Cold Girl

by R. M. Greenaway

  With no standing ovation for his grand performance, with nothing left to say, Dion puffed out a sigh and looked at the sky, and Rourke got the last word in, waving his gun. “One thing you better know, Constable Dion. You betray me, and I’ll kill you. That I promise. I’ll track you down and I’ll kill you, and it’ll be slow, and it will hurt.”

  Dion nodded. The engines had been purring into position up on the ridge, and now they were cut, and there came instead the telltale silence of a stealthy descent, peppered with discreet noises, the crunch of snow, the snap of ground cover and rustling of shrubs. He opened his eyes from a waking doze and said to Rourke, “Better throw your gun down, ’less you want to end it right here.”

  Rourke hesitated, maybe picturing that glorious showdown of his dreams, but his madness only took him so far into that imagined glory, and bottom line was he wanted to stay here, as most people did, eking it out until the last straw broke. Rourke leaned over and laid the gun in the grass. His hands were up as the team was still creeping forward. To speed things up, Dion might have shouted out to them, told them all was well, but he didn’t. He was starting to flatline.

  They materialized from the dark and took command of the situation, and he explained to David Leith in his SWAT-like gear that he’d put Scott Rourke under arrest for the murder of Kiera Rilkoff. Leith asked him about shots fired, but the question was not quite connecting. Dion knew only that he was cold, and told Leith so. Leith told him to hand over his firearm, and Dion did so. There was a party-like chaos now on the mountainside around him, lot of hubbub, Rourke being arrested, shouting something about Frank, Frank being arrested, shouting something about Rourke, and it was almost funny, until some kind of animal went screaming over Dion’s head, a giant bat that was really just a piece of the sky flying off its axis. He raised an arm to fend it off, and when it was gone, so was the crowd, or most of it. A man’s voice woke him from some distance, asking if he was coming or what?

  He followed Leith up a difficult path, but not nearly so difficult as the one he’d taken earlier, and like everything else, he’d messed up his pathfinding and come the long way round. His feet took him into a clearing where the vehicles were parked. Engines were starting up, SUVs pushing off. He wasn’t sure where Rourke had gone but knew somebody here must have the asshole under control. The ache in his side was now throbbing like a disco, and matching colours flashed behind his eyelids, red and blue and green. Leith asked him about keys, and he found them in his jacket pocket and handed them over. He was to ride with Leith back to the detachment, where he would give his statement. He wouldn’t have to drive, and that was good news. He dropped into the passenger seat but found it wasn’t the blessed relief he’d been hoping for. Folding himself into a seated position, the pain went from throbbing disco to mangling knife blades, and he felt the blood drain from his face.

  He tried to keep his eyes open. The car woke, lurched, and was on its way. Leith spoke, but in a drone of foreign words. The car began its downhill journey, and with every jolt Dion felt warm liquid spurting from his midriff. He tried to pack the open wound by clamping his arm over it, but knew he’d been wrong, and it wasn’t a minor scrape but a fatal split, and his guts were coming out. He was becoming a corpse even as he sat breathing the comforting warm automobile air and listening to Leith’s intermittent drone.

  This was what he wanted, to die in the line of duty, but he was desperately afraid. He was ice-cold and either very still or shaking hard, he couldn’t say, even as he tried to look at his own hand. How would it all turn out without him? He should have written to Kate. Should have said sorry to Looch’s widow. He should have been nicer, should have tried harder. Worst of all, maybe he’d been wrong about everything, and he’d been fighting his own shadow. Now that he was here at the end of the line, it was unbearably sad. He hoped he wasn’t crying. The timing was wrong, that’s all. Say something smart to Leith, he told himself. Something nice. He tried to speak, but nothing came out. He tried to raise an arm to wipe across his eyes, but lost the strength. The disco lights flared and went out.

  * * *

  Once they were on their way down the mountain, Leith launched into his lecture, not sure why he bothered. “She says she told you to wait for backup. You know what backup means? You want me to spell it out for you?”

  Silence.

  “Anyway, you’re going to have to get it together. Rourke’s gun’s been fired, and I have to know who fired it and where the bullet went. How are you doing?”

  Dion looked at him briefly, blankly, and didn’t respond.

