Six Seconds (7 page)

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

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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.”

17

Los Angeles, California

Please, God, let it be Logan.
Blurry images of a boy played on the screen before
Maggie.
Let it be him. Please.
A few days after Maggie’s ordeal with Madame
Fatima, a new hope had emerged.
“We believe this is your son,” Ned Rimmer said just
as the video froze and static snowed on the images. Rimmer was an LAPD detective—“retired six years
now” after a drug dealer’s bullet took his left eye.
Rimmer wore an eye patch, a ponytail and a sour dis
position most days. He was still a detective, just not the
kind he’d planned on being.
Rimmer and his wife, Sharmay, an emergency dis
patcher with a penchant for dangling earrings, belonged
to the Guardian Rescue Society, a national group of law
enforcement types who volunteered their money, re
sources and time, to find children in parental abduction
cases who’d slipped through the cracks.
Logan’s file was passed to them months ago when Maggie had first sought help from support groups
who’d circulated her plea among their circles. She’d never heard of the society until today when
Sharmay called her at the bookstore, identified herself,
then said, “We believe one of our Guardians may have
located your son, Logan Conlin.”
Stunned into silence, Maggie gripped the phone. “Hello? Maggie?”
“My God, do you have him? Where is he? Is he
okay? I have to see him!”
“We don’t have him yet. We’d prefer to discuss
details at our Los Angeles office. Please come as soon
as it’s convenient so we can advance the case.” An hour later, after following Sharmay’s directions,
Maggie had parked her car on a street that bordered
Culver City and West L.A.
The society’s L.A. chapter was in a second-story
office above the Flying Emerald Dragon takeout restau
rant. The aroma of deep-fried chicken and stir-fried veg
etables filled it now as Maggie sat before the video
monitor.
“Here we go. Fixed it,” Rimmer said. “This footage
comes to us from our New York chapter from Wayne
Kraychinski, retired NYPD detective first grade.” As the Rimmers had explained it, Kraychinski
checked Logan’s profile with his school sources, as he
does with all the cases his chapter takes on.
Kraychinski got a lead in Queens concerning a boy
fitting Logan’s age and description. According to the
history, the boy had recently moved to the community
with his father, a trucker, who fit Jake Conlin’s general
profile.

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Kraychinski and some of the other Guardians initi ated surveillance.
“We’ve got a series of sequences recorded over a few weeks,” Rimmer said.
The camera shook and a boy about eight to ten years old in a hooded sweatshirt swam into view but not in sharp focus. Maggie couldn’t see his face clearly, or his full body and gait. The boy was among a group walking through a schoolyard to a basketball court.
“Now, this is where they reside.”
The video jumped to a row of tired-looking twostory detached homes shoehorned into a Queens neigh borhood. One house had a rig out front. No trailer. A green Peterbilt. Being married to a trucker, Maggie knew vehicles. Jake drove a Kenworth but he could’ve sold it or traded it for a Peterbilt.
Next, the boy was in a park with other kids on skateboards.
Again, his back was to the camera. He was wearing a ball cap and was sitting on the grass bordering the skating area. Maggie caught her breath as he turned to offer his profile, but a shadow blocked the image before it disappeared.
Maggie covered her mouth with her hand to stifle a groan.
Is it Logan? She couldn’t be certain.
“Now,” Rimmer said, “this next sequence, which is the money sequence, was obtained by Kraychinski’s friend, Ella Bell. She’s a former Customs officer. Ella used a minicamera hidden in her hat to employ a ruse for interaction.”
The camera was shaky as it came upon a group of boys at a park bench in a playground. The audio offered a woman’s voice that carried a touch of Long Island. The speaker was unseen as the camera closed in on the group.
“Excuse me, guys, could you help me? I’m lost and could use some help here.”
A map was unfolded on the bench.
“I’m looking for the Vander Building. Anybody know where that is?”
The boys huddled around the map and faces bobbed in and out of view. The camera pulled close on a boy about ten with a ball cap.
“This is it,” Rimmer said. “Watch.”
“Nice hat,” the woman said. “You like the Yankees?”
“Yeah.”
The cap’s brim cast the boy’s face in shadow.
“You’re not from around here,” the woman said. “Where’re you from?”
“He’s new here from Ohio,” another kid answered. “Yo-hi-yo.”
“That right?”
The boy’s face is clear now, filling the screen as he nods.
“The Vander Building’s that way.” Another boy pointed. The images blurred for Maggie as her heart sank and tears rolled down her face.
“It’s not him.”
“Are you sure?” Rimmer asked. “Because sometimes the abducting parent will change the hairstyle and color.”
“That boy is not my son!”
“Stop the video, Ned.” Sharmay began rubbing Maggie’s shoulders. “You’re going to be okay, honey.”
“I’m sorry I yelled. That’s not Logan. I’m sorry. Please thank everybody for me. I’m sorry.” Maggie col lected her bag and headed to the door.
“We’ll keep looking,” Sharmay called to her back. “You’re going to see him again, I just know it.”
Night was falling.
Maggie was losing a battle with her emotions as she hurried to her car.
How could she have been so stupid? How could she let her hopes get so high?
She pulled her keys from her bag and fumbled them. They chimed against the pavement. As she retrieved them, she glanced to the end of the street.
Although it didn’t fully register, Maggie glimpsed a man near the end of the block who’d been sitting in his car reading a newspaper.
As Maggie got behind the wheel of her car, he put the paper aside, sat upright then turned his ignition. When she left her parking space, the man behind her pulled out of his.
He stayed several car lengths back in a blue Impala with tinted windows. His lower front bumper was scraped on the driver’s side.
Maggie had noticed him as she checked her rearview mirror, but didn’t give it much thought as she headed for the freeway. She had other things to contend with.
Traffic was heavy.
The radio news reported that a wreck was choking flow on the San Bernardino Freeway, so she took the 60, her pulse still racing over what had happened with the Guardians. It hammered home the reality that she may never see Logan again.

