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Questions

TALK AT THE CATALINA Cafe had gone on past midnight, and Leith hadn’t made it to his motel bed until one thirty. He woke in the morning when it was still dark out, missing Alison, and missing her more as he stood, toothbrush in hand, and observed the lumps and bumps of his homely face in the bathroom mirror. He’d forgotten all the domestic unhappiness and slamming of doors and the howling child and his aching head. All he knew was he missed them both. Ali and Izzy, his girls.

His home away from home was a room on the second floor of a long, boxy, two-storey Super 8 motel set right on the highway, mid-range, furnished in the usual murky browns and golds like every other inn Leith had ever been stuck in, not a destination but a contingency for the working traveller. Depending on how things went, he could be struck in this Gyproc haven for days, maybe weeks, along with a growing legion of out-of-towners. For now the team was relatively small.

The corridor outside his room was hushed and empty, a hive of sleeping souls. Downstairs in the diner he found Fairchild and Bosko already with coffee in front of them. The only other resident out-of-towner on the case so far, Constable Dion, was nowhere to be seen. The three men had a quick breakfast, asking each other how they’d slept, exchanged motel horror stories, then sat in their vehicles and crossed the silent highway to the small Hazelton detachment.

Small was an understatement. It was a low, squarish building probably built sometime in the seventies, posted with the backlit RCMP signage out front, but otherwise innocuous as a laundromat. The kind of place that would make wandering criminals feel right at home as they cased the town, Leith had told Giroux last night, still seated in the Catalina’s back room with her and Bosko following the dinner briefing. “It’s better than anarchy,” Giroux had answered. Anyway, it would soon be replaced with something bigger and better, and she’d passed over photos not of her nieces and nephews but the architectural rendering of the project to be. In a few years, she said, no more little straw house. She’d be living in brick. “That makes you the smart little pig,” Leith had pointed out.

Unfortunately, for now they were stuck with the straw, hazy under the pre-dawn glow of lamp standards. Inside, he left Bosko and Fairchild in the main room, busy on their respective BlackBerrys at their temporary desks, and found Giroux in her little office, moving colour-coded magnets around her organizational white board. Like the detachment itself, the woman put up an unlikely face of the law, a little middle-aged Métis lady with slightly crazy eyes that always seemed widened on the verge of outrage. Leith, like probably a lot of people, had assumed Renee Giroux had gained her office via reverse discrimination, a local native, female, getting the boost to show the RCMP’s non-sexist forward momentum and open-mindedness. But Phil Prentice had once enlightened Leith to the truth over beers: Renee Giroux had got where she was by the sheer digging in of her stubborn little heels. And she wasn’t local, either, but had blown over like a travelling weed from eastern Canada, made this her home, and refused to budge. She’d started out as a constable at the age of twenty-two and served under a score of commanding officers, mostly big white guys like Leith himself, and against the odds her wit and hard work and loyalty and sheer rootedness had finally paid off, and she’d made corporal, and then sergeant, and now she was officially the queen of this little mud-hole called the Hazeltons.

“Why are you so set on it?” Leith had asked her last night. They’d left the Catalina and were standing at their vehicles, hunching against the bitter wind funnelling down the broad highway, no sign of life in this poverty-stricken little shanty town of hers. “Awesome place,” she’d said, and pointed up to what Leith saw only as midnight skies layered with clouds of thunder grey. “Stood under that mountain there and fell in love, said this is where I’m going to die.”

That was what she said last night. Now she said, “Morning, Big City. You’re late.”

On some level, Leith liked the nickname she’d stuck on him some years ago. It flattered him, which in turn made him feel foolish, because Prince Rupert, City of Rainbows, was hardly a big city; it was a largish funky fishing village on the stormy north coast. He wasn’t awake enough to bandy about cheerful greetings. “You said six thirty.”

The crazy eyes widened at him. “Yes, which means six fifteen. Okay? So Spacey’s organized herself and Thackray to canvass the Bell 3 for any workers that slipped our radar last night, and I got whatshisname, Dion, out looking for Lenny Law. Sound good?”

Lenny Law was Frank Law’s younger brother, one of many witnesses who needed to be rounded up. An important witness, one of the last few to see Kiera on the day of her vanishing. Leith said, “Oh. I figured he slept in.”

“Who?”

“Dion.”

“No, actually, he was in bright and early. Unlike you.”

This was Giroux’s territory, but it was Leith’s case, and he knew there would be some jostling before they got comfortable in their roles. So far the jostling was fairly amiable, and if they didn’t bite each other’s heads off first, it should stay that way. “Fine,” he said.

“Great. Then I’m ready to go tackle our prime suspect, as you called him last night about five times without any grounds whatsoever.”

She pulled on her RCMP-decalled jacket as she spoke, heavy-duty blue nylon, and Leith said, “Yes, and I stick to my guns on that. And by the way, we’re going out there without backup. Should I be worried?”

The jacket swamped her, made her comical. She said, “Worried? About Frank? No. He’s a musician.”

“Last I heard, musicians can be mean too. He’s got a police record involving fists, and I saw the picture. He’s covered in the kind of tattoos that say ‘make-my-day.’ I don’t get along well with people covered in tattoos. You ask me, we should err on the side of caution and take along a uniform. What we in the big city call ‘backup’.”

She laughed. “Get real. I know Frank. He’s a sweetheart. You got a gun, don’t you?”

“I’d rather not use it.”

She snorted, and with that won the argument.

They sat in her vehicle, the dinged black Crown Vic he’d seen parked up on the mountain last night. Like her jacket, the steering wheel looked a couple sizes too big for her. “They live over the bridge and deep in the woods,” she said, conjuring up another children’s classic to brand the boys neatly. “I call ’em the three bears.”

