Another thing to add to Monty’s list of virtues was persistence. The party had been mentioned a few times, and Leith had worked hard at not giving a straight answer, hoping it would go away. “Yes,” he said now. “A costume party, at your place, Sunday. Be there or be square. Sorry, one thing I don’t do is costumes. But thanks for the invite.” He turned the heater on full blast.
In the rear-view mirror he saw Monty’s blue eyes surrounded by fine crinkles. Lines in aging faces could say a lot about character, and Monty’s had nice-guy written all over them. “I tell you what it is, Dave,” he said, relaxing back, his arms outstretched. “You’re socially rusty. You’re the Tin Man without an oil can. But it’s not fatal. Sometimes you just got to push yourself, get out there. Have some fun. At best, you’ll have a blast, make new friends. At worst, you come to my party, you say, Fuck, this is lame, you dodge out first chance you get. I won’t stop you.”
Leith looked at JD beside him. Her eyes said, Don’t ask me; I’m sure the hell not going.
Of course she wasn’t. Except for the occasional drinks night when she joined the crew at Rainey’s, she was a confirmed loner. Even when she deigned to come out, she wouldn’t stay long. She’d take a chair and join in the conversation for a bit, end up criticizing the music or the unhealthy snacks, and usually leave on a sour note. Sometimes Leith wondered if her attendances were some kind of self-imposed chore — like teeth-flossing.
Did he want to end up like JD? Hell no. Monty was right. Socializing is a lot like going for a walk; it’s easier not to, and the longer you put it off, the harder it gets, but once you’re out there, it feels great. “Okay, but no costume,” he said.
“No costume, no candy.”
Leith checked his colleague in the mirror. In this new-age world, candy had all kinds of meanings, some not so innocent. Monty read the glance and cried, “Oh, for Pete’s sake, Dave! By candy I mean candy. Gummy Bears and such. You weren’t kidding about the ol’ stick-in-the-mud thing, were you?”
JD laughed aloud.
Leith drove back down Mountain Highway, and behind him Monty said, “Oh, look here.” He was reading something off his phone, an email or text. “Looks like we have a lead. Couple of neighbourhood kids were up the Mesachee trail this summer and might have seen something of interest. Of interest to who, I’m not quite sure.”
“Mesachee, where’s that?”
“Don’t ask me.”
JD knew. “Above the Headwaters.”
Leith told her that meant nothing to him. After six months he was still forever getting lost on the North Shore. Behind him a phone pinged again, and Monty chuckled. “This just in. My fiancée.” He leaned to show JD. She took the phone in hand, looked at the little picture on display, then tilted it at Leith.
Leith glanced away from the road and squinted at the screen, which showed a pixie-like girl pulling a rude face at the camera. She looked about twelve. “She’s pretty,” he said, and it wasn’t a lie.
“Pretty as a picture,” Monty agreed, retrieving his phone. “She’s not jailbait, if that’s what you’re thinking. She’s twenty-eight.”
Leith was more interested in where the Headwaters were than Monty’s amazingly young-looking fiancée, and JD went on to fill him in. Around the bend from Greer, the neighbourhood they had just left, she told him, was the Lynn Headwaters Regional Park, bisected by Lynn Creek — which was more raging river than babbling brook — into formal and informal halves. On the far side of the river from the parking lot were the mapped trails, with walks that ranged from beginner to murderous, all clearly delineated on governmental signboards. No mountain bikes allowed. But on this side of the river lay the Mesachee, an unendorsed, uncharted swatch of forest created by mountain bikers, for mountain bikers. The Mesachee, as JD went on to describe, was a crazy network of trails and death-defying obstacles, ramps, mud swamps, and switchbacks.
“Sounds like you’ve challenged these death-defying obstacles yourself,” Leith said.
“No, but I’ve personally signed my niece’s leg cast.”
Monty had been busy reading emails. He tucked his phone away and set the agenda. “We’ll have lunch, then go talk to these kids. Apparently they’re out and about, mountain biking at this Mesachee place. But they’re being rounded up for us as we speak.”
“Good,” Leith said. He had a feeling when Monty said, “We’ll have lunch,” he meant together. And Leith was right.
“So whereabouts for lunch?” Monty asked. “Ideas, anybody?”
JD said, “At my desk, out of my brown bag, if you want to join me. Otherwise, you can just go ahead and drop me off.”
As she had told Leith once, she had given up on the whole team spirit, rank-climbing bullshit long ago. Maybe it was her disfigurement. Her mouth was scarred by a birth defect, which might have led to her being bullied, which might have led to loneliness, which had maybe left her with a defensiveness that was just a little over the top, as he’d told her. She had told him in reply to go fuck himself, so she was definitely warming up to his charms.
But rank-climber was Leith’s middle name. He looked at Monty and said, “I’ve always wanted to try the Tomahawk, if you’re up for something new.”
Six
HOWL
Though it was just past noon, the forest seemed to be sinking into dusk. Dion and Jackie Randall were in the midst of the Mesachee Woods, looking for two young witnesses who were said to be mountain bike fanatics and were possibly hereabouts.
The trails on this side of the river were narrower and not so hiker-friendly as those woodsy corridors on the far side, the headwater trails where just this week, Aldobrandino Rosetti had lost his life. Muddier here, too, as the knobby treads of bikes were always chewing through the ground cover. Dion was sweating more than he had on the Rosetti hike; his thighs ached, and his boots were starting to look like shit, literally. “Five more minutes and we’re going back,” he called to Randall ahead of him. “Didn’t I tell you we’re better off ambushing them at the trail head? And it’d be a lot easier.”
“Five more minutes,” Randall agreed, over her shoulder. “The problem is, these kids have had their phone privileges revoked. And they’re on bicycles, and we’re not, and they could be anywhere from here to Mount Fromme.”
Dion corrected her. “You can’t get to Mount Fromme from here. You have to go around. Mountain Highway takes you up there, but you’d need a vehicle.”
“You know your way around pretty good. You a biker?”
He had been, when younger. He had flashed down these very trails, in fact, coated in mud. He had thumped the tracks, done a couple of end-over-ends, earned his kudos. “I’ve done some biking in my time.”
Randall grinned. “I’m a pretty hot biker myself. Got an old one-speed with a basket and a bell in my mom’s basement. But, oh, right, I don’t do hills.”
They continued walking. Dion explained that this area was an old set of trails that had been refurbished by young freeriders some years back, because bikes weren’t allowed on the main park trails, and the kids wanted somewhere more accessible than the Mount Fromme wheelie wonderland.
“It’s kind of an outlaw route,” he said. “Not even on the maps. We should go back. Hear me, Jackie? Enter at your own risk.”
She turned to laugh at him. “You’re such a wuss.”
“Watch out!” he warned her.
They both stepped back as a cyclist charged by, telling them, “Get off the path, motherfuckers!”
Two