His higher-ups, Staff Sergeant Prentice and certain brass from North District, didn’t think he could be considered impartial, considering Ms. Blackwood had just tried to kill him. They stuck to their guns even when the tests came back, blood and urine analysis, A-okay. Ident had also scoured her kitchen for the poison she might have put in his tea and found nothing more insidious than a soggy little bag of No-Name chai.
“She didn’t try to kill me,” he told Prentice for the fifth time, free from the hospital, back at the New Hazelton detachment, Renee Giroux listening in and rolling her eyes. “She tried to distract me from that freezer, sir. She thought I’d peel out of there to save my own life, giving her a chance to hide the evidence, is what she thought.”
“That’s insane,” Prentice told him.
“Half this village is insane,” Leith answered. “And Mercy Blackwood leads the pack.”
The brass talked some more, and finally caved and told him to carry on, just to watch his P’s and Q’s. As soon as he felt he was too emotionally involved, he should hand the case over to someone else.
Before sitting down with Mercy, Leith sat down with Renee Giroux in person and the rest of the team via teleconference, from wherever they had scattered to: Terrace, Prince George, Prince Rupert. The meeting lasted two hours as they picked over every aspect of the case with its shifted dynamics, now that there was a body. Kiera had been transported by plane to Vancouver for autopsy, accompanied by Corporal Fairchild and the constable in charge of exhibits. The team talked at length over what Mercy’s tack might be, what approach to take, any pitfalls to avoid. But there was no right approach, Leith knew. Whenever he thought he had her scoped out, she morphed into something entirely different. That left him with the least desirable “wing it” tactic. “I’ll begin with respect,” he said.
Late in the evening, she was brought to the interview room from the cells in her prison coveralls. He had her unshackled, and they sat across from each other, saying nothing. She appeared to him much the same as the first time they’d met, chilly, polite, and subdued. He himself was calm. Nobody looking on would have guessed at their recent melodrama. He asked if she’d spoken to counsel, if she was satisfied with the advice she’d received. She said she had and she was. He asked her to tell him everything. She said she would, if she could get a sweater or blanket.
He had her fixed up with a blanket and a mug of hot tea. After her first sip, she put down the cup and said, “I’m very sorry about the ricin thing. I do these things, sometimes. It’s like I’m possessed. I always carry that pepper spray around with me, since I moved up here. Lot of vicious dogs running around. I don’t feel safe.”
The apology sounded dry but genuine. He ignored it and said, “Start from the beginning. How did we end up here?”
“All of them have been to my house, Frank and Kiera, Stella and Chad, back when things were good between us. They knew their way around. They must have broken in that day and hid her in the freezer. When I say they, I can only guess who was involved.”
“Who?”
“Stella. It was only days later I discovered the body in my freezer, wrapped in a tarp. I didn’t look closer, but of course it was Kiera. I didn’t touch the body. I phoned Stella. She said it was a terrible accident, and they didn’t know what else to do with her. She told me to say nothing. If I reported it, they would implicate me. Of course, I still considered phoning it in, and I should have. But I hesitated. And the minute I hesitated, I became a criminal. And I knew it. I said nothing. I have been living in a cold sweat ever since.”
She was done, the shortest police statement in history. Cold sweat summed her up perfectly, Leith realized. She’d been in a cold sweat every time he saw her. He said, “What about the truck you borrowed from Jim’s garage?”
“I didn’t.”
“Sure you did. You had keys. Jim says so. The shop closes at noon on Saturdays, but somebody let themselves in after closing that day, took a truck out, and returned it much later that same night. We found the truck that was used. The proof’s on the odometer. And there’s surveillance video too.”
The footage was not from Duncan’s garage but the Home Hardware up the block, and all it showed was a vehicle leaving the lot, with a time stamp. But he wasn’t about to say so. He didn’t mention either the black fabric and tape found in the garage’s dumpster, or the tape residue on the truck’s rear window. He said, “You let yourself in, found the keys, drove that truck out. Brought it back. Hung the keys up. Let yourself out again.”
She was appalled but not surprised. “God,” she said, “she must have taken the key.”