No. Please. No. She wouldn’t survive. Jake, where are you? Please tell me.
Maggie brushed away her tears and focused on the slow-moving streams of red taillights and Sharmay’s parting words, replaying like a prayer.
“You’re going to see him again, I just know it.”
Maggie needed to believe that.
She had to.
By the time she reached her exit some ninety minutes later, her anguish had evolved into exhaustion. As she made her way through Blue Rose Creek, she saw that her tank was nearly dry. She turned into the big twentyfour-hour Chevron that she liked.
It was clean and well lit.
Safe for a woman alone at night.
After filling up and swiping her card at the pump, Maggie stopped dead.
That’s weird.
A blue Impala with tinted windows and a bumper damaged on the driver’s side was in a far corner of the station’s large lot.
Was that the same car she’d seen behind her in Culver City?
Couldn’t be. She was being silly. Or tired. Or both. Chalk it up to a bad day, she told herself after she started her car and pulled out of the station.
A moment later, as she waited at an intersection for the light to change, she thought about taking a hot bath to soothe her nerves when she got home. Then in her side mirror, she noticed that a blue Impala had eased into her lane, two cars back from her.
What the heck?

The light turned green and Maggie quickly changed her turn signal indicator and turned right instead of left, keeping her eye on her mirror.

The Impala turned right.
She was being followed!
Stop it, she told herself. You’re not being followed.

It’s probably nothing. Probably a coincidence. To prove it, she turned left at the very next street.
She checked her mirror.
The Impala turned left.
Gooseflesh rose on Maggie’s arms as scenarios played in her mind. She pushed on the accelerator. She didn’t know this neighborhood and took the next right, glimpsing the Impala behind her, turning right.
Maggie pressed the pedal down farther and began searching the dark houses along the quiet streets, help less, not knowing what to do, eyes locked on her mirror.
As she came to a stretch where the street coiled, Maggie turned quickly into an empty driveway and her car disappeared into a darkened, empty carport.
She killed her motor, her lights and took her foot off the brake.
She slid down in her seat and peeked from her car to the street, watching the Impala roar by, its taillights dis appearing into the night.
Maggie sat up and rested her head on her headrest. She gulped air and took several deep breaths as she sat motionless, wondering what the hell had happened.
Had she been followed? Should she tell police? She imagined how that would go.
Ah, yes, the crazy lady again. How can we help you?
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Rick Mofina

What was it? Carjackers? Teenagers? The imaginings of a distressed woman?

Maggie concentrated on her watch. It calmed her. After fifteen minutes passed, she started her car and drove to her house.

No sign of the Impala.
She sighed.
As she unlocked her door and entered her home,

she was numb.
Sleep.
Forget the bath.
Go to sleep.
But she noticed the red light was blinking on her an

swering machine.
One message.
She pressed Play.
The tape beeped as it cued the message. Maggie rec

ognized that voice.
“This is Helga, Madame Fatima’s friend. Madame
has instructed me to tell you that she has information
about your son. Information you should have.” Book Two: Blood Revenge