a genuine disconnect, Dave. There’s real time and distance involved. It’s not like moving the cursor across Google Earth. It’s distance you can feel in the small of your back.” He grinned, watched the cruddy snow-plastered trees pass for a while, and said, “So what do you know of Kiera Rilkoff?”
Leith could sum up what he knew of the missing girl on three fingers. She was attractive, popular among the local youngsters, and had aspirations. He said as much, padding it out with extra words, trying to sound smart, feeling Bosko’s eyes on him.
After a beat Bosko said, “The track they played on the radio back in November was pretty rough on the ears. By the sound of it, I’d say it was done up in a home studio, and not too well. Kiera promised their upcoming CD would be a professional burn, that they had sunk money into it, and maybe had acquired an agent, I think she said. Or was it a manager? Does that mean anything to you?”
“I haven’t been following her career,” Leith admitted. “Sorry.”
“No, and unfortunately I wasn’t really listening at the time,” Bosko said. “But if anyone’s interested, it can probably be pulled from the archives.”
Who needs archives when you have the amazing Bosko’s hi-fidelity recall, Leith thought enviously. His own memory was good on things that mattered, but recount some random bullshit he’d heard on the radio three months ago?
Bosko asked more smart questions about the logistics of operations in the area, search and rescue, continuity issues with thin staffing, response times in various conditions. Leith did his best to answer, not so well, and soon enough the big man from the city went from asking questions to a kind of running soliloquy on whatever was on his mind at the moment. Northern demographics, poverty issues, the border security conference and how it had gone down, who had spoken, upcoming shifts in policy and legislation. As Leith was learning now the hard way, Mike Bosko abhorred a vacuum.
Half listening, grunting occasionally, Leith pressed on, away from the ocean, into the bleak wilds of B.C. There was no colour in the sky, no colour anywhere now that they’d left the port city behind and the temperatures had plummeted. The roads were slick but manageable. He drove faster than the traffic pattern, passing when possible, until a line of loaded B-train freight trucks slowed him to sixty on the straights and a mind-numbing thirty through the curves. And Bosko’s low, plodding voice droned on. As well as knowing pretty much everything about the universe at large, he seemed to have the scoop on the local crime scene. He spoke of the Pickup killings, knew the bodies had been found on forest service roads, knew the names, Karen Blake, Lindsay Carlyle, Joanne Crow, and the stories their bodies told of forceful takedown, bondage, and strangulation. Leith wondered if Mike Bosko had gotten hold of the files at some point, and if so, why? He wondered if Bosko was privy to the holdback information that had been kept back from the press, known only to the inner circle of investigators so far, the killer’s quirk. He said, “You’ve done your research.”
Bosko either didn’t hear or didn’t care to answer.
The Pickup Killer case had gone cool, if not cold, and these days Leith only worked it if something new turned up. Nothing had for over a year now, except faint whispers that kept him awake some nights. The whispers said the beast was still in their midst, still crawling the streets of Terrace.
As they passed through that very city, the killer’s known hunting grounds, darkness fell and the snow came down in earnest. Terrace fell behind, and they were again in lonely wilderness, with another two hours to go before they reached the Hazeltons. Bosko switched to historian mode, telling Leith all kinds of interesting things about the area, Hazelton being rooted in the Omineca Gold Rush, the sternwheeler that ran the Skeena once open a time, the turn-of-the-century search for Simon Gunanoot, much of it news to Leith.
He shifted in his seat and sighed with relief as the lights of their final destination approached, the broad, slow highway that cut through the main settlement of New Hazelton. Passage through town would take about two minutes if a person drove the speed limit, which nobody did, except Leith now, slowing to sixty, then fifty, losing the tandem trucks ahead, which ploughed through and disappeared up the big dark hill that merged again with black forest, probably heading for the mills of Smithers.
“We’re here,” he said, sounding smarter than ever.
There was scant traffic out and about as he cruised the SUV under the orange glow of tall lamp standards, past a gas station and shut-down supermarket, a few darkened restaurants. He pulled at last down a side street and parked in front of the New Hazelton detachment. He shut off the engine and looked at Bosko, hoping the shabbiness of the place was a crushing disappointment to the man. Bosko looked fresh, pleased, and enthusiastic.
Inside the small RCMP detachment they were met by a sleepy-looking auxiliary constable who told them that Renee Giroux, the local sergeant in charge, was up on the Matax with a small search team. Leith said, “Matax, what’s that?”
“Hiking trail heading off the Bell 3,” the auxiliary told him. “Where Kiera’s truck was found.”
“Bell 3 …”
“The logging road.”
Leith told the auxiliary to contact Giroux and let her know he was on his way. The auxiliary said, “I’ll try. Can’t guarantee a connection. The airwaves are thin up there.” She supplied him with a map, marking it with Xs, one for the Bell 3 turnoff and one for the Matax trailhead. Leith thanked her.
“It’s going to be tedious,” he told Bosko as they headed back out to the truck. “You’d be better off checking into your room and kicking back. They’ve got us booked in at the Super 8 over there. I’ll just drop you off?”
“I’ll tag along, if that’s okay.”
They left the town lights behind, and Bosko got a tour of the Hazeltons as they passed through the settlements of Two Mile, Old Town, over a canyon into the heavily forested Kispiox area and beyond, where Leith was soon lost, in spite of map and GPS. With Bosko’s help he did manage to locate the Bell 3 signpost, the words nearly obliterated by driven snow, and took the turn, geared the truck down, and the high-suspension, fat-tired V8 police truck began to climb the snowy road beaten flat by previous tires. The incline steepened steadily and the road narrowed until even Bosko sat mute as the headlights lit the banks falling steeply away inches from his right shoulder.
The second X on the map wasn’t far in theory, a mere 9.7 kilometres of straights and switchbacks, but it was a crawl to get there, and nearly an hour passed before a pylon glowed in the headlights. A moment later a row of vehicles came gleaming into view, a couple of police SUVs and a black four-door sedan that didn’t look fit for the terrain. Leith pulled in behind the sedan and stepped out onto the road, wincing. Crystals fell light but fast, tiny daggers lashing his face. Upslope and deep in the woods a hard light pierced the darkness, a signal to follow.
“Not a good place to break down,” Bosko remarked. He stood now at the nose of the truck, taking in the scene. Leith shone his flashlight toward the man and saw how out of place he looked in urban overcoat, collars turned up, glasses flecked with snow and his short hair flipping about, but no fear on his solid, pale face. Bosko checked his cellphone for signal and confirmed what Leith already knew. “Not a single bar.”
The pylons pointed the way to a parking area for trail users, ribboned off with crime-scene tape, the ground here churned by tires, but no vehicles occupying its space. Leith swung his light about low and caught another line of pylons, and these led him up on a short trek into the woods. Here as everywhere the forest floor was disturbed by foot traffic in every direction, silent evidence of the searchers who would have been and
