being down and out, needing a vehicle, and Leith reminded him of the peril he faced. Blair began to tire, to roll his eyes, stammer, and contradict himself. He didn’t have the advantage of pen and paper, and Leith did. Leith cross-referenced the lies and threw them back at the suspect until the suspect became trapped in confusion, and his facial muscles softened. Andy Blair could see a jail cell in his future, either way he jumped. The sooner he jumped, the shorter the jail time, he would be thinking now.
Leith used the moment and asked it again. “You had an idea what he was using those trucks for, didn’t you?”
“Not till lately,” Blair said, barely a mumble now. “Lately, it occurred to me. But I thought, no, couldn’t be. Not John. He’s a nice, quiet guy. Friendly like hell.”
“But the timelines bothered you.”
Blair nodded. “He said it was for drug runs down to George and back. Didn’t want to use his own vehicle. So he took trucks off the lot.”
“What did you get in return?”
“Bit of weed. Recreational use only.”
“Weed?” Leith said. “Really? Weed’s cheap, and you can get it anywhere. What did you get in return, Andy? You want me to repeat those warnings for you?”
Blair nodded again. “Coke. A smidge, enough to share with a friend or two, no charge. Personal use only. But it was good stuff, and I believed him a hundred percent, that that’s all he used the trucks for, and as far as I knew, he was only getting it for personal use too.”
Leith believed that Blair knew the trucks were used for killing, at least toward the end. But he’d barricaded himself in with indecision, and if once the charges might have been dropped altogether, they now would stick hard. “He borrowed trucks three times, didn’t he?”
Blair began to sniffle a bit and wipe his eyes. Not for the dead girls, Leith thought. Not a tear for them. “Spit it out, Andy.”
Blair spat it out. “It was March, year before last, when he took out the shitty Tacoma. Then a couple times last winter, different vehicles, and I could give you more exact dates if I could look at my calendar.”
“On your phone? Go ahead.”
Blair reached for his pocket and paused, still a charmer, the little creep, even with his eyes wet with self-pity. “You won’t shoot me?”
“I won’t shoot you.”
The car salesman studied the calendar on his phone for some time and was able to give Leith the dates, which he could extrapolate because that’s when he got the free coke, which was when he’d thrown house parties. Three great house parties that aligned with three dead girls to a tee.
Leith felt something other than blood coursing through his veins, some kind of high-octane mix, and he sped up matters, pressing Blair for descriptions of the vehicles, and soon had it scrawled in his notebook, in chronological order: silver Toyota Tacoma, white Chev Silverado, dark blue Nissan, older model.
He took another break to step out and talk to Bosko, who had a report already on John Potter. Bosko handed it over and said the ERT was prepped and ready to hit the road. “He’s a registered gun owner, Dave. Be careful.”
“Everybody in the north is a registered gun owner,” Leith said.
Pacing, he read the report and saw that John Potter was thirty-two years old, an ex-oil field worker from Alberta, moved to the area three years ago, bought a house, not in Terrace but Kitimat, seventy-three kilometres south on Highway 37. He worked off and on for Sherbrooke & Sons Roofing, a local Terrace company. No criminal record. He’d been canvassed, as all men in the area had been, but checked off as okay.
But it was futile to worry about errors and omissions now. What was really great was the piece of paper Leith now held in his hand, which gave him an address, a line of attack, and with pedal to the metal, he and the Emergency Response Team would be out there in no time flat. Half an hour, forty minutes max, they’d have their man in a bag.
* * *
Giroux had ordered Constables Thackray and Dion to accompany her to an event she worried might become a problem. Thackray told her he didn’t see how a candlelight vigil for a pacifist like Kiera Rilkoff could get out of hand, but Giroux told him she’d seen stranger things happen when a bunch of emotional and probably stoned kids got together.
Now it was dusk, and the two constables in uniform stood getting pelted by sleet in the village’s memorial park, down by the little covered stage. Friends and admirers of Kiera took the mic and said a few words about the woman they knew and loved. They sent prayers for her safe return into the drizzle. Music played too, starting with Kiera’s upbeat CD, which hardly set the mood. Giroux had posted herself centrally, solemnly holding a candle, but Dion and Thackray stood at the sidelines with their collars up high against the elements, their hands free. “So we can battle this crazed uprising,” Thackray murmured.
Dion observed the crowd, which numbered about a hundred and fifty, so many faces under-lit by flame. Hardly a bunch of kids, these were a fair mix of old and young, and none of them looked stoned or rowdy. He recognized several from their appearances at the detachment over the last few days. There were Kiera’s parents, looking frozen in place. Lenny Law and Scott Rourke and Evangeline Doyle clustered together near front centre, with the drummer Chad nearby, head bowed. He didn’t see Frank anywhere. Stella the violinist stood to one side of the crowd talking with an individual he didn’t recognize, man or woman he couldn’t tell at this distance. Their conversation looked animated, maybe angry. He asked Thackray who the unknown individual was.
Thackray squinted. “Looks like Jim from the garage,” he said, and squinted harder. The individual was bulked by winter clothes, hood up, but turned more their way so the face was exposed, and Thackray grinned. “No, it’s her. Well, they’re twins, right?”
“Who?”
“Jim and Mercy,” Thackray said. “That’s Mercy. You can tell by the lack of moustache.”
Mercy, Dion thought. That word again. He tried to put it together with recent thoughts, but it didn’t mesh, and it was moments like this he despised what he had become. Fragmented. Unwhole. Next to useless.
Thackray seemed to notice he was struggling and dropped a clue. “She manages the band. Well, did. I’m not sure there’s any band left to manage.”
Dion watched the fiddler Stella and the band manager Mercy, the way they talked. They were trying to be discreet with their argument, he saw. The hand gestures, though angry, were short jabs, then hands jammed back into coat pockets. With their hopes of success trashed, he supposed, no wonder they were angry. Still, this was the time and place for prayers and grieving, not anger and recriminations. Bitching at any vigil was disrespectful. He checked the other faces in the crowd and found them devout, like churchgoers, listening not to a sermon right now but to a rockabilly love song blasting out over the speakers. Many were crying.
A young woman in Sorel boots and bundled in a heavy parka stopped in her passage and handed Dion a glass. There was a tea-light barely glowing within the glass, faintly blue. “For Kiera,” the woman said, and moved on, distributing her candles to all those who stood lightless.
Seven
Up in Smoke
THEY
