Jordan was good on his word. He was able to track the last known ping from Bishan's cell phone. He called Sunny the next morning with the information, after Sunny spent the whole night pacing his bedroom, part of it with Ajit in his arms, soothing him back to sleep, all the while unsure what to tell his parents, and hoping against all hope that his sister would return home, having just gone out for a walk and unaware that everyone was worrying about her. He thought his young son might have felt his tension, because it seemed to take longer than normal to comfort him, and his cries eventually woke Harpreet for a while, so Tej had to take Ajit from him, her soft body more comforting, while Sunny helped his daughter back into bed and read her a story, distracting himself as much as lulling her.
"I was able to triangulate it to Queensborough," Jordan said, "on the north east corner."
"That's very near where she lives with Balwinder," Sunny said. "So, if she's so close to home, why hasn't she made contact?"
"Her phone had its last ping there, that doesn't necessarily mean it's still there, or that she herself is there."
"Should we give this to the police?" Sunny asked.
"Um, no, because they'd wonder how I got this information. I'd rather not go to jail."
"Well, what should we do?"
"We could go look in the area. Have you checked whether Balwinder filed a police report?"
"I'll do that. Do you want to go look together?"
"If you can stand to be in a car with me."
"Why wouldn't I?"
"Because I could be the reason something happened to Bishan."
There was that. "Well, regardless, you found a real lead, and I'm grateful."
"All right, I'll be there soon."
He hung up and told Tej what Jordan had told him. Her face fell. "I don't like this," she said. "If she's there with her phone and she hasn't called, then something's happened to her and she needs help. If she's not there with her phone, then something's happened to her and she needs help."
He nodded, feeling his heart pounding in his throat. He didn't say anything because he thought he might be sick, having had no sleep, fear jangling his nerves. If he didn't do something soon he thought he might collapse.
"I think we need to tell your parents now," she said.
He nodded again, even though it was the last thing he wanted to do.
They had to tell them anyway, to explain why Sunny hadn't gone into work that day. He had to call in sick and postpone any appointments he had with clients, since there was no way he could perform in his state. He was grateful Jordan drove, because he might have driven off the Queensborough Bridge if he was behind the wheel.
What surprised him was his parents' strength to hold on to hope once he'd told them. As soon as he called Balwinder and confirmed he'd called the police last night, Dad took the phone and began calling everybody he knew at the gurdwara, as many of them lived in Queensborough and could be counted on to keep an eye out for her, since they knew her by sight.
When Jordan picked him up, he told him about Balwinder calling the police and his dad calling around to the neighbours. Jordan nodded and asked, "Did you tell Balwinder about the phone?"
Sunny blinked in surprise. "Actually, no, I didn't."
Jordan nodded. "Good."
"Really?"
"Yeah. There's a reason you didn't tell him, even if it was an unconscious one. You don't trust him, and something about his story doesn't add up."
"I just want to see this area for myself, before we tell him or the police."
Jordan drove them to the area he'd printed off his computer. When Sunny climbed out of the car and walked around, he realized it was the old shore he and his friends in the LSDC used to go to from time to time, to look out at Poplar Island and pretend they were pirates, and to watch the train cross the swing bridge from downtown on its way to Annacis Island. It was where they'd first met Danny Trybek and seen the bruises on his arms.
Jordan saw his wistful expression and asked, "Do you know this place? I never grew up here."
Sunny nodded. "We used to come here a lot. Bishan would know this place too."
They climbed down the rock path and alighted on the sand, looking around. The shore was empty.
"How accurate is that triangulation?" Sunny asked.
"Pretty accurate, but the area's pretty big. At least we have one natural barrier, the river. It won't be in there."
"Are you sure? You said last ping. What if the ping happened and then the phone went into the river?"
Jordan looked to him, his face even paler than normal. "There are some dark possibilities there. What if she walked into the river?"
Sunny frowned. "She isn't suicidal, at least I don't think she is. She was going to run away with you, right? Shouldn't she have been hopeful, excited?"
"What if something happened, and she realized she couldn't leave, and she thought this was the only way out?"
Sunny shook his head stubbornly. "No, I won't believe that. That's not my sister. She's a fighter, she's defiant. She wouldn't give up like that."
Jordan nodded. "Okay, what if she didn't go into the river on her own?"
Sunny didn't want to think about that. "We're assuming she's with her phone."