Rob, Frank, and Lenny Law.

“Bears,” Leith said, regretting he hadn’t insisted on that backup. An extra 9mm at the sidelines would be nice, at least till he got a feel for the players in this thing. Being in unfamiliar territory didn’t help. He had worked in the Hazeltons before, but never in depth. The land here was huge and wild, dense with pine and poplar, riddled with rivers and gorges, and within all that chaos of nature sat this starburst of small communities linked by long, meandering roads, much of it barely charted. So, yes, he was a little uneasy.

“And I say it again,” Giroux said. She had fired up the Crown Vic’s eight lusty cylinders and lunged the car out through the chain-linked lot onto the avenue. “And this is why. He’s got an alibi for the time she went missing, unless it’s a three-way conspiracy, which I guess we can’t discount. And he was the first to put on his boots and go out searching. And he searched till he bled,” she added, the Queen of Hyperbole. “They had to drag him in half- dead from the cold. If that’s not sweet, what is?”

Leith sighed.

“It’s your case,” she added. “But my people. So just keep that in mind.”

By my people she meant all the registered locals, he realized. Not just the dark-skinned Aboriginals that populated much of the north. Whites were the minority in the Hazeltons, but not by far, and they too belonged to Renee Giroux.

Clouds had gathered, thick. A few flakes fluttered down, not nearly the whiteout of last night. Giroux steered them through Two Mile, through Old Town, over the bridge that spanned a rather gut-wrenching canyon, and on for another quarter hour down a narrow, snowy backroad, finally turning into a driveway made of tire ruts.

The driveway seemed to go on forever, dead straight through a young poplar forest, ending in a clearing, and through the windshield Leith saw a big ugly rancher set down amongst the trees with all the grace of a beer can on a beach. Powder blue, vinyl-sided, green metal roof sloping at a shallow pitch. Machinery and cars and clutter in the yard. The kind of place a pit bull would run around looking for man-sized snacks. He kept an eye out but saw no animals lurking in the gloom.

“Been out here before?” he asked.

“Once,” she said, puffing vapour ghosts. “About four years back. That incident I told you about. House was just bare bones then. The Law boys built it pretty much on their own. Dispute with the building inspector became a verbal firestorm and ended in Marty — that’s the inspector — on his ass. Frank did his penance, and far as I know it never happened again. Far as I know, Frank and Marty still drink together.”

Up on the porch, Giroux rapped her knuckles on the door. Leith, listening for dogs still, saw deck chairs, ashtrays, beer cans, and what was probably a mega-gas barbecue under a tarp. The three bears enjoyed their house in the woods, it seemed. Heavy wool blankets thrown over the deck chairs suggested they enjoyed it even on a cold winter day.

The door opened, and he got his first look at his only real suspect so far, Frank Law. The guy was twenty-three, still at the concave-gut stage of life, a lanky powerhouse. Tallish, lightly bearded, eye sockets dented by what was maybe exhaustion, maybe guilt, maybe a good brew of both. “Anything?” he asked.

“Sorry, nothing yet,” Giroux said. “Frank, this is Constable Leith, up from Prince Rupert. He’s come to make sure we look in all the right places, okay?”

Frank looked far from reassured but allowed them in with a good show of manners. In the living room, among more macho mess and the not-so-faint smell of pot smoke, they took seats.

Leith fiddled with his pocket recorder, prefaced the recording with date and time and who all was present, and asked Frank to take them to the beginning, starting from the day before Kiera had gone missing, that being Friday. “Just take your time,” he said, “and give me a visual replay of everything you can remember, okay?”

“Friday,” Frank said. His voice was husky and sore. “Helped Rob up on the landing all morning, bucking some old windfall out of the way for the crew. I left for home about four. It was getting dark. Rob stayed on alone, breaking his own rules. You don’t work alone in this business unless you got a death wish, but there’s only so far you can push him, and he just shuts you out. That’s Rob. Anyway, he’s got these new lights set up there, wants to get his money’s worth. Told me not to worry. So I didn’t.” His frown deepened, and he seemed already lost. Giroux prompted him with an encouraging murmur, and he gave a start and carried on. “Friday night. Came back, had dinner with Lenny and Kiera. She came over for dinner.”

He didn’t recall the conversation around the dinner table or what they’d done that evening except watch some dumb show on TV. Leith asked if Kiera had mentioned anything out of the ordinary happening in her life, if she’d met anyone, even just a casual encounter. Did she have any special plans for the upcoming days?

Frank didn’t recall anything unusual in their conversation. Kiera went home pretty early, around ten o’clock. Frank went to bed soon after.

Leith asked him about the day that really mattered now, Saturday. “Just go through it, minute by minute. What happened?”

“I got up about seven thirty, had toast and coffee.”

“And Rob had stayed up on the mountain, right? What about Lenny? Was he around?”

Frank scowled. “Sleeps like a pile of rocks these days. He’s seventeen. Such a shitty age. Used to be our soundman, and a good one, but lost interest. Lost interest in everything, pretty well.”

Leith studied Frank’s downturned lashes, the troubled lines of his face, his shoulders, that almost visible inner quaking of emotional trauma. Not a cruel man, but poss­ibly a killer. Anybody could be, really.

Frank went ploughing on, talking in machine-gun bursts now, like all he wanted was to get this over with. “So Lenny was in his room, and Kiera came over a bit later than she said, nearly nine. We’d agreed on eight thirty.”

“Was that unusual?”

He shrugged. “Kind of. No big deal. I was already setting up the equipment. We went over some of the music, played a bit, waited for the others to show up.”

