LITMIR.BIZ

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the locks on the door. Frank was different, born by a Christian midwife. A good boy. My favourite. The prettiest baby, and smart as a whip. No Tabasco, no spanking, a listener, an angel spreading light into the world. Very talented, very musical, always with a guitar in his hand. He left the day he turned sixteen, and I cried for days. It’s Robert lured him away with alcohol and prostitutes. And then Lenny, my youngest. Lenny is slow in many ways, and such an ugly duckling. Not handsome like Frank. But he did write some nice poems. He wanted to leave with Frank, but I hung on for dear life, went to the government, and the government made him stay. The day he turned sixteen there was nothing I could do to save him, and Frank came by in his pickup and without a word took my youngest from salvation to Hell, and now they are all lost to me. All of them, stolen by sin, and not a word on Christmas or birthdays, and I can tell you that come Easter Roland and I will be kneeling here alone.”

      Dion didn’t doubt it. Something moved in the shadows, and he saw that Roland had stolen back into the room with an object in hand, a pipe, its bone-white bowl carved into a human head. The man held out the pipe to Dion like a gift. Dion looked at the pipe but didn’t take it.

      “I only smoked it once,” Roland said. “Didn’t like it. Don’t smoke, generally. Never did.”

      “Why are you showing me a pipe, sir?”

      Clara said, “It was a gift from Lenny on Roland’s seventieth. On Frank’s sixteenth birthday I made his favourite cake, and I cried rivers. He ate his cake with his bags all packed, and he gave me a hug and walked out the door. My favourite baby boy. A slap in the face. We were a very close-knit family when the boys were growing up. One year we went to Nevada. They loved Nevada, especially Frank. We have pictures of them on packhorses. I’ll show you.”

      She started to rise, but Dion stopped her. “Really, I just need to know, can either of you think of any friends or relatives Leonard might have gone to in the area?”

      Roland answered. “My sister Mabel. Mabel Renfrew. Always very close to the boys.”

      Dion raised his brows at him. “Whereabouts does she live, sir?”

      “Vernon, B.C.”

      Dion wrote it all down, asked for an address, and watched Roland Law’s long, dark face break into a chuckle. “Last known address,” the man said, “Pleasant Valley Cemetery, Vernon.”

      Dion drew a line through Mabel, and Roland went on to contradict everything his wife had just explained about sin and corruption and hostile takeovers. “Don’t know why you’re looking for Lenny. Good boys, all three. Always were.”

      Cap back on, notebook tucked away, Dion thanked them for their time and turned to leave, but Roland had one more nugget to offer. “Maybe they gone up the Dease,” he said. “Lenny and his wife, the injun. That’s where she’s from, far as I know. Dease.”

      Dion looked back at the man. He didn’t want to pursue this. He wanted to run. The room was making him seasick, the grandfather clock banging at his brain. “Pardon, sir? What?”

      “Oh, for god’s sake, that’s Robert,” Clara snapped. “It’s Robert married the Indian lady, not Lenny. Honestly, Rolly, your mind is going in leaps and bounds.”

      Roland swooped both hands downward in go-to-hell anger and left the room. A door down the hall slammed shut. Clara hurried after her husband, and Dion stood alone in the sour, trapped air, listening to the ticking of the clock that he could swear was not keeping time with the rest of the world. And then a distant, muffled argument.

      He saw himself out. The gloomy morning now seemed over-lit, hard on the eyes. He got into his car and began to write out a summary of the disjointed interview in his notebook, but stalled after the bare basics because the rest, it seemed to him, was garbage.

      He’d woken this morning with renewed ambition. Showered and shaved and buffed his boots and went in early, but everything dragged him down, the new computer with the power button he couldn’t locate, the complicated short-term transfer paperwork, and meeting the local constables who met his short greeting with their own. Whatever was left of his waking spirit had been trampled flat by Clara and Roland Law.

      He studied the paragraph he’d written, knowing there was something he was missing. Something he’d heard that he’d meant to follow up on. But his handwriting had gone to ratshit along with all his other skills, and whatever it was had been washed away in the stream of Clara’s words.

      Did it matter, though? The Laws didn’t know where Lenny was, hadn’t seen any of their sons in a while, and even if they had, they wouldn’t know it. He checked his watch and wrote down time of departure, precise to the minute. The time seemed wrong, so he checked it against the dashboard clock and found it was off by several minutes. Just like himself, just like the grandfather clock in the Laws’ living room, his watch was having trouble keeping up.

      * * *

      Two o’clock and the snow was coming down again, big flakes hitting the earth like slow-motion bombs, adding to the mess on the mountainside. Leith was behind the wheel of the SUV, with Sergeant Mike Bosko beside him. They were headed once more up the Bell 3 logging road, first to see the Matax trailhead in the light of day, and second to pay a visit to Rob Law, who wasn’t making it easy for them, keeping to his cut block and returning no calls.

      The drive was as slow and gruelling as it had been the first time up. The light of day made it easier than last night, but the occasional logging truck coming down made it much, much worse, forcing Leith to pull over on the narrow track, as close to the drop-off as he dared, and hold his breath as the truck lurched past. Worse, he had no choice on one occasion but to reverse downhill till he could find a pullout.

      At last they reached the flat spot that was the parking area for the Matax trail, where Kiera’s truck had been found. They left the vehicle and stood looking about. Leith was ready for the cold, as always, in long johns under his jeans, hiking boots, fleece, and storm jacket, hood pulled up against the snow. Bosko was still dressed for a stroll down city streets, in overcoat, baggy black trousers, and Oxfords.

      There was nothing to see here, in Leith’s eyes. The forest had been searched last night, searched again today, and if there were anything to be found, it would have been. Before him stood just another hectare of woods in a hundred thousand hectares that stretched out in every direction, and a gravel road with banks of dirty snow spewed by truck tires. Beyond this clearing for parking there was a dip down, and then a rise toward the Matax trail. Not an inviting hike, by the looks of it, but Renee Giroux had said it got really nice after about an hour’s trek. She’d told him he should try it sometime. In late summer, when the wildflowers were at their best. “No thanks,” he’d answered. He didn’t like hiking — it amounted to nothing but sore feet, sweat, bears, and mosquitos — and even if he did, this place would be forever haunted to him. Even if this case ended well.

      Standing now on the road with no sound but the wind singing in his ears, he was reminded of the absurdity of one of their scenarios. He said, “What are the odds she gets stuck here just as a serial killer is cruising by? This is not the kind of place you’d trawl for victims.”

      “Or, as we discussed last night, it could be he works in a logging outfit up here somewhere, or drives truck,” Bosko said. “A case of the wrong time, wrong place.”

      Or, Leith supposed, the Pickup Killer could have broken his pattern of targeting the unknown and unwanted and become fixated on the exact opposite, this beautiful young singer, loved by everyone. Started following her around. Followed her up the mountain, and then … then what? Gambled that her car would break down and leave her vulnerable?

      Last night the ident section had found the reason for the Isuzu’s engine stall: a dislodged electronic fuel-supply sensor. What they couldn’t say was if it was entropy or sabotage that did it. Taking the sabotage theory to its conclusion, did the killer mess with her Rodeo while it was parked at the Law residence, when the band was inside rehearsing, again gambling that it would die in some remote spot instead of in the local IGA parking lot? Or did he force her to a stop, get her immobilized, and then sabotage her truck

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