“Stella knew you had a key to his garage, did she? And knew where to find it?”
“Obviously.”
But Leith had more. He said, “D’you know who dumped all those frozen vegetables over Kiera’s body in the freezer?”
Her crinkled brow said she was losing patience. “They did, apparently. Stella and whoever she was working with.”
Leith said, “If you want, I’ll show you the IGA surveillance tape. Sunday, the day after, you’re buying a lot of frozen peas. Enough to feed an army. Do you want to explain that?”
She considered his face, her brow smooth now. She pulled the itchy grey blanket snugger around her shoulders and said blandly, “Well, I suppose it wasn’t several days later I discovered the body. I must be mistaken about that. That’s right, it was the next day. Yes, I did buy the frozen vegetables to cover her up. I’m sorry. I know it was wrong. I know her family will never forgive me, and I know I will be criminally charged. Is there anything else?”
* * *
Leith stayed at his desk at the detachment and worked late into the night, writing his report and looking at the facts, knowing her story had to be a whitewash. Or in her case, a greywash. How did Kiera’s body get from riverbank to shallow grave on the Matax trailhead to Mercy Blackwood’s freezer? What was the story there? He suspected that until Scott Rourke and/or Stella Marshall showed up and spilled the beans, he may never know the whole truth. Blackwood’s house was undergoing a thorough search, autopsy results were pending, but it wouldn’t tell him what he needed to know, who did what, when. He told himself that at least Kiera’s family would have a body to bury, whatever peace that brought.
He called in an off-duty Constable Thackray, the exhibit custodian for the Blackwood search. Thackray arrived in civvies, looking unkempt and dazed. Leith told him he needed to see Blackwood’s phone. Thackray brought it from the lockers and sat by while Leith went through the phone’s databanks. He found one number of interest, called several times over the last ten days. He ran the number down on his computer. It was a cellular that belonged to a Van Edwards. “Who’s Van Edwards?” he asked Thackray. “Name mean anything to you?”
“Local guy,” Thackray said. “Unemployed. Does odd jobs around.”
Leith punched out Renee Giroux’s number on his BlackBerry. She sounded as if she might have been asleep, and she asked if he knew what time it was. He looked at the wall clock and realized it was a quarter past two in the morning.
“Sorry,” he said. “But I was thinking. I’m mining Blackwood’s phone here. She’s been in touch lately with a local odd-jobber named Van Edwards. Maybe she was planning to hire him to remove the body. She couldn’t do it herself, could she? Why now, though? Why not soon as possible?”
“Too many cops around,” Giroux suggested.
He agreed that was possible. But it was something else, deeper and darker, that nagged. “She suggested Kiera wasn’t dead, was lying in wait, would come after her. That’s when we were talking, before I found the body.”
Giroux said, “A ruse to throw you off the scent.”
It continued to bother him. He thought of the photographs of Mercy on the wall, from not so long ago, before she left the city. She’d been wholesome-looking, round-cheeked and smiling. In the span of a
year or so she had shrunk to her present state. Forever cold. He relayed the thought, more or less, to Giroux.
Giroux said, “Of course she’s shrunk. So would you if you were hiding a corpse in your freezer. A corpse you were at least in part responsible for by spreading false rumours and counterfeit documents, which sparked the fight that killed her. It’s called guilty conscience.”
He sighed, knowing she was right. “I don’t know,” he said, spinning a pen on the desktop and frowning. “Something bothers me about this whole thing.”
“Huh, well,” Giroux said. “Here’s a suggestion. Sleep on it.” She disconnected.
* * *
After sleeping on it, he was no wiser. First thing in the morning he spoke to a sombre, hulking twenty-two-year-old who Giroux knew as troublesome but harmless, Van Edwards, a good-looking native boy of impressive height and width. Edwards told Leith how Mercy Blackwood had found his number on the bulletin board at the IGA last week and called him up, wondering if he could help renovate her house. He was up for it. He’d shifted some junk, he said, got a hundred bucks off her, and not much else so far. He was losing faith that he’d ever see any real money from the job. “She tried to seduce me,” he added.
