around from place to place? She sure as hell told me.”
Tse didn’t answer that, which told Heathen that Grace of course had. “Nobody thought to bring him to an ER?” she said. “Jesus! Didn’t he show signs of a head injury? Confusion? Irritability? Nausea? Balance problems?” She had them memorized herself, because of her freestyle skiing.
Still no confirmation, just an awkward silence. Of course, the man couldn’t say so. In case of a lawsuit, Vancouver PD had to circle the wagons. This guy couldn’t be heard admitting anything that could be construed as negligence.
“Look, it’s not my case any more,” Tse said. “I just came here...for Grace—before anyone else got here. And for continuity with any evidence or statements from the victim, because it was an injury sustained in the commission of a crime.”
“Or not,” Heathen said.
Tse ignored that jab. “The detectives are coming in a while to take her statement,” he said a bit stiffly. “Tell her not to go anywhere till they get here. And I’d like your number, too.” He handed her a pad and a pen. Heathen wrote her name and Mohammed’s cell number down.
Tse’s voice was different when he spoke again. “She really stood up today,” he said. “I hope everything goes okay.”
Handing the paper and pen back, Heathen followed his glance. Through the narrow opening in the doorway of the lounge, she could see Grace inside, on the other cell phone. Stewart hovered, but safely outside the room. Heathen looked around and saw that Mohammed had faded back to the coffee machine near the elevator. She went over to tell him all the horrible news.
Two
Whistler
Jefferoo watched the snowboarder on the half-pipe. Opening day of the season, and he knew this guy’s ride was over. One second the rider was upside-down in midair over the course. A split second later, he cratered in on his twisting inverted aerial, hitting the landing on his knees instead of his feet and face-planting for the fourth time in a minute and a half. Jeff and the other snowboarders looking on didn’t even gasp any more at his bailed tricks. They just watched in embarrassed silence.
Jefferoo turned to Jared beside him. None of this looked right. “You sure that’s Dangler Dag? That’s Kenzo’s jacket. The Swede busts way better air than that.”
“No,” Jared said, “it’s him. He borrowed Kenzo’s gear. His didn’t fit any more.”
Jefferoo watched Dag dribble stinkbug style down the vertical of the half-pipe to rest on the flat like a chucked-out pop can in a culvert. Among the pro snowboarders and would-be pros in Whistler, now, as of this moment, Dag looked like a wouldn’t-be. Dag was done. Done like dinner. Dead in the water. Or, the snow.
For a second, it didn’t look like he was going to move. Jefferoo knew the feeling of wanting to lie motionless in the cold snow, butt and head aching, versus the need to get the hell and gone out of public view as fast as possible. If only time could stop there and hold off the painful extrication and only slightly less painful mockery of the tribe yet to come.
It was a long trudge out of the pipe. Jefferoo edged over to be the first to meet him off the pipe. “Dude,” Jefferoo said, with great feeling. “Oh, dude.”
“Thanks, Jeff.” Dag raised a fist to tap knuckles gratefully.
“Dude,” Jefferoo said, “we don’t even have a word for that yet. But we totally have to make one up now.”
Dag shed those bits of gear that hadn’t fallen off in his crashes, shoved his borrowed board at Kenzo, mumbled something and began to bugger off of Blackcomb at a quick limp.
Not quick enough. “I got it!” Jefferoo hollered after him. “PERFORMANCE ART!”
• • •
Heather blew her cigarette smoke at the mountain. Every patio in Whistler Village, the touristy centre of town, faced the mountains. The chairs at all the tables were turned to face the view. Today, though, in the middle of the afternoon in September, past the midday rush, the patio was empty. High season hadn’t started up yet. Heather leaned her chair back against the wall of the coffee shop.
While she blew smoke rings and slugged from a bottle of water, a young guy limped up the lane that led from Blackcomb into the village. Instead of following the path that curved around to the front of the coffee shop, where it faced the central pedestrian area, he walked straight over the back patio railing, wincing as he did, and dropped into a chair at the table nearest to it with an air of weariness. He didn’t seem to notice Heather and faced out at the mountain with his back to her. The whole of her break, he just sat there, either staring at the mountain, or maybe sleeping. She couldn’t tell which from behind.
At the end of her break, Heather strolled over, for form’s sake. “Hey,” she said, “not that you have to order anything, but if you want to, I’m on my way back in.”
He looked at her, kind of startled. He was cute. Blond, short hair, nineteen or twenty, a few years younger than her. Nice dark blue eyes with long, pretty eyelashes that a girl would kill to have. “Oh, sorry, I’ll shove off—” he started. Heather also noticed that he looked dishevelled and banged-up. From a dark red residue, she could see his nose had been bleeding recently.
“No, it’s cool if you want to sit here,” Heather said. “I just thought I should check.”
He swivelled his head around, grimacing again as he did. “Which, um…where…?”
Heather got it. Limping Guy had grabbed at the first patio he’d come to, without even knowing which one it was. “BlackArts Coffee Company?” she said, pointing to the hated beige apron with the trademark oversized coffee rings printed on it that had to be worn over her eternally coffee-smelling black shirt and pants. “You might have heard of it?” Her attempt at a joke. BlackArts was the trendy coffee megachain these days. Even Whistler Village already had two.
“Hey, I know you,” he said suddenly, looking surprised to recognize her. “You’re Heathen.”
Heather was more surprised to hear this blast from the past. She hadn’t heard that nickname in maybe two years. She looked at him sideways for a second. “It’s Heather,” she said. “Do I—”
“I ride—rode with Jefferoo’s crew,” he said. “Dag Olsson. I didn’t know you worked here.”
Heather could top that. She didn’t even know him. “Oh, hey,” she nodded politely, but couldn’t place him. He didn’t have to tell her he was one of Jeff’s snowboarding buds, though, they were the only ones who called her Heathen, which she didn’t like, instead of Heather. That was why Jeff had encouraged it. No wonder they hadn’t lasted as a couple. Heather was a freestyle skier, moving in different circles, so she couldn’t necessarily be expected to remember all of Jeff’s boarder buds. But she thought she would have remembered one of Jeff’s friends being such a nice-looking guy. Most snowboarders were kind of goofy.
“Yeah, a year and a half,” she said. “My sponsorship pays the rent, but this keeps me in groceries, lift tickets and weed. And I can flex my shifts around my skiing.”
“You do moguls, right?”
“Aerials,” she said. “I’m off to a training camp in Calgary in a couple of days. So, anyway,” she added, “I’m due back in there. You want something or not?”
“No. Too yupscale for me,” he said. Yeah, Heather knew too well that no bucks totally went with being an amateur athlete.
She nodded sympathetically. “Me, too. That’s why I only work here. I couldn’t afford to actually drink here otherwise.”
“How is it? Working here, I mean?”
“Oh, come on, don’t ask to be polite. Half this fucking job is spent with a