Читать книгу B.C. Blues Crime 4-Book Bundle - R.M. Greenaway - Страница 18

White Lies

WAKING HAD BEEN BAD, but not hellish. Not like rising from the coma last year, when he’d dragged his own broken body through a dark, wet corridor for endless miles in pain, confusion, and bouts of genuine terror. This was easy, dry, bright, and the painkillers worked wonders. Dion sat on a straight-backed chair in his hospital room waiting for his ride from the hospital. His side hurt, but it was nothing next to the thudding in his chest. He rested his face in his palms, trying not to imagine the hilarity, and imaging it all the same. Frank had told all, by now, every last excruciating tidbit, and the story would have gone viral. They’d be laughing hard. Spacey would laugh hardest.

The thought of the story doing the rounds in this detachment and spreading to others, probably eventually reaching the world at large, sickened him, literally, and he limped into the bathroom and leaned over the throne, hands splayed on the tank, ready to barf up his hospital breakfast, whatever that had been. The nurse came up behind him as he stood contemplating the plumbing and asked if he was all right. He straightened, wiped his mouth, and accepted the glass of water she offered. Somehow the dizziness had passed, and so had the nausea, and even the rip in his side didn’t seem so bad. Only the worry remained. “I’m okay,” he told her.

“I don’t think you are,” she said.

She went to get him a couple of T3s, and he thought about fleeing the scene, walking, jumping on a bus, hitchhiking, anything, just getting out of there, fast. Cross the border, sink into anonymity, become a bearded street person.

But there was a hitch in that he had no jacket. They had taken it away, along with the uniform he’d been wearing during the farcical confrontation with Scott Rourke last night. He now wore the clothes somebody had brought in from his room at the Super 8, the winter-weight joggers and sweater he usually wore on his days off, the black leather Nike runners, and a scarf around his throat. The scarf he’d wrapped around twice, depressed.

“Hi there,” Thackray said, poking his head around the door. “Ready to go?”

Ten minutes later they walked into the detachment, and Dion found it quiet inside, nobody laughing. Spacey was nowhere to be seen. Leith stood from his desk and said, “Hey, glad you’re okay,” then summoned him down the hall to the “soft” interview room.

They sat across from each other, like accuser and accused, and Leith said, “I really thought you’d caught a bullet. Took you down Code 3, man, made quite a scene.”

“Yeah, sorry about that.”

Leith seemed glad to be done with the small talk and got down to business, opening a file that turned out to be an interview with Chad Oman. He told Dion the date and time of the interview and asked Dion if he remembered it.

Of course Dion remembered it. He answered coldly. “Right, it was last week.”

Leith read out what they had written out together at the end of that miserable interview, after the disaster with the recording device. He finished reading and said, “You told me you thought he was lying about something but couldn’t remember what it was. But you were flustered then. Maybe now something’s twigged, huh?”

Dion pulled the statement across the table and read it again, trying to put himself back in the moment, imagining the witness in the room. He couldn’t remember what had prompted him to say Oman was lying. Oman had been loud, a fast talker, hard to track, and his own regrettable comment about lying had come out of him spontaneous as a sneeze.

He shook his head. “I don’t know. There was that bit where Oman paused here, said something was funny, then wouldn’t say what he thought was funny. Maybe it was there.”

“That’s kind of what I was thinking. But that’s not really a lie, is it? At worst, that’s holding something back.”

“I don’t know, then.”

Leith looked far from shocked and closed the folder. Now it was time for another painful rehashing: what happened on the East Band last night. He let Dion run through the narrative first, no questions asked. Dion did his best and told what he could remember, which was just about everything, from picking up Evangeline, to spotting the abandoned bicycle, to the directions he’d gotten to the Gates of Heaven, to calling Spacey for backup. He told of his drive up the mountain, expecting reinforcements that didn’t seem to be coming, his hesitation, and his ultimate decision to plough on. He told of his conversation with Scott Rourke, and his final ploy of giving Rourke a false motive for not wanting Frank Law to go to jail. Here he fell silent, unable to finish.

