Six Seconds

16

Calgary, Alberta, Canada

Jesus Rocks filled the police binoculars.

The words strained across Neil Bick’s T-shirt, adver tising his tattooed physique, earned in Stony Mountain federal prison where he did three years for stealing computers from RVs, cabins and cottages.

He’d also shot at-but missed-the two Winnipeg cops who’d arrested him.

How did this ex-con’s fingerprints get on the SUV rented by the Tarver family, Graham wondered, watch ing through binoculars as Bick walked down a neglected southeast Calgary sidewalk and into a world of trouble.

The Calgary Police Tactical Unit had a perimeter around his ramshackle house. The street had been cleared. Far off, an unseen dog barked.

“All right, take him,” the TAC commander whis pered over the radio.

Heavily armed police rushed from the cover of shrubs, alleys, porches and parked cars, putting Bick facedown on the street at gunpoint.

“What the fuck?”

They handcuffed him, patted him down and read him his Charter rights.

“What the fuck is this?”

Twenty-five minutes later he was sitting in an inter view room with Graham, who’d read his file a third time.

Neil Frederick Bick, age thirty-four, born in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Mother was a hooker murdered by an outlaw biker when Bick was six. He’d been a child of the province. In and out of school. In and out of the military. In and out of jail.

Graham asked Bick if he wanted a lawyer.

“Fuck lawyers. I don’t need one because I didn’t do nothing. Why are you jamming me, man? I’ve been livin’ straight since I got out. I need a smoke.”

The federal building was subject to no-smoking laws but Graham returned his pack. Bick shook one out, lit it and squinted through a cloud.

“Yeah, I remembered that family after I’d read the news. Wild.”

“Tell me again how your prints got on their SUV.”

“One of my jobs is pumping gas into airport rentals. I filled their tank and cleaned their windshield. I gave them directions to the Trans-Canada. My prints are on a lot of cars, you already know that.”

Graham knew it.

He also knew they’d just executed a search warrant on Bick’s residence.

“Neil, tell me about the four laptop computers we found in your possession.”

“I’m repairing them for people at my church. I studied computer tech at Stony. The church outreach people set me up here in Calgary. New place, new start and all.”

Bick tapped ash into the empty soda can Graham had passed him.

Ray Tarver’s computer was not among the four they’d found with Bick. None of the models or serial numbers were close. In fact, they all belonged to church members who’d corroborated Bick’s account.

And Mounties in Banff had called Graham after they’d showed Bick’s photograph to the staff at the Tree Top Restaurant, including Carmen Navales.

“No one can say if Bick’s the man who was sitting with Ray Tarver.”

By late afternoon, Graham had established Bick’s whereabouts for the time surrounding the tragedy. He’d been nowhere near the mountains. A minister came to the Duncan building to confirm that Bick had driven seniors to Dinosaur Provincial Park in a church van on the days in question. He had pictures.

At that point, Graham resumed discussing Bick with his commanding officers. Between making calls and handling other cases in his office, Inspector Stotter had watched most of the questioning from the other side of the room’s transparent mirror.

Graham said, “Our guy’s not connected to this.”

Stotter held Graham in a stare that bordered on concern for a tense moment.

“Kick him loose and go home, Dan. We’ll talk in the morning.”

Driving from work, Graham had to pass his wife’s roadside shrine again.

He had to pass it every day.

The windswept stretch where she’d died was on the only highway to their home. The white cross jutted from the earth like an accusation but he didn’t stop to face it today. Not this time.

Something deep in his stomach turned cold but he kept driving, asking for forgiveness as he passed the site.

Their property was southwest of Calgary on the upper slope of an isolated butte. One of the few modest old ranch homes still standing, it sat on a ridge over looking a clear stream and the mountains.

Since the day he’d arrived in Alberta, Graham had wanted this acreage, known as Sawtooth Bend. After he’d shown it to Nora, she fell in love with it, too. Six months after they were married they bought the land.

They belonged here.

