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The Three Bears

COMING BACK FROM THE LITTLE pink house of Clara and Roland Law, Dion crossed paths with Constable Jayne Spacey. She was just heading out to grab a bite, she told him, and invited him along. Of all the people he’d met here in the Hazeltons, Spacey was the friendliest. She would catch his eye, as she did now, and smile, and for the moment he would feel okay. He climbed into the passenger seat of her cruiser and snapped on his seat belt. “Thanks.”

“Not a lot of choices here, you may have discovered,” she said. “But I’m going to take you somewhere really clas­­sy.” She drove hardly a minute down the highway, passing the Catalina — the food was way too greasy for a girl watching her figure — and stopped at the IGA supermarket. “They actually have some pretty good deli here,” she said as they left the truck. “And a place to sit down. And music.”

Inside they bought sandwiches and took a table. Spacey asked him about himself, a question he always dreaded but had planned for. He’d been with the RCMP for a year and half, he would tell people in casual conversation, not the ten years he’d actually served. That way he could avoid the crash altogether. Then he’d bulk out his early years of adulthood with vague odd jobs that nobody would care to pursue.

He gave Spacey the spiel now, and then went on in the brisk and cheerful way he’d been perfecting lately in the privacy of his own room. “Got posted in Smithers last October, and it’s great,” he said. “Nice place, nice people. Love it here.”

Spacey sized him up for a moment and said, “You’re what, twenty-six, twenty-seven? Kind of late start with the Mounties, isn’t it? But that’s cool. I joined right out of high school. Never done anything else.”

He was twenty-nine but didn’t say so. He told her it was beautiful here in the north. Strange words for the setting, a brightly lit supermarket deli with Muzak playing and shoppers pushing their carts past. But it was something he’d heard said a lot, how beautiful the north was, and a part of him meant it. Sometimes he found himself staring at the land in disbelief, and maybe it was just that, this wraparound beauty that made him — and by association his problems — small, insignificant, nothing at all. Spacey put down her fork and said, “Bullshit it’s beautiful. It’s a pit. It’s part of the circuit. It’s penance. I can’t wait to get out of here.”

She told him of her big family back in Canmore, Alberta, and her husband Shane, or ex, to be precise, a cheating creep she was happily divorcing. “He’s still crazy about me, but too bad, schmuck. You’re history.”

“No second chance?”

She laughed and shrugged. “I gave him a second chance, but he’s not getting a third. And this time he really blew it, ’cause it was Megan he fooled around with. My best friend. Or was. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine screwing around with your best friend’s husband? I mean, how can you live with yourself?”

Her words were serious but her expression was careless, and Dion wasn’t sure she wasn’t making it all up. He said, “Shane’s an idiot.”

She nodded. “As most men are. Are you an idiot, Constable Dion? Don’t answer that, it’s a trick question. And how’s your love life? Got a sweetheart somewhere?”

The woman who came to his mind’s eye wasn’t Penny, but Kate Ballantyne, whom he had broken off with after the crash. She still wrote to him sometimes, but he didn’t have the nerve to read those letters. And of course the longer he waited, the harder it was to approach them, so they remained in a box on the shelf, three so far. Meanwhile there was the relationship with Penny McKenzie from the post office, which he saw as nothing but a long date going stale. He summed up with, “No, not really.”

“Tell me another lie,” Spacey said. She reached out to touch a crumb off the side of his mouth, and now they were sitting knee-to-knee, eye-to-eye. She said, “Hey, you’re not religious, are you? Or a teetotaller?”

Neither religion nor drink had any power over him. He shook his head no to both questions, and Spacey was delighted. “Perfect, ’cause I’m going to take you out tonight, show you the town. Game?”

He hesitated a moment and said, “If I’m caught drinking and driving, it’ll be the end of my great career.”

“’Course not. I’m driving, and you’re sitting back and watching the scenery. Later, if we get along okay, we’ll park the car and take a cab out to the Black Bear for a beer. The Black Bear’s out on the Kispiox River. It’s where all the big-game hunters hang out. Heli-ski base and all that.”

“Sounds good.”

“Fucking fantastic.” She wiggled her upper body in a victory dance. She stopped abruptly, bit into her sandwich, and chewed a moment, watching him. “You’re part native, aren’t you?”

“Native? Me? No.”

She chewed a moment longer and then shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. Give me your phone.”

Wondering what didn’t matter, he handed over his personal cellphone, a fold-up Motorola. Spacey entered her number into its databanks, aimed it at herself, snapped a picture, and gave it back. She told him to call her about 8:00 p.m., and they’d arrange to meet. She checked her watch and said, “Oh my god, we better get back. I forgot to tell you, Constable Leith slipped on ice and banged up his hand, so he needs a scribe. Which is why I’m making myself scarce. But you don’t have my kind of leverage around here, so you’d better run along.”

She dropped him off back at the little detachment, and her cruiser scudded away. Dion climbed the steps and went inside. The reception area was noisy with young people, slouched, standing, talking, drinking pop. Passing through to the main office, he was flagged by one of the local uniforms and directed to go see Sergeant Giroux.

