Deadline (13 page)

Colin sat down and logged in to one of the terminals. “Only if Photoshopping Devries’s head onto the body of an orangutan counts as working.”

Colin quickly checked the local and major news sites. There were no updates. The discovery of the two bodies had been overshadowed nationally by another shooting rampage, this one at a shopping mall in Edmonton. The perpetrator was a 14-year-old who had taken his father’s rifle to the food court to get revenge on the kids who bullied him at high school. Three of those kids were now dead and two were in hospital with critical injuries. Liberal pundits were using it as a platform to hammer the government for scrapping the national gun registry. Conservative pundits were claiming that the gun registry had nothing to do with it and now was not the time to re-open that debate. Same old, same old. In a few days they would all get back to blaming Europe for dragging the economy into the toilet and things would get back to normal.

Devane had been officially named as the second victim, but there was still no mention of the symbol or, Colin was relieved to see, the Knights of the Holy Thorn. That meant their exclusive was still alive to fight another day, and Colin had an idea where he was going to start with his half of the investigation.

He got up to head back out of the room and was intercepted by Watterson on his way in.

“Colin!” Watterson exclaimed, looking strangely relieved. “There you are! Look, Seth hasn’t come in and I can’t get a hold of him. I need you to sit down with CJ to start putting next week’s edition together—”

Colin steered himself around Watterson and didn’t stop moving. “Sorry, chief. I believe there’s a women’s volleyball game in Kingston I have to cover.”

“Colin, wait!” Watterson reached out a hand to try to slow Colin down, but Colin avoided it and shot out the door. “Shit.” He looked at CJ. “Well, CJ, looks like you’re acting editor for the moment.”

“Great,” CJ said without enthusiasm. “So what do you wanna run on the front page? I’m guessing Seth hasn’t turned in his story on the murders yet, so you get to choose between a piece on the new playground equipment in the ECE centre or a story about Devries suing the company that installed his faulty penile implant that Colin filed as a joke.”

Watterson sagged. There were days when he viewed the spectre of looming unemployment as more of a blessing than a curse. Today, he was sure, was going to be one of them.

T
he tech wing was the located at the far southern end of the secondary access road next to a large circular reflecting pool that, due to contractor issues, did not actually have any water in it and therefore didn’t reflect anything more than several thousand pigeon droppings.

The front of the building was designed to look like some sort of glass amphitheatre, beckoning students toward a glorious future of leaky ceilings and a heating system that turned some rooms into ovens and others into walk-in freezers. There were so many technical problems with it, in fact, that even the name ‘Technology Building’ had become a running joke amongst those required to study there.

It housed the engineering and robotics programs that the college was using to hype its image as a centre of cutting-edge learning, as well as the more pedestrian apprenticeship and trades programs that, whether Devries liked it or not, were the school’s bread and butter. Westhill had started out as a small trades academy for kids looking to become mechanics, plumbers and electricians, many of whom still made up the bulk of yearly admissions. Since Devries had taken the helm, however, the school had actively tried to shed that image, promoting itself as
the
happening brain hive of Silicon Valley North. Like many image transformations, it involved more wishful thinking than practical change.

Colin cut around to the back of the building. This was where most of the trades were located, hidden away like a dark secret next to the shipping and receiving area. Colin went in through a side door and found his way to the faculty offices, where he found Paolo Ronda sitting with his feet up on a desk munching on a breakfast bagel. Paolo was an enormous man in his mid-thirties who was on part-time contract as an instructor in the automotive repair program. He ran his own garage in town with his brother-in-law, but Colin knew that was up in the air because Paolo’s business partner and sister were in the process of getting divorced. Paolo had done some discount repair work on Colin’s car the semester before when it had developed a strange grinding noise that turned out to be a loose bearing. Paolo had done the work for a fraction of what it would have cost at another garage. He was, as far as Colin could tell, an honest mechanic, which was probably one of the reasons he was in danger of going out of business.

“Hey Paolo,” Colin said.

“Hey Colin,” Paolo said through a mouth of what looked like cream cheese. “How’s the car runnin’?”

“Great,” Colin said. “How’s the repair business?”

“Not great,” Paolo said. “My brother-in-law, or I should say, my former brother-in-law, shacked up with some dental hygienist out in Oakville. I’m tryin’ to see if I can keep the place runnin’ myself, but it don’t look good.”

“That sucks,” Colin said. “Look, I stopped by to see if you might be able to answer a question for me.”

Paolo shrugged and took another bite. “Shoot.”

“What do you know about a guy named Terrence Devane?” Colin asked. “I heard he was involved in some sort of incident out in the repair bay back in February and got kicked out of school. Do you know what happened?”

Paolo stopped chewing immediately