Leith was somewhat expecting it. Mercy needed not just muscle but devotion when it came to moving a human body. She was probably hoping the young guy would fall head over heels for her, do anything she asked, and cover for her crimes. He said, “And did it work?”
“Course,” Van said, grinning. “Worked three times. Weren’t bad at all, too.”
They talked for another hour, Leith trying his best not to lead, trying to find out if Mercy had told the man anything that might shed light on his own murky suspicions. Not leading got him nowhere, so finally he made a suggestion. “Did she ever mention an upcoming job that might not be totally legal, say?”
“Nope.”
Leith pondered. “There’s a blood stain on her floor in front of her woodstove,” he said, thinking of Mercy’s story of an injured dog, which he hadn’t believed for a moment. The floorboards had been cut out and were away for analysis, but he wouldn’t have an answer for a while whether the blood was indeed human. Kiera hadn’t bled out, from what he’d seen and what he’d been told, but he was certain that bloodstain was somehow integral to whatever happened in Mercy’s house that day. “Know where that came from?”
“Dog,” Van said. “Got hit by a car.”
So she’d given him the same lie. Leith crossed his arms.
“She was weird about that dog,” Van went on. “It got killed a week or two before she first hired me, but she was always talking about it. Fact she still had it in her freezer. I go, what? You put it in your freezer? That’s where your food goes. She says the freezer’s old and shitty and she wants it taken to the dump, dog and all. I says, I’ll need help with that, you’ll have to hire another guy, somebody with a flat-deck. Then she changed her mind, says she wants the dog buried.” He reflected a moment and then nodded. “Yeah, weird how she’s always going on about that damned dog. She said she watched it die, how horrible it was, how it scared her at night, knowing it was there on the verandah, and she was always hearing things. Jumpy. Zombie dogs, eh. Ha. That’s why she wanted me staying overnight all the time, I guess, so she wasn’t alone, that’s how freaked out she was. I said, well, fuck, just get rid of it. I’ll take it out to the woods for you. Can’t, she says. Not yet. Soon. She wanted to give it a proper burial when the time was right. Said she’d pay me good money for it. Up in the hills, she says. Way far away from town.” Van rolled his eyes in mock fear. “Weird lady. Kind of gave me the creeps sometimes, when we’re lying in bed, and she’s hanging on to me like her life depends on it, staring at the doorway like she can see something coming. I don’t scare easy, but I tell you, I was pretty well ready to quit that bitch.”
“Did you ever look at the dog in the freezer?”
“No. I tried, but she wouldn’t let me.”
“When would the time be right, for this burial, did she say?”
“Soon as the ground thaws,” Van said with a shrug, and now his eyes gleamed with interest. “So what’s she done wrong?”
Leith thought of the gardeners out in their yards with their forks and shovels, and the dripping eaves, and the softening ground. He would talk to her again, and this time he’d get mean. A call came in just then from Corporal Fairchild. Members following Leith’s directions had been re-reviewing security footages from the vicinity of the Blackwell residence from the day of Kiera’s disappearance, and had discovered something he ought to see.
* * *
Leith and Mercy were talking again, because Leith now had what he hoped was proof of collusion. Down the block from Mercy’s house stood the Royal Bank where Stella worked. The Royal Bank had a surveillance cam, and the footage on that cam provided proof that he was now advising her of. On Saturday, the day Kiera disappeared, Mercy had met Scott Rourke on the street, and they had spoken. This was at 2:15 p.m., soon after Rourke had learned of Kiera’s death, according to Leith’s timeline. He wanted to know now what they had talked about.
Mercy was silent, so he let her know, with rising anger, that she’d better come clean and tell the truth this time. All of it.
She flinched, and he could see that a night in cells had worn down her bravado. Finally, she nodded. “Saturday afternoon. I was on my way to the bank. I ran into Scott Rourke on the street. I almost walked on by, but he looked jittery, more than usual. He’s a high-strung man, but that day he looked like he’d seen a ghost. I asked what was wrong, and he told me about Kiera. That Frank had killed her. It was an accident.”
“Just like that?” Leith asked.
