Читать книгу B.C. Blues Crime 4-Book Bundle - R.M. Greenaway - Страница 17

The Gates

THE SKIES WERE NO LONGER a weird, writhing pink but black velvet spangled with stars. He found McLeod Road, no problem, passed a ranch, and about five miles farther found a logging road jotting off his left, with a brown government sign warning about logging trucks. So far Evangeline had it all dead right.

The road started good and flat, and his high beams cut a white path before him as he sped along, exposing so many blurry kilometres of frozen gravel. Then it began to slant uphill, the grade increasing until the engine had to clear its throat and change gears.

The last of the ranch lands fell behind and the wilds closed in fast, and he became aware of his isolation, and almost worse than what he couldn’t see before him was what he could, caught in the periphery of his lights, the flanks of nightmare forests. Something loomed in the headlights bigger than a deer and flashed away as he jumped on the brakes and slid into a spin across gravel and ice.

He sat breathing hard till his heart slowed, straightened out the vehicle, and carried on.

The road branched, and he braked at the unmarked crossroads and swore. Evangeline hadn’t mentioned any branching. He left the car idling and went around to the back to dig out a reflective marker to leave for the team to know which branch he’d gambled on: the left.

From here the gravel steepened, deteriorated to ruts, and forced him to a crawl, and he knew he’d lost the race. It was time to find a good place to turn around, go back and wait at the crossroads for the backup that was bound to be just minutes behind him. Twenty minutes, he figured, if Spacey had jumped to it.

A fairly good place to turn around came up, but he passed it, thinking the next would be even better. Another chance didn’t seem to come up, and he kept climbing the narrow road, higher and higher, alternately accelerating and braking, swerving to avoid the potholes, suspension jouncing crazily. When the gravel levelled out and gleamed away ahead of him, a pale blue ribbon touched with ice, he made a deal with himself that he would travel up this stretch as far as it went, and soon as it got rutty again he would turn back.

A kilometre into the stretch his headlights glanced against something man-made, off the road to his left. He pulled over again, this time shutting off engine and lights so the night’s blackness invaded his lungs and made it hard to breathe.

Turning on the flashlight only made the blackness worse, so he flicked it off again. He backlit his wristwatch to show the time, calculated his backup ETA once more, tried his radio, got nothing but static, waited another full thirty seconds, then left the car, and with light on full blast headed toward the object downslope that had caught his headlights.

The object, as he’d thought, was a vehicle that had driven off the road across the dead grasses of a broad clearing, churning the snow and leaving twin tracks, and yes it was an old green Jeep. Frank’s wheels. He touched the hood and found it cool but not icy. All doors were locked. There was nothing of interest visible inside. The footprints, two sets, headed off into the woods toward an opening in the trees. If he could read anything in the tracks, they seemed unhurried. Two friends ambling along.

He called out Frank’s name, and Rourke’s, and listened. This was where he would post himself, then, and wait for backup. Again he backlit his watch, and it dawned on him that there was something wrong with that ETA. He tried his cellphone again and found again no reception. That was what mountains did, threw walls up between towers, killed the signals.

And now he felt so tiny and alone, here in the vastness of the night. Grasses rustled, branches swished, wood creaked, but nothing in all those sounds warned him of company. The two friends were long gone. He could stand here and freeze, or he could return to the car and head back down the mountain, or he could follow those tracks. The risk, as he saw it, was moderate. Rourke didn’t have a gun, at least not registered, and he, Dion, did.

The tracks didn’t lead far. The trees formed a thick canopy that kept snow off the trail, and there were no signs of passage, leaving only the path itself as a guide. The path was decent at times and at times became nothing, leaving him to cross boulders along the brink of what looked like a bottomless pit in his torch beam. When he’d gotten past the big rocks, the hillside dipped, and he could just make out the trail angling across its face. No footprints still, and he wondered again if he was going the wrong way. His feet propelled him downward in jerking strides through scrub and loose shale, until his passage caused a small avalanche and he lost his footing and went down in a slither, onto knees, then butt, then back, trying to dig in his heels as brakes but his weight carrying him down till some jagged obstruction brought him to an abrupt stop. Not just abrupt, but painful, and whatever had blocked his fall was sharp against his body. Worse, his flashlight had flown from his chilled grip. He lay still, eyes squeezed shut, listening to rocks clattering downhill.

The silence resettled, except for his own gasps. The pain drove up through his torso, flaring at his right side, and he eased upright and explored the area by touch. Something, a ragged branch stub probably, had ripped through his patrol jacket and gouged him. His hand came away wet.

For a minute he stayed where he was, in case the wound was fatal. According to plan, he tried to make his last moments not so lonely. Shivering, eyes closed, he imagined Kate leaning over, kissing him gently on the mouth. He waited a moment longer, still shivering. He opened his eyes and looked around. Down the slope a ways and stuck under a bush was a patch of light. He moved sideways and downward until he had the flashlight in hand again. He crawled back up to the path, got to his feet, used the light to check his wound. Not fatal, he decided. Hardly worth a bandage. Just an added aggravation in a difficult situation.

The path took him downward some distance farther and ended at a plateau of tall grasses poking up through the rain-tattered snow, and the sky opened before him into a dome, not quite black but a solemn midnight blue, and across the length of a football field, maybe, was the brink. He couldn’t see it but could feel it, a hollowness, a near silent roar that told of empty space. This, he was sure, was the edge of the vista that had made Evangeline dizzy.

