He’d have preferred it if they’d bellowed warnings in his face and slammed down a list of conditions to meet before they’d let him back in the door. Instead there was that eerie silence, and he knew what it amounted to. They were going to gently downsize him till he vanished.
He didn’t want to go out like that. He looked out the window, up to the snowy peaks. He imagined if a hiker went missing up there, they’d search for a week then call it off. He’d climb so high the winds would batter him to death. So high they wouldn’t find him till he was bits of bone, white and pure. He decided to go for a walk.
A taxi took him to the base of a popular trail that wound up the ski hill just west of Smithers. Up there past the trodden path he would find pure wilderness, he knew, endless peaks and valleys. But even before he left the car he hit a snag, as the heavy-bellied middle-aged native cabbie he’d never met before balked instead of taking his cash. “What, you’re going to walk up the mountain?” the cabbie asked. “Dressed like that? S’a long haul, you know. It’s not Sunday afternoon in Stanley Park, hey.”
“I know. I’m okay.”
“You got no canteen, no provisions. You start walking, you’ll get thirsty, and you’ll look around and realize you’re miles from anything. No Starbucks up there, my friend. It’s dangerous. It’s a full day to the top, and that’s with all the proper gear. Soon as you’re out of the sun it’ll drop below zero. I’ve never seen anyone go up here without a pack.”
“So I’ll go halfway and come down again.”
“You got gloves? No, look at you, man, you don’t even got gloves!”
Dion sat with the passenger door wide open, exasperated. What was the problem? This guy wasn’t his mother, and even if he were, it wouldn’t be her business. “I’ll be okay,” he said again, and stood.
“And how you going to get back to town once you get back to this point, thirsty and hungry and cold? Even right here there’s no good cell service, you know. Let alone up there, you got nothing.”
Dion hadn’t thought it out this far, that the cabbie would report him to the police as a self-destructive lunatic, and they’d come and fetch him, and so much for going out with dignity.
“Tell you what,” the cabbie said. “There’s a road I know, gets you pretty high up the base of the glacier there out past the Johnsons’ farm on the 16. You can do the hike, it’s about three quarters of an hour, to this really spectacular kind of waterfall thing, then you come back down and I’ll pick you up at —” he looked at his watch “— one o’clock. How ’bout it?”
Following the cabbie’s orders, he was driven to a different trailhead, and he walked up a gravelly path fit for geriatrics, passing a few other hikers on the way, who all smiled hello at him. At the top he looked at the glacier and the waterfall and stood on a sightseer’s platform and listened to the wind. The wind slapped him hard but didn’t try to kill him. By the time he arrived back to the parking lot at five minutes to one, he was thirsty, hungry, and numbed. He was grateful when the cab pulled in a few minutes later.
“I brought you some coffee,” the cabbie said. “Knew you’d need it.”
Later, back in his apartment, Dion considered how easily he’d been dissuaded from suicide, and had to accept that he just wasn’t ready for it. He also wondered if the cabbie was just being nice, or really just wanted that big tip he’d ended up getting. His own judgment in all things was bad, following the crash, and one big fear of his was being taken for a sucker. Maybe that was why he thought through everything about four times longer than the average man, and sometimes forgot to say thank you.
While he was eating a late lunch in the silence of his apartment, he decided that the cabbie was for sure happy to get that big tip, but it wasn’t what drove him. Niceness was the purest of motives, in the cabbie’s case. Or caring, or common decency. Just as Scottie Rourke was nice, however off-the-rails he was. And Frank Law seemed like a good man, at least through hearsay. No doubt Kiera was good too. Stella Marshall might have been nice, in the right circumstances. Willy, who’d taught him how to say foolish and rabbit in the Nisga’a tongue, was very nice, and he missed Willy’s early morning company. Bunch of nice people, really.
He thought of Mercy Blackwood. For all her hospitality, she wasn’t nice. It wasn’t just the way she blew off the death of her dog. It went deeper than that. She was worse than not nice. She was just like him, bloodless, heartless, and cold to the touch.
Sixteen
Thaw
LATE MARCH, AND THE GROUND was still frozen, but the snow was on the wane. Spring break-up was washing over the central interior, and 90 percent of logging operations had shut down to ride it out. When Leith arrived at the Law home the sky was pelting rain and the midday light was muted to a premature dusk. Frank Law had been released pending his remand hearing but hadn’t been home more than a week before he’d screwed up badly, caught drinking and driving, and was sent back to the slammer. In Terrace. So much for reprieve. The youngest bear, Lenny, opened the door to Leith’s knock and directed him out back to the fleet of oversized Tonka toys in the yard, in particular to what he called the grapple-skidder. Leith had no solid idea what a grapple-skidder was, so he walked between the half-dozen machines until he found one emitting a clanging noise. He climbed the rungs and looked in to find Rob lying sideways on the operator’s seat, wrestling at something within the manifold with a wrench in each hand. His bare arms were striped with grease and his face contorted. He glanced around irritably when Leith rapped his knuckles against the mud-spattered, projectile-proof glass.
“Need to talk,” Leith shouted.
He waited between the machines until Rob came to earth with a thud and asked what he wanted.
“Charlie West,” Leith said. “Where exactly did she go when she left?”
“Charlie? Went north, I thought. But now I’m hearing she went south, so I’m guessing Vancouver. I told you, the lawyers said not to talk to you guys.”
“Thing is, she didn’t get to Dease Lake. Her sister hasn’t heard from her since last September, around the time she left you. No news of her showing up elsewhere either. With that in mind, d’you have any suggestion where she may be now?”
Rob shook his head, eyes squinched with fatigue or impatience, or both. He gestured at the house. “Gotta go clean up, get out of the rain.”
Leith followed him across the yard. “Has Frank been in contact with her since she left?”
Rob’s voice was dispirited. “Why should he be in contact with Charlie?”
“Why d’you think?”
They were inside the house, in the kitchen now, Rob running hot water, dousing a rag in soap. He didn’t pursue the why, and that said it all. He shrugged and spoke to the soap. “Seems to be a rumour Frank was screwing around with her. No clue why. He wasn’t interested in her whatsoever. Doesn’t matter. He’ll get his trial next month, and then he’ll probably go away for a long time. We got other things on our minds. She’s gone, hell knows where, and the last thing we need —”
“We’re concerned about her,” Leith said. “I understand you don’t want to hear this, but she’s missing, and I plan to find her, and you’re my best lead. Okay? So help me out.”
Rob made a noise, part disgust and part defeat. He said, “I’m having a beer. Want one?”
Leith said no to the beer but followed him into the living room, where Rob in his dirty coveralls sat heavily in an armchair, leaned back, and closed his eyes. The can of Labatt’s dangled in one hand, popped open but untouched.
The silence stretched until Leith broke it, putting to words what had bothered him since the last round of phone calls with the girl’s hometown. “She’s dead, isn’t she?”
“Dead,” Rob