Deadline (26 page)

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Authors: Craig McLay

Tags: #General Fiction

BOOK: Deadline
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“Like Crowley’s son, Augustine.”

“Exactly,” Colin said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he wasn’t the only one Ludnick hired onto his security force. A perfect spot for someone looking to root out sinners. I recognized him as soon as I saw him. He was one of the security guys that had originally gotten involved in the whole thing with Devane. Shalene had said lots of girls had complained about being videotaped by Devane in the past, but nothing had been done about it. That changed in a hurry as soon as the Church of the Holy Thorn took an interest in the matter.”

“We believe Seth Reznick was the one supplying Devane with at least some of his drugs,” Giordino said. “His number was pre-programmed into Devane’s cell phone.”

“I always thought he was living beyond his means,” Colin mumbled.

“All of Crowley’s children have had issues with the law,” Giordino said. “Augustine has a juvenile record for a couple of assaults, both against prospective foster parents or other members of their families. He picked up an adult conviction for attempted murder and arson when he tried to burn down one of their houses while they were still in it. We still don’t know how long he or the rest of the Crowley clan had been staying at that farmhouse. The land was bought years ago by a developer to turn into a new subdivision, but the financing got tied up and then the developer disappeared. It looks like they may have been there for as long as a year.”

“Crowley had probably tracked his son Augustine to Westhill, Augustine ended up there because of the Fresh Start program,” Colin speculated. “Working for security would give young Gus the opportunity to apprise his father of all the horribly immoral goings-on at his place of work. That was likely when Crowley decided to take a more hands-on approach to things.”

“You’re certainly not the first two people taken down into that basement,” Giordino observed. “Forensics is going to be going through that place for weeks.”

“Start going through your missing persons cases,” Colin suggested. “Especially for the downtown sex workers. I couldn’t help but notice that the alley behind Carlyle wasn’t quite as busy as it usually is. Not that I spend any time down there, I hasten to add.”

“This little scoop of yours is already causing quite a stir,” Giordino said. “The opposition’s already calling for the justice minister to resign. He’s saying he didn’t know anything about any illegal activity. The whole prison project might be scrapped.”

“I’m sure the neighbours will be happy to hear that,” Colin mused. “What did Devries have to say for himself?”

Giordino smiled. “We caught up with him at Pearson. He was trying to board a flight to Costa Rica.”

“I think Peter might owe some money to some less than savoury people,” Colin said. “Either that or he has 500 mistresses hidden away in various apartments around town.”

“Oh, and Jerome Ludnick was taken to hospital this afternoon with what he described as a self-inflicted gunshot wound.”

Colin raised his eyebrows. “He said what?”

“That’s right,” Giordino said. “He said he’d been cleaning it when it discharged accidentally into his thigh. Only problem was, he couldn’t produce the weapon that had caused the injury. Bullet came from a Glock 9 mm semi-automatic. He doesn’t have one of those registered in his name. His residue test came up negative, too. There was no gunpowder on his hands.”

Colin couldn’t help but smile. “Really?”

“Really,” Giordino said. “He wanted to make it very clear that he didn’t know anything about any security irregularities at Westhill. Said he’d never even heard of the Fresh Start program. If anything like that was going on, it was all Devries. What kind of gun were you carrying when you walked into that basement?”

Colin tried to look confused. “Beats me. I’m just a reporter. I can’t tell a Glock from a Kalashnikov.”

“Uh huh,” Giordino said. “And I don’t suppose you remember how you came to be in possession of that Glock 9 mm semi-automatic you were carrying?”

“No idea,” Colin said. “Maybe I’ll be able to recall after the years of therapy that will be required to get over this PTSD-inducing experience.”

Giordino started packing the documentation back into her briefcase. “I am going to need you to come downtown as soon as you’re medically fit to provide us with a detailed statement.”

“Nothing would please me more,” Colin said. “Should I bring my lawyer with me?”

