his guts were coming out. He was becoming a corpse even as he sat breathing the comforting warm automobile air and listening to Leith’s intermittent drone.
This was what he wanted, to die in the line of duty, but he was desperately afraid. He was ice-cold and either very still or shaking hard, he couldn’t say, even as he tried to look at his own hand. How would it all turn out without him? He should have written to Kate. Should have said sorry to Looch’s widow. He should have been nicer, should have tried harder. Worst of all, maybe he’d been wrong about everything, and he’d been fighting his own shadow. Now that he was here at the end of the line, it was unbearably sad. He hoped he wasn’t crying. The timing was wrong, that’s all. Say something smart to Leith, he told himself. Something nice. He tried to speak, but nothing came out. He tried to raise an arm to wipe across his eyes, but lost the strength. The disco lights flared and went out.
* * *
Once they were on their way down the mountain, Leith launched into his lecture, not sure why he bothered. “She says she told you to wait for backup. You know what backup means? You want me to spell it out for you?”
Silence.
“Anyway, you’re going to have to get it together. Rourke’s gun’s been fired, and I have to know who fired it and where the bullet went. How are you doing?”
Dion looked at him briefly, blankly, and didn’t respond.
Feels stupid, Leith thought. And so he should. Ballsy, going after Rourke on his own, and more than a little bewildering. But ultimately just stupid.
Leaving the mountain behind him, upping the speed on straight flat rubble now, Leith glanced sideways and noted by the console lights that his passenger was leaning heavily back now, staring a bit too serenely at the windshield, that he was breathing shallow, that his arm was pressed across his torso in a peculiar manner. On a second glance he saw that the pale grey lining of Dion’s patrol jacket, partially flipped back and visible, was black with a migrating wetness, and with a start he realized where that bullet had gone, and why he wasn’t getting any answers.
“You’ve been shot,” he said, hitting the strobes and siren toggles. “Hang on. I’ll get you to emerg.”
Ten minutes later, he pulled into the ambulance-only bay at the Wrinch Memorial, and a pre-notified team rushed out with a gurney, portable oxygen, and an arsenal of blood-staunching supplies. Dion was out cold now, unresponsive. He was wrangled from the car by two large medics, laid on a gurney and wheeled into the hospital with measured speed.
“Why didn’t he say something?” Leith asked the nurse as he followed. “Why didn’t he just bloody mention, oh, by the way, Dave, I’ve been shot?”
The nurse didn’t know why, so he asked, more to the point, “Is he going to live?”
She couldn’t answer that either. But things were crazy enough tonight, and Leith was needed elsewhere. He left a card at the nursing station with a request that they call the office as soon as they had news on the constable’s condition, then rushed back to his car to head back to where the action was unfolding, anxious not to miss a beat.
* * *
There was to be no action for the rest of the night, as it turned out, because nobody wanted to talk, on either side of the thin blue line. So Scott Rourke and Frank Law were thawed out, fed, and given the usual one-size-fits-all coveralls and scratchy blankets for their night in the New Hazelton holding cells, which was full house by now. Leith went to his room at the Super 8 for a few hours’ sleep, and the few hours went by too fast; his alarm went off at six thirty, and he was up and at it again.
There was a lot to sort out today, and as he ate breakfast in the motel’s diner he tried to compartmentalize the problems in his mind. First problem, he now had three confessors to the killing of Kiera Rilkoff. Ironic, as he’ d mentioned to Giroux last night, that three low-life bastards all wanted to claim responsibility for taking the life of one kind and talented young woman with a golden future. And they all claimed she was dear to them.
Giroux said it was plain that all three men knew what had happened to some extent or another, and each was trying to protect the others, and sooner or later the truth would emerge, whether they liked it or not. Just gotta keep hitting them till something breaks.
“Nothing like good ol’ grassroots police tactics,” Leith had told her, and added his own grassroots opinion that he hadn’t seen such a schmozzle of false confessions in his life, and if he had his way they’d all do maximum time.
But in the end only one would face the most serious charge, and that man, at least, would get the royal treatment, twenty-five years eating over-boiled peas for dinner, staring at cement, and having a good long ponder on where he’d gone wrong.
His second current problem, taken as a thing in itself, was yesterday’s incident on the East Band lookout, which had whipped itself up out of nowhere like a prairie twister, ending in two arrests and one officer down. How had Dion got himself up there alone? Wasn’t he supposed to be grid-searching the new subdivision by the 7-Eleven? How was a wallflower like him always getting in the middle of the polka?
No, he revised. Not a wallflower. A thistle.
The third problem, taken as another thing in itself, was the timing of Jayne Spacey’s call to him last night — ten thirty, as he’d logged it — mustering backup to charge up the East Band. He had nothing but a suspicion and a quick glance at the roster to go on, but something just didn’t jive there, and would need looking into.
But first things first. It was seven thirty, bright and early, a great time to talk to three killers. He decided to start with his least favourite person in the world, Scottie Rourke. Rourke had twice declined the offer of counsel, but Leith wouldn’t go forward with this until the prisoner had spoken to somebody, so it had happened. Rourke had been duly warned to shut the hell up and happily was apparently going to ignore that advice and spill all.
Leith popped a caffeine pill and went to the interrogation room, where he found Rourke wound up, twitchy, fierce-eyed. The two men sat face to face, and Rourke agreed he’d spoken to counsel and knew his rights. Leith gave him free rein to speak, which worked well with madmen, and Rourke told of encountering Kiera on the Saturday of her disappearance. She hadn’t driven by but stopped to say hello. He’d made a grab for her, all in fun, and she’d slapped him, and he’d seen red, and next thing you know he had his hands around her neck.
“Where’s her body?” Leith said.
“I buried her where you’ll never find her,” Rourke said.
Leith wondered if it was the same place Rob Law had buried her, where they’d never find her too. He wondered where Frank Law would claim to have buried her next. He wondered if the Rilkoff family would ever get their murdered daughter back. He said, “Without her body, I’m finding it hard to believe you actually killed her, Scott. And I’ve got a long day ahead of me, so —”
“You got piles of evidence against me,” Rourke said. “You don’t need her body. I want her to stay where I left her, out of respect for her, believe it or not. ’Cause I buried her right. She wasn’t dumped like garbage. You can tell her folks that.”
Oh, they will be immeasurably comforted, Leith almost said. Instead he asked, “And what evidence is that, that we have piled against you?” Already his pen was beating a fast tattoo on the desktop. He stopped it by crossing his arms and stopped his foot tapping by stretching out his legs and crossing
