Deadline (29 page)

Simms didn’t know what to think. She had had drinks with Balusi and Bouchard the night before and they seemed honestly confused by the whole thing. She wasn’t prepared to say much without more information. “My sources are as confused as we are,” she said. “I like your theory, boss.”

After the meeting, she went to her desk and took up where she’d left off the day before when the Mowat story broke. She opened both sound files and looked at their wave forms carefully. The second one had been edited, and was about two seconds shorter. She thought about going to a sound technician, who would likely be able to spot the edit in two minutes, but decided she didn’t want to share whatever she had.

She sighed, put on the headphones and started to listen.

When Jack awoke, there was an attractive blonde woman sitting in the chair next to his bed.

He lay still for a moment, taking her in. Mid-thirties, with a womanly figure, a wedge of frizzy blond hair and a wide, beautiful face with a strong, sensual mouth. Dressed in a black blazer, white cotton blouse and jeans, she was fiddling with her BlackBerry.

“Good morning, Jack,” she said. “How you feeling?”

“Not bad.” He tried and failed to sit up. “I’m thirsty.”

She filled a plastic cup with ice water from a pitcher by the door and gave it to him, then helped him adjust the bed so he could sit up.

“You must be the counsellor,” he said.

She smiled. “I’m Mallorie.”

“I don’t know if there’s much point to us talking,” he said.

“What do you mean?” she said as she sat back down. “Aren’t you feeling well enough?”

Jack looked around the room, clearing his head.

“No,” he said. “I feel pretty good now. It’s just that I don’t think I need to talk to you. I didn’t try to kill myself, I don’t think. I’m not suicidal. It was an accidental overdose.”

The woman looked at him and didn’t say anything for a moment. She put her fingertips together in front of her face and looked up in the air.

“Well, good,” she said. “That’s good news. Um, but, why did you take so many pills?”

Jack stared at her and scratched his head. “What time is it?”

“Eleven fifteen.”

“You don’t know how long I slept, do you?”

“Not exactly. About two hours, I think. So why did you take so many pills?”

“Well,” he said. “I’ll be honest. I don’t remember.”

Jack was telling the truth. His last memory was a hazy recollection of wolfing down a Big Mac.

“I was totally hammered,” he said. “What I think likely happened is that I took some pills, to help me sleep off the hangover that I knew was coming. Then I was so drunk that I forgot that I already took some. I usually have a high tolerance to drugs, and I was upset and really wanted to zonk out for a while. So maybe I took too many.”

He stopped and neither of them said anything for a moment. She was looking at him with a small smile and nodding.

“I feel like an idiot,” he said. “It’s embarrassing. I’m lucky that I didn’t kill myself by mistake. I’ve learned my lesson. I’ll never make that mistake again. Now, I want to get out of here. I have things to do. I feel like an idiot for causing all this trouble, but there must be actual suicidal people in the hospital you could be helping. I bet some poor bugger in another ward is this minute plotting to do away with himself. He’s probably perched on the window sill as we speak, working up the nerve to jump.”

She laughed a little. “You’re funny,” she said. “That’s great. But, I have to ask you, if it was an accidental overdose, why did you send that note?”

Her clear blue eyes were on him. She had a way of watching that he found disconcerting, a cool intelligence in her gaze that made him feel that if he lied she would catch him.

“Right,” he said. “I sent an email, did I? Shit. What did it say? I have no memory of that.”

She looked at her BlackBerry and read aloud. “Subject: ‘Too much.’ Message: ‘I fucked up so bad. Sorry. It’s better this way.’”

Then her eyes were back on Jack. “What do you think you meant?” she asked.

“Shit,” said Jack. “It does sound like a suicide note, doesn’t it? Shit.” He looked around. “Do you think you can get me some more water please?”

She refilled his cup, then stayed standing next to his bed after she gave it to him, looking down at him.

“What did you mean?” she asked.

“Well,” he said, “I lost my job yesterday, in a very, uh, I guess you could say humiliating way.”

“I know about that,” she said.

“I went to see my friend Sophie, who I may have a crush on.” He shrugged. “I wanted some sympathy from my friend. And she was busy. She was with somebody in her apartment, a man, and wouldn’t let me in, and I took that hard. I think I wanted to hurt her, to let her know that she had hurt me. I can’t be sure that I really wanted her to think I was killing myself. I hope not. Because that’s a pretty shitty thing to do. What’s it say again?”

She read it aloud again.

“I would like to think that maybe I was going to write more, and drunkenly hit send by mistake,” he said. He had to look away from her eyes. “But it’s possible I wanted her to worry about me. I know that must seem childish.”

She sat back down. “What’s the last memory you have of the night you and Ed were drinking at Pigale?”

Jack stared at her. “Did Sophie tell you about that?”

She shifted in her seat.

“Well?” she said.

He realized his mistake.

“You’re not a counsellor,” he said. “You’re Ashton.”

She gave him a big smile. “Yes,” she said. “That’s right.”

“Wow,” he said. “You just lied to me, gave me the impression I was talking to a counsellor, so I would open up to you.”

“I didn’t say I was a counsellor,” she said.

“No,” he said. “You didn’t, but you let me think that. I could lose my job if I did that.”

