really, but this guy who fell down was a building inspector. We couldn’t just let it slide. Building inspectors have it rough enough, without letting it be known you can push ’em and get away with it, eh.”
Leith passed the photo sideways to Dion and said to nobody in particular, “Girl like this could have her share of stalkers, right? Even without the celebrity status.”
Across from him Corporal Fairchild added to the thought. “She could have her share of anybody. Maybe she did, and maybe Frank didn’t like it. Why is nobody asking why she was heading up to see his brother?”
The team canvassed the issue, but it entered the realm of conjecture, and Leith, suffering the first pangs of indigestion, didn’t take part. The waitress came by, checking if anyone wanted refills. Nobody wanted more coffee except Giroux, a woman who bragged she only needed four hours’ sleep a night. Constable Dion asked for another Coke and ice, and when he received it and stuck the straw in his mouth, Leith felt obliged to turn to him with a warning, thinly disguised as chummy advice. “You heard the latest on sugar, right? They’ve discovered it makes lab rats stupid.”
He didn’t feel chummy about it at all. He was genuinely concerned about stupidity in the ranks, and this man, he could see at a glance, needed to hold onto as many brain cells as he had left.
Constable Dion set down his glass and gave him a blank stare. “’Scuse me?”
Too late, Leith thought. “Forget it,” he said, and watched Dion do just that, returning to the sandwich like it was some kind of do-or-die challenge. Leith glared at him a moment longer and then told the team, “Tomorrow first thing I’ll talk to Frank out in Kispiox, and if he’s agreeable, I’ll get Forensics in there, the sooner the better.” To Giroux he said, “I wouldn’t mind if you came with me to do the introductions. After Frank, we’ll just have to plough through the rest of the band as fast as we can. I also want to talk to Frank’s brothers, Rob and Lenny. Especially Rob.”
Spacey said, “Getting hold of Rob isn’t easy. He’s a workaholic, spends a lot of nights in the Atco up on the cut block. He’s there now, and I can’t reach him to call him in for an interview. No cell service up there, and his satellite phone’s either down or disconnected.”
“Well, somebody’s gotta go haul him down here, then,” Leith said, hoping it wouldn’t be himself doing the hauling. He wasn’t afraid of Rob Law, but he was afraid of that fucking road, the painful crawl along a precipice, tires thumping over the rough-furrowed snow. Nobody around here seemed much fazed by that particular road, but he was a prairie boy, and verticals just weren’t in his genes.
Fairchild shook his head. “Get him on his trucker chat-channel. Or one of his crew’s. Get the message out that he’s to come and see you or face a warrant. We don’t have time or resources to go chasing our witnesses up mountainsides. Not here, not now.”
“Amen,” Leith said. “I’ll leave it to you, then.”
“No problem,” Fairchild said.
“Well, maybe we can work it into a viewing of the trailhead tomorrow,” Bosko offered, countering Fairchild’s great suggestion in that long-winded, easygoing manner that was starting to grate on Leith. “We could go up and take a look around the crime scene in the light of day, then head up to the cut block, if that’s what Rob Law prefers, which might be preferable for us too. Sometimes it’s better talking to people on their own turf. What d’you think, Dave?”
Leith eyed him coldly. “That works too.”
He went about dividing up the rest of the interviews, with Spacey making notes. The songs playing distantly on the radio were melancholy, making Leith crave beer, but drinking wasn’t in the cards tonight. The meeting began to wind down, and there followed some less formal chit-chat and housekeeping matters. Giroux talked about disbursements and accommodations for the out-of-towners, Leith from Prince Rupert, Bosko from the Lower Mainland, Fairchild from Terrace, and the dumbass temp from Smithers, Dion, who was too busy cramming the last of his sandwich to notice he was being addressed, which made Giroux raise her voice in irritation and flap her hand at his face. “Constable. Yes, that’s you. Did you get yourself a room yet?”
With mouth full, Dion stared across at her.
A familiar anger began to crawl in Leith’s veins, and for good reason. Sometimes, somehow, a real bonehead crossed the recruitment hurdle and made it onto the force. Dion was one of those, just out of training, shell-shocked by the grim reality of his job. Probably expected respect, glamour, fun. Probably on day one he’d been posted roadside for eight hours with a radar gun in his hand and was already balking. Well, fuck you, we’ve all done it, Leith thought.
Maladjustment was just the base of the problem; the reputation of the force was at stake, and by extension the reputation of Leith. As though scandals and leadership issues weren’t bad enough, last year a bonehead rookie such as this one, under his command, had blown an investigation, costing the Crown a rock-solid conviction. It was a big case, and the acquittal still left a genuine twinge of pain in Leith’s chest when he thought of it.
So no, he didn’t find stupidity in the ranks funny. And neither did Renee Giroux, who barked at the temp now, “I take that as a no. So, not for the first time, please get yourself booked in over at the Super 8 and bring in the paperwork. Got that? It’s right across the highway there.”
Everyone watched Constable Dion absorbing the instructions, and Corporal Fairchild asked him, “Up from the city, are you? Touch of culture shock? How’d I guess? Easy. You got that what’s with all these fucking trees look about you. Where’s the malls? Where’s the Starbucks?”
Jayne Spacey laughed and blew ice water through her straw at Dion’s face, making him blink. Mike Bosko looked at the temp with brief interest — and maybe only Leith caught his slight double-take — then turned back to Giroux, who was asking him something.
“So where exactly do you call home, Mike?”
“I’m kind of between homes right now,” Bosko told her. “I was in Vancouver for four years, with Commercial Crimes, and I’m making the move over to North Van to help rewire their Serious Crimes Unit. Just needs some tweaking here and there, but it’s not as easy as it sounds.”
“From white collar to SCU to clambering about in the mountains,” Giroux said. “Impressive.”
Spacey leaned forward in a sparkly way, getting Bosko’s attention. “Does your rewiring include seeking out new talent by any chance, sir?”
He smiled back at her. “It certainly does.”
The exchange got Leith’s attention, and he checked Bosko’s face, trying to see if he meant it about the talent search. If so, it might mean an opening for him too. He wasn’t so sure he wanted it, these days, a radical move to the glittering metropolis. Fifteen years ago, leaving his home in North Battleford, Saskatchewan, to join the RCMP, he’d set his sails for the bright lights of Vancouver, but now that he was comfortably lodged in Prince Rupert, a place he liked, the idea of leaving seemed about as doable as relocating to Mars. Or maybe he was just scared.
He shifted back in his seat, vaguely depressed, imagining being stuck in dingy backrooms like this for the rest of his working life. On the other hand, stalwarts like him were needed here as everywhere. Missing kids like Kiera Rilkoff needed him.
His depression deepened, no longer for himself, but for her. Whatever anybody thought, he knew this would be no happy ending. The girl had crossed paths with somebody bad, and was either dead or in that person’s control. He heard Bosko and Spacey discussing North Vancouver, what a great city it was, that buzzing beehive to the south, and from the corner of his eye he noticed Constable Dion had become interested for the first time in something other than his own plate, and the something was Mike Bosko’s face. Was there recognition in his stare, along with a touch of anger? Leith looked at Bosko, thinking he must surely feel the heat of attention, but apparently Bosko didn’t.
Anyway, Leith realized, it wasn’t a stare so much as a sustained