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God forbid we violate
his
Charter
rights.

“Whenever you’re ready.”

“Does your dad know already?”

“What do you think?”

Warren lowered his head again. “I never
meant for any of it to happen. She loved me, I knew she did.”

Kara was fuming. I moved behind her and put
my hand on her back, out of Warren’s sight. She reacted to the touch and
breathed deeply, steeling her nerves for what was to be a painful interview.

“A month before I… before it happened, we were
at a party. One of my friends had thrown it and I invited your parents. They
got into a fight about something—God, I can’t even remember what now. Your mom
wanted to stay and drink some more so your dad stormed out, took a cab home.
Your mom and I were talking, we were both drinking and by the end of the night,
she was crying in my arms.

“I’d loved her ever since your dad
introduced her to me. She looked up at me, her eyes full of tears, and she
kissed me.”

I could feel Kara breathing faster, my hand
still on her back.

“That was all it was, just a kiss, but I
knew she wanted more. I started calling her when your dad was out, but she kept
telling me it was a mistake. She wanted me to leave her alone. But I knew how
she really felt. A couple of months later, she was at work. I needed to talk to
her but she wouldn’t see me. I stabbed her tires and waited for a bit after she
had left. Then I drove down the road and found her there, on the shoulder with
two flats.

“I thought she’d be happy to see me. I
walked up to her, ready to be her saviour but she slapped me. She knew I’d
wrecked her tires, she knew I’d set it up. I was so angry, I hit her a couple
of times and she spit blood in my face. I couldn’t take her lies anymore.

“I knocked her to the ground and… and
kicked her a few times. Then I… Christ… I took her pants off…”

Kara was crying, spastic breaths made my
hand bounce up and down.

“I… I don’t want to get into details. You
know what happened. I raped her, while she lay there in the mud down in the
ditch. She was screaming at me not to. But there was no one around to hear her,
it was late at night on a back road. She scratched my face and arms and tried
to kick me off of her, but I held her down.

“After, she just laid there crying. I felt
horrible for what I’d done to her. Then she looked me in the eyes and said ‘And
you really thought I could love you? Someone like you? And you’re supposed to
be a cop?’ It hadn’t even crossed my mind until then. Everything was on the
line. I couldn’t let her tell.

“That’s when I beat her… until I thought
she was dead. And I left. I got in my truck and I drove away.”

I felt a slight surge against my hand
before Kara lunged across the table, her hands reaching for Warren’s throat. I
hooked my right arm around her chest and pulled her back. She was frothing at
the mouth, screaming unintelligibly at Warren, saliva flying and tears
cascading down her face. She fought against me as I held her tight and turned
her to look at me.

“Don’t,” I said, barely even a whisper.
“Don’t let him win, Kara.”

“I should’ve killed him, Link. I should’ve
fucking killed him when I had the chance.”

I nodded. She was probably right. If I’d
had my gun I might have even done it for her right then.

“I can’t finish this. I can’t.” She was
shaking, her body spasmed violently beneath my hands. I tightened my grip.

“We need too, Kara. He may be the only one
who knows where Simpson is. And if we get it all on tape, he’ll be going away
for life. Think of what they’ll do to an ex-cop and rapist.”

I got a faint smirk. It would have to do.

“You always know what to say to cheer a
girl up.”

Images of Warren dropping the soap, being
in a cell with a cop-hater, or finding some big burly man who missed his baby
mama so much he was happy to beat on someone who felt the need to rape innocent
women, must have been flowing through her mind—all yielding some sense of
satisfaction and divine retribution.

Kara wiped her eyes then went and sat back
down. I expected Warren to have an arrogant smirk or something but he didn’t,
he looked almost as upset as Kara.

“I knew from there that my days were
numbered. Someone would find out, I never expected it to take this long. A
couple years later I arrested a guy, big player in the drug scene. He made me
an offer, fifty thousand if I let him go. I had enough on him, plus his
outstanding warrants, to put him away for a couple of years. I knew that if
anyone ever found out about what I’d done, I’d be finished. If I ever got out I
wanted to have some money stashed. And I was hoping I could leave the force and
lie low, disappear.

“It didn’t work that way. After that I
found out I was in his debt. He had me start running checks on people, had me
helping him out or he told me he’d go to the Chief. Things ramped up from there
and eventually I wound up his right hand man. He got put away a while after for
a first degree and I took over, turned in the badge. That was fifteen years
ago.”

How had he gone unnoticed for fifteen
years? There was no way he was that smart.

“It was easy to recruit cops. Look for the
ones with financial problems, marital problems, drug or drinking problems.
That’s how I got George in. I never thought he’d do it, but he was desperate.
It was Simpson that tipped me off to him.”

“The shipments came through the States and
I had a few people on the payroll over there as well. I’m sure you’ve found my
books by now. Jeremiah Dawson, an Ohio trooper, wanted to go straight. Met some
Mormon girl, became born-again or something and wanted out. But he knew too
much. I went down there one night and met with him, tried to talk him out of
it. But he was a stubborn man, always had been.

“So you killed him?” Kara hadn’t said a
word yet, it was best to just let people talk.

Warren nodded. “I shot him twice in the
chest, left him in the parking lot and drove back here. Thought all of our
problems were taken care of until Carter started snooping. No one knew how long
he’d been at it or what he knew, but we kept seeing the same car in the area.
Didn’t take long to find out he was OPP.

“I should’ve taken care of it myself, then
none of this would have happened. But I knew that if he’d been watching us,
maybe he knew I was in charge. He wouldn’t have let me get close enough to him.
It had to be a cop. I offered a hundred grand to whoever did it—make sure he
hadn’t told anyone else then kill him. Simpson was way too eager for my liking
but he was the only one to volunteer. Everyone else drew the line at murder.

