LITMIR.BIZ

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      “That hasn’t been crossed off,” Leith admitted.

      “I’ve also heard it said the killer lives right here in the Hazeltons.”

      “That’s possible too.”

      “And he’s responsible for all those missing girls from Prince George to Prince Rupert.”

      “Highly unlikely,” Leith said, and that was true. The profilers had crunched the data, what little there was of it, and concluded the Pickup Killer was not responsible for the atrocities that had plagued Highway 16 for so many years, as yet unsolved. This killer was localized, new to the area, employed in Terrace, maybe, but could live elsewhere. The profilers believed he lived within a two-hour drive of Terrace, which encompassed both the Hazeltons and Prince Rupert. Leith banked more on Prince Rupert, his own home base, but the Hazeltons remained under close observation. The population of the area was scant, and he had probably looked at the name of every male in the area at least once over the last two and a half years. Nobody had jumped out at him or held his attention for long.

      Mercy Blackwood sat silently now, pondering him. He had received nothing of value from her so far and didn’t expect much from his next question either. He said, “I have to ask you, Ms. Blackwood. I’ve been told you were heard arguing with Kiera, on February the fifth, which is eight days before she went missing. I need to know what it was about.”

      She frowned in a worried way, casting her mind back. “Yes, I guess we did raise our voices somewhat.”

      “What was the problem?”

      “Disappointment, clash of ambitions, reality checks. Unhappily, nothing was working. The Vancouver label pulled out because the CD just wasn’t good enough, which I should have known, and I feel bad about that. We’re brainstorming, trying to get back on our feet. My suggestion was a radical change of direction. Kiera didn’t do well in a studio setting, for some reason, and I thought the best route was to try new songs and new lead. A new persona, really. Frank could take lead vocals and Kiera could sing backup. That was my plan, and they both said hell no. So there you go. I wished them luck, said I would hang in through the making of this second demo, and then I would leave them to find their own way from there. And that’s where we stand.”

      Everything she said lined up with Frank’s version so far. Leith said, “Worst case scenario, Kiera doesn’t come back, will you continue working with Frank and the others?”

      “Too soon to say. Frank can go places on his own, if he puts his mind to it, and I’ll work him through it, if that’s what he wants to do. We’ll see.”

      Leith’s notebook told him he’d come to his last query, and it was a touchy one. “D’you have any French in you?” he asked.

      “French,” she echoed. “Me? No. I speak some French, but that’s as far as it goes. Why?”

      “During the argument Kiera called you a frog. I’m wondering why.”

      Her cool grey eyes didn’t leave him for a moment. She was one of those maddening interviewees who kept their emotions tucked neatly away, surprise, anger, and amusement. “Frog,” she echoed. “Wow. I don’t recall that.”

      He said, “Also, you called her a waste of time. Sounds like quite a battle.”

      Now, finally, she showed herself; her brows went up and she almost smiled. “Ah,” she said. “I recall now, yes. I was fed up with her stonewalling all my ideas. I flung up my hands and said she was a perte de temps. She said, what? I translated, waste of time. I guess ‘frog’ was the meanest comeback she could think up on the spot, followed by bitch and cow. Well, I’ve been called worse over the course of my career, working with artists, you know.”

      For the first time she grinned.

      * * *

      Jayne Spacey glanced up, and her face was smooth and sweet. She didn’t look angry, but she was, and even the indoors felt frigid now to Dion. She hated him; he could feel it as he walked up to her at her computer with his apologies. She stopped typing to listen to what he had to say and continued to look smooth and sweet, but the chill kept spreading.

      “I didn’t want to get into the middle of it,” he said. “Sorry.”

      “Well, I must say you have great comedic timing. Shane and Megan couldn’t stop laughing. Sure, I’d like you to go to hell, and you know what? That’s where you’re going, judging by the things I overheard them saying about you.”

      “Who saying?”

      “Those who matter,” she said. “But chin up, baby. I hear security guards are in high demand, and it’s better than minimum wage. No thinking required. Briefing in fifteen, by the way, and the boss has made a note that you’re late. Better have caught up on your reports. She’s a stickler for the twenty-four-hour rule.”

      Those who matter would be Giroux, he knew, and Leith. Or was it Sergeant Bosko from the Lower Mainland, a presence that had bothered him from the start, back at the dinner briefing at the Catalina, when Bosko spoke of his latest posting, North Vancouver, Serious Crimes. What was a man of his stature doing here in the sticks? Just hanging around, helping the locals with a missing persons investigation, just for the hell of it?

      No chance. Sergeant Bosko had bigger things on his mind.

      Dion was back at his own station, a temporary set-up jammed between filing cabinets and a fax machine, and he got to work on his last, overdue report. His time was coming to an end; he could see it approaching like banners of war fluttering on the horizon. At least he could get this report in. Late and full of typos, but better than nothing at all.

      Five

      Three Voices

      LEITH THOUGHT ABOUT MURDER and its aftermath, all the damage done. There were the victims themselves; that went without saying. Then there were those left behind, their lives forever bent out of shape. The family of the killer, also in tatters. There were the cops, working night and day and getting ulcers. Like himself. Last October, back in Prince Rupert, stomach pains had sent him first to the doctor, and then, for the first time in his life, to a counsellor.

      He hated being sent for counselling. He didn’t believe that any external advice could fix any internal problem of any healthy man. He didn’t like being told how to breathe, how to think, how to relax. As he’d said to Alison afterward, what a stinking bunch of hogwash. To avoid a return visit to the shrink, he’d determined not to get another ulcer, and so far hadn’t.

      This gloomy afternoon, sitting eating lunch in Giroux’s office, he felt something gnawing at his gut again, and it wasn’t just all the takeout he’d been downing lately; it was the proliferation of trucks in the north.

      All eyes were open for reports of suspicious pickups, but every other person drove a pickup, and with a little imagination, every other person could look suspicious. A map lay before him, in his mind the constellation of burial sites and the voices of three women telling him what they’d been through as their time ran out. Joanne Crow, the last known victim, had the most to say. This evil man raped me, held me captive for days, bound and gagged me, starved me and let me freeze. Look at my hands and toes and nose and cheeks, destroyed by frostbite. He didn’t even have the heart to put me out of my misery. I did not go easily.

      That was the big thing to consider, the evidence of escalation of this man’s tormenting, again as whispered by the dead. The first killing had been vicious but relatively swift. Abduction, rape, and strangulation. The second had been kept alive for maybe two days, possibly in a house, possibly in a vehicle, but most likely a shed with rotting floors, according to trace evidence. The third, Joanne, had endured at least a week before exhaustion and the elements got her. There had been no rotted wood fibres found embedded in her wounds. She had died in her zap-strap handcuffs and been dumped in the mud, somewhat farther to the north from Terrace than the first two.

      If the killer had taken to keeping his victims captive, it followed there was a good chance that

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