And there were voices, far away but distinct. They came from the brink, he believed, carried to him on the wind. He cast his light downward then flicked it off, and as he walked forward and as his eyes adjusted, a structure became visible, a hundred metres distant now, rough timbers raised to create a small silhouette against the sky. The hubcapped arch, the Gateway to Heaven. The voices came from there, and toward them he walked. He had found Frank Law, and since backup had screwed up, it was up to him to bring the guy back to town. Which he would do, no problem. He wasn’t dead yet.

* * *

At half past ten Constable Spacey phoned with news for Leith. She was calling from the Black Bear Lodge, she said. She was talking to an Evangeline Doyle, the name ringing a bell faintly in Leith’s mind. “I’ve notified Giroux and central dispatch,” she said. “Dion called in an hour ago with some info, but he was in some kind of rush and didn’t give me much to go on, so I wasted a hell of a lot of time trying to figure out what he was after. He mentioned Scott Rourke’s girlfriend, Evangeline Doyle, so I tracked her down. She’s here with me now at the Lodge, and she’s saying Frank’s gone up the Kispiox Range with Rourke, and that he might be in danger. Their destination is a bit convoluted, but I’ve got it pinpointed on a forestry map. I think it’s called the East Band logging road. We’ve got to proceed with caution, sir. I think Dion’s gone up ahead to see if he can find anything, but like I said, he wasn’t too clear on the phone, and we only spoke briefly. I told him not to approach the subjects, to wait for backup. I suggest you get reinforcements together and we meet at the Black Bear parking lot. It’s the closest landmark to the East Band I can think of to muster.”

It was a lot to take in. Leith caught the gist, checked his watch and said, “All right, thanks. We’ll be there soon as possible. Stay in touch.”

* * *

There was no way he could walk in silence here, in the receding snow and the brittle grasses, but it didn’t matter. The wind created a din across the bare patches of meadowland, and even if he wanted to call out and warn them of his presence, which was maybe the smarter move, he couldn’t. Not yet. Only when he’d made it to a stone’s throw from the two men he could make out the odd word fluttering back, and he could delineate against the blue-black their vague shapes bulked out by winter coats, both huddling, both wearing caps. He stopped to observe them, to get a handle on what was happening here. One man was seated on a bench between the hubcapped posts, his back to Dion, the other just barely recognizable as Scott Rourke. Rourke stood before the seated man and occasionally paced.

A small object passed between the men from time to time. A flask, Dion supposed. There was no snarl of anger in the voices, and maybe he’d been all wrong about Frank being in danger. As the breeze died down, he could make out broken conversation, Frank’s voice, saying, “Too late for that. Lenny knows. They all know. Must have the bloodhounds out by now.”

Rourke said something, broken by distance but patched together in Dion’s mind to “We can work it out. I know the land. We got a whole network of friends. Have faith.”

Frank had a strong voice, louder than Rourke’s and twice as rude, and it carried well. “Yeah, like that dick pal of yours, Morris,” he said. “What a warrior, long as there’s beer in his belly and no cops in sight. Cops knock on the door, and suddenly his casa is no longer our casa. Anyway, we sure as shit can’t stay here. I’m freezing my balls off, and I tell you, jail’s starting to look kinda nice.”

Rourke’s voice spiked in anger. “Jail is never nice. It’s hell. Haven’t you heard a word I’ve said? It’s hell on earth, and it’ll kill you.”

“Yeah, well, you do the crime —”

Rourke’s interruption was harsh but too fragmented to hear. Then came silence. Then the rushing wind again, and the grasses fretted and flailed. Sheltered by the dark, Dion had a feeling that if he spoke now, the situation, peaceful as it seemed, would whip out of control, would possibly snap. He took a sideways stance, sighted down his pistol, and lowered it again. No chance. The two men had huddled closer together and become a solid blot. He moved forward a few paces with a vague plan: get close enough, beam his light, aim, and shout a warning. Get them both away from the cliff. It was the cliff that made him nervous. That and the heavy object Rourke was now holding loose in one hand, which wasn’t a wine bottle, as he’d first believed. From the shape of it, and the relationship between hand and object, he believed it was a weapon. Gun, large hunting knife, or mallet. But probably gun.

Rourke made a turning motion and Dion dropped to his haunches. He heard Rourke say something about love. “You know what, Frank? It’s all about love. All about love, little brother.”

Frank said something that was whipped away by the wind, and Rourke spoke louder, making his point with passion. “I love all you guys. You’re family to me. Always remember that.”

It was the booze talking. Rourke had gotten himself tanked for courage, and it was strumming on his emotions, which was bad news, with drop-away cliffs and guns in the mix. And if it wasn’t Dion’s imagination, there was a note of farewell in those words.

Did Frank hear it too?

By now, Dion hoped that backup had gotten lost and would stay lost, because the situation had become fragile before his eyes. A swarm of officers now would just light the fuse. Rourke was on his feet again, pacing, and Frank stood too, and instead of wandering into a safer zone, as Dion hoped, he moved closer to the madman, and there they stayed on the brink.

Rourke wouldn’t push his friend over, Dion believed. That would be too cruel. He’d just take aim, when Frank wasn’t looking, and splatter his brains to oblivion. And the moment was now, Frank taking in the view, Rourke’s gun arm lifted, rigid at the elbow, pointed at the back of that man’s skull, and it was like watching porcelain fall. Dion levelled both arms, torch and gun, and moved, three strides forward with a bellow that seemed to come from elsewhere, not himself: “Scottie, stop!” And the dynamics changed again, and it was a terrible lining up of bodies, both men frozen in his flashlight beam, Frank by the cliff, turned in surprise, partially cut off from view by Rourke at centre stage, gaping, white-faced, Dion lunging forward over rough terrain toward a handgun now aimed straight at his face.

