the woman he’d seen only in silhouette before, the one with the wild hair, not Kiera Rilkoff at all. She rose from a heavy velour armchair and said, “You’re the cop with the watch Scottie was talking about, right?”
“That’s me.”
“Evangeline Doyle, meet Dudley Do-Right,” Rourke said and took his place at his workbench. “Just putting this thing back together for you, Dudley. Two minutes. Make yourself at home. Get ’im a beer, Evie. And me a fresh one.”
She was young and pretty, in a pampered way. Far too pretty for an old greaseball like Scottie. And very pale. She belonged on a stage with a name like Peaches ’n Cream, twirling the chrome pole. She brought a beer for Dion and returned to her chair, gesturing at him to take the tatty loveseat across from her. The trailer was warm, and she wore only a gauzy green dress that showed off her long, solid legs. The fabric was shot through with metallic threads so that it gleamed in the lamplight. Her hair, even wilder than he’d seen in silhouette, was orangey-gold. She sat comfortably and watched him with interest. She said, “So, you guys getting anywhere finding Kiera?”
“Not yet,” he said, about all he was willing to say about the case. “Sorry.”
“She’s dead, isn’t she?”
“I can’t say that.”
He considered asking Rourke and Evangeline about Charlie West again, but there was really no point. His assigned task to locate the woman had been taken off his hands by Jayne Spacey within minutes of his first attempts, when he was leaving a message with the Dease Lake detachment. Spacey was working on crushing him. She confiscated his duties whenever she could, didn’t want him claiming any accomplishments, even small ones. She would tell the boss that Dion couldn’t cope with even this, tracking down contact information, that she had to do it herself.
In the end, it hardly mattered. He’d checked Spacey’s file notes and saw that she did manage to reach Charlie West in Dease Lake, which meant Charlie wasn’t the girl walking away from the fall fair, which didn’t surprise him, brought no comfort, only crossed out one of a million possibilities.
A space heater hummed, roasting the air. The beer Evangeline had given him was cold. Rourke brought over the Smiths and handed it to its owner, almost tenderly. “You’re lucky,” he said. “It’s not every repairman who keeps every bit of junk he ever comes across in his whole godforsaken life. I got a shoebox full of watch corpses. Happened to find one that matches close enough, and I replaced the gizmo, there, and put it all back together. I don’t guarantee eternity, but she’s got another ten years under the belt, easy.”
Dion listened to the watch ticking, and it sounded robust. He strapped it to his wrist and felt whole again, ready to take on the world. Rourke was back at his workbench, beer in hand. “No sir, they don’t make things like they used to. It’s a setup. Everything you buy self-destructs on deadline, otherwise known as warranty expiration. Right, Evie?”
“Absolutely,” said Evangeline from her armchair. She pulled a knee up and embraced it, smiling at Dion.
He returned the smile briefly. He was running on an empty stomach, and even a few sips of beer, combined with the relief at having his Smiths back in running order, made him feel light, happier than he’d felt in months. He said to Rourke, “Are you really incorporated?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
“Watch it, Scottie,” Evangeline said. “He’s a cop.”
“You could say I’m incorporated,” Rourke said. He was tinkering with something at his bench, back turned on his guest. “In the broad sense.”
“He doesn’t even know what incorporated means,” Evangeline told Dion. “Leave the guy alone. It just sounds good. Like you tack ‘esquire’ behind your name, when you’re for sure no squire.”
“Oh, I’d never do that,” Dion said. He swallowed beer, taking in the environment, feeling present. Integral. Evangeline’s arm moved and her bracelet caught the light, shooting turquoise sparks into his eyes. “So, are you Scottish?” he said to Rourke’s back. Rourke wore overalls and a tank top, neither flattering his ribby frame.
“Sort of Norwegian-Mohawk strain,” Rourke said. “Bit of this, bit of that.”
“He’s a mongrel,” Evangeline said. “But no Scot in Scottie. You can ignore the name.”
Rourke said, “And what kind of a name is Dion, anyway? Dion. Sounds girly.”
“It’s my surname.”
“Well, obviously,” Evangeline said. “You got a regular name?”
He downed more beer, watching her watching him, safe enough at the moment, with Rourke’s focus down his magnifying glass. “No, I don’t have one, actually.”
“Like hell you don’t have one,” Rourke said. “Everyone’s got a first name. It’s the law.”
“It’s probably a really goofy name he’s embarrassed to say,” Evangeline said, eyes gleaming. “Like Jasper, or Stanley. To go with the haircut.”
Dion checked his watch once more and compared it with the satellite-perfect time on his cellphone. Dead on. “You fixed it, Rourke,” he said. “Guess that means I’d better pay you.” He pulled out his wallet and riffled through it. Not that there was much to riffle. His pay rate had been chopped since November, since vehicular triple somersaults and crash landings and diminished capacity. The short-term disability payments had stopped the moment he’d been cleared to return to full-time employment, and none of it mattered a bit anyway, now that he was back in working order. “How much do I owe you?”
Rourke turned around. “Honestly, the time it took me fixing that thing, you’d owe me your next ten paycheques. But give me thirty and we’ll call it even.”
“Scottie’s such a shark,” Evangeline said and lazily noodled an index finger around her temple, for Dion’s eyes only.
“Thirty-five,” Rourke said.
Dion gave him a fifty and said to keep the change.
Rourke snapped the bill and held it up to the light. “No, come on, fifty?”
“Keep it. It’s worth it to me.”
“Boy, you really are attached to that ticker, aren’t you? I guess you being a cop, I’d better give you a receipt, right?”
“Forget it.” The mean northern wind had blown up over the last little while, gathering force, and was now rattling the trailer. The windows were pitch black. Dion looked at the pitch-black windows and thought about a pickup truck with a black rear window. He could hear something outside, sounded like those voices again, trying to tell him something, and his transient sense of well-being began to slip away. “I should get going.”
“You should have another beer,” Rourke corrected, scribbling a receipt. “Evie, get our guest another cold one.”
“So long as he knows he’s going to have to arrest himself for DUI,” Evangeline said but did as told, rose from her armchair and wandered to the kitchenette.
Next to Dion the wall was covered in photographs, the ones he’d seen
