Six Seconds

“What the fuck is this?”

Twenty-five minutes later he was sitting in an interview 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 overlooking 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 Toronto’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 secretary 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 recognized 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 detective 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 something 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 BlueRose 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 emergeand collect the insurance?

Go back.

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