other vehicles. He stood looking for his keys. They weren’t in his trousers, but they were in his jacket when he untied it from his waist and went through it. He also found something missing: his personal notebook.
“God,” he said, standing in the parking lot, being stared at by passing workers. He tried beeping open the SUV to check if the book had fallen in there, but the doors remained locked. He looked at the keys in his hand and realized they were the wrong ones. These keys were to his cruiser. Spacey had the keys to the SUV.
He radioed Spacey and asked if she’d found a notebook on the trail. She said she hadn’t. He told her about the keys, and she said he’d just have to come back and get them. He returned to the narrow little deer trail and headed down it, following the fluorescent ribbons and keeping an eye out for the little notebook in its black leather cover. Most likely, though, it had fallen when he’d taken off his jacket to tie around his waist. So why hadn’t he seen it when he doubled back?
Because Spacey had seen it first.
The ribbons began to confuse him. He didn’t understand Spacey’s complicated system of colour-coding, and they soon led him into the middle of an unfamiliar glen, surrounded by trees, all identical and dizzying. He backtracked, looking for the flutter of neon plastic that had misled him, but now even that had disappeared in the maze.
Something seized in his chest, and the pain in his stomach began to cinch and twist. He radioed to Spacey again, and her voice, breaking up over the air, asked him where the hell he was. He said he didn’t know. She called him a jerk-off. She asked if he had his whistle on him. He did. She said to blow it, hard, and to blow it every minute or so until she located him. He did as she said, and eventually heard her voice calling through the trees. He called back, and minutes later she stood before him, puffing out jets of vapour.
“Sorry,” he said.
Spacey was sweaty and rosy-cheeked, stripped down to her shirtsleeves, jacket slung crookedly around her waist, but she looked pleased. “It’s okay. I got through to the Matax. It’s all ribboned out. We can head back.”
“You didn’t find my notebook?”
She walked backward to look at him. “How could you lose your notebook? My goodness, you’re a dumb fuck, aren’t you?”
Following her, also in his shirtsleeves, cap off and hooked to his gun belt, sweat soaking his back, he made it back to the SUV and climbed in. His faint hope that the notebook had fallen here died as he groped about under the seat. Spacey wasn’t speaking to him at all now, not even in those cold soundbites, which suited him fine. In silence, they returned to the detachment, found it all but empty, and Spacey put the box of doughnuts, untouched, onto the table by the coffee machine.
Dion was searching his workstation, and it wasn’t here either. Of course it wasn’t, because he took it with him everywhere. He heard his name and turned around. He saw the notebook fluttering in the air, attached to Spacey’s hand, being held up and flickered like a taunt. She was standing within punching distance, grinning at him.
“This is great stuff,” she said. “My god, I didn’t realize you were so good at listing things. All kinds of things that are so good to remember, like the names of the people you work with every day. There’s maps to help you get around this very complicated village. Even a cute little diagram here, how to tie a tie. I thought you were dumb, but you’re a very smart little boy, aren’t you?”
He held out his hand, said, “Give it to me.”
She flipped a page, searching. “I bet you’ve got instructions on how to make toast, too.”
He grabbed for the book, and she stepped backward, but he was faster, and stronger, and had her wrist in his grip and was pressing her arm back, ready to break it if that’s what it took. With a cry, Spacey let it fall. Dion shoved her hard, another bad call in a string of bad calls, and she crashed against a desk and from the desk to the floor. The clerk Pam popped her head around the corner and rushed over to help Spacey to her feet, but Spacey seemed winded, unable to move. I broke her back, Dion thought, dazed. Down the hall a door opened, and a man appeared saying, “What’s going on here?”
Dion leaned to pick up his notebook where it lay near Spacey’s shoulder, but was pulled upright by his arm, spun around, and propelled away, back against the nearest wall with a thud. Constable Leith had him pinned and was staring at him, close-up and angry, asking him what the hell was he was doing.
Spacey was back on her feet, supported by Pam, and he stared at her, knowing he hadn’t broken her spine but finding no comfort in it. “He tried to break my arm. Look.” Spacey exposed the pink friction burn on her wrist that was already starting to bruise. Dion twisted out of Leith’s grip and looked with longing at his notebook on the floor. Not that it mattered now. She’d read it, she knew, and she’d tell everyone.
“You going to press charges?” he heard Pam asking her. It sounded not so much a question as a recommendation. He looked at Spacey and saw her face twisted like a gargoyle.
“Hell no, I’m not going to press charges. I’m going to have you crucified, that’s what, fucking maniac.” She scooped the notebook from the floor and thrust it at Leith. “I found this. I opened it up to find out who it belonged to, and he went berserk. Pam saw it all.”
Leith took the book and shook it at Dion. “Is that right?”
“No,” Dion said. “She —”
“You want me to read you your fucking rights?” Leith’s finger was pointed at Dion, in case he wasn’t clear enough who was in trouble here. He said, “Better yet, get out. I’ll book you tomorrow. You’re fired. Get your shit and go. Guns, keys, badge, on the table, now.”
Still damp and gritty from the mountain, Dion unloaded the key to his cruiser, his .22 Smith & Wesson, his RCMP ID card, on the desk in front of Leith, punched the front door open, and left the building. His face was wet with sweat and the tears of frustration, and the wind coming off the mountain seemed to turn him to ice as he crossed the highway to the Super 8.
* * *
Actually, Constable Leith had no authority to fire him, Dion knew. It was just a hotheaded temporary suspension. But it hardly mattered. The real shit would hit the fan over the next few weeks, and he wouldn’t work another day. Criminal charges were unlikely, but the notebook would be examined, and the investigation into who he really was would be long and painful. He should have known, should have backed off, taken early retirement when it was offered. It wasn’t just a matter of rebuilding muscle and reconnecting the synapses. It was his mind, not a missing limb. He’d lost depth, and now he finally understood that depth could not be restored at will.
He changed into his civvies and left the motel. His mind was oddly blank and carefree, or maybe he’d just blown a fuse. After some wait, he flagged the town’s lone cab on the highway. There were only a couple of bars in the area, and he directed the cabbie to the one out in Old Town, which he’d stepped into briefly once before. The Old Town bar wasn’t a cop hangout. The customers were mostly native, mostly young, all strangers. The music was too loud and too country, but he didn’t care. The cavernous interior smelled of beer and deep-fried everything. He was eyed as he passed through, as if they sensed who he was or what he represented, but that didn’t matter either. From experience he knew that if he ignored the world, the world returned the favour.
He chose a small round table near a side exit, where a low dividing wall and a fake palm tree buffered some of the noise, far from the pool tables where the brawls
