“Calvin Dion, hello.” Recognition must have kicked in, for now Bosko was on his feet, smiling. “Or is it Cal?”
“Cal’s good.” Dion had risen too, reaching across the desk. This was another of the day’s big challenges: the all-important first impression, the firm handshake, the confident smile. The smile had to reach the eyes, or it was worse than no smile at all. The reach and grip had to be solid, fluid, and of just the right duration — not so brief as to seem skittish, but releasing before being released, to show initiative. “Morning, sir.”
They both resumed their seats. Reborn from the haircut to the silk-blend socks, Dion had been careful not to show up on Day One looking like a menswear mannequin. That would make him look insecure. He had knotted the tie properly but hadn’t snugged it too tight, tucked the shirttails in, then did a few overhead stretches to slack off the tension. He was showered and shaved, but had skipped the cologne, and his short black hair was a tad mussed. According to the mirror, he was perfectly imperfect.
“So you didn’t have time to set up your pencil jar before they sent you off to the field, I hear,” Bosko said. He had a deep, easy voice, almost lazy. And controlled, as though nothing could fluster him. “I also understand you’re already in the thick of it, so I won’t keep you. I called you in just to welcome you back and have a one-minute face-to-face, since I don’t believe we ever actually spoke, did we? How are you doing so far?”
“Great,” Dion said. Seated straight, but not too straight, his expression enthused but not maniacal. “I’m stoked to be home. I wanted to thank you. For putting your trust in me, sir. You won’t be disappointed.”
“I don’t expect I will be. Now, you’ve been away for a while, and things have been shuffled around a bit, so if you need any help with our setup here, procedure, fitting back in, or just need to talk something through, come on over and let me know. The door’s open.”
Dion nodded. “There is one thing. I was working on a file when the crash happened. It’s still unsolved. Would I be able to get back on it?”
Bosko asked for the particulars, and Dion gave him the file name — written down and memorized before this meeting — and the basics. Last summer a young woman’s body had been found washed ashore. Snagged in the boulders that formed a rampart down by the Neptune Terminals. He didn’t give Bosko the fine details, how Jane Doe’s face had been eroded by gasses, brine, and parasites, so a police artist had reconstructed her, as best she could, in pencil, to be followed up by a 3D model. Early twenties, short hair that was natural brown but dyed white-blond, wide-spaced eyes, rosebud mouth. Ancestry undetermined, but possibly Eurasian. Pink spandex bathing suit — a pricey brand — embedded in flesh, grotesque and slimy. And one earring, the other apparently lost. He had been trying before his departure to track down the jeweller who made the earring. It was of characteristic design, a round, enamelled button, a yellow shape against a red background. The shape might have been a star, except it was cut off. Around the edges ran little beads of gold, fourteen-carat.
The bathing suit and the season — summertime — suggested she had come off a boat. The pathologist determined she had been strangled by a fine, hard ligature. Alternatively, it might have been a necklace that had cut into her bloating flesh before snapping and sinking to the ocean floor.
She would have been beautiful, once.
Nobody had come to claim her, and she had never been given a name, and like any unfinished job, she continued to haunt Dion.
“I’ll tell you what,” Bosko said, after calling the case up on the intranet. “You’re free to look it over, but I’d like you on this Mahon case, hundred percent.”
Mahon Avenue, murdered mother and child, missing husband. “Yes, sir. Thank you.”
And just like that, they were done. Dion stood and smiled again. As he left the room and strode down the hall, he counted again the four possibilities of why he was back in North Vancouver. Possibility one was just what he’d been told, that Bosko was impressed with him for some reason — his excellent past record, say — and for that reason alone, he’d had him summoned. Possibility two: sheer error. Bosko was a busy man with lots on his mind, and maybe a wire had crossed, a typo or false memory, and he simply had someone else in mind. Three, Bosko was a manipulator. He considered Dion a liability and wanted him gone, but needed a good excuse, so he’d decided to place him in a stressful situation — the big-city crime scene — to watch him come apart.
The fourth possibility kept Dion awake nights: he was being investigated. Bosko was working a crime, had a theory, was putting his suspicion to the test, and to test it properly he needed his suspect close at hand.
Down on Level 2, at the desk he’d been given, Dion set aside his doubts and focussed on the Lius. He listed his thoughts on paper. First on the list, he made a call to the Justice Department for a telephone warrant, doing Jimmy Torr’s job for him, then to the Corporate Registry of Companies, and fairly soon had the information he was looking for: the names of all partners in the company, which totalled two, each owning fifty percent of L&S Electric.
He guessed the “L” was Lance Liu. The “S,” he knew now, would be a Sigmund Blatt. The company had been incorporated only three months ago. Its address was a PO box, and its phone number was the one he had tried earlier without luck. Now he made more calls, tracking down the unlisted contact information for the surviving partner.
Within the hour he took the information a few desks down to Jimmy Torr. He sat and waited for Torr to finish a call, then told him, “I’ve got a line on Sigmund Blatt, the missing man’s partner. You want me to follow up?”
He had known Torr for years. Torr was in his middle thirties, built, irritable, and insecure. He had never liked Dion, and vice versa. But animosity felt good to Dion. It meant for a while he could drop the cheek-numbing smile.
“I’ll take care of it,” Torr said coldly, reaching for the note. “Thanks.”
“It’s priority. Lance Liu’s our best bet right now, and he’s missing. If you’re not going to deal with it straight away, I will. Paley’s given me the go-ahead.”
Torr looked at the paper. He said, “Call him up, tell him I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
“I tried. Got an answering machine.”
“Did you leave a message? Tell him to get back to you A-SAP?”
“No. Better to cold-call him anyway,” Dion said. “I could head over there now.”
Torr said sourly, “What meds they got you on?” He didn’t wait for an answer, but stood and grabbed his suit jacket, making a statement with the set of his shoulders that he was going alone. Dion followed.
Four
Echoes
Leith had seen what he had to see in the house on Mahon, and as the place filled with Ident members buckling down for an in-depth search, he thought he would leave, make himself useful back at the office. He was heading down the stairs toward the front door when he heard a commotion, a kind of collective gasp, then a murmuring of excited voices.
It was so unlike any other commotion he had heard at crime scenes over the years that he returned at a jog to the top of the stairs and followed the sound to the kitchen. Here he saw half a dozen white-clad Idents clustered about the lower corner cabinet next to the kitchen sink. All were peering into the darkness, and one was speaking gently to it.
Dog or cat, Leith thought.
“What’s up?” he asked the member closest to him.
“There’s a child in there,” she said. “A boy, we’re thinking. He’s crouched way