of the snapshots here were old and faded anyway, he saw, their colours washed out to blue. Quite a few newer shots of Kiera, but Kiera was a celebrity, and the camera loved her, and he didn’t think obsession could be read into it. Kiera on stage, singing, backed up by her group. Kiera embracing friends, including this old greaseball, Scott Rourke. Kiera crouched down chatting with a toddler, riding a horse, grinning at the camera. There were pictures of Frank Law, too, one person of interest Dion hadn’t met, other than seeing him down there on the stage last fall.
There was a recent-looking shot of Evangeline, and several of the Law brothers over the years. This was Lenny, probably, as a boy, couldn’t be more than four or five, which meant Rourke had known the brothers at least a dozen years. There was a more recent picture of Rourke standing between the two older Law brothers, Rob and Frank, an arm hooked around each of their necks and pulling them to him, like an affectionate dad with two grown sons horsing around in the backyard.
There were even more faded shots, probably from Rourke’s childhood, and some of his years as a young and not-so-bad looking man, before the scar. None of Rourke’s dead wife, though. Naturally enough.
Evangeline delivered the fresh bottle of Kokanee to Dion’s hand and stood so close for a moment that he could smell the soap and perfume and the slight mildew of a dress grabbed from a pile on the floor. Rourke was talking about what he’d do to the bastard responsible for Kiera’s disappearance when he got his hands on the sick piece of trash. Rourke was 99 percent certain the Pickup Killer was responsible. “And let me tell you,” he was saying. “It’s not just me. There’s a whole posse of us ready to hang him high. You can bet your cotton socks on that, my friend. And there’s nothing you bleeding-heart cops are going to be able to do about it. Somehow or other, that sonofabitch is going to get himself strung up from the tallest tree in the valley.”
“I wouldn’t talk like that if I were you,” Dion said, not quite serious, but not quite joking either. “Not with me around. I’ll have to remember this conversation when we’re cutting that sonofabitch down.”
“Yeah, Scottie, keep your big mouth shut,” Evangeline said, back in her chair. And flapping a hand at Dion, dismissing the death threats, “Don’t listen to him. He talks big, but he wouldn’t hurt a fly.”
Oh, he’d do a lot worse, Dion thought. Not quite twenty years ago, Scott Rourke had come home a day early from a hunting expedition and caught his wife with a lover. He’d grabbed a baseball bat and clobbered the shit out of the man. The man had lived, but like Dion, he was left with a badly altered trajectory. And the wife, well, she was collateral damage: jumped in a lake and surfaced dead. Dion had heard mention of it in the Wednesday night briefing, and had checked his computer for the details on his own time. If Evangeline was unaware of the violence in her boyfriend’s bones, somebody ought to tell her, and soon.
“You live in this area?” he asked her. “I get the feeling you’re not from around here.”
She rested her chin in her palm and challenged him with a stare. “What gives you that feeling?”
She looked and moved and talked and smelled like city, that’s what. “I don’t know,” he said. “Just —”
“Just quit chatting up my woman,” Rourke interrupted with mock menace, arms crossed, staring across the gloom at Dion.
There was not much fun in the mock menace, though, and Dion made sure to keep his eyes and conversation, if not his thoughts, well off Scottie’s girl.
Six
Aam niin (You are good)
MORNING HAD BROKEN, and down in the Super 8’s diner over coffee and toast, Dion had folded aside his paper and was mostly listening.
“I had a pal once,” the old Indian named Willy told him, turtle-slow. They were sitting at the window booth, sharing the view on highway and windblown litter. “He’s Gitxsan. Looks lot like you. You got some Gitxsan in you, not so far off.”
It was a statement, not a question, and probably as wrong as Giroux calling him Cree. “Lot like you,” Willy repeated, nodding. “Name is Johnny.”
“Oh, so that’s why you keep calling me that.”
“Hey?”
“Forget it. What happened to him?”
“Dead. It’s years ago, before you came into this world. He’s dancing now … at the big powwow in the sky.”
Dion shut an eye in case his collar was being yanked. But Willy’s expression, side-lit by the low morning light and gnarled by age, gave nothing away.
“So how’d he die?”
No answer came. Willy seemed to go adrift, unlit cigarette clamped between his puckered lips. Dion dropped his attention back to the news of the day, stale breaking news from the Lower Mainland, all that murder and mayhem he was forced to watch from the sidelines.
“Drowned,” Willy said, minutes later. “Twenty-two.”
“That’s too bad. Was he a good friend?”
“No. He’s a liar and a cheat and he drinks too much. We worked together. Deckhands. Trawlers, just out of Rupert.”
“Oh. So it happened on the job, did it?”
“No. Fell in the river, down here.” Willy’s bluish left eye and semi-clear right eye stared at Dion fiercely, as if he’d had something to do with the tragedy.
“So how did it happen?”
Again no answer, and this time it seemed there would be none any time soon. Willy was looking at his own hands on the tabletop, cradling the cup of coffee Dion had ordered for him.
“Well, tell me about it tomorrow,” Dion said. He pushed Willy’s book of Eddy Lites across the table. “It’s bad for you, you know that? Bad for me too.”
“I know. Tried to quit. Can’t.”
“Go ahead, few puffs, then put it out.”
“Aam niin,” Willy said, slowly. Slow even for him. It was an annoying habit of his, teaching. “You are good,” he translated, and waited.
“Aam niin,” Dion said. “You are good.”
Willy struck a match to light his hand-rolled. He took a pull then sat back pluming smoke like a chip-burner. “I will teach you not Gitxsan,” he said. “I will teach you Nisga’a, my language. But close enough. Don’t want to lose the language.”
“Thanks, no. I have a hard enough time with English.”
But the old Indian sat there being willfully deaf, nodding to himself, making plans. “It’s a good thing,” he said. He put out his cigarette and tapped at his own chest, somewhere over his heart. “Time to come home, eh?”
* * *
Andy Blair was being watched, everywhere he went, and the surveillers weren’t shy about it, ranged around the Chev dealership in their shiny cars and trucks. “Maybe now he’ll break a sweat,” Leith said from the office, pushing papers around, waiting for something to give.
In