Giroux’s office was a small room, ten by ten at best, mostly taken up by an L-shaped desk and filing cabinets. She was at her desk, and in a chair across from her sat the terse blond detective from Prince Rupert named Leith, the one who had called Dion a lab rat. Leith was slumped, jacket and tie removed, shirtsleeves rolled to the elbow, his right hand swathed in tensor bandages. Both officers fell silent and looked at Dion where he had stopped in the doorway. Giroux remained seated and said, “Looks like you and me need to have a talk about lunch breaks and punctuality. How’s your handwriting? And your stamina?”

Neither were great, but he didn’t say so, and as directed followed Constable Leith down the hall to the first of two small interview rooms. There were no windows here, no sharp objects, ropes, or combustibles in sight. Just a desk and some chairs and a lot of stern posters on the walls. Leith took a chair, slapped down his notebook, and studied what was written there. “We’ll start with Chad Oman,” he said at last.

Since the crash, words had become Dion’s greatest enemy. Sometimes they came together easily, but often he needed some catch-up time. Already Leith was looking at him, losing patience, spelling it out more clearly. “Chad Oman, our witness. If you’d get him, please?”

Dion went to the reception area and called out the name, and a bulky native kid stepped out from the gathering of youths. Oman followed him to the interview room and sat across from Leith in practiced fashion, like he’d been interrogated before and knew the drill. Leith asked Dion if he had a tape recorder. Dion didn’t have one of the newer digital devices, which he found hard to figure out, but had an old-fashioned mini-cassette type with simpler controls.

“Good,” Leith said. “Take care of it.”

Dion checked that the blank tape was rewound to the beginning, thinking about the North Vancouver detachment, its many interview rooms hardwired for audio-visual, and adjacent monitoring rooms, and usually extra staff to man the controls. Smithers’ one-room set-up was far simpler but modern enough. New Hazelton was a shocker, barely an empty closet, no Mirropane, no camera. He started the recorder and set it down, angled toward the witness, got pen and paper ready, and jotted down the preliminaries.

Leith told Oman that the conversation was being recorded, and for the benefit of the record gave time, date, place, and name of witness.

“Yeah, that’s me,” Oman said. “Whatchoo do to your hand there, bud?”

“My feet went south,” Leith said. “On ice.”

“Hooya, that’s a bitch,” Oman said gravely.

Leith grimaced. “I’ll get you out of here soon as possible. Just a few questions. Let’s start with Kiera Rilkoff and Frank Law. When and how’d you get to know them?”

“Knew Frank since grade eight,” Oman said. “We were always into the music, eh. Him on guitar, and me, I liked hitting things, so I got to be the drummer. We wrote some wicked tunes that looking back now, man they were bad, evil crap. But we got us a bit of a following. We were called Frankly Insane then. Stella came in with her fiddle, and then Kiera one day got up and took the mic from Frank, and we found out she could sing not so bad. And she’s got the looks too. I mean, talent is one thing, but ballsiness is everything else. She made it a show. That day at the school dance she opened her mouth and yodelled out ‘Soulful Shade of Blue,’ we knew we were magic. We changed the name to Fling, her call, and everything was great. And last summer it got even better when we got talent-spotted. For real, man. That lady talked to us after that fundraiser gig at the rec centre and told us what we already knew, that we’re really good, and we oughta get serious, market ourselves and whatnot.”

“Ms. Blackwood, is it?” Leith said.

“Mercy Blackwood. She’s huge. She launched Joe Forte and the Six-Packs. You know them, right?”

“Oh yeah,” Leith said. He didn’t really, but they sounded like a flash in the pan. “Whatever happened to them?”

“Forte got killed in a freak boating accident.”

Now Leith recalled the story. Forte wasn’t a flash in the pan. He was up-and-coming, but he’d died young. He said, “That was a long time ago. So she’s been in the business a while. She’s living here now?”

Oman nodded sympathetically. “I know, you’re thinking what’s a person like that doing in a place like this, right? She come up here to look after old Mrs. Trish Baldwin last year, who’s her relative or something, who’s gone now. Mercy says she’ll probably move on soon as the old house sells, but in the meantime she’s helping us out in a big way. Got us a bunch of sound equipment, made up our website, put our name out there. So, yeah, all of a sudden we’re not just high school rockers; now we got a future. Which is kind of funny.” His smile faded, and he finished on a quieter note. “So that’s about it. It’s so unreal, I can’t stop cryin’. I forget she’s missing, and every time I remember I just start cryin’ all over again.”

There were no tears in his eyes, but Dion got the gist, and Leith seemed to as well. “What’s kind of funny?” he asked.

“Nothing. What d’you think happened to her?”

“We’re working hard to find her,” Leith said. “What’s kind of funny?”

“Nothing, hey. I’m just so freaked out here, just can’t think straight.”

Oman was a fast talker, and Dion flexed his wrist. He wondered how many interviews he’d be on today. How long before his scribbles turned to garbage? Just get the key points, he told himself. Oman was describing for Leith the Saturday when Kiera walked out of rehearsal without explanation, and Dion’s key points fractured into point form, then finally random hieroglyphics. It didn’t matter, though, because the tape was getting it all down. Notes were just for backup and quick reference, memoranda for the continuation reports that he would be typing later. He rubbed his temple and flipped a page.

