point it out for all the world to see, him googling how to use an idiot-proof pedometer.
He had no choice but to back out now, tell Leith he couldn’t do this run. His face burned, and the lump in his throat made it difficult to pull in air. Shallow breathing made his ribs ache and the room vibrate. He looked at Leith, and the face was a blur, starting to run, and still he couldn’t put the words together.
Leith took the pedometer from him and dragged over a couple of chairs. “No problem,” he said. “I’ll show you.”
* * *
Dion had no running gear, so he wore his casual civvies, the hiker-like boots from Mark’s, his favourite black jeans, and on top the layers that somebody had suggested, tank, sweatshirt, patrol jacket, rain cape. He and Thackray drove up the mountain, that long, jouncing crawl with the heat blasting, to Rob Law’s cut block. They parked and in the shelter of the SUV went over the plan. Thackray would wait in the vehicle, ears on alert, and be ready to respond in case there were any problems. If he didn’t get any updates for fifteen minutes straight and couldn’t get through to Dion, he’d call in backup and hit the path himself to see what was amiss. Thackray pressed his bony hands into a prayer and told Dion to please, please report in diligently, because he really, really didn’t want to hit the path. Dion promised.
The crew was hard at work in the downpour, and Dion knew enough about the logging industry by now to understand that it was a seasonal scramble; they were racing against the spring melt, which would mire the north in mud, bringing operations to a standstill. He shouted a question at one of the workers, and the answer was shouted back at him that Rob was out at the mill dealing with some sort of tally dispute, and would be back within the hour.
Dion climbed to the raw land behind the Atco trailer and stood in his flapping cape at the mouth of the trail, by Spacey’s first ribbon, and set the pedometer as Leith had shown him. The forest ahead looked worse than yesterday. It hadn’t rained on him yesterday, and the sky hadn’t been smothered in blackish clouds that cast shades of nightfall over the land. Rain rattled on his cape and drizzled from the hood brim. He looked up at the sky and back some distance to the worksite, where it seemed half the crew stood watching him.
He pressed the start button and headed down the path at an easy stride, picked up speed only when out of sight of the spectators, and jogged along for some time, the cape catching on bushes. He stopped and struggled out of it and abandoned it by another of Spacey’s markers, and now he was cold but unencumbered. Icy water coursed down his face and neck and back and rode up his pant legs as he ran, chilling him to the bone, but the exercise pumped his blood and warmed him. He hadn’t moved, not really, since the crash. And this was no rehab treadmill but body in motion, complete with the hot rasp of his working lungs and the strain on his thighs.
He tired, recovered, and pressed on, faster, fast as he could push himself, straddling slippery logs, ducking under low branches, pounding through the mud puddles. He slowed when the path narrowed, and slowed further when it became treacherous, but mostly he jogged. He remembered in the nick of time to report in to Thackray, then ran downhill, slithered, righted himself. Splashed through another puddle, and now faced a long, steady slope of rocks, pathless but with pink ribbons marking the way across the scree, and up he went, soaked and grimed head to toe. At the top of the hill he looked down the valley, sweaty, sore, and breathless. Looking to his left, he could see off in the distance the three ribbons set in a triangle that he knew was the Matax trailhead. He clambered up through tall, dead grasses in time to hear, not ten metres beyond, the approaching roar of a truck and the drone of its brakes as it passed on its way down the mountainside on the Bell 3 Road.
One final climb and he stood on the road, almost directly across from the trailhead, the world quiet now except for the pattering of the rain that was softening to snowfall. He stopped the timer and checked. Nineteen minutes. He noted time and distance, contacted Thackray, and started back.
For the return trip he needed no markers. He was limping and nearing the end of his reserves when the upper reaches of the logging site came in view, and he walked like a cripple the last few metres to find the total time of the two runs, not counting the five-minute rest, was forty-four minutes, which as he understood it left the killer eleven minutes to commit his crime.
He stood making final notes in the small yellow book that Leith had given him, specially designed for wet-weather writing, and when he looked up again he found the killer himself stood facing him, a mere seven or eight feet away. He and the killer sized each other up, himself cold and wet and dirty, Rob Law dry and secure in gumboots and olive-green rain gear, eyes glinting from the shadows of his hood. Law was white-faced, fierce, and silent, and with the blackness of the forest at his back he looked like a samurai about to hoist his sword and lop off the enemy’s head.
But Dion was armed and unworried. He squeegeed water off his face with a palm, and in the second it took to do it he’d lost his suspect. Law had turned and was walking back toward the worksite, not a word spoken. Dion called out, “Mr. Law? ’Scuse me. Could I borrow your office for a moment?”
But first he needed to let Thackray know. Down at the SUV, he fetched his gym bag and spoke to the constable, who sat reading a police manual in the warmth of its cab, studying for his next level exams, he’d said. Dion explained what the deal was, that he was going to change into dry things in the trailer, that Rob Law was there, to just keep an eye out. Ten minutes, max. Thackray wondered if it wouldn’t be prudent if they went to the trailer together, considering Law was a suspect. Dion said he didn’t think so, and Thackray went back to his reading.
The trailer inside was as dark as the outdoors, and not much warmer, but Law was working on getting the place running. A generator grumbled and then came a metallic whir, harsh light and dust-scented heat. “Place’ll be too hot in about three minutes here,” he said and went about making coffee in a slow, determined way, mixing sugar, no-name instant, and whitener in two mugs. Dion stripped off sweatshirt and tank and pulled on a clean, dry T-shirt. The jeans he would have to live in till he got back to his room, same with the wet boots. He bundled the soggy mess of used clothes into his bag and joined Law at the table, where a cup of coffee awaited him. As he took his chair, Law spoke so low it was hard to make out the words. “So, you have it all figured out?”
“I’m not the one who figures things out.”
“Well, the path. You got that part figured.”
Dion started to say he was just the runner, but found he couldn’t. He was far from powerless, and to say otherwise would be a lie. He gave a noncommittal nod instead. The coffee he’d just gulped was hot and sweet and awful. Across from him, Law was thinking grim thoughts, if anything could be read in the teaspoon he was absently bending out of shape between two thumbs. But wet feet turning to ice and the fact of Thackray waiting in the truck both spurred Dion to get going, and after another gulp of the awful coffee, he stood. “Thanks for the warm-up. I’ll be off now.”
Law nodded, not moving from his chair, still in his rain gear, and he looked like he might sit like this all night. Dion saw depression, and it worried him. He walked back to the table and asked, “Is there a problem, Mr. Law?”
Law’s throat worked. Eyes turned up, for a moment he looked younger than his years, almost juvenile. The moment passed, and he was himself again, a thirtysomething grown man, a mover of earth and trees without much of an education, now asking a strange question in a near snarl. “They still hang people?”
Dion was back in his chair, startled that anyone wouldn’t know the basics of law and order in this country. But he supposed that if a man doesn’t watch TV, doesn’t listen to the radio, is maybe just not interested in how the world operates, he might go on believing there are still gallows set up in the backrooms of every penitentiary. “No, of course not.”
Law pulled a cigarette from a box on the table then held out the open box. Dion, who hadn’t stuck a cigarette in his mouth since the crash, shook his head. “I never been to jail,” the killer said after lighting up, pulling in and streaming out the exhaust to one side, not to hit his guest in the face with it. “Scottie has, though, like I’m sure you know. Seven and a half years. Got off easy,