not so much what he’s done,” Leith said. “We all make mistakes. It’s what he is. He’s slow, and he’s absent. You haven’t noticed?”
“I’ve noticed him,” Bosko said, not quite answering the question. “Do you feel you should write him up?”
“No,” Leith said after a moment’s consideration. “Not at this point. But I’ll definitely be keeping an eye on him.”
“And maybe have a talk,” Bosko suggested.
A counsellor Leith was not. He grimaced and moved on. “First impressions on everyone I’ve talked to so far. Frank Law’s still my first choice, but he’s got at least one good alibi, Chad Oman. I don’t think Oman’s lying to cover him. Stella Marshall I’m not so sure about. Parker Chu is solid. I’m more interested in Rob Law right now. Think of it, he’s up at his worksite, not far from Kiera’s truck. He couldn’t have gone down to meet her without being seeing by his crew, and nobody saw him leave, but he was there after everyone left. Maybe he met her then, down at the Matax, or she’d made her way up to the site, waited till everyone left before going in to see him.”
Giroux and Bosko looked doubtful, and Leith knew why. A logging road in mid-February was no place to hang about for hours, even in the shelter of a vehicle. He sighed, checked the memo that had been handed to him in the hallway, and recalled he had one more interview to cover off. Not a band member or family, but Scott Rourke, a friend of the Law brothers who lived just up the road from the Laws, now waiting out in the reception area. Rourke was the last one to see Kiera alive, if he could be believed, but he’d already been cleared as a suspect, and so far Leith had seen no need to question him himself.
The facts were simple enough: Rourke had been riding his dirt bike from his mobile home toward town when Kiera had passed him in her truck. The time, as far as he could narrow it down, was just before one in the afternoon. She hadn’t acknowledged him, probably hadn’t recognized him as she approached, just sped past. It was about all he could say then, but now apparently he had something to add, and this time he wanted to talk to the lead investigator.
Rourke was a name Leith was all too familiar with from his many long days of weeding through the listings in his search for the Pickup Killer. This one he’d pulled and run through the system more than once because of its history, but nothing had panned out, and he’d moved on. He said to Giroux, “Our biker. We all know this turkey, but I haven’t talked to him in person yet. What can you tell me about him?”
He saw a shadow cross her brow, and she made a noise, something between a spit and a hiss. “Where do I start?” she said.
* * *
Leith ushered Rourke into the interview room, gave Dion the name, and took his seat. Scott Rourke was an ugly sucker, face rippled by a nasty scar. He was somewhere in his late fifties, with yellow hair going silver. He wore skinny jeans, battered cowboy boots, a white muscle shirt, and a black leather vest with a large, grubby bird’s feather — illegal eagle, Leith suspected — laced to its lapel. First Nations people could possess feathers and whites couldn’t, and Rourke was white as white could be. He draped himself loosely over his chair, gnashing on a wad of chewing gum, stared across at Leith, and said, “Well, let’s get started.”
Leith told Rourke to state his full name, age, and occupation.
“What’s what I do for a living got to do with anything?” Rourke said.
Dion the scribe wrote it down.
Leith hardened his voice. “We won’t know until we know, will we?” He studied the scar bisecting the witness’s face, starting from the forehead, skirting the inside of the left eye, running down the left side of the nose, crossing the mouth, not quite centre, ending off to the right of the chin. Somebody had done a job on him, but a while ago. The scar looked old.
“I’m self-employed is what I am.” Rourke’s brown arms were crossed, every tendon popped and delineated. “I fix things. Okay? Anything I can fit on my workbench, I fix. Small engines, clocks, microwave ovens, you name it. Well, okay, maybe not microwave ovens. Okay? But everything else under the sun, it’s broke, I fix.”
“All right,” Leith said. “Self-employed fix-all. Was that so bad? See, I ask you questions, you give me answers, he writes them down, and we move on. That’s how it usually goes.”
“Thank you for educating me on the fine art of interrogation. So move on.”
“You said you have some information for me about Kiera Rilkoff. I’ve got your statement about seeing her drive past on Kispiox Road. What else d’you know, sir?”
“It’s not so much what I know as what I want to know. Time is of the essence, right? The first forty-eight and all that. I don’t see a lot of action happening here, you all sitting around, questioning people like you’re writing some fucking book. What a waste of time. It’s not people that got her, it’s that bastard, and she could be still alive, and you people better get your ass in gear and start turning over rocks.”
“What bastard got her?”
“You know the bastard I’m talking about. Mr. Pickup, who strangles young girls and leaves them in shallow graves. He’s been having his sick kicks for two years now, and with all your equipment and your brains and manpower, you keep letting him get away, and now he’s got Kiera, thanks very much.”
“Is that your information, Mr. Rourke? Are you done? ’Cause I have a few questions myself. You live about a stone’s throw from the Law brothers, is that right?”
“If you call kilometre and a half a stone’s throw.”
“You’re a close friend of Kiera Rilkoff?”
“That’s why I’m here, you fucking genius!”
“Keep your hair on,” Leith snapped. “This is a police station, not your local watering hole, get that straight. When did you last see her?”
“You guys already asked me all that.”
“I’m asking you again.”
“Last night, then, to be exact. It was a hot day, blue sky, and her and Frank were standing in the river, okay? Down at the S-Bend, up to their navels and side by side. I was on the beach in a purple tux, reading them their vows from a podium made of Popsicle sticks. That’s the last time I saw her.”
Dion the scribe was clearly not keeping up. Leith picked up the tape recorder, checked its little bars were hopping, and set it down again. He leaned toward his witness and said, quietly, “That’s fascinating, sir. But see, this fellow has to take down everything we say, and he thinks you’re giving him a load of writer’s cramp for nothing. And he doesn’t think it’s cute. And neither do I. So let’s stick to facts. Okay? Not dreams, not your artsy-fartsy sarcasm. Fact.”
“I thought I’d share an interesting dream.”
“I don’t want to hear your interesting dreams.”
Rourke shrugged. “Who the fuck knows the last time I saw her, besides her driving past me on Saturday. On the street maybe, few weeks ago, stopped to chat, whatever. Or I was over there for dinner, or they dropped by. We just bump into each other all over the place, helter-skelter, willy-nilly.”
Dion’s pen fell to the floor with