Oman talked about the new demo they were working on after the big disappointment in December when that Vancouver record label backed out of a deal. “Mercy says don’t worry about it, just carry on, write some new material, work harder, which is what we’re doing now, working on the new, improved demo that’s going to make us a big name.”

“And how’s that going?”

Oman shrugged, which said it all.

Leith said, “I was in the sound studio at Frank’s house. It’s an impressive setup. You’re saying Blackwood funded all that?”

“I’m not sure how that’s all worked out. They have a contract, I think. Frank could tell you. Are we done soon, because I want to go home and shoot my brains out.”

“Why?”

“Because I have a feeling Kiera’s not coming back, which means so much for making it big, which is super depressing, if you have to know.”

Leith told him gravely not to go shooting his brains out. He asked for more details, specifically if Oman recalled anything Kiera had eaten or drank or smoked, and what she was wearing as she left, and how her hair was done up, and her mood at the time. Oman didn’t know if Kiera drank any beer or smoked any dope. He didn’t recall what she was wearing, in particular. Jeans and a baggy sweater, probably, and those battered Blundstones of hers. He didn’t recall her leaving with her coat on. She left alone. He agreed that Frank was in a bad mood, but not angry or anything. They were all glum. Soon after Kiera left, Oman left with Stella, and later that night Frank buzzed in a big panic, and Oman had put on his winter gear and gone up the mountain with him to look for Kiera. They hadn’t found her, and that was that.

The interview wound down and Dion was breathing hard, as if he’d just jogged up a steep hill. The witness was having a few last words with Leith and seeing himself out. Dion reviewed his notes and felt the familiar sliding chill of defeat. The witness was gone, and Leith was by the door, studying him. “There a problem?”

“Couldn’t keep up so well at the end there,” Dion told him.

“It’s just for reference,” Leith said irritably, coming around, taking his seat, prepping for the next interview. “You got it recorded, right?”

Dion rewound the recorder to check with a brief playback. Nothing issued forth but a faint hiss. His pulse went into overdrive. He must have pressed play but not record. He looked at Leith and saw the kind of restrained anger that was worse than a blowup. Leith took Dion’s notebook, looked it over, and tossed it back at him. “I’ll dictate what I recall of the conversation. You write.”

They spent half an hour getting down what had been said, and Dion discovered that Leith had an excellent memory. When it was done, his nerves were still jangling, but the stifling fear had lifted. He said, “I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”

“Not a big deal,” Leith said curtly. “Just be happy it wasn’t our prime suspect.”

Dion nodded, and Leith devoted himself to his file documents.

“He was lying, there. I think,” Dion said.

Leith stared up from his papers. “What?”

The stare was direct and unsettling, and whatever lightbulb had been burning in Dion’s brain blew a fuse and went black. He said, “It just seemed … no, probably not. I thought … but … sorry.”

The detective’s unfriendly blue eyes stayed on him. “Thought but what?”

“Nothing. Sorry.”

“You just said you think he’s lying. Lying about what? What makes you say that?”

Dion was starting to sweat. He searched his mind for something, anything, but all he found was more dead air. He said, “Actually I forget.”

“You forget what?”

They were staring at each other now, the inevitable answer to the question lying heavy and silent between them.

With a slap on the tabletop, Leith said, “Just get Stella Marshall in here, please.”

Stella was a tall, solidly built woman in her early twenties with white-blond hair. Her eyes were pale and bulgy. Her pink skin was blotched, and a fine white down picked out by the fluorescent lights ran down her cheeks like vague sideburns. She spoke much slower than the drummer, to Dion’s relief, glancing his way from time to time as if to be sure his pen was keeping up. Sometimes she smiled at him. “I’ve known Frank forever,” she told Leith. “I joined his band in grade ten. I played bass guitar then, but I’ve gravitated toward fiddle, and I think that worked better in the long run. It branded us country and western, but that’s okay. We’re very popular around here. Produced our own CD. Didn’t exactly go viral, but we get some good paying gigs. And as you’ve heard by now, we’ve hit the big time with Mercy Blackwood coming along to back us. She’s got connections. She’s going to put us out there. Have you heard us play?” she asked Dion.

Leith brought her attention back his way, saying, “Let’s go over Saturday again. Give me a play-by-play of what happened that day, start to finish.”

Her narrative paralleled that of Chad Oman. Kiera had left rehearsal prematurely. She was in a bad mood, but her nastiness didn’t seem directed at anybody in particular. She hadn’t eaten anything or drunk any beer or smoked any pot. She might have been wearing a coat when she left, but Stella couldn’t be sure. Her hair was definitely tied back, and maybe pinned back too, on one side. Stella and Chad had left soon after lunch because there was no point hanging around. Frank had called her later that night, about eight, asking if she’d seen Kiera, and saying something about the Rodeo up on the Bell 3. Stella had taken part in the search deep into the night.

