Читать книгу B.C. Blues Crime 4-Book Bundle - R.M. Greenaway - Страница 13

Turn on the Fear

LEITH PLANNED TO MAKE things happen by picking up Frank Law the following morning and placing him under arrest, searching his house again, making a racket. The arrest wouldn’t hold past twenty-four hours, but maybe, as Bosko suggested, those twenty-four hours would stir the waters. Being a pessimist at heart, Leith expected they’d just muddy them.

A meeting was held, all staff including auxiliaries and temps crammed into the case room again at the crack of dawn so they knew what was happening and how to deal with questions about the arrest from the public. Or abuse, or death threats. The warrants had been approved, and after the meeting Leith and Giroux and two constables in battle gear, Spacey and Ecton, drove out in separate vehicles to the Law house in the woods and made the arrest. Behind them came the search team.

Frank and Lenny Law were both at home, but Rob was absent. Frank was silent and grim but submitted to the arrest and went along without a fuss. The fuss, Leith fully expected, was yet to come.

* * *

The search warrant had gone through, and Dion had his first real look around the Law home. It wasn’t tidy, was well lived-in and messy, which kept him well occupied in his role of searching the living room. So far, nothing stood out within the mess, nothing the warrant gave him permission to seize. He studied the floorboards near the woodstove and crouched to pick up a tiny shred of paper that stood out from the other debris. The Law brothers fed paper trash into the woodstove, he guessed, and this had fallen out of the latest bin or bag.

The shred was about four inches long and not even a quarter-inch wide at one end. Good quality paper, not newsprint. Sharp-edged, not ragged. Kind of like a shredder scrap, except it narrowed to a point. It had plainly been slashed from a book, maybe using a straight-edge for cutting, but without mathematical precision.

He read the partial printed sentence. It is vitally important not to believe them, or they will suddenly

It sounded like some kind of instruction manual. Don’t believe who? he wondered. Suddenly what?

He showed it to the exhibit custodian, one of the latest members to join the expanding team, a Sergeant McIntyre from Terrace. McIntyre shook his head, not interested.

Dion stood holding the bit of paper, feeling homesick. As an investigator, he should have some say whether this was interesting or not. It was interesting because it was from a book, and this was a house without books, except for the few lined up on a shelf in Lenny Law’s bedroom. So what was the book, and who had cut it up? Had Lenny? Why? All valid questions, it seemed to him, that deserved at least some inquiry.

Anything not seized had to be left where it was, so he wrote the line into his notebook, dropped the scrap on the floor by the woodstove where he’d found it, and continued his search, looking for anything Corporal McIntyre considered worthy of a second glance.

* * *

The fuss Leith expected began soon after the arrest of Frank Law. Lenny had spread the word, and the word flew. Within half an hour, the detachment’s phone started ringing. Journalists were rerouted by reception, and all other calls were patched through to Giroux’s desk. Bosko happened to pick up the first of the calls, since Giroux had stepped out for a minute. She returned as the call ended, and Bosko picked up a Danish to go with his coffee before relaying the message, in what sounded like an accurate paraphrase: “Rob Law’s coming down here to get his brother out, if it means killing us all.”

Bosko didn’t seem alarmed, and neither did Giroux, who muttered, “Rob’s not exactly the brains in the family.”

Was nobody but Leith thinking about bulletproof vests and pepper spray, or maybe just a good hiding spot? He said, “Kill us all? All of us? Did he mean it?”

Bosko shook his head and spoke around a mouth full of pastry. “No. But he’s upset. He’s got a bit of a drive ahead of him. He’ll calm down by the time he reaches us.”

Leith took the next two calls. Stella Marshall asked him what was going on. She got no satisfactory answer and ended up the call saying they had the wrong guy, that it was typical police scapegoating, and that she knew a lawyer from the city who’d make sure the Hazelton detachment was sued so hard, it would spend the rest of its life picking up pop cans for a living.