“I gave the order. I made the decision.
Simpson was the gunman. There’s not much else to it.”

“Where is he now?”

Warren paused for a moment. “I have a
cottage, up near Collingwood. He’ll be there. They all knew about it, it was
the safe house. I bought it in a fake name, so your records checks would never
have found it.”

Kara and I both nodded, but Warren wasn’t
done.

“He’s fucked. I never should have brought
him in. He won’t go down without a fight. Move in at night, infrared and all
that shit to make sure he’s asleep. You guys took my keys when you arrested me,
it’s the silver one, Schlage. Go in quiet and take him down. I don’t want to
see anyone else die because of this.”

“Okay,” Kara said, then stopped. She knew
what she should say—in a normal situation—but did she really want to?

“Thanks.” And there it was.

“Now please, talk to the feds. Keep me here
if you can, if I go to Ohio I’m dead.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” I said. I’d talk
to the Crown for him, for the only reason being that he had given Kara some
closure, even if it came in the form of pure, unbridled hatred toward the man.
Of course, then it hit me. Canada won’t extradite someone if they’ll face the
death penalty, unless of course the receiving country agrees not to impose a
death sentence.

How could he not have known that? Or his
lawyer?

Was he trying to do the right thing, hiding
it behind a lie in case his cronies found out? If so, it was a definite case of
too little, too late. Whether his reason was a lie or not, he’d given us what
we needed.

Now there was little for us to do but wait.
Warren’s warning that Simpson wouldn’t go down without a fight had not fallen
on deaf ears. I knew how I felt and I was certain Kara would feel the same way—we’d
seen more than enough lives lost and blood shed. If we could take him alive, we
would.

It was getting into the afternoon by the
time we made it back to the detachment, leaving Warren to his concrete bed and
iron bars. For us to put together a warrant, get it endorsed by a Justice
(hopefully the only dirty one had already been taken care of—or more so taken
care of himself), and make it to the Collingwood area three hours north would
have been a rush. Rushes led to mistakes.

Simpson could enjoy one more night of
freedom.

I sat down in Dan’s chair once we made it
to Kara’s office. The lack of a mess in the room made it feel even more like I
was in someone else’s life. This was no longer my office, may never be again.
Kara took a seat in her chair and the long, drawn-out sigh let me know what she
was thinking.

“It’ll be over soon,” I said to an
exasperated nod.

“And then that’s it.”

I wasn’t sure if it was a question or not.
“I guess. Then we all just try to get back to our lives.”

“Think you’ll be able to?”

I was about to nod out of instinct. But it
would have been a lie. Could I really go back? After everything? The job was
all about integrity to me, and I always knew that not everyone felt the same.
But to see what I had seen, to be tortured and nearly executed by my supposed
brethren all in the name of making a buck—it was a little too much to bear.

“I hope so,” I said, conceding to myself.

“Yeah.”

We didn’t speak for a moment, both of our
minds latched to a spiralling and uncertain future. Maybe a transfer to another
detachment, or even another service, could be in order. Maybe it was time to be
looking for something else.

“What’s the word?”

Kara just looked at me. If she’d had kids
and had been exposed to
Sesame Street
, I likely would’ve been given the
answer of ‘the bird’. But all she did was stare.

I gestured to my old page-a-day calendar,
the only remnant of me in the office.

“Oh,” she said. She reached out and flipped
a few pages, then a couple more before tearing the top stack off. She threw the
old dates into the recycling bin beside her desk. I would have had to read them
before throwing them out, just to see what the words had been.

Yet another compulsion of mine.

“Have I ever told you how much this thing
creeps me out?”

I shook my head.

“Seriously. What the eff, Link. ‘Qualm: a
sudden feeling of apprehension or uncertainty…’ Wait for it… ‘often regarding a
misgiving about conduct or an action’. I hate this thing.”

I laughed. “It does seem to be a little
prophetic at times. Just ignore it, before you torch it or bring in a young
priest and an old priest.”

“Still…” She shook her head. “Whatever…
more important things to think about.”

She paused and began chewing on her lower
lip. I could tell she was nervous, but she wouldn’t meet my eyes.

“What is it?”

“Where you’re sitting, Link. I forgot to
tell you, Dan’s taking early retirement.”

“Oh…” What else was there to say?

“Yeah, thirty-two quiet years then getting
shot through the chest. He figured it was time to pack it in.”

I swivelled back and forth in the chair,
thinking about it being mine once more. It felt good, it felt right. But there
were too many things to think about. Kat, for starters. She was the reason I
got kicked out of this desk in the first place. Then there was my new unit.
They’d lost their Staff Sergeant, and then to lose a Sergeant as well?

“I… I don’t know. I mean, it’s not up to
me, anyway. Decision has to come down from brass.”

Kara nodded. I could tell she questioned
having told me, maybe silence would have been better in her mind.

My phone rang, a refreshing break from the
awkwardness that had begun to settle in.

“Munroe.”

“You okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

“You’re sure? You don’t sound fine.”

“I’m good, Kat. Trust me.” Change of
subject. “Did you find us a hotel room?”

“Yeah, found three adjoining rooms.”

“Three?”

“You really going to let Kara go home or
stay in another hotel alone while there’s still someone out there?”

Sainthood. She had to be trying for it.

“Right,” I said. “I’ll let her know. And
please tell me you got a receipt. We’re not paying for this, let the province
pick up the tab.”