Sea to Sky (14 page)

“You got photos?”

Hunter smiled. Joe was already on it. With his network of contacts, from clients to friends to business associates, including hot dog vendors and social workers, he had as good a chance as anyone to get a lead on the boy. “What’s your fax number? You’ll have some as soon as I can find a fax machine.”

Alora did call. Hunter had faxed the photos to Joe Solomon from the hotel office and made a few more calls from the lobby — one to his landlord in North Vancouver, just to let him know where he was, and a couple to old friends who worked in the city of Vancouver — then had faxed photos of the runaways off to them as well. He was waiting for the elevator to the underground parking when his cell phone rang.

“Still want to buy me that drink?” She was sitting at the same table in the lounge, she said. Kelly had gone back to her kids.

“I’ll be there in five minutes,” he told her. He felt that he owed her an apology, but he still wasn’t sure why. There was a small gift and sundries shop off the lobby where they sold books and magazine, toiletries, aspirin and cold remedies, plus souvenir items. Hunter just wanted something small: a rose? a box of chocolates? a ‘whatever I’ve done I’m sorry’ sort of token. He settled on a package of maple syrup fudge.

“I brought you a sweet souvenir,” he said. He smiled and handed her the fudge before sitting down. “I apologize for upsetting you the other night.”

She sighed. “Fudge. Thank you.” She shook her head. “Men can be so clueless sometimes.” Then, “No. No. Forget I said that.” She reached across the table and placed her hand over his. “I’m sorry. I guess seeing Mike — everything with Mike — has been such a downer, I kind of lost sight of what I was doing here.”

Hunter smiled, without enthusiasm, not sure any more of what to say to this woman. It had seemed so easy and casual at first, and then being with her turned into the same bewildering minefield he had to tiptoe through with his ex-wife Christine, where at any second something he did or said could be turned against him somehow. But Alora was right. The appearance of a stalker and then being interrogated about his murder wasn’t exactly conducive to the success of a new relationship. He turned his hand over and gave hers a gentle squeeze.

“Can I buy you that drink?” That had to be a safe topic.

She gave a slow, exaggerated nod. “I definitely think I could handle another glass of wine.”

Hunter looked around the lounge. It was dim except for soft pools of light at each table. Many of the tables were still occupied, and most of the conversations were subdued, but occasionally loud laughter erupted from a large table near the back. Hunter caught the eye of a server and beckoned him to the table.

“How long are you planning to stay now?” Alora asked after the young man in black left with their order. Her fingers played with the stem of her almost empty wine glass.

“A day or two, at least,” he said. “I’m really hoping the RCMP can put a lid on this case by the time I leave, so I’m doing what I can to help them. Any new insights on your part?”

“You mean from Kelly,” she said. “She’s hurting. Funny, isn’t it? Mike’s death has to be the best thing that’s happened to her lately, and she was feeling her first taste of freedom today, but she got all weepy about the bastard after a single glass of wine.”

“She’s your client now?”

Alora shrugged. “We didn’t discuss any lawyer-client arrangement after you left. Besides, there’s nothing I can tell you about her that relates to Mike’s murder. She’s a nice girl, smart, attractive, and she managed to fall for the same abusive creep I did. Suddenly, now that he’s gone, she decides that he wasn’t all bad. Of course, he wasn’t all bad. Just bad to be married to.” She took a sip of wine. “No, for her, not even that. He made lots of money, she had a nice house and the family had lots of toys, he was gone at work much of the time so it was just her and the kids — a good thing in his case — but the bad thing is that she lost all her self-respect and who knows how their poor little boy would have ended up. She said the poor kid couldn’t do anything right, from Mike’s perspective. He’ll be much better off with a single mother, I have no doubt.”

“Speaking of boys with single mothers…“ Hunter thought it was time to change the subject and was going to bring up the runaways, but Alora carried on as if he hadn’t spoken.