He retreated a step and stopped. He raised both hands, and the light beam went up too, and all went dark, leaving Rourke a cardboard cut-out against the sky.

“Dion?” Rourke shouted. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

Dion shouted back, not at Rourke but Frank. “Move it, now. He’s got a gun. Get away from the cliff.”

As seemed to happen in Dion’s world these days, things went from bad to worse. With bewildering speed, Rourke turned and seized the younger man by the scruff of the neck, it looked like, but it was probably his coat, and yanked him toward him into a chokehold. Just like in the snapshot, but without the sunshine or smiles. “Oh, man,” Rourke said now, more a whine than a roar. “You don’t know what you’ve done here. He was going to go out painless. He wasn’t going to know what hit him, you dumb shit. Look what you done.”

Dion was doing just that, looking at what he’d done, and he felt that familiar slide of ice through his veins. He’d put Frank Law in a noose, gun muzzle against his temple, inches from a deadly fall. He watched Frank fight the grip, saw Rourke totter a bit, find his footing and hold fast, pure sinew, a wannabe Mohawk, a man not afraid of heights.

“I don’t understand,” Dion called out. He had knitted the plan together on the long drive up, custom designed for Scott Rourke, who was the home-grown religious type, rabid, reflexive, fiercely protective. Unless he had it all wrong, and having it wrong was a big possibility too, Rourke would rather see Frank dead than raped and ravaged in jail for the next twenty years. He called out, “He’s not going to jail, Scott. You got it wrong. He didn’t kill Kiera. We got a new lead on a guy, and it’s not Frank, and it’s not Rob either. It’s one of Rob’s employees. We have the guy locked up tight, man.”

The air cracked at his left, and he dropped to a crouch and froze. The bullet had whistled past his ear, he could swear it was Rourke’s way of saying “Don’t bullshit me.” He hitched his flashlight to his belt and stayed crouched. Stretch this out, he told himself. Things had shifted again, and yes, backup would be good now. They might not save the day, but they would resolve matters fast enough.

He could hear Rourke saying sorry to Frank, and he thought he heard a click, and he definitely heard Frank’s yell of fear, almost a shriek, and it got him up out of his crouch to give it one last try, no longer a hostage negotiator talking but a pal to the rescue. “C’mon, Scott. We can sort this out. It’s not the end of the world. You need help, and I can help you get it. And by the way, Frank wants to live as much as you and I. Right?”

“Frank doesn’t know what he wants,” Rourke shouted. “That’s the problem, isn’t it?”

Dion breathed hard. His options were running low, and a last-ditch plan had sprung to mind, and it was a shitty one. Worse, it was comical. But it was all he had, his last grenade. He raised his voice once more, trying for an emphasis he was not trained for. “Don’t be an idiot, Scottie. You want to protect him? Well, guess what. I care too, and a lot more than you do.”

If nothing else, Rourke would lose his train of thought, and that would buy some time. Rourke’s response was angry but puzzled. “Hey? What d’you mean?”

“I mean I don’t want him going to jail, and I have my reasons that are none of your business. And I’m going to keep him out of jail if it kills me, and you’re going to help me by taking the rap. Right? I also have the means, and all you gotta do is hear me out.”

He had Rourke’s interest. The man’s face lifted, tuned in, leery but wanting to hear more. “Don’t know what the hell you’re talking about here, Dion. Explain yourself, and make it fast.”

Frank made a gagging noise, his boots scrabbling against the rocks and grit and grasses on the lip of a chasm. Dion could hear pebbles cascading, falling away into the abyss. He called out, “I’m not saying anything till you swear you’ll take the rap for him. Would you do that? You love him enough to trade your soul for his?”

“’Course I would. Any day.”

This was better than Dion expected. No bullets this time, but an actual dialogue. “Great, then I can make him get away with it. I can plant evidence. He’ll get six months for being accessory after the fact, probably on probation. He can do that easy. But you’ll go down for the murder itself. I’ll see to it.”

Rourke soaked up the information and then was bellowing again. “Why? Why would you do that? I don’t get you. You’re playing with my head here.”

“I said I have my reasons,” Dion bellowed back. “Take it or leave it.”

Rourke seemed to lose patience and yanked Frank again, pulling him against him like a rag doll, cocking the gun against his skull, and again Frank cried out. Dion cried out too, the last resort, the punchline that would make him the laughingstock of the police community for years down the road. “I love him more than you ever will,” he yelped. And cleared his throat and gave another hoarse shout. “You stupid bastard, that’s why.”

There. Ha ha ha, he had the asshole’s undivided attention now. The muzzle lowered, and Rourke was staring his way. Dion spoke more calmly now, like a man who’d gotten a load off his chest, like there was nothing left but gentle persuasion. “I saw it in your eyes, Frank. You felt it too, didn’t you? That night at the bar.”

There was no night in the bar, no love at first sight. In fact, he hadn’t seen the guitar man up close and in person until this very night. Frank made a noise, more a rodeo calf in distress than a man in love, but Rourke was diverted, still trying to get a handle on what he was hearing. “You? You have a thing for Frankie?”

“It’s more than a thing,” Dion said bitterly. “He’s what gets me through my day. And I don’t care if you don’t feel the same for me, Frank. It doesn’t change what I’m trying to do here. I’m going to get you off the hook, promise.” He searched his mind for a handy catchphrase, something gay-sounding, but drew a blank. He watched Frank struggle.

