about survival. But I imagine your SAR guys have checked the area far and wide with a helicopter and dogs and the works, right?”
Leith said yes, they had, and Stella said in that case she didn’t have a clue. She said that she was glad she’d kept the day job, and now she was done too and was allowed to leave, wishing Dion a good afternoon and ignoring Leith.
A man named Parker Chu came next. Chinese-Canadian, thin and unsmiling, a self-admitted nerd. Parker told Leith he wasn’t friends with Frank or the others, that it was just a job for him doing their sound work. He was employed at the community college some days, teaching computer, but it wasn’t great pay. He was planning to move to Alberta soon as he could pin down a better job.
The band paid him by the hour, he said, though the hours were running thin. He recounted how Frank had called him up Saturday just before one, and he’d gone right over, because work was work, and listened to the tracks, which weren’t tracks at all, but random noises. No, he exaggerated, he said, with a smile. But it was bad. He’d talked it over with Frank, trying to be diplomatic about it, and left within the hour.
Yes, he recalled Frank’s phone pinging, and Frank sending a text moments later. Just one, two at most. He looked kind of peeved as he did it.
Parker left, and before Dion could go out to fetch the next interviewee in line, one was brought to them by Sergeant Giroux. She darkened the doorway with a boy in his late teens at her side, tall and solidly built, his brows bunched into a thundercloud of anger.
“Look who showed up,” she told Leith. “This is Leonard Law, better known as Lenny.”
She left, and the seventeen-year-old took the interviewee’s seat. His brown hair was long at the front and short at the back. He wore skinny black jeans and a bulky black hoody covered in bold white graphics. The hoody looked new, to Dion, and expensive.
“I just got back,” Lenny said, nearly spitting the words at Leith. “And Frank says Kiera’s missing and you guys are looking for me. You think I did something to her, is that it? ’Cause I didn’t do nothing, and I got an alibi to say so, and I want a lawyer, and I want it now.”
Leith opened his mouth, but the boy wasn’t done. “I don’t have to say nothing till I got a lawyer. And I want a real one, not your Legal Aid joke-in-a-suit who can’t get your name right, let alone what you’re supposed to have done.”
Leith said, “Sit down, Leonard — should I call you Leonard or Lenny?”
“You can call me nothing, ’cause I got nothing to say. I get one phone call, right? I think your talking to me before I get my phone call is a breach of my rights, and none of this can be used against me in court, and you know what? This is all you’re getting from me from here on in.” He stood looking combative, mouth turned down and arms crossed tight.
Leith said, “Take it easy. Would you sit down, please?”
The kid uncrossed his arms and dropped hard into the chair.
Leith said, “It’s just we’re talking to everyone who was at the house on Saturday. You’re not being charged with anything. You’re just a witness. Honest.”
Lenny sat, thinking hard. Dion rotated his writing wrist. Leith continued to watch the boy, waiting through the silence as though he knew it wouldn’t last. He was right.
“But I’m not a witness,” Lenny burst out. “You say she’s missing? I didn’t even know it. I was in Prince George. With Tex. I don’t even have a phone, ’cause Rob cut me off, so I was five hours away and didn’t even know you were looking for me.”
“Yeah,” Leith said. “I know.”
The colour was returning to Lenny’s face. He cleared his throat and said, “Sorry.”
“That’s okay,” Leith said.
“So what’s happened to Kiera?”
“We don’t know what happened to Kiera,” Leith told him.
Lenny sat for a moment, staring into nothing, then without warning his face crumpled and he was crying like a frightened child. Dion was glad, because his writing hand was sore as hell, and tears didn’t need transcribing.
* * *
Leith was fried. He shut down the interviews for a time out to talk to his colleagues. He sent Lenny Law on his way and met with Bosko and Giroux in Giroux’s office. The others sat, but he paced. He’d had enough of sitting for a while.
“The kid was mighty defensive,” he said. “You told me he hasn’t been in trouble with the law before.”
Giroux at her desk shook her head. “Hasn’t even lifted a candy bar. But it’s what he grew up in, eh? The three bears were estranged from their parents early on. If you met them you’d know why. So they moved into their big house in the woods and far as I know stay out of trouble. Rob was never caught committing a crime, but probably everyone he was close to as a youngster had done time. And as we know, Frank’s got that assault thing. So if Lenny’s edgy about the police, you can see where he gets it.”
Leith described the boy’s crying jag, which was understandable, maybe, but didn’t quite jibe. “All these people, for some reason I’m having a hard time reading them. Why do I get the feeling they’re holding back?”
Bosko asked, “What did Lenny have to say, once he pulled himself together?”
“Nothing new. He was in his room all morning and left after Kiera was gone. He didn’t witness anything.”
“Did he tell you about Prince George?”
“Not really. Like his brothers said, he goes there a lot. Nothing strange there.”
“Sure,” Bosko said. “Did he give any reason why, here in the communication age, nobody could reach him for two whole days?”
“I did ask him about that. Lenny’s lost his cellphone rights. Tex doesn’t answer his dad’s home phone, as a rule, and it happens he wasn’t picking up his cell either because he was trying to avoid some girl, and he doesn’t have caller ID, so he wasn’t screening either.”
“All of which you’re going to verify with Tex,” Bosko said, a question without a question mark attached.
Leith hadn’t planned on verifying anything except the trip itself, but gave a nod. “Spacey’s tracking him down right now.”
Bosko said to Giroux, “That reminds me, how are you doing for manpower? You have a village to run, and we’ve stolen your troops. Are you getting everything else covered, or should we call for more help?”
“More help would be good,” Giroux said. “We’re down one rookie ’cause this ass slipped in the mud and broke his hand, so he needs a scribe.”
Leith said, “Slipped on the ice and sprained my wrist.”
“However you want to say it, we’re down one guy who’s taking notes for Dave here instead of out doing his own interviews, which is too bad, ’cause there are plenty of minor witnesses on my list that even he could handle.”
“Dion?”
