Rick Mofina - Six Seconds

It was a wonderful trip, but it was good to be home. Setsuko took a break from unpacking.

She went to her desk with her memory cards, switched on her computer and began viewing her travel photographs.

Here they were-the girls-on a mountaintop; in a forest; next to a river; here they were on the Icefields

Parkway. Here were elk on the golf course in Banff. A man with a cowboy hat. Setsuko clicked through dozens of images, smiling and giggling, until she stopped at one.

Her smile melted.

Setsuko had taken this one of Mayumi and Yukiko in cowboy hats, laughing, seated at their table in the logcabin restaurant outside Banff. It was during the last days of their trip.

Something about the image niggled at her. Something familiar.

Staring at it, she tried to remember.

The people in the background.

She returned to her bags, fished around in the deep side pockets where she’d shoved magazines, maps and newspapers, her fingers probing until she found the copy of the Calgary Herald the attendants had offered on the plane.

She remembered glancing at it before dozing off during the flight to Vancouver where they’d caught the return flight to Japan.

She unfolded it at her desk.

There was the headline, U.S. FAMILY DIES IN MOUNTAIN ACCIDENT, and pictures of Ray and Anita Tarver and their two small children, Tommy and Emily. A beautiful family, Setsuko thought, reading the article.

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.

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.”