LITMIR.BIZ

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grumbled.

      Giroux gave him a sour look. “How about you? About time you shifted your weight.”

      Leith was fit enough, just barely, but desperately didn’t want to run that trail. He said, “One of the constables, then. Thackray.”

      “I told you, Thackray can’t run.”

      Leith’s mood was starting a dangerous downhill slide. Maybe it was the fact that Spacey had been wooed away by Mike Bosko, while he hadn’t even been courted. Maybe it was distrust of Bosko’s weird agenda. More likely it was just the threat of having to run up a mountainside in the pouring rain. He raised his voice. “What d’you mean Thackray can’t run? He’s a cop. He’s got to be able to run. It’s a prerequisite.”

      “And Ecton’s been working all night,” Giroux went on, ignoring him. “Lynn Daniels couldn’t compete with Rob Law any better than me. Well, a bit better. Augie’s on another file that requires his undivided attention, and my other two are testifying in Prince George as we speak.”

      There were half a dozen others that she and Leith ran through before he gave up. They were out-of-towners, all good candidates, he thought. But Giroux seemed to think it unnecessary to pull them from their tasks when a perfectly good David Leith was going to be sitting around twiddling his thumbs all day.

      He looked at the sleety grey window and saw himself slogging along at two thousand metres above sea level with a stopwatch. Exercise was not his thing these days, and so what he if was looking more solid than ten years ago? Alison said it looked good on him, and he agreed.

      Giroux said, “Don’t mope. You’re not our last resort. Constable Dion can do it.”

      “Dion cannot do it,” Leith snapped. “He’ll fall and break his neck. And while he’s at it, he’ll cause an avalanche that’ll wipe out your precious village.”

      But the Queen of the Hazeltons only nodded, a mule at heart. “He can do it. And he will. After he and I have a little talk.”

      Leith considered her stubborn face and considered the menace of Dion, and sighed. “No. I’ll talk to him.”

      * * *

      In civilian clothes, jeans and sweatshirt, boots and leather, Dion stepped into Giroux’s office, finding not Giroux but Constable Leith standing by the window, his back to the outdoors. He looked more tired than usual, and pissed off in advance. “Weren’t you told you’re back on duty?” he asked, eying Dion’s well-worn black jeans and leather car coat that said loud and clear I’m not here to work.

      “It’s probably not your choice to make,” Dion said, sounding cool and firm, because he’d thought this out, every word planned in advance. “It’s probably mine.”

      David Leith had only three expressions as Dion had counted them: fed up, indifferent, or angry. He looked the first right now. “I see,” he said. “Quitting, are you?”

      “I’m not quitting, but I’m leaving,” Dion said, and then an unexpected surge of emotion swept him badly off script. “… and I don’t know why. How did I mess up? Filed a few late reports? Got pushed and pushed back? Forgot to kowtow?”

      “You screwed up every task you got, that’s what,” Leith said.

      Dion bared his teeth and stepped forward. “Like what?”

      The answer came at him in a near shout. “You really want me to count ’em off for you?” Leith tried to count it off on his fingers. “Shoddy paperwork, punctuality issues, snotty attitude. Insubordination. How about assaulting a fellow officer?”

      All of it was true, and Dion felt his metabolism rising. “I’m not like this,” he told Leith, hating the sound of his own voice, shaky and maybe insane. “I’m good. I’m better than you and everyone else here put together. I put in years of blood, sweat, and tears, and I got places. Look at my service record, then you go ahead and put my failures on a chart, put ’em against my accomplishments, you’ll see what I am.” He poked himself violently on the chest. “I’m the best. I’m down right now, but I was getting up, not with your help or anybody else’s. If you couldn’t see that, you’re a worse fucking detective than I even thought.”

      He stopped, half blind with indignation, and got his bearings. He saw the vague outline of the man he was shouting at, who looked pale and bruised. “Right,” Leith said. “I get it. You didn’t get coddled like you wanted. So what are you waiting for? There’s the door.”

      “I’m going,” Dion said, and looked sideways at the open doorway. His eyes were clouded with inner heat, and the door seemed murky and distant, a challenge to reach.

      A moment passed, and Leith said, “I may be a lousy detective, but even I can see you’re not. Or did I get that wrong too?”

      The room came into focus, but it shimmered and glitched. Past Leith were maps on the walls, the window looking out on New Hazelton, the flowering cactus on the sill, the desk with its clutter. Dion felt the breath socked right out of him. He moved toward the door and stalled again. From the corner of his eye he saw Leith had turned to face the window and was looking out, and he was speaking now matter-of-factly. The words were strange and incongruous in the moment, halting Dion in his tracks. “As you’re in no big rush, I might have a job for you. Come here.”

      Dion joined him at the window. He followed Leith’s gaze outside to the bleak scenery, the pelting rain.

      “That trail you walked yesterday with Spacey,” Leith said. “She can’t time it now because she’s sick. You have to go as fast as you can and log it for time and distance. Pretend you’re a desperate man, not a moment to lose. Can you do that?”

      “What?”

      Leith laid out the details of the mission. “Sergeant Giroux says she’s got a pedometer that’ll do both measurements,” he finished. “So you’ll use that. Spacey’s got the path all flagged out in pink ribbons, so it’s just a matter of following ’em all the way to the Matax trailhead, making note of the time, and doing a fast return trip. Fast, but without breaking your neck. Ignore the blue and the green ribbons. They’re dead ends. Stick with the pink. Think you can manage that?”

      “Of course I can manage that,” Dion said. “But why should I?”

      “Because you couldn’t walk out that door,” Leith said, losing patience again. “Because you have something to prove, and here’s your chance. And believe me, it’s your very last.”

      Dion burst into scornful laughter, because he wasn’t that much of a fool. “I get it. Give me the dirty job nobody else wants to do and dress it up like a big favour.”

      “Is that a no?”

      Dion snorted. He looked again at the rain, and his first instinct of point-blank refusal was already complicated by a stronger desire to take on the challenge. A minute dragged by, and he knew that point-blank refusals had to be made point blank, not sometime later. He sniffed, and tried to match Leith’s irritation with his own. “How much time did he have to get there and back?”

      “Fifty-five minutes between loading slips. Anything else?”

      There was something else, but it was touchy. “That thing you mentioned, is it easy to use?”

      “Thing?” Leith said.

      Dion narrowed his eyes at him. “For measuring distance.”

      “Oh, the pedometer? Easy as a wristwatch. Hang on.”

      Leith left the room and came back with the gadget. Dion paled as he took it, looking at its LCD display, numbers blinking at him as he thumbed one button then the other. He thought of his new Timex that beeped at him at odd moments throughout the day, and even with instructions he couldn’t figure out why, or how to mute it, or how to make it beep when he needed it to. This was a hurdle he didn’t need right now. But no sweat. He’d just go on the Internet when Leith wasn’t looking. There was

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