“You have an in-house studio?”

“Top of the line,” Frank said, sitting straighter and flicking hair out of his eyes. “Just finished last November. To die for.” He looked pugnacious as he said it, as though daring Leith to contradict him. Now he was glum again. Leith prompted him back on track.

“Chad and Stella showed up minutes after Kiera, around nine, quarter after,” Frank said. “Chad’s wrecked his truck, so he caught a ride in with Stella.”

Chad was Chad Oman, the band’s drummer. He was native, local born, once a bit of a troublemaker, according to Giroux, but nothing worse than the usual teenage joie de vivre. Now that he was in his twenties, working at the Home Hardware, and with a great career as a drummer on the horizon, he was behaving “pretty good.” And Stella was Stella Marshall, also a band member, also local born, also in her early twenties, who apparently played the electric fiddle.

Frank described how the band had rehearsed for a couple of hours, till lunch break. More to get a sense of the group dynamics than anything, Leith asked if it had been a good rehearsal. The answer was short, snappy, and surprising. “No,” Frank said. “It was crappy. Got nothing accomplished. It’s the pressure. We need to get this demo put together by the end of the month because the last one bombed, so we were all just on edge. Especially Kiera. So we took an early break, and I put out some food, but nobody seemed hungry. Kiera said she was going out for a while, and she just took off. Drove off in her truck. It was just after noon, I guess.”

“Did you see which way she went?” Leith asked, though he knew the answer before Frank shook his head. There was only one way she could have gone by vehicle, and that was off down that long, tree-shrouded driveway. Unless somebody followed her, they couldn’t know which way she went once she hit the narrow two-lane Kispiox Road, whether it was south toward town or north toward the Kispiox Range, where her truck had been found.

“What did she say, exactly, as she left?”

“Not much. ‘Back in a while.’ That’s about it.”

“She was upset?”

“Not upset. Fed up.”

“With who, or what?”

“Like I said, the music wasn’t coming together. They’re upbeat tunes. You can’t force upbeat, can you?” It was a black, rhetorical question. He said, “Stella said there wasn’t much point sticking around, so she and Chad left. Lenny crawled out of his room, grabbed a sandwich, went off with Tex to Prince George. That was my idea. I wanted him out of there. Last thing I needed was a sullen teenager hanging around.”

This part Leith didn’t know so well, but he’d seen in the statements taken by Spacey, drafted up for review, that Tex was Lenny’s buddy who’d picked up Lenny and taken him off to Prince George for the day. So far neither boy had been reached, and it wasn’t for lack of trying. He also knew that both Lenny and Tex were homeschoolers, so they chose their own reading assignments and wrote their own schedules, which also made them harder to pin down. “What time was it they took off?”

“About half an hour after Kiera left, I guess.”

“What does Tex drive?”

“Old Toyota station wagon. Silver.”

Leith asked why the boys were going to Prince George.

“There’s stuff to do in George. Tex has family down there. His dad’s there, has a big place, so they go there whenever they can.”

Leith told him to carry on, and Frank was slumped again, eyes closed to help track his memories. “I had a bite to eat then called Parker in to see if we could salvage anything from what we had so far. Parker had a listen and said pretty flat-out, no, we couldn’t fix this. It was garbage.”

“Parker?” Leith said, taken aback. “Who’s that?”

“Techie, works at the college, does our post-op mix for us.”

Leith got the gist. He asked for Parker’s full name and address, but all Frank had was a cell number, which he read out from his phone. Leith wrote it down and asked for a timeline for Parker’s attendance. Frank looked at his phone again and said he’d called Parker at 12:50, and the guy had come by within about fifteen or twenty minutes.

Leith said, “So Parker comes over, listens to your recording. Now what?”

“Like I told Constable Spacey, Kiera texted me. ‘Screw you. Get yourself another lead.’ Didn’t take it too seriously. She was just sulking. I texted back, asked her what that was all about. No answer.”

“Right,” Leith said. “I’ve seen the texts. You didn’t press her for more. Why? Weren’t you worried?”

“I was wondering where the hell she was off to, but I wasn’t going to play any head games. I figured she’d be back eventually, and we’d kiss and make up like always.”

“Were you surprised when her truck was found up on the Matax?”

“Totally. I guess she was going to see Rob. She wouldn’t be hiking the Matax, not at this time of year. Not dressed like she was. Unless she went home and changed. Which she might have, for all I know, because she was gone quite a while before she texted, and she couldn’t have texted from up on the mountain. No signal.”

Leith said, “She hadn’t mentioned visiting Rob before she left?”

“No, never, and I have no idea why she’d want to see him.”

“How do she and Rob generally get along? Are they close?”

Frank shrugged, cracking his knuckles. “They get along okay, as much as Rob gets along with anyone. Don’t have much in common, except me. I’ve got no clue why she’d all of a sudden go up to see him. Maybe she had something to tell him that she couldn’t tell me. I just can’t say. I asked Rob. He says she didn’t call, didn’t talk to him beforehand, and she never showed up there. I think she’s only been to the cut block once, me just showing her the operation last summer. You can ask Rob yourself, but he’ll say the same thing. He hasn’t got a clue.”

Along with the knuckle cracking, there was a vicious undertone to his words that Leith made mental note of. It made him wonder, was there something between the lines he should be reading? He now went about angering Frank by backtracking for further detail, such as what was served for lunch, food and beverage, stuff that could be pertinent only in the grim event of an actual autopsy. Frank didn’t know what Kiera had or hadn’t eaten or drunk. Leith next asked about the pot smell. “Who’s the smoker in the house?”