Rourke let loose a laugh. “Holy Jesus, and I thought you were into girls.”

“You can’t help what you’re into. Let him go, and we’ll talk it out, okay? We’re all freezing to death, and we better get our story straight before we go back down that mountain.”

“I can tell you one thing, Frankie’s straight as an arrow,” Rourke said. “Right, Frank?”

Frank snorted and kicked and tried to twist out of the older man’s grip, but he was losing steam, starting to sag.

Dion was starting to sag too. Ridiculously, he still held gun in one hand, flashlight in the other, neither aimed anywhere meaningful. He looked at his own boots, inhaling the mountain air, trying to stay on track. It was the stress, the humiliation, the wound in his side. The grass and mucky snow beneath had a rotten earthy smell, and now that they’d all done shouting, there was quiet, and beyond that a muted conversation, millions of branches sawing together whenever the wind gathered force. And there was something else, too. Mountains were great auditoriums in the dead of night, and sound carried. He heard a distant grumble and knew what it was. Engines. Three or four gutsy V8s working upward at speed.

The timing was incredibly bad, too late and too soon. He raised his voice, which was worse than hoarse by now, breaking up like bad reception. “If you don’t let him go, he’s going to the pen, and he’s going to end up with a scar like yours, but worse. Let him go. Let me save him. Only I can save him. I have an ironclad story for you to tell the cops, and long as you get it straight, this is going to work. But we have to get on it now.”

The now was delivered in pure exhaustion and tired rage, designed to startle Rourke into action. Instead, Rourke become a dark, baffled silhouette, frozen in indecision. Maybe he was having second thoughts about how much he loved Frank Law, if he was worth going to prison for. Maybe he just wasn’t buying the lie, or maybe he was going back to the simpler Plan A, shoot the loved one to save him from grief.

Dion held out his arms. “Send him over here. You can do the time a lot better than he can. Nobody’s going to mess with you, that’s for sure.”

“I think you’re full of shit,” Rourke said. “It’s a trick, and a pretty sleazy one too.”

One minute, two minutes, and they’d be coming down the ravine, and in a panic Rourke’s trigger finger would twitch, and blood would spray all over the hubcapped gates of heaven. Frank’s blood. Frankly, Dion wasn’t sure he cared any longer, or if so, why. Who was he trying to impress, now that he had nobody to impress? Not the RCMP, not Looch in his grave, not Nadia from rehab, and not the old Indian Willy who thought they shared some kind of kinship but was dead wrong. He had nobody to impress, and what did it matter if Frank got a bullet in his head? In the spirit of resignation he told Rourke, “I’m coming forward so we can talk without yelling. Don’t you fucking shoot me.”

“I won’t shoot you,” Rourke said. “Just keep your hands up.”

Gun holstered, flashlight slung in its loop, Dion linked chilled hands behind his head and stepped forward, coming close enough that Rourke’s face became more than puddles of shadow. “I’m giving you my word, Scottie. All I want is for him to be free.”

Rourke studied him with wonder, and with revulsion, and then something else creased his brow, some kind of understanding. “I feel for you, man,” he said. “Being like that. Must be horrible.”

“It is horrible.” Dion reached out and touched Frank Law on the arm, claiming possession. Rourke released his chokehold, and Frank crashed to his knees. Dion helped him up and pulled him away from the madman, behind him to safety, and now that the danger was more or less passed, it crossed his mind almost irresistibly to whip out his own gun and put one through Rourke’s face, if nothing else just to get back at him for all this crap he’d put him through tonight. Flying backward, Rourke would sail over the cliff. Soar free like the eagle he always wanted to be. And that would be that.

He said instead, “First off, you’re going to have to break your alibi for the day Kiera died.”

“I can do that,” Rourke said.

“And I’m going to need your DNA.”

“You’re not getting my DNA how you’re thinking, y’queer,” Rourke said, but just joking.

“Spit into a baggie, that’s all you have to do,” Dion said. “Could you do me a favour and put that gun away? Makes me nervous.”

“No chance,” Rourke said. “You think I’m stupid?”

“I know you’re stupid,” Dion spat out, angrily, not wisely.

The engines were definitely there now, somewhere above, not loud but distinct. Rourke heard it too. “Cops,” he said in a furious rasp, and his gun was up again, pointing at Dion. “You lying fucking cheating piece of shit.”

“Wasn’t me,” Dion told him, too cold to care about the gun in his face, which he had come to realize wasn’t going to discharge anyway. He just knew it. Probably wouldn’t have discharged into Frank’s skull either, and what he should have done, instead of charging like a fool to the rescue, was wait at the crossroads as he was supposed to, and these two fucking hillbillies would have finished their Scotch and returned down the mountainside, where they would have been arrested without incident. But he hadn’t waited at the crossroads, and here he was in the middle of this big ugly mess he’d made, miles too late to go back, and so much explaining to do that it almost made his knees buckle. “They were going to track you down one way or another,” he said. “Just be cool. They’re going to arrest Frank, but they have nothing on him. I know the file. All they have is what Lenny’s saying, but Lenny doesn’t know anything, really, and he’ll change his tune. So until Frank confesses, they have nothing, and long as he sticks to denial he’s home free.” He pulled something from his pocket, a granola bar wrapper he’d forgotten to dispose of, and held it out. “Spit into that.”

Rourke did as he was told, and Dion pocketed the evidence that was supposed to dupe the entire North District Major Crimes Unit into a wrongful conviction. Rourke nodded at Frank, who was crouched down, massaging his neck, not returning the gaze. “Hear that, Frank? Don’t stop denying, and you’re home free, kiddo.”

