Six Seconds (5 page)

11

Tokyo, Japan

Central Tokyo’s skyline glittered against the night sky. Setsuko Uchida gazed upon it from the balcony of
her fortieth-floor apartment in Roppongi Hills, but her
thoughts lingered on her vacation in the Rockies.
Had she really traveled halfway around the world?
She sighed, then resumed unpacking in her bedroom,
happy to be home. Tomorrow she would have lunch
with her daughter, Miki, near the Imperial Gardens and
tell her about the magnificent mountains.
With great care, she retrieved the gift box from her
suitcase and slowly unwrapped the tissue paper until a
small polar bear, and a second, tinier bear, hand-carved
in jade, emerged. A mother and her cub. She knew Miki
would love them. The two women had grown closer
since Setsuko’s husband had passed away.
Toshiro.
He smiled from the gold-framed photo on her nightstand. He’d been a senior official at the Ministry of
Justice and was a kind man. He died of lung complica
tions which had tormented him years after his exposure to the sarin gas attack on the subway system by the Aum
Shinrikyo cult.
Losing her husband had almost destroyed Setsuko,
who’d been an economics professor at the University
of Tokyo. Eventually, she took early retirement then
moved from their home in Chiba to Central Tokyo to
be nearer to their daughter, Miki.
Miki was angered by her father’s death and had with
drawn from everyone, burying herself in her job.
Setsuko had refused to accept Miki’s isolation, never
letting her be alone for too long, always calling or
visiting. In time, Miki opened her heart and allowed
Setsuko back into her life, allowed her to be her mother
again.
This happened because Setsuko’s friends, Mayumi
and Yukiko, had always encouraged Setsuko not to give
up on Miki. She loved them for it. She also loved them
for insisting she join them on their recent adventure to
the wilds of Canada, a place Setsuko’s husband had
dreamed of visiting.
It was a wonderful trip, but it was good to be home. Setsuko took a break from unpacking.
She went to her desk with her memory cards,
switched on her computer and began viewing her travel
photographs.
Here they were—the girls—on a mountaintop; in a
forest; next to a river; here they were on the Icefields
Parkway. Here were elk on the golf course in Banff. A
man with a cowboy hat. Setsuko clicked through dozens
of images, smiling and giggling, until she stopped at
one.
Her smile melted.
Setsuko had taken this one of Mayumi and Yukiko
in cowboy hats, laughing, seated at their table in the logcabin restaurant outside Banff. It was during the last
days of their trip.
Something about the image niggled at her. Something familiar.
Staring at it, she tried to remember.
The people in the background.
She returned to her bags, fished around in the deep
side pockets where she’d shoved magazines, maps and
newspapers, her fingers probing until she found the
copy of the
Calgary Herald
the attendants had offered
on the plane.
She remembered glancing at it before dozing off
during the flight to Vancouver where they’d caught the
return flight to Japan.
She unfolded it at her desk.
There was the headline, U.S. FAMILY DIES IN
MOUNTAIN ACCIDENT, and pictures of Ray and
Anita Tarver and their two small children, Tommy and
Emily. A beautiful family, Setsuko thought, reading the
article.
Having done her postgraduate work at the London
School of Economics and at Harvard, her English was
strong. According to the report, the authorities had
located the bodies of the mother and her children, but
not that of the father, Ray Tarver, a freelance reporter
from Washington, D.C.
The article concluded with the Royal Canadian
Mounted Police requesting anyone with information
regarding the Tarver family’s movements in the park
area to contact them, or Crime Stoppers.
Setsuko studied the pictures in the newspaper then
the people in the background of the photo she’d taken
at the restaurant. The man in the background, sitting at
the table behind Setsuko’s friends, was Ray Tarver. Setsuko had no doubt about it.
She checked the dates. The tragedy was discovered
one or two days after Setsuko had snapped her photo
of her friends in the restaurant.
This might be the last picture taken of Ray Tarver. It could be of use to the Canadian police. Setsuko
reached for her phone and called her daughter, who was
working late at her office. After Setsuko explained,
Miki said, “Can you send me the news article and your
picture now?”
Setsuko scanned the article into her computer then
e-mailed it along with her travel picture to her daughter,
who was a sergeant in the Criminal Affairs Section for
Violent Crime with the Tokyo Metropolitan Police De
partment. Miki would know what to do, Setsuko
thought, rereading the terrible story about that poor
young family from the United States.