He walked to where the river met the shore and began sweeping the area. When they'd first met Danny Trybek, they'd come to the shore to pretend to look for mob victims with cement shoes, hoping to see their hair floating in the water. Looking back, Sunny thought that was a pretty morbid thing to do, but didn't kids always approach death with that same sense of play? They used to play Cowboys and Indians, after all (quite racist in retrospect, and he, an actual Indian by heritage, couldn't believe he'd played the Cowboy,) and pretend to be gut-shot, weaving in circles before collapsing to the ground, pretending to be dead. Maybe it was the way kids processed the real-world horrors of the grown-up world, by acting out a kind of passion play from which they could walk away, alive and well, still confident in the notion that they themselves would never feel the sting of death, at least until their first grandparent passed away.
In retrospect, he didn't think they would have been able to see a body floating in the water without going in. The river was silty and not very translucent. Still, thoughts of those magical days of his youth reminded him that they'd found Danny on this same stretch of beach after his father had called to hire them to find him, in order to return him home to his abuser. It had been Rachel's idea, he remembered, and that memory brought tears of yearning to his eyes. Rachel. Lauren. Joe. Al. God, he missed them, more than ever at this moment; he could joke and say the search for his sister was the case they might have dreamed of taking on as the Lawrence Street Detective Club, but what he really could have used was their friendship and support in this dark time, when he felt like he was coming apart at the seams. Jordan, helpful as he was with the phone trace, was a poor substitute.
"Bishan!" he yelled, just to do something. Maybe she was lying in the scrub somewhere, unable to move because she'd broken a bone. If she heard him, maybe she could yell back.
Jordan called her name too, and they walked in opposite directions along the shore, combing the sand for her phone. They climbed over rocks on either end of the beach, looking for any trace of her in case she tumbled from the street above and broke a leg. In a few more years the Port Royal subdivision would come in, and their searching might have been noticed by neighbours looking out from the front porches of cute faux-craftsman detached houses of various colours facing the Queensborough Perimeter Trail. They might have even noticed activity in this beach a couple of nights ago and mentioned it to them. As it was now, the area was empty, so they were on their own.
After an hour of searching, they met back in the middle of the beach, despondent.
"I bet that phone is in the river," Jordan said.
"If it's in the river, then someone wanted it to disappear," Sunny said.
Jordan ran his hands through his hair and pulled at it so hard it looked like it hurt. Sunny knew how he felt. He might have done the same if his own hair wasn't pulled up and hidden away.
"Even if it's in the river," he said, "that doesn't mean she is."
"Yeah," Jordan said, letting go of his hair. "Yeah." He said it not like he agreed with Sunny, but as if the word itself were a talisman against any other possibility. "Maybe she hurt herself, but she still got out of here. Why don't we drive around here and see if we can spot her."
Sunny nodded, knowing the chances of finding her now were slimmer than they were when Jordan had phoned with that hopeful news, but unwilling to go home and admit they didn't do everything they could to find her.
They climbed back into the car, and Jordan followed every small road in this corner of Lulu Island, where once the lumber mills dominated, employing hundreds of men like Sunny's father. They got out and looked around whenever they hit a dead end, just in case the scrub beyond the street held any answers.
Frustrated after another hour of fruitless driving, Sunny said, "I think I need to talk to Balwinder."
"What?" Jordan asked, startled.
"I need to look him in the eye and determine if he's really frantic about my sister being missing, or if he's just pretending."
"Do you think that's a good idea? If he's done something, you could be spooking him into doing more to cover his tracks."
Sunny threw up his hands and said, "I don't know what else to do! I can't go home empty handed, not yet."
Jordan nodded and said, "Is it all right if I don't go with you?"
"Afraid he'll make the right connections?"
"No. I'm afraid of what I might do to him if I see the wrong thing in his eyes. I am a black belt."
Sunny had the same fear, but he wasn't a man of violence, as angry as he might have been. Plus, he was just too tired to do any damage. "You know, Bishan could probably defend herself, even against a bigger man."
"There's a difference between learning fancy moves and actually fighting when you have to. Maybe she was surprised. Maybe she was hit from behind."
"Shit, let's not go down that road. You stay in the car a block away, and I'll talk to him."
Jordan followed his directions until they were within a block of the sprawling property of the Johals. To his surprise, there was already a gathering of people outside the house, many of whom Sunny recognized as Balwinder's sisters, their children and the extended Johal family, and the rest probably friends and neighbours. There were also a couple of New West Police patrol cars and an unmarked vehicle that probably belonged to detectives.
He left Jordan in the car and strode to the house. Balwinder and his mother were talking to two detectives, while two patrol constables conferred with the others, pointing at a map in their hands and gesturing out to the streets beyond. It looked like they were organizing a search party.
When Balwinder locked eyes with Sunny, he flinched microscopically, but recovered almost instantly and cleared his throat. "Sunil," he said. "Any news?" Unlike when they were alone on the phone, he used his proper name in front of the authorities and people not related to him.
