than ever to departure and shook his head. “Even if you look into transferring me, it’ll take too long to happen. I’m going to have to quit.”
Bosko sat back in his chair and gently swivelled. Finally he sat forward again with a new idea. “Dave’s heading over to Calgary tomorrow morning, and he could probably use some company. How about you go with him? Use the time away to think it through. And talk to him. He’s got a good ear and a good heart. I’m saying think twice, Cal. I’d really hate to lose you. Is that a deal?”
It wasn’t a deal, but it wasn’t a choice, either. Dion could refuse to go, but that would be cowardly. He could quit on the spot, but he wasn’t ready for such a precipitous drop. Or he could get on the plane and delay ripping his heart out, at least for a day or two. He chose the plane.
Nine
Aweigh
First thing in the morning Dion climbed on the midsized jet to Calgary. He sat next to his travel companion. Leith had the window seat and didn’t seem to want to chat, from the way he exchanged a few lines about the weather, then opened his Maclean’s magazine and stuck his nose in it.
Dion reclined the aisle seat and closed his eyes. Sitting next to David Leith forced him to think about David Leith. They had known each other only months, not the years it felt like. February, in New Hazelton. The Catalina Café was their first introduction, getting briefed on a missing woman as the world outside was muffled in snow. Dion had been posted in Smithers, was new to the north, a stranger in the Hazeltons sent to help in the search. He was in bad shape then, worse than now, and his first interactions with Leith had not gone off well.
He didn’t blame Leith for disliking him. If anything, it was a break. Like Torr’s attitude, it spared them both from having to expend energy on being chummy. But unlike Torr, there were gears turning in Leith’s mind. And he was perceptive. Dion could tell by Leith’s occasional moody and penetrating stares, shot at him like lasers, that he could see through disguises. Which was unsettling.
“Afraid of flying?” Leith asked, still reading.
“No. Are you?”
“No.”
An hour later, as they soared toward the jagged rip line of the Rockies, Leith shut the magazine. He said, “I’ve never lived in biker territory. Started out in Slave Lake, did time in Fort St. John. Didn’t face much big-time gang action. Maybe these days Hells Angels are trying to set up shop there, but not so much back then. Spent the last seven years in Prince Rupert, where we had some HA port crimes, but it wasn’t my department. And that’s it. So not much experience with the two-wheeled species. What about you?”
“I’ve dealt with a few bike gangs. Never head-on. They’re more a Surrey problem, Abbotsford. They seem to like wide open spaces.”
“Huh,” Leith said, after a moment’s thought. Then, “I’m thinking I’ll go at this one straight up, what d’you say? Hell with the friendly approach.”
“Sure,” Dion said. “What did you do before you became a cop?”
Leith looked at him with some mistrust. “Who says I did anything? Maybe I joined the force straight out of school.”
“Maybe you did. But I doubt it.”
“Okay, sure. I worked a few years first.”
“In construction,” Dion said.
Leith lowered a brow. “That’s pretty much it.”
“Till you were thirty, then joined up.”
“Twenty-eight. Also pretty close. How d’you figure?”
“It’s easy. I did the math. Two postings, averaging four years each, then seven in Prince Rupert, that’s fifteen years. And you’re about forty-five, so you joined up around thirty. Which is kind of late.”
“I’m forty-four. But how do you figure construction? For all you know I was an accountant.”
Dion laughed. “No way you were an accountant. You’re like me, not the academic type. But you’re hard working, so you probably got a job straight out of school. Best job guys can get straight out of school is in the construction industry. But you felt there was more to life than bending nails. You wanted to make the world a better place. So you joined up.”
Leith gave him a smile, then looked out the window and downward. “Look at all that range,” he said, but more to himself. Then he went back to his magazine.
* * *
They had lunch with some Calgarian police officers, more social than business. Dion enjoyed the neutrality of it, and wondered if he should try for a transfer eastward instead of north. He and Leith then spent the afternoon in an interview room talking to Phillip Prince. Physically, Prince wasn’t overwhelming, but he was a bully, complete with bully tattoos, bully facial hair, and bully attitude. Leith started out by asking him what he had against Lance Liu.
“What d’you mean?” Prince said.
“People have been telling me you wanted to kill the guy. What was the gripe? How’d he step on your toes?”
Prince’s face knotted defensively. “The fuck you talking about?”
Dion saw it coming, the usual let’s-get-acquainted song and dance, and zoned out. It went on for about an hour, as he noted on his watch, before the talk became substantive, and in bits and pieces dense with obscenities, Prince told the story.
It turned out that in Prince’s mind, Lance Liu was a clumsy motherfucking spark plug whose truck, while backing out of the driveway, had knocked over Prince’s custom Harley Wide Glide. Liu and Prince weren’t friends or associates, had never met before that day, were just thrown together by that one twist of bad fucking luck. Liu had been hired for an electric panel upgrade at the Prince home, that’s all. He’d put in his hours and was done for the day, and departed. Prince was popping a Budweiser, heard a crash, ran outside, and after a bit of a fistfight, the two men had settled, off the books. Liu went away with a bunch of death threats thrown at his back, but he got off lucky. Prince used the settlement to repair his bike, but he was never happy with the machine after that. “It’s just not fuckin’ the same,” he said. “When you fuckin’ go over one fuckin’ ten, something fuckin’ rattles.”
“So stay under one ten,” Leith said. “Anything over, you’re breaking the fuckin’ limit.”
“You’re a fuckin’ cunt,” Prince said.
Next Leith put to Prince that Prince had hopped on his bike last week, driven to B.C., and wiped out the whole Liu family, all over one damned rattle. The accusation nearly popped a vein in Prince’s temple, and on that note the interview ended.
* * *
They were put up in two rooms on the fourth floor of the Holiday Inn. Dion unloaded his travel bag. He had a shower, then took time by the big window to admire the view. He saw a flattened version of urban sprawl, lit up as far as the eye could see, and imagined living here, not as an RCMP officer, but a city detective. Because that was definitely an option.
When his watch beeped nine, he closed the blinds. He went downstairs, as agreed,
