Читать книгу Charlie McKelvey Mysteries 3-Book Bundle - C.B. Forrest - Страница 25

Sept. 1, 1993. A beach somewhere in Sector South, Croatia.

Dear Kit... It was good to hear from you finally. We’ve been moving around a lot, so I’m not sure where we are, or what we’re doing here. Mostly keeping an eye on Serb troopmovements, counting artillery fire, and waiting for the orderto move when the Croat withdrawal agreement is signed. TheHammer has us doing a lot of PT , humping up and down themountain with our packs so we won’t get soft. And drills.Man, am I sick of drills and cleaning the guns.

We’re in a town on the coast that’s pretty deserted, so wehave our choice of houses. Danny moved our section into thisbig old mansion. Most of the furniture’s been looted, but thereare beds for all of us. Beds! The first night I slept on one, Ididn’t sleep a wink. I still feel like I’m in that bunker on thehill. It’s hard to shake that, and just relax.

I’ve been thinking about home a lot, now that it’s gettingclose. I’ll have lots of money saved when I get back, but I thinkI’d like some time off, just to hang out at the farm and helpmy folks. Maybe I’ll be ready for vet school next year, but it allfeels a long way off.

* * *

Green yanked open his office door and scanned the squad room to see who might be available to join the search for Jeff Weiss. He spotted Charbonneau and Leblanc back at their computers and was about to call them over when the elevator slid open and George Nelson lumbered out. The staff sergeant’s bald dome was bright red and shiny with sweat, and even from across the room, Green could hear his wheezing.

When Nelson saw Green, his eyes sparked. Without a word, he gestured Green back into his office and slammed the door. “I hear you’ve got half a dozen officers going after Jeff Weiss.”

Green forced himself to sit down behind his desk with a serenity he did not feel. Jesus, the last thing this delicate operation needed was a leak that brought the entire police service down on his back. “Who told you that?”

“Is it true?”

Green met his belligerent stare with silence. Finally, Nelson wagged his heavy head back and forth with disgust. “Jesus H., Mike, what are you doing?”

“You know I’m quietly looking into Weiss’s possible involvement, George. You yourself talked to me.”

“An off-the-record discussion between supervisors is one thing. You’ve got guys out there watching his house and checking his phone records!”

Damn, Green thought, one of my men is blabbing. Some of his anger crept into his voice. “I’m tracking a killer, and I’m also trying to prevent him from killing again. I have to tell you, the evidence against Weiss is piling up.”

Nelson absorbed this in silence, his breathing loud in the tiny room. “Have you told the brass yet? Or Professional Standards?”

Green hesitated. He had made one effort to contact Devine, but had been relieved she wasn’t there.

“Jesus H.!” Nelson said. “You’ve got to tell them. This has to be by the book.”

“It will be. Nothing has been done yet, and so far all I want to do is locate Weiss so I can keep an eye on him till I put the pieces together.”

Nelson raised a skeptical eyebrow. “It’s going to blow up in your face, Mike. If I found out, half the force will know by dinnertime.”

Green didn’t appreciate being reminded of the obvious. He tried again. “Which one of my men told you?”

“It wasn’t one of ours. It was a neighbour of Weiss’s who’s in the RCMP. He knew I knew Jeff, and he wanted to know what was going on.” Nelson paused to wipe the sweat that had trickled down his cheek. “Law Enforcement’s a small community. Everybody knows somebody, nothing stays a secret very long. Weiss is going to find out.”

Green tried to imagine the fall-out. “That’s not necessarily a bad thing. It might force his hand.”

“Weiss is a scrapper. If he’s innocent, he’ll come after you with every regulation in the book.”

“And if he’s guilty?”

Nelson’s eyes narrowed behind the bags of bruised flesh as he concentrated. Gradually worry crept into them. “You know the type of cop who eats their gun?”

Green leaned forward urgently. “Then help me find him, George. Where would he go? Who would he turn to? Is he married?”

“Divorced.”

“Kids?”

Nelson nodded. “Three, but they’re still pretty young.”

“Is he close to his ex-wife?”

Nelson sucked his jowls into a scowl and shifted his bulk in the chair. “The break-up was on my watch, when he had that bit of...disciplinary trouble. It was hard on him, although the decision was mutual. To answer your question, I think they’re amicable.”