“None of us smoke.”

“I’m not talking cigarettes.”

Frank crossed his arms, an irritated man, paddling his feet on the floorboards.

Leith said, “C’mon, Frank. I’m getting stoned just sitting here.”

Frank sighed. “We all smoke. Everybody in the world smokes a bit of herb.”

Except me, Leith thought. He wondered about the drugs, their source, whether they figured into the abduction at all, but it was a diversion he didn’t want to take quite yet. Except for one more question, relevant to nothing but his own concern for the welfare of a young person. “Does that include Lenny?”

“Definitely not Lenny,” Frank said. “I won’t let him touch the stuff.”

He said it adamantly, and Leith believed him and was slightly cheered. “Glad to hear it. So Kiera’s texted you. Go on from there.”

“Parker left. I think I just worked on a song till Rob got home, saying he’d found her truck up at the Matax trailhead. Then I got scared.”

At this point Giroux said she could smell coffee. Would it be okay if she helped herself to a cup? Frank nodded at her, and she rose and went to the kitchen, just visible from the living room through an opening in the wall, and banged around in the cupboards. “Carry on,” she said. “I can hear you from here.”

Leith asked Frank to describe what Kiera was wearing when she left. Frank described distressed jeans, grey T-shirt, the heavy shapeless cardigan that looked straight off a homeless man’s back but was actually a pricey piece of steampunk she’d bought in Vancouver. And the boots to match, the army-of-the-future look. If she had a coat, she’d left it in her truck.

There was no coat in the truck, Leith knew, so it was probably still on her back. What about her hair, he asked. Did Frank remember how was it done up that day?

Frank shrugged. “She usually ties it back, for practice. Keeps it out of her face.”

Giroux was back with a coffee mug between her palms. Leith said, “Photos. Were any taken on Saturday? Of Kiera, I’m interested in mostly.”

Frank checked his phone and found one shot he’d chanced to take during the rehearsal. Leith had a look, and from what he could see Kiera’s hair was in a ponytail and clipped to one side with a barrette. The colour of the hair clip was indiscernible, and he suspected that no amount of pixel-tweaking would tell them if it matched the metallic blue clip found on the mountain. Still, it was something.

He asked if he could skim through the shots, and Frank didn’t care, so he did, flicked through a few weeks’ worth and found typical pictures that young people take of each other and themselves, mostly out of focus and chaotic. A talented photographer Frank was not. It did tell him that however gloomy they’d been on the day of Kiera’s disappearance, they’d been happy enough in the days before. Of course the metadata would tell him a lot more, but he couldn’t get the metadata without a warrant, and he wasn’t even close to that yet.

He asked if he could keep the phone for a day or two, upload that photo of Kiera? Frank looked at him aghast. “No way. I can email anything you want, but no way you’re taking my phone.”

“Cool,” Leith said — not the word he had in mind. He handed over his business card. “Send me that shot, but soon as possible. Okay?”

“Sure, I can do it now,” Frank said, and he sat there tapping at his phone, transferring the shot to Leith’s email address off the business card.

Leith said, “Once you heard from Rob of the Isuzu at the Matax, then what happened?”

“I picked up Chad, and we dressed up warm and got flashlights and went up to have a look. Got there about eight thirty. Pitch black already. Her truck’s cold as ice. Doors were unlocked. She’s careful about stuff like that, locking her car. There was no notes, no keys, no handbag. Saw a bunch of footprints in the snow going down the slope toward the trail. There’s that little dip there before it climbs. So that’s where we went.”

“Did you touch anything in the truck?”

“No.”

“See her coat there?”

“No. Wasn’t looking for her coat.”

“In the snow, how many sets of prints?”

Frank rubbed his face. He’d said it before and didn’t want to say it again. “It was too messed up. Tracks overlaid and snowed upon. Then where the trail started there was lots of tree cover, so not enough snow on the ground to leave tracks. Farther in where the snow got thick again, we didn’t see any tracks, and we were looking for ’em hard. We walked around the woods yelling her name. Then went back to town and called you guys. Talked to Constable Spacey there. No search team till morning, she says. Couldn’t believe my ears. Still can’t.” He gave Leith a nasty stare, his eyes raw and sore. “So we gathered friends and family, many as we could, nearly a dozen, went back up and did it ourselves.”

He was wilting again. He directed his next words toward the window. “I should be out there now, fuck me, looking for her.”

“I think the Search and Rescue guys have it covered.”

“Then I might as well get back to the block, help Rob get the trees in. The guy wants to shoot me. This is the last thing he needs right now.”

“Why?”

“Wood,” Frank said, dully. “Gotta get in as much wood as we can before spring melt.”

Leith asked if he could take a look around, see the studio where they rehearsed, and whether Frank would be okay with a complete forensic search of the house and property, say this afternoon?

Frank didn’t seem to care. “I can show you the studio now.”

Down a hallway toward the end of the house, Leith and Giroux followed him into a large room, lofty, tidy, and professionally set up as a recording studio. Leith looked at the mixing boards, the drum kit, keyboards, and computers, what were probably acoustic-boarded walls, pricy-looking speakers and microphones, the heavy coils of cable, and a stack of black cases for taking the show on the road. He said, “How much does something like this cost?”

Frank crossed his arms and pulled a face. “A lot.”

A more definitive answer would be nice, but Leith left it for now.

As they left the studio and headed for the front door, he said, “One more thing, Frank. Where’s Lenny? We tried the numbers you gave us. The first one’s not in service, and the others don’t seem to lead anywhere either.”

A complicated new emotion flashed in Frank’s eyes, a visible ramping up of confusion and grief. Frank Law knew nothing of his brother’s whereabouts, and Lenny too, it seemed, was gone without a trace.

