Deadline (22 page)

She walked to the bedroom door.

“Okay,” she said, and nodded toward the hallway. “Out. I don’t appreciate being accused of something I didn’t do. Get out.”

“What?” said Jack.

“You heard me. Fun’s over. You’re pissing me off. Out.”

“You are bad news,” said Jack.

Ellen raised her voice. “I’ve had enough. Out.
Out.
Get dressed and get out.”

Jack pulled on his clothes and walked past her. She followed him in silence down the hallway.

“I think the things they say about you might be true,” he said when he got to the door.

She held it open for him and pointed at it with her a gesture of her chin.

“I’m not interested in your opinion,” she said.

He stepped outside and turned to say something to her, but she slammed the door in his face.

After an hour at the computer at home, Sophie knew a lot about brain damage and comas. There was not a lot of reason to be encouraged by Ed’s temporary apparent recovery. Some patients stayed locked in for years, intermittently communicating with blinks, but fading slowly over time, as their bodies atrophied and their minds ground down.

That didn’t mean that there was no hope, though. The medical literature was full of examples of people who had made surprising recoveries, their brains forming new pathways around dead and damaged issue. It was hard to believe that Ed would ever be as he was, but she reminded herself that the bruises on his wrists still weren’t healed. That meant that the tissue in his brain wouldn’t have healed yet. There was reason to hope.

Sophie sighed and shut down the computer. She knew needed to sleep so that she could get back to the hospital in the morning and try to encourage that spark of life that she’d seen today. She was getting ready to go brush her teeth when she noticed the messenger light blinking on her phone. She picked it up. It was a fresh message from Jack, asking if he could pop by

When he arrived, Sophie thought there was something odd about him, but she couldn’t figure out what it was. He was rumpled-looking, but he was always rumpled-looking, and his smile was crooked, but it always was. She poured him a glass of red wine and he asked about Ed, and listened, entranced, as she told him about the tear. After she was sure that Ed was really hearing her, she had got him to blink for her, so she was sure he was really responding, and they had a little chat, with him responding by blinking, once for yes, twice for no.

“Wow. You must have been freaking out.”

“Oh, I was a scene. I was crying and talking really loud. Then I asked him if I had to talk loud for him to hear me, and he blinked twice. And then I was laughing and crying. Oh my God.” She cried and giggled a little as she talked. Then her face grew serious. “I asked him if he could move his arms or legs, and he blinked twice. And then his face grew kind of still, and I couldn’t get him to respond at all.”

Jack pulled her into his arms to comfort her.

“Hey,” she said. “What happened to your wrist? It looks like Ed’s.”

She sat up and took his hands in hers and examined them closely. “Are those handcuff marks? Did you get arrested?”

“No. I didn’t get arrested. Sort of the opposite.” He chuckled. “I want to talk to you about it. But I need you to promise me you’ll keep it secret.”

“What is it?” she said. “I promise.”

“Well, it’s kind of weird.”

He told her in a rush, everything except how he had lost control during sex. Sophie listened with wide eyes.

“Oh my God,” she said, and she got up to get more wine for them.

“I hope you used a condom,” she said. “Ugh. She probably has herpes on her herpes.”

Jack laughed.

“Yes, we did,” he said. “Although she didn’t have any extra large.”

Sophie laughed and smacked him lightly on the head.

“Idiote,” she said. “Quel gros con.”

“It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“I bet,” said Sophie. “Ed will be jealous. He always said he wanted to ‘fuck the shit out of her.’ ”

She made air quotes with her fingers.

Now it was Jack’s turn to be surprised. “He told you that?”

“We don’t keep secrets from each other.’

“Well,” said Jack. “You promised you’d keep this a secret.”

“I will,” said Sophie. “Believe me, it’s not the first thing I want to share with my boyfriend while he’s in a coma. Honey, guess what? Your friend fucked that slut Ellen Simms. Blink once if you’re jealous, twice if you’re happy.”

They laughed together.

“I bet it was fun,” said Sophie.

“Until she kicked me out, yeah,” said Jack. “So, the reason I told you, aside from wanting to brag, is that I wonder what it means. Should I tell the cops? Is there any way that she had something to do with Ed ending up in the canal? I mean, did he sleep with her?”

Sophie thought about it. “No,” she said. “I don’t think so. He would have told me.”

Jack cocked an eyebrow at her. “I don’t know if you can be so sure,” he said.

She gazed at him coolly. “Yes I can. He always told me the other times he slept with someone. We had, uh, have, kind of a deal about that.”

“You have an open relationship?” asked Jack.

“Yeah,” said Sophie. “You could say that.”

Jack whistled.

“Don’t tell anyone,” said Sophie. “It’s a secret. I shouldn’t have told you. Shit.”

“Anyway. The point is, he would have been back here bragging about it in about a minute if he had ‘fucked the shit out of her,’ ” she said, making air quotes again.

“So do you sometimes tell him about your adventures, too?” asked Jack. “Do you have adventures?”

“None of your business,” she said. “She was really curious about Ed’s BlackBerry, eh?”

“Yeah. I won’t tell you how she got me to tell her about it, but she seemed like she really wanted to know.”

“But you don’t know where it is.”

“Nope.”