“Would he turn to her?”

“He might. He doesn’t have many friends.” Nelson couldn’t remember the wife’s name, but he tested his vague recollections against the listings in the phone book until they had narrowed down the most likely Weiss. A quick phone call to see if she was home netted only her voice mail, but Green didn’t leave a message. He didn’t plan to do this interview over the phone; he wanted to see her in person so he could interpret every pucker of the brow or blink of the eyes.

After he’d escorted Nelson to the elevator, thanked him for his help and asked him to try to quash the rumours, he dispatched Charbonneau and Leblanc to check the wife’s house and to set up a stake-out from an inconspicuous place on the street. Then he returned to his office, bracing himself for the task he could no longer put off. Devine was not in her office, but this time she picked up her home phone on the second ring.

“Green!” she snapped before he could get more than a word in. “What’s going on down there?”

He cast about, unsure which crisis she was referring to. Good God, could she too have heard the news that he was investigating Weiss? “Lots of things,” he countered cautiously. “Why?”

“Turn on the television, CBC. See for yourself! Then call me back. I want to listen now.”

He hung up and dashed out of his office down to the coffee room, where a small TV sat in the corner, almost never used except for the Stanley Cup playoff games. He turned it on and flipped channels until suddenly, to his surprise, John Blakeley’s grim face filled the screen. He was standing at a microphone, soberly attired in a navy suit and tie. His wife stood at his side, her gaze expressionless, but her lips pulled in a tight slash. “I am eternally grateful to the faith that the Liberal Party and the people of Renfrew-Nippissing placed in me, and it is with a heavy heart and much soul searching that I have made this painful but necessary decision. Public office is an onerous and awesome responsibility, and those who accept it must be able to devote their full attention and energy to it. Public office is also an honour, and those who accept it should be worthy of the trust placed in them and serve as an example of all the best ideals our country embodies.”

He glanced at the ceiling, as if searching for inspiration in the phrasing of his dilemma. “As long as our armed forces and the missions they have accomplished are under scrutiny, I do not feel I can serve the Liberal party nor the Canadian people with the attention, energy and honour they deserve. Therefore, at fourteen hundred hours today, I notified the Chairman of the Liberal Party of my intentions and submitted a formal withdrawal of my candidacy to the Chief Electoral Officer.”

Blakeley had been standing rigidly still with his hands clasped behind his back and his gaze fixed straight ahead, like a warrior facing his execution. Throughout the speech, his voice rang clear and firm, but now he paused and Green could see the fine quiver in his jaw.

“I sincerely apologize for the inconvenience and disappointment my withdrawal will cause for the Liberal Party, the voters of Renfrew-Nippissing, and my hard-working staff. I wish to assure you all that, had there been another way, I would have taken it. Thank you.”

Barely were the words out of his mouth than the press peppered him with questions. A reporter jostled another to get his own microphone closer, and cameras flashed. John Blakeley did not stay for questions; he took his wife’s hand and the two of them hustled out a door at the far side of the room, which Green recognized to be the marble lobby of the Chateau Laurier.

Immediately, the CBC news commentators began scrambling to analyze the speech, which had apparently caught everyone by surprise. A spokesman for the Liberal Party, hastily reached on the Sunday, called the loss of John Blakeley’s candidacy regrettable but by no means insurmountable, as there were many other fine Liberal candidates in area ridings. Which translated, meant that the Party brass was already distancing itself from John Blakeley and whatever mud he might have stuck to him.

Green listened impatiently for the crucial detail he had obviously missed—the connection between Blakeley’s withdrawal and the scrutiny of the military. What scrutiny? The analysts were asking that very question as well. Apparently, Blakeley was expecting an imminent revelation in the news that would put the military under scrutiny, but he’d given no specifics. Speculation ranged widely from more equipment failures in the aging naval fleet to mistreatment of Afghan prisoners by our troops in Kandahar. Only one reporter wondered whether the recent beating of an Ottawa police officer in Petawawa might be connected. Considering that Green had left an interview with the man less than three hours earlier, he thought that extremely likely.

Green’s cellphone rang.

“Did you see it?” Devine demanded.

“Yes.” “So? Is it connected to the Ross case?”

“I don’t know.” Strictly speaking, that was the truth.

