False Witness (35 page)

Alex saw Sam open his mouth to speak, then close it again as Tess’s elbow struck home in his ribs. Sam gave her an odd look, then opened his mouth again. “As I was
going to say
, influencing the verdict plays along with their general
modus operandi,
assuming the killers knew that Larocque would flip out and go to Palliser. Even if it did come out, there would be a huge public outcry against
Hodge
, not the judge. The worst-case scenario is the attorney general would fire Larocque. No politically-minded judge in the country would threaten to overturn Hodge’s conviction based on something like that. If anything, it would end up in a legal battle that would drag on for years. From the public’s perspective, it’s just another reason to hang Hodge from the nearest flagpole.”

A look of sudden realization crept across Tess’s face. “That’s why they tried to kill Hodge in prison!” she said, clapping her hands together. “If he was dead, it wouldn’t matter if the tainted verdict ever came to light; no one would go over the case again. Who cares about a dead criminal? It would all just go away. And they would get away with everything.”

Crowe jumped as if he’d sat on a live wire. “Shit!” he yelped. “I’ve been so wound up in all this, I forgot to check in on Hodge.” He pulled his old folding cell phone from the front pocket of his jeans and dialed a number. Everyone sat silently. Alex could feel Crowe’s tension as he heard the tone
whirring
faintly on the other end of the line. After the sixth ring, Crowe’s brow began to furrow. After the tenth, he finally clapped the phone closed.

“This isn’t good,” he said.

“What’s going on?” Sam asked. “Who did you call?”

“I have a guard inside the Badlands. The one who beat that Aryan inmate into a coma. He’s my go-between with Hodge.”

Sam blinked, eyes wide. “Holy shit, man. You’re like some kind of James Bond villain.” He seemed to realize what he’d just said, because he quickly added: “I mean that with total respect.”

Crowe sighed. “He didn’t answer the phone I gave him. That means something’s wrong. I’m positive that whoever lit the swastika outside the Rosebush took out another paid hit on Hodge. To finish the job they started with Billy Trinh.”

“Maybe the guard was just in the john,” said Alex.

“That wouldn’t stop him from answering. Trust me.”

“Uh, guys,” said Sam. He was looking at the screen of his smart phone. “I just checked Twitter.” He looked up at Crowe. Alex saw Sam’s Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed hard. “It’s all over the news. Hodge is in intensive care at Rockyview General. Extensive stab wounds and trauma.”

Alex sat there, silently processing. The man who had played the role of the devil in his mind for almost a year was at death’s door, and he couldn’t even feel good about it. Another thing that would have seemed insane sixteen hours earlier.

Crowe closed his eyes. Everyone else in the room seemed to be holding their breath. Alex could see tears welling up in Shitbox’s eyes.

“
Goddam it
,” Crowe muttered. He opened his eyes. They seemed a shade darker than they had been moments earlier. “Gimme the details.”

Sam peered at his screen. “Four members of the Aryan Brotherhood attacked him in his cell. They apparently knocked out a guard and took his uniform and keys to the security wing. Two of them were killed, the other two are in hospital.” He looked up again. “The guard who was with Hodge was killed.”

#

No one spoke for a long time. The only sounds in the room were the ticking of the Black Label clock, and Shitbox snuffling quietly near the kitchen. It was Angie who finally broke the silence.

“What happens now?” she asked.

Crowe rubbed his hands over his face, driving the heels of his palms into his eyes. He’d been fighting this battle for weeks – months, really – and he was dead tired of it. He had known the odds were stacked against him from the outset, but he felt compelled to see this through to the end, out of loyalty to Hodge. But now Hodge was, in all likelihood, a dead man. Even if he lived – even if, by some miracle, they could somehow get his conviction overturned – his days as the head of the Wild Roses were over. Crowe’s obligation was finished. God knows he didn’t need the money. He could cut his losses right now, invoke the sacred authority of the Church of the Almighty Number One, and bolt. He could be at the Calgary airport in less than five hours. Book the next flight to Istanbul; it was only a twelve-hour direct flight. With a little luck, he was less than a day away from freedom.

He could feel the eyes of everyone in the room on him, like greasy fingerprints on a window. They were looking to him for answers. For salvation. What would happen to them if he left? Would the killers finally let this go if he stopped pursuing them? For that matter, would the killers even let
him
leave, or would they try to kill him? Too many what-ifs. He wanted this burden off his shoulders.