  Feels stupid, Leith thought. And so he should. Ballsy, going after Rourke on his own, and more than a little bewildering. But ultimately just stupid.

  Leaving the mountain behind him, upping the speed on straight flat rubble now, Leith glanced sideways and noted by the console lights that his passenger was leaning heavily back now, staring a bit too serenely at the windshield, that he was breathing shallow, that his arm was pressed across his torso in a peculiar manner. On a second glance he saw that the pale grey lining of Dion’s patrol jacket, partially flipped back and visible, was black with a migrating wetness, and with a start he realized where that bullet had gone, and why he wasn’t getting any answers.

  “You’ve been shot,” he said, hitting the strobes and siren toggles. “Hang on. I’ll get you to emerg.”

  Ten minutes later, he pulled into the ambulance-only bay at the Wrinch Memorial, and a pre-notified team rushed out with a gurney, portable oxygen, and an arsenal of blood-staunching supplies. Dion was out cold now, unresponsive. He was wrangled from the car by two large medics, laid on a gurney and wheeled into the hospital with measured speed.

  “Why didn’t he say something?” Leith asked the nurse as he followed. “Why didn’t he just bloody mention, oh, by the way, Dave, I’ve been shot?”

  The nurse didn’t know why, so he asked, more to the point, “Is he going to live?”

  She couldn’t answer that either. But things were crazy enough tonight, and Leith was needed elsewhere. He left a card at the nursing station with a request that they call the office as soon as they had news on the constable’s condition, then rushed back to his car to head back to where the action was unfolding, anxious not to miss a beat.

  * * *

  There was to be no action for the rest of the night, as it turned out, because nobody wanted to talk, on either side of the thin blue line. So Scott Rourke and Frank Law were thawed out, fed, and given the usual one-size-fits-all coveralls and scratchy blankets for their night in the New Hazelton holding cells, which was full house by now. Leith went to his room at the Super 8 for a few hours’ sleep, and the few hours went by too fast; his alarm went off at six thirty, and he was up and at it again.

  There was a lot to sort out today, and as he ate breakfast in the motel’s diner he tried to compartmentalize the problems in his mind. First problem, he now had three confessors to the killing of Kiera Rilkoff. Ironic, as he’ d mentioned to Giroux last night, that three low-life bastards all wanted to claim responsibility for taking the life of one kind and talented young woman with a golden future. And they all claimed she was dear to them.

  Giroux said it was plain that all three men knew what had happened to some extent or another, and each was trying to protect the others, and sooner or later the truth would emerge, whether they liked it or not. Just gotta keep hitting them till something breaks.

  “Nothing like good ol’ grassroots police tactics,” Leith had told her, and added his own grassroots opinion that he hadn’t seen such a schmozzle of false confessions in his life, and if he had his way they’d all do maximum time.

  But in the end only one would face the most serious charge, and that man, at least, would get the royal treatment, twenty-five years eating over-boiled peas for dinner, staring at cement, and having a good long ponder on where he’d gone wrong.

  His second current probl
em, taken as a thing in itself, was yesterday’s incident on the East Band lookout, which had whipped itself up out of nowhere like a prairie twister, ending in two arrests and one officer down. How had Dion got himself up there alone? Wasn’t he supposed to be grid-searching the new subdivision by the 7-Eleven? How was a wallflower like him always getting in the middle of the polka?

  No, he revised. Not a wallflower. A thistle.

  The third problem, taken as another thing in itself, was the timing of Jayne Spacey’s call to him last night — ten thirty, as he’d logged it — mustering backup to charge up the East Band. He had nothing but a suspicion and a quick glance at the roster to go on, but something just didn’t jive there, and would need looking into.

  But first things first. It was seven thirty, bright and early, a great time to talk to three killers. He decided to start with his least favourite person in the world, Scottie Rourke. Rourke had twice declined the offer of counsel, but Leith wouldn’t go forward with this until the prisoner had spoken to somebody, so it had happened. Rourke had been duly warned to shut the hell up and happily was apparently going to ignore that advice and spill all.

