Cold Girl

by R. M. Greenaway

  “Yes,” she said. She was crying freely now, sobbing and huddling as if to burrow away from the memories. “But it was too late. There was no going back.”

  “Why?” he asked. “Why in hell would you not help her, even if it was too late? To save Stella? Scott? Frank?”

  It was a while before she answered. She straightened, popped her eyes wide, and spoke like an automaton now, gazing at the wall. “Just Frank,” she said. “My beautiful, brilliant Frank. When this all blew over I would take him places. He was always the star of the show, just didn’t know it. With his curb appeal and Charlie’s music, we would have broken through for sure.”

  Leith buzzed for the guard to take her away, and his own heart was beating madly as the door swung shut behind them. He looked at the lens of the video camera set up to record this interview and realized it was still rolling, and he was still swearing. He straightened his shirt collar and stood to switch it off.

  * * *

  Over the next few days Leith tackled the loose ends of the file. More came to light about Mercy Blackwell the fraud. Her departure from Vancouver had nothing to do with a medical crisis and everything to do with being fired by the Midlanders, a lawsuit related to another bad contract, and the looming shadow of bankruptcy. Her dying grandmother had been more a stroke of luck to Mercy than an act of kindness, a place to go, temporary accommodations. The luck had gone south when she discovered Fling. Promoting the little band of musicians was her effort to get back on her feet, but instead it had landed her in jail, maybe for life. A purple coat came to light as well, stuffed into the attic in a garbage bag, another nail in her coffin.

  She was now in the care of a fairly high-profile lawyer from the Lower Mainland. There was still no word of Charlie West, and her shy, plain face joined the league of missing girl postings. Stella Marshall was still gone, untrackable. Scott Rourke seemed to have followed her into the void; he had never showed up at his ratty little trailer, which was watched round the clock, and none of his associates had seen him for several days.

  Just as Leith was preparing to leave the Hazeltons and head back to Rupert, leaving those loose ends for someone else to tie, he received some grisly news. A hiker had been exploring a defunct highway running from the main road to Two Mile, a stretch of crumbly blacktop left to the mosses and weeds. The man had been walking along, taking pictures. Took a shot of this, of that, pointed his lens upward at a massive cottonwood arching over the road, and jumped out of his skin.

  Ident were now on scene, trying to deal with the hiker’s find. From the side of their vehicle, Leith and Giroux shielded their eyes and looked up. Limned against the fuzzy grey sky a thin scrap of adult male hung, tattered and weathered. On his feet were saggy socks. Cowboy boots lay below, tossed wide. The boots had already been marked with little yellow numbers. Judging from the way the head was angled, Leith saw it wasn’t a professional hitch that had broken Rourke’s neck, but an amateur’s knot that would have slowly throttled him.

  Leith winced. He didn’t like Scott Rourke, but nobody deserved an end like that.

  He watched as the body was cut down, lowered to earth, and the processing began. He said, “I’ll have to pass this one on to someone else, or I’ll never get back home.”

  “Kind of like a bad dream, isn’t it?” Giroux said. She too seemed sobered by this death, whatever she had called Rourke just days earlier. “It’s the people that make a community,” she said. “Good, bad, or weird as hell. When you think of it, those were a bunch of friends to die for. Stella, Scottie, Chad. Risking everything to save Frank. Have you ever had a friend who’d do that for you?”

  Leith hadn’t. He thought of Mercy’s remark about these kids working against each other. Well, they’d been very much working together, in fact. And still would be, if she hadn’t come along. He said, “What they did was not only criminal, but mind-blowingly stupid, all of it. They put the family through hell and burned through a year’s worth of man hours that could have been spent elsewhere.”

  Giroux nodded. “Still. And they’d have done the same if it was the other way around, if it was Frank they thought dead. Except Kiera would have refused to go along with it. She’s a woman. She’s got brains.”

  “You know you’re a real female chauvinist pig? Stella’s a woman too, and she was the mastermind behind it all. What d’you say to that?”