“If you feel you might need one,” Giordino said. She got up and headed over to the door. “You know, half the reporters in the western world are in the lobby right now trying to get in here for an exclusive interview.”

Colin winced at the thought. He’d never been on the other side of a story before and had a feeling he wasn’t going to like it. “Ugh.”

“I hope you don’t mind, but I took the liberty of letting one of them in,” Giordino said. She opened the door and Janice stuck her head inside.

“Colin? You okay?”

“Janice!” Colin said, relieved. “I’m alive. How are you?”

Giordino pulled the door open so that Janice could enter, then waved and headed out into the hallway. “Mister Mitchell, I’d like to thank you for all your cooperation.”

Colin managed to wave a couple of fingers, which was about as much as he could manage. Janice gave him a kiss and then looked at his heavily bandaged shoulder. “Are you okay? Does it hurt a lot?”

“Not too bad,” Colin said. “But when we write this one up, I think you’re going to have to do most of the typing.”

ONE YEAR LATER
Knightsbridge, London

S
urprise, surprise, it was raining.

They had been in London for three weeks and Colin still wasn’t used to the weather. He had checked the weather online and saw that Westhill already had 12 centimetres of snow and was expecting at least five more. Christmas was five weeks away and the only festive mood existed on the brightly lit shop floors of retailers like nearby Harrods. London itself was chilly and damp; the sky a persistent and unbroken slate grey.

Colin was familiar with this part of the city, having been here many times with his father, who had worked out of an office on Fulham Road. The apartment they were using on Walton Street had also belonged to Colin’s father. When the leasing firm that normally rented it out on the family’s behalf had advised that the current tenant would be moving out at the end of October, Colin had told them not to sign any new contracts on the place. He and Janice had moved in in the middle of November.

It was a strange feeling to be back for the first time in ten years. Everything was smaller than Colin remembered. The city was so compact compared to the North American sprawl. Roads seemed like sidewalks. Driveways looked like front steps. Friends who came over to visit kept remarking on the impressive size of the place, which Colin found strange as it was only slightly bigger than the apartment he’d been in back home. And everyone moved so fast. Colin had been honked at dozens of times because he kept forgetting to first look right and
then
left before crossing the street.

They had come here to start research on their second book, which was going to be a more in-depth history of the Knights of the Holy Thorn and its survival and spread in the modern day. Here they would be closer to the British Museum, the British Library and the National Archives. Most religious historical documents were not stored in any one place. Most of the people who looked after them were volunteers with no formal archival training, so a lot of valuable material wasn’t even catalogued. Janice had made some contacts at the Religious Archives Group, however, and was confident that she would be able to find at least some of what they were looking for.

Colin’s job was to try and track down any more modern adherents. Since the publication of their book about the Westhill killings,
Brotherhood of Blood
, they had received literally thousands of tips, hints, suggestions and even threats from supposed members. Most of them were cranks and wild goose chases, but some had referenced unsolved murder cases that looked suspiciously similar to what had happened back home.

Colin wasn’t terribly eager to go looking for more people like Ezekiel Crowley, but figured it was probably preferable that he found them first than the other way around. You didn’t need to spend a day at the British Museum to know that it was usually a bad idea to piss off a sadistic group of religious radicals.

Something else had come up, however, that had pushed the Knights out of the front of his mind.

It had arrived in the form of an email a week ago. The email had not come to the Facebook author account that he and Janice had set up when the book was published. This one had come in through his private email address. It was one he never used for online registrations or purchases and didn’t give out to just anyone. All told, there were probably less than a dozen people who knew about it. The account was set up with a strict security filter. Technically, no email was supposed to make it to his inbox unless the sender was a recognized source. He didn’t know who the sender was, but the email had made it through anyway.

The email was short and to the point:

MR MITCHELL,

YOUR FATHER WAS NOT AN OIL COMPANY EXECUTIVE.

HIS DEATH WAS NOT AN ACCIDENT.

