LITMIR.BIZ

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fantastic.” She wiggled her upper body in a victory dance. She stopped abruptly, bit into her sandwich, and chewed a moment, watching him. “You’re part native, aren’t you?”

      “Native? Me? No.”

      She chewed a moment longer and then shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. Give me your phone.”

      Wondering what didn’t matter, he handed over his personal cellphone, a fold-up Motorola. Spacey entered her number into its databanks, aimed it at herself, snapped a picture, and gave it back. She told him to call her about 8:00 p.m., and they’d arrange to meet. She checked her watch and said, “Oh my god, we better get back. I forgot to tell you, Constable Leith slipped on ice and banged up his hand, so he needs a scribe. Which is why I’m making myself scarce. But you don’t have my kind of leverage around here, so you’d better run along.”

      She dropped him off back at the little detachment, and her cruiser scudded away. Dion climbed the steps and went inside. The reception area was noisy with young people, slouched, standing, talking, drinking pop. Passing through to the main office, he was flagged by one of the local uniforms and directed to go see Sergeant Giroux.

      Giroux’s office was a small room, ten by ten at best, mostly taken up by an L-shaped desk and filing cabinets. She was at her desk, and in a chair across from her sat the terse blond detective from Prince Rupert named Leith, the one who had called Dion a lab rat. Leith was slumped, jacket and tie removed, shirtsleeves rolled to the elbow, his right hand swathed in tensor bandages. Both officers fell silent and looked at Dion where he had stopped in the doorway. Giroux remained seated and said, “Looks like you and me need to have a talk about lunch breaks and punctuality. How’s your handwriting? And your stamina?”

      Neither were great, but he didn’t say so, and as directed followed Constable Leith down the hall to the first of two small interview rooms. There were no windows here, no sharp objects, ropes, or combustibles in sight. Just a desk and some chairs and a lot of stern posters on the walls. Leith took a chair, slapped down his notebook, and studied what was written there. “We’ll start with Chad Oman,” he said at last.

      Since the crash, words had become Dion’s greatest enemy. Sometimes they came together easily, but often he needed some catch-up time. Already Leith was looking at him, losing patience, spelling it out more clearly. “Chad Oman, our witness. If you’d get him, please?”

      Dion went to the reception area and called out the name, and a bulky native kid stepped out from the gathering of youths. Oman followed him to the interview room and sat across from Leith in practiced fashion, like he’d been interrogated before and knew the drill. Leith asked Dion if he had a tape recorder. Dion didn’t have one of the newer digital devices, which he found hard to figure out, but had an old-fashioned mini-cassette type with simpler controls.

      “Good,” Leith said. “Take care of it.”

      Dion checked that the blank tape was rewound to the beginning, thinking about the North Vancouver detachment, its many interview rooms hardwired for audio-visual, and adjacent monitoring rooms, and usually extra staff to man the controls. Smithers’ one-room set-up was far simpler but modern enough. New Hazelton was a shocker, barely an empty closet, no Mirropane, no camera. He started the recorder and set it down, angled toward the witness, got pen and paper ready, and jotted down the preliminaries.

      Leith told Oman that the conversation was being recorded, and for the benefit of the record gave time, date, place, and name of witness.

      “Yeah, that’s me,” Oman said. “Whatchoo do to your hand there, bud?”

      “My feet went south,” Leith said. “On ice.”

      “Hooya, that’s a bitch,” Oman said gravely.

      Leith grimaced. “I’ll get you out of here soon as possible. Just a few questions. Let’s start with Kiera Rilkoff and Frank Law. When and how’d you get to know them?”

      “Knew Frank since grade eight,” Oman said. “We were always into the music, eh. Him on guitar, and me, I liked hitting things, so I got to be the drummer. We wrote some wicked tunes that looking back now, man they were bad, evil crap. But we got us a bit of a following. We were called Frankly Insane then. Stella came in with her fiddle, and then Kiera one day got up and took the mic from Frank, and we found out she could sing not so bad. And she’s got the looks too. I mean, talent is one thing, but ballsiness is everything else. She made it a show. That day at the school dance she opened her mouth and yodelled out ‘Soulful Shade of Blue,’ we knew we were magic. We changed the name to Fling, her call, and everything was great. And last summer it got even better when we got talent-spotted. For real, man. That lady talked to us after that fundraiser gig at the rec centre and told us what we already knew, that we’re really good, and we oughta get serious, market ourselves and whatnot.”

      “Ms. Blackwood, is it?” Leith said.

      “Mercy Blackwood. She’s huge. She launched Joe Forte and the Six-Packs. You know them, right?”

      “Oh yeah,” Leith said. He didn’t really, but they sounded like a flash in the pan. “Whatever happened to them?”

      “Forte got killed in a freak boating accident.”

      Now Leith recalled the story. Forte wasn’t a flash in the pan. He was up-and-coming, but he’d died young. He said, “That was a long time ago. So she’s been in the business a while. She’s living here now?”

      Oman nodded sympathetically. “I know, you’re thinking what’s a person like that doing in a place like this, right? She come up here to look after old Mrs. Trish Baldwin last year, who’s her relative or something, who’s gone now. Mercy says she’ll probably move on soon as the old house sells, but in the meantime she’s helping us out in a big way. Got us a bunch of sound equipment, made up our website, put our name out there. So, yeah, all of a sudden we’re not just high school rockers; now we got a future. Which is kind of funny.” His smile faded, and he finished on a quieter note. “So that’s about it. It’s so unreal, I can’t stop cryin’. I forget she’s missing, and every time I remember I just start cryin’ all over again.”

      There were no tears in his eyes, but Dion got the gist, and Leith seemed to as well. “What’s kind of funny?” he asked.

      “Nothing. What d’you think happened to her?”

      “We’re working hard to find her,” Leith said. “What’s kind of funny?”

      “Nothing, hey. I’m just so freaked out here, just can’t think straight.”

      Oman was a fast talker, and Dion flexed his wrist. He wondered how many interviews he’d be on today. How long before his scribbles turned to garbage? Just get the key points, he told himself. Oman was describing for Leith the Saturday when Kiera walked out of rehearsal without explanation, and Dion’s key points fractured into point form, then finally random hieroglyphics. It didn’t matter, though, because the tape was getting it all down. Notes were just for backup and quick reference, memoranda for the continuation reports that he would be typing later. He rubbed his temple and flipped a page.

      Oman talked about the new demo they were working on after the big disappointment in December when that Vancouver record label backed out of a deal. “Mercy says don’t worry about it, just carry on, write some new material, work harder, which is what we’re doing now, working on the new, improved demo that’s going to make us a big name.”

      “And how’s that going?”

      Oman shrugged, which said it all.

      Leith said, “I was in the sound studio at Frank’s house. It’s an impressive setup. You’re saying Blackwood funded all that?”

      “I’m not sure how that’s all worked out. They have a contract, I think. Frank could tell you. Are we done soon, because I want to go home and shoot my brains out.”

      “Why?”

      “Because I have a feeling Kiera’s not coming back, which means so much for

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