  “Stella’s not a woman; she’s an anomaly.”

  You couldn’t win with Renee Giroux. Leith huddled and swore under his breath.

  “Hmph,” Giroux said, not to their argument but to the body lying before them. “I hate this. For whatever his sins, he was one of us.”

  “Any idea who did it? Those two guys we saw him with outside the detachment, by any chance?”

  An ident officer brought something over in a plastic exhibit bag. “Was in his pocket, sir.”

  Leith and Giroux read the suicide note. Leith saw authenticity in the calligraphy and the prose, but no outright reason given. He winced, imagining the weight of guilt floating about this town. This was no mob lynching, then. Just self-annihilation. He said, “Rourke’s the do-gooder from hell. He tried to save Frank’s neck, but failed. But I don’t think that’s it. I think he found out Kiera wasn’t dead when he dumped her in the freezer. That’s what he couldn’t live with.”

  Giroux was irritated. “That’s a hell of an assumption. How could he possibly know that?”

  “I don’t know,” he grumbled. “Maybe he didn’t know, but suspected. Maybe she twitched as he laid her inside, but like Mercy, he knew it was too late to save her.”

  “Maybe this is all a bad dream,” Giroux said. “Did you hear about the dog?”

  He stared down at her. “What dog?”

  “The dead dog behind Mercy’s house. In the bushes. Looks like it had been hit by a car. And the blood on her floorboards is animal, not human.”

  Leith said nothing. Watching Rourke’s body zipped into its body bag, he told Giroux of his big decision, his new posting, fast-tracked by the amazing Mike Bosko. “Yeah, looks like I’ll be gone April 20th, heading for the bright lights of North Vancouver,” he said, jetting his hand southbound across the continent to more exciting places, a part of him hoping to make Giroux just a little bit jealous.

  “Yeah?” she said flatly. “My condolences.” And she meant it.

  Seventeen

  Unfond Farewells

  KIERA’S BODY WAS COMING HOME, and on this same weekend an outdoor festival was held in Smithers, all along Main Street, with a stage set up at the rondo at one end. As Dion understood it, the festival was in celebration of Kiera’s life, combined with a fundraiser for women at risk. The turnout was good. These early April days were still too cold for outdoor events, really, but people bundled up in parkas and long johns under their jeans, wearing mitts and toques and big smiles. They brought folding chairs or wandered and listened to the live bands playing and the speeches and comedians and fundraising auctions and whatever else climbed the stage and took the mic. There were midway games, food booths, plenty of native arts and crafts on sale, I Love Kiera T-shirts, and Fling’s first and only CD selling like hotcakes.

  Dion had arrived with Penny at noon. Now at half past three they found a bench near the stage to sit down and eat corn dogs. A new band was setting up, country rockers from Prince George. This wasn’t the fall fair, but it felt much the same to Dion as the guitars were tuned and the mics tested. A woman on stage introduced the members of her band. She talked about Kiera, and of violence against women, and of the changes that would now be made. There were cheers and applause to her proclamation, and Dion kept his doubts to himself. Her first song was titled “Captivity.”

  “Not as good as Kiera,” Penny murmured as the song played. “Nobody can ever be as good as Kiera.”

  Penny mourned Kiera but had no regrets for Frank, facing charges of second-degree murder. Th
e posters had come down off her wall, and he’d been flicked into the scum bin in her mind, but she still knew nothing of men. “That guy’s pretty hot,” she said, looking toward the stage and meaning either the guy on guitar or the guy on drums. The song ended. There was another round of applause, and Dion clapped too, knowing he was going to be here in this town forever, attending concerts with Penny and feeling nothing.

  “Oh,” she said, waving. She had spotted some friends and wanted to go join them. Dion told her to go ahead, he’d catch up with her later. In the middle of a song, which struck him as rude, she got up and headed toward her pals on the far side of the street. He called out, “Hey, Penny,” and held out the small plush penguin he’d won for her on the mini midway.

  She mouthed “Later,” and kept going.