“Yes. He’s a babbler, the last person you’d want to trust your secrets with. But Frank had apparently done just that, called up Scott and told him all about it. And now Scott was telling me. He said Stella was involved too. While Frank stayed at home and buried his head in the sand, Stella and Scott wrapped Kiera’s body in a tarp, put her in the back of her Rodeo, and drove up the mountain to bury her in the snow off the Matax.”
“How’d they get back down?”
“They drove in tandem. Stella took Frank’s Jeep. She thought the police would blame it on the Pickup Killer. She got Scott to call Frank and tell him what the plan was. Frank should set up an alibi with Parker, our sound guy. Something about a text message sent from Kiera’s phone before they ditched it. Also, Scott would tell the cops he’d seen Kiera driving by, and it had to be during the time Parker was at the house. Stella’s sharp, but not as sharp as she thinks she is. When I heard all this, I told Scott it was a terrible cover-up. The body would be found and traced back to Frank in no time at all. What they should have done is go straight to the police. If it was an accident like Frank said, then he was in trouble, but he wouldn’t get much. Maybe a year, maybe just probation. But now he was in it up to his neck. And so were they. And so was I, for even talking to Scott like I was.”
She glowered back at those crossroads she’d stood upon, and the really bad fork she’d chosen. She said, “I told Scott he’d better go back up the mountain and get the body, hide it for a day or two, then take her away, somewhere remote. He just sat there moaning. He said driving Frank’s Jeep up the first time was horribly risky, and a second time could be disastrous. It would be recognized. He had a point. So I gave him the key to Jim’s garage. Jim always had a truck or two in the bay, waiting for service. Scott took the key, promised he’d bring it back, and left. I was already full of regret, of course, and scared out of my wits, but it was too late. I carried on as planned, spent the day in town, doing errands, making sure I was seen by lots of people. Establishing my own alibi.”
Again she paused, and Leith could see her gathering her thoughts. He didn’t like suspects gathering their thoughts much, but he waited in silence.
She said, “I came home that evening
and saw someone had been on my back verandah. The floor was wet. I had a bad feeling. I looked in the freezer and saw something was in there, under the food. Large, wrapped not so well in an old orange tarp. I realized that those two angels had found a really great hiding spot for the body.”
She hung her head now, done. Leith wasn’t, quite. “Tell me about your dog,” he said.
Her face lifted, and she stared at him.
He said, “You said your dog was hit by a vehicle, and a man brought it inside. I need to verify it. What’s his name, the man?”
“He was a stranger, walking by. I asked for his name, but he never told me. He said he’s from Smithers, does odd jobs around. I asked if he was interested in doing renovation work for me, but that never went anywhere. We were both in a daze.”
“Describe him, then,” Leith said. It was all an invention to explain that mysterious blood stain, he knew, and now she would go on to describe a tall, dark stranger.
“Young,” she said. “Tall. Good looking. Dark hair, dark eyes. May have been native, but I don’t think so. I drove him to the Super 8.”
What a load of crap, Leith thought. He leaned forward and said, “How about this instead. There was no dog. It was Kiera you watched die. You opened the freezer and found her there, but she wasn’t dead. She was looking up at you, asking for help. That’s what’s left you in a cold sweat. That’s what’s giving you nightmares.” He stood, leaned both hands on the tabletop and raised his voice at her. “She’s going to tell us from that autopsy table, every last detail. So out with it. Tell me. Tell me the damned truth.”
Mercy shrank away from him. “No, that’s not true at all.”
“It is true,” he shouted and slammed the table with both palms, hard, and for the first time in his career his anger was more than interrogatory theatrics. He had a connection with Kiera, stronger than he ought to have allowed develop. She had become his own personal missing loved one, and he couldn’t bear to think of her suffering, yet everything in his mind pointed to that terrible death, without foundation or confirmation, without one tangible clue. He said it again, feeling the ulcer at work in the pit of his stomach, the veins popping at his throat, the wet heat in his eyes. “You damn well could have saved her, and you shut the lid, didn’t you? Slammed it down and left her in the dark to die. Didn’t you?”
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