At her desk at the headquarters of the Keishicho, in the Kasumigaseki part of central Tokyo, Miki Uchida studied the material her mother had sent her. She agreed with her mother. The man in the background was the missing American.

Miki glanced at her boss’s office. He’d gone home for the day.
Early the next morning, as soon as he stepped into the office, she told him about the information and how it related to the tragedy in Canada. Sipping coffee from a commuter mug, he looked over her shoulder at the article and pictures enlarged on her computer screen.
“Do the necessary documentation. Then contact the Canadian Embassy and get back to our work.”
Sergeant Marc Larose was the Royal Canadian Mounted Police liaison officer for the Canadian Em bassy, which was located along Aoyama Dori. After as sessing the tip Miki Uchida at Tokyo Metro had sent him, Larose e-mailed a report, along with the informa tion, through a secure network to Canada.
The file pinballed down through the command struc ture until it finally arrived in the mailbox of Corporal Daniel Graham, who would come to realize it was more than a random picture of Ray Tarver before the tragedy.
The background of Setsuko’s photo showed Ray Tarver sitting at a restaurant table facing the camera.
He was behind an open laptop.

12

Near Banff, Alberta, Canada

Fear crept across Carmen Navales’s face as she studied the pictures Graham had set before her on the table in the Tree Top Restaurant.

Ray Tarver stared back at the waitress from his passport, his driver’s license and the tourist photo Graham had received that morning from Tokyo.

“Think hard,” he said. “Do you remember serving this man?”
Carmen caught her bottom lip between her teeth.
Earlier, Graham had noticed her watching him in the booth of the closed section of the restaurant where he’d been interviewing other staff. They weren’t much help, practically indifferent, so why was Car men nervous?
The RCMP knew all about places like the Tree Top.
Young people from around the world worked at the motels, resorts and restaurants in the Rockies, lured by the mountains, the tips and the party life. Sure, at times, things got out of hand with drinking, drugs, thefts, a few assaults. Last month, a chef from Paris stabbed a climber from Italy over a girl from Montreal. The Italian needed twenty stitches.
But Carmen hadn’t gotten into trouble out here. She was from Madrid and her visa was about to expire. Nothing to be nervous about.
Carmen was the last staff member Graham needed to interview. None of the others had remembered seeing Ray Tarver.
I was, like, so hung over.
Or
, those tour buses just kept coming. It was all a blur, sorry, man, such a shame with those little kids.
Their responses eroded Graham’s hope that his Tokyo tip would lead somewhere because they still hadn’t recovered Ray’s body.
Carmen’s reticence frustrated him.
He tapped the photos.
“Ms. Navales, this is Raymond Tarver, the father of the family that drowned not too far from here. It was in the news. You must’ve heard.”
“Yes, I know, but I was in British Columbia at that time.”
“According to your time cards, you worked a double shift here the day
before
the children were found in the river.” Graham tapped the photo from Tokyo. “Ray Tarver was here the day before the tragedy. In this res taurant. In your section. On the day you were working. Now, please think hard.”
Carmen steepled her fingers and touched them to her lips.
“What’s the problem?” Graham asked.
“I need to extend my visa.”
“What’s that got to do with this?”
“I need to keep sending money home to help my sister in Barcelona. Her house burned down. I’m afraid that if my records show I’ve been involved with police—”
“Hold on. Look, I can’t do anything about your visa. But things might go better for you if you cooperate, understand?”
She nodded.
“You served him?”
“Yes.”
“And his family?”
“No family, he was sitting with another man.”
“Another man?”
Carmen traced her finger on the photo, along a fuzzy shadow behind the head of one of the laughing Japanese women. It bordered the edge and was easy to miss.
“That’s his shoulder.”
Graham inspected the detail, scolding himself for not seeing it.
“Do you know this other man? Have you ever seen him before?”
Carmen shook her head.
“Describe him.”
“He was a white guy, but with a dark tan. Slim build. In his thirties.”
“Any facial hair, jewelry, tattoos, that sort of thing?”
“I don’t remember. I’m sorry.”
“What about clothes. How was he dressed?”
Carmen looked at Graham.
“I think like you. Jeans, polo or golf shirt, a wind breaker jacket, I think.”
“Did he pay with a credit card?”
“Cash. And he paid for both. In American cash.”
“Do you remember their demeanor? Were they arguing, laughing?”
“They were serious, like it was business.”
“Any idea what they talked about?”
“We were crowded, it was loud, I couldn’t hear them.”
“How long did they stay?”
“About an hour.”
“Do you know if they left in separate vehicles?”
Carmen shook her head.
For the next half hour, Graham continued pressing her for details. When he was satisfied he had exhausted her memory, he stood to leave.
“One last thing,” Carmen said. “Every now and then, the computer guy would turn his laptop to the stranger so he could read the screen.”