“Fucking maniac,” Frank whispered, like his vocal cords were too sore to blare it out.

With no standing ovation for his grand performance, with nothing left to say, Dion puffed out a sigh and looked at the sky, and Rourke got the last word in, waving his gun. “One thing you better know, Constable Dion. You betray me, and I’ll kill you. That I promise. I’ll track you down and I’ll kill you, and it’ll be slow, and it will hurt.”

Dion nodded. The engines had been purring into position up on the ridge, and now they were cut, and there came instead the telltale silence of a stealthy descent, peppered with discreet noises, the crunch of snow, the snap of ground cover and rustling of shrubs. He opened his eyes from a waking doze and said to Rourke, “Better throw your gun down, ’less you want to end it right here.”

Rourke hesitated, maybe picturing that glorious showdown of his dreams, but his madness only took him so far into that imagined glory, and bottom line was he wanted to stay here, as most people did, eking it out until the last straw broke. Rourke leaned over and laid the gun in the grass. His hands were up as the team was still creeping forward. To speed things up, Dion might have shouted out to them, told them all was well, but he didn’t. He was starting to flatline.

They materialized from the dark and took command of the situation, and he explained to David Leith in his SWAT-like gear that he’d put Scott Rourke under arrest for the murder of Kiera Rilkoff. Leith asked him about shots fired, but the question was not quite connecting. Dion knew only that he was cold, and told Leith so. Leith told him to hand over his firearm, and Dion did so. There was a party-like chaos now on the mountainside around him, lot of hubbub, Rourke being arrested, shouting something about Frank, Frank being arrested, shouting something about Rourke, and it was almost funny, until some kind of animal went screaming over Dion’s head, a giant bat that was really just a piece of the sky flying off its axis. He raised an arm to fend it off, and when it was gone, so was the crowd, or most of it. A man’s voice woke him from some distance, asking if he was coming or what?

He followed Leith up a difficult path, but not nearly so difficult as the one he’d taken earlier, and like everything else, he’d messed up his pathfinding and come the long way round. His feet took him into a clearing where the vehicles were parked. Engines were starting up, SUVs pushing off. He wasn’t sure where Rourke had gone but knew somebody here must have the asshole under control. The ache in his side was now throbbing like a disco, and matching colours flashed behind his eyelids, red and blue and green. Leith asked him about keys, and he found them in his jacket pocket and handed them over. He was to ride with Leith back to the detachment, where he would give his statement. He wouldn’t have to drive, and that was good news. He dropped into the passenger seat but found it wasn’t the blessed relief he’d been hoping for. Folding himself into a seated position, the pain went from throbbing disco to mangling knife blades, and he felt the blood drain from his face.

He tried to keep his eyes open. The car woke, lurched, and was on its way. Leith spoke, but in a drone of foreign words. The car began its downhill journey, and with every jolt Dion felt warm liquid spurting from his midriff. He tried to pack the open wound by clamping his arm over it, but knew he’d been wrong, and it wasn’t a minor scrape but a fatal split, and his guts were coming out. He was becoming a corpse even as he sat breathing the comforting warm automobile air and listening to Leith’s intermittent drone.

This was what he wanted, to die in the line of duty, but he was desperately afraid. He was ice-cold and either very still or shaking hard, he couldn’t say, even as he tried to look at his own hand. How would it all turn out without him? He should have written to Kate. Should have said sorry to Looch’s widow. He should have been nicer, should have tried harder. Worst of all, maybe he’d been wrong about everything, and he’d been fighting his own shadow. Now that he was here at the end of the line, it was unbearably sad. He hoped he wasn’t crying. The timing was wrong, that’s all. Say something smart to Leith, he told himself. Something nice. He tried to speak, but nothing came out. He tried to raise an arm to wipe across his eyes, but lost the strength. The disco lights flared and went out.

* * *

Once they were on their way down the mountain, Leith launched into his lecture, not sure why he bothered. “She says she told you to wait for backup. You know what backup means? You want me to spell it out for you?”

Silence.

“Anyway, you’re going to have to get it together. Rourke’s gun’s been fired, and I have to know who fired it and where the bullet went. How are you doing?”

Dion looked at him briefly, blankly, and didn’t respond.

Feels stupid, Leith thought. And so he should. Ballsy, going after Rourke on his own, and more than a little bewildering. But ultimately just stupid.

Leaving the mountain behind him, upping the speed on straight flat rubble now, Leith glanced sideways and noted by the console lights that his passenger was leaning heavily back now, staring a bit too serenely at the windshield, that he was breathing shallow, that his arm was pressed across his torso in a peculiar manner. On a second glance he saw that the pale grey lining of Dion’s patrol jacket, partially flipped back and visible, was black with a migrating wetness, and with a start he realized where that bullet had gone, and why he wasn’t getting any answers.

“You’ve been shot,” he said, hitting the strobes and siren toggles. “Hang on. I’ll get you to emerg.”

Ten minutes later, he pulled into the ambulance-only bay at the Wrinch Memorial, and a pre-notified team rushed out with a gurney, portable oxygen, and an arsenal of blood-staunching supplies. Dion was out cold now, unresponsive. He was wrangled from the car by two large medics, laid on a gurney and wheeled into the hospital with measured speed.

“Why didn’t he say something?” Leith asked the nurse as he followed. “Why didn’t he just bloody mention, oh, by the way, Dave, I’ve been shot?”

The nurse didn’t know why, so he asked, more to the point, “Is he going to live?”