SBL

Colin didn’t know anybody with the initials “SBL”. Colin had just dismissed the email at first, but hadn’t gone so far as to delete it. Over the next few days, he had gone back to his email to re-read it dozens of times. Who could it have come from? Somebody who worked with his father? What did they mean when they said he wasn’t an oil company executive? Or that his death wasn’t an accident? Why were they contacting him now? Was it somebody who had read the book, done a little Google research and was just trying to wind him up?

Colin kept telling himself to just ignore it. Forget about it. Delete it.

But he didn’t.

Colin padded into the kitchen and made himself a coffee. He missed his old coffeemaker, which was incompatible with British voltage and currently in storage back home. This one spewed out a black approximation of something that might charitably be referred to as a hot beverage, but that was the best thing you could say about it. There were plenty of little cafes in the neighbourhood that did provide the real thing, but they also charged accordingly. Colin reckoned they must be sending their staff to Columbia to personally harvest the beans. Despite having money, Colin had never been able to adjust to living that way.

Janice was the opposite. Since their book had hit the charts, she had been taking a lot more taxis than tubes and had been gravitating more towards fancy restaurants than pubs. For somebody who said she didn’t care about money, she didn’t seem to have any problem spending it.

Colin didn’t mind. There wasn’t a lot to recommend the life of a poor college student. She had also been tied up and threatened with torture in a dank stone basement. If anyone was entitled to a few posh dinners and less standing around, it was her. At the moment, she was out for lunch with a research fellow from the Archives. The two of them had corresponded quite a lot when she was doing her initial research. She had asked if Colin had wanted to come along, but he’d told her to go ahead. He had other plans.

Colin heard the clink of the mail through the slot and walked to the front door to grab the envelopes. The tile was ice cold on his bare feet. The floor was supposed to be heated, but either the system wasn’t working or he hadn’t figured out how to properly turn it on. He’d never dealt with a heated floor before.

Colin grabbed the mail. Most of it was junk, but a large envelope with a Canadian postmark grabbed his attention. He ripped it open and found a copy of the
Westhill Sentinel
. The front page featured a picture of Peter Devries getting out of a car under the headline “Former College President Indicted”. A handwritten note tucked inside read: “Thought you might get a kick out of this! - CJ”.

Colin smiled. He had already heard that Devries had been arrested on multiple fraud and obstruction charges. Devries had pled guilty on many of those charges in exchange for a light sentencing recommendation that was conditional on his testifying against many of his co-accused, which included several police officers, his former head of security, and numerous city officials. The justice minister had denied all knowledge of any wrongdoing but stepped down anyway “to spend more time with his family” and with a lobby firm that was quite keen to harvest as much of his bid rigging expertise as possible.

The mayor and the chief of police had come out of it mostly unscathed. Most of the people who took the fall for the Fresh Start spending fiasco were minor comptrollers and functionaries. Most of the bigger rats had disappeared back into the dark when the lights were turned on, leaving Devries and his well-publicized gambling problems to shoulder most of the blame.

The prison project had been killed and the government had announced that there would be no public inquiry into where all the money had gone. They made some vague noises about procurement reforms, but otherwise just curled up in a stubborn ball while waiting for the whole thing to go away. It probably would have, too, if Colin and Janice’s book hadn’t come out and brought the whole mess back into the public eye again.

CJ had graduated and gotten a job as a layout designer for the online version of the Toronto Star, where he seemed to be settling in quite nicely. The new president at Westhill had decided to keep the print journalism program running, but under a new coordinator. The last Colin had heard, Hal Watterson was working in the PR department of a dog food company. Colin was pretty sure it was the same company that had just gotten itself into trouble for using rendered parts from BSE-infected cows. He had even downloaded some of their damage control press releases for a quick laugh.

Colin dropped the mail on the table and then headed into the bedroom to get dressed. He still didn’t have full mobility back in his right shoulder, which made it difficult to put on certain shirts. He wondered if it was his imagination that his shoulder seemed to hurt more because of all the cold, damp weather.

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