Like Thackray before him, Dion did his best, making a yacking gesture with his hand at his mouth, shaking his head at the woman, saying, “Sorry.” Leith and Thackray grinned at each other, and the old lady went quiet. Dion turned to Leith with arm outstretched, pointing at the wall, and said, “Willy’s at the Super 8 diner every morning about seven. You must have seen him there, old Indian guy, white hair. He could translate for you. Ken could probably tell you how to reach him.”
“Willy …” Vaguely, Leith recalled a white-haired gentleman in the Super 8’s little gingham-tabled restaurant, sitting at the window booth, outlined by predawn darkness, drinking coffee. “Ken,” he said. “Who’s that?”
Dion stared at him. “He serves you breakfast every morning. Right? Ken Cheng?”
And with that he was reaching for the door handle again, and Leith wondered if this was it, he would now just climb into his cruiser and shoot away back to his home posting of Smithers, a one hour’s drive south, without so much as a goodbye or a swell to know you. Recalling the paperwork Giroux had been flapping about earlier, Leith shouted after him, “You have to clear it with the boss before you go, right?”
“I did,” Dion shouted back, and was gone, out into the falling snow.
The old native lady looked exasperated, and Thackray said to the door, “Goodbye, Mr. Sunshine.”
* * *
Getting a translator for the little old lady was Thackray’s problem, really, but Leith decided a change of pace to the day would be good for him, and he offered to do it himself. Sometimes to run a simple errand is rejuvenating. Solve an easy puzzle and feel good about yourself for a change.
He crossed the highway on foot to the Super 8 and talked to the short-spoken little Asian fellow who served him and the other out-of-towners breakfast every morning — sure enough, the name was Ken Cheng — and asked him about a customer named Willy. Mr. Cheng told him, yeah, Willy hung out here most mornings — in fact, he left about an hour ago. He didn’t have a lot of money, taught languages at the Continuing Ed place sometimes, for free. But not many people were interested in language learning, so Willy mostly just walked about town or went fishing in the season. Mr. Cheng didn’t know Willy’s address.
Leith re-crossed the highway on foot, jumped into his SUV, and drove to the Continuing Education building, where he spoke to a woman there who knew Willy and had his address on file. No phone number, sorry. She told Leith that Willy wasn’t a translator, really, not too good with English, more a teacher of the old language, but he’d probably be able to help out in a pinch.
Not feeling much rejuvenated, Leith punched the address into his GPS and drove to the address the woman gave him, a rundown apartment low-rise in the poorest nook of the village. He climbed the stairs and knocked on the door. He heard loud music and loud shouting and a loud dog barking incessantly, all from behind thin walls, and his nerves danced. Nobody answered his knocking, but the shouting in the next apartment went quiet, and a native teenager who should have been in school looked out and asked him what he wanted. Leith told him he was looking for Willy. The kid said, “What’s Willy done?”
Being in plainclothes, Leith mentally bellowed, Now why d’you assume I’m a cop? I could be the old guy’s perennial fishing pal. But on reflection he realized he couldn’t be anybody’s fishing pal; in this scenario, he could be nothing else but a cop. He said, “Willy’s not in trouble. I need him to translate for me. D’you know anybody else who could translate?”
“Translate what?”
Leith realized he didn’t have any idea. “Gitxsan, I’m pretty sure.”
The kid shook his head.
“Thanks,” Leith said.
“No problem,” the kid said and shut the door, and the shouting started all over again, and Leith realized it was aggressive but not angry shouting, and there was laughter thrown in, so it wasn’t murder after all, just some kind of party. The shouting was in English, but it wasn’t good English. It was slurred and mangled. Leith was glad he was white and middle-class and didn’t have to live next to these noisy bastards. Better yet, he didn’t have to be these noisy bastards. Poor Willy. No wonder he wandered the town.
Outside, the snow was ankle-deep but heavy and wet. His mission was a failure, and he felt far from good about himself, and it was high time to hand it back to Thackray, say go find your own damn translator. But then he saw him, a shambling figure walking along the side of the highway, head bowed, heavily dressed, and Leith said aloud, “I’ll bet my right arm that’s our man.”
He stopped the SUV and approached with his ID out, and the shambling figure stopped to watch him come in stony silence.
“Hi, excuse me, I’m looking for William Lloyd?”
“Why?” came the answer. “What’s ol’ Willy done?”
This wasn’t the first time Leith had lost his right arm, and he knew it wouldn’t be the last. He pocketed his ID. “Any idea where he is right now?”
The man who wasn’t Willy pointed to the big yellow sign on the main drag not too far ahead.
Leith drove the two blocks to the Catalina, stepped inside, and found a table where four native men sat. There were three middle-aged men speaking English — something about construction of a new road — and one old guy with wild white hair and mismatched eyes, one milky blue, who seemed to be mostly just listening. All four men looked at Leith as he walked over. This time there could be no doubt which was Willy.
There were greetings all around, and he was invited to sit down, in spite of being a fair-skinned, hazel-eyed detective from Prince Rupert. The three men listened while Leith spoke with Willy, asking him if he could do some translating for him. He didn’t mention the complainant’s name, Paula Chester, in case one of the three men listening was somehow involved in the crime. Who knew?
Willy said sure, he could do that, and his English didn’t seem so bad, actually. “Now?”
Leith called the detachment, and Thackray said Mrs. Chester had left, but he would pick her up again and bring her back. Fifteen minutes? Leith would have left with Willy then, except one of the three men had bought him a coffee. This guy too was from Prince Rupert but hadn’t been back in a while and wanted to know how things were going in the City of Rainbows.
After the unwanted coffee and chat, Leith drove Willy back to the detachment and found Thackray hadn’t yet returned with Mrs. Chester, so he left the old man in the more comfortable interview room, which would be the best place, he thought, for the translation process. Then he went back to his desk to get stuff done. The cute little errand hadn’t been so cute in the end, not the mood-boost he’d been aiming for.
As he was to find out later, it was some minutes after he’d left Willy in that room that the old man must have gotten bored with sitting looking at travel magazines and got up and wandered about the detachment a bit, finding himself in the primary case room, which should have been locked but wasn’t, and which took the Hazelton case on a whole new trajectory.
* * *
The apartment, which Dion had rented partially furnished when he’d moved to Smithers five months ago, still had the echo of an unloved place, and now on his return it had also the chill of vacancy. He dropped his gym bag to the floor and turned up the thermostat. The baseboards ticked alive, and in time the iciness began to thaw from walls and furniture.
One of the first things he’d bought after landing in Smithers had been a Sony ghetto blaster from the local stereo store, and he stooped now to bang in a synthpop CD to scare away the silence. On the kitchen counter stood another welcome-back bonus, five beer left over from a twelve-pack