the phone. Now, go grab a bite, and I’ll get Thackray to bring Oman in. Report back here at eleven twenty. Okay?”
He gathered his things and left the room. Dion remained for a few minutes, trying to program his watch to beep at eleven, giving himself a good margin of error, but couldn’t get the sequence right. Too many buttons, too little brains. So he wrote it in ballpoint on his palm, “Oman 11:20.” If that failed, he thought, he’d throw himself in the river too.
* * *
The band’s drummer seemed to have lost weight since his first interview, and a good deal of vim, too. But hey, Leith thought, reality’s finally set in. Kiera’s gone, and she’s not coming back. Before her disappearance, these kids were just embarking on an endless party, fun, fame, and good times. Now it was the brink of humdrum for Oman. A slow climb to department manager at the local Home Hardware. Two-inch nails and miscellaneous fasteners. Even without Kiera they could have carried on, led by Frank. Mercy Blackwood seemed to think it was possible, maybe even better, to carry on without Kiera. But now Frank was possibly going away too, and that left, what? Not much. Oman was just a drummer, and no matter how good he was, he would never be the next Ginger Baker.
Quite a shock to the system to lose all that in the space of two weeks.
Yet the guy seemed somehow okay with his lot when they first sat down, exchanging the small talk. Maybe he was a flat-bottomed boat, a survivor. Doggedly upbeat, with that off-centre smile on his round, healthy, brown face.
Dion sat in, as agreed. He looked physically unfit, still suffering from the stitches and the drugs, but he was doing his best to listen. Oman stuck faithfully to his story the first time around, and Leith could find no cracks to get a fingerhold in, to flip him upside down and get to his vulnerable side, so he did what he had to do, as rotten as it felt, and got mean. He eased into meanness with, “I hate to say it, Chad, but I’m finding it hard to believe what you’re telling me here.”
Oman looked stunned, and being a bit of a ham, he overdid it, eyes agog, mouth dropped open. “About what?”
“About Kiera leaving the house without her coat on, for one. It was a bitch of a cold day, as I remember it. Snow was bombing down. Temperatures well below zero, right?”
Oman’s eyes roved the room and settled back on Leith with some indignation. “She was wearing a pretty good sweater. I figured she was going to jump in her Rodeo, go to town, get something, come back. We’re all of us born and raised in the snow, hey? So that’s what I figured, she was just hopping out for something.”
“So you clearly remember her leaving without a coat?”
“Yeah, I do. She turned around, put her hands in her front pockets, her jeans, like this, said see you later, or back soon, or something like that, and she stepped out backward, kind of, and shut the door. I can see it like it’s happening right now.”
“But when she arrived that day she came in wearing a coat, right?”
“I don’t know. I got a pretty good photogenic memory, but to a point, eh.”
Leith didn’t break the flow to correct the kid’s vocabulary and went on ramping up the tension. “It was a rough day. Everyone was upset, including Frank. Kiera didn’t leave on her own, did she? Frank went with her.”
“Yes, sir, she left on her own.”
“You sure of that?”
“Yes, sir.”
And there’s the tell, Leith thought. The yes sir, yes sir, three bags full, sir. His own bad cop routine was a well-worn thing, simple and not very imaginative, but effective, especially with the young and the inexperienced. It was the arctic blast stare-down. He stared Oman down with icicles and said, “You know where this is going to lead, Chad? You don’t tell me the truth, it’s not going to be good.”
“Yeah, how so?” Oman snapped back, maybe more aware of his rights than Leith gave him credit for, maybe knowing where threats and inducements would lead, eventually. Nowhere.
Leith crossed his arms but toned down the bullying. “How so in that you’ll be charged with obstruction, is how. It’s not the kind of thing you can wiggle out of, you sitting here telling me she left alone, then later it comes out she didn’t. You’re going to turn on your heels then? How?”
“It’s what I saw,” Oman stated.
“You actually watched her walk out the door alone?” Leith asked, and held up a warning hand. “Here’s where you better be damned sure you’re telling the truth, because here’s where there’s no going back. Understand?”
Oman hesitated. He said, “Yeah, she walked out the door alone, cross my heart and hope to die.”
“Where was Frank when she walked out the door alone? You might want to cross your heart again, now.”
Oman was silent. Leith watched him, still as a rock, like he would sit here still as a rock all day and all night, if that’s what it took.
Oman said, “I think he …”
“He what, Chad?”
“I think he might have stepped out too, a minute or two before her. For a smoke, maybe. But I’m not a hundred percent on that.”
“Right,” Leith said. He was buzzing within now but speaking calmly, as if he was merely hammering down the details of facts he already had. “And Stella Marshall, where was she when Kiera walked out the door?”
“She was around. In the room there with us.”
“So she saw Frank leave?”
“I guess so.”
“And Lenny?”
“I’m not sure on that. He wasn’t around, but probably in his room. I think he left afterward.”
“So you’re in the house, and Frank’s gone out, maybe for a smoke, and a minute or two later Kiera goes out as well, and now they’re both outside. Did you watch them from the window at all, see where they went at all, what they did out there?”
“No.”
“Hear any vehicles starting up?”
Oman paused and admitted he hadn’t heard any vehicles starting up, and it looked to Leith like a dishonest pause but an honest admission. Which was interesting.
“When you left the Law house that day, her Rodeo was still there, wasn’t it?”
Oman shook his head vaguely.
“Yes or no?” Leith said, wanting something for the record.
“No, I don’t think it was,” Oman said.
“For how long were they out there, Frank and Kiera?”
Oman’s bluff facade was breaking down, nearly gone. He said in a low and husky voice, “I never saw Kiera again.”
“Sure. What about Frank, when did you see him again?”
“He