“I’m not a fool, Mike. In about two minutes flat, I expect the press to be on the phone, asking what the connection is and whether we’re investigating John Blakeley. Are we?”

“Well...yes.”

There was a brief pause. “My office, fifteen minutes. I want the media relations people there too.”

He sensed she was about to hang up. “Barbara!”

She came back on the line. “Damn it, Mike! The Chief is already on the other line. He’ll have to be included.”

Green groaned. He knew she was right, but he felt the whole delicate investigation spinning out of his control. “Okay, but you and I need to meet privately first, so I can tell you where we really are and figure out what the hell to release for general consumption. Because it’s explosive, Barbara. Really explosive.”

For the next fifteen minutes Green paced his office and jotted notes on a pad of paper. He was so busy figuring out exactly how much he was going to tell Devine that he had no chance to consider the significance of Blakeley’s announcement. He needed Devine’s cooperation to keep the investigation of Weiss under wraps, but when she finally summoned him upstairs, he discovered she had an entirely different concern.

When he walked in, she was on the phone talking to the Chief himself. “Absolutely not, sir,” she was saying. “Inspector Green has just arrived, and I will keep you well apprised of any actions we plan to take... Of course, sir.”

When she hung up, she pivoted on her stiletto heel and walked to the door to close it firmly behind him. Despite her haste, she’d managed to arrive at the office impeccably packaged in the latest spring colours. Her green linen suit hadn’t a single wrinkle in it, and every black hair on her head was lacquered into submission. She waved peach-tipped fingers at the group of chairs in front of her desk.

“John Blakeley,” she announced without preamble. “I’ve just been on the phone with the Chief. You’re not to go near him again without our approval.”

In his astonishment, he froze midway into his chair. “Barbara, that’s ridiculous. He’s a prime suspect—”

“Do you have concrete evidence?”

“Not yet, but—”

“Then you won’t touch him. The media will be all over this. They’ll have a field day with his connections to the Liberal Party brass, and the opposition parties will grab any chance to smear the Liberal leadership. They’ll say it’s another example of their poor judgement, if not their outright criminal connections.”

He thought about the call he’d overhead between her and the Chief. Who in the Liberal Party had the power to call in favours from the police? And why?

“Is there something I don’t know?” he asked. “Some other player who has the ear of the Chief? Because I don’t want to be blindsided by someone’s secret agenda—”

“Of course not, Mike. It’s just a media jackpot. Blakeley’s wife is the daughter of Jack Neuss, who’s been a senior policy advisor for the Liberals since the days of Trudeau. You know how it works, Mike. It’s two weeks to the election, and the public has never been more fickle.”

He paced in outrage. “So you’re saying if I’m planning to arrest Blakeley, I should wait two weeks?”

“Are you planning to arrest him?”

He forced himself to slow down and think of how he might persuade her. “Not yet. But I will need to talk to him again, and you can’t seriously suggest we go easy on the guy when one of our officers is lying in the <span class=">ICU , possibly because of him.”

She stared up at him unblinking for several seconds. “All right, tell me about it.”

“If you promise not to interrupt. We have very little time to waste.”

Her eyes narrowed at his bald insubordination and her mouth opened as if to protest, but in the end, she snapped it shut. “Go ahead. But for God’s sake, sit down.”

He sat, and for fifteen minutes he gave her an executive summary of the case to date, starting with the suicide of Ian MacDonald and the fatal beating of his friend Daniel Oliver by a man he and MacDonald served with in Yugoslavia. He described Oliver’s fiancée’s arrival in Ottawa with a newspaper clipping about Blakeley and his campaign manager, who coincidentally just happened to have been a witness to Oliver’s death. He traced her movements in Ottawa as they knew them, from her trip to Petawawa to her date with a mystery man only hours before her death.

Finally, with some trepidation, he broached the subject of Weiss, including his connection to MacDonald and Blakeley in Yugoslavia, his request to be put on the case, his inquiries about Twiggy, and most damning of all, his phone call from the convenience store that set up Peters up.

Devine’s lips grew tighter as the evidence against Weiss added up. When Green mentioned Weiss’s recent disappearance along with Twiggy’s, she shook her head in outrage.

“There’s more than enough there to bring him in.”

“I agree. And we will, as soon as we can find him.”

