and bouncing as if a passenger in a rig.
Fatima’s head snapped back.
Maggie gasped.
Fatima’s body jolted as if punched by a powerful force. It jerked again, nearly throwing her from the chair. Fatima’s hands let the knife and key ring slip to the table as jolt after jolt shook her in her chair.
Maggie’s skin tingled.
Fatima’s eyes bulged to the point of nearly bursting. Her pupils rolled back in her head, leaving only the whites.
She was motionless.
Each minute melted into the next, devouring time in huge chunks before Helga blew out the candle and drew back the curtains.
Fatima began coughing.
Helga brought her a fresh glass of ice chips and Maggie watched Fatima’s jaw work as she crunched them. The older woman’s body was depleted as Helga slid her glasses back onto her head then helped replace her head scarf.
“We’re done,” Helga said. “Thank you, Maggie. You may leave.”
“Fatima, did you see my husband and son?”
“I saw nothing that will help.”
Maggie’s jaw dropped.
“You saw something, didn’t you?”
Fatima searched for her cane.
“You have to help me, please, tell me what to do?” Maggie asked.
Helga helped Fatima from the table.
“Please, Maggie.” Helga nodded toward the door. “We’re done.”
“Yes,” Fatima whispered, “I must sleep.”
“That’s it?”
“You must leave,” Helga said.
“No! Wait, please, you have to tell me what you saw. You have to help me!”
Fatima extended her shaking hand to Maggie’s, then dropped Logan’s key ring and Jake’s penknife into it. Fatima’s eyes held Maggie’s for an intense moment.
“No one can help, especially me.”
“What are you saying? What does that mean?”
“You should pray.”
“Pray for what? I don’t understand.” Helga was closing the door on her. “Please, you have to help me! You can try again! Please! I felt Logan with us! I know you saw something!”
Maggie stepped from Fatima’s mobile home and the locks clicked behind her. She leaned against the door, slid to the landing and buried her face in her hands.
16
Calgary, Alberta, Canada
Jesus Rocks filled the police binoculars.
The words strained across Neil Bick’s T-shirt, advertising his tattooed physique, earned in Stony Mountain federal prison where he did three years for stealing computers from RVs, cabins and cottages.
He’d also shot at—but missed—the two Winnipeg cops who’d arrested him.
How did this ex-con’s fingerprints get on the SUV rented by the Tarver family, Graham wondered, watching through binoculars as Bick walked down a neglected southeast Calgary sidewalk and into a world of trouble.
The Calgary Police Tactical Unit had a perimeter around his ramshackle house. The street had been cleared. Far off, an unseen dog barked.
“All right, take him,” the TAC commander whispered over the radio.
Heavily armed police rushed from the cover of shrubs, alleys, porches and parked cars, putting Bick facedown on the street at gunpoint.
“What the fuck?”
They handcuffed him, patted him down and read him his Charter rights.
“What the fuck is this?”
Twenty-five minutes later he was sitting in an interview room with Graham, who’d read his file a third time.
Neil Frederick Bick, age thirty-four, born in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Mother was a hooker murdered by an outlaw biker when Bick was six. He’d been a child of the province. In and out of school. In and out of the military. In and out of jail.
Graham asked Bick if he wanted a lawyer.
“Fuck lawyers. I don’t need one because I didn’t do nothing. Why are you jamming me, man? I’ve been livin’ straight since I got out. I need a smoke.”
The federal building was subject to no-smoking laws but Graham returned his pack. Bick shook one out, lit it and squinted through a cloud.
“Yeah, I remembered that family after I’d read the news. Wild.”
“Tell me again how your prints got on their SUV.”
“One of my jobs is pumping gas into airport rentals. I filled their tank and cleaned their windshield. I gave them directions to the Trans-Canada. My prints are on a lot of cars, you already know that.”
Graham knew it.
He also knew they’d just executed a search warrant on Bick’s residence.
“Neil, tell me about the four laptop computers we found in your possession.”
“I’m repairing them for people at my church. I studied computer tech at Stony. The church outreach people set me up here in Calgary. New place, new start and all.”
Bick tapped ash into the empty soda can Graham had passed him.
Ray Tarver’s computer was not among the four they’d found with Bick. None of the models or serial numbers were close. In fact, they all belonged to church members who’d corroborated Bick’s account.
And Mounties in Banff had called Graham after they’d showed Bick’s photograph to the staff at the Tree Top Restaurant, including Carmen Navales.
“No one can say if Bick’s the man who was sitting with Ray Tarver.”
By late afternoon, Graham had established Bick’s whereabouts for the time surrounding the tragedy. He’d been nowhere near the mountains. A minister came to the Duncan building to confirm that Bick had driven seniors to Dinosaur Provincial Park in a church van on the days in question. He had pictures.
At that point, Graham resumed discussing Bick with his commanding officers. Between making calls and handling other cases in his office, Inspector Stotter had watched most of the questioning from the other side of the room’s transparent mirror.
Graham said, “Our guy’s