Then he laughed. “Or I frigged up a really big story,” he said. “I could lose my job for that, too. Anyway, you police can get away with lying. I can’t ever misrepresent myself. The first thing I have to do when I talk to anyone on a story is identify myself as a reporter. It’s interesting that you don’t have to do that.”

She looked at him hard for a moment. “We are trying to catch killers. It’s different. We can’t say just anything, because we could run into problems in court, but there’s a different, um, onus on us.”

“I guess that’s right,” he said. “But you should be careful. When Flanagan interviewed me the first time he kept telling me lies and it made me defensive. Anyway, my last clear memory of Ed is having a smoke with him outside at Pigale. It was cold. He was bragging about how he was going to make a move, how he would hire me to be a d comms – director of communications – after he got his next job. Just drunk bragging, I think. He’s like that. Part of his charm.

“I remember one funny thing he said to me. He said, ‘The definition of a transition period is, the period between two transition periods.’ I think he was counting on a promotion if Donahoe wins the leadership.”

“You don’t remember anything after that?” said Ashton.

“Not much,” said Jack. “I remember little flashes. Sitting down watching the strippers. I remember him leaving to go for a lap dance. I remember staggering out to a cab. That’s about it.”

“You don’t remember taking his BlackBerry?”

“No. Not at all. I don’t remember if I had it or not.”

“Did he talk to you about his files?”

“Not much. I’m a reporter, remember? He wasn’t supposed to talk to me about his files. We would talk about politics, though. The upcoming leadership race, that kind of thing.”

“How did he get on with Sophie?” she asked.

“Great,” he said. “She was good for him. They were happy together. I saw them a fair bit and there was a kind of mutual respect between them that I admired.”

“Did you spend time at their apartment?”

“Yeah. Scattered time. Stop by for a drink or whatever.”

“What did Ed use the computer for?”

“Email. Porn. Warcraft. The usual. Sophie would read celebrity gossip blogs, Perez Hilton, check the weather.”

“So they both use it?”

“Yeah,” said Jack. “Why?”

“Never mind why. Last time it ended up in the newspaper.”

Jack laughed. “No danger of that now.”

“Have you seen Sophie use the computer since Ed got hurt?”

“Yeah. The other day I slept there. In the morning, she booted it up to check the weather. And ...”

“What?”

“After she left, I was kind of snooping around, and I found a line to a web cam hidden in a bookshelf in the bedroom.”

She stared at him for a moment. “Are you and Sophie having a sexual relationship?”

“No,” said Jack, shaking his head. “No. We never have. I do have a crush on her, but I’ve never made a move. She’s my friend’s girlfriend.”

“Okay,” she said. “Any idea who was there the other night?”

Jack shook his head. “Nope. Some lucky dude.”

She sat back, exhaled and thought. “Do you have any idea who might have tried to drown Ed?”

“No,” he said. “Some bad dudes.”

He thought for a moment. “Look, there’s something I should tell you. The night after Ed wound up in the canal, when I went home, I saw these guys near my apartment. They were dressed in dark, like black boots, dark ski jackets. They both had moustaches. They were in a black Buick. Something about them spooked me, so I took off running and it seemed to me like they were pursuing me. I would run and hide and then the Buick would go by. Eventually I shook them off and went to Sophie’s.

“They looked like cops, big guys, all in black, but I didn’t figure they were with you guys. They made me nervous. I had the creepy feeling that they were tracking me by my BlackBerry.”

“What made you think that?”

“Because I couldn’t shake them. I’d think I’d lost them and then I’d see the Buick again. Might be paranoia. But when I powered down my Berry, I did finally lose them.”

“You haven’t seen them again?”

“No.”

“Well, if you do see them again, I want you to call me on my cell as soon as you can and get away from them. And I’m going to need a more detailed description.”

“I’m pretty sure I won’t see them again,” he said.

“Why?” said Ashton.

“Because I’m leaving for Newfoundland just as soon as I can get out of this hospital. I’m finished with Ottawa.”

Simms didn’t have to listen for long to find the edit. It was in the highlighted bit.

In one file, the French recording matched the English transcript. “To mend this rift, they say, we need to make a new place for Quebec in the constitution, and formally recognize what is a fact of life, the distinct and rich cultural life of the province. Call it Meech II. I am with these people.”

In the other file, there were an extra two words:
ne pas
. “Je ne suis pas avec ce monde,” said Donahoe, quite clearly. Someone had edited the clip to reverse Donahoe’s message. He was actually saying that he would not attempt a Meech II, and then the tape ended. He likely went on to say what he would do instead. But whoever had edited the clip cut it off there.

So Balusi and company were trying to derail Donahoe’s leadership campaign with a fake tape, thought Simms, which would hand the leadership to Mowat. That would be an explosive story. PMO Operative Behind Dirty Tricks Campaign. She briefly thought about going to Murphy with the audio files. She would get a great scoop, but she would lose her best source.

Or she could try to use the secret to get leverage over Balusi, and get lots of scoops.

She sent him a PIN.

To:
Ismael Balusi


From:
Ellen Simms


Subject:
Bullshit


You doctored the tape. Tsk tsk tsk.


He responded immediately.

From:
Ismael Balusi


To:
Ellen Simms


Subject:
Bullshit


I can explain. Free for lunch?