Mercy Blackwood phoned, not to rant but to reason. She asked what was happening and insisted Frank was innocent and didn’t belong in jail. She knew Frank wouldn’t hurt a soul. Leith promised her that Frank was speaking to a lawyer right now, and there would be no abuse of process.

Rob Law appeared within the hour, but he didn’t kill anybody or even overturn a desk. He spoke with Bosko for fifteen minutes or so in the privacy of Giroux’s office and then left quietly enough.

An anonymous tip came in, too, in the form of a note stuck to the windshield of one of the cruisers parked along the curb. The note said:

We seen Lenny Law Saturday night on Two Mile Rode

Leith found Two Mile Road on the map and followed it along with his eyes from start to end, thinking Lenny Law couldn’t have been there on Saturday night, because he was loitering about the malls of Prince George with his pal Tex.

Tracking down the writer of the note would be tough. He or she would be one of the hundreds of residents of the Hazeltons who had been canvassed in the first days of the search and asked about Lenny, amongst other things. Now, with the heat coming down, the writer of the note was afraid of being implicated in a lie, and since that person hadn’t been alone when they’d supposedly seen Lenny, as the note said “we,” the writer of the note feared their companion would talk first.

The simple but complicated logic scrolled through Leith’s mind as he looked at the wet and grubby little note, and it left him irritated. The writer was mistaken, or Lenny was lying about where he was on Saturday. Either way he would have to be brought in, along with Tex, and questioned once more. Leith called Jayne Spacey and told her to hunt him down.

There was more drama in the late afternoon when Scott Rourke made a personal appearance, the kind that sent papers flying, and had to be escorted out by Constables Thackray and Ecton. Thackray and Ecton returned, dusting their hands and laughing, and Spacey came along soon after, accompanied by a truculent Lenny Law.

Leith sat down with the kid in the interview room. The best approach was direct, he decided, and he laid the note on the table, read it aloud, looked Lenny in the eyes, and said, “So what about it?”

Lenny Law’s approach was even more direct. Arms crossed, he looked Leith in the eyes, and said, “Yeah, so?”

“Yeah, so why’d you tell us you were in Prince George?”

“I was supposed to be is why. Frank thought I was there.”

“You’re going to have to explain yourself. I’m confused.”

Lenny sighed. “I get up Saturday, and Frank’s decided I should go to George with Tex. I said no, I don’t want to go. He said yes, you damn well go, and in fact he’d already called Tex, and Tex was on his way over. He gave me a bunch of spending money and practically pushed me out the door. I know why he wanted me out of there, too, because the rehearsals were shit, and they didn’t want me sitting around hearing them doing fuck-all for Ms. Blackworm.”

Leith opened his mouth and shut it. The boy was glowing with emotion, angry as a bee, but he was on a roll, and it was best to just let him spew.

“You want to know why the rehearsals were shit?” the boy went on. “Because of her, Ms. Blackworm, coming around, telling them to be like this, be like that, Kiera should go on the treadmill, Frank should cap his teeth, add some theatre to their act, get professional, making them think they’re something they’re not. She wants them to use other people’s songs, and far as I know, that’s called intellectual theft, right?”

Leith thought it wise to agree and nodded his encouragement.

Lenny finished on a lamer note. “They’re all on edge, ever since she came along with her big ideas. That’s why I didn’t go to George.”

“I don’t get the connection,” Leith said. “Sorry.”

Lenny steamed in silence for a moment and then said ominously, “Something was going to happen. I could feel it. I couldn’t just leave them here by themselves, could I?”

“Something as in what?”

“I don’t know.”

“Something between Frank and Kiera? Were they angry with each other?”

“No,” Lenny snapped. “Frank and Kiera are the most in-love people in the world. They’d never do anything to hurt each other, ever.”

Leith knew all too well how the most in-love people in the world could hurt each other. He said, “Where was Kiera when you left the house with Tex?”

“She was gone. Everyone was gone except Frank.”

“And you didn’t go to Prince George?”

“No. I got Tex to dump me just outside of town and walked back. He promised he’d cover for me, but that’s all. He didn’t do anything wrong, so don’t go harassing him.”

“You walked back home to Kispiox?”