* * *

As Dion had it written down, Leonard Law was the younger brother of the missing girl’s boyfriend, which was a bit of a mind-bender, but not his problem. The great thing about being a nobody is the assignments are simple, the answers black and white, and nothing much matters anyway. You’re given a destination and a set of questions to be answered, you scribble it down, go back and type it up, then drink coffee till the next simple task. Perfect.

There was a more immediate problem, though, in that he was lost in a strange town, the smallest town he’d ever worked within, population below a thousand, a number he’d had to double-check. He turned the tourist map of the Hazeltons upside down, finding it lined up better with where he had situated his cruiser on the shoulder of the highway. The car was GPS-equipped, but either the thing couldn’t pinpoint the address or he’d punched it in wrong. The five-minute drive had taken him half an hour, so far, and counting.

His eyes found the road on paper, a little dead-end spur way over there on the other side of town, on the road to Old Hazelton. He pulled out a pen and circled it, then clamped the map under the sun visor and turned again onto the empty highway that shone like dull steel in the morning light, and after a few more wrong turns found himself on the right track. And there at last was the road itself, unpaved, and according to the number on the mailbox that was the house in question, a little pink bungalow under a white cap of snow. Dion peered through the windshield and saw on the front lawn a gathering of small lumpy people, four of them standing all in a row, dead still, wrapped and bound in heavy cloth. Leaving the car and taking a closer look, he found them to be skinny shrubs, covered in burlap and tied with twine.

He climbed the three steps and knocked on the door. A woman, small and bottom-heavy, opened the door. Behind her a tall, lean figure stood, dark and mysterious and still, like a continuation of the shrubs in the yard.

Dion presented his ID and asked the woman if she was Clara Law.

“Yes, I’m Clara Law,” she said. “This is my husband, Roland. How can we help you?”

“Constable Dion, RCMP,” he said. “I’m looking for your son, Leonard Law.”

“Leonard?” Her eyes pierced him, puzzled. “Leonard Law?”

He brought out his notebook and studied what he’d written down. He looked at the brass numbers hammered to the siding, and down again at the small woman. “You have a son named Leonard, ma’am?”

“Yes, I have a son named Leonard,” she said. “But he’s not here, for heaven’s sake. Why would he be? Why are you asking?”

“Leonard was at a house party that’s under investigation. We haven’t been able to contact him.”

“Why didn’t you phone and ask, save yourself a trip?”

“I think there were several calls placed, with no answer.”

“They might have called, Clara,” the big man behind the short woman said.

She looked around at her husband. She glared at Dion and said, “You’re letting the cold in. Please come inside so I can shut the door.”

The interior was too warm. He removed his police cap and scraped his boots clean on the welcome mat. He followed the couple along a plastic runner to the opening into the living room. The room was darkened by fuzzy-looking wallpaper and heavy curtains. Clara Law told him to remove his footwear and sit, gesturing at an armchair. He chose to keep his boots on and stand on plastic.

The place smelled sour. A huge grandfather clock ticked in a corner. Roland Law stationed himself behind the sofa his wife sat on, and the two of them watched Dion standing on plastic at the threshold of their living room. He said, “When’s the last time either of you saw or spoke to Leonard?”

Roland Law startled him with a voice like a foghorn. “We haven’t seen Leonard for months. Haven’t seen any of the boys for nigh on twenty years.”

Leonard Law, Dion had thought, was only seventeen. He began to ask for clarification, but Clara Law interrupted with, “Sweet Jesus, Rolly, let me do the talking.”

“No,” Roland said, a huge finger in the air. “Wait. I did see him. In the gazebo. Looked out the kitchen window and seen him just starin’ out at me, then he just up and disappeared.”

Clara smiled at Dion, whose attention was divided between her and her husband, now mostly on the husband. She said, “We haven’t seen the boys in probably a year and a half, and through no fault of ours, either, because let me tell you —”

“My birthday,” Roland boomed, patting at his chest, his thighs, looking for something lost. “And where is it?” he said, still patting. “I’m looking for the damn thing, Clara, to show the man.”

“Dresser,” Clara said. “Top drawer with your vests.”

Roland stepped out, and Clara said, “All our boys moved out of home at sixteen. Except Robert. He moved out when he was just fourteen and went to live in those welfare rooms near the highway where the Indians live, where frankly I wouldn’t let a dog live. He stayed there probably getting buggered by Mr. Heston who he worked for who runs the machine shop who got arrested for peedeefeelya. When Robert got big enough, he came over with a hunting rifle and threatened Rolly and took over Rolly’s logging outfit, and far as I know bought some land over near the reservation and built a house. Which doesn’t belong to Robert, of course. It belongs to the Royal Bank and always will. He was always very independent, very moody. The schools hereabouts are godless mills of crime and corruption, so we home-schooled all three. But Robert, who was born in a hospital, came into the world with a violent streak you couldn’t whip out of him and a tongue you couldn’t clean with soap or Tabasco, and when he turned his back on Jesus and family I banished him from my heart and changed the locks on the door. Frank was different, born by a Christian midwife. A good boy. My favourite. The prettiest baby, and smart as a whip. No Tabasco, no spanking, a listener, an angel spreading light into the world. Very talented, very musical, always with a guitar in his hand. He left the day he turned sixteen, and I cried for days. It’s Robert lured him away with alcohol and prostitutes. And then Lenny, my youngest. Lenny is slow in many ways, and such an ugly duckling. Not handsome like Frank. But he did write some nice poems. He wanted to leave with Frank, but I hung on for dear life, went to the government, and the government made him stay. The day he turned sixteen there was nothing I could do to save him, and Frank came by in his pickup and without a word took my youngest from salvation to Hell, and now they are all lost to me. All of them, stolen by sin, and not a word on Christmas or birthdays, and I can tell you that come Easter Roland and I will be kneeling here alone.”

