LITMIR.BIZ

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could hear the throaty roar of the river and the clack and thud of rocks in its depth, shifted by the current. The river had muscle, and resolve. Nothing would stop it getting to where it wanted to go.

      He sighed and looked down, pushed back the cuff of his jacket, and looked at the face of his watch, knowing what he’d see. Not quite an hour ago he had adjusted its hands as he waited for his deli dinner to be wrapped and bagged. The watch told him forty-five minutes had passed. With sinking heart he checked it against his phone, and there was the living proof. The watch was off by seven minutes, and Scott Rourke had failed in keeping it alive, and so would the greatest surgeon in the world, and what good was a watch that couldn’t keep time?

      The light was fading fast, and Dion was alone. He unstrapped the Smiths. Down by the edge of the water he coiled back his arm and released with a hoarse shout of rage. The watch arced out and down, into an open patch of water and disappeared.

      He stood a moment longer and then grabbed up the deli bag and walked back through light forest and across the wild-grass fields and up the steep four-by-four trail to his car.

      Having no watch, and not wanting to be always checking his phone for the time, he drove to the drug store in Old Hazelton, stepped into the store, and spun the watch rack for a while, choosing a black plastic Timex with LCD display and backlighting. Water-resistant up to two hundred metres, it said, and it had a one-year warranty.

      The watch cost him $49.99, plus GST, a blowout special. He drew out his wallet and chanced to look around and meet the stare of the woman in line behind him. She was tall and solid and pale, bundled in a long, puffy parka and fluffy pink scarf. Her hair was long, almost white-blond, her arms loaded with a supersized pack of Charmin TP, and it took him a moment to place her as Stella Marshall, the fiddler in the band.

      “Well, hey,” she said. “Just the man I wanted to talk to.”

      He nodded hello, found his debit card, gave it to the teller. When he was handed the receipt, the fiddler said, “Don’t run off, now. I’ll just pay for this stuff and be with you in a sec.”

      Darkness had fallen by now. He waited outside by his cruiser, removing the packaging of the Timex. He still hadn’t figured out how to set it to the correct time when Marshall approached. She threw the TP into the back seat of a beat-up red Sunbird and came over to him, saying, “Here, let me.”

      She set the time in a few moves and gave it back to him. He thanked her and strapped it on. He tested the backlight button and pretended to be impressed. She said, “Now you owe me one. You can start by telling me what’s going on. Why are you charging him? What proof do you have? Tell me that.”

      The instructions from the early morning briefing were simple. Frank was being arrested. If approached by the public with questions about the arrest, the questioner was to be directed to the officers in charge, Giroux or Bosko or Leith. That didn’t mean Dion couldn’t chat with people who had information to offer, and he probably should, and probably would have, if there had been any steel left in him. But there wasn’t. “I’m just a temp,” he said. “You’ll have to go down to the detachment and talk to somebody in charge. Or I can give you the number.”

      Out in the open parking lot, the air was icy cold. Marshall’s long hair and pink scarf took turns lifting then plastering across her face. She elbowed the tangles away and pointed across the road to a fish and chip joint that looked closed, not least because of the flip-around sign that was flipped around to closed. “Let’s go sit down before we freeze to death. I have to tell you something, and it’s a matter of life and death.”

      “Like I said —”

      “And like I said, I have something to tell you, and you’re going to listen. That’s your job, right? To listen to the good citizens of the world?”

      “I think they’re closed,” he said.

      “They’re not closed, just stupid.”

      They crossed the road and stepped into the little restaurant. The doorbell tinkled, but nobody emerged. A radio was playing on a pop station. Marshall turned the sign around to open then went behind the counter and poured two cups of coffee. She brought them around and ordered Dion to sit. Not there. There. He sat in the booth she’d chosen, and she sat across from him. She said, “They actually serve really good fish and chips, if you can catch ’em. Now, get out your notebook and write this down.”

      He brought out his duty notebook, found the first blank page, and wrote down the date and time. Marshall said, “He didn’t do it. Write that down.”

      He wrote down nothing. He said, “What d’you have to tell me, Ms. Marshall?”

      She sipped her coffee in silence for a minute, watching him watching her. She spoke softly. “Please call me Stella. Say it. Stella. It’s not so hard.”

      “I told you, and I mean it, I’m not the right person to be talking to.” He took the cellphone from his jacket’s breast pocket and showed it to her. “Here, I can put you in touch with the office right now, and you can arrange to talk to someone who can be more helpful.”

      “I don’t want to talk to someone more helpful,” Stella Marshall said. “Giroux is a nasty little beastie, and those two goons she’s got running around asking questions, I don’t like them at all. I like you. You’re like this spectacular angel-being come out of the blue.”

      “Well, thank you. But —”

      “I’m not saying that to be nice. It’s just the truth. You’re very uneasy, I can tell. Like me. We’re akin that way. Well, I have no excuse, I was born antsy. But you? You have every right to be uneasy, when you come flapping down expecting sunlight and butterflies, and instead you drop in the mud. New wings, huh?”

      Uneasy was a wild understatement. He tried again to end this interview that was going from bad to worse, but stopped and was silent, seeing something wrong; it showed in her pale bulgy eyes and the pulsing of the artery at her throat. Her stream of nonsense was some kind of shield. She was afraid.

      She had maybe caught the shift in his demeanour, from shutting her out to listening in, and she seemed to relax, and he wondered if it was all a game with her, and she’d just scored a point. She closed her eyes, and her lashes were white. Not to look at her colourless lashes and not to be duped any further, he looked outside. Past his own reflection, he saw things scuttling and spinning down the street, bits of garbage and clouds of snow crystals racing toward the river.

      When she finally spoke, she was no longer coy and bossy, but calm and direct. “Frank and Kiera split up a few months ago,” she said. “It wasn’t official, and they didn’t want anybody to know. But I knew. I also happen to know it was mutual, and it was amicable. There was no jealousy, no anger, no hostility whatsoever. I also happen to know that she was seeing somebody, secretly, because he was married. So they’d meet in different places.”

      Like the Matax trailhead, he supposed. He got his pen ready. “What’s his name?”

      “That I’m afraid I don’t know.”

      “How do you know all the rest of it?”

      “I’m inquisitive and have great hearing.”

      “And Frank knew about it and was okay with it.”

      “Yes. Like I say, they both wanted to move on.”

      He saw in her eyes that she loved Frank Law. She had to, to be sitting here making up diversionary bullshit like this, cheapest trick in the book. Unbelievable. He paraphrased her information into his notebook and snapped it shut. “Okay. I’ll pass this on, and somebody will probably be contacting you for a full statement.”

      “Oh my god,” she said, dully. He couldn’t interpret the remark, nor would he pursue it. He watched her heave a theatrical sigh and slump back, maybe disgusted with him, or maybe just depressed. “Yeah, okay,” she said. “Thanks for listening. Take care.”

      He put money on the table and left, driving back to the Hazelton detachment.

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