Lenny smirked. “No way, man. Frank would be pissed if I showed up there after he’d sent me packing. I went to my parents’ place.”

“You stayed with your parents?” Leith asked, surprised. He’d read an interview with Roland and Clara Law, typed up by Constable Dion, which said in black and white — albeit Dion’s black and white — that they hadn’t seen any of their sons in years.

“I stayed in their old gazebo thing,” Lenny said. “Out back. I stash a bag there, a book or two, hang out sometimes, whenever I want to get away from Frank. He can be a real old lady.”

Leith briefly marvelled that there existed a teenaged boy who read books, and without a cattle prod. “And your parents don’t know you’re there?”

Lenny Law gave a mean laugh and asked if he could go now. He said he was hungry and tired, and Leith had no right to detain him.

Leith let him go and sat thinking. Lenny’s words hadn’t shed new light on the situation, exactly, just a different pall. The tension within the band was ramping up, if Lenny could be believed. Kids could be wildly inaccurate in their statements, but usually Leith could find a grain of truth in there worthy of follow-up.

The day ended and nothing further came in, not from Frank Law’s mouth or further anonymous tipsters or the community at large. Nothing but a higher stone wall, Leith thought, gloomily enjoying his metaphors, and the waters were indeed muddied. Still, Bosko seemed pleased. He had told Leith in an aside, “They sure do love Frank, don’t they?”

Across the squad room, the big man was now talking to Giroux about something less serious. Beer, it sounded like. Leith scowled and eavesdropped. Microbreweries, calories, and warm versus cold. Giroux maybe saw him scowling and called across the room to him, “So we’re going up to my place to confer about all this stuff further. Top brass only, but you’re invited too. Coming?”

* * *

As he pulled his jacket on, Dion asked Jayne Spacey out for a beer, thinking that after a pint or two maybe she’d edge toward forgiveness. But she was great at holding a grudge, it seemed, and told him that no, she’d love to except she’d stepped in a big pile of dog crap and was looking forward to spending the evening cleaning her boots. There was wit and sarcasm in that, but there was also true hatred. He’d noticed the other constables seemed to like him less too, even easygoing Thackray, and Pam the desk clerk. No smiles, no attempts at small talk. And maybe it was just himself, or maybe it was something Spacey had said about him, a half-truth of some kind. Or outright lie.

He signed out, drove to the IGA for a deli wrap, then returned to his car and followed his fold-up tourist map northeast out of town, looking for somewhere wild where he couldn’t possibly run into anybody he knew. Using the cruiser for recreation wasn’t permitted, but this wasn’t recreation any more than driving out to the Black Bear for dinner was, and they all did that. The map led through Kispiox, more or less where Scott Rourke lived, but splitting off onto a different gravel road. He landed on an outcrop of rock, where he left the car and walked down a steep trail criss-crossed with dirt bike tracks, down to where the map said a river would flow. And it did, broad and ice-cluttered, green and strong.

From studying maps and brochures, he knew this water had shed off the mountain ranges to the north, joining forces to become this, the Skeena. The river travelled through the land, past his boots, down around that S-bend, and on for another five hundred kilometres before releasing into the ocean at Prince Rupert.

He felt bloodless, not quite alive, and his eyes were watering in the wind. The cold day grew colder as the sun went down, leaving the world steel grey and thunder blue. He sat on a fallen log with a first-class view of the water coursing by on its endless journey. On the far shore those ragged black trees towered into the sky. There was a muted feel to the place, as if his ears were plugged, but he could hear the throaty roar of the river and the clack and thud of rocks in its depth, shifted by the current. The river had muscle, and resolve. Nothing would stop it getting to where it wanted to go.

He sighed and looked down, pushed back the cuff of his jacket, and looked at the face of his watch, knowing what he’d see. Not quite an hour ago he had adjusted its hands as he waited for his deli dinner to be wrapped and bagged. The watch told him forty-five minutes had passed. With sinking heart he checked it against his phone, and there was the living proof. The watch was off by seven minutes, and Scott Rourke had failed in keeping it alive, and so would the greatest surgeon in the world, and what good was a watch that couldn’t keep time?

