LITMIR.BIZ

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      “Did any of your crew leave the site between noon, say, and shut-down?”

      “Not that I know.”

      “If they had, would you know it?”

      “Definitely.”

      “Any logging trucks leave or arrive without the usual paperwork?”

      “’Course not.”

      Bosko had one more question, the one that had been put to Frank earlier this morning. “Your brother Lenny, do you know where he is? We can’t seem to find him.”

      “Hey?”

      For the first time, something other than obstinance crossed Rob’s face, a flush of anxiety maybe. Leith took over then. “Frank tells us Lenny’s gone to Prince George with a friend, Tex. But we haven’t been able to track down either of them. Does Lenny generally let you know of his whereabouts?”

      “We don’t always know where he is, no. He’s kind of useless that way.”

      “You seemed startled.”

      “Yeah, I’m startled,” Rob said with anger. “We’re talking about Kiera being seriously missing, maybe dead, and you mention Lenny in the same breath. ’Course I was startled. But no, if Frank says he’s in George then I believe it. Goes there with Tex whenever he can. Tex has half his family down there, so there’s places to stay.”

      “Doesn’t he leave some kind of contact number when he takes off like that, normally?”

      Rob grinned suddenly, and his teeth weren’t great, jumbled and stained. “That’s right, now you mention it. It’s Lenny’s way of giving me the finger. He had a smartphone, loved it more than life itself, but I took it away from him last month. Cost too much. Told him he can have it back when he gets a job. So he decides he’ll take off and not stay in touch. Payback time. Let us worry ourselves to death, see if he cares.”

      Leith watched the alarm fade and knew that Lenny’s payback wasn’t paying back well at all. “So now you’re not worried, then.”

      “He’s seventeen. An adult.”

      “If he needs a job, couldn’t you give him work up here, help bring in the timber? Frank says you need all the help you can get right now.”

      “Over my dead body,” Rob said. “Too dangerous.”

      The two bigger bears watch over baby bear, Leith decided. The brothers were close, cautious, and defensive. Could it be that whatever had happened to Kiera somehow tied in? He said, “In any case, it’s important we talk to Lenny, soon as possible. He was at the house around the time Kiera went missing. You can’t help us out?”

      Rob shook his head. “Can’t. And when you find the prick, tell him to call me, on the double.”

      The men thanked him and left the trailer. “I’m keeping that one on my list for now,” Leith said as they made their way back to the SUV, shortcutting across the clearing. Progress was awkward, the ground chopped by truck tires, frozen into lumps, hollows filled with snow, puddles turned into mini ice rinks.

      “Definitely have to keep our eyes on him,” Bosko agreed, walking in front, talking over his shoulder. “Watch your step, Dave. It’s pretty slick here.”

      Slick for a city slicker, Leith thought, and for a brief moment he enjoyed an image of the big man in front of him losing traction and doing the famous midair northern reel.

      Ha, he thought, and his foot went out from under him.

      Three

      The Three Bears

      COMING BACK FROM THE LITTLE pink house of Clara and Roland Law, Dion crossed paths with Constable Jayne Spacey. She was just heading out to grab a bite, she told him, and invited him along. Of all the people he’d met here in the Hazeltons, Spacey was the friendliest. She would catch his eye, as she did now, and smile, and for the moment he would feel okay. He climbed into the passenger seat of her cruiser and snapped on his seat belt. “Thanks.”

      “Not a lot of choices here, you may have discovered,” she said. “But I’m going to take you somewhere really clas­­sy.” She drove hardly a minute down the highway, passing the Catalina — the food was way too greasy for a girl watching her figure — and stopped at the IGA supermarket. “They actually have some pretty good deli here,” she said as they left the truck. “And a place to sit down. And music.”

      Inside they bought sandwiches and took a table. Spacey asked him about himself, a question he always dreaded but had planned for. He’d been with the RCMP for a year and half, he would tell people in casual conversation, not the ten years he’d actually served. That way he could avoid the crash altogether. Then he’d bulk out his early years of adulthood with vague odd jobs that nobody would care to pursue.

      He gave Spacey the spiel now, and then went on in the brisk and cheerful way he’d been perfecting lately in the privacy of his own room. “Got posted in Smithers last October, and it’s great,” he said. “Nice place, nice people. Love it here.”

      Spacey sized him up for a moment and said, “You’re what, twenty-six, twenty-seven? Kind of late start with the Mounties, isn’t it? But that’s cool. I joined right out of high school. Never done anything else.”

      He was twenty-nine but didn’t say so. He told her it was beautiful here in the north. Strange words for the setting, a brightly lit supermarket deli with Muzak playing and shoppers pushing their carts past. But it was something he’d heard said a lot, how beautiful the north was, and a part of him meant it. Sometimes he found himself staring at the land in disbelief, and maybe it was just that, this wraparound beauty that made him — and by association his problems — small, insignificant, nothing at all. Spacey put down her fork and said, “Bullshit it’s beautiful. It’s a pit. It’s part of the circuit. It’s penance. I can’t wait to get out of here.”

      She told him of her big family back in Canmore, Alberta, and her husband Shane, or ex, to be precise, a cheating creep she was happily divorcing. “He’s still crazy about me, but too bad, schmuck. You’re history.”

      “No second chance?”

      She laughed and shrugged. “I gave him a second chance, but he’s not getting a third. And this time he really blew it, ’cause it was Megan he fooled around with. My best friend. Or was. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine screwing around with your best friend’s husband? I mean, how can you live with yourself?”

      Her words were serious but her expression was careless, and Dion wasn’t sure she wasn’t making it all up. He said, “Shane’s an idiot.”

      She nodded. “As most men are. Are you an idiot, Constable Dion? Don’t answer that, it’s a trick question. And how’s your love life? Got a sweetheart somewhere?”

      The woman who came to his mind’s eye wasn’t Penny, but Kate Ballantyne, whom he had broken off with after the crash. She still wrote to him sometimes, but he didn’t have the nerve to read those letters. And of course the longer he waited, the harder it was to approach them, so they remained in a box on the shelf, three so far. Meanwhile there was the relationship with Penny McKenzie from the post office, which he saw as nothing but a long date going stale. He summed up with, “No, not really.”

      “Tell me another lie,” Spacey said. She reached out to touch a crumb off the side of his mouth, and now they were sitting knee-to-knee, eye-to-eye. She said, “Hey, you’re not religious, are you? Or a teetotaller?”

      Neither religion nor drink had any power over him. He shook his head no to both questions, and Spacey was delighted. “Perfect, ’cause I’m going to take you out tonight, show you the town. Game?”

      He hesitated a moment and said, “If I’m caught drinking and driving, it’ll be the end of my great career.”

      “’Course not. I’m

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