Having done her postgraduate work at the London
School of Economics and at Harvard, her English was strong. According to the report, the authorities had located the bodies of the mother and her children, but not that of the father, Ray Tarver, a freelance reporter from Washington, D.C.
The article concluded with the Royal Canadian
Mounted Police requesting anyone with information regarding the Tarver family’s movements in the park area to contact them, or Crime Stoppers.
Setsuko studied the pictures in the newspaper then the people in the background of the photo she’d taken at the restaurant. The man in the background, sitting at the table behind Setsuko’s friends, was Ray Tarver. Setsuko had no doubt about it.
She checked the dates. The tragedy was discovered one or two days after Setsuko had snapped her photo of her friends in the restaurant.
This might be the last picture taken of Ray Tarver. It could be of use to the Canadian police. Setsuko reached for her phone and called her daughter, who was working late at her office. After Setsuko explained,
Miki said, “Can you send me the news article and your picture now?”
Setsuko scanned the article into her computer then e-mailed it along with her travel picture to her daughter, who was a sergeant in the Criminal Affairs Section for
Violent Crime with the Tokyo Metropolitan Police De partment. Miki would know what to do, Setsuko thought, rereading the terrible story about that poor young family from the United States.
At her desk at the headquarters of the Keishicho, in the Kasumigaseki part of central Tokyo, Miki Uchida studied the material her mother had sent her. She agreed with her mother. The man in the background was the missing American.
Miki glanced at her boss’s office. He’d gone home for the day.
Early the next morning, as soon as he stepped into the office, she told him about the information and how it related to the tragedy in Canada. Sipping coffee from a commuter mug, he looked over her shoulder at the article and pictures enlarged on her computer screen.
“Do the necessary documentation. Then contact the Canadian Embassy and get back to our work.”
Sergeant Marc Larose was the Royal Canadian Mounted Police liaison officer for the Canadian Em bassy, which was located along Aoyama Dori. After as sessing the tip Miki Uchida at Tokyo Metro had sent him, Larose e-mailed a report, along with the informa tion, through a secure network to Canada.
The file pinballed down through the command struc ture until it finally arrived in the mailbox of Corporal Daniel Graham, who would come to realize it was more than a random picture of Ray Tarver before the tragedy.
The background of Setsuko’s photo showed Ray Tarver sitting at a restaurant table facing the camera.
He was behind an open laptop.
12
Near Banff, Alberta, Canada
Fear crept across Carmen Navales’s face as she studied the pictures Graham had set before her on the table in the Tree Top Restaurant.
Ray Tarver stared back at the waitress from his passport, his driver’s license and the tourist photo Graham had received that morning from Tokyo.
“Think hard,” he said. “Do you remember serving this man?”
Carmen caught her bottom lip between her teeth.
Earlier, Graham had noticed her watching him in the booth of the closed section of the restaurant where he’d been interviewing other staff. They weren’t much help, practically indifferent, so why was Car men nervous?
The RCMP knew all about places like the Tree Top.
Young people from around the world worked at the motels, resorts and restaurants in the Rockies, lured by the mountains, the tips and the party life. Sure, at times, things got out of hand with drinking, drugs, thefts, a few assaults. Last month, a chef from Paris stabbed a climber from Italy over a girl from Montreal. The Italian needed twenty stitches.
But Carmen hadn’t gotten into trouble out here. She was from Madrid and her visa was about to expire. Nothing to be nervous about.
Carmen was the last staff member Graham needed to interview. None of the others had remembered seeing Ray Tarver. I was, like, so hung over. Or, those tour buses just kept coming. It was all a blur, sorry, man, such a shame with those little kids.
Their responses eroded Graham’s hope that his Tokyo tip would lead somewhere because they still hadn’t recovered Ray’s body.
Carmen’s reticence frustrated him.
He tapped the photos.
“Ms. Navales, this is Raymond Tarver, the father of the family that drowned not too far from here. It was in the news. You must’ve heard.”
“Yes, I know, but I was in British Columbia at that time.”
“According to your time cards, you worked a double shift here the day before the children were found in the river.” Graham tapped the photo from Tokyo. “Ray Tarver was here the day before the tragedy. In this res taurant. In your section. On the day you were working. Now, please think hard.”
Carmen steepled her fingers and touched them to her lips.
“What’s the problem?” Graham asked.
“I need to extend my visa.”
“What’s that got to do with this?”
“I need to keep sending money home to help my sister in Barcelona. Her house burned down. I’m afraid that if my records show I’ve been involved with police-”
“Hold on. Look, I can’t do anything about your visa. But things might go better for you if you cooperate, understand?”
She nodded.
“You served him?”
“Yes.”
“And his family?”
“No family, he was sitting with another man.”
“Another man?”
Carmen traced her finger on the photo, along a fuzzy shadow behind the head of one of the laughing Japanese women. It bordered the edge and was easy to miss.
“That’s his shoulder.”
Graham inspected the detail, scolding himself for not seeing it.
“Do you know this other man? Have you ever seen him before?”
Carmen shook her head.
“Describe him.”
“He was a white guy, but with a dark tan. Slim build. In his thirties.”
“Any facial hair, jewelry, tattoos, that sort of thing?”
“I don’t remember. I’m sorry.”
“What about clothes. How was he dressed?”
Carmen looked at Graham.
“I think like you. Jeans, polo or golf shirt, a wind breaker jacket, I think.”
“Did he pay with a credit card?”
“Cash. And he paid for both. In American cash.”
“Do you remember their demeanor? Were they arguing, laughing?”
“They were serious, like it was business.”
“Any idea what they talked about?”
“We were crowded, it was loud, I couldn’t hear them.”
“How long did they stay?”
“About an hour.”
“Do you know if they left in separate vehicles?”
Carmen shook her head.
For the next half hour, Graham continued pressing her for details. When he was satisfied he had exhausted her memory, he stood to leave.
“One last thing,” Carmen said. “Every now and then, the computer guy would turn his laptop to the stranger so he could read the screen.”
Graham didn’t know what he had.
Driving back to Calgary, he weighed the new infor mation. The Tree Top was about a forty-five-minute drive from the Tarvers’ campsite. The photo put Ray in the res taurant the day before his family was found in the river.
Who was the guy at his table?
And why was Ray showing him his laptop? Was it an arranged meeting? Or spontaneous? Maybe he’d gone there to interview someone for a travel article?
Maybe it was nothing?
But some twenty-four hours later, his family was dead.
Now, Ray was missing and so was his laptop.
The questions gnawed at Graham as he worked alone at his desk.
Since the initial front-page stories, the calls from the public had slowed. Prell and Shane had followed up with a lot of door-knocking. Most of the information was useless, even bizarre. One guy claimed that the Tarvers had been “abducted by alien organ harvesters who will appear at the UN.”