She couldn’t answer that either. But things were crazy enough tonight, and Leith was needed elsewhere. He left a card at the nursing station with a request that they call the office as soon as they had news on the constable’s condition, then rushed back to his car to head back to where the action was unfolding, anxious not to miss a beat.

* * *

There was to be no action for the rest of the night, as it turned out, because nobody wanted to talk, on either side of the thin blue line. So Scott Rourke and Frank Law were thawed out, fed, and given the usual one-size-fits-all coveralls and scratchy blankets for their night in the New Hazelton holding cells, which was full house by now. Leith went to his room at the Super 8 for a few hours’ sleep, and the few hours went by too fast; his alarm went off at six thirty, and he was up and at it again.

There was a lot to sort out today, and as he ate breakfast in the motel’s diner he tried to compartmentalize the problems in his mind. First problem, he now had three confessors to the killing of Kiera Rilkoff. Ironic, as he’ d mentioned to Giroux last night, that three low-life bastards all wanted to claim responsibility for taking the life of one kind and talented young woman with a golden future. And they all claimed she was dear to them.

Giroux said it was plain that all three men knew what had happened to some extent or another, and each was trying to protect the others, and sooner or later the truth would emerge, whether they liked it or not. Just gotta keep hitting them till something breaks.

“Nothing like good ol’ grassroots police tactics,” Leith had told her, and added his own grassroots opinion that he hadn’t seen such a schmozzle of false confessions in his life, and if he had his way they’d all do maximum time.

But in the end only one would face the most serious charge, and that man, at least, would get the royal treatment, twenty-five years eating over-boiled peas for dinner, staring at cement, and having a good long ponder on where he’d gone wrong.

His second current problem, taken as a thing in itself, was yesterday’s incident on the East Band lookout, which had whipped itself up out of nowhere like a prairie twister, ending in two arrests and one officer down. How had Dion got himself up there alone? Wasn’t he supposed to be grid-searching the new subdivision by the 7-Eleven? How was a wallflower like him always getting in the middle of the polka?

No, he revised. Not a wallflower. A thistle.

The third problem, taken as another thing in itself, was the timing of Jayne Spacey’s call to him last night — ten thirty, as he’d logged it — mustering backup to charge up the East Band. He had nothing but a suspicion and a quick glance at the roster to go on, but something just didn’t jive there, and would need looking into.

But first things first. It was seven thirty, bright and early, a great time to talk to three killers. He decided to start with his least favourite person in the world, Scottie Rourke. Rourke had twice declined the offer of counsel, but Leith wouldn’t go forward with this until the prisoner had spoken to somebody, so it had happened. Rourke had been duly warned to shut the hell up and happily was apparently going to ignore that advice and spill all.

Leith popped a caffeine pill and went to the interrogation room, where he found Rourke wound up, twitchy, fierce-eyed. The two men sat face to face, and Rourke agreed he’d spoken to counsel and knew his rights. Leith gave him free rein to speak, which worked well with madmen, and Rourke told of encountering Kiera on the Saturday of her disappearance. She hadn’t driven by but stopped to say hello. He’d made a grab for her, all in fun, and she’d slapped him, and he’d seen red, and next thing you know he had his hands around her neck.

“Where’s her body?” Leith said.

“I buried her where you’ll never find her,” Rourke said.

Leith wondered if it was the same place Rob Law had buried her, where they’d never find her too. He wondered where Frank Law would claim to have buried her next. He wondered if the Rilkoff family would ever get their murdered daughter back. He said, “Without her body, I’m finding it hard to believe you actually killed her, Scott. And I’ve got a long day ahead of me, so —”

“You got piles of evidence against me,” Rourke said. “You don’t need her body. I want her to stay where I left her, out of respect for her, believe it or not. ’Cause I buried her right. She wasn’t dumped like garbage. You can tell her folks that.”

Oh, they will be immeasurably comforted, Leith almost said. Instead he asked, “And what evidence is that, that we have piled against you?” Already his pen was beating a fast tattoo on the desktop. He stopped it by crossing his arms and stopped his foot tapping by stretching out his legs and crossing the ankles.

“I choose to withhold that for now,” Rourke said. “That’s your job, to find it, I’d say.”

“All right. So why are you telling me this?”

“Because it’s fantastic. It’s a comedy of errors. Rob and Frank each think the other did it, so they’re trying to save each other’s necks, which is insane because neither one should be going through this hell, when I’m the one who did it. Me.” Rourke thumped himself on the chest. “That’s why I’m telling you this. I have that much decency left in me to admit what I done, if it means saving those two bozos from themselves.”

“Why did you and Frank go up to the lookout last night?”

“To talk.”

“Your good friend Morris Fernholdt says you came by yesterday evening, you and Frank, and wanted to hide out there for a few days. He sent you packing. Why would Frank need to hide out if he hadn’t done anything wrong?”

“Frank was just trying to help me out. He’s a good man. Loyal.”

“Sure. That’s a nice .22 you got, by the way. Diamond­back. Kind of rare specimen, isn’t it?”

“They’re still common as Ford F-150s, actually.”

“Maybe. But far and few between up here in the sticks. How’d you come upon it?”

“Friend of a friend. An estate acquisition. Fifteen years ago, at least.”

“Interesting. We’ll have to do some tracking, find out when it went off the radar.”

“I got hold of it before the radar was invented, sir, and before I got my firearms ban, by the way. It was an oversight. I guess I just stashed it away and forgot about it. Just doing some spring cleaning the other day and came upon it.”

“And took it with you to talk with Frank on the lookout?”

“That was for cougars.”