Graham didn’t know what he had.
Driving back to Calgary, he weighed the new infor mation. The Tree Top was about a forty-five-minute drive from the Tarvers’ campsite. The photo put Ray in the res taurant the day before his family was found in the river.
Who was the guy at his table?
And why was Ray showing him his laptop? Was it an arranged meeting? Or spontaneous? Maybe he’d gone there to interview someone for a travel article?
Maybe it was nothing?
But some twenty-four hours later, his family was dead.
Now, Ray was missing and so was his laptop.
The questions gnawed at Graham as he worked alone at his desk.
Since the initial front-page stories, the calls from the public had slowed. Prell and Shane had followed up with a lot of door-knocking. Most of the information was useless, even bizarre. One guy claimed that the Tarvers had been “abducted by alien organ harvesters who will appear at the UN.”
Other tips were more down-to-earth, like the local rancher who’d insisted he’d seen a man resembling Ray hitch a ride on a logging rig. Graham had contacted all the lumber and trucking companies in the region.
No one had picked up anybody.
And nothing had surfaced concerning the where abouts of Ray’s missing laptop.
The Banff and Canmore Mounties had put the word out to see if anyone on the street was selling one like Ray’s. Graham notified Calgary and Edmonton city police, who circulated information to pawnshops.
Jackson Tarver agreed to release the family’s bank, credit and Internet accounts. If someone had stolen Ray’s laptop they may be using it, and this information could help track the computer down.
Nothing had surfaced so far.
What was he missing?
Graham’s cell phone rang.
“Danny, it’s Horst at the site.” Static hissed over the search master’s satellite phone, mixing with the river’s rush and a distant helicopter.
“You find anything?”
“Nothing. Our people have been going full tilt for twenty-four-seven for the past few days. We figure he likely got wedged in the rocks, or a grizz hauled him off. A couple of big sows have been spotted in the search zones. We could find him in the next hour, or the next month, or never. Know what I mean?”
“Right.”
“We’ll keep it going, but we’ll wind it down by the end of the week.”
It was early afternoon as Graham ate his lunch, alone, outside at a picnic table.
He chewed on the ham and Swiss he’d made at home, looked at Calgary’s office towers and the distant Rockies and tried not to think of his life.
Stay on the case, he told himself.
He was nearly finished his sandwich when the super intendent’s assistant, who spent her lunch breaks walking in the neighborhood, approached him.
“There you are. How you keeping, Dan?”
“Day by day, Muriel.”
“There’s going to be a barbecue with Calgary city vice unit at Lake Sundance this weekend.”
“I heard.”
“Come join us, if you’re up for it.” She touched his shoulder.
“Thank you. We’ll see.”
“Sunday. Around three. Don’t bring a thing, dear.”
Graham nodded.
But when Muriel left, he decided he was not up to it. He crumpled his lunch bag and tossed it in the trash. Back at his desk, he went at the file again.
At Graham’s request, Ray’s father had faxed him copies of the insurance policies Ray had taken out on himself and his wife. Each had a two-hundred-fifty thousand-dollar death benefit. Anita was Ray’s benefi ciary, Ray was hers. If they both died then Ray’s parents became beneficiaries.
Those were big numbers. People had committed serious crimes for less, but Graham saw no reason to suspect an insurance fraud, unless Ray Tarver emerged from the mountains unharmed to collect a quarter of a million dollars.
Graham returned to the Tokyo photo. He had to be missing something, he thought, staring long and hard at Ray and his laptop, until the light began to fade. With most of day and most of his coworkers gone, Graham began to dread what was coming.