for a while there was only the sound of forks and knives hitting china, munching, sipping, and the distant twitter of pop music.
Leith chomped at his burger faster than he should. Down the table, Mike Bosko ate a much healthier salad of some kind and made conversation with Corporal Fairchild, Ident Team Leader, at his side. Constable Dion picked up the first quarter of his Denver and devoured it in two big bites, then closed his eyes and looked ill.
Bosko left his conversation with Fairchild to ask Spacey, if she didn’t mind, about more general background on the band itself. “I’ve heard they’re putting out a CD?”
“Was supposed to come out at Christmas,” Spacey said. “There were some delays, and I’m not sure where that’s at right now. Mercy Blackwood would be the one to talk to, the band’s manager. I’ll set her up for an interview.”
Leith added the name Blackwood to his list of interviewees and listened as Constable Spacey described a barrette she’d found in the snow near where Kiera’s cellphone was found. Both barrette and phone would have to be fingerprinted, and Kiera’s family would be asked to identify the items.
Leith scrubbed the mayo off his mouth and told the team of the critical clue, the body glitter, possibly linking up this disappearance with two of the three Terrace murders. Some discussion followed on the importance of eliminating or confirming the link, then he turned to the cellphone, now Police Exhibit 1, which wouldn’t give up any secrets till he got it unlocked. “Nobody knows her password?” he asked Spacey. “BFF, family, boyfriend?”
“Not so far,” Spacey said.
Bosko said, “And who is her BFF, by the way?”
Corporal Fairchild said, “What the hell is a BFF?”
“Best friends forever in teen-speak,” Spacey told him. “And WTF is what the fuck.”
“Everybody knows what the fuck,” Fairchild said testily.
Spacey ignored him and said to Bosko, “Her BFF would be Frank. She’s got tons of Facebook friends, I know because I checked, but not a lot of real up-close and touch-em people in her life. The band is kind of insular in that way. They stick together.”
Leith was thinking about the cellphone. He told Fairchild, “If you could find out who her provider is—”
“Rogers,” Spacey said. “I checked.”
Leith nodded at her. “Contact Rogers,” he told Fairchild. “Crack the code, get a printout of her call and text history.”
“I’ll get on it,” Fairchild said. “I’ll see what I can do about a data dump, but it may take a while. For starters I can grab some screenshots. How far you want me to go back, Dave?”
Leith suggested a month.
Fairchild put the question out about the Isuzu — which was being scoured for evidence by his team even as they spoke — why it had stalled, whether an engine could be sabotaged without leaving a trace. Leith didn’t know the answer. Nobody did, not even the fountain of knowledge named Bosko. Giroux said she’d ask Jim of Duncan’s Auto Repair; he’d know.
Spacey passed around a snapshot of Kiera Rilkoff and Frank Law. Leith had only glanced at the photo earlier, and he took the time to study it now, Kiera smiling gorgeously at the camera, her boyfriend seated beside her, also smiling. Frank’s smile could be judged gorgeous too, he supposed, if the judge was a young girl.
Frank Law, like Kiera, was white, in his early twenties. He had longish hair, dirty blond, and in the photo he wore a clingy black short-sleeved shirt, a thorny tattoo banding his upper bicep. Leith angled the photograph to Giroux. “Any kind of a record on this guy?”
She nodded. “Pretty minor. Assault, few years back. Got one year probation and a stern eye from the judge is about it.”
“Domestic?”
“No, he pushed a guy. Or punched him, depending on which one of them you believe. The guy fell down. It was just stupid, really, but this guy who fell down was a building inspector. We couldn’t just let it slide. Building inspectors have it rough enough, without letting it be known you can push ’em and get away with it, eh.”
Leith passed the photo sideways to Dion and said to nobody in particular, “Girl like this could have her share of stalkers, right? Even without the celebrity status.”
Across from him Corporal Fairchild added to the thought. “She could have her share of anybody. Maybe she did, and maybe Frank didn’t like it. Why is nobody asking why she was heading up to see his brother?”
The team canvassed the issue, but it entered the realm of conjecture, and Leith, suffering the first pangs of indigestion, didn’t take part. The waitress came by, checking if anyone wanted refills. Nobody wanted more coffee except Giroux, a woman who bragged she only needed four hours’ sleep a night. Constable Dion asked for another Coke and ice, and when he received it and stuck the straw in his mouth, Leith felt obliged to turn to him with a warning, thinly disguised as chummy advice. “You heard the latest on sugar, right? They’ve discovered it makes lab rats stupid.”
He didn’t feel chummy about it at all. He was genuinely concerned about stupidity in the ranks, and this man, he could see at a glance, needed to hold onto as many brain cells as he had left.
Constable Dion set down his glass and gave him a blank stare. “’Scuse me?”
Too late, Leith thought. “Forget it,” he said, and watched Dion do just that, returning to the sandwich like it was some kind of do-or-die challenge. Leith glared at him a moment longer and then told the team, “Tomorrow first thing I’ll talk to Frank out in Kispiox, and if he’s agreeable, I’ll get Forensics in there, the sooner the better.” To Giroux he said, “I wouldn’t mind if you came with me to do the introductions. After Frank, we’ll just have to plough through the rest of the band as fast as we can. I also want to talk to Frank’s brothers, Rob and Lenny. Especially Rob.”
Spacey said, “Getting hold of Rob isn’t easy. He’s a workaholic, spends a lot of nights in the Atco up on the cut block. He’s there now, and I can’t reach him to call him in for an interview. No cell service up there, and his satellite phone’s either down or disconnected.”
“Well, somebody’s gotta go haul him down here, then,” Leith said, hoping it wouldn’t be himself doing the hauling. He wasn’t afraid of Rob Law, but he was afraid of that fucking road, the painful crawl along a precipice, tires thumping over the rough-furrowed snow. Nobody around here seemed much fazed by that particular road, but he was a prairie boy, and verticals just weren’t in his genes.
Fairchild shook his head. “Get him on his trucker chat-channel. Or one of his crew’s. Get the message out that he’s to come and see you or face a warrant. We don’t have time or resources to go chasing our witnesses up mountainsides. Not here, not now.”
“Amen,” Leith said. “I’ll leave it to you, then.”
“No problem,” Fairchild said.
“Well, maybe we can work it into a viewing of the trailhead tomorrow,” Bosko offered, countering Fairchild’s great suggestion in that long-winded, easygoing manner that was starting to grate on Leith. “We could go up and take a look around the crime scene in the light of day, then head up to the cut block,
