TWO STRANGE THINGS happened to Dion as he was signing out for the day. The first was Ken Poole, in uniform and duty belt, stopping him for a brief chat in the main floor hallway. Or not so much a chat as a word in passing.
“Nice day, isn’t it?” Poole said. “Should take a walk along the Quay tomorrow morning. Six a.m.” He didn’t wait for an answer but moved on.
Since the day was anything but nice, and the Quay at 6:00 a.m. would be dark and dismal, Dion stood puzzled and called out to Poole’s backside, “What?”
Poole kept walking, and now Dion got it.
As he was digesting the question, suggestion, or command, his cell buzzed. It was Mike Bosko inviting him out for coffee. Something they had to discuss, serious, but not actually job related. The sergeant suggested not one of the usual cop hangouts, but a Persian cafeteria a few blocks uphill from the detachment, in say half an hour.
Dion made sure to arrive ahead of schedule. The invitation unnerved him, and he wanted time to scope out his surroundings, brace himself for whatever was coming. Inside the narrow restaurant the customers were mostly dark-skinned and speaking in a loose blend of English and Farsi. He found a seat in a corner and watched the door. Bosko arrived minutes later. He was greeted by the server and nodded at by other patrons, Dion noticed. As if he’d been here before. As if he was a regular.
“Hey, thanks for getting together on such short notice,” Bosko said.
“No problem.”
When they were facing each other, two cups of strong Persian coffee before them, Bosko opened with a pleasantry. “How’s it going for you these days?”
Dion had overheard colleagues discussing Bosko, a man who never looked busy, never got angry, yet got things done. Bit of a mystery. JD snickered that he was an android, embedded in the North Van detachment as a CSIS experiment. Not an android, Dion thought, but definitely a spy. Worse, Dion himself was in the spy’s crosshairs.
“Very good, sir,” he said. He sat back with shoulders relaxed, no fear in his eyes. He knew how fearless he appeared because his mirror confirmed it, every morning as he shaved.
Bosko seemed to absorb the brief answer. Computing. Finally, he said, “You’ve come a long way since we first met, up in the Hazeltons. I’m impressed.”
Dion’s transfer to the northern half of the province after the crash was a faded memory. New Hazelton was where he had first met and worked under Bosko and Leith. When the case that had brought them together ended, Bosko had returned to the city, Leith to his home detachment of Prince Rupert, and Dion had resigned himself to life in a small town surrounded by wilderness. But then Bosko had summoned him back to North Vancouver, to be on his team. After all this time, Dion was still trying to figure out why. “Thanks,” he said. And tacked on a little white lie: “The counselling helped.”
Bosko led the discussion with some small talk, weather related, then case related, before getting to the point of the meeting. “Brooke Zaccardi,” he said. “Did you know she was in town?”
Dion had been expecting her name to come up, though not like this, an intimate face-to-face in a dark café. He nodded. “Doug mentioned she was in Rainey’s for a visit last month.”
“And then disappeared. You didn’t see her, in or around that time?”
“No. She didn’t get in touch.”
“You didn’t know of her visit?”
“Not until after.”
“If you’d have known, would you have tried to see her?”
The question took Dion off guard. He thought about it, shook his head. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Any idea what could have happened to her? You’re probably the closest friend she had here on the North Shore.”
So Dion was being canvassed about a missing woman. But it was more than that, he realized. Brooke was connected to Looch, and Looch was connected to the night of the murder, and now Brooke had disappeared. A bunch of stepping stones that led to Dion himself, which Bosko would have figured out soon enough.
If he was in the mood to confess, Dion could have put forward his theory to Bosko, in detail. On the summer night of the murder, in the deep shadows of the gravel pit, he had seen Looch on his phone. Who would he be calling in secret? Brooke. To cry about the trouble he was in, because Looch was a coward. If he cried to Brooke, if Brooke knew what they’d done, then probably it was Brooke who had made the call and threatened to tell all. To get back at Dion, if nothing else.
Maybe Bosko knew it already. Probably he did. Probably he was here to break it to Dion over Persian coffee, away from the eyes of his colleagues, an act of mercy. Then he’d place him under arrest.