  He sat ignoring the music, considering his position, the new secret to add to his stockpile. He’d maintain the lie, because nothing would be gained by confession. He’d been in Mercy Blackwell’s house. He’d laid the dog at the foot of the freezer, inside which lay the body of the missing singer. Maybe he’d left fingerprints; maybe they’d be found; maybe he’d be interrogated for hours, even suspected of being involved. But he doubted it.

  Anyway, in the big picture it hardly mattered. His crimes were a lot bigger than that. He’d killed a man. His justification would be laughed out of court, and they’d put him away for good. That was something to worry about.

  There had been a witness, doing whatever she was doing in that gravel pit that night. She had jumped on her bicycle and pedalled off, and she’d got a good head start, but he’d jumped into his Dodge, Looch in the passenger seat, and went after her with intent, pedal to the metal, and crashed instead, and now that witness was out there, somewhere, a fat girl with pink hair who visited him in his dreams. That was something to worry about too.

  He blew out a breath and told himself again that everything would be cool. He’d finally been cleared to return to light duties at the Smithers detachment, starting tomorrow. He was doing okay. He’d come a long way over the course of the winter. He’d found his gloves, knew how to steer out of a skid on sheer ice. Penny’s family still liked him, and he was determined to work harder at getting along with the guys he worked with. He still talked to Looch sometimes, when nobody was listening, but even that was a habit he had just about kicked. There was plenty to celebrate.

  He pulled a pack of Rothman’s from his shirt pocket, knocked out a cigarette, and searched himself for a lighter. It was part of his celebration, taking up smoking again. Penny had been shocked and disgusted when he’d lit up in front of her, but he didn’t care. He liked the hit of nicotine in his lungs. It steadied his nerves and took him back to the man he’d once been. He waited till the set was over and then left the bench, little plush penguin in hand, and started down Main toward the highway, with plans of stepping into the Alpenhorn Pub. He had a new mission in mind: get to the bar and grab some matches. There was a smoking section out back where he could sit and have a pint in peace and quiet.

  As it happened, he didn’t make it as far as the Alpenhorn, sidetracked by a chance encounter. The man stood in a concession stand lineup, someone he’d known briefly, and not so well, what felt like half a lifetime ago. Riding on the man’s broad shoulders was a small child with curly blond hair, the curls tossing like a halo in the afternoon sunlight. The man wore dark shades. He happened to look sidelong through the drift of passersby, straight at Dion, lowered the dark shades and peered, then lifted an obligatory hand in greeting, and the expression on his face said damn.

  * * *

  It was Constable Dion, of course, in the act of passing by, almost a stranger in jeans, hoody, dark blue baseball cap. He’d filled out a bit, which suited him well, and but for the plush toy in hand he looked like any other twentysomething jock on his way to the pub. Leith expected the jock to return the salute with his usual diffidence and keep going, but instead he sauntered over, gave a surprisingly friendly nod to Leith, then looked up at Izzy and said hello to her too.

  Izzy was silent, of course, and Leith couldn’t see her face, but he knew she would be staring imperiously down at the stranger, sizing him up. He said, “Say hello to Constable Dion, Izzy,” because he was in the process of teaching her good manners. Izzy said hello, and now it was Leith’s turn. “Hi, how’s it going?”

  “Pretty good.” Dion turned and pointed toward the stage. “Been listening to the bands and speeches. Good stuff.”

  Leith nodded. “Caught a few songs myself, but the kid here doesn’t have the patience.”

  The lineup shuffled ahead, a few steps closer to that hot dog he really shouldn’t be getting. He had one worried eye out for Alison, lost in the crowd. She’d give him hell if she found him feeding Izzy junk food. Dion didn’t say okay, well, and leave, as expected, but moved along with the lineup and said, “I heard how you found Kiera. Congratulations.”

  “Thanks.”

  “So what brings you to Smithers?”