The light was fading fast, and Dion was alone. He unstrapped the Smiths. Down by the edge of the water he coiled back his arm and released with a hoarse shout of rage. The watch arced out and down, into an open patch of water and disappeared.

He stood a moment longer and then grabbed up the deli bag and walked back through light forest and across the wild-grass fields and up the steep four-by-four trail to his car.

Having no watch, and not wanting to be always checking his phone for the time, he drove to the drug store in Old Hazelton, stepped into the store, and spun the watch rack for a while, choosing a black plastic Timex with LCD display and backlighting. Water-resistant up to two hundred metres, it said, and it had a one-year warranty.

The watch cost him $49.99, plus GST, a blowout special. He drew out his wallet and chanced to look around and meet the stare of the woman in line behind him. She was tall and solid and pale, bundled in a long, puffy parka and fluffy pink scarf. Her hair was long, almost white-blond, her arms loaded with a supersized pack of Charmin TP, and it took him a moment to place her as Stella Marshall, the fiddler in the band.

“Well, hey,” she said. “Just the man I wanted to talk to.”

He nodded hello, found his debit card, gave it to the teller. When he was handed the receipt, the fiddler said, “Don’t run off, now. I’ll just pay for this stuff and be with you in a sec.”

Darkness had fallen by now. He waited outside by his cruiser, removing the packaging of the Timex. He still hadn’t figured out how to set it to the correct time when Marshall approached. She threw the TP into the back seat of a beat-up red Sunbird and came over to him, saying, “Here, let me.”

She set the time in a few moves and gave it back to him. He thanked her and strapped it on. He tested the backlight button and pretended to be impressed. She said, “Now you owe me one. You can start by telling me what’s going on. Why are you charging him? What proof do you have? Tell me that.”

The instructions from the early morning briefing were simple. Frank was being arrested. If approached by the public with questions about the arrest, the questioner was to be directed to the officers in charge, Giroux or Bosko or Leith. That didn’t mean Dion couldn’t chat with people who had information to offer, and he probably should, and probably would have, if there had been any steel left in him. But there wasn’t. “I’m just a temp,” he said. “You’ll have to go down to the detachment and talk to somebody in charge. Or I can give you the number.”

Out in the open parking lot, the air was icy cold. Marshall’s long hair and pink scarf took turns lifting then plastering across her face. She elbowed the tangles away and pointed across the road to a fish and chip joint that looked closed, not least because of the flip-around sign that was flipped around to closed. “Let’s go sit down before we freeze to death. I have to tell you something, and it’s a matter of life and death.”

“Like I said —”

“And like I said, I have something to tell you, and you’re going to listen. That’s your job, right? To listen to the good citizens of the world?”

“I think they’re closed,” he said.

“They’re not closed, just stupid.”

They crossed the road and stepped into the little restaurant. The doorbell tinkled, but nobody emerged. A radio was playing on a pop station. Marshall turned the sign around to open then went behind the counter and poured two cups of coffee. She brought them around and ordered Dion to sit. Not there. There. He sat in the booth she’d chosen, and she sat across from him. She said, “They actually serve really good fish and chips, if you can catch ’em. Now, get out your notebook and write this down.”

He brought out his duty notebook, found the first blank page, and wrote down the date and time. Marshall said, “He didn’t do it. Write that down.”

He wrote down nothing. He said, “What d’you have to tell me, Ms. Marshall?”

She sipped her coffee in silence for a minute, watching him watching her. She spoke softly. “Please call me Stella. Say it. Stella. It’s not so hard.”

“I told you, and I mean it, I’m not the right person to be talking to.” He took the cellphone from his jacket’s breast pocket and showed it to her. “Here, I can put you in touch with the office right now, and you can arrange to talk to someone who can be more helpful.”

“I don’t want to talk to someone more helpful,” Stella Marshall said. “Giroux is a nasty little beastie, and those two goons she’s got running around asking questions, I don’t like them at all. I like you. You’re like this spectacular angel-being come out of the blue.”