They’d had dreams for building a big new ranch home and raising children here.

But those dreams had vanished with the ashes he’d released to the wind.

Loneliness greeted him when he opened the door.

He took a hot shower, changed into his jeans and a T-shirt. He wasn’t hungry. He poured a glass of apple juice, collapsed in his swivel rocker, turned to the window to watch the sun sink behind the Rockies.

How could he live without her?

How could he go on chained to his guilt?

He glanced at their wedding picture on the mantel, loving how she glowed in her gown. An angel in the sun. He beamed in his red serge. For that moment in time, his dreams had come true.

He was born in a working-class section near To ronto’s High Park neighborhood. He grew up wanting to find the right girl and become a cop, just like his old man, a respected Toronto detective. When Graham’s dad followed a case to Quebec, he met Marie, a secre tary for Montreal homicide. They fell in love and that was that.

The younger Graham grew up in Toronto fluent in English and, thanks to his mother, French. He dreamed of being a Mountie, a federal cop with the most recog nized force in the world. His father and mother had tears in their eyes the day his graduating troop marched by them at the RCMP Training Academy in Regina. His first posting was in southern Alberta, where he’d made some key arrests at the Montana border. It led to a de tective job with GIS in Calgary. Then he joined the Major Crimes section where he’d excelled at clearing the hardest cases.

But now?

He ran his hand over his face.

Now, his confidence had been shattered. He didn’t know if he was on the right track, a fact reflected in the way Stotter had looked at him. Bick was not connected. Graham had no solid evidence to prove the case was anything more than a terrible wilderness accident.

So why the hell was he trying to make it into some thing more?

Did he believe it was something more?

Was he missing something?

He didn’t know. He couldn’t think. It was black outside and he went to bed. But night winds rattled the windows and tormented him with questions.

Maybe what happened to the Tarvers was no accident? What about the missing laptop? The stranger at Ray’s table? The meaning of “Blue Rose Creek,” the last note Ray had written? Earlier, Graham had run the term Blue Rose Creek through databases but got nothing concrete.

Then there was the big insurance policy. There was stress in the Tarver home, money problems and the fact that they still hadn’t found Ray’s body.

Did he flip out, kill his family with plans to emerge and collect the insurance?

Go back.

What if Ray was onto a big story and someone killed him and his family?

How big does a story have to be?

Any way you cut it, a wilderness accident can be a perfect murder.

Mother Nature is your murder weapon.

The wind shook the house. Graham tossed and turned and in his dream state he heard Nora whisper to him as she did when he’d been underwater in the river facing death.

Keep going, Daniel. You have to keep going.

Little Emily Tarver’s dying words haunted him.

Don’t-daddy.

But the girl’s voice was so soft, so small and the river was deafening. These factors raised doubts. Did she actually speak at all? Or did he dream that she did?

Was he dreaming now?

Or was he mining his subconscious as her last breaths played in his memory. He could hear her again. But this time she said more.

He heard her clearly.

An icy chill rocketed up Graham’s spine, forcing him to sit up, wide awake.

The time glowed: 2:47 a.m.

He made coffee, sat in his chair and considered his case. Then he went to his computer and by dawn he’d completed a new case status report. He showered, had fresh coffee and scrambled eggs for breakfast then drove back to the office and placed his updated report on his boss’s desk.

Graham was convinced he now knew Emily Tarver’s dying words.

“Don’t hurt my daddy.”

After reading Graham’s report, Inspector Stotter removed the jacket of his mohair suit, hung it on the wooden hanger, and then hooked it on his coatrack.

“I know you’ve saved our team many times with solid detective work, Dan.”

Graham sat in one of the cushioned visitors’ chairs watching Stotter.

“You stood your ground when everyone else thought you were wrong.”

Stotter loosened his tie then rolled his sleeves to the elbows.

“But I don’t see it here. I don’t see a reason to grant your request to go to the U.S. and look into Ray Tarver’s history.”

“Why not?”

“I think you’re using this case as a means of repen tance.”