Dion didn’t doubt it. Something moved in the shadows, and he saw that Roland had stolen back into the room with an object in hand, a pipe, its bone-white bowl carved into a human head. The man held out the pipe to Dion like a gift. Dion looked at the pipe but didn’t take it.

“I only smoked it once,” Roland said. “Didn’t like it. Don’t smoke, generally. Never did.”

“Why are you showing me a pipe, sir?”

Clara said, “It was a gift from Lenny on Roland’s seventieth. On Frank’s sixteenth birthday I made his favourite cake, and I cried rivers. He ate his cake with his bags all packed, and he gave me a hug and walked out the door. My favourite baby boy. A slap in the face. We were a very close-knit family when the boys were growing up. One year we went to Nevada. They loved Nevada, especially Frank. We have pictures of them on packhorses. I’ll show you.”

She started to rise, but Dion stopped her. “Really, I just need to know, can either of you think of any friends or relatives Leonard might have gone to in the area?”

Roland answered. “My sister Mabel. Mabel Renfrew. Always very close to the boys.”

Dion raised his brows at him. “Whereabouts does she live, sir?”

“Vernon, B.C.”

Dion wrote it all down, asked for an address, and watched Roland Law’s long, dark face break into a chuckle. “Last known address,” the man said, “Pleasant Valley Cemetery, Vernon.”

Dion drew a line through Mabel, and Roland went on to contradict everything his wife had just explained about sin and corruption and hostile takeovers. “Don’t know why you’re looking for Lenny. Good boys, all three. Always were.”

Cap back on, notebook tucked away, Dion thanked them for their time and turned to leave, but Roland had one more nugget to offer. “Maybe they gone up the Dease,” he said. “Lenny and his wife, the injun. That’s where she’s from, far as I know. Dease.”

Dion looked back at the man. He didn’t want to pursue this. He wanted to run. The room was making him seasick, the grandfather clock banging at his brain. “Pardon, sir? What?”

“Oh, for god’s sake, that’s Robert,” Clara snapped. “It’s Robert married the Indian lady, not Lenny. Honestly, Rolly, your mind is going in leaps and bounds.”

Roland swooped both hands downward in go-to-hell anger and left the room. A door down the hall slammed shut. Clara hurried after her husband, and Dion stood alone in the sour, trapped air, listening to the ticking of the clock that he could swear was not keeping time with the rest of the world. And then a distant, muffled argument.

He saw himself out. The gloomy morning now seemed over-lit, hard on the eyes. He got into his car and began to write out a summary of the disjointed interview in his notebook, but stalled after the bare basics because the rest, it seemed to him, was garbage.

He’d woken this morning with renewed ambition. Showered and shaved and buffed his boots and went in early, but everything dragged him down, the new computer with the power button he couldn’t locate, the complicated short-term transfer paperwork, and meeting the local constables who met his short greeting with their own. Whatever was left of his waking spirit had been trampled flat by Clara and Roland Law.

He studied the paragraph he’d written, knowing there was something he was missing. Something he’d heard that he’d meant to follow up on. But his handwriting had gone to ratshit along with all his other skills, and whatever it was had been washed away in the stream of Clara’s words.

Did it matter, though? The Laws didn’t know where Lenny was, hadn’t seen any of their sons in a while, and even if they had, they wouldn’t know it. He checked his watch and wrote down time of departure, precise to the minute. The time seemed wrong, so he checked it against the dashboard clock and found it was off by several minutes. Just like himself, just like the grandfather clock in the Laws’ living room, his watch was having trouble keeping up.

* * *

Two o’clock and the snow was coming down again, big flakes hitting the earth like slow-motion bombs, adding to the mess on the mountainside. Leith was behind the wheel of the SUV, with Sergeant Mike Bosko beside him. They were headed once more up the Bell 3 logging road, first to see the Matax trailhead in the light of day, and second to pay a visit to Rob Law, who wasn’t making it easy for them, keeping to his cut block and returning no calls.

The drive was as slow and gruelling as it had been the first time up. The light of day made it easier than last night, but the occasional logging truck coming down made it much, much worse, forcing Leith to pull over on the narrow track, as close to the drop-off as he dared, and hold his breath as the truck lurched past. Worse, he had no choice on one occasion but to reverse downhill till he could find a pullout.

At last they reached the flat spot that was the parking area for the Matax trail, where Kiera’s truck had been found. They left the vehicle and stood looking about. Leith was ready for the cold, as always, in long johns under his jeans, hiking boots, fleece, and storm jacket, hood pulled up against the snow. Bosko was still dressed for a stroll down city streets, in overcoat, baggy black trousers, and Oxfords.

There was nothing to see here, in Leith’s eyes. The forest had been searched last night, searched again today, and if there were anything to be found, it would have been. Before him stood just another hectare of woods in a hundred thousand hectares that stretched out in every direction, and a gravel road with banks of dirty snow spewed by truck tires. Beyond this clearing for parking there was a dip down, and then a rise toward the Matax trail. Not an inviting hike, by the looks of it, but Renee Giroux had said it got really nice after about an hour’s trek. She’d told him he should try it sometime. In late summer, when the wildflowers were at their best. “No thanks,” he’d answered. He didn’t like hiking — it amounted to nothing but sore feet, sweat, bears, and mosquitos — and even if he did, this place would be forever haunted to him. Even if this case ended well.