The tightness was coiling in Dion, the fear that left him cold and clammy. If he had another sip of that thick coffee he’d probably spew it all over Bosko. He left the cup alone and waited, and when the arrest didn’t happen, he answered Bosko with his expertly forced calm. “Brooke and I weren’t close. She’s as much friends with Doug and the others as me. I have no idea what happened to her. Doug says she was acting strangely that night at Rainey’s.”
“Acting strangely how?” Bosko asked. “What did Doug tell you?”
What Doug Paley had said afterward was, Hey, Cal, guess who dropped in out of nowhere last week? Brooke Fucking Zaccardi. Came to Rainey’s with JD, sucked up a couple highballs, and ranted about what a bastard you are. She’s hit the chemicals, man. Got the meth-face and the shakes. Skinny as a rake and looks like shit.
“He said she wasn’t looking good,” Dion said. “He thinks she’s doing drugs. Lost weight, not taking care of herself. I can’t confirm any of it, because I wasn’t there.”
“Do you know who was there, besides Doug?”
Dion had a feeling that Bosko well knew who was there besides Doug. He’d probably already questioned those involved. Probably this was part of the test he was sure to fail.
He shook his head. “Don’t know.”
Bosko gave the table a light slap to signal an end to his questions. “Good enough. I’m pretty sure I’ve got the full list, but just checking in case I missed somebody.”
Dion wondered who else was on the list, who else had heard Brooke’s rant, and what the rant had been, specifically. The queasiness had passed enough that he could devote himself to his coffee, if only because not drinking was a show of weakness. Maybe it was just the extra hit of caffeine, but his heart was thudding.
“Brooke isn’t our case, of course,” Bosko added. He was fishing out his wallet, ready to leave. “She’s got a Burnaby address. But she was here in North Van the day before she disappeared, so I’m helping out as best I can, asking around. It’s not much of a lead, but anything helps.”
“Wish I had something to offer,” Dion said. He held up his cup to say he wasn’t finished and would stay a while. Bosko gave him a smile, paid for both cups, and left.
Dion pictured Brooke’s face as he had known her two summers ago. He hadn’t seen her, hadn’t exchanged a word with her since the crash that killed Looch. He’d heard she’d gone east, and why she was back he had no idea. He looked across the coffee shop, past the silhouettes of its patrons, through plate glass to the street, focusing on his body, his fear, his outer calm. Whatever had brought Brooke back here, whatever revenge she had planned for him, all he could do was hope she’d stay silent — even if it meant a permanent listing on the missing persons registry.
* * *
As her day ended, JD sat in her car and thought about the shoes she needed but didn’t want. She put her car in gear and drove to the Park Royal Mall.
She had discovered the shoe issue this morning, while dressing for work, looking through her wardrobe, thinking about the Valentine’s Day dance she wouldn’t be attending, impatiently leafing through hangers of shirts, trousers, skirts, and a long-forgotten kimono. Why? Because one of these days she’d have no choice but attend some event, formal or semi, and it would be good to have something respectable to wear.
The only reasonably attractive dress she found was long-sleeved, dark grey, body-hugging, mid-thigh length. It would do at both a social gathering and a funeral, if paired with charcoal tights and strappy heels. But the only strappy heels she seemed to own were some mustard-coloured stilettos. She had untangled them, this morning, from a crate of flip-flops and old runners and dangled them in the morning light, not sure where they’d come from.
Definitely wouldn’t go with charcoal tights. She needed new shoes.
She arrived at the mall in West Van, with its plethora of shoe stores, and parked her car. She didn’t like malls, and shoe shopping was way up there on her list of least favourite chores. But she did her best. Store after store, all the shoes she looked at were just not her. And the ones she liked were either hazardous or uncomfortable.
She had given up on the plan and was heading back to the exit when a pair in a display case caught her eye. Wedge-style pumps, they were called. Not as strappy as she had in mind, but less tottery. A good colour, too, distressed grey on black. She might even say cute, if forced to use the word.
She went in to try them on.
While she waited for her size to be brought, she browsed the shelves. On one side of the store were women’s shoes, on the other, men’s. Among the men’s shoes stood the masculine equivalent of stilettos: ornate cowboy boots, which made her think of Robbie Clark.
“Ma’am,” the sales clerk said, holding up a box.
“One minute,” JD said.
She stared at the cowboy boots, at their sassy chrome toe points. The chrome caught the store’s high-watt spotlight, flashing into her eyes.
Dazzling, in more ways than one.