Leith said, “Yes? And what was that false motive?”

“I told him Frank and I were friends,” Dion said. Which was the truth. Not the whole truth, but enough. He watched Leith’s face, expecting he’d already got the punchline out of Frank and was just holding back the guffaw. But there wasn’t even a smirk. Just an intense and skeptical gaze.

“And he believed it?” Leith asked.

Dion basked in relief for a moment. So Frank was just as embarrassed about the whole thing as he was and hadn’t said anything about love at first sight or any of the rest. Maybe it would never come to light. He sat straighter and gave a shrug. “I guess Rourke believed me. He let Frank go. Then you and the others finally got there, and you know the rest. What took you so long, by the way?”

Leith skirted the question, saying, “Any idea why Scott Rourke wanted to blow Frank’s head off in the first place?”

“Like I said, he thought Frank was going to jail. He wanted to preserve him from a fate worse than death.”

“Honestly? Sounds like a stretch to me. How about he, Rourke, killed Kiera, and Frank knew it. Rourke thought Frank was going to report him, so he had to silence him.”

Dion shook his head. “Everything we said up there pointed to a mercy kill. Or that’s the way it looked to me at the time. I figured the only thing that might stop him was my promise that I’d keep Frank out of jail. For personal reasons. So I ad libbed.”

“You think he would have actually shot him?”

“No, I don’t,” Dion said glumly. “I should have just sat at the crossroads and waited, and they’d have probably wrapped up their drinking party and come down and met us. But I did what I did, and what happened happened. I don’t expect any medals. I’m just glad nobody got killed, because then I’d really be up to my neck in it, wouldn’t I?”

Leith agreed. He said, “There’s a lot more we have to talk about yet. You and Scott Rourke, and his girlfriend, Doyle. I don’t know you’ve broken any rules, fraternizing with witnesses, but you’ve sure bent common sense out of shape. Pretty soon you’re going to have to tell me all about it.”

“Sure,” Dion said. He felt unburdened, empty but free. It was all coming together, reaching a conclusion. Things were wrapping up, and he could walk away with few regrets. He thought about his watch, running slow, the source of all this mess. The watch lay on an icy riverbed now and would rust there till eternity. Looch was dead, which had its advantages, and Cloverdale was worlds away. Everything seemed good. He could breathe.

“But for now,” Leith said, having ended the interview, turned off the tape recorder, and signed off on his notes, “We’re going to have another chat with Chad Oman. I want you to sit in and pay attention, and maybe you’ll catch it again, whatever you thought he was lying about the first time, for what it’s worth. And just one more thing. You called Spacey last night, and we know the time of your call from the records. I just can’t figure out how it took her an hour to get things moving. She says your message was garbled or unclear, and she had a helluva time trying to locate Evangeline and find out what was really going on. Any comment?”

“It wasn’t complicated. I was clear as I could be. She doesn’t like me, and she lets it get in the way. When can I get off this case and go back to Smithers? You must have it figured out by now, I’m not much help here.”

Leith nodded. “I’ll see if I can get you back on the road tomorrow. You might have to return to give further statements, but maybe we can get ’em over the phone. Now, go grab a bite, and I’ll get Thackray to bring Oman in. Report back here at eleven twenty. Okay?”

He gathered his things and left the room. Dion remained for a few minutes, trying to program his watch to beep at eleven, giving himself a good margin of error, but couldn’t get the sequence right. Too many buttons, too little brains. So he wrote it in ballpoint on his palm, “Oman 11:20.” If that failed, he thought, he’d throw himself in the river too.

* * *

The band’s drummer seemed to have lost weight since his first interview, and a good deal of vim, too. But hey, Leith thought, reality’s finally set in. Kiera’s gone, and she’s not coming back. Before her disappearance, these kids were just embarking on an endless party, fun, fame, and good times. Now it was the brink of humdrum for Oman. A slow climb to department manager at the local Home Hardware. Two-inch nails and miscellaneous fasteners. Even without Kiera they could have carried on, led by Frank. Mercy Blackwood seemed to think it was possible, maybe even better, to carry on without Kiera. But now Frank was possibly going away too, and that left, what? Not much. Oman was just a drummer, and no matter how good he was, he would never be the next Ginger Baker.