“I wonder if Mike was jealous of his son. I wonder if it was another part of the dominant male thing. Any male was a threat, even his own five year old kid. What do you think?”

“I don’t know. I thought the dominant male’s priority was to ensure the survival of his own genes. Then again, in some species the alpha male kills any infants that are too weak to contribute to the tribe. Maybe…”

“The child wasn’t up to Mike’s standards?” said Alora. “I could see that. Kelly said he’s a bit of a momma’s boy. Mike would feel that reflected poorly on the macho image he had of himself. Or was the boy a wimp because his father destroyed his self esteem? Didn’t Freud say that a person’s character is largely set by his environment in the first few years of life?”

Hunter tried to imagine how he would feel about a son. He had two daughters, both now in college. He couldn’t imagine not being proud of them, but then, they had turned out well. As far as he knew, they were both generally happy and well adjusted. He and Chris had done
something
right together. But what about Ken’s son, Adam?  A runaway at fourteen. Was how his father treated him in early childhood responsible for that behavior? Or was it the loss of his father before he reached his teens? He couldn’t imagine that Helen had been anything but an excellent mother. She would have been loving, but firm. Or did he not know Helen as well as he thought he did?

Alora again interrupted his train of thought. “Do you think that maybe Mike wasn’t really the boy’s father?”

Hunter paused with his beer glass halfway to his lips. “Why do you say that?” His mind ran through a possible scenario: the child’s biological father wanting to protect him, feeling a need to eliminate Mike. No evidence of that, but then, no one had been looking for it.

“You saw as much of the child as I did. Did he look like Mike?”

“No, definitely not. But my daughters don’t look like me either.”

“You probably just don’t see it. Have you got a picture?” She held out a hand, as if she expected him to pull a picture out of his pocket.

Alora seemed as happy as he was to move away from the topic of Mike and his family. He had no pictures to show her, but did his best to describe Janice and Lesley, his two daughters. Jan was the oldest, and studying Marketing at BCIT. Lesley had recently graduated from high school and had surprised him by choosing to study Criminology at Simon Fraser University. Her goal was to join the RCMP. Both girls managed to work part-time, but Hunter contributed what he could to keep them in school. He knew he didn’t see them as often as he should, but he was on the road much of the time with an uncertain schedule that didn’t allow him to plan much ahead, and they had busy schedules that usually didn’t mesh with his last minute calls.

They managed to talk their way pleasantly through a second drink, then Hunter escorted Alora back to her room. They kissed in the hallway. This time it was the kind of kiss that could lead to something more, but Hunter felt himself hit a wall. It should have been easy to ignore the angel on his shoulder that told him he wasn’t ready for the next step, but its voice was insistent enough to make him lift his hands from Alora’s soft curves and place them on her shoulders. “I have an early morning,” he said.  His voice was husky and he had to clear his throat.  “I have to meet detective Blackwell at the Whistler RCMP detachment, skis in hand, before dawn so we can be up the mountain before the Harmony chairlift officially opens. I’ll call you.”

Alora seemed to accept his departure without taking offence. No more minefields.

As the door of her room closed after a final kiss and Hunter started toward the elevator, he recognized the angel on his shoulder. Maybe she’d been on his shoulder all this time, but it wasn’t until today that she had found her voice. It was a sweet and evocative voice from his distant past.

It was the voice of Helen Marsh.

Sorry arrived in Yreka before sunrise, although the sky brightened enough for him to see the familiar scrub-dotted brown hills along the I-5. It was almost exactly eleven hours of driving time. “Here of all places,” he said aloud. “What the hell is going on?” He hadn’t given his father much thought in years. Then yesterday morning, the conversation about Hunter’s runaways, followed by running into the two scrawny kids at the truck stop in Yoncalla; his father had been on his mind and here he was driving down South Main Street past Hank’s Hardware, stuck in town for ten full hours before he could take this puppy back out on the highway to finish his trip. “Weird shit.”

