LITMIR.BIZ

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Willy didn’t know. Mostly Frank had just stood around waiting, except for those few words overheard.

      Leith jotted it down, underlined it twice, and finally asked the man, “So did she bring you her CD, as promised?”

      No, she didn’t. Willy never saw her or Frank again. He had one last thing to say, through the translator, as Leith stood to signal the interview was over. “I hope you find her, Bilaam. I’m very worried. She is water.”

      “Water?” Leith asked.

      After some more back and forthing, the translator corrected herself. “Dew. She is a dewdrop.”

      * * *

      Leith needed a break. He had made some calls to arrange for time off, five days in which he would return home to Prince Rupert to recharge, and today was the day. This was also the day Scott Rourke was released from lockup in Smithers.

      Rourke reported in to the Hazelton detachment, where he met with a probation officer and went over the terms of his recognizance. It was a strict one, loaded with conditions, one being to stay clear of the Law residence. He signed his name, gave the PO a piece of his mind — which Leith and everybody else heard — then was let loose, back onto the streets. Giroux stood at her office window, looking out, and laughed. “There he goes,” she said. “Bow-legged old greaseball. I don’t often say this, but that is one scrawny waste of skin.”

      Leith joined her, peering outward. “Who are those guys?”

      “Look vaguely familiar. He’s chatting ’em up pretty good. Must be friends.”

      Two men stood on the sidewalk, one white, one native, both in their late forties, dumpy and on the rough side, truckers or loggers by the looks of it. And she was right, they were chatting with Rourke. The conversation looked friendly. Rourke flapped a hand at the police station, then all three sauntered off toward a beat-up pickup parked at the curb.

      “Should we be worried?” Leith said.

      “About what?” Giroux said.

      “He’s said it himself, he’s got friends far and wide. A network of anarchists. He’ll go into hiding.”

      “Good riddance. Waste of taxpayers’ money, putting him through trial. For what, being a goof?”

      “He tried to kill two people, one of them a police officer. That’s goofy to you, is it?”

      “Public disturbance and careless use of a firearm. I don’t care what Mike says, Rourke wouldn’t have shot anybody up there. He was being, what d’you call it, Shakespearean.”

      “You’re forgetting he nearly bludgeoned a guy to death, Renee?”

      “That was different. It was libido-driven. This was dramatic flair, and our fellow Dion just made it worse. Probably what happened was he startled Rourke’s trigger finger.”

      Leith shrugged irritably. Giroux was the worst to argue with, inflexible, swift and resilient. Still, he tried to implant in his memory the faces of the men who’d wafted Rourke away, in case it came up again later. He did the same with their vehicles as they spat exhaust and tore off onto the adjacent highway, but didn’t catch a single licence plate number in the process. Which meant he didn’t only need reading glasses; pretty soon he’d need distance glasses too. Or like his dad, those godawful bifocals. As much as he loved his dad, the idea of becoming him was pretty damn scary.

      He left instructions for the hunt to continue in his absence and went out to his truck for the long drive home. Normally he’d be whistling a merry tune, heading home after such a grind. But there was nothing to whistle about today. Midday and he was pushing into a dark highway, high beams on against the falling snow, mission far from accomplished.

      * * *

      Leith’s week off was antsy and far from restful. He spent much of his time on the phone with his team, drank too much, slept too little, made love with his wife only once, and barely noticed his daughter toddling about destroying whatever she could get her tiny hands on. He also caught a bad cold. He returned to New Hazelton, drugged and more tired than ever, to pick up the pursuit, the search for Charlie West, still haunted by the notion that Charlie was somehow involved in Kiera’s disappearance, that maybe if he tracked her down, he’d have tracked down the motive, if nothing else.

      Mike Bosko was back in the North Van SCU, re-immersed in big city crime, no doubt, the Hazeltons just a fading memory in his busy mind. Dion was no longer around, which was just plain nice. And Spacey was gone too. Promoted to some more glamorous place, Leith thought, but Giroux told him no, there was no glamour to Spacey’s whereabouts. She was in big trouble, facing some serious allegations. Allegations that Giroux herself had made.

      The news startled Leith, like he’d just learned of a death in the family. “What happened?”

      “We had words. She was having problems in her life. Messy divorce. Her ex filed for a restraining order, and so did his girlfriend, who’s the bartender at the Black Bear you met, Megan. I love Spacey like a daughter, but I see now she’s not looking for a mother. She’s looking for a punching bag. Your life’s out of balance, I told her. She told me to get stuffed, except not so politely.”

      Beating around the bush like this wasn’t Giroux’s way, normally, and neither was looking wounded. “Anyhow,” she said, “I pulled up the East Band issue again, her calling for backup. The timing was so off that I had to get to the bottom of it. She maintained it’s Dion’s fault. I told her I didn’t believe her. And I still don’t, because you know what? When that young man wants to talk, he talks better than you and me. And so I wrote it up. I had to. She said she’d fight it to the end, but she won’t. She’ll see the writing on the wall. She’ll resign.”

      They stood a moment in silence, and it really was like a death in the family. Not some distant aunt, but a beloved cousin. Leith couldn’t help but blame Dion for the loss. And Giroux. He said, “Was it really worth losing a good officer over that? She made a bad judgment call. Didn’t jump to it quite fast enough. You or I might have done the same in the circumstances.”

      Giroux shook her head. “At great expense and difficulty, I pulled in Evangeline Doyle, all the way from Edmonton. What she says fits with Dion’s version, not Spacey’s. It’s not a trivial matter. Spacey lied. She tried to take credit away from Dion and tried to make him look the fool, and in the process she put his life in jeopardy. You can’t turn a blind eye to that kind of behaviour, now, can you?”

      “No, ma’am,” Leith agreed.

      But it still hurt. There was a sense of deconstruction here, now that the group had shrunk to so few familiar faces, and in an odd way, Leith missed all those who were gone. As for the Law boys, Giroux wondered if Frank would be deemed by the circuit judge to be neither a flight risk nor a danger to the public and would be let go on a condition-laden recognizance. It would be good, she said. For a little while at least the three bears would be together in their home in the woods.

      Leith doubted it. Frank might not be a flight risk, but Kiera was still missing, and if her bones lay too close to the surface, somewhere out there in the ever-shrinking snow mass, there was a danger the killer would steal out one night and make sure she was never found.

      Dismantle her, scatter her to the winds. And then how would the poor girl ever rest in peace?

      Fifteen

      Smithers

      NOT ALLOWED BACK TO WORK till he got his doctor’s okay, Dion was learning the fine art of being idle. After a solidly overcast week, he opened the drapes one morning and saw the sky had shed its murk and become a broad, dazzling blue vista over Smithers, shot through with sunlight so sharp it made him wince. The stitches in his side were out, but it still hurt when he inhaled too deeply. When he eventually returned to work, they said he’d be put on light duties for at least a month.

      It seemed to him that if his duties got any lighter he would turn into a puff of smoke and disappear. Two days ago he’d

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