Quite a shock to the system to lose all that in the space of two weeks.

Yet the guy seemed somehow okay with his lot when they first sat down, exchanging the small talk. Maybe he was a flat-bottomed boat, a survivor. Doggedly upbeat, with that off-centre smile on his round, healthy, brown face.

Dion sat in, as agreed. He looked physically unfit, still suffering from the stitches and the drugs, but he was doing his best to listen. Oman stuck faithfully to his story the first time around, and Leith could find no cracks to get a fingerhold in, to flip him upside down and get to his vulnerable side, so he did what he had to do, as rotten as it felt, and got mean. He eased into meanness with, “I hate to say it, Chad, but I’m finding it hard to believe what you’re telling me here.”

Oman looked stunned, and being a bit of a ham, he overdid it, eyes agog, mouth dropped open. “About what?”

“About Kiera leaving the house without her coat on, for one. It was a bitch of a cold day, as I remember it. Snow was bombing down. Temperatures well below zero, right?”

Oman’s eyes roved the room and settled back on Leith with some indignation. “She was wearing a pretty good sweater. I figured she was going to jump in her Rodeo, go to town, get something, come back. We’re all of us born and raised in the snow, hey? So that’s what I figured, she was just hopping out for something.”

“So you clearly remember her leaving without a coat?”

“Yeah, I do. She turned around, put her hands in her front pockets, her jeans, like this, said see you later, or back soon, or something like that, and she stepped out backward, kind of, and shut the door. I can see it like it’s happening right now.”

“But when she arrived that day she came in wearing a coat, right?”

“I don’t know. I got a pretty good photogenic memory, but to a point, eh.”

Leith didn’t break the flow to correct the kid’s vocabulary and went on ramping up the tension. “It was a rough day. Everyone was upset, including Frank. Kiera didn’t leave on her own, did she? Frank went with her.”

“Yes, sir, she left on her own.”

“You sure of that?”

“Yes, sir.”

And there’s the tell, Leith thought. The yes sir, yes sir, three bags full, sir. His own bad cop routine was a well-worn thing, simple and not very imaginative, but effective, especially with the young and the inexperienced. It was the arctic blast stare-down. He stared Oman down with icicles and said, “You know where this is going to lead, Chad? You don’t tell me the truth, it’s not going to be good.”

“Yeah, how so?” Oman snapped back, maybe more aware of his rights than Leith gave him credit for, maybe knowing where threats and inducements would lead, eventually. Nowhere.

Leith crossed his arms but toned down the bullying. “How so in that you’ll be charged with obstruction, is how. It’s not the kind of thing you can wiggle out of, you sitting here telling me she left alone, then later it comes out she didn’t. You’re going to turn on your heels then? How?”

“It’s what I saw,” Oman stated.

“You actually watched her walk out the door alone?” Leith asked, and held up a warning hand. “Here’s where you better be damned sure you’re telling the truth, because here’s where there’s no going back. Understand?”

Oman hesitated. He said, “Yeah, she walked out the door alone, cross my heart and hope to die.”

“Where was Frank when she walked out the door alone? You might want to cross your heart again, now.”

Oman was silent. Leith watched him, still as a rock, like he would sit here still as a rock all day and all night, if that’s what it took.

Oman said, “I think he …”

“He what, Chad?”

“I think he might have stepped out too, a minute or two before her. For a smoke, maybe. But I’m not a hundred percent on that.”

“Right,” Leith said. He was buzzing within now but speaking calmly, as if he was merely hammering down the details of facts he already had. “And Stella Marshall, where was she when Kiera walked out the door?”

“She was around. In the room there with us.”

“So she saw Frank leave?”

“I guess so.”

“And Lenny?”

“I’m not sure on that. He wasn’t around, but probably in his room. I think he left afterward.”

