Leith looked at him. “He was run over by his own truck?”
Dion beckoned, then tramped down to the rear of the Silverado. Leith joined him. Dion gestured up the hill, toward the road some distance away. Here and there forensic members bent and crouched like they’d lost something small but vital in the grasses. “Seems he reversed off the road at quite an angle, overcorrected, and ended up there, where the flag is,” Dion said. “There’s drag marks through the soil like he braked hard and slid, and we think there’s footprints around where the cab would have ended up, but it’s hard to make out with the weeds. We’re thinking he lost control of the vehicle, got out, came down here to the treeline and either sat down or collapsed. There’s no blood trail. Key’s in the ignition, switched to battery mode, truck’s in neutral, brakes off, so it could actually have rolled down and pinned him. He’s suffered some head trauma that doesn’t fit with the vehicle going into the ditch, and like I say, there’s no blood trail, but the injury does look recent enough to fit the timeline. The vehicle shows no sign of rollover, no body damage, anything like that, except where the bumper hit the tree, and that’s minor. A low-speed impact. If it hadn’t hit the tree, it would have likely continued over the body. Far as the injuries, Doug thinks maybe Liu fell, hit his head on a rock, but to me it looks more like a flat kind of impact, like abrasions, like he struck a branch. I don’t see any branches around here low enough that he could have run into them in the dark, so maybe he tripped and slammed into the tree trunk — except he’s quite pulped.”
He indicated a large area around his own right temple in illustration before carrying on. “I don’t think it’s even possible to hurt yourself that bad with a trip and fall. I think he was clubbed, left to die, and his attacker put the truck in neutral and let it roll down. Maybe to crush him, but probably not, ’cause what kind of luck would it take for that truck to roll downslope at this angle, nearly sixty-five feet, and land right on the guy where he lay?”
“Or maybe that attacker got in and drove it down,” Leith said, thinking this far more likely.
Dion seemed not to hear, and pointed in a travelling line from roadside to truck. “Probably he just wanted the truck to disappear into the forest, which worked out pretty well, right? From the road you can’t see it at all down here ’cause of the bushes, and in fact we might not have found him for days, except a guy cycling uphill had to fix his bike when the chain came off, and while he was doing that he looked down. He saw metal, went to investigate, called us.”
He seemed to be finished, so Leith thanked him. He went around the truck to look at the body from the far side. Coroner Jack Dadd had done his inspection and was clearing up his gear. Paley joined Leith and they both crouched by the crime-scene tape for a better squint. Paley said, “Well, this is weird. Dadd got in close and says the truck didn’t kill him. See that tire that’s pressed up against his chest? Barely a touch, Dadd says. Not enough pressure to break ribs. Not even to bend ’em. Wouldn’t have prevented him from breathing.”
So what had killed Lance Liu? The wounds to the right side of his head were a literal bloody mess, but Paley told him the injuries weren’t as bad as they looked. Actually fairly superficial, according to Dadd. Not a killing blow, anyway. As hard as Leith peered to gather detail, he couldn’t hazard a guess as to whether a rock or a branch or whatever else on earth had done the damage.
Dion joined them. Leith stood and looked around. A playful breeze buffeted the hillside. Some small dark birds, starlings maybe, dashed about the skies. The three men watched the RCMP-contracted tow truck arrive and begin its careful descent to hook up the Silverado. The tow truck idled, and Dion went to talk to the driver. The conversation was out of earshot but seemed to be earnest and energetic.
Leith was again sizing up the distance between road and body, puzzling over the logistics. Paley was still looking at the tow truck. He said, “Fucking dick.”
“Who, what?” Leith said, looking up.
“Ever seen Invasion of the Body Snatchers? If you ask me, my friend Cal has definitely been snatched. I’m kidding. I love the guy. He’s only been back a day, so he’s trying too hard. And so what that we asked him out for beer last night post-briefing, and he said yes most definitely, and then didn’t show up? So what if we reserved an extra-big table, and ended up having to drink our Fireball shooters without him? We soldiered on. It’ll take him a while to get back up to speed, that’s all.”
Leith looked at Paley, then at Dion in the distance, arguing with the tow truck driver, and then Paley again, hurt. “How come I didn’t hear about this extra-big table and Fireball shooters?”
“Oh, hey. Sorry about that, Dave.”
Paley didn’t look sorry. He gave his hands a back-to-work clap. “Liu’s phone’s still missing. We couldn’t get a ping yesterday, but maybe whoever’s got it had it turned off, and maybe it’s on now, so we’ll keep trying. And you’re going to talk to the kid again — Joey, right? The grandmom’s still with him?”
Leith nodded, thinking of the terrible task ahead of him: breaking the news to Zan Liu.
Paley’s moustache contracted, maybe in sympathy. “The body will be there for ID in an hour. I’ll be talking to the Chens myself again, meanwhile. They’re Edmonton people.”
The Chens were Cheryl Liu’s parents, Leith knew. They had flown over last night but were too emotional to interview. Eventually they would have to pull themselves together enough to talk. He had little faith that they could offer anything meaningful. He left the breezy field with its starlings and its corpse, making a call to JD Temple as he returned to his car, destination Joey.
* * *
He met JD at the hospital. She was seated in the waiting room and talking with Joey Liu’s paternal grandmother, Zan Liu. Leith introduced himself and took a chair as well. He could see that Mrs. Liu, a widow who had just lost a daughter-in-law and granddaughter to some faceless bastard, and who didn’t know where her son was, was working on keeping the shock and grief bottled. Maybe because she had one precious four-year-old survivor to look after now and couldn’t afford to fall apart. Pretty soon she would learn she had lost a son as well.
Leith told her. And maybe she had suspected all along because, although the tears creeked down her face, she didn’t break down. Nor did she when he took her to the morgue. She laid a hand gently on Lance Liu’s chest, inspected his face with concern as though maybe bandages would solve the problem, and whispered something to him in Chinese.
* * *
Leith asked Zan if she could tell him a bit about Lance and Cheryl, just anything she cared to say. Zan told him how Lance and Cheryl had met, courted, married. Nothing she said seemed to progress the case forward, but he let her talk, as she seemed to wish to do. Food was brought in, which she didn’t consume. And Jasmine tea, which she did.
Cheryl was a good girl, she said. A fine wife and mother, had no enemies. Lance had been her only serious relationship. They were a happy couple, in love, never separated even for a day. Lance was a really good boy. Hard-working, took care of his family.
“If there was something seriously wrong, do you feel either of them would have talked to you about it?” Leith asked.
“Yes, I am sure Lance would have told me.”
Joey slept, on and off. When awake, he snivelled and sucked his thumb. JD asked him more about the closed cabinet door, whether he could recall anything further, but instead of opening up, he seemed to be shutting them out.
Leith nodded at JD; there would be no more questions tonight.
Down on the street a wind was gusting litter about. People walked by at slants and seemed to be battling their own clothes. JD’s short hair fluttered, and her squinting eyes had that fierce warrior look Leith had noticed before. She said, “Did you see that?”
“See what?”
“Joey, the way he curled up, squeezed his eyes shut.”
“Sure,