and said, “Your relationship with Kiera. In your mind it’s a little more than just friends, isn’t it? You’ve got ideas about you and her. Fantasies.”
Rourke straightened in indignation. “Fantasies? Me? I’m old enough to be her grandfather.”
“Ever heard the term ‘dirty old man’?”
“Ever heard the term libel action? Because, sir, I’m just itchin’ —”
“All I asked you,” Leith pointed out, “is if you’ve ever heard the term. What were you doing Saturday?”
“Nothing. I worked on my projects. Fixing things.”
“Anybody with you?”
“A friend.”
“Name.”
“Evangeline Doyle.”
“Contact information?”
“She lives with me, so get it from your file.”
Leith gave Dion a nod to flag the name. “Anything else?”
“When I heard about Kiera, I went up the mountain and searched it high and low, doing your guys’s job for you, which is just plain hair-brained, ’cause that mountain should have been turned inside out on that first night, not by a bunch of amateurs, but by a bunch of cops who could have maybe found a clue or two before it got destroyed, because guess what, there’s a murderer at large. But no, I guess you got your protocols to follow….”
He had plenty more, and Leith argued with him for a while, but mostly he let the man rant. He didn’t like Rourke, a man with a bad criminal record, but for now all he had against him was his own, sorely biased contempt. He watched Rourke’s mobile and badly scarred face, the rolled-up sleeves, the scrappy hands, oil-blackened and rough, and the muscled arms flexing with every angry word. There was a rhythm to his words, a drumbeat that was saying more than it was saying. The missing girl wasn’t his only grievance, or the shortcomings of the police service. It was something bigger and meaner, and it was wounded, and just as Leith was getting a sense of what it might be, Rourke seemed to short out, tossed his hands one last time, and said he was bloody done here.
Leith said, “Glad to hear it. Thank you, sir, for your time. And do yourself a favour, lose the feather. Next cop you meet might not be so nice.”
“I got Mohawk in my blood.”
“Good for you.”
He watched Rourke leave and then smiled briefly at Dion, who was already clearing up to leave. “Got all that?”
Leith wasn’t a great smiler, never had been, but he thought he’d give the rookie a chance. If he could make contact, find something of value, some tiny glimmer of intelligence, he could maybe start on the road to positive mentoring.
In the next instant, he wished he hadn’t bothered, as Dion nearly stumbled in his haste to rise and said sharply, “No, I didn’t get all that.” He didn’t look well, his pale face flushed, his hair sweaty and spiked, dark rings under his flashing, angry eyes, and for the first time he had plenty to say. “Nobody could get all that. You let your witness off the leash, throw sticks and watch him run, just for the fun of it, and you expect me to get all that?” He removed a tatty duty notebook from his pocket and flipped it across the desk at Leith, who was still staring at him in dumb surprise. “Read it, if you want, circle all the mistakes, and send me to hell, if you want. Frankly, I don’t give a shit.”
He strode out, leaving behind the little spiral notebook in its leather case.
* * *
“Hell,” Dion said again, hands linked behind his neck as if to save himself from toppling backward. From his second-floor motel room window he could see a volcano -like mountain rising up, a dark mass in the night sky, its peaks glowing a paler blue, a two thousand and seventy metre-high rock called Hagwilget Peak, according to the tourist brochure he’d read front to back this morning over coffee.
The motel was right next to the highway, and even through the thick glass he could hear the grunts of trucks decelerating and the occasional noisy exhaust of an older car barrelling by. There were muffled screams and gun blasts from the TV in the room next to his, too. But mostly there was silence, immense and smothering.
He was thinking about his last exchange with Constable Leith, just an hour ago. He had doubled back moments later, partly to face the music, but mostly because it wasn’t his duty notebook he’d left behind, but his private one, the one where he kept track of pertinent names and dates, random statistics, and whatever else he needed to keep the facts and fictions of his life in order.
Leith was still in his chair, just finishing a phone call, lodging a complaint of insubordination probably. He’d looked up, and Dion had spoken loudly to keep the tremor out of his voice. “Is that it, then? Should I pack my bags? You want my badge?”
Leith had observed him blankly for a long moment, and finally said, simply but coldly, “No. Why?”
“Anyway, I just wanted to apologize.” Dion had moved closer to the table and saw the notebook lay as he’d left it. He’d reached out, picked it up, tucked it behind him.
Leith didn’t seem to care about the notebook or the apology. He left his chair abruptly and walked out, and that seemed to be the end of the matter.
Another freight truck roared by, breaking the limit. Jayne Spacey, Dion thought. Eight o’clock. He checked his watch, comparing it to the radio clock on the bedside table, and saw that the watch hands were off by over ten minutes, confirming his fears. It was a special watch, older than himself, all gears and leather. He adjusted it and gave the stem a bit of a wind, whistling a careless tune.
He changed into jeans and sweater, boots and jacket, and went downstairs, hoping not to run into any of the other officers lodged at the Super 8 — Fairchild, or Bosko, or especially Leith. But there was nobody around, not in the halls, the stairwells, the lobby, or next to the lobby in the motel’s small diner — Western food, gingham motif — run by a thin, aloof Korean named Ken.
Dion took the only booth in the place, the one by the window. There was nothing to see outside now but the occasional passing truck, vehicles going from point A to point B, passing through Hazelton by necessity. Everyone broke the limit, leaving arcs of slush or swirls of crystal in their wake. He ordered dinner, roast beef for the protein, salad for fibre, all the trimmings for the calories. Filling himself out to be the man he’d been before was one of his major goals. Gaining weight wasn’t as easy as it seemed.
After dinner he walked along the cold, blustery highway that formed the backbone of the town. The lamp standards blazed their dead orange-grey light along the four-lane strip, and the banners banged and clanged in the wind. The businesses along the highway were closed, all but the Catalina Cafe, lights on bright, the stout silhouettes of diners against the drapes. And the Chevron, the twenty-four-hour gas station/convenience store where Kiera Rilkoff had once worked part time. Youths loitered on the sidewalk, smelling of cigarettes and weed, and Dion worried about being swarmed. They didn’t even look his way.
From inside the Chevron he phoned Spacey, and her little blue Toyota RAV4 pulled up soon after. He climbed in the passenger seat, and they were off, exploring the great spread of land that made up the Hazeltons. Her uneven smile lit by the dashboard, Spacey said, “In the city you get