“Well, thank you. But —”

“I’m not saying that to be nice. It’s just the truth. You’re very uneasy, I can tell. Like me. We’re akin that way. Well, I have no excuse, I was born antsy. But you? You have every right to be uneasy, when you come flapping down expecting sunlight and butterflies, and instead you drop in the mud. New wings, huh?”

Uneasy was a wild understatement. He tried again to end this interview that was going from bad to worse, but stopped and was silent, seeing something wrong; it showed in her pale bulgy eyes and the pulsing of the artery at her throat. Her stream of nonsense was some kind of shield. She was afraid.

She had maybe caught the shift in his demeanour, from shutting her out to listening in, and she seemed to relax, and he wondered if it was all a game with her, and she’d just scored a point. She closed her eyes, and her lashes were white. Not to look at her colourless lashes and not to be duped any further, he looked outside. Past his own reflection, he saw things scuttling and spinning down the street, bits of garbage and clouds of snow crystals racing toward the river.

When she finally spoke, she was no longer coy and bossy, but calm and direct. “Frank and Kiera split up a few months ago,” she said. “It wasn’t official, and they didn’t want anybody to know. But I knew. I also happen to know it was mutual, and it was amicable. There was no jealousy, no anger, no hostility whatsoever. I also happen to know that she was seeing somebody, secretly, because he was married. So they’d meet in different places.”

Like the Matax trailhead, he supposed. He got his pen ready. “What’s his name?”

“That I’m afraid I don’t know.”

“How do you know all the rest of it?”

“I’m inquisitive and have great hearing.”

“And Frank knew about it and was okay with it.”

“Yes. Like I say, they both wanted to move on.”

He saw in her eyes that she loved Frank Law. She had to, to be sitting here making up diversionary bullshit like this, cheapest trick in the book. Unbelievable. He paraphrased her information into his notebook and snapped it shut. “Okay. I’ll pass this on, and somebody will probably be contacting you for a full statement.”

“Oh my god,” she said, dully. He couldn’t interpret the remark, nor would he pursue it. He watched her heave a theatrical sigh and slump back, maybe disgusted with him, or maybe just depressed. “Yeah, okay,” she said. “Thanks for listening. Take care.”

He put money on the table and left, driving back to the Hazelton detachment. Night shift was on duty, two constables he had only met once or twice and whose names he had forgotten. Under the annoying buzz of the fluorescents, he sat at his computer, wrote out the brief report, and filed it. Then he went back to his accommodations across the highway at the Super 8. Passing the room he knew belonged to Sergeant Mike Bosko of the Serious Crimes Unit, North Vancouver, where he had come from himself and where he belonged, he paused and stood before the door, considering its surface. He pulled in air, raised his knuckles, gave a light rap.

Nothing happened. And had that door opened, what would he have said? He wasn’t even sure.

Back in his room, he turned the TV on for company and managed to get some sleep. Sleep was pocked with disturbing dreams, haunted as usual by Looch, who stood on the pavement below the Super 8. Dion looked down and saw the car parked curbside. The river ran beyond instead of the highway, black cottonwoods ranged along the far shore, dense as a wall. Looch wore a dark overcoat and was packing something in the car’s trunk, an awkward parcel like a side of beef bundled in tarpaulin. Looch was leaving town, and Dion was crushed. The wall of trees was a wall of stone looming high into the sky. A figure appeared on the sidewalk, approaching Looch from behind, and Dion tried to open the window to either shout a warning or jump out, but the window wouldn’t open. The figure was nearing and would soon be at Looch’s back, and Dion banged on the glass with both palms until the strain of his foiled efforts woke him.

He had shifted across the bed in a tangle of blankets. He sat and stared at his own hands, pale blue and flickering in the light of the TV. Just a nightmare, but the message in the dream remained, a sour fear in the pit of his stomach. All the things he’d done wrong, the mistakes he’d made, they weren’t buried deep enough. Like the figure on the sidewalk, they were slowly but surely catching up.