“I don’t see how you have a single thing on Blakeley, however.”

“Only a theory—”

“We can’t destroy a man’s reputation or torpedo an election on a theory.”

Green clenched his teeth and prayed for patience. “Blakeley was MacDonald’s and Weiss’s superior officer. Whatever wrongdoing occurred in Yugoslavia, he had to have been involved. And I think the fact he withdrew today is the most damning evidence of all. It’s tantamount to admitting we’re going to turn up something rotten.”

“But maybe nothing more than a poor judgement call or a superior officer’s desire to protect his men. That’s not a good enough reason to flush a man or the election down the toilet.”

Green stared out the window, weighing his options. Devine’s office, like all the senior administration, had a spectacular view of the Museum of Nature, that sat like a Medieval Scottish Castle in the middle of the park across the road. Green had always found it soothing in an other-worldly way, but today he felt his blood pressure climb. Eventually he figured out a way to manouevre.

“All right, I’ll give you fair warning before I move on Blakeley. I have a number of leads to pursue first, which may give us more concrete evidence against him. Or exonerate him, for that matter.”

“And you’ll keep me informed?”

Hating it, he nodded. She leaped to her feet, moved behind her desk and reached for her phone. “Fine. We’ll go see the Chief and hammer out what we’re going to say when the media come calling—”

Green’s cellphone rang, startling them both. It was Gibbs, stuttering with excitement. “S-sorry to interrupt, sir. I didn’t know i-if I should, but I thought you’d want to know this.”

“Where are you, Bob?”

“D-downstairs in the squad room, sir.”

Green considered the alternatives. Devine was already looking at him questioningly, and he knew she would demand an update, which meant he would waste precious time playing middleman. Instead he told Gibbs to come upstairs. When he’d hung up, Devine slowly put her own phone down.

“I think Detective Gibbs has found out something important,” he said.

“That would be a first,” she replied as she sat down behind her desk, her shoulders squared and her hands folded, the picture of authority. Green bit back a retort. As usual, Devine never saw behind appearances.

Less than a minute later Gibbs arrived, flushed and sweaty. The same suit had hung on his lanky frame for the past two days, and it looked as weary and bedraggled as he did. But despite his exhaustion, his eyes shone.

“The canvass, sir! It finally paid off.”

“Which canvass?”

“L-looking for the man Patricia Ross had a drink with? One of the uniformed officers finally hit paydirt. And you were right, sir, it was an upscale bar in the Delta Hotel.”

Green scanned his memory of the city quickly. The Delta Hotel was a boutique hotel at the western edge of the downtown business district—discreet, elegant and most importantly only a few minutes’ walk from the aqueduct where Patricia Ross was murdered.

“Someone remembered her and her companion?”

Gibbs bobbed his head up and down. “The bartender. It’s a s-small bar, sir, mostly business people having a quiet drink. It doesn’t really get many girls in the game—that’s what the bartender thought she was, although she wasn’t really highpriced enough for a place like that. But he remembered her sitting with a man at a corner table, talking quietly for at least an hour.”

“Did he hear any of the conversation?”

“A bit, sir, but mostly the woman’s. He said sometimes she’d get angry and raise her voice, and he heard things like ‘I have needs, you know’ and ‘It hasn’t been a picnic’. That’s when he wondered if maybe she was a girlfriend instead of a hooker.”

“What about the man? Did the bartender hear any of his answers?”

“No. He says the man never raised his voice. He kept checking around him, and it looked like he was trying to calm her down.”

Green tried to visualize the interaction. It did not sound like an angry confrontation or a demand for vengeance, but rather a quiet discussion punctuated by Patricia’s occasional flare-ups. ‘I have needs too’, she’d said. Blackmail? Could that be what she’d been after all along?

“Good work,” he exclaimed. “Did the bartender get a good look at this man?”

“Mediocre, sir. He’d chosen the darkest table.”

“Well, I suggest you get over there and show the bartender a photo line-up. Maybe it will help jog his memory.”

Bob Gibbs broke into a broad grin. “I already did that, sir. I took the photos of all our suspects, plus some neutrals. I just got back.”

Green took in the big grin and the dancing eyes. He felt his own pulse begin to race. “You got a hit.”

“I did, sir. Colonel John Blakeley.”