  Leith popped a caffeine pill and went to the interrogation room, where he found Rourke wound up, twitchy, fierce-eyed. The two men sat face to face, and Rourke agreed he’d spoken to counsel and knew his rights. Leith gave him free rein to speak, which worked well with madmen, and Rourke told of encountering Kiera on the Saturday of her disappearance. She hadn’t driven by but stopped to say hello. He’d made a grab for her, all in fun, and she’d slapped him, and he’d seen red, and next thing you know he had his hands around her neck.

  “Where’s her body?” Leith said.

  “I buried her where you’ll never find her,” Rourke said.

  Leith wondered if it was the same place Rob Law had buried her, where they’d never find her too. He wondered where Frank Law would claim to have buried her next. He wondered if the Rilkoff family would ever get their murdered daughter back. He said, “Without her body, I’m finding it hard to believe you actually killed her, Scott. And I’ve got a long day ahead of me, so —”

  “You got piles of evidence against me,” Rourke said. “You don’t need her body. I want her to stay where I left her, out of respect for her, believe it or not. ’Cause I buried her right. She wasn’t dumped like garbage. You can tell her folks that.”

  Oh, they will be immeasurably comforted, Leith almost said. Instead he asked, “And what evidence is that, that we have piled against you?” Already his pen was beating a fast tattoo on the desktop. He stopped it by crossing his arms and stopped his foot tapping by stretching out his legs and crossing the ankles.

  “I choose to withhold that for now,” Rourke said. “That’s your job, to find it, I’d say.”

  “All right. So why are you telling me this?”

  “Because it’s fantastic. It’s a comedy of errors. Rob and Frank each think the other did it, so they’re trying to save each other’s necks, which is insane because neither one should be going through this hell, when I’m the one who did it. Me.” Rourke thumped himself on the chest. “That’s why I’m telling you this. I have that much decency left in me to admit what I done, if it means saving those two bozos from themselves.”

  “Why did you and Frank go up to the lookout last night?”

  “To talk.”

  “Your good friend Morris Fernholdt says you came by yesterday evening, you and Frank, and wanted to hide out there for a few days. He sent you packing. Why would Frank need to hide out if he hadn’t done anything wrong?”

  “Frank was just trying to help me out. He’s a good man. Loyal.”

  “Sure. That’s a nice .22 you got, by the way. Diamond­back. Kind of rare specimen, isn’t it?”

  “They’re still common as Ford F-150s, actually.”

  “Maybe. But far and few between up here in the sticks. How’d you come upon it?”

  “Friend of a friend. An estate acquisition. Fifteen years ago, at least.”

  “Interesting. We’ll have to do some tracking, find out when it went off the radar.”

  “I got hold of it before the radar was invented, sir, and before I got my firearms ban, by the way. It was an oversight. I guess I just stashed it away and forgot about it. Just doing some spring cleaning the other day and came upon it.”

  “And took it with you to talk with Frank on the lookout?”

  “That was for cougars.”

  “You shot a cop, Mr. Rourke.”

  “Huh?”

  “And since you’re sitting here readily confessing to one homicide, is there anything else you should get off your chest? We got the gun, we’ll get the riflings. We’ll rummage the archives, and any place that gun shows up, every little gas station holdup, we’ll have to assume you were there too. So save yourself the trouble of a bunch of long boring interrogations and give me the list now.”

  Rourke was looking appalled, and like all his emotions, it came across with exquisite exaggeration, Daffy Duck accused of murder. “What d’you mean, I shot a cop? I never shot a cop.”

  Leith’s arms and ankles uncrossed themselves, and he sat forward. “Something wrong with your short-term memory? You shot him last night, right in the gut. He bled all over my car, and he’s dying in the hospital as we speak. And you know what? Killing a cop is even worse than your regular civilian homicide.”

  Rourke jerked back in his chair. “You talking about Constable Dion here? I never shot him. Never.”

  Leith saw outrage, and it puzzled him. He didn’t want to sound puzzled, so he said savagely, “Isn’t that weird, because Frank’s telling us the exact opposite.” This was an on-the-spot invention, because he hadn’t talked to Frank Law yet, but he’d never felt bad about lying to catch a shithead. He raised his voice as Rourke clambered to his feet in indignation and barked, “Sit the hell down.”