Standing now on the road with no sound but the wind singing in his ears, he was reminded of the absurdity of one of their scenarios. He said, “What are the odds she gets stuck here just as a serial killer is cruising by? This is not the kind of place you’d trawl for victims.”

“Or, as we discussed last night, it could be he works in a logging outfit up here somewhere, or drives truck,” Bosko said. “A case of the wrong time, wrong place.”

Or, Leith supposed, the Pickup Killer could have broken his pattern of targeting the unknown and unwanted and become fixated on the exact opposite, this beautiful young singer, loved by everyone. Started following her around. Followed her up the mountain, and then … then what? Gambled that her car would break down and leave her vulnerable?

Last night the ident section had found the reason for the Isuzu’s engine stall: a dislodged electronic fuel-supply sensor. What they couldn’t say was if it was entropy or sabotage that did it. Taking the sabotage theory to its conclusion, did the killer mess with her Rodeo while it was parked at the Law residence, when the band was inside rehearsing, again gambling that it would die in some remote spot instead of in the local IGA parking lot? Or did he force her to a stop, get her immobilized, and then sabotage her truck to divert suspicion?

He mentally balled up the theory and trashed it, and it was back to scenario one, an age-old story: the boyfriend did it. Or in this case, maybe the boyfriend’s brother.

They returned to the vehicle and continued up the road. After twenty minutes, it forked without signage, and Leith had to consult his forestry map to learn he’d want to go left. They didn’t reach the logging site run by Rob Law, called RL Logging Ltd., for another ten minutes of bone-jarring ascent, and here suddenly was life and noise, the churning of an active logging show amidst a clearing.

Again they stepped from the truck, and they found it was colder here, windier. Just the altitude, Leith supposed, or the lack of shelter, brought the temperature down. A crew of five or six pushed large machines through the snow, and a worker in yellow rain gear swung off a Caterpillar to ask their business. Leith asked to speak with Rob Law, and the worker indicated the loader toiling away a hundred yards uphill, swinging logs from the great pile of timber on the landing onto the long spine of a waiting rig. “That’s him there. Why? Got some news? Kiera …”

“’Fraid not,” Leith said. “Could you call him over for us? Just a few questions.”

The worker got on his radio and forged off through the dirty snow. Bosko said, “I understand Rob and Frank inherited the company from their father Roland eight years ago or so, and that Roland’s no longer involved. Is that right?”

Leith hadn’t a clue. “That’s what I understand,” he agreed. He watched a man he assumed to be Rob Law approaching. He wore a plaid mack jacket and jeans, hard helmet on, pulled low. He’s going to be difficult, he thought. He said, “D’you want to take the lead on this one? I’d rather do the observing.”

“Sure.”

The logger took his time making his way over, pausing to talk to his crew, kicking at a piece of machinery, but finally stood before them, face tipped back with what looked like challenge. He wasn’t so tall, about five-ten, but solid. Renee Giroux called him antisocial and/or misogynistic. Any time she encountered him in town he’d be ducking his face, she said, and she believed it was more to do with her sex than her rank.

Leith introduced himself and Bosko. “You’re a difficult man to get a hold of,” he added. “You didn’t get our message to come down and talk, sir?”

“Busy,” Rob Law said. He swung the Thermos he was carrying toward a portable workstation set up on a nearby slope, what Jayne Spacey had called the Atco. “We can talk in there. You’re supposed to wear lids, eh.” He rapped his own hard hat.

“We won’t tell,” Bosko said.

Rob led the way around pulverized wood debris and coffee-coloured ice puddles, climbed the set of fold-out stairs leading up to the Atco trailer’s door, stomped the soil off his boots at the threshold, shoved open the three-quarter size aluminum door, and stood aside to let them pass. The trailer they found themselves in was a long, near-empty room that apparently served as his on-site headquarters. Heat and light were provided by a grumbling generator. A kitchen table with mismatched lawn chairs was set at one end, a ratty sofa at the other, everything else in between. Deck of cards on the table, coffee maker on the counter, small fridge, mini-sink. Supernatural BC wall calendar. Without asking, Rob cleared the table of paperwork and set three cups of coffee on the Arborite tabletop, one cup in front of each folding chair. Bosko took the cue first and sat. Leith took his own chair and watched Rob step away, shove open the door, and leave the trailer without so much as an “excuse me.”

Leith left his chair to watch through a window, making sure their subject wasn’t fleeing, and saw Rob walk back toward the trees and step into a bright blue Johnny-on-the-spot. If this was an arms or drugs charge Leith would be worried, but it wasn’t. Under his breath he said, “Real king of the castle here, aren’t you.”

The king of the castle returned, washed his hands more meticulously than Leith would have expected, took his chair at the head of the table, dried his palms on his jeans, folded his arms, and waited.

As Leith had suggested, Bosko did the questioning. Leith wondered now why he had suggested it, really. True, he wanted the opportunity to sit quietly and observe Rob answering questions, but more so he wanted to see how Bosko operated. There was anxiety too, in that he feared he’d make an ass of himself in front of Bosko. He could be abrasive, he knew, and his interviewees could be too, and now and then his questioning sessions became shit-slinging contests. He didn’t want that to happen here.

He wondered further why he cared what Bosko thought of him, and it took another moment of self-analysis to get it. Simple, really: Bosko was looking for talent for his new Serious Crimes Unit down on the Lower Mainland, and Leith wished to impress him. Ergo, Leith wished to leave the north, which in turn came as a big surprise to himself, something he’d have to consider later.