He looked around the room at the expectant faces. Walsh and Tess. They didn’t have to get involved in this, but they had, because they wanted the truth. If it hadn’t been for them, Crowe never would have been able to piece everything together. Dunn was a complete pawn in this game; he’d been moved around the board by forces beyond his control, manipulated into being an unwitting accomplice to murder. Angie Dawson was an innocent, what they’d called
collateral damage
in his military days. She had been swept into this from the sidelines. And then there was sweet, loyal Shitbox, the one Wild Rose he knew he could still trust.

As if on cue, his phone rang. He opened it and looked at the screen. It was Max Pulaski’s number.
How stupid do you think I am, you fucking Polack?
he thought. The phone quieted after the sixth ring. Five seconds later, the chorus of
I’m Too Sexy
rang through the cabin. Shitbox flinched and fumbled for his smart phone. He looked at the screen. “It’s Pulaski, boss.”

“Don’t answer,” said Crowe. Eventually, Right Said Fred stopped bragging about being a model and doing his little turn on the catwalk. There was silence again.

“Jason?” Tess said after several moments. “I think we deserve to know what your plans are.”

He looked at her, and suddenly his mind’s eye was filled with the face of Diane Manning. He remembered the look on her face when they made love in the cot at the Rosebush. The fire in her eyes. The hunger in her mouth. The image was suddenly replaced by the look of confusion and terror when the bullets started flying less than half and hour later. The cold whiteness of her face as she lay on the floor of the safe room, little Katie’s blood-soaked hands still on the hem of her dress.

“Boss?” Shitbox said, voice quavering. “What happens now?”

Crowe finally stood up and crossed to the spot on the kitchen floor where he’d left the cache of weapons. He unzipped it and withdrew his Sig Sauer. It felt obscenely good in his hands.

“I’m going to find these fuckers,” he said. “And I’m going to finish this.”

The coldness in Crowe’s voice made Sam’s stomach flip, but he wasn’t quite sure whether it was anxiety or excitement. Maybe it was both. He could still recall the adrenaline rush in his system as he fired off shotgun blasts in the Rosebush, bullets flying around him. The sudden clarity of thought as he did so, the feeling of
doing something
. Had it only been twenty-four hours ago?

Tess must have seen something on his face. “You’re not serious,” she said sternly. “You are
not
getting involved in this.”

“He’s going to need help,” Sam said.

“That’s
my
job,” said Shitbox, who seemed to have gotten himself under control. He was apparently unaware of the film of snot that had pooled in his prodigious moustache.

“Nobody’s coming with me,” said Crowe. “Shitbox, you need to stay with them in case I don’t make it back. I’ll stay in touch; make sure your phone is charged.”

“But boss,” Shitbox whined. “You said Sam handled himself okay at the Rosebush. He can use a shotgun. Can’t he look after these guys?”

Sam felt an absurd rush of pride at that.
Crowe said I handled myself okay.

Alex gave him a strange look. “
You
can handle a shotgun?”

“Don’t look so surprised,” Sam said. He tried not to sound defensive. “I grew up on a farm. I’ve shot my own supper a hundred times.”
We didn’t have a personal chef
, he managed to not say. “I’ve fired everything from a .22 pistol to a thirty-ought-six elk rifle.”

He was surprised when Alex nodded and said, “That’s good. I’ve never held a gun in my life. I wouldn’t know what to do with one.”

“I
said
nobody’s coming with me,” Crowe barked. “Shitbox, you’re staying here with Alex. I don’t feel safe trying to move him yet.”

Sam said, “Plus Shitbox would stick out like a sore thumb, wouldn’t he?”

The big man looked affronted, but it was Crowe who defended him.

“This guy has forgotten more about reconnaissance than you’ll ever know, asshole,” he said. “Don’t let your head get too big just because I said you know how to pull a trigger.”

Sam looked down, abashed. He’d had a nasty habit of allowing himself to get too big for his britches ever since he was a kid. Now was not the time for trying to prove himself.

“I apologize, Shitbox,” he said. “I should have known better. You’ve obviously done a hell of a job of staying out of sight so far.”