  “I shot over his head,” Rourke said, back in his chair, still appalled and somehow hurt. “I never aimed anywhere near the jerk. I wouldn’t do that.”

  There followed a dead spot in the interview. Rourke moped. Leith sat tapping his pen again, studying the man’s face and wondering.

  He left the room to talk to Giroux and found instead a big bear at her desk, Mike Bosko, who was supposed to have caught the sheriff shuttle to Prince George this morning but apparently hadn’t. Like a bad rash, he’d take his time fading away.

  Bosko looked up, smiled, said, “How’s it going with Rourke?”

  “He says he didn’t shoot Dion,” Leith told him. “And he’s full of hot air on every point except this. Are we sure it’s actually a bullet that got him?”

  Giroux stepped in, sparing Bosko the trouble of saying I don’t know in his long-winded way. “Not a bullet, guys,” she said. “Just heard from the hospital. He woke up long enough to confirm what the doctor suspected. It was a jab, not a bullet. And self-inflicted.”

  Naturally, Leith thought.

  The same blast of contempt had maybe crossed Giroux’s mind, the way she tossed her hands. She said, “Seems he impaled himself on a branch during a fall. Lost some blood, but no vital organs. Exhaustion is the diagnosis, few stitches and rest is the cure. So he’ll be okay, but we can’t talk to him till they say so.”

  “Well, they better say so fast,” Leith said.

  On the other hand, he wasn’t too concerned about what Dion had to say. Frank’s confession had been in the works last night, and the East Band was just an aggravating little diversion masterminded by that idiot Rourke. Now they were back on track, and Frank was being brought in for his turn at the podium, and Leith felt cautiously optimistic that this would be the grand finale. The interview that would close the file forever.

  * * *

  Things seemed to go well, at first. Frank Law, in a choppy, solemn way, told Leith that after a day of reflecting, sitting up at Sunday
Lake with Lenny, chilled to the bone, he’d known what he had to do: come clean with what had happened to Kiera, and for the first time in a long time Leith’s hopefulness marched forward. He nodded encouragement to this intelligent young man who could see the writing on the wall, who was going to do the right thing now and save everybody a lot of time and trouble and admit he’d done it.

  Frank took a deep breath and said, “Scott Rourke killed her.”

  Leith went through the motions in his mind of slamming the table and howling rude words at the heavens. But only in his mind. He gave Frank his steadiest gaze, rimed with ice, and waited for more.

  The not-so-intelligent young man nodded, something earnest in his demeanour, almost sweet, and Leith thought about juries and their fallibility. “Ask him,” Frank said. “He’ll tell you.”

  So the long way around they would have to go. Some cases were quick wraps, others were like playing musical chairs in a fevered dream. Leith put Kiera aside for the moment, made a note to himself, and got onto the more recent past, asking about the shootout on the East Band lookout.

  “Not much to tell,” Frank replied. “I’d just dropped Lenny back at home, was on my way here, to tell you guys everything. But met Scottie, he was heading home on his bicycle, and I made the mistake of stopping to say hi, and he said he wanted to talk about something, so he hopped in my Jeep and we went up to the lookout.”

  “Long ways to go for a chat in the middle of the night.”

  “Around here, man, logging roads are entertainment.”

  “You went straight up the mountain, then?”

  Frank shrugged uncomfortably. “First we went over to Morris’s place. Scottie was saying he’d be needing a place to lie low for a while. He has this idea that he’s got friends all over the planet who’ll hide him till the heat blows over. I think he’s kind of delusional.”

  “You think? Well, what happened at Morris’s?”

  “Cops knocked on the door, but we’d seen ’em coming, and Scottie yanked me into the back bedroom. Morris got rid of ’em, then he came and told us the cops were looking for me and he wanted us to get lost in a big way. So we did. Went on up to the lookout, and Scottie had some hooch, and I wanted to get bombed, so we went to the arch and were just talking about shit when the constable jumped out at us from nowhere and was yelling at Scottie to let me go. And suddenly Scottie’s got me in a chokehold with his gun shoved up my nostril, so I don’t know, but I think that cop had things a bit backward. Anyway, I can tell you, I was pretty damn confused.”