She tilted her head, and her long blond bangs swung. “They’re saying it’s the Pickup Killer. But I don’t believe it. Way up there, in the middle of nowhere? Do you want to hear my theory?”

“Sure,” Leith said.

“I think she had engine trouble, and she was walking down the road, and maybe decided to cut through the woods to avoid the switchbacks, and fell and twisted her ankle or something. She’s probably alive, just can’t move. She’s very outdoorsy and savvy about survival. But I imagine your SAR guys have checked the area far and wide with a helicopter and dogs and the works, right?”

Leith said yes, they had, and Stella said in that case she didn’t have a clue. She said that she was glad she’d kept the day job, and now she was done too and was allowed to leave, wishing Dion a good afternoon and ignoring Leith.

A man named Parker Chu came next. Chinese-Canadian, thin and unsmiling, a self-admitted nerd. Parker told Leith he wasn’t friends with Frank or the others, that it was just a job for him doing their sound work. He was employed at the community college some days, teaching computer, but it wasn’t great pay. He was planning to move to Alberta soon as he could pin down a better job.

The band paid him by the hour, he said, though the hours were running thin. He recounted how Frank had called him up Saturday just before one, and he’d gone right over, because work was work, and listened to the tracks, which weren’t tracks at all, but random noises. No, he exaggerated, he said, with a smile. But it was bad. He’d talked it over with Frank, trying to be diplomatic about it, and left within the hour.

Yes, he recalled Frank’s phone pinging, and Frank sending a text moments later. Just one, two at most. He looked kind of peeved as he did it.

Parker left, and before Dion could go out to fetch the next interviewee in line, one was brought to them by Sergeant Giroux. She darkened the doorway with a boy in his late teens at her side, tall and solidly built, his brows bunched into a thundercloud of anger.

“Look who showed up,” she told Leith. “This is Leonard Law, better known as Lenny.”

She left, and the seventeen-year-old took the interviewee’s seat. His brown hair was long at the front and short at the back. He wore skinny black jeans and a bulky black hoody covered in bold white graphics. The hoody looked new, to Dion, and expensive.

“I just got back,” Lenny said, nearly spitting the words at Leith. “And Frank says Kiera’s missing and you guys are looking for me. You think I did something to her, is that it? ’Cause I didn’t do nothing, and I got an alibi to say so, and I want a lawyer, and I want it now.”

Leith opened his mouth, but the boy wasn’t done. “I don’t have to say nothing till I got a lawyer. And I want a real one, not your Legal Aid joke-in-a-suit who can’t get your name right, let alone what you’re supposed to have done.”

Leith said, “Sit down, Leonard — should I call you Leonard or Lenny?”

“You can call me nothing, ’cause I got nothing to say. I get one phone call, right? I think your talking to me before I get my phone call is a breach of my rights, and none of this can be used against me in court, and you know what? This is all you’re getting from me from here on in.” He stood looking combative, mouth turned down and arms crossed tight.

Leith said, “Take it easy. Would you sit down, please?”

The kid uncrossed his arms and dropped hard into the chair.

Leith said, “It’s just we’re talking to everyone who was at the house on Saturday. You’re not being charged with anything. You’re just a witness. Honest.”

Lenny sat, thinking hard. Dion rotated his writing wrist. Leith continued to watch the boy, waiting through the silence as though he knew it wouldn’t last. He was right.

“But I’m not a witness,” Lenny burst out. “You say she’s missing? I didn’t even know it. I was in Prince George. With Tex. I don’t even have a phone, ’cause Rob cut me off, so I was five hours away and didn’t even know you were looking for me.”

“Yeah,” Leith said. “I know.”

The colour was returning to Lenny’s face. He cleared his throat and said, “Sorry.”

“That’s okay,” Leith said.

“So what’s happened to Kiera?”

“We don’t know what happened to Kiera,” Leith told him.

Lenny sat for a moment, staring into nothing, then without warning his face crumpled and he was crying like a frightened child. Dion was glad, because his writing hand was sore as hell, and tears didn’t need transcribing.

* * *

Leith was fried. He shut down the interviews for a time out to talk to his colleagues. He sent Lenny Law on his way and met with Bosko and Giroux in Giroux’s office. The others sat, but he paced. He’d had enough of sitting for a while.

“The kid was mighty defensive,” he said. “You told me he hasn’t been in trouble with the law before.”

Giroux at her desk shook her head. “Hasn’t even lifted a candy bar. But it’s what he grew up in, eh? The three bears were estranged from their parents early on. If you met them you’d know why. So they moved into their big house in the woods and far as I know stay out of trouble. Rob was never caught committing a crime, but probably everyone he was close to as a youngster had done time. And as we know, Frank’s got that assault thing. So if Lenny’s edgy about the police, you can see where he gets it.”

Leith described the boy’s crying jag, which was understandable, maybe, but didn’t quite jibe. “All these people, for some reason I’m having a hard time reading them. Why do I get the feeling they’re holding back?”

Bosko asked, “What did Lenny have to say, once he pulled himself together?”

“Nothing new. He was in his room all morning and left after Kiera was gone. He didn’t witness anything.”

“Did he tell you about Prince George?”