“So you’re in the house, and Frank’s gone out, maybe for a smoke, and a minute or two later Kiera goes out as well, and now they’re both outside. Did you watch them from the window at all, see where they went at all, what they did out there?”

“No.”

“Hear any vehicles starting up?”

Oman paused and admitted he hadn’t heard any vehicles starting up, and it looked to Leith like a dishonest pause but an honest admission. Which was interesting.

“When you left the Law house that day, her Rodeo was still there, wasn’t it?”

Oman shook his head vaguely.

“Yes or no?” Leith said, wanting something for the record.

“No, I don’t think it was,” Oman said.

“For how long were they out there, Frank and Kiera?”

Oman’s bluff facade was breaking down, nearly gone. He said in a low and husky voice, “I never saw Kiera again.”

“Sure. What about Frank, when did you see him again?”

“He came back.”

Leith raised his voice, just enough to give the kid a jolt. “I know he came back, and I know damn well when he came back. I want to know when you say he came back so I don’t have to waste any more time writing up criminal charges here. This is a homicide we’re dealing with, right? If you think I’m grim to deal with, think again. Next to the prosecutor, I’m a pretty nice guy.”

“Yeah, sorry, I was just trying to think, is all. I’d say … ten.”

“Ten what?”

“He was out for ten minutes, maybe,” Oman said, and looked away, rosy-cheeked and wet-eyed. “Fuck.”

Fuck said it all, in Leith’s mind. The drummer boy’s last hope for a rosy future had just gone up in smoke.

* * *

With Dion dismissed for the night, back to his room at the Super 8 to sleep off the pain pills, Leith was on his own now, interviewing Stella Marshall. It didn’t go well. However much he bullied her, she stuck to her original story, that Kiera had left on her own, that she’d left in her truck, and that Frank had stepped out earlier for a smoke, but had come back, and he had nothing to do with her disappearance. Breezily, she went about shooting down the case built up against Frank by Chad Oman’s latest admissions. Chad, she said, had been smoking some pretty high-grade zombie all morning and wasn’t firing on all cylinders to begin with. “Let’s just say he’s pliable,” she said, lounging in her interrogation chair, inspecting Leith with those pale marble eyes as she twined her hair about a finger. “Especially in the face of a policeman with lots to lose, right? I’m sure you didn’t exactly handle him with kid gloves, as they say. Did you?”

This lady really should get into politics, Leith thought. He said, “First I’ve heard of zombie.”

“It’s the kind of thing you don’t blather about to cops if you don’t need to.”

“Everybody was smoking hard?”

“No. I only smoke on weekdays, and only what I can bum off friends. Frank only had a toke after Lenny left, so he doesn’t set a bad example. Very old-lady, Frank is, when it comes to Lenny. If he only knew. Kiera tokes once in a blue moon, and I don’t recall her smoking that day. So it was just Chad indulging.”

“What d’you mean, if Frank only knew. Only knew what?”

“The kid’s a total pothead, when big brother’s not looking.”

“Where do y’all get your weed?”

“I really don’t know,” Stella said.

Like hell she didn’t.

When he’d let her go too, Lenny Law took the seat next and told Leith that Kiera’s Rodeo was gone when Tex had picked him up that day for their trip to George. And you could hypnotize him or put him through a lie detector, and you’d get the same answer, he said, swear to god.

Even without the swearing to god, Leith believed the kid. He considered pressing him about the weed angle, but it was barely a tangent at this point, and he didn’t want the trouble. So that was the end of his eyewitness list, barring Frank, who on the advice of counsel continued his right to say nothing. Not a word.

* * *

They didn’t arrest Frank. Crown counsel didn’t think they had enough and didn’t want to blow it by jumping the gun. You can’t base an arrest on a boatload of probablys and one witness’s foggy say-so. So the team heads sat about with take-out dinner and a steady supply of caffeine and brainstormed, looking for a solid bit of proof. There was the matter of Kiera’s coat, and it bothered Leith enough that he went over it again. And again. A striking purple coat, with embroidered cuffs and flamboyant fake fur trim, as described by her family and friends, that hadn’t been found, either at her own home, or at the Law house in the woods, anywhere on the property, or in her vehicle or anybody else’s. It was nowhere. So it was presumed to have been on her back when she’d been taken and was maybe buried with her now. Except Chad Oman had sworn she’d left the house without that or any other coat on, just the sweater, and in that respect Leith believed him.