  Leith looked at him sidelong. Maybe Dion’s brick-wall personality in the Hazeltons had just been a stage in his recovery. Maybe he’d improved, had found his own humanity, had become a regular nice guy. Which was always a good thing. “Still mopping up after John Potter,” he told Dion. “Seems he had work down here around September last year on a roofing crew. Big contract, upgrading the tar and gravel roof at the courthouse. So we’re going over any missing persons cases, see if he did his best at touching this community as well while he was hereabouts.”

  Dion nodded. “I know. I heard about it. I also saw in the news this morning that Charlie West’s listed as missing. I thought she was located in Dease. I thought Spacey talked to her.”

  “That turns out to be a miscommunication,” Leith said.

  Dion nodded again, up and down, a bit too much. Trying too hard, but trying for what? He had a cigarette between his fingers, and he stuck it in his mouth.

  It was news to Leith that Dion was a smoker, and it irked him. It was no fault of Dion’s; it was just that being an ex-smoker himself, Leith didn’t appreciate others enjoying that heady blend of toxins in his presence. He said, “I’m just here for a couple days, actually, passing the Potter file over to Paul Foley, ’cause it looks like I’m transferring out, be gone by the end of the month.” The looming move was one reason he’d brought Alison and Izzy along on this police-business trip, trying to spend as much time with them as possible before he left. He would leave them in Rupert while he firmed things up down in North Van, bring them down only when he was sure it was going to work out. “You’ll probably be meeting Paul in the next few days. I don’t think smoking is allowed here, eh. Public place.”

  Dion was still nodding, cigarette in mouth, unlit. “Sure, I know. Where are you transferring to?”

  “North Van. Joining Mike Bosko’s unit. Serious Crimes.”

  Dion had stopped nodding like a bobble-head, maybe getting a sore neck. He said, “North Vancouver. Wow. That’s great.”

  “Your old turf, right?”

  Which apparently Dion didn’t hear. He stared off down Main Street, jerry-rigged into festival grounds, and above the crowds into the cold blue sky, and said, “Any chance I can look at that file?”

  “What file?”

  “The Potter file. You’ve brought it with you, right?”

  Leith’s bonhomie seeped away. “Why?”

  Dion looked down and seemed to notice the object in his own hand for the first time, a stuffed toy with a yellow beak and yellow feet, some kind of duck. A midway prize, made in China, a dollar a dozen, Leith thought. “Sharpshooter, are you?”

  “Okay if I give this to your little girl?”

  “Sure. Thanks. You’ll make her day.”

  Dion handed the duck up to Izzy, who snatched it out of Leith’s sight. Leith told her to say thank-you, and she did, kicking her heels against his chest in a happy way as she
inspected her new toy.

  Leith repeated his question to the off-duty constable. “Why?”

  Dion was no longer smiling or nodding or looking concertedly casual. With one eye squinted against the afternoon glare and the other challenging Leith point blank, he said, “I might have seen him. Potter.”

  * * *

  They looked over the file in the Smithers case room, Leith and his colleague Foley and Constable Dion, who always got into the middle of the polka. Dion zipped through the documentation, zoning in on certain information, skimming most. He read a bulletin, found photographs, laid them out. A photograph of a building, the Smithers courthouse, with several workers up top, then an outdated portrait photograph of the missing Charlie West. He went back to the courthouse photo and studied the workers on its roof with an intensity that Leith hadn’t seen in him before, had frankly not thought possible.

  Dion directed his words at Foley, maybe because Leith was transferring out and in his mind was already gone. “The man I saw wore a red cap, like this. Was tall and skinny, like this. I think this is him. And I think this is her.”

  In the end, though, it didn’t matter, Leith realized. If it was true, and not some kind of ghoulish coincidence, that last September this cop had seen that killer following that victim, it pinned matters down, gave them a timeline to work with, but it really didn’t get them anywhere. It all was moot, since the killer was dead now.

  But everyone wanted Charlie West to be found, especially her sister Charlene, and if she was found dead, then they needed her to be given the dignity of a proper burial. Dion’s information maybe at least gave them the basis to bring in the cadaver dogs and set them to work.