“Not really. Like his brothers said, he goes there a lot. Nothing strange there.”

“Sure,” Bosko said. “Did he give any reason why, here in the communication age, nobody could reach him for two whole days?”

“I did ask him about that. Lenny’s lost his cellphone rights. Tex doesn’t answer his dad’s home phone, as a rule, and it happens he wasn’t picking up his cell either because he was trying to avoid some girl, and he doesn’t have caller ID, so he wasn’t screening either.”

“All of which you’re going to verify with Tex,” Bosko said, a question without a question mark attached.

Leith hadn’t planned on verifying anything except the trip itself, but gave a nod. “Spacey’s tracking him down right now.”

Bosko said to Giroux, “That reminds me, how are you doing for manpower? You have a village to run, and we’ve stolen your troops. Are you getting everything else covered, or should we call for more help?”

“More help would be good,” Giroux said. “We’re down one rookie ’cause this ass slipped in the mud and broke his hand, so he needs a scribe.”

Leith said, “Slipped on the ice and sprained my wrist.”

“However you want to say it, we’re down one guy who’s taking notes for Dave here instead of out doing his own interviews, which is too bad, ’cause there are plenty of minor witnesses on my list that even he could handle.”

“Dion?” Leith said with contempt. “I wouldn’t let that halfwit make coffee. What are they letting out of Regina these days? He can’t work a tape recorder. Scares the hell out of me that he’s in charge of a loaded gun.”

Bosko lifted his brows. “What’s he done, exactly?”

“It’s not so much what he’s done,” Leith said. “We all make mistakes. It’s what he is. He’s slow, and he’s absent. You haven’t noticed?”

“I’ve noticed him,” Bosko said, not quite answering the question. “Do you feel you should write him up?”

“No,” Leith said after a moment’s consideration. “Not at this point. But I’ll definitely be keeping an eye on him.”

“And maybe have a talk,” Bosko suggested.

A counsellor Leith was not. He grimaced and moved on. “First impressions on everyone I’ve talked to so far. Frank Law’s still my first choice, but he’s got at least one good alibi, Chad Oman. I don’t think Oman’s lying to cover him. Stella Marshall I’m not so sure about. Parker Chu is solid. I’m more interested in Rob Law right now. Think of it, he’s up at his worksite, not far from Kiera’s truck. He couldn’t have gone down to meet her without being seeing by his crew, and nobody saw him leave, but he was there after everyone left. Maybe he met her then, down at the Matax, or she’d made her way up to the site, waited till everyone left before going in to see him.”

Giroux and Bosko looked doubtful, and Leith knew why. A logging road in mid-February was no place to hang about for hours, even in the shelter of a vehicle. He sighed, checked the memo that had been handed to him in the hallway, and recalled he had one more interview to cover off. Not a band member or family, but Scott Rourke, a friend of the Law brothers who lived just up the road from the Laws, now waiting out in the reception area. Rourke was the last one to see Kiera alive, if he could be believed, but he’d already been cleared as a suspect, and so far Leith had seen no need to question him himself.

The facts were simple enough: Rourke had been riding his dirt bike from his mobile home toward town when Kiera had passed him in her truck. The time, as far as he could narrow it down, was just before one in the afternoon. She hadn’t acknowledged him, probably hadn’t recognized him as she approached, just sped past. It was about all he could say then, but now apparently he had something to add, and this time he wanted to talk to the lead investigator.

Rourke was a name Leith was all too familiar with from his many long days of weeding through the listings in his search for the Pickup Killer. This one he’d pulled and run through the system more than once because of its history, but nothing had panned out, and he’d moved on. He said to Giroux, “Our biker. We all know this turkey, but I haven’t talked to him in person yet. What can you tell me about him?”

He saw a shadow cross her brow, and she made a noise, something between a spit and a hiss. “Where do I start?” she said.

* * *

Leith ushered Rourke into the interview room, gave Dion the name, and took his seat. Scott Rourke was an ugly sucker, face rippled by a nasty scar. He was somewhere in his late fifties, with yellow hair going silver. He wore skinny jeans, battered cowboy boots, a white muscle shirt, and a black leather vest with a large, grubby bird’s feather — illegal eagle, Leith suspected — laced to its lapel. First Nations people could possess feathers and whites couldn’t, and Rourke was white as white could be. He draped himself loosely over his chair, gnashing on a wad of chewing gum, stared across at Leith, and said, “Well, let’s get started.”

Leith told Rourke to state his full name, age, and occupation.

“What’s what I do for a living got to do with anything?” Rourke said.

Dion the scribe wrote it down.

Leith hardened his voice. “We won’t know until we know, will we?” He studied the scar bisecting the witness’s face, starting from the forehead, skirting the inside of the left eye, running down the left side of the nose, crossing the mouth, not quite centre, ending off to the right of the chin. Somebody had done a job on him, but a while ago. The scar looked old.

“I’m self-employed is what I am.” Rourke’s brown arms were crossed, every tendon popped and delineated. “I fix things. Okay? Anything I can fit on my workbench, I fix. Small engines, clocks, microwave ovens, you name it. Well, okay, maybe not microwave ovens. Okay? But everything else under the sun, it’s broke, I fix.”