“You shot a cop, Mr. Rourke.”

“Huh?”

“And since you’re sitting here readily confessing to one homicide, is there anything else you should get off your chest? We got the gun, we’ll get the riflings. We’ll rummage the archives, and any place that gun shows up, every little gas station holdup, we’ll have to assume you were there too. So save yourself the trouble of a bunch of long boring interrogations and give me the list now.”

Rourke was looking appalled, and like all his emotions, it came across with exquisite exaggeration, Daffy Duck accused of murder. “What d’you mean, I shot a cop? I never shot a cop.”

Leith’s arms and ankles uncrossed themselves, and he sat forward. “Something wrong with your short-term memory? You shot him last night, right in the gut. He bled all over my car, and he’s dying in the hospital as we speak. And you know what? Killing a cop is even worse than your regular civilian homicide.”

Rourke jerked back in his chair. “You talking about Constable Dion here? I never shot him. Never.”

Leith saw outrage, and it puzzled him. He didn’t want to sound puzzled, so he said savagely, “Isn’t that weird, because Frank’s telling us the exact opposite.” This was an on-the-spot invention, because he hadn’t talked to Frank Law yet, but he’d never felt bad about lying to catch a shithead. He raised his voice as Rourke clambered to his feet in indignation and barked, “Sit the hell down.”

“I shot over his head,” Rourke said, back in his chair, still appalled and somehow hurt. “I never aimed anywhere near the jerk. I wouldn’t do that.”

There followed a dead spot in the interview. Rourke moped. Leith sat tapping his pen again, studying the man’s face and wondering.

He left the room to talk to Giroux and found instead a big bear at her desk, Mike Bosko, who was supposed to have caught the sheriff shuttle to Prince George this morning but apparently hadn’t. Like a bad rash, he’d take his time fading away.

Bosko looked up, smiled, said, “How’s it going with Rourke?”

“He says he didn’t shoot Dion,” Leith told him. “And he’s full of hot air on every point except this. Are we sure it’s actually a bullet that got him?”

Giroux stepped in, sparing Bosko the trouble of saying I don’t know in his long-winded way. “Not a bullet, guys,” she said. “Just heard from the hospital. He woke up long enough to confirm what the doctor suspected. It was a jab, not a bullet. And self-inflicted.”

Naturally, Leith thought.

The same blast of contempt had maybe crossed Giroux’s mind, the way she tossed her hands. She said, “Seems he impaled himself on a branch during a fall. Lost some blood, but no vital organs. Exhaustion is the diagnosis, few stitches and rest is the cure. So he’ll be okay, but we can’t talk to him till they say so.”

“Well, they better say so fast,” Leith said.

On the other hand, he wasn’t too concerned about what Dion had to say. Frank’s confession had been in the works last night, and the East Band was just an aggravating little diversion masterminded by that idiot Rourke. Now they were back on track, and Frank was being brought in for his turn at the podium, and Leith felt cautiously optimistic that this would be the grand finale. The interview that would close the file forever.

* * *

Things seemed to go well, at first. Frank Law, in a choppy, solemn way, told Leith that after a day of reflecting, sitting up at Sunday Lake with Lenny, chilled to the bone, he’d known what he had to do: come clean with what had happened to Kiera, and for the first time in a long time Leith’s hopefulness marched forward. He nodded encouragement to this intelligent young man who could see the writing on the wall, who was going to do the right thing now and save everybody a lot of time and trouble and admit he’d done it.

Frank took a deep breath and said, “Scott Rourke killed her.”

Leith went through the motions in his mind of slamming the table and howling rude words at the heavens. But only in his mind. He gave Frank his steadiest gaze, rimed with ice, and waited for more.

The not-so-intelligent young man nodded, something earnest in his demeanour, almost sweet, and Leith thought about juries and their fallibility. “Ask him,” Frank said. “He’ll tell you.”

So the long way around they would have to go. Some cases were quick wraps, others were like playing musical chairs in a fevered dream. Leith put Kiera aside for the moment, made a note to himself, and got onto the more recent past, asking about the shootout on the East Band lookout.

“Not much to tell,” Frank replied. “I’d just dropped Lenny back at home, was on my way here, to tell you guys everything. But met Scottie, he was heading home on his bicycle, and I made the mistake of stopping to say hi, and he said he wanted to talk about something, so he hopped in my Jeep and we went up to the lookout.”

“Long ways to go for a chat in the middle of the night.”

“Around here, man, logging roads are entertainment.”

“You went straight up the mountain, then?”

Frank shrugged uncomfortably. “First we went over to Morris’s place. Scottie was saying he’d be needing a place to lie low for a while. He has this idea that he’s got friends all over the planet who’ll hide him till the heat blows over. I think he’s kind of delusional.”

“You think? Well, what happened at Morris’s?”

“Cops knocked on the door, but we’d seen ’em coming, and Scottie yanked me into the back bedroom. Morris got rid of ’em, then he came and told us the cops were looking for me and he wanted us to get lost in a big way. So we did. Went on up to the lookout, and Scottie had some hooch, and I wanted to get bombed, so we went to the arch and were just talking about shit when the constable jumped out at us from nowhere and was yelling at Scottie to let me go. And suddenly Scottie’s got me in a chokehold with his gun shoved up my nostril, so I don’t know, but I think that cop had things a bit backward. Anyway, I can tell you, I was pretty damn confused.”

Which makes two of us, Leith thought. “So it was some kind of standoff?”

