LITMIR.BIZ

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hair, looking different in the context of work. She had given him a friendly wave some minutes ago, and he’d nodded back, but still hadn’t placed her.

      “Afternoon, Stella,” he heard Giroux saying. “Howarya? Just a couple questions.”

      Dion remained standing at his distance and didn’t hear much of their conversation, something about an argument with Mercy at the Catalina. Mercy was a name on the file, but he couldn’t put a face to her, or any significance.

      He consulted his second notebook, the one he kept separate from his duty notebook. This was the one he’d nearly left with Leith by accident, where he listed names from any file he was assigned to, in chart form, to keep them in order. Nadia, his rehab professional, had told him not to be ashamed to keep notes of even the most minor details. Anything to get you through the day. And it worked. On top of field notes, he had reminders of all sorts of crap that hampered his day-to-day living, PIN codes, and basic computer procedures. He even had a necktie-knotting diagram, which was embarrassing. Still needed it once in a while, when he lost the moves and stood with a tie end in each fist, no idea where they were supposed to go next. That was when the panic set in.

      Giroux was done, leaving the bank, so he followed. When they were in the car, breath gusting white, she snapped at him, “Why didn’t you join me? It’s your job to pay attention. You’re a highly intelligent sponge, not a dumbass doorstop.”

      He wasn’t so sure about that, so he couldn’t agree. Even apologizing seemed futile. He busied himself with his seat belt instead.

      Giroux’s voice hardened. “This is off the record, Constable Dion. I worry about you, maybe because you’re First Nations, and I’m Métis, and we’re different creatures from the present governing race, and we have to look out for each other. I want to help you. So how can I put this nicely? There’s something wrong with you. Are you on drugs?”

      He stared at her, trying not to gape. “I’m not First Nations.”

      “Sure you are.”

      “No, ma’am.”

      “You’ve got Cree eyes. Take that as a compliment, if you want.”

      She seemed to mean what she said, and he began to wonder if he was First Nations. Spacey had suggested he was. The old guy in the Super 8 diner had jabbered at him like he was. And now this. And maybe they were all right, and he was wrong. He looked at his own hands and saw the skin was white as ever. His father was white. His mother was maybe on the dark side, from what he could remember, her arms going around him, tight, hair cascading over him, black, on one of her good days, few and far between. He knew nothing else about her, really, and had made no inquiries, and never for a moment had he considered she might be native.

      Giroux said, “So you protest your bloodlines but not the drugs, so what are you on?” Her palm went up, a stop sign. “No, I don’t want to know, because you’re right, I couldn’t let it slide if you fess up. But take this as a serious warning. If you’re on something, get off it. Now.”

      “Ibuprofen,” he said with anger, pointing hard at his own temple. “That’s all. For headaches.” He crimped his mouth. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t sure what you wanted me to do, take notes or guard the door.”

      She blinked at him. “Hover, Constable. Look, listen, analyze. You should know that. I’m not going to be directing your every move. Be interested. Nobody can make you be interested. It’s got to come from within. Are you interested? At all?”

      “Yes, ma’am.”

      She looked unconvinced. Worse, she looked sympathetic. They both gazed forward, and for a moment it felt to Dion like a first date gone wrong, stuck in Lovers’ Lane with nothing to say. Giroux said, “Actually, I owe you an apology, because I know nothing about you, and I should. I’m supposed to review files of all my people, even if they’re short-term, but I didn’t. I’ll get to it sooner or later, probably after you’re gone when it’s too late anyway. Whatever, never mind, doesn’t matter. I’m just trying to tell you something here. It’s a tough job, and if you don’t walk into it with a sure stride, you’ll fall behind. Get me?”

      “Yes, ma’am.”

      “And the fact is this job’s not for everyone. There’s no shame in admitting it’s not your calling, pet. Better sooner than later, is all I’m saying.”

      He looked away, out the passenger window at parking lot, and beyond that to the drab little village smothered in snow.

      Giroux started the car and drove away from the Royal Bank, turning onto yet another small byway that connected the communities. Dion watched homes and ranch land, river and roadside bushes blur by. Nadia had said, “Don’t look too far forward or too far back, one step at a time, sweetie.” That’s what she’d always called him, sweetie, in her South Pacific accent. He’d taken the name at face value until it dawned on him that was what she called everyone she was trying to bend back into shape. Sweetie. It meant nothing, like pet meant nothing from Giroux.

      She was sharing her thoughts again as she drove along, maybe because she wasn’t giving up on him so easy, but more likely because she was in the habit of talking to herself aloud. “Poor Kiera, if that sick freak from Terrace got his hands on her. At least now we have something to work with, hey?”

      Dion turned her way and tried to sound smart, not with the usual yes ma’am but a full sentence, complete with theory attached. “The pickup sighting, right. Black glass, that should narrow it down. In fact —” he said, and the words were knocked from his head as the world went into a skid. He grabbed for the dashboard, heart slamming, and found that instead of slithering into the second catastrophic collision in his life the car was idling safely at the side of the road.

      “Damn,” Giroux said. “I forgot all about them. The photos.”

      Without explanation, she carved a U-turn on the frosty asphalt and headed back the way they had come.

      “It was inadvertent,” she said, not so much to Dion as to the windshield, which wasn’t clearing properly, fogged at the edges. “They were right there on the counter by the coffee maker, and I wanted to ask Frank if I could look at ’em, because maybe they were from the day in question. But I put ’em in my pocket and forgot.”

      They crossed the frightening chasm bridge to an area Dion was familiar with, the road to Scottie Rourke’s trailer, but turned instead down somebody’s driveway, where Giroux slowed to a crawl, for it was barely a lane tunnelling through branches. A minute later, no house in sight, she stopped the car and let it rumble on standby. Here she sat rock still, hands on the wheel, looking up. Dion followed her stare at the clouded sky, chopped by branches. The branches were fine, pale and leafless. Giroux said, “Well, since I have ’em, might as well take a quick look. Hand me my bag there, would you?”

      He watched her draw a white drug-store envelope from the handbag, about six inches by eight, and from it she brought a thin stack of what he saw as glossy photographs. “Who does the snapshot thing these days, with all your digital slideshows and whatnot?” Giroux asked herself. “Nobody but my Aunt Jean and the three bears, I guess. They’re probably Lenny’s, actually. He’s the sentimental one in the family. The reader of books, the poet. The historian.” She shuffled through the pictures, shaking her head, giving a brief running narrative. “Nope, nope, not even from winter, obviously. There’s Kiera. What a pretty smile she’s got, hey?”

      She showed him the picture, but too fast for Dion to absorb, and kept shuffling.

      Excluded, he sat waiting. Out the side window, high up in the endless grey, a hawk of some kind wheeled in a slow drift out of sight. The Chev had settled into waiting mode and purred quietly. “These are from the summer,” Giroux said. “Rob with his new truck, looking like a proud dad. Frank jumping in the river. Kiera again.” She paused on a photograph and said, “Who’s this? Don’t know this girl at all.”

      She angled the shot at Dion, and he caught a glimpse of a young woman in an ice-blue shirt, native, the young woman from the fall

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