want to say it again. “It was too messed up. Tracks overlaid and snowed upon. Then where the trail started there was lots of tree cover, so not enough snow on the ground to leave tracks. Farther in where the snow got thick again, we didn’t see any tracks, and we were looking for ’em hard. We walked around the woods yelling her name. Then went back to town and called you guys. Talked to Constable Spacey there. No search team till morning, she says. Couldn’t believe my ears. Still can’t.” He gave Leith a nasty stare, his eyes raw and sore. “So we gathered friends and family, many as we could, nearly a dozen, went back up and did it ourselves.”
He was wilting again. He directed his next words toward the window. “I should be out there now, fuck me, looking for her.”
“I think the Search and Rescue guys have it covered.”
“Then I might as well get back to the block, help Rob get the trees in. The guy wants to shoot me. This is the last thing he needs right now.”
“Why?”
“Wood,” Frank said, dully. “Gotta get in as much wood as we can before spring melt.”
Leith asked if he could take a look around, see the studio where they rehearsed, and whether Frank would be okay with a complete forensic search of the house and property, say this afternoon?
Frank didn’t seem to care. “I can show you the studio now.”
Down a hallway toward the end of the house, Leith and Giroux followed him into a large room, lofty, tidy, and professionally set up as a recording studio. Leith looked at the mixing boards, the drum kit, keyboards, and computers, what were probably acoustic-boarded walls, pricy-looking speakers and microphones, the heavy coils of cable, and a stack of black cases for taking the show on the road. He said, “How much does something like this cost?”
Frank crossed his arms and pulled a face. “A lot.”
A more definitive answer would be nice, but Leith left it for now.
As they left the studio and headed for the front door, he said, “One more thing, Frank. Where’s Lenny? We tried the numbers you gave us. The first one’s not in service, and the others don’t seem to lead anywhere either.”
A complicated new emotion flashed in Frank’s eyes, a visible ramping up of confusion and grief. Frank Law knew nothing of his brother’s whereabouts, and Lenny too, it seemed, was gone without a trace.
* * *
As Dion had it written down, Leonard Law was the younger brother of the missing girl’s boyfriend, which was a bit of a mind-bender, but not his problem. The great thing about being a nobody is the assignments are simple, the answers black and white, and nothing much matters anyway. You’re given a destination and a set of questions to be answered, you scribble it down, go back and type it up, then drink coffee till the next simple task. Perfect.
There was a more immediate problem, though, in that he was lost in a strange town, the smallest town he’d ever worked within, population below a thousand, a number he’d had to double-check. He turned the tourist map of the Hazeltons upside down, finding it lined up better with where he had situated his cruiser on the shoulder of the highway. The car was GPS-equipped, but either the thing couldn’t pinpoint the address or he’d punched it in wrong. The five-minute drive had taken him half an hour, so far, and counting.
His eyes found the road on paper, a little dead-end spur way over there on the other side of town, on the road to Old Hazelton. He pulled out a pen and circled it, then clamped the map under the sun visor and turned again onto the empty highway that shone like dull steel in the morning light, and after a few more wrong turns found himself on the right track. And there at last was the road itself, unpaved, and according to the number on the mailbox that was the house in question, a little pink bungalow under a white cap of snow. Dion peered through the windshield and saw on the front lawn a gathering of small lumpy people, four of them standing all in a row, dead still, wrapped and bound in heavy cloth. Leaving the car and taking a closer look, he found them to be skinny shrubs, covered in burlap and tied with twine.
He climbed the three steps and knocked on the door. A woman, small and bottom-heavy, opened the door. Behind her a tall, lean figure stood, dark and mysterious and still, like a continuation of the shrubs in the yard.
Dion presented his ID and asked the woman if she was Clara Law.
“Yes, I’m Clara Law,” she said. “This is my husband, Roland. How can we help you?”
“Constable Dion, RCMP,” he said. “I’m looking for your son, Leonard Law.”
“Leonard?” Her eyes pierced him, puzzled. “Leonard Law?”
He brought out his notebook and studied what he’d written down. He looked at the brass numbers hammered to the siding, and down again at the small woman. “You have a son named Leonard, ma’am?”
“Yes, I have a son named Leonard,” she said. “But he’s not here, for heaven’s sake. Why would he be? Why are you asking?”
“Leonard was at a house party that’s under investigation. We haven’t been able to contact him.”
“Why didn’t you phone and ask, save yourself a trip?”
“I think there were several calls placed, with no answer.”
“They might have called, Clara,” the big man behind the short woman said.
She looked around at her husband. She glared at Dion and said, “You’re letting the cold in. Please come inside so I can shut the door.”
The interior was too warm. He removed his police cap and scraped his boots clean on the welcome mat. He followed the couple along a plastic runner to the opening into the living room. The room was darkened by fuzzy-looking wallpaper and heavy curtains. Clara Law told him to remove his footwear and sit, gesturing at an armchair. He chose to keep his boots on and stand on plastic.
The place smelled sour. A huge grandfather clock ticked in a corner. Roland Law stationed himself behind the sofa his wife sat on, and the two of them watched Dion standing on plastic at the threshold of their living room. He said, “When’s the last time either of you saw or spoke to Leonard?”
Roland Law startled him with a voice like a foghorn. “We haven’t seen Leonard for months. Haven’t seen any of the boys for nigh on twenty years.”
Leonard Law, Dion had thought, was only seventeen. He began to ask for clarification, but Clara Law interrupted with, “Sweet Jesus, Rolly, let me do the talking.”
“No,” Roland said, a huge finger in the air. “Wait. I did see him. In the gazebo. Looked out the kitchen window and seen him just starin’ out at me, then he just up and disappeared.”
Clara smiled at Dion, whose attention was divided between her and her husband, now mostly on the husband. She said, “We haven’t seen the boys in probably a year and a half, and through no fault of ours, either, because let me tell you —”
“My birthday,” Roland boomed, patting at his chest, his thighs, looking for something lost. “And where is it?” he said, still patting. “I’m looking for the damn thing, Clara, to show the man.”
“Dresser,” Clara said. “Top drawer with your vests.”
Roland stepped out, and Clara said, “All our boys moved out of home at sixteen. Except Robert. He moved out when he was just fourteen and went to live in those welfare rooms near the highway where the Indians live, where frankly I wouldn’t let a dog live. He stayed there probably getting buggered by Mr. Heston who he worked for who runs the machine shop who got arrested for peedeefeelya. When Robert got big enough, he came over with a hunting rifle and threatened Rolly and took over Rolly’s logging outfit, and far as I know bought some land over near the reservation and built a house. Which doesn’t belong to Robert, of course. It belongs to the Royal Bank and always will. He was always very independent, very moody. The schools hereabouts are godless mills of crime and corruption, so we home-schooled