“Scottie called it East Band. I don’t know, East Band mountain, or road. He just said East Band.”
When she was done, he told her to wait there. Out in his car he phoned directly to Jayne Spacey, his point person for the night, and told her where he was, at Scott Rourke’s residence, and where he was going, up to a lookout on a logging road past McLeod, in an area possibly called East Band. He told her that he needed backup, because he believed Scott Rourke was up there with Frank Law, and it could be a dicey situation.
“What, where?” she said.
He looked at the map, so little of it marked with names. The lookout wasn’t a tourist hotspot, and there was nothing to distinguish it from the rest of the green. There was no East Band that he could see. “I can’t explain everything right now,” he said. “But Evangeline Doyle’s here. She’ll give you directions, or maybe she can just take you out there. That would be better.” He thought a moment, staring at his map, struggling through the logistics as the clock ticked. If the team had to come out to Rourke’s trailer to get Evangeline, there would be a good half hour wasted, considering the road leading to the area she had pointed out started somewhere up Highway 37, not up Kispiox Road. The closest point between the detachment and the East Band, as he saw it, was Old Town.
He said, “I’ll leave her at the Black Bear Lodge. You can meet her there. Get a team together. I’ll go up ahead and see what I can find out, and wait there for backup. I’m not sure if Rourke is armed. You have to move fast on this. I don’t know what exactly I’m headed into.”
“Yes, fine,” Spacey said.
He shut his phone and jogged back to the trailer to get Evangeline. She sat in the passenger seat and he fired the engine, aware that it was all wrong, somehow, him and Spacey, the games they were playing and the dynamite they had underfoot. But in this case she would have no choice but to act, and he could hardly sit here mulling it over anyway. Rourke had at least an hour’s head start, and Dion was almost certain that if Frank wasn’t dead already, all in the name of mercy, it was just a matter of time.
Twelve
The Gates
THE SKIES WERE NO LONGER a weird, writhing pink but black velvet spangled with stars. He found McLeod Road, no problem, passed a ranch, and about five miles farther found a logging road jotting off his left, with a brown government sign warning about logging trucks. So far Evangeline had it all dead right.
The road started good and flat, and his high beams cut a white path before him as he sped along, exposing so many blurry kilometres of frozen gravel. Then it began to slant uphill, the grade increasing until the engine had to clear its throat and change gears.
The last of the ranch lands fell behind and the wilds closed in fast, and he became aware of his isolation, and almost worse than what he couldn’t see before him was what he could, caught in the periphery of his lights, the flanks of nightmare forests. Something loomed in the headlights bigger than a deer and flashed away as he jumped on the brakes and slid into a spin across gravel and ice.
He sat breathing hard till his heart slowed, straightened out the vehicle, and carried on.
The road branched, and he braked at the unmarked crossroads and swore. Evangeline hadn’t mentioned any branching. He left the car idling and went around to the back to dig out a reflective marker to leave for the team to know which branch he’d gambled on: the left.
From here the gravel steepened, deteriorated to ruts, and forced him to a crawl, and he knew he’d lost the race. It was time to find a good place to turn around, go back and wait at the crossroads for the backup that was bound to be just minutes behind him. Twenty minutes, he figured, if Spacey had jumped to it.
A fairly good place to turn around came up, but he passed it, thinking the next would be even better. Another chance didn’t seem to come up, and he kept climbing the narrow road, higher and higher, alternately accelerating and braking, swerving to avoid the potholes, suspension jouncing crazily. When the gravel levelled out and gleamed away ahead of him, a pale blue ribbon touched with ice, he made a deal with himself that he would travel up this stretch as far as it went, and soon as it got rutty again he would turn back.
A kilometre into the stretch his headlights glanced against something man-made, off the road to his left. He pulled over again, this time shutting off engine and lights so the night’s blackness invaded his lungs and made it hard to breathe.
Turning on the flashlight only made the blackness worse, so he flicked it off again. He backlit his wristwatch to show the time, calculated his backup ETA once more, tried his radio, got nothing but static, waited another full thirty seconds, then left the car, and with light on full blast headed toward the object downslope that had caught his headlights.
The object, as he’d thought, was a vehicle that had driven off the road across the dead grasses of a broad clearing, churning the snow and leaving twin tracks, and yes it was an old green Jeep. Frank’s wheels. He touched the hood and found it cool but not icy. All doors were locked. There was nothing of interest visible inside. The footprints, two sets, headed off into the woods toward an opening in the trees. If he could read anything in the tracks, they seemed unhurried. Two friends ambling along.
He called out Frank’s name, and Rourke’s, and listened. This was where he would post himself, then, and wait for backup. Again he backlit his watch, and it dawned on him that there was something wrong with that ETA. He tried his cellphone again and found again no reception. That was what mountains did, threw walls up between towers, killed the signals.
And now he felt so tiny and alone, here in the vastness of the night. Grasses rustled, branches swished, wood creaked, but nothing in all those sounds warned him of company. The two friends were long gone. He could stand here and freeze, or he could return to the car and head back down the mountain, or he could follow those tracks. The risk, as he saw it, was moderate. Rourke didn’t have a gun, at least not registered, and he, Dion, did.
The tracks didn’t lead far. The trees formed a thick canopy that kept snow off the trail, and there were no signs of passage, leaving only the path itself as a guide. The path was decent at times and at times became nothing, leaving him to cross boulders along the brink of what looked like a bottomless pit in his torch beam. When he’d gotten past the big rocks, the hillside dipped, and he could just make out the trail angling across its face. No footprints still, and he wondered again if he was going the wrong way. His feet propelled him downward in jerking strides through scrub and loose shale, until his passage caused a small avalanche and he lost his footing and went down in a slither, onto knees, then butt, then back, trying to dig in his heels as brakes but his weight carrying him down till some jagged obstruction brought him to an abrupt stop. Not just abrupt, but painful, and whatever had blocked his fall was sharp against his body. Worse, his flashlight had flown from his chilled grip. He lay still, eyes squeezed shut, listening to rocks clattering downhill.
The silence resettled, except for his own gasps. The pain drove up through his torso, flaring at his right side, and he eased upright and explored the area by touch. Something, a ragged branch stub probably, had ripped through his patrol jacket and gouged him. His hand came away wet.
For a minute he stayed where he was, in case the wound was fatal. According to plan, he tried to make his last moments not so lonely. Shivering, eyes closed, he imagined Kate leaning over, kissing him gently on the mouth. He waited a moment longer, still shivering. He opened his eyes and looked around. Down the slope a ways and stuck under a bush was a patch of light. He moved sideways and downward until he had the flashlight in hand again. He crawled back up to the path, got to his feet, used the light to check his wound. Not fatal, he decided. Hardly worth a bandage. Just an added aggravation in a difficult situation.
The path took him downward some distance farther and ended at a plateau of tall grasses poking up through the rain-tattered snow, and the sky opened before him into a dome, not quite black but a solemn midnight blue, and across the length of a football field, maybe, was the brink. He couldn’t see it but could feel it, a hollowness, a near silent roar that told of empty