Sunny thought about telling him about the phone, but then he would have had to tell him how he'd come by this information, how Bishan's lover had hacked into the phone company to find the communication records for one of their numbers. He didn't think it would be a good idea to bring Jordan into this now, especially not with the police here.
"No," he said. "But I wanted to lend my help in any way I can."
Balwinder brightened at that. "Thank you. You can join our canvass of the neighbourhood."
Sunny stared at him for a second, looking for anything on his face that would count as a tell. Other than that first flinch, which might have been surprise, there was nothing. "I thought I'd start by searching your house," he said.
Balwinder blinked in surprise, and one of the detectives broke conversation with his mother to look at him and say, "We've already done a full search of the property, Mister..."
"Parhar," Sunny said, offering his hand.
"I'm Detective Donnelly Rhodes with New Westminster Police," he said, shaking it. Back then he wasn't partnered with Tracey. Years later, Sunny would be relieved Rhodes didn't remember him when he met him at the Anderson house, or when they met again outside Jordan's own house in a neighbourhood that didn't exist yet, but where Jordan chose to move, maybe to feel close to Bishan in the last place she lived. Although Rhodes had ultimately put away Bishan's killer, he'd never found her alive, and if he remembered Sunny, he might have felt the shame of it, and that was the last thing Sunny wanted. Better to look just like any other East Indian in a turban to the old white detective.
"Mr. Parhar is my brother-in-law," Balwinder explained. "Bishan is his sister."
Rhodes nodded in understanding. "Could I ask you a few questions over there, Mr. Parhar?"
"Yes, of course."
They walked over to where the big rigs were parked. Rhodes pulled out a notebook and pen from an inside pocket of his tweed houndstooth blazer. "When was the last time you saw your sister, Mr. Parhar?"
"Last Friday," he said. "She works part-time at my law firm, Westminster Law Group."
"Can I have the address and phone number of your firm? Your home address and phone number, too."
Sunny took his notebook and pen and wrote it down. "She told me she was going on vacation," he said, "with her husband. This is why I'm confused. He's here and she's not. Something's not adding up."
Rhodes nodded as he jotted notes. "We're verifying everybody's whereabouts."
"He told me he'd just come back from a hauling job," Sunny said. He nodded his head at the two rigs sitting side by side in the big driveway. "Both of those trucks look awfully clean for having just come back from being on the road for days."
Rhodes turned to look at the rigs. He scanned them for quite a while, then scribbled in his notebook. "You make a very good point, Mr. Parhar. Maybe there's an explanation, like he and his father took them to a wash before they brought them home."
"Where is his father, by the way?"
"We haven't established that yet."
"Interesting."
"And you, Mr. Parhar, can we get an idea of your movements in the last few days?" Rhodes asked.
"Me?" he asked in incredulity.
"We're asking these questions of everyone close to her," he assured him. "It's just routine box-checking, don't worry."
"Oh." Sunny shrugged. "All I do during the week is go to work and come home. I have two young children."
"And your coworkers will verify you were at your work?"
"Of course."
Rhodes looked at his notebook and said, "You live across the bridge?"
"Yes. Our family likes to live close to each other. If you'd like to come search our house, you're welcome to. Did Balwinder give you Bishan's cell phone number? He said her cell phone was gone."
Rhodes looked up from his notebook. "No, he didn't. I wonder why that would be."
"Me too."
Sunny gave him her cell phone number, and Rhodes said, "We'll put a trace on this right away. I think we'll have a look inside these trucks, too."
Sunny nodded. "I think that's a great idea. But I wonder where their most recent trailers are."
"We'll track those down as well. Truckers are supposed to keep a log. It might be too late to get any evidence out of them, but we'll do it if we can."
"Thank you, Detective. I can't help feeling, though, that the more helpful you're being, the more likely we're going to find a bad end for my sister."
"Don't give up hope, Mr. Parhar, we're just getting started," Rhodes said, but from the way he gazed at him with those sad, world weary eyes, Sunny knew he was just saying what he was supposed to say, that hope was already in the rear view mirror.
Thanks for reading this far! Since Bishan's fate had already been described in previous chapters, I won't tell of it in the flashback chapters. These scenes were meant to show Sunny's relationship with his sister when she was alive, and his charged encounters with Jordan, and to give background on why Jordan might have been so obsessed with Naira's disappearance.
If you liked what you just read, hit "Vote" to send this title up the ranks. If anything doesn't ring true about cell phone triangulation or police procedure in a missing persons case, leave a comment; I strive for authenticity.
To return to Lauren in the present day, and the event at Centennial Lodge that gets an unexpected visitor, click on "Continue reading."