Читать книгу Undertow - R.M. Greenaway - Страница 9

A Moody Breeze

There is nothing like the fresh chill of a spring morning to set a man up with new hope. Leith stepped into the big, busy restaurant he had discovered on 2nd Avenue just off Lonsdale that provided a hearty breakfast for a decent price and catered to a mixed crowd of bums and businessmen. He felt oddly happy, but maybe it was just the prospect of sizzling, buttery bacon and eggs.

It was a split-level restaurant, and he favoured the upper section, featuring several back-to-back booths. He stepped up and walked toward an available seat, but froze as he heard a familiar voice, low and leisurely, saying, “But I happen to like Cal, and that’s a problem. It’s too bad. You might say a lose-lose proposition. Anyway, hold fire, till I let you know. For now, just …”

The words cut off cold. From where Leith stood, he could not see the speaker, but he could see the listener, a white male in his forties, slim and slight and neatly dressed, with such close-cropped hair he might have been bald, a goatee, and cold, wide-open eyes. The stranger had possibly noted Leith’s piqued interest and lifted a discreet finger, which was maybe why the voice — it was definitely Bosko’s — had stopped in its tracks. The stranger said something, and Bosko looked around the edge of the booth and saw Leith. Leith grinned. Bosko seemed pleased to see him and said, “Hey, Dave. You’ve found my favourite breakfast joint.”

“I thought I heard your voice,” Leith said. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“No, come and join me,” Bosko said, beaming. “Parker is actually just leaving.”

“Morning,” Leith said, as the man called Parker shifted over and stood.

“Morning,” Parker said. He nodded at Bosko, saying, “Give you a call next week.” Then he nodded at Leith and walked out.

Leith sat in Parker’s vacated spot, wishing to hell he had stopped at McDonald’s for a McMuffin, his original plan. Instead he had unwittingly intercepted a secretive conversation about somebody named Cal, and he knew of only one Cal in the neighbourhood. Worse, the conversation had aborted midsentence, and a wary-eyed stranger named Parker had all but flown off in cloak-and-dagger haste. All of which added up to a big question mark in Leith’s mind. Enough that he said, “Thought I overheard you talking about Dion here. What’s up?”

Before Bosko could answer, the waitress came by. Bosko asked for a refill, and Leith ordered breakfast. The waitress filled their cups and left.

Bosko’s phone was buzzing, but he ignored it. He seemed to be considering Leith, not like someone caught in the act, but in a calm, good-natured way. He wore the usual white shirt, dark suit, and broad, dented-looking tie, solid colour, no pattern. Today the tie was mauve. He said, “Parker’s an old friend of mine. We’re both psychology nuts. We were talking about head injury, case studies, the DSM, all that. I was telling him about Dion’s remarkable recovery.”

“Uh,” Leith said, meaning to say ah.

Bosko’s low voice, which usually carried undertones of inexplicable delight, had come across as oddly flat. Also, Bosko liked to tarry over subjects that interested him, sometimes in a maddening way, but now he hustled the talk away from Parker and the DSM to the lesser topics of weather, traffic, and family.

Which wasn’t too bright, for a cop.

Leith’s breakfast arrived, and Bosko looked as though he would head out. But not quite. He watched Leith trying to knock ketchup from the bottle and said, “I hope things are going well for you, Dave. I’m still congratulating myself for having snagged you away from Prince Rupert. I knew I liked you the day we shook hands. It was just one of those trust-at-first-sight things, you could say. That’s in large part why I got you down here and onto my team. You’ve got solid values.”

“Well, thank you,” Leith said, expecting all this flattery was a lead-in to bad news, compensation in advance.

But it wasn’t. Bosko stood to pull on his coat. He smiled once more, then walked between tables, an oversized figure, out into the little foyer. On his way he checked his cell for all the messages he’d missed, pulled change from a trouser pocket to pay the woman at the till, had a word with her that made her laugh. Then he was out the door, phone to his ear.

Bosko would be checking messages and returning calls as he lay on his deathbed, Leith reflected. A multitasker to the last breath. But what had this all been about?

Alone, he worked on finishing his breakfast. Afterward, his gut ached as if he’d eaten too fast, which he probably had. He had a funny feeling that he had known all along, back in February, those strange days in the Hazeltons. He had seen the nonrelationship between Bosko and Dion progress from very little to nothing at all. As far as Leith could see, the two men had barely looked at or spoken to one another during those two weeks. To the point that it became just a bit weird.

Now he was sure. It wasn’t all in his head. Something was amiss. Dion was in trouble, in a big way, and Bosko was onto it.

His own phone buzzed now, the RCMP-issued BlackBerry. The dispatcher wanted him on the scene of an MVA, which meant either she’d got the wrong Leith or he’d been demoted. He told her he was with GIS, not traffic control. She told him the vehicle was registered to Lance Liu, and there was a fatality involved. It was all she knew. She gave him the coordinates and left him to figure the rest out for himself.

