sat in Parker’s vacated spot, wishing to hell he had stopped at McDonald’s for a McMuffin, his original plan. Instead he had unwittingly intercepted a secretive conversation about somebody named Cal, and he knew of only one Cal in the neighbourhood. Worse, the conversation had aborted midsentence, and a wary-eyed stranger named Parker had all but flown off in cloak-and-dagger haste. All of which added up to a big question mark in Leith’s mind. Enough that he said, “Thought I overheard you talking about Dion here. What’s up?”
Before Bosko could answer, the waitress came by. Bosko asked for a refill, and Leith ordered breakfast. The waitress filled their cups and left.
Bosko’s phone was buzzing, but he ignored it. He seemed to be considering Leith, not like someone caught in the act, but in a calm, good-natured way. He wore the usual white shirt, dark suit, and broad, dented-looking tie, solid colour, no pattern. Today the tie was mauve. He said, “Parker’s an old friend of mine. We’re both psychology nuts. We were talking about head injury, case studies, the DSM, all that. I was telling him about Dion’s remarkable recovery.”
“Uh,” Leith said, meaning to say ah.
Bosko’s low voice, which usually carried undertones of inexplicable delight, had come across as oddly flat. Also, Bosko liked to tarry over subjects that interested him, sometimes in a maddening way, but now he hustled the talk away from Parker and the DSM to the lesser topics of weather, traffic, and family.
Which wasn’t too bright, for a cop.
Leith’s breakfast arrived, and Bosko looked as though he would head out. But not quite. He watched Leith trying to knock ketchup from the bottle and said, “I hope things are going well for you, Dave. I’m still congratulating myself for having snagged you away from Prince Rupert. I knew I liked you the day we shook hands. It was just one of those trust-at-first-sight things, you could say. That’s in large part why I got you down here and onto my team. You’ve got solid values.”
“Well, thank you,” Leith said, expecting all this flattery was a lead-in to bad news, compensation in advance.
But it wasn’t. Bosko stood to pull on his coat. He smiled once more, then walked between tables, an oversized figure, out into the little foyer. On his way he checked his cell for all the messages he’d missed, pulled change from a trouser pocket to pay the woman at the till, had a word with her that made her laugh. Then he was out the door, phone to his ear.
Bosko would be checking messages and returning calls as he lay on his deathbed, Leith reflected. A multitasker to the last breath. But what had this all been about?
Alone, he worked on finishing his breakfast. Afterward, his gut ached as if he’d eaten too fast, which he probably had. He had a funny feeling that he had known all along, back in February, those strange days in the Hazeltons. He had seen the nonrelationship between Bosko and Dion progress from very little to nothing at all. As far as Leith could see, the two men had barely looked at or spoken to one another during those two weeks. To the point that it became just a bit weird.
Now he was sure. It wasn’t all in his head. Something was amiss. Dion was in trouble, in a big way, and Bosko was onto it.
His own phone buzzed now, the RCMP-issued BlackBerry. The dispatcher wanted him on the scene of an MVA, which meant either she’d got the wrong Leith or he’d been demoted. He told her he was with GIS, not traffic control. She told him the vehicle was registered to Lance Liu, and there was a fatality involved. It was all she knew. She gave him the coordinates and left him to figure the rest out for himself.
* * *
At 6:45, Dion left the hotel to head in to work. The skies were rosy and clear, and already the temperature was rising toward T-shirt weather. He was not in a T-shirt, but a suit and tie. He worried that the beery stench of the Royal Arms would stick to his clothes. He lifted forearm to nose and sniffed. He could smell nothing nasty in the fabric, but maybe that was because he was immersed in it.
Arriving at work, he learned that Lance Liu’s truck had been found nose-down on the road up to Cypress Bowl. A man matching the description of Liu himself was pinned under the wheels of the truck. Deceased. Doug Paley was on location, and he wanted Dion out there right away.
* * *
Leith’s GPS had got him stuck in traffic, and he didn’t arrive at the scene until sometime past eight. Already the spot on the forested road that climbed up to Cypress Bowl was clogged with emergency vehicles, and officers were directing tourists to slow down but keep moving. Leith drove through the bottleneck, adding his car to the traffic jam.
He found the designated footpath and made his way down a fairly steep slope. It levelled out into a milder incline of long grasses and bushes, ending at a stand of trees — a mix of conifers and deciduous — and the truck in question, a dark-blue Silverado lodged nose-first against a tree. Forensics members searched the grasses in a wide perimeter, or took photographs, or stood in consultation. The truck was barricaded off by tape, and standing somewhat by its rear were Doug Paley and Cal Dion. Leith had a feeling as he approached that much had happened in his absence, that the party was winding down, that he was a fifth wheel rolling up a tad too late to matter.
Paley confirmed it with a twitch of his moustache. “You with Cold Cases now, Dave? Ha. What happened? Get lost?”
“There was an accident on the Upper Levels just inches before the ramp,” Leith said. It was a wild exaggeration, and only half the answer, but he wasn’t about to admit the worst of it — the fifteen minutes of going the wrong way on the wrong ramp, and the fifteen minutes to correct the mistake.
“Could have taken Chippendale,” Dion said. “A few twists and turns, but you cut some clicks.”
“Never go that route,” Paley countered. “Probably get stuck behind some church lady doing ten under the limit.”
“So what, just hit the lights and pass,” Dion said. “The highway’s fine when it goes, deadly when it stops. Chippendale is a good alternate route, is all I’m saying.”
Leith was looking at the tilted Silverado, the gathering of forensic people at its front bumper, and what he could see of the victim. With the body’s position, the tall weeds, the mass of the truck, and so many professionals in the way, about all he could see down on the ground was an outstretched leg in faded denims. “Lance Liu?” he asked Paley.
“That’s what his ID says, and he fits the photo,” Dion answered, faster, sharper, and more on-the-ball than anybody on the planet, apparently.
Leith looked at him. “He was run over by his own truck?”
Dion beckoned, then tramped down to the rear of the Silverado. Leith joined him. Dion gestured up the hill, toward the road some distance away. Here and there forensic members bent and crouched like they’d lost something small but vital in the grasses. “Seems he reversed off the road at quite an angle, overcorrected, and ended up there, where the flag is,” Dion said. “There’s drag marks through the soil like he braked hard and slid, and we think there’s footprints around where the cab would have ended up, but it’s hard to make out with the weeds. We’re thinking he lost control of the vehicle, got out, came down here to the treeline and either sat down or collapsed. There’s no blood trail. Key’s in the ignition, switched to battery mode, truck’s in neutral, brakes off, so it could actually have rolled down and pinned him. He’s suffered some head trauma that doesn’t fit with the vehicle going into the ditch, and like I say, there’s no blood trail, but the injury does look recent enough to fit the timeline. The vehicle shows no sign of rollover,