He sat and observed the men, Mike Bosko and Rob Law, as they talked. Rob was not bad looking, in a rough-hewn kind of way. His hair was longish and unkempt, face moody and unwelcoming, a bit of a worker troll. Bosko explained to the troll in a level, respectful way that there were no leads on what had happened to Kiera. He described where the investigation was at. Finally he asked for some background information: How long had Rob known the girl?

The logger’s face slewed into an exaggerated sniff. “I don’t know. A while.”

“What’s a while?”

“Years. Who knows? Why? It matters?”

“Well, I can tell you,” Bosko said, “it might seem pointless to you, and maybe it is. But we have a lot of blanks to fill in right now. I can also tell you that I’ve only got about ten short questions, but if you answer each one like this, we’re going to be here for a lot longer than you probably want.”

He said it nicely enough, but Leith expected a backlash. None came. The veiled anger in Rob’s eyes neither darkened nor lightened, but he seemed to get the message. “I’ve known her as long as she and Frank got together, which is when they were teens, so whatever that is.”

“Good,” Bosko said. Good was a reward word, a tool Leith rarely used. He watched another degree of tension leave Rob’s face. “Tell us about Saturday,” Bosko said. “The day she went missing. Give a timeline of what you did that day, starting from when you woke up in the morning.”

“Timeline.” Rob said it with distaste, maybe just not keen on fancy words applied to his unfancy life. “Got up with the light, got to work. Worked all day. The crew knocked off at six and took off home. I did my paperwork and went down the hill about seven. On the way I found her wheels parked off to the side. Checked it out a bit and then went down and told Frank about it. That’s about all I know. Frank went off looking for her. I’d have gone and helped, but I was dead on my feet. Went straight to bed.”

“You didn’t take part in the search?”

“Other than looking at her truck there when I found it and hollering out her name, I never joined the party, no. If a dozen guys with dogs and whistles can’t find her, I sure couldn’t either.”

Bosko paused, maybe thinking what Leith was thinking, that Rob by his own admission was alone at the Matax at 7:00 p.m., and it was only his word that he hadn’t found Kiera there at that time and done something with her. It was unlikely but worth a follow-up.

“Did you notice anything else in the area that night, besides her vehicle?” Bosko asked. “Tire tracks, footprints, items on the ground, anything out of the ordinary?”

“No. Wasn’t looking, didn’t notice. Never crossed my mind anything worse had happened than she’d broke down and gotten a ride back to town with somebody. Probably one of my crew, heading home.”

“The big question on everyone’s mind,” Bosko said, “is why she was heading up the Bell 3. The only possible destination is this worksite, don’t you think? Did she communicate with you in any way, that day or before, that she was coming to see you? Were you expecting her?”

Rob sat stone-still and drilled his eyes at Bosko for a long moment before giving the shortest possible answer. “No.”

“You can’t think of any reason, then, for her visit?”

“No.”

“Was she friendly with any of your crew?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Did any of your crew leave the site between noon, say, and shut-down?”

“Not that I know.”

“If they had, would you know it?”

“Definitely.”

“Any logging trucks leave or arrive without the usual paperwork?”

“’Course not.”

Bosko had one more question, the one that had been put to Frank earlier this morning. “Your brother Lenny, do you know where he is? We can’t seem to find him.”

“Hey?”

For the first time, something other than obstinance crossed Rob’s face, a flush of anxiety maybe. Leith took over then. “Frank tells us Lenny’s gone to Prince George with a friend, Tex. But we haven’t been able to track down either of them. Does Lenny generally let you know of his whereabouts?”

“We don’t always know where he is, no. He’s kind of useless that way.”

“You seemed startled.”

“Yeah, I’m startled,” Rob said with anger. “We’re talking about Kiera being seriously missing, maybe dead, and you mention Lenny in the same breath. ’Course I was startled. But no, if Frank says he’s in George then I believe it. Goes there with Tex whenever he can. Tex has half his family down there, so there’s places to stay.”

“Doesn’t he leave some kind of contact number when he takes off like that, normally?”

Rob grinned suddenly, and his teeth weren’t great, jumbled and stained. “That’s right, now you mention it. It’s Lenny’s way of giving me the finger. He had a smartphone, loved it more than life itself, but I took it away from him last month. Cost too much. Told him he can have it back when he gets a job. So he decides he’ll take off and not stay in touch. Payback time. Let us worry ourselves to death, see if he cares.”

Leith watched the alarm fade and knew that Lenny’s payback wasn’t paying back well at all. “So now you’re not worried, then.”

“He’s seventeen. An adult.”

“If he needs a job, couldn’t you give him work up here, help bring in the timber? Frank says you need all the help you can get right now.”

“Over my dead body,” Rob said. “Too dangerous.”

The two bigger bears watch over baby bear, Leith decided. The brothers were close, cautious, and defensive. Could it be that whatever had happened to Kiera somehow tied in? He said, “In any case, it’s important we talk to Lenny, soon as possible. He was at the house around the time Kiera went missing. You can’t help us out?”

Rob shook his head. “Can’t. And when you find the prick, tell him to call me, on the double.”

The men thanked him and left the trailer. “I’m keeping that one on my list for now,” Leith said as they made their way back to the SUV, shortcutting across the clearing. Progress was awkward, the ground chopped by truck tires, frozen into lumps, hollows filled with snow, puddles turned into mini ice rinks.

“Definitely have to keep our eyes on him,” Bosko agreed, walking in front, talking over his shoulder. “Watch your step, Dave. It’s pretty slick here.”

Slick for a city slicker, Leith thought, and for a brief moment he enjoyed an image of the big man in front of him losing traction and doing the famous midair northern reel.

Ha, he thought, and his foot went out from under him.