LITMIR.BIZ

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      She didn’t, and his duty was done. He said, “I can loan you bus fare if you want. Hitchhiking around here isn’t a good idea. You know that, right?”

      “I know that. I’m ready for it.”

      “I’ll give you the bus fare.”

      She laughed. “I’ve got money, and I’ll take the bus, if that makes you feel better.”

      They drove in silence for a bit and had left Two Mile behind, and Old Town, and were deep in the woods that flanked the Skeena when she said, “Hey, that’s his bike.”

      “Whose bike?” Dion said, slowing the vehicle, looking at his passenger, following the line of her finger out to the woods.

      “There. Scottie’s bicycle.”

      Something blue shone from within the trees, and Dion pulled to the shoulder and reversed till he could see it better. “That’s his bicycle?”

      “That’s his bicycle. Weird. It’s the only way he gets around these days, ’cause his dirt bike’s out of commission too, and he can’t fix it. How dumb is that, Scottie the Fix-All can’t fix his own bike. Great advertising.”

      Dion got out of the car and went to take a closer look. Sure enough, it was Scottie Rourke’s crappy blue one-speed, leaned up against a tree off to the side of the highway. There was no lock and chain around it, and it seemed intact. Its tires were firm. With collar high against the cold, he looked up and down the dark, little-travelled byway that wound through forest toward the Law residence, and beyond that to Rourke’s trailer, with a whole lot of nothingness in between.

      The bike was pointing away from the village, so Scottie had been heading home, by the looks of it. He supposed it was no mystery; somebody had driven by and given him a lift. Not to Rourke’s trailer, because why bother leaving the bike for subsequent pick-up if he was just about home anyway? No, he’d been given a lift back to the village, or somewhere else altogether. The police would be out crawling this road looking for Frank, so maybe Rourke had been picked up by one of the constables for questioning. But a pick-up would have been broadcast, and it hadn’t been. Same if he’d gone to the pub or the Catalina. He’d have been scooped, and the scoop would have come across the police frequency. So the drive-by and the pick-up would have happened before the alert went out, and who would be driving by, by chance, on this remote road? One of the Laws. Not Lenny and not Rob. Frank in his old green Jeep. That’s who.

      He sat back behind the wheel and drove past the Law driveway, looking for police activity and seeing none, and a minute or two further to Rourke’s trailer. The lights were off in the place except for one burning low in the area of the kitchen. He hauled Evangeline’s pack from the trunk of the car and went up to the door with her. She had found a business card stuck in the jamb, and she showed it to him. Thackray had left his RCMP card with a note scribbled on the back to call this number ASAP.

      Evangeline fished into an empty flowerpot and found the house key. She let herself into the trailer, and Dion followed and set down her pack. The place wasn’t warm but not cold either. Evangeline was calling out for Scottie, and Scottie wasn’t answering. She had turned up the heat, switched on lights, was pouring water into a kettle, and asking Dion if he wanted coffee or a beer or anything. How about some antioxidant tea with ginger?

      He didn’t. He stood in the middle of the tiny trailer kitchen, and it was coming to him like a home movie played without sound, everything that was happening. He remembered the photos on Rourke’s wall, that snapshot of Rourke grinning at the camera, the grin cut in half by a terrible scar, an arm around each of the two older Law brothers’ necks, throttling them with fatherly affection. That same suffocating love of Rourke’s had destroyed a man and driven a woman to suicide. The crime was history, and maybe he’d mellowed, but it still ran in his veins, that terrible, overblown passion.

      Dion experienced a fleeting moment of wonder at himself, that he was still here, knowing some things, not knowing a lot more, facing the end of life as he knew it, but still ticking away as if he must close the deal. He said, “Does Scottie have a gun?”

      Evangeline didn’t think so. “Why?”

      And maybe he was totally off the wall, but in a further epiphany he could see where it was playing out, too, at least in vague composite form. Now he had to decide: call it in, alert the team what he thought and where they ought to go — or go there himself.

      Time and space and a certainty that they’d drag their feet told him he didn’t really have a choice. He would fire up his own engines and go there himself, now. Except he couldn’t go there, because he still didn’t know where there was. What he needed were coordinates. He said, “Evangeline.”

      She had her nose in the cabinets, looking for teabags. She turned and said, “Hm?”

      “Do you know anything about the Gates of Heaven?”

      She abandoned the cupboard and turned so she was facing him, no longer bustling but still and watchful. “The what, sorry?” He saw her glance to her right, at the knife rack, and to her left, at the door, and of course the question had scared her, put that way out of the blue, because psychos roamed the earth, even dressed as policemen. He explained there was a place Scottie had described to him the other day, and he needed to find it, fast, that was all. Did she have any idea?

      Her shoulders relaxed, and she shook her head. “No. But tell me more. Maybe I can help.”

      Dion ploughed backward through that casual conversation at the Old Town Pub. “It’s a place up on a mountain somewhere. It’s got a great view. It’s open to the skies. Scott wants his ashes scattered there when he dies. Ring any bells?”

      “Oh, the place with the hubcaps?” she said.

      “Hubcaps? Like a wrecking yard?”

      “No, hubcaps like stuck on this big log arch thing. We buried the red-tail there.”

      This was hardly what he needed right now, more random puzzle bits. “The what?”

      She said, “The red-tail, the hawk with the broken wing, last fall. We couldn’t save it, and it died, and Scottie had a truck then, so we went up to the place with the hubcaps. He didn’t call it the Gates of Heaven, far as I know, but it’s something he’d do, Mister Schmaltz. He said he was going to build a cabin there, but raising the two posts and decorating them was about as far as he got. Anyway, he wanted to bury the bird. That was before the ground froze solid, right? So, great, except he wanted to bury it right on the edge there where its soul could soar free, blah-blah-blah, and he wanted me to stand with him as he did so and say prayers, but it was too scary, the edge, way too far down, eh? Made me dizzy. So he did it himself. He’s not afraid of heights. He says he’s got Mohawk blood in him that makes him not afraid of heights, but I don’t believe him. It’s wishful thinking. He’s whiter than I am, and I am very white.”

      Dion was weeding words as she spoke, as best and as fast he could. He said, “This hubcap place, is it up the Matax trail, up that way somewhere?”

      “No, no. It’s a whole different mountain. It’s over here.” She poked the air to her left.

      The Hazeltons were surrounded by mountains, so it wasn’t a helpful poke. “D’you have a map? Could you show me where it is?”

      She didn’t have a map. He brought the one printed for tourists from his vehicle and flattened it on the kitchen counter, and Evangeline’s pearly pink fingernail showed him it was pretty well just across the highway from the entrance to the Bell 3. An old logging road that didn’t have a name, far as she knew.

      “You take this road called McLeod, past this ranch, and then about five miles along there’s a sign on your left warning people about logging trucks, and you take that. It’s steep and gravelly, but not too bad, you don’t need a four-by or anything….”

      Her finger travelled up the mountainside, ended at more or less where she thought the plateau was located, and marked it with an X for him in ballpoint.

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