He hadn’t owned a car since the crash. In Smithers he had walked or cabbed anywhere he needed to go, except when on the job. The job demanded that he drive, sometimes at speed, occasionally on ice, so he had no choice but to get good at it again. Here on the Lower Mainland an off-duty vehicle was not optional. He needed a car, but he would never drive again just for the fun of it. No thanks.
He read the stat sheets on the car’s window and saw the mileage wasn’t so bad. He circled the Civic again, and already a salesman was approaching, hands in pockets. The salesman stopped and looked at the car, proud as a new dad. He remarked that Dion had great taste in wheels, and did he have any questions? Dion said no, he didn’t right now, thanks. He stood and drew at his cigarette and looked at the car, while the salesman looked at the sky and talked about the weather. The salesman segued from weather into suggesting a test spin.
Dion smiled at the salesman. He wasn’t born yesterday. He knew what used sporty-looking coupes with great price tags meant, and the kind of people who fell for them. He was about to say so, but the salesman spoke first. “Whatcha got to lose?”
He had a point. The man took his driver’s licence to make a copy and went to get the key and demo plates, and Dion stood on the sidewalk to wait. He looked south along Marine Drive at the city skyline, then northward, at the mountains. He thought about the highway that wove through them, and the long drive between this point and that, North Vancouver and Smithers. Strange how a part of him wanted to go back there even after he had worked so hard to be here. This was where he belonged, not there.
The salesman brought the keys. It took a moment for Dion to remember why. “Thank you.”
“You’re … all right?” the salesman said.
Dion smiled at him, and smiled big. “Absolutely.”
Three
Crime Currents
Each new day, Dave Leith had to look harder for that silver lining. For over a month now he had been living in a strange city, confined to a crappy little apartment that was costing him twelve hundred a month, plus utilities, and driving a rental car to an office full of strangers, none of whom he had managed to befriend. He asked himself now: when exactly in the recent past had this move to the metropolis struck him as a “great idea”?
Last night from Prince Rupert, his wife Alison had given yet another long-distance reassurance: “You just need time to adjust.”
“It’s not exactly what I thought it would be,” he had told her.
“What ever is?” she asked.
Sure, he would adjust — what choice did he have? But Alison didn’t get it, that adjustment for him was step two in a two-step process. First he had to get over the disappointment, and he had to do that in his own particular style, griping all the way.
At least the daily commute from his apartment to the North Van detachment had become routine by now; he no longer tilted an ear to the GPS delivering her robotic instructions. He merged onto Highway 1 and joined another vehicular lineup. North Vancouver hadn’t failed in its promises in any big way; the bright lights were maybe not as bright as he’d imagined, but he had grown up in a small Saskatchewan city, and his thrill-meter was set fairly low. Really he was only disappointed in himself. Where was the handsomer, smarter, wittier Dave Leith that this move was supposed to have made him? A juvenile fantasy, of course, but still he would check the mirror as he shaved each morning and be chagrined to see no progress. He remained a tall, thickening, doubtful-looking forty-four-year-old with lumpy, blond hair beginning to recede, blue eyes too close set, nose and chin too big, mouth too thin and always clamped into a self-conscious smile.
There was no wild nightlife here, either, at least not for him. He had made the effort and gone out drinking twice with the rowdier set of his new workmates, but the situation — it was mostly the noisy atmosphere that got him down — only made him antsy. Not that he would quit trying.
He seemed to spend all his time commuting, burning frozen dinners in the apartment’s quirky oven, and studying up on the procedures and protocols of his new office. In an effort to impress his new superior, Sergeant Mike Bosko — the man he’d met on a northern assignment and who had made this transfer happen — he also brought his caseload home with him to mull over as he ate his burned dinners.
He missed Prince Rupert. Missed his buddies and comfortable bungalow on its good-sized lot, which now had a big for-sale sign on the front lawn. He missed the morning fogs and the busy harbour, the locals and summer tourists. Alison was still up there, with the furniture and their two-year-old, Isabelle, waiting for Leith to get settled before coming to join him.
Their foolish expectation had been that he would find a great little house, put an offer on it — stretching the budget just a bit — and they would transition smoothly from one residence to another.
The expectation had hit a brick wall called the ridiculous price of real estate in North Vancouver. He was still reverberating from the shock. Some local staff were buying properties as far afield as Abbotsford, he heard. Which meant they spent half their lives commuting.
He was off Highway 1 and driving down the spine of North Vancouver, Lonsdale Avenue, a gauntlet of traffic lights that each turned sadistic yellow as he approached. He had learned that pulling faces and swearing at traffic lights didn’t help. Didn’t help at all.
Making it through the last light, he turned his car up 15th and down St. Georges and entered the underground parkade of his new detachment.
The North Vancouver RCMP HQ was a modern terraced monolith, three above-ground levels of concrete and glass that looked more like a beached ocean liner than a building. He left his car and rode the elevator up to Level 2, walked down the corridor, and swung into the briefing hall where “A” watch gathered to learn of the day’s challenges.
North Van was a mill of hot files, unlike laid-back Rupert, City of Rainbows, up there on its rocky shore. Some crimes were bad, others worse. Today’s was off the scale, horrific, and the point-form description, even without the graphic details, rattled Leith as Watch Commander Doug Paley laid it out. A mother and daughter found dead in their home, Paley was saying. Found by a concerned neighbour. Neighbour had seen lights on all night, heard music going, too, and no sign of the residents. She didn’t know them personally, not even their names. But the lights and music had struck her as odd enough that she had gone up the back stairs this morning and peeked inside.
First-on-scene gave some details, describing the scene, the victims.
One of the dead was just a toddler. Like Leith’s own little Izzy.
* * *
Leith rode in the passenger seat with Doug Paley. Paley was late-middle-aged, heavy set, and cynical. He didn’t speak throughout the drive, and only as he pulled in to the curb and yanked on the handbrake did he tell Leith what was what. He would talk to the first responders outside, then join Leith inside the house.
The house was a modest one-storey with finished basement on the corner of 23rd and Mahon. Several squad cars and the crime-scene vans were ranged along the avenue. A crowd of the curious was gathering: neighbours and passersby. Constables kept traffic moving. At the back of a van, Leith zipped into anti-contamination coveralls. The home’s front gate was propped open, the egress path marked with crime-scene tape. He climbed cement steps to the door, identified himself to the constable at the door, was given general directions, and entered the house.
Music played, soft rock. There was an unpleasant smell, but it wasn’t the worst he had ever worked at not inhaling. Inside the front door a flight of stairs led down, and another led up. He took the flight up, and the music got louder and the smell got ranker. From the top of the stairs radiated a hallway to what might be bedrooms and a bathroom. The place looked neat and clean. Kitchen straight ahead and a combo living room/dining room to his left. The bodies were in the living room, along with the first signs of chaos: a lamp knocked over, dry flowers strewn willy-nilly,