Mal thanks Otto and returns to her vehicle. She calls Benoit as she drives back to the station.
“Still nothing on this end,” he says. “The front plus a king tide has brought in silt and a big current. The team has paused the search again. They hope a safer window will present within a few hours when the tide turns. I’ll keep you posted.”
Mal kills the call and drives the rest of the way to the station, feeling edgy and impatient for more results from the lab. She also called in a blood-spatter expert to assess the crime scene and is keen for his report, too. It all feels so close yet so far.
As Mal enters her unit’s bullpen, Jack Duff comes up to her.
“Guess who just walked in of his own accord?”
Mal shakes out her coat and hangs it up. “Suspense is killing me, Jack. Who?”
“Boon-mee Saelim.”
She flicks her gaze to Jack. “Last I heard he was nowhere to be found.”
“He looks pretty messed up,” Jack says. “Like he hasn’t slept in days. He insists on talking only to you or Benoit.”
MAL
November 4, 2019. Monday.
Mal finds Boon sitting on a dark-blue sofa in one of their more comfortable interview rooms. He looks like hell. His leg jiggles and his fingers fidget.
Mal takes a seat on the chair opposite Boon. She places her notebook and pen on the low table between them.
“Do you know that we’ve been looking for you, Boon?”
“Do I need a lawyer?”
“You’re free to obtain counsel. I can also provide you with a number if you’d like to access legal aid. Let me know. Meanwhile, let’s start with where you’ve been. And just so you know, you are on camera, and this is being recorded.”
Boon’s gaze darts up to the camera mounted near the ceiling. He then glances at the closed door as though he’s having second thoughts.
Mal waits.
“I was at a cabin near Hope,” he finally says as he rubs his thigh with his hand.
“Why did you run?”
“I didn’t run. I needed to grieve. I lost a friend. My best friend.”
Tension quickens in Mal. “So you knew Kit was dead?”
“No. I was grieving because I lost her as a friend through something I did a long time ago, and she found out.”
“So why’ve you come in now, Boon? What brings you back from the cabin?”
“I was at a gas station and saw on the news that divers had found her body. I—” His voice cracks and his eyes pool with tears. “It wasn’t supposed to go like this. She wasn’t supposed to die.” He sniffs and swipes tears away.
“Tell me what you mean. Take your time. Start at the beginning.”
He wipes his nose, and Mal pushes a box of tissues toward him. He takes one, blows his nose.
“Kit and I—our whole group—we would often dress up for role-play on the fly, you know? Like pop-up improv. We’d go into a Walmart, or to a supermarket, or an outdoor park, and interact with people, messing with them. It was our private game. A joke.”
“Like Kit’s Instagram was also a joke? We did check her @foxandcrow profile that you told us about. A good percentage of those Instagram photos are posed with you, Boon.”
“Like I told you. We played these games. It wasn’t unusual.” He rubs his face. “At the end of September, she asked me to participate in another ‘game.’ She wanted me to pretend to be a character named Haruto North. She asked me to come to this bistro and fetch her. She was going to play Haruto’s wife, a woman called Vanessa. I arrived at the bistro to find Kit in the wig and the fake pregnancy belly she wore for her character, Mary, in this play we put on—The Three Lives of Mary. She was lunching with a woman I later learned was Daisy Rittenberg. I played along, improvised. I acted controlling, a little aggressive. Like a domineering husband.”
“And why did Kit ask you to do this?”
He inhales deeply, and for a moment Boon-mee looks like he’s deciding whether to jump off a cliff and end his life. “I—I wasn’t totally up front the first time we spoke, Detective. I did know what happened to Kit in Whistler at that ski lodge. I was there.”
“You were at that party? You witnessed the alleged sexual assault?”
He looks down at his hands in his lap. “I did. And I never came forward. I could have saved her and stopped Jon and the others ever doing that again, and I didn’t. I was an enabler, and the guilt became a monster inside me. Kit discovered recently that I was there. I said I’d do anything to make it up to her, anything that would help her find it in her heart to forgive me for lying to her by default all these years. She then asked me to do some things, including playing Haruto.” Boon looks up and meets Mal’s eyes.
“I did owe her, Sergeant. If I had spoken up eighteen years ago, maybe Katarina would have had her baby. Maybe her father wouldn’t have been disgusted by her and wanted to kick her out. Maybe her father would not have been so stressed that he had a heart attack and died. Kit was so smart, her grades so good—she would have gone to university. She’d have had her self-esteem. Her life would have been different. The cops would have charged Jon and the others. But I didn’t speak.”
Adrenaline zings through Mal’s blood. “You do realize there’s no statute of limitations for sexual assault in this province, Boon, and that anything you say right now might be used as evidence.”
He nods.
“At the time, why did you not come forward?”
“I was gay and had not come out at that time. I was horrifically bullied at school, and I still had half a year before I graduated. I was terrified to stick my neck out and put a target on my back. So I hid. I stayed quiet. I failed Kit. So, yes, Sergeant, I owe her.” He wavers and tears fill his eyes again. “There are many different kinds of love, you know? I love Kit. She is my world. My sister, my best friend, everything. I wanted her back. I hated myself deeply for deceiving her. So I did it. I played the parts she asked me to. Then, when I fully realized what she was doing, I warned her it was too dangerous. I told her if Jon Rittenberg or Daisy found out, they would do anything to stop her from exposing them. But she continued like she had nothing to lose. And maybe she didn’t have anything left to lose,” Boon says quietly. “Not after she found out I’d also betrayed her.”
“And what was Kit doing to the Rittenbergs, exactly?”
“Gaslighting them. Messing with their heads. I only know some of it. She’d troll Daisy’s Instagram account, leave threatening notes on her car, inside her car. She left threats in the mailbox at Rose Cottage. She even cost Jon Rittenberg his job. She asked me to follow him and take photos. Kit had access to Jon’s computer, so she knew on occasion where he would be. She posed as some siren named Mia, and I took photographs of her and Jon together. While I was following him, I learned Jon had engaged a private investigator, and Kit found Jon’s contract with the PI in his computer. She eventually had me deliver all the photographic evidence of Jon and Mia’s ‘affair’ plus a copy of the PI contract to TerraWest, where Jon works. He was fired that morning—the same morning of the attack at the Glass House. Jon drove from work to a liquor store, bought alcohol, and sat in a park, drinking all day. I—if I’d known Kit was planning to meet Jon and Daisy Rittenberg that same night, I would’ve stopped her. He was enraged, drunk.”