Shitbox smiled. “Don’t worry about it. People been underestimating me my whole life.”

Crowe turned to Sam and Tess. “It doesn’t matter. You two should take Angie in Dunn’s rental car and get back to Calgary. Your part in this is over.”

Sam was ready for the argument. He’d been thinking a lot of things over for the last few minutes. It wasn’t just the thrill of the chase that was driving him. “You don’t know that,” he said. “They may have recognized me at the Rosebush yesterday. It’s a sure bet that they attended Hodge’s trial, which means they know who I am; if they did see me, they’ve put two and two together.”

“All the more reason to get out of here,” said Crowe.

Tess spoke up. “What if it turns out the bad guys
aren’t
here in Lost Lake? What if they’re back in Calgary? We could be walking right into their hands.”

Crowe let out a long, hissing sigh. Sam could see a vein throbbing in the center of his forehead. “Fine,” he said. “All my instincts say the black hats are here, but stay if you want. It’s on you, understand? I take no responsibility for what happens from this point on.” He looked Sam in the eyes and jammed an index finger in his chest. “And if you do anything to get Shitbox hurt, I swear I’ll kill you myself.”

“Aw, boss, I don’t think that’s gonna happen,” Shitbox squeaked.

Sam turned to Tess. “Maybe you and Angie
would
be better off in Calgary. It’s a big place, easier to hide.”

Angie, who had been silent for a long time, put her hands on her hips. Her full lips had flattened into a thin line. “A lot of people seem to know what’s good for me,” she said hotly. “How about letting
me
decide what’s going to happen to me?”

Sam looked at Alex, who simply shrugged. “She’s a grown woman,” he said. “She can make her own decisions.”

“So can I,” said Tess. Sam knew from the look on her face that her mind was made up. “And I’m staying.”

“So am I,” said Angie.

Crowe looked around the room at all their faces and shook his head. He hoisted the black bag and disappeared into the bathroom with it.

“What’s he gonna do in there?” Sam asked. “Shoot his poop?”

Alex snorted a laugh. Tess and Angie both smiled. Even Shitbox giggled. Sam thought it was good to break the tension, if only for a moment. Sometimes a little ridiculousness was the only way to deal with a ridiculous situation.

A few minutes later, Crowe emerged from the bathroom. At least, Sam thought it was Crowe. The man standing in front of him was clad in the uniform of the summer tourist: cargo shorts, a muscle shirt with an open button-down cotton shirt over it, and sandals. Crowe had shaved off his beard scruff and covered his close-cropped hair with a shoulder-length dirty blonde wig. He looked for all the world like a surfer dude straight out of Venice Beach. If Sam had passed Crowe on the street in this getup, he wouldn’t have recognized him.

“Whoa,” said Tess, looking Crowe up and down. Sam thought her eyes might have lingered a little too long on his chiseled chest and legs. “Hello, Matthew McConaughey.”

Crowe ignored the comment. “I’ll be back in a few hours,” he said to Shitbox. “You know what to do.”

“Yessir, boss.”

As Crowe headed for the door, Sam called out after him. “You’re going out unarmed?”

Crowe turned his head and lifted the tail of his cotton shirt. His trusty Sig Sauer was tucked into a small clip holster in the back of his cargo shorts.

“Good rule of thumb to remember,” he said as he walked out the door. “Even if I don’t have a weapon, I’m
never
unarmed.”

Shitbox hummed softly in the kitchen as he prepared lunch. Alex wasn’t sure what he was making, but it smelled great. Crowe had been gone for almost an hour, and the sun had climbed to the middle of the sky, but the cabin remained cool. The dense copse of mountain pines out front not only served as excellent cover, they were practically as good as an air conditioning unit.

Over the past hour, as the four of them talked, Alex’s respect for Sam Walsh had grown considerably. Try as he might, he couldn’t remember what exactly had put him off the guy when they first met four years earlier; all he knew was they had both quickly learned to stay out of each other’s way. Alex had grudgingly accepted the fact that Sam was assigned the crime beat in his absence, which he’d chalked up to brown-nosing on Sam’s part. Now he realized he had actually short-changed Sam as a colleague.

“So you were really in a shootout?” he asked. “I can’t even imagine what that was like.”

Sam gave him a half smile. “Crowe was in a shootout. I just fired a few shots and ran.”