“All right,” Leith said. “Self-employed fix-all. Was that so bad? See, I ask you questions, you give me answers, he writes them down, and we move on. That’s how it usually goes.”

“Thank you for educating me on the fine art of interrogation. So move on.”

“You said you have some information for me about Kiera Rilkoff. I’ve got your statement about seeing her drive past on Kispiox Road. What else d’you know, sir?”

“It’s not so much what I know as what I want to know. Time is of the essence, right? The first forty-eight and all that. I don’t see a lot of action happening here, you all sitting around, questioning people like you’re writing some fucking book. What a waste of time. It’s not people that got her, it’s that bastard, and she could be still alive, and you people better get your ass in gear and start turning over rocks.”

“What bastard got her?”

“You know the bastard I’m talking about. Mr. Pickup, who strangles young girls and leaves them in shallow graves. He’s been having his sick kicks for two years now, and with all your equipment and your brains and manpower, you keep letting him get away, and now he’s got Kiera, thanks very much.”

“Is that your information, Mr. Rourke? Are you done? ’Cause I have a few questions myself. You live about a stone’s throw from the Law brothers, is that right?”

“If you call kilometre and a half a stone’s throw.”

“You’re a close friend of Kiera Rilkoff?”

“That’s why I’m here, you fucking genius!”

“Keep your hair on,” Leith snapped. “This is a police station, not your local watering hole, get that straight. When did you last see her?”

“You guys already asked me all that.”

“I’m asking you again.”

“Last night, then, to be exact. It was a hot day, blue sky, and her and Frank were standing in the river, okay? Down at the S-Bend, up to their navels and side by side. I was on the beach in a purple tux, reading them their vows from a podium made of Popsicle sticks. That’s the last time I saw her.”

Dion the scribe was clearly not keeping up. Leith picked up the tape recorder, checked its little bars were hopping, and set it down again. He leaned toward his witness and said, quietly, “That’s fascinating, sir. But see, this fellow has to take down everything we say, and he thinks you’re giving him a load of writer’s cramp for nothing. And he doesn’t think it’s cute. And neither do I. So let’s stick to facts. Okay? Not dreams, not your artsy-fartsy sarcasm. Fact.”

“I thought I’d share an interesting dream.”

“I don’t want to hear your interesting dreams.”

Rourke shrugged. “Who the fuck knows the last time I saw her, besides her driving past me on Saturday. On the street maybe, few weeks ago, stopped to chat, whatever. Or I was over there for dinner, or they dropped by. We just bump into each other all over the place, helter-skelter, willy-nilly.”

Dion’s pen fell to the floor with a clatter. Leith waited till he was back in business and said, “Your relationship with Kiera. In your mind it’s a little more than just friends, isn’t it? You’ve got ideas about you and her. Fantasies.”

Rourke straightened in indignation. “Fantasies? Me? I’m old enough to be her grandfather.”

“Ever heard the term ‘dirty old man’?”

“Ever heard the term libel action? Because, sir, I’m just itchin’ —”

“All I asked you,” Leith pointed out, “is if you’ve ever heard the term. What were you doing Saturday?”

“Nothing. I worked on my projects. Fixing things.”

“Anybody with you?”

“A friend.”

“Name.”

“Evangeline Doyle.”

“Contact information?”

“She lives with me, so get it from your file.”

Leith gave Dion a nod to flag the name. “Anything else?”

“When I heard about Kiera, I went up the mountain and searched it high and low, doing your guys’s job for you, which is just plain hair-brained, ’cause that mountain should have been turned inside out on that first night, not by a bunch of amateurs, but by a bunch of cops who could have maybe found a clue or two before it got destroyed, because guess what, there’s a murderer at large. But no, I guess you got your protocols to follow….”

He had plenty more, and Leith argued with him for a while, but mostly he let the man rant. He didn’t like Rourke, a man with a bad criminal record, but for now all he had against him was his own, sorely biased contempt. He watched Rourke’s mobile and badly scarred face, the rolled-up sleeves, the scrappy hands, oil-blackened and rough, and the muscled arms flexing with every angry word. There was a rhythm to his words, a drumbeat that was saying more than it was saying. The missing girl wasn’t his only grievance, or the shortcomings of the police service. It was something bigger and meaner, and it was wounded, and just as Leith was getting a sense of what it might be, Rourke seemed to short out, tossed his hands one last time, and said he was bloody done here.

Leith said, “Glad to hear it. Thank you, sir, for your time. And do yourself a favour, lose the feather. Next cop you meet might not be so nice.”

“I got Mohawk in my blood.”

“Good for you.”

He watched Rourke leave and then smiled briefly at Dion, who was already clearing up to leave. “Got all that?”

Leith wasn’t a great smiler, never had been, but he thought he’d give the rookie a chance. If he could make contact, find something of value, some tiny glimmer of intelligence, he could maybe start on the road to positive mentoring.

