Cold Girl

Chapter 1 (Part 1)

February Callout

DAVID LEITH BROUGHT the phone to his ear, standing in his living room by the big picture window, looking out at the winter scenery. Not his personal phone but his work phone, the police-issue BlackBerry, and that meant this Sunday, his day off, was probably shot.

"Leith," he answered. And sighed, and listened, and continued to watch the falling snow.

He liked snow — maybe even loved it. As a boy he had skated through it, slid on it, built with it. He'd grown up and joined the RCMP and been bumped west from Saskatchewan to Alberta's Slave Lake, then farther west to B.C.'s Fort St. John, and finally all the way to the coast, to this rugged little city of Prince Rupert. He'd got married, settled down, and until this year had continued to be one with the snow. Till now it represented fun to him, and beauty, one wheel in the great cycle of life. There was nothing like standing out there first thing in the morning, dazzled by a world cleansed in white, and feeling one with nature.

"Be there in ten," he said, and disconnected.

Snow in Prince Rupert didn't hit hard, as it did inland, this being the oceanic climate, and usually melted as it hit the ground, but now and then there was a great dump of the stuff, and it stuck. This last dump was sticking, and it was no longer fun or beautiful to Leith. These days each new snowfall just pissed him off, the way it found its way into his boots and behind his collar and brought him crashing to the ground from time to time as he forged to work and forged out on investigations and forged out to the supermarket and forged home again. Snow tracked into the home with all the other stresses of the day and dirtied the carpet and made Alison bitchy.

No, that wasn't fair. She was never bitchy, no matter how dirty the carpet got or how low their spirits fell. She would go mute, though, which only made him louder. They had never argued in the Februaries of their younger years, and it worried him that something had gone so badly off the rails — and how bad exactly would it get? Maybe having a child too late in life had upset the balance. Leith was forty-four, Alison thirty-eight, and Izzy was just turning two, and had morphed not into cuteness but into a tiny, blonde-ringletted monster with powerful lungs. Ear-splitting lungs. Alison blamed it on the Terrible Twos. Leith blamed it on the species and dreaded the next twenty years.

So this call from the office at midday on this, his first day off in a while, didn't bother him as much as he made out it did. He cursed aloud and told Alison he had to go out. She didn't seem so disappointed. He pulled on soft-shell, then outer jacket, then sat on the foyer bench to lace up the waterproof boots. "Bye-bye-bye," he said and stooped toward Isabelle where she stood staring up at him on the dirty grey stretch of hallway carpet. She raised a threatening fist and spoke in tongues. Alison gathered the child up and didn't bother to see him off on the doorstep where she used to stand smiling, back when they were in love.

At noon, Prince Rupert seemed steeped in dusk. He drove to the station, parked underground, walked up into the stuffy over-lit main, and on down to Phil Prentice's office, where he found his boss on his feet, speaking to a stranger. The stranger wore glasses, a black suit, white shirt, no tie. He was bigger than the average cop, and bulky, kind of bear-shaped, head ducked down as if he was self-conscious about his height. He looked to be about Leith's age, maybe a year or two younger.

He was vaguely familiar, too, like Leith had seen him somewhere recently. Maybe on TV? A journalist? Prentice made introductions. "Mike, this is my main man, Detective Constable Dave Leith. A real get-it-done guy."

The stranger looked pleased, shook Leith's hand, and said, "Detective Sergeant Mike Bosko, up from North Van for the border security conference. How ya doin'?"