He had contemplated stopping at the rest stop at Hornbrook or in the parking lot at the Super 8 just off the highway in Yreka, but it didn’t make much sense to spend the next ten hours twiddling his thumbs in a parking lot when he could hang out at his mom and dad’s, get some home-cooked meals and catch a nap in a cozy house instead of the narrow bunk behind him. Besides, it was going to get cold in the truck unless he kept the engine running, judging by the frost on cars that had been parked along the street overnight.

In spite of the early hour, there were lights on and movement inside the old hardware store. It was a plain old post-war box of a building, single story, but with a coat of dark green paint that Sorry hadn’t seen before. The ubiquitous OPEN sign in orange neon glowed in the front window, and the cast-iron bicycle rack still stood between the window and the door. It used to be the only place in town to buy bike parts and inner tubes. Sorry’s friends would often ride their bikes over and hang out while he stocked shelves for his father during the summer.

On an impulse, Sorry pulled the Blue Knight over to the curb and sat with his emergency flashers on. He could see the front door of the store reflected in the passenger side mirror, and an early bird customer in a feed-store cap walking out with a small sack of something, maybe nails. The customer stared at Sorry’s rig for a few seconds, then turned around and went back inside. A moment later, he emerged again, accompanied by a man in a red jacket. Sorry smiled. His dad always wore something red when he was working in the store, so the customers could spot him easy if they had a question. He remembered working winter weekend mornings in his early teens, how cold it would be until the old furnace had taken the chill off the big open room, and that his dad had an old L.A. Angel’s jacket he liked to wear. Looks like he still had it.

A moment later, Sorry was peering down at an older version of a man he’d seen almost every day of his life for over seventeen years. The blonde hair had turned white, the hairline receded, the strong, straight cheeks were crumpling like a paper sack. His mouth seemed larger, his lips less well defined.

“Hey, driver! You got a delivery near here? Can’t just park that thing on the street, you know.” The voice was older in a way Sorry couldn’t quite explain: a little deeper, a little rougher, but still strong enough to penetrate the closed window, and not unkind. He realized his father couldn’t really see him from below the passenger side window, probably from lights reflecting off the glass.

Sorry opened the driver’s door and got down out of the cab. When he cleared the front bumper of the Freightliner, he said, “Hallo, Pappa.” He held out his hand for a handshake, although he half expected his father to spit in his face.

It must have taken the old man a few seconds to get his head around what was happening, then he reached for Sorry’s outstretched hand and clasped it firmly in both of his own. His hands were warm and strong and just held on. Sorry realized with amazement that his father’s eyes had filled with tears, and even more amazing, that his own eyes began to sting. His father seemed smaller than he remembered him, although he was a big man by most standards, just a couple of inches shorter than Sorry but not as broad in the chest.

“Daniel,” his father said. “Daniel.” Then softer, almost to himself, “My son, Daniel.”

Sorry was afraid to speak, afraid he wouldn’t be able to control his voice. He looked away, toward the store, where the customer still stood clutching his bag of nails. Sorry nodded a hello in the man’s direction and cleared his throat, once, then once again.

“Who’s minding the store?” he finally said.

“I have to get back. Come have a coffee, Daniel. There’s a fresh pot.” His father still held tight to Sorry’s hand.

Sorry jerked his head in the direction of the Blue Knight, intending to use it as an excuse.

“Leave your truck. Just leave the flashers on. At this time of day, I’m the only one who would complain.”

His father walked around the front of the Freightliner, nodding his head and smiling, while Sorry grabbed his jacket and wallet out of the truck, then locked the doors. They walked together toward the store, and the old man grinned at the customer as they passed. “This is my son, Daniel,” he said. “He lives up north.” The customer smiled and shook Sorry’s hand before walking away.

The old man brought two mugs of coffee from a pot at the back of the store, and they sat on stools behind the counter sipping and talking while two or three customers wandered into the store, working men seeking out items they would need for the morning’s job. Sorry told his father he was only in town for ten hours before he had to be back on the road.