In the next instant, he wished he hadn’t bothered, as Dion nearly stumbled in his haste to rise and said sharply, “No, I didn’t get all that.” He didn’t look well, his pale face flushed, his hair sweaty and spiked, dark rings under his flashing, angry eyes, and for the first time he had plenty to say. “Nobody could get all that. You let your witness off the leash, throw sticks and watch him run, just for the fun of it, and you expect me to get all that?” He removed a tatty duty notebook from his pocket and flipped it across the desk at Leith, who was still staring at him in dumb surprise. “Read it, if you want, circle all the mistakes, and send me to hell, if you want. Frankly, I don’t give a shit.”

He strode out, leaving behind the little spiral notebook in its leather case.

* * *

“Hell,” Dion said again, hands linked behind his neck as if to save himself from toppling backward. From his second-floor motel room window he could see a volcano -like mountain rising up, a dark mass in the night sky, its peaks glowing a paler blue, a two thousand and seventy metre-high rock called Hagwilget Peak, according to the tourist brochure he’d read front to back this morning over coffee.

The motel was right next to the highway, and even through the thick glass he could hear the grunts of trucks decelerating and the occasional noisy exhaust of an older car barrelling by. There were muffled screams and gun blasts from the TV in the room next to his, too. But mostly there was silence, immense and smothering.

He was thinking about his last exchange with Constable Leith, just an hour ago. He had doubled back moments later, partly to face the music, but mostly because it wasn’t his duty notebook he’d left behind, but his private one, the one where he kept track of pertinent names and dates, random statistics, and whatever else he needed to keep the facts and fictions of his life in order.

Leith was still in his chair, just finishing a phone call, lodging a complaint of insubordination probably. He’d looked up, and Dion had spoken loudly to keep the tremor out of his voice. “Is that it, then? Should I pack my bags? You want my badge?”

Leith had observed him blankly for a long moment, and finally said, simply but coldly, “No. Why?”

“Anyway, I just wanted to apologize.” Dion had moved closer to the table and saw the notebook lay as he’d left it. He’d reached out, picked it up, tucked it behind him.

Leith didn’t seem to care about the notebook or the apology. He left his chair abruptly and walked out, and that seemed to be the end of the matter.

Another freight truck roared by, breaking the limit. Jayne Spacey, Dion thought. Eight o’clock. He checked his watch, comparing it to the radio clock on the bedside table, and saw that the watch hands were off by over ten minutes, confirming his fears. It was a special watch, older than himself, all gears and leather. He adjusted it and gave the stem a bit of a wind, whistling a careless tune.

He changed into jeans and sweater, boots and jacket, and went downstairs, hoping not to run into any of the other officers lodged at the Super 8 — Fairchild, or Bosko, or especially Leith. But there was nobody around, not in the halls, the stairwells, the lobby, or next to the lobby in the motel’s small diner — Western food, gingham motif — run by a thin, aloof Korean named Ken.

Dion took the only booth in the place, the one by the window. There was nothing to see outside now but the occasional passing truck, vehicles going from point A to point B, passing through Hazelton by necessity. Everyone broke the limit, leaving arcs of slush or swirls of crystal in their wake. He ordered dinner, roast beef for the protein, salad for fibre, all the trimmings for the calories. Filling himself out to be the man he’d been before was one of his major goals. Gaining weight wasn’t as easy as it seemed.

After dinner he walked along the cold, blustery highway that formed the backbone of the town. The lamp standards blazed their dead orange-grey light along the four-lane strip, and the banners banged and clanged in the wind. The businesses along the highway were closed, all but the Catalina Cafe, lights on bright, the stout silhouettes of diners against the drapes. And the Chevron, the twenty-four-hour gas station/convenience store where Kiera Rilkoff had once worked part time. Youths loitered on the sidewalk, smelling of cigarettes and weed, and Dion worried about being swarmed. They didn’t even look his way.

From inside the Chevron he phoned Spacey, and her little blue Toyota RAV4 pulled up soon after. He climbed in the passenger seat, and they were off, exploring the great spread of land that made up the Hazeltons. Her uneven smile lit by the dashboard, Spacey said, “In the city you get entertained. Here you have to entertain yourself. Wheels help, big-time.”

The drive turned out to be a nice break from routine, though she barrelled along the backroads too fast for comfort. In Old Hazelton they stood in the snow in a darkened park ringed by enormous dark trees that rustled their dead leaves and whispered. Spacey told him about the totem poles and longhouses, the preserved Gitxsan village of Ksan. Later she took him to a viewpoint over a chasm and told him of a drama­tic rescue that took place here. She drove down to a winter-dead meadow with train tracks and a river, and they walked southbound along the ties and talked, mostly about her life and troubles. But she was funny, and she didn’t seem worried that he wasn’t laughing or had little to say, as though she knew he appreciated her even in his silence. He looked across at the trees growing on the far riverbanks, leafless, tall, and ragged. The trees looked like a tribe of giants deep in conversation. Black cottonwood, Spacey told him, following his eyes.

A train came and went, also southbound, and it was while it flooded past, shaking the ground they stood on, that Spacey put an arm around his waist and stood close, tilting her face for a kiss. He wrapped her in both arms to complete the embrace, and completed the kiss too, feeling the warmth of arousal as their mouths met, and something even better: a dramatic change of mood, a teasing sense of bliss.

