Page 16

October 2016

Rob Boychuk stood in the waiting room of the Patricia Bay detachment, appraising the young man who had just asked to see the “head officer of the looking-for-people team.” Boychuk guessed he might be in his late teens or early twenties, but estimating age seemed to be a skill that diminished as he grew older. They all looked like children to him these days. The boy sat on the waiting-room chair, phone in one hand, legs splayed as his thumb flicked through images on the screen. His free hand rested on his knee, tapping out an indecipherable beat. The impetuousness of youth, thought Boychuk, or a guilty conscience? Even after all this time on the job, it still wasn’t always easy to tell.

“Shall we have a seat in my office?” Boychuk said, after introducing himself. “Whatever,” the boy said, looking to the front door of the detachment as if there were a better offer outside.

“Won’t take long, I promise—sorry, what did you say your name was again?”

“Zach. Zach Ellis.”

“Come on back, Zach.”

Boychuk led the young man to his desk and asked him to have a seat. He thought about taking him to the interview room, but the kid was squirrelly enough. His office had big windows with a clear view of the parking lot. Better to let Zach Ellis see the outside world.

“So, you told the desk officer that you had some information about the search for Matthew Anderson?”

“Is that the guy’s name? I hadn’t heard about it until my mom texted me. She saw it on the cottagers’ Facebook page or something. Something about a guy going missing on our lake. She knew I was up here over the weekend it happened and thought I should come talk to you.”

Zach looked around the room as he spoke, avoiding Boychuk’s eyes and finally settling his gaze out the window.

Boychuk nodded but held his tongue. It had been a little over three weeks since Matthew Anderson’s disappearance, one week since they’d discovered the storage unit with a filing cabinet of documents in the name of Jonathan Evans.

“I didn’t see the guy or anything. But there was a woman, all freaked out. She was with a couple of kids. She asked me to take a look for her husband. Said he’d taken off in their canoe or something. Thought he might have fallen asleep. Seemed a little weird to me.”

“And did you?”

“Did I what?”

“Look for him.”

“Ya, I took a spin around the lake. Didn’t see anyone. It was kinda stupid for us to even be out there. The wind was kicking up, and I really had to concentrate on steering the boat into the wind. Almost thought we’d flip over.”

“We?”

“I had some friends at the cottage with me.”

“Did anyone see him or anything out of the ordinary?”

“Naw. We took a quick look around and got the hell out of there.”

“Did you go back for the woman?”

Zach looked at his feet. Boychuk could see the faint blush on his face.

“We let her know we hadn’t seen anything, but with a storm coming up, I wanted off that lake. Plus, my friends were hassling me about being cold and everything. I figured her husband would eventually come back. I mean, who would take off and leave his wife and kids at a campsite? Right?”

Boychuk resisted the urge to scold the boy. The shame was already readable in his body. “So what happened when you got off the lake?”

“We packed up and left. The weather forecast was shitty. And my dad wanted us to pull the boat out, which we didn’t want to be doing in a full-blown storm.”

Zach squirmed in his seat, his eyes darting around the room. Something else had happened.

“Son, I promise, you’re not in any trouble here. We’re just looking for information that will help us find Mr. Anderson.”

Zach met Boychuk’s eyes for the first time. Boychuk could see he was deciding whether to trust a cop.

“I fucked up with the boat.”

“Fucked up how, son?”

Zach sighed. “I was feeling pretty crappy from the night before, so when we got back, I downed a shot. A little hair of the dog, you know? And I smoked a joint. I didn’t think I was messed up, but I must have done something wrong pulling the boat out of the water, ’cause when I got it back to the city, my dad found a huge scrape up the side. No idea how it happened. But Dad was pissed.”

“And you drove right home after pulling the boat out?”

“Ya. Well, wait, I didn’t drive. I’m not that stupid. I was too buzzed to drive, so my friend Bruno drove us home. He was freaked out, though, trying to drive with the boat attached. Wound up stopping at the campground store so he could get an energy drink. Said it would help him focus. Then he turned down a back road around the lake instead of the left turn onto the highway I told him to take. We had to go, like, five miles before he found a spot he was comfortable turning around in. What a shit show of a weekend.”

“You mean the old logging road around the lake?”

“Ya, that’s the one. Nearly clipped some abandoned car when he tried to go by it. I swear, it’s like the more he wanted to avoid something, the more he steered toward it. I was pretty sure he didn’t hit it, though, but maybe that’s what scraped up the boat.”

“Where was the car?”

“I don’t know. Maybe about three or four miles up the road. We turned around not long after passing it.”

“And did you see anything on the road? Another car? A person?”

“No. Nothing.”

“How did you know the car was abandoned?”

“Well, I kinda assumed. There aren’t any cottages up that way. Plus it looked like it’d been there awhile. Ya know. Leaves and dust all over it. It was tucked into the trees a bit too. Clearly hadn’t moved in a long time.”

“Did you happen to catch the make or model?”

“Well, seeing as Bruno nearly hit the damn thing, it was hard to miss. It was one of the older Honda Civics. I think it was red, but hard to tell under all that dust.”

“Okay, thanks, Zach. I’ll show you out. I’ll get you to leave your name and contact details with the desk clerk before you leave.”

Back at his desk, Boychuck typed up the meager details Zach Ellis had shared into the file. It must have been Sarah Anderson that Zach talked to on the lake. Yet she hadn’t mentioned it. Boychuk tucked the information away, not yet sure whether the encounter or the abandoned car on the old logging road had any relevance. One thing he’d learned over his policing career was that relevance could shift.

The Anderson case had grown beyond anything he’d imagined it could be, thanks to the discovery of the storage locker. The documents they’d found inside were still being authenticated, but no matter what, they had a bearing on this case. And because of that, any detail outside the norm mattered. Maybe the car meant nothing, but it added a layer worth exploring.