LITMIR.BIZ

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the dirty backwaters of the Hazeltons and all its troubles. He was glad to be out of there and back into this pocket-sized city, with its fast food and yuppie pub and its strip mall. But there was a sense of something left unresolved, and it wasn’t just the full and sworn statements he had yet to give. It was mixed somewhere in the faces and the conversations that had flowed at and around him in the strange little settlement under that big mountain. There were conversations yet to be had and faces yet to be met, it seemed, and it was a weird and unsettling notion that nagged him even as he shook it off, finished a second beer, and bobbed his head to the music.

      Whatever.

      He had picked up a pile of mail from his box in the lobby, and he sat on the sofa and sorted through it. Most of it was junk and flew into the waste bin. Some bills to set aside and deal with later. There was also one slim envelope from Kate, which he looked at in wonder. She still wrote. After all his cold shouldering.

      When he was in rehab, he’d refused to see her because his face was skewed and bruised, and he drooled when he spoke. He’d sent her a note saying the accident made them strangers, so she’d better delete his number from her list, find someone else. Even after his face straightened out and he learned to control his tongue, he knew he was far from fixed, and wouldn’t see her. He returned home, and since he’d been battling the RCMP to keep his job, he’d been in no mood to see her then either. So “just go” were the exact words he used at his apartment door as she stood there with a bottle of wine in her hand. He’d been blunt. “Don’t call, don’t write. When I’m good again, I’ll be in touch.”

      The letter he held now was proof she just didn’t get it.

      He went to add it to her other three envelopes he’d received since arriving in Smithers, stored away in a shoebox on the shelf, but it occurred to him that things had shifted again, and the faint hope of Kate was no longer even faint. He tapped all four envelopes on the counter until they were nicely square with each other, hesitated once more, and tore them in half. It hurt, but in a good way, he told himself, as he dropped the tatters in the wastebasket with the other junk mail. It was just another lightening of the load.

      * * *

      The old man named Willy was looking at the photographs still up on the bulletin board in the case room when Leith came looking for him. The photograph he seemed most interested in was that of Frank Law, blown up from a snapshot to show his handsome, smiling face. Frank’s front tooth was chipped, but otherwise his teeth were straight and white. And ask any local girl, she’d say the damage only added to his charms.

      Leith said, “Sir, sorry, but this room —”

      And Willy said, “Where has his girl gone?”

      Leith stood next to him and looked at the picture of Frank. Posted within inches was the photo of Kiera, but Willy didn’t seem interested in her, which didn’t mesh with the question he’d just asked.

      “She hasn’t been found,” Leith told him. “We’re still looking. We’ll never stop looking.”

      Willy nodded, still studying Frank.

      Leith frowned. Maybe the old guy was blindish. He put his finger under Kiera’s picture and said, “D’you know her, sir? Ever met her in person?”

      Willy looked at him and at the photo he was indicating. He looked harder at the picture and said, “Nope.”

      “She’s the singer who went missing. Kiera Rilkoff?”

      “Yes, yes.” Willy nodded in recognition at the name. “It’s a sad story.”

      There was still something off-key with this whole exchange. “She’s Frank’s girl. You know that, right?”

      Willy grinned. “He got a lot of girls.”

      “Hey?”

      Willy stopped grinning and said something in his native tongue, but only to himself.

      Leith tried for the unequivocal approach. “You asked about his girl. You mean her?” His finger was on Kiera’s picture again.

      “No,” Willy said. “The Laxgibuu. Wolf House. Bilaam is her name. The singer.”

      Leith puffed out a breath. What he needed was a translator for this translator. Willy appeared to be searching his mind too, and finally he said, “Charles West. Bilaam. His girl. Never came back to finish up. I ask around, nobody know.”

      “Charlie?” Leith said.

      Willy nodded and smiled. “Charlie.”

      Leith nodded now, relieved that they were finally getting somewhere. “Charlie West went back to Dease Lake. That’s where she’s from.”

      “From Gitlakdamix,” Willy said, correcting him. “New Aiyansh. Whole family went up to Dease. They follow the jobs, eh. Mom and dad died. Car accident, you know? Horrible. Sad.”

      “Right, okay. So you know her well, Charlie? What makes you say she’s Frank’s girl?”

      “She come by with this boy, to the school. Frank, he wants to see too.”

      “See what?”

      Willy, so brief till now, suddenly spouted off at length. “Come to see her sing her own words. I teach her the words. She grow up away from all what made her, you know? Lost it all, but they’re coming back. I am bringing them back to her.”

      To Leith this was becoming one big, irrelevant headache. Rob Law’s ex-fiancée was taking language lessons, or singing lessons, or find-your-roots lessons, or some combination, from this old guy, and she had taken Frank with her to one of their sessions because he was interested, and the old guy assumed they were a couple. So what? “When was this that she came by with Frank for lessons?”

      Willy said it was late last summer. September. He nodded at his memories. “Good singer. Smart. I hope she comes back and finishes up. Her music is fine and good things. You give me her phone number, hey? And I will call her. Maybe she does not understand that I will be gone soon. And then so will her songs be gone.”

      Leith went to the files and found the phone number for Charlie West in Dease Lake to give to the old teacher of the old language.

      And that would have been the end of it, but the next morning he encountered by chance Willy in the Super 8’s diner and asked him if he’d talked to Charlie, and Willy told him no, he’d talked to Charlie’s sister, and the sister said Charlie had never made it home.

      Which was puzzling and worrisome. Leith didn’t want to get into another painstaking back-and-forth with the old man, so he went across to the office and dug up the file once more. He looked at Spacey’s transcription of her call to Dease some seven days ago.

      Q: Ms. West, you lived with Robert Law down here in Kispiox and his brothers Frank and Leonard 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.

      Charlie was a nickname. Her real name, as on Spacey’s notes, was Charlene. Wasn’t it? Well, wasn’t it? If there was a sister, could the nickname be some kind of … hell, no, that was impossible. He grimaced. Knowing the impossible was often called shit happens, he made some calls himself and learned with dismay that, yes indeed, there had been some gross miscommunication, that Charlene West was Charlie’s sister, one year younger, that Charlie’s legal name was Charlotte, that as far as Dease Lake knew, twenty-year-old Charlotte had gone to live with Rob Law in Kispiox. She hadn’t been home since.

      Why hadn’t Rob corrected the mistake when Leith had brought the issue forward in interrogation? Charlene. He recalled now that Rob had paused, had seemed baffled, but then gone on and let it pass. Maybe the

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