Spacey pushed him away with a smile and said it was high time for a drink. They returned to the RAV4, and she drove along a road that followed the river a ways, pulling into the parking lot of a large post-and-beam structure that glowed like a cruise ship in the dark. The Black Bear Lodge. A couple dozen vehicles sat in the snow, all of them four-by-fours, and Spacey said, “More traffic than you’d think, even in winter. You got your heli-skiers and skidooers and hunters. And a few locals, anybody with extra money in their pocket. This place isn’t cheap.”

Inside they found the bar was doing good business, even at this hour, nearly midnight. The lights were warm and the music just loud enough to add milieu without hammering the eardrums. Spacey said she’d only have one beer, and she’d make it last, no problem; it wouldn’t even touch her bloodstream. Afterward, they’d go to her place and play Scrabble. She said it with a wink.

His first clue that something was wrong came as he followed Spacey through the bar and she reached back to grab his hand, guiding him to a table with a good view on the brass and glass of the long bar itself, at the attractive, brown-haired woman mixing drinks there, who was looking across at them with what looked like stony-faced wonder.

“Why’s she staring at us?” Dion asked as he took a chair, returning the stare.

“Because she’s a nosy, jealous bitch,” Spacey told him. “That’s Megan.”

Megan, if Dion recalled right, was Jayne Spacey’s ex-friend, which made this spot the worst possible choice in the whole bar. Before he could object, Spacey leaned across the table and kissed him on the mouth. Then she sat back and grinned at him. “It’s okay. Kind of awkward, but she won’t bother you. I will have to ask you to go up and order, though, since she and I aren’t speaking.”

He pushed his chair back. “We can move. We’ll sit over there. I don’t need her glaring at me like this.”

“She’s not glaring at you, she’s glaring at me. You she likes. She’s always had a thing for native guys, like my ex, Shane.”

“I’m not —”

“Whatever. Just smile at her nicely and make her twitch, horny little cow.” She tilted her head, reading the doubt on his face, and her voice went smoky. “C’mon, do me a big favour and play along. I’ll pay you back in a big way.”

Understanding was jolting through him now, followed by amazement, followed by mute anger. This wasn’t friendship, and it wasn’t even sex. He was a prop, and she’d brought him here to fling daggers at the one who’d hurt her. He opened his mouth to argue, but shut it again, knowing anything he had to say would only take the situation on a fast downhill slide. He would play along for as long as it took to drink one beer, then he’d insist they leave.

He stood and dug out his wallet, walking up to the bar. He ordered two draft pints from Megan. He didn’t smile at her, and she didn’t smile back. He left a generous tip, brought the mugs back to the table and settled in, his back to Megan. He drank his beer and let Spacey do her thing, chatting and posing, showing her ex-friend what a great time she was having with her new boyfriend.

About halfway through his beer, just when he was getting used to the idea of being a prop and deciding he actually didn’t care, a hulk of a black-haired man in black leather walked up to their table, glowered at Dion, and said to Spacey, “Get over here and talk.”

So this would be the cheating husband Shane, still crazy about her, the Shane who she’d never forgive. Spacey stayed in her seat, and Dion remained next to her, mouth shut, marvelling at how she’d fixed this scene. He listened to Spacey telling her ex, “You’re looking kinda desperate, Shane. Why don’t you go poke Megan in the ol’ beaver pelt? Looks like she could use the exercise.” She put her arm through Dion’s as she spoke, and it was here he messed up badly by losing patience, removing her arm, and standing up, telling her he was done.

Outside, a cab stood idling and wreathed in vapour, its roof light on to net the drunks who spilled out like clockwork around closing time. He climbed in and said “Super 8.”

Back in his room, he turned off the phone, not checking the messages. He didn’t call Penny, breaking another promise. He turned on the TV and found an old movie that he couldn’t follow, black and white, a man and a woman talking wildly at each other. He sat on the bed and watched and listened, without seeing or hearing. He thought about the train hurling by, and the black trees having their conversation, and a strange notion of wanting to join them, learn the language, stand in their midst, and let the elements take him.

He pushed the thought away. All that really bothered him right now was the twenty-five-minute difference between his wristwatch and the time on the cabbie’s dashboard clock. “Doesn’t matter,” he said, studying the watch up close. His face felt feverish and his airway was tight. He lifted the watch to his ear, and it ticked softly, chk-chk-chk, pretending to do its job. Such a simple job, to stay with him, keep track of the minutes and display them. Not much of a conversation, but a conversation all the same, and it couldn’t even manage that.

It was a black-faced Smiths military watch. It had been old when he’d got it from Looch seven years ago, a birthday present, and like everything with moving parts, it had a life span. It’ll outlive you, Looch had promised, but apparently Looch was wrong.

He took the watch off to adjust the time, giving its stem a clockwise winding, carefully, slowly, stopping when he met resistance and giving it a little back-off twist, as he’d been taught. Held it to his ear again, and it sounded fine now, so everything would be okay for a while. He sat on the bed with the watch in his hand and the TV light strobing over him, battening down the fear.