* * *

At 6:45, Dion left the hotel to head in to work. The skies were rosy and clear, and already the temperature was rising toward T-shirt weather. He was not in a T-shirt, but a suit and tie. He worried that the beery stench of the Royal Arms would stick to his clothes. He lifted forearm to nose and sniffed. He could smell nothing nasty in the fabric, but maybe that was because he was immersed in it.

Arriving at work, he learned that Lance Liu’s truck had been found nose-down on the road up to Cypress Bowl. A man matching the description of Liu himself was pinned under the wheels of the truck. Deceased. Doug Paley was on location, and he wanted Dion out there right away.

* * *

Leith’s GPS had got him stuck in traffic, and he didn’t arrive at the scene until sometime past eight. Already the spot on the forested road that climbed up to Cypress Bowl was clogged with emergency vehicles, and officers were directing tourists to slow down but keep moving. Leith drove through the bottleneck, adding his car to the traffic jam.

He found the designated footpath and made his way down a fairly steep slope. It levelled out into a milder incline of long grasses and bushes, ending at a stand of trees — a mix of conifers and deciduous — and the truck in question, a dark-blue Silverado lodged nose-first against a tree. Forensics members searched the grasses in a wide perimeter, or took photographs, or stood in consultation. The truck was barricaded off by tape, and standing somewhat by its rear were Doug Paley and Cal Dion. Leith had a feeling as he approached that much had happened in his absence, that the party was winding down, that he was a fifth wheel rolling up a tad too late to matter.

Paley confirmed it with a twitch of his moustache. “You with Cold Cases now, Dave? Ha. What happened? Get lost?”

“There was an accident on the Upper Levels just inches before the ramp,” Leith said. It was a wild exaggeration, and only half the answer, but he wasn’t about to admit the worst of it — the fifteen minutes of going the wrong way on the wrong ramp, and the fifteen minutes to correct the mistake.

“Could have taken Chippendale,” Dion said. “A few twists and turns, but you cut some clicks.”

“Never go that route,” Paley countered. “Probably get stuck behind some church lady doing ten under the limit.”

“So what, just hit the lights and pass,” Dion said. “The highway’s fine when it goes, deadly when it stops. Chippendale is a good alternate route, is all I’m saying.”

Leith was looking at the tilted Silverado, the gathering of forensic people at its front bumper, and what he could see of the victim. With the body’s position, the tall weeds, the mass of the truck, and so many professionals in the way, about all he could see down on the ground was an outstretched leg in faded denims. “Lance Liu?” he asked Paley.

“That’s what his ID says, and he fits the photo,” Dion answered, faster, sharper, and more on-the-ball than anybody on the planet, apparently.

Leith looked at him. “He was run over by his own truck?”

Dion beckoned, then tramped down to the rear of the Silverado. Leith joined him. Dion gestured up the hill, toward the road some distance away. Here and there forensic members bent and crouched like they’d lost something small but vital in the grasses. “Seems he reversed off the road at quite an angle, overcorrected, and ended up there, where the flag is,” Dion said. “There’s drag marks through the soil like he braked hard and slid, and we think there’s footprints around where the cab would have ended up, but it’s hard to make out with the weeds. We’re thinking he lost control of the vehicle, got out, came down here to the treeline and either sat down or collapsed. There’s no blood trail. Key’s in the ignition, switched to battery mode, truck’s in neutral, brakes off, so it could actually have rolled down and pinned him. He’s suffered some head trauma that doesn’t fit with the vehicle going into the ditch, and like I say, there’s no blood trail, but the injury does look recent enough to fit the timeline. The vehicle shows no sign of rollover, no body damage, anything like that, except where the bumper hit the tree, and that’s minor. A low-speed impact. If it hadn’t hit the tree, it would have likely continued over the body. Far as the injuries, Doug thinks maybe Liu fell, hit his head on a rock, but to me it looks more like a flat kind of impact, like abrasions, like he struck a branch. I don’t see any branches around here low enough that he could have run into them in the dark, so maybe he tripped and slammed into the tree trunk — except he’s quite pulped.”

He indicated a large area around his own right temple in illustration before carrying on. “I don’t think it’s even possible to hurt yourself that bad with a trip and fall. I think he was clubbed, left to die, and his attacker put the truck in neutral and let it roll down. Maybe to crush him, but probably not, ’cause what kind of luck would it take for that truck to roll downslope at this angle, nearly sixty-five feet, and land right on the guy where he lay?”

“Or maybe that attacker got in and drove it down,” Leith said, thinking this far more likely.

Dion seemed not to hear, and pointed in a travelling line from roadside to truck. “Probably he just wanted the truck to disappear into the forest, which worked out pretty well, right? From the road you can’t see it at all down here ’cause of the bushes, and in fact we might not have found him for days, except a guy cycling uphill had to fix his bike when the chain came off, and while he was doing that he looked down. He saw metal, went to investigate, called us.”