They sat in silence, and for a moment he thought he was going to tell her the truth, and tell her about the men who chased him, and about the dead taxi driver and businessman from Winnipeg. And he’d ask about the hidden camera in her bookcase, put all his cards on the table. He opened his mouth to speak, and then she got to her feet.

“Well,” she said. “I’m tired and I have an early morning tomorrow. I’m going to go to bed. You can stay here if you want. Did you sleep okay here the other night?”

“Yeah,” he said.

Sophie kissed him on the cheek. “Good night.”

She went to the bathroom. Jack took off his suit and wrapped himself in a quilt.

When she left the bathroom for the bedroom, he went in and used the bathroom.

When he came out, her bedroom door was open and the light was on. He went and stood in the doorway. She was under the covers, staring at the ceiling.

“Can I stay in here with you?” he asked.

“Hm,” she said. “Do you promise to behave?”

“Yes,” he said. “I don’t know if I mentioned it before, but I fucked the shit out of Ellen Simms tonight, so I think I’m good.”

He crawled in next to her and they lay silently beside one another for a long time before falling asleep.

Z
WICKER HAD
A
SHTON
and Flanagan in his office at 8 a.m.

“Sit down,” he said, his face completely blank. He strode back and forth behind his desk for a while without saying anything, and stopped a couple of times as if about to begin, only to start pacing again. Finally, he sat down and opened a notebook.

“Detective Sergeant Ashton,” he said, looking down at the paper in front of him. “What did I say to you yesterday about talking to reporters?”

“Uh, you told me not to talk to any reporters.”

He laughed, a short bark with no humour. “Right. That’s what I thought I said. So then I have this story here, from a Newfoundland newspaper, with all kinds of inside details about the investigation. It doesn’t quote anyone by name, but refers to ‘sources close to the investigation.’ ”

“It was me,” said Flanagan. “I interviewed Macdonald twice, once in person and once over the phone. He is a friend of the kid, Sawatski. He was drinking with him the night before he was pulled out of the canal.”

“And did you tell this witness, this possible suspect, that we were investigating personnel in the office of the federal minister of justice?” said Zwicker. “Am I right in thinking that?”

Flanagan was silent for a moment. His expression was pained. “I believe I told him that Detective Sergeant Ashton went up to the Hill to talk to Sawatski’s colleagues.”

Zwicker’s face was crimson. “I find that surprising.”

He cradled his head in his hands and stared down at his notes. “So, do either of you have any further evidence, aside from the photo and video you sent me yesterday, that points to the idea that this is anything but a story about a drunk kid falling in the canal?”

Flanagan and Ashton looked at one another.

“Nothing definite,” said Ashton.

“Nothing definite,” said Zwicker. “Would you agree with that assessment, Detective Sergeant Flanagan?”

“Yes sir,” he said.

Zwicker glared at the two officers in front of him.

“I doubt that you two really appreciate how delicate this situation is. We have a story here,” he jabbed the printout on his desk, “that’s drawing a connection between a serious crime and the highest officials in the federal government. This is a matter of grave concern to those officials. They function in a very challenging environment, scrutiny-wise. This makes them very sensitive. So they are saying, reasonably enough, I think, ‘What is this? What is this crime we hear about? What is this crime, to which we are linked, in a very painful way for us?’ ”

Zwicker picked up the notebook then slapped it down with a crack. “What shall I tell them?”

Neither officer spoke.

“I am not impressed by your evidence,” he said. “Not at all. I am not convinced there is a crime here. You understand?”

They both nodded.

“I was going to shut the investigation down unless I saw something in your report that gave me reason to reconsider. I think you two probably guessed that.”

“Yes sir,” Ashton said.

“If I thought you had leaked anything to this reporter on purpose, I would express my frustration more fully,” he said, and he smiled at them in a distinctly unfriendly way. “That would be very pleasant for me. Do you understand that? It would be very pleasant for me to express those feelings, but not for you two,” he said, and his face was distorted with a flash of rage. “Sadly for me, I don’t think you are quite stupid enough to have planted this story on purpose. I think you are stupid enough to have done so by mistake, which is still pretty stupid. Would you agree with me, Detective Sergeant Flanagan?”

“Yes sir,” he croaked.

“Okay,” said Zwicker. “So because of this story, I am not going to ask you to shut down the investigation today, as I had planned to do. That would be my preference, but others feel that that might leave in the public mind the impression that something is being covered up, that political influence was being exerted to shut down a police investigation. You follow me?”

He stared at them until they nodded.

“I find it ironic that, in fact, looking at it one way, there is now political pressure to continue a police investigation that is embarrassing to senior government officials. So, I was tempted to tell you to continue the investigation in such a way that you don’t talk to anyone. You two could look for clues at your desks, write reports about it. On reflection, though, I don’t think the director of investigations can order you not to investigate, even though that’s what I want to do. So carry on. If, though, at any point, you are tempted to take an investigative step that might subject the Ottawa Police Service or the federal Department of Justice to scrutiny, I want you to report to me before you take that step.”

He glowered at them and said with painful slowness, “Do you understand?”

“Yes sir,” they said.

“Okay,” said Zwicker. “Now get the fuck out of my office.”

Jack was drinking coffee in the Hot Room, reading the day’s headlines on his laptop when his editor called.

“Hey,” said Brandt.