All of which led him to the conclusion that somewhere between her walking out of the house that day and vanishing into the unknown, she had somehow been reunited with her famous purple coat, and that coat had gone with her to the grave. Probably it had been in her Rodeo, and she’d gone out and put it on, before or after her interaction with Frank.

In the prevailing theory, Frank had killed her, there in the woods near the home, even though a pair of dogs with keen nostrils had snuffled about the whole five acres and located no trace of cadavers or shed blood. So the killing had been clean, a strangulation, maybe, or suffocation.

And then? Then he had left her there, and later, when the band had gone, with Lenny safely packed off with Tex to Prince George — or so he thought — he had placed her into her Rodeo, which despite what Lenny said remained in the driveway, and driven her somewhere and disposed of her, either alone or with the help of his lying, cheating friends. But there the theory became impossibly dilute.

The windows were solid black when Jayne Spacey said, “What’s this?”

She tossed over a photograph that Leith recognized as one of the printouts from Frank Law’s iPhone. The image was tilted, blurred, and would have been deleted off the phone immediately if Frank had been the efficient type, a shot of Chad Oman doing what many kids did these days to show how smart they are, giving the camera the two-handed middle-finger salute.

“Why do they do that?” Leith said. “In my day we smiled and said cheese.”

“Fuddy-duddy,” Spacey said. She leaned, pointed. “It’s this blue thing here.”

Giroux pulled more photos now, crime scene shots, spreading them around and hovering over them like a plump little human scanner. “Holy smokes. I don’t see it anywhere. It’s gone.”

Leith looked at the blue thing in the blurry shot of Chad flipping the bird. It was there in the background, barely a smudge. Could be a garment, he thought. Her coat? Gotta see if we can find a picture of her in her coat, he thought. “Her family called it purple, not blue. This is definitely blue.”

“Frank’s still got the old iPhone,” Spacey said. “Not great at handling some colours.”

Leith inspected the photo as close as his not-so-great eyes would allow without reading glasses. “There’s this paler stuff around the top. That could be the fake fur trim her sister mentioned.”

Spacey and Giroux agreed, it could be furry trim. Spacey said, “We’ll show it to her family. They’ll be able to identify it better for us.”

If the blue smudge in the photo was indeed Kiera’s coat, the find was significant. Leith stood and paced, playing the devil’s advocate. “Like Stella said, Chad was stoned. So he forgot he’d seen her walk out with her coat under her arm.”

“Chad’s description of her leaving the house was convincingly detailed,” Spacey countered. “He saw her with both hands in her pockets. There’s nowhere for a coat to hide in that memory.”

“Hooked under her arm, like this?”

“It’s a bulky winter coat. It would have been part of his mental image.”

“Maybe this blue thing is a different coat altogether. Maybe it belongs to Lenny, and it went with him when he left for Prince George. Or Chad’s or Stella’s.”

“All will have to be checked,” Giroux said. “But I agree with Spacey here. I’m pretty sure that’s her coat.”

So, Leith thought, assuming for the moment it was Kiera’s coat. The door’s closed, and Kiera’s out there in the cold with only a sweater and jeans. Ten minutes later Frank had returned. The Rodeo was gone, according to Stella and Lenny; maybe so, according to Chad. Whatever the case, the coat was in the house when she left, and wasn’t there when the police photographer showed up with the ident team the next day, and nobody had an explanation. If nothing else, that showed somebody in the house was covering his or her tracks.

Spacey took the photograph and went to visit Kiera’s parents. She phoned back with the results half an hour later. “Yes, it’s her coat,” she said. “Ninety-nine percent positive.”

Leith spent an hour on the phone with Crown counsel, in spite of the hour, and that same night Frank Law was arrested and charged with the murder of Kiera Rilkoff.