without him. He saw himself alone in the woods, following Kiera’s footsteps into the wildest mystery of all. A moment longer he hesitated, and then shifted the gear bag to his other shoulder and headed up the trodden path, almost at a run, to join the departing team.
* * *
Leith and Bosko arrived at the Catalina Cafe, its big yellow sign a blazing landmark on the highway cutting through town. Leith was tired, hungry, and aggravated. He had spent the last hour in conference calls from his new desk at the New Hazelton detachment, and his vocal cords were strained raw. He wanted to return to Terrace and dive straight into the Pickup lead, now that they had a solid link to the Pickup Killer. Phil Prentice thought otherwise, reminding Leith that holding back information could be a valuable tool, but it could also cause havoc. Leaks happened, and supposedly confidential clues could be used and abused, and nothing should be taken for granted at this point. For now, pink glitter be damned, Leith was to remain in the Hazeltons and explore all the other myriad avenues, keeping in regular contact, of course, with the Terrace task force that would be chasing down the Pickup Killer full-tilt, headed up by Corporal Mel Stoner. Furthermore, the glitter angle was to remain, at Stoner’s discretion, held back from the press and disseminated only to the core team.
The back room at the Catalina was too warm, and Leith shed his several layers of coats, jackets, and sweaters, hung them up, and took a seat. He had missed lunch and was glad the briefing would be bracketed around food. Hardly gourmet grub in a place like this, but he didn’t care so long as it was greasily rich in salt and starch. Giroux said the food was great as she sat across from him, but she had to say that, knowing the owners; she knew everybody here. That was the advantage and disadvantage of running a village in the middle of nowhere: familiarity.
They were a party of ten, a few faces Leith didn’t know. Giroux said she’d used this room often for meetings such as this. It was also used for weddings and whatnot. Sound-wise, it was well insulated, private, and the staff knew all about discretion. The one long table they sat at was draped in white. The walls were panelled in fake wood and hung about with genuine mounted animal heads, which in turn were hung about with cobwebs. Swing doors separated this room from the kitchen, but the kitchen sounds were distant enough when the doors clicked shut. Music from a local pop station played, but barely audible.
Coffee was served and orders were taken, and Giroux made introductions, naming herself in charge of New Hazelton. She would be dealing with issues in her community but would be at hand to lend assistance to the team when possible. She introduced Leith as lead investigator, the one who’d assign tasks, make all procedural decisions, and liaise with Sergeant Phil Prentice in Prince Rupert.
She introduced Sergeant Mike Bosko, the brass from the Lower Mainland who was joining the team in a sort of unofficial advisory capacity until further notice. A few brows went up, and Corporal Fairchild from Terrace asked jokingly, “What, just happened to be passing by?” the joke being that nobody just passed by the lonely Hazeltons in mid-February.
Leith watched Bosko for reaction to the jibe and saw the irony had gone right past him. “Pretty well,” Bosko said. “Dave was heading this way, so I hitched a ride.”
Giroux charged through the remaining introductions and then gave the floor to Jayne Spacey, who had opened the file and knew it best. Spacey stood to talk, skimming fast over Kiera Rilkoff’s particulars, since they were all there on her stat sheet: age, height, weight, the colour of her hair and eyes, address, identifying marks. She went on from there. “At twenty-two she still lives with her parents and her sister Grace on 12th Avenue. Sergeant Giroux and I were there early today, and on a preliminary look-around there’s nothing out of ordinary in her room.”
“The family’s completely flummoxed,” Giroux put in. “And devastated. We don’t have to focus on them whatsoever.”
Spacey said, “Kiera’s a high school grad. She has plans of attending music school in Vancouver somewhere down the road. Good reputation in the community, no criminal history. She’d been employed at the Chevron gas station until last summer, when she quit to devote herself to her music. We all know Fling’s a successful band and seems to be going places. Her parents support her financially and morally, it seems. I haven’t taken full statements from them yet, but like the boss just said, we have no reason to focus on them at this point. Kiera’s dad is with the Ministry of Forests, and her mom’s a physiotherapist at the hospital, so they’re financially secure.”
Leith admired how Spacey had progressed since they’d last met. He wondered if her straight-shouldered stance and lucid delivery had anything to do with the presence of the brass from the city. He wondered if his own blustering did as well, and hoped not.
Spacey said, “Now for the here’s-what-we-know part. Kiera’s boyfriend is Frank Law, who’s the guitarist in the band. She spends much of her time at his place in Kispiox.” She passed around several copies of a map marked in red with points of interest. “It’s the ‘L,’ and I’ve been there as well today. It’s a good-sized house on an acreage he shares with his two brothers, Leonard and Robert, better known as Lenny and Rob. It’s here Fling has been rehearsing since the house was built, about four years ago. They were rehearsing there yesterday when Kiera left the house, alone, drove off, and didn’t come back. She left at the lunch break, around noon, but nobody can give a precise time. She was seen driving northwest on Kispiox Road about an hour later by a friend of the Law brothers, Scott Rourke.”
She went on detailing the eyewitness account of Scott Rourke, who had been riding down Kispiox Road on his motorbike when Kiera had passed him in her Isuzu, upward bound. Leith had heard most of this up on the mountainside, but he made notes now. Most everybody at the table did the same, except for the dark-haired uniformed constable at Leith’s left, who couldn’t seem to find a pen. Leith gave him his spare and said to Spacey, “A motorbike? In these conditions?”
“More like a dirt bike,” Spacey said. “And Rourke’s a maniac.” She went on. “Also on the map you’ll see an ‘RL’ up on Kispiox Mountain. That’s where the Law brothers, more specifically Frank’s older brother Rob, run a logging show. We have reason to believe she was heading up to see him when her truck broke down at the ‘M’ you’ll see there, the Matax hiking trail. Kiera and Frank texted briefly around one thirty, and that was their last communication. We got it off Frank’s phone.”
Another photocopy was passed around, a printout of a direct screenshot from an iPhone. Bosko looked it over and then passed it to Leith. The text came from Kiera at 1:26 p.m.
Kiera: “Screw U. Find yrsf another lead”
Frank: “WTF? Where RU?”
Spacey said, “Kiera didn’t reply, and Frank more or less put it out of his mind till later in the evening, when Rob Law came upon her black Isuzu Rodeo at the Matax trailhead as he was coming down from the cut block around seven. He got home at seven thirty. That’s when Frank collected Chad and went up.”
She paused as the waitress brought food. Not a moment too soon, Leith thought, his stomach grumbling. The constable to his left, the one who’d forgotten his pen, was in his mid-twenties, maybe, pale-skinned but dark-haired and dark-eyed, beat-up looking. He was staring with doubt at the Denver sandwich placed before him, and in a low-grade epiphany Leith realized this was the guy Jayne Spacey had called “kinda cute but not too bright.” Dion, the temp in from Smithers.
The long-awaited “Special” burger with extra fries landed in front of Leith, and he dug in. Spacey ignored her wrap, still on her feet, and went on briefing the team. She told them who had been at the house yesterday at noon when Kiera walked out: Chad Oman, the drummer, Stella Marshall, who played fiddle, and Frank Law’s younger brother Lenny Law, who was seventeen and home-schooled. Lenny wasn’t involved with the