“Don’t ask me what it was. Scottie would never shoot me. He’s not that kind of guy. Anyway, him and the cop yelled back and forth for a while, and Scottie fired at the cop but didn’t hit him, and finally he let me go.” The young man pulled a face, brows up, mouth turned down, a mime portraying bewilderment.

“What happened between the gunshot and him letting you go? What changed his mind?”

Frank’s stare went distant, and Leith thought he was blushing, but it was maybe just the central heat parching the air. A big chunk of the story had just been skipped over, it seemed, and Leith waited, but Frank didn’t carry on and fill in the blanks. He said, “I don’t know why he changed his mind. Probably because there was a cop telling him to let me go, so he did. I still can’t believe Scottie killed Kiera.”

“Neither can I,” Leith said. “And I don’t. It’s time to cut the bullshit, Frank. We all know Rourke didn’t kill Kiera. The truth will come out one way or another, and it’ll be a hell of a lot better for your own interests if it comes from you, here, now. Her family is waiting for closure. You’re not a bad person. You know what’s right.”

Frank hung his head, pressing fingertips against his eyelids. After a minute of the hung head, he said he was going to heed his lawyer’s advice and say no more.

Leith took him back to cells and then joined Mike Bosko in the monitor room. Bosko was eating a sandwich and didn’t look nearly as steamed as Leith felt. He said, “Well, you can hardly blame him for not looking the gift horse in the mouth.”

What did that even mean? Leith said, “So that’s it, then. We can’t hold him. Rourke’s going to claim responsibility, and unless we get something solid, we’re going to have to go with it, right down the line till trial. Do I have all that right?”

Bosko shrugged. He put the sandwich aside and said, “There’s something I want to ask you about. Let’s go to the case room for a minute.” He lumbered out of his chair and led the way. In the case room he sorted through folders, found one, flipped through statements, and folded the clipped pages back on one where he’d put a sticky note. The statement was of Chad Oman, and the handwriting was not Leith’s, but Leith’s scribe of the day, Constable Dion. Bosko put his finger on a notation appended to the end that was in Leith’s handwriting and read it aloud. “‘Constable Dion suggests he’s lying but can’t say why.’ What’s that about?”

Leith skimmed through the statement to refresh his memory. “I interviewed Oman,” he said. “Dion’s notes were useless, and he’d forgotten to press ‘record,’ so all he got was dead air. We ended up writing out the interview from memory. My memory, because he didn’t have any. At the end he apologized for messing up, then added that he thought Oman was lying. I tried to get out of him what he meant, lying about what, and he couldn’t elaborate. In the end I figured he was just trying to impress me, the old newbie with keen intuition senses a witness is lying and breaks case wide open scenario. I was going to ignore it altogether, but next day, when my hand wasn’t so sore, I decided I’d better add that note. And that’s about all I can tell you.”

“Good thing you did,” Bosko said. “Since as we now know, he’s not a newbie at all. Right?”

Leith had to acknowledge something that had been niggling at him; maybe saving Dion’s life made Leith his guardian ad litem, in a sense, or maybe it was just his own dislike of loose ends, but he needed to know. “What’s going to happen to him?”

Bosko looked at him with interest. “The man’s had a serious head injury. It wasn’t something headquarters wanted to advertise, but it is something they need to monitor, and that’s what they’re doing, if it makes you feel better.”

“Is that why you’re here, to monitor one of your constables?”

Bosko grinned. “For one thing, he’s not my constable. He left North Vancouver before I moved in, so we haven’t crossed paths till now. For another, I wouldn’t be flying halfway across the province and taking lodgings to watch one brain-damaged constable. Wouldn’t be very cost-effective, would it? The locals in charge were supposed to send in regular reports, however, for the first six months, which they’ve been doing, but Renee didn’t notice the letter that accompanied her temp, and Willoughby didn’t stress the importance of the letter, so between them, he’s kind of dropped off the radar. Kind of frightening, isn’t it?”

Very, Leith thought. He crossed his arms, then uncrossed them and stuck his hands in his trouser pockets. When Bosko was reticent, it bothered him. When he was forthcoming, it bothered him even more. Bottom line, he still didn’t trust the man or his agenda.

“I wouldn’t worry about it,” Bosko said. “We’ve got our eye on him. All right?”

It wasn’t all right. Head injuries changed people, diminished them. Leith had never heard of a head injury improving on a man’s powers or personality, and Dion was clearly no exception to the rule. Maybe he’d been a prodigy, as he claimed, but he was now just bad news. If he didn’t get somebody else killed, he’d kill himself. Neither struck Leith as all right.

Bosko was looking at the document in question again. He said, “His abilities aside, do you have any idea what he thought Oman was lying about?”

Leith shook his head. “No clue.”

“Then talk to Oman again, go over the same ground, and watch for tells. Get tough if you have to. And ask Dion what he recalls, soon as he’s back in the now.”

“How about I get Giroux to grill him?” Leith asked. “Whenever I talk to the man, I get these homicidal thoughts.”

Bosko was amused, but only for a moment. “Seriously, I think you should deal with him yourself. I think you have a way with him. And try to be patient, Dave.”

A way with him? Leith ground his teeth. He wasn’t sure Constable Dion would ever be in the now, or could recall what he ate for breakfast, let alone the nuances of Chad Oman’s veracity over a week ago. And now, thanks to that brain damaged cop’s whimsical I think he was lying remark, he, Leith, was going to have to play bad cop with the drummer, a man who was quite possibly blameless, and that was a role he didn’t relish. Yes, it rankled. His phone buzzed before he could put his resentment to words, and speak of the devil, it was the hospital calling to say Dion was ready to talk.