Angie said, “Hargreaves told us he was foraging for mushrooms when his dog located the remains. He had a bag full of chanterelles across his body when he flagged us down from the riverbank.”
Another glance passed quickly between the two Mounties. Angie noticed. So did Maddocks, because his brow crooked up slightly.
“Is Hargreaves known to police?” she asked, curious.
The coroner’s gaze ticked briefly to her. But Pett said nothing. Neither did the officers. Clearly, to them, Angie was a civilian, and this was not her purview.
A cool irritation filtered into her chest. “Well, if you don’t need me”—she checked her watch—“I have a job in the city this evening. I need to get back.”
“Corporal Watt will take a full statement from both of you along with contact details,” Jacobi said. “Then you’re free to go.”
CHAPTER 6
Angie paced up and down the water’s edge, checking and rechecking her watch. It started to rain again, a soft, insidious drizzle falling on the camping equipment she and Maddocks had piled up on the bank. Tension wound tighter inside her. They’d given their statements to the Port Ferris cops, packed up their gear, called the lodge on the satellite phone Claire had brought them, and made their way down the trail to the beach to await pickup by boat.
But the boat was taking its sweet time to arrive.
“What’s the problem?” Maddocks said. “You’re starting to wear a track right through those rocks.”
“Look at the time. I need to be in my vehicle and waiting outside the Victoria airport by 7:00 p.m., and we’re not even across the water yet,” she said. “This is Brixton’s ‘major client’ who ‘we cannot lose.’” Angie made giant air quotes. “This client is out of town for five days, and he told Brixton his wife was likely going to collect her lover at the Vic airport when Lover Boy flies in from Seattle on some business pretext. I’m supposed to tail Wifey and Lover Boy from the airport, get photographic evidence of their liaison—catch them having sex on camera if at all possible. It’s a big-deal account for Coastal Investigations. If I screw this up—”
“You won’t. We’ll be back in time.”
She smoothed a hand over her dampening hair. “I’m on thin ice with Brixton. If I miss this opportunity to nail this couple on camera—” She checked her watch again. “Did the lodge guys give an ETA?”
“Angie, relax. Jock Brixton knows he’s got a good thing with you in his employ.”
“He’s a jackass,” she snapped. “An aging ex-detective who was first demoted for insubordination, then fired for using police databases for personal reasons while driving his demotion desk.”
Maddocks crooked a brow and angled his head.
“What? You’re not saying whatIdid—” She cursed. “What I did was different, okay.”
“You went rogue. You used your badge without authorization.” He raised both hands, palms out in self-defense. “Hey, I’m not passing judgment. Just saying it like it is. I totally understand why you did what you did. We all do. Even the MVPD brass. I’m just saying, maybe cut Brixton a little slack. He had his reasons.”
She regarded him steadily, her temperature rising. Wind gusted, sending raindrops skittering over the river surface. “I’m sorry,” she said after a while. “I know I made mistakes. I ... just want to be better than that—thanhim. I want to transcend my past, not hang out with a bunch of fat old failed cops and retired detectives.” A pause. “His is the only agency that offered me a job. I’ve just got to get through my hours there. Ineedthose fucking hours.”
Maddocks did her the favor of not answering. Angie plunked her butt down on a wet log and watched an eagle take flight from a towering snag. It flew up, higher, higher, where it began to drift on invisible thermals, wings outstretched, its eagle eyes scanning for tiny things below. Scavengers. Killers. Angie’s thoughts turned to the ghost fish swimming beneath the mercurial surface of the river and to the futility of beating oneself to death for a goal. Just to die.
“One day at a time,” he said.
“Yeah. Right.” He’d said that before. Maddocks was constantly reminding her to live in the moment, to enjoy the small pleasures. She knew she needed to hear it, but it didn’t sit easy. She inhaled deeply.
“I can hear the rig,” Maddocks said suddenly. Angie lifted her head. She heard it, too, a distant diesel engine growling along the logging road on the far side of the river.
Angie pulled up her hood against the increasing rain as she settled in to wait. She checked her watch again, and her mind turned back to the body in the moss.
“Did you see the way those cops looked at each other when we spoke about Budge Hargreaves?” she said.
Maddocks grunted. He was crouched down on the gravel, busy retying the dry bags to keep rain out.
“Wonder how Hargreaves lost his wife?” she said. “Claire mentioned he went off the rails after her death, started drinking heavily, sold their house in town, and moved out into the remote woods. Bit of a loner, she said.”
Maddocks peered up, his eyes catching the light as droplets formed little diamonds on his thick black hair. “What? You think Hargreaves knew those remains were there? That he wanted to reveal them to someone? Like he’s some kind of killer revisiting his crime scene?”
“Just keeping an open mind.”
A grin crumpled his face, and he laughed.