He seemed to be finished, so Leith thanked him. He went around the truck to look at the body from the far side. Coroner Jack Dadd had done his inspection and was clearing up his gear. Paley joined Leith and they both crouched by the crime-scene tape for a better squint. Paley said, “Well, this is weird. Dadd got in close and says the truck didn’t kill him. See that tire that’s pressed up against his chest? Barely a touch, Dadd says. Not enough pressure to break ribs. Not even to bend ’em. Wouldn’t have prevented him from breathing.”

So what had killed Lance Liu? The wounds to the right side of his head were a literal bloody mess, but Paley told him the injuries weren’t as bad as they looked. Actually fairly superficial, according to Dadd. Not a killing blow, anyway. As hard as Leith peered to gather detail, he couldn’t hazard a guess as to whether a rock or a branch or whatever else on earth had done the damage.

Dion joined them. Leith stood and looked around. A playful breeze buffeted the hillside. Some small dark birds, starlings maybe, dashed about the skies. The three men watched the RCMP-contracted tow truck arrive and begin its careful descent to hook up the Silverado. The tow truck idled, and Dion went to talk to the driver. The conversation was out of earshot but seemed to be earnest and energetic.

Leith was again sizing up the distance between road and body, puzzling over the logistics. Paley was still looking at the tow truck. He said, “Fucking dick.”

“Who, what?” Leith said, looking up.

“Ever seen Invasion of the Body Snatchers? If you ask me, my friend Cal has definitely been snatched. I’m kidding. I love the guy. He’s only been back a day, so he’s trying too hard. And so what that we asked him out for beer last night post-briefing, and he said yes most definitely, and then didn’t show up? So what if we reserved an extra-big table, and ended up having to drink our Fireball shooters without him? We soldiered on. It’ll take him a while to get back up to speed, that’s all.”

Leith looked at Paley, then at Dion in the distance, arguing with the tow truck driver, and then Paley again, hurt. “How come I didn’t hear about this extra-big table and Fireball shooters?”

“Oh, hey. Sorry about that, Dave.”

Paley didn’t look sorry. He gave his hands a back-to-work clap. “Liu’s phone’s still missing. We couldn’t get a ping yesterday, but maybe whoever’s got it had it turned off, and maybe it’s on now, so we’ll keep trying. And you’re going to talk to the kid again — Joey, right? The grandmom’s still with him?”

Leith nodded, thinking of the terrible task ahead of him: breaking the news to Zan Liu.

Paley’s moustache contracted, maybe in sympathy. “The body will be there for ID in an hour. I’ll be talking to the Chens myself again, meanwhile. They’re Edmonton people.”

The Chens were Cheryl Liu’s parents, Leith knew. They had flown over last night but were too emotional to interview. Eventually they would have to pull themselves together enough to talk. He had little faith that they could offer anything meaningful. He left the breezy field with its starlings and its corpse, making a call to JD Temple as he returned to his car, destination Joey.

* * *

He met JD at the hospital. She was seated in the waiting room and talking with Joey Liu’s paternal grandmother, Zan Liu. Leith introduced himself and took a chair as well. He could see that Mrs. Liu, a widow who had just lost a daughter-in-law and granddaughter to some faceless bastard, and who didn’t know where her son was, was working on keeping the shock and grief bottled. Maybe because she had one precious four-year-old survivor to look after now and couldn’t afford to fall apart. Pretty soon she would learn she had lost a son as well.

Leith told her. And maybe she had suspected all along because, although the tears creeked down her face, she didn’t break down. Nor did she when he took her to the morgue. She laid a hand gently on Lance Liu’s chest, inspected his face with concern as though maybe bandages would solve the problem, and whispered something to him in Chinese.

* * *

Leith asked Zan if she could tell him a bit about Lance and Cheryl, just anything she cared to say. Zan told him how Lance and Cheryl had met, courted, married. Nothing she said seemed to progress the case forward, but he let her talk, as she seemed to wish to do. Food was brought in, which she didn’t consume. And Jasmine tea, which she did.

Cheryl was a good girl, she said. A fine wife and mother, had no enemies. Lance had been her only serious relationship. They were a happy couple, in love, never separated even for a day. Lance was a really good boy. Hard-working, took care of his family.

“If there was something seriously wrong, do you feel either of them would have talked to you about it?” Leith asked.

“Yes, I am sure Lance would have told me.”

Joey slept, on and off. When awake, he snivelled and sucked his thumb. JD asked him more about the closed cabinet door, whether he could recall anything further, but instead of opening up, he seemed to be shutting them out.

Leith nodded at JD; there would be no more questions tonight.

Down on the street a wind was gusting litter about. People walked by at slants and seemed to be battling their own clothes. JD’s short hair fluttered, and her squinting eyes had that fierce warrior look Leith had noticed before. She said, “Did you see that?”

“See what?”

“Joey, the way he curled up, squeezed his eyes shut.”

“Sure, I could see that. What of it?”

“It comes in waves,” she said. “Memories. He wants to think about his mom but doesn’t want to think about his mom. But he’s working through it. I think he’ll have something to tell us about what he saw. Sometime.”

“Sometime soon, I hope.”

“Sometime,” JD repeated. And after a pause, added, “I hate this job. I really do.”