LITMIR.BIZ

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so, and if so, then Leith needed to switch modes. He was no longer bent on debunking Law’s confession but hammering it into place, closing off any escape routes. “So tell me,” he said. “Why the urgent need to meet her on Saturday at two in the afternoon?”

      Law had a good answer for that one too. “Her and Frank and the others were planning an out-of-town trip in a couple days, playing at a dance down in Burns Lake, then another in Vanderhoof. It was about my last chance to talk to her alone. Convince her not to tell Frank.”

      “Vanderhoof is hardly the moon. They’d be back in a couple of days. Why not wait?”

      “I couldn’t wait. She was going to tell him, who knows when.”

      “Okay,” Leith said. “One more thing I need to tie off before we head up the mountain. Tell me about your relationship with Charlene West.”

      There was a lengthy pause while the logger studied him. “Didn’t work out,” he said.

      “Why’s that?”

      “I don’t know. She got sick of me, or sick of this place, left a note and went back home. Why, did you talk to her?”

      “We had a few words,” Leith said, loading more meaning into the statement than it deserved. In fact, it was Jayne Spacey who’d done some investigation a few days back, and with help from the Dease Lake RCMP had tracked down Charlene West’s cell number and given the girl a call to have a few words. And “few” was a stretch:

      Q: Ms. West, you lived with Robert Law down here in Kispiox, and his brothers Frank and Lenny last year?

      A: Little bit, yeah.

      Q: Why’d you leave?

      A: Had a fight.

      Q: Do you know Kiera Rilkoff?

      A: Sure.

      Q: She’s missing; any idea what happened to her?

      A: Nope.

      And that was about it, according to Spacey’s transcription. But Rob didn’t know any of that, so Leith used it for what it was worth, giving the suspect the quiet, confident stare that said the gig’s up, buddy, I had a good long talk with your ex and she spilled the beans on your dirty little secrets.

      But maybe Rob wasn’t reading the stare, gawping back at him with dull and distant wonder, and finally blurting out, “Yeah? So?”

      Leith rose to his feet and led Rob out to the main room, where they pulled on coats, hats, and gloves. Then they joined the others in the rear parking lot and climbed into trucks, bound for a search that would maybe turn up the remains of the Rockabilly Princess at last.

      * * *

      They had spent many long hours on the mountainside, traipsing about in a land without landmarks, hunting for a burial spot on the heels of the self-confessed killer, but no body had been found. Rob Law seemed as distressed about his failure as anybody. Just couldn’t remember exactly which goddamn spur he had taken, he said.

      He was back in his holding cell now, and Leith was at his own holding cell, Room 213 at the Super 8. Surprisingly, it was only seven o’ clock, the evening sky cloudless for a change, sharp and clear, each star a bright sparkle against the heaviest blue. He was helping himself to a mickey of Scotch to soothe his nerves, sitting on his bed, on the phone with his wife. He told her of the new schedule, not a happy one, and he swore too much in the telling, until she told him to stop, because she didn’t like that kind of language. Alison wasn’t a prude, just sensible, and she saw no point in saying the F-word with every out-breath like most cops and criminals were prone to. It jarred the ears.

      “Anyway,” he told her, “he says he did it, and I think he did it, but he led us all over kingdom come and can’t find her now in all those woods. So we’re going to have to bus in a bunch of cadaver dogs from Rupert, George, Terrace, wherever we have kennels. So it’ll be another few days at least. If that doesn’t work, we’re going to excavate the cut block, top to bottom. Yup, pull it all up, inch by fucking inch. Sorry. Because maybe he’s just leading us on a wild goose chase miles uphill when really she’s right there under our feet. Imagine that. He’s got an eight-foot bucket at his disposal. Can you imagine the hole you can dig with that thing in about two minutes flat?”

      “I can imagine,” Alison said from across the miles, that warm and familiar voice that he missed so much. Time and distance made all the wrangling seem ridiculous now. The arguments about how he shut her out, about how she needed to lay off when he was tired, about having a second child (she wanted one, he didn’t), about his opinions about certain of her family members, her opinions about certain of his, it all seemed trite now, and he only knew he loved her madly.

      She let him ramble on a bit longer about the pursuit of a body and then interrupted, saying, “That’s enough. You’re really wound up, you know? You make my head spin. There is a world beyond crime, and you gotta get your mind off it. Go for a walk. Read a book. Listen to some music. Okay, hon? Then get some sleep.”

       “Okay, hon,” he murmured. “Thinkin’ of you, babe.”

      “Thinkin’ of you too,” she said.

      He signed off, feeling better, wandered with his plastic tumbler of Scotch to the window, and gasped. Above the black rip-line of the mountains, a light-show played out in undulating waves of green and pink. The phone at his hip buzzed urgently, and it was Renee Giroux in his ear now, saying, “Finally. I tried your work phone, and it went to voicemail. So I tried this number, and it went to voicemail too, so I had to assume you’re on a long call somewhere. You’re worse than my thirteen-year-old niece. D’you see the goddamn sky?”

      “I see the goddamn sky right now,” Leith said, still lost in love. “It’s the best goddamn sky I’ve seen in a long time.”

      “We’re at the Black Bear,” Giroux said. “Myself and Mike and Spacey. We’re saving a spot for you. And make it fast because we need a distraction here in a big way. It’s Mike’s last night here, so he’s pulling out all the stops, if you know what I mean. He’s telling us in great detail the dynamics of aurora borealis, which I so do not want to know.”

      “Trashing the magic for you?”

      “No, he couldn’t do that. It’s just really, really not interesting.”

      Leith smiled. “Sorry, but I’m not going anywhere. I’ve got my own bar right here in front of me. But I do have a question for you. Did anybody manage to contact the two little bears?”

      Frank and Lenny Law, he meant. Since Rob Law’s arrest, nothing had been heard of them, neither hide nor hair, and it was becoming worrisome.

      “No,” Giroux said. “I’ll check with my people on the road, see what’s happening, and call you back.”

      A few minutes later, she did call back, not with an update but breaking news. “Sorry, but we have to meet, like, now. Augie and Ecton just picked up Lenny. He was hitchhiking up the Old Town road. He’s got something to say, they’re telling me, but he’s not saying it. Whatever it is, doesn’t look good, Dave.”

      The detachment being just across the highway from the Super 8, Leith didn’t have to drive, which would be breaking his own laws. He capped the mickey, pulled on jacket and boots, and made tracks.

      * * *

      The kid was a wreck. His mouth hung open. Bilious-looking, like he’d been into the liquor cabinet. Or the pharmaceuticals, maybe. And his eyes were swollen and bloodshot, sticky and heavy-lidded, like he’d been crying long and hard.

      “What is it?” Leith asked him. “What happened?” He and Giroux sat with the youngest of the Law brothers in Giroux’s office, trying not to loom over him, trying to make him comfortable. So far he hadn’t said much of anything to anyone, and another minute passed, and finally he came out with it, but in a faraway voice, like someone — Leith imagined — sucked into the fourth dimension. “He’s gone.”

      “Who’s

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