“What?”

“I think it’s got something to do with why you were in the mountains in the first place and why you jumped in the river after the girl.”

“I jumped in to help that girl.”

“The result was heroic but the act was suicidal.” Graham averted his stare.

“Danny, you’ve got to stop beating yourself up for what happened to Nora. You can’t go back and undo what happened. It was an accident, which is probably what happened with the Tarver family.”

“She spoke to me.”

“Who spoke to you?”

“I told you. The little girl, Emily. In the river. Just before she died.”

“Dan.” He let a long silence pass. “Dan, are you sure you’re ready to be back on the job?”

“I swear it happened, Mike.”

Stotter looked at him for a long moment, thinking.

“This isn’t in your report.”

“It was chaotic. I was unclear at first.”

“What did she say?”

“‘Don’t hurt my daddy.’”

“‘Don’t hurt my daddy’?”

“That’s right.”

“You’re certain?”

“Yes.”

“She say anything else?”

“No, just, ‘Don’t hurt my daddy.’ Why would she say something like that? There has to be something else at work.”

Stotter looked hard at Graham for a long time then scratched his chin.

“You’ve attended traffic accidents, Dan. You’ve seen badly injured people in shock. They fight off people who try to help them. They say all kinds of things that

106 Rick Mofina don’t make sense when they’re in shock. I don’t think you have a clear dying declaration here that would warrant a criminal investigation into suspicious deaths. You have no solid evidence.”

“We still haven’t found Ray Tarver, or his laptop. He met some stranger the day before this happened. The guy was a freelance investigative reporter from Wash ington, D.C. And there’s another thing, the last hand written entry in his notebook, this Blue Rose Creek.”

“All circumstantial. It will not hold up in court.” “But…”

“You know real cases are not like TV crime shows,

Hollywood movies or books. There are always loose, inexplicable threads that cannot be tied up neatly at the end, and have no bearing on a criminal act.”

“My gut’s telling me there’s more to this.” “Your gut?”

“Sir, you’ve got nothing to lose by signing off on a thorough investigation.”

“Dan, our budget’s tight. We’re shorthanded. I need you on other cases.”

“We’re talking a multiple death case with unsettling circumstances.”

Stotter crossed his arms, cognizant of the fact

Graham was one of his best, that he needed to keep him on his game and that this case could be crucial to pre serving his confidence. After ruminating on the situa tion, Stotter grabbed Graham’s report.

“Give me an hour.”

Some forty minutes later, Stotter, holding Graham’s rolled report like a baton in his hand, waved him into his office.

Six Seconds 107

“Shut the door. I talked to the superintendent.” “And?”

“Apart from his life insurance-” Stotter had circled part of Graham’s report “-Ray Tarver took out a small Canadian travel insurance policy when he booked their trip.”

“Right. It doesn’t pay much for death.”

“In cases where bodies are not recovered the policy has a standard presumption-of-death clause.”

“You’re going to let me do this, let me go to the U.S. and check his background?”

“Listen to what I’m telling you.”

Graham took out his notebook.

“You get in touch with the LO in Washington and give him what he needs to set you up down there. This is how you approach this: You tell people that you’re completing paperwork that confirms Ray Tarver was in peril at the time of his presumed death. All efforts to locate him have been exhausted. You’re asking a few routine background questions, basically to ensure that he hasn’t surfaced, wandering like an amnesia victim, or was acting out of character before the tragedy.”

“Right.”

“You say that you’re tending to an administrative matter while you’re in the U.S. following up on other unrelated matters. This will be low-key with no poten tial for ruffling feathers or causing embarrassment between the force and U.S. law enforcement. Besides, I’m sure some of the guys will be busy with the papal visit. Do you understand what I’ve told you?”

“Got it.”

“You are not authorized to conduct a criminal inves tigation in the United States. Is that clear, Corporal Graham?”

“Crystalline.”

“Register your trip with the travel branch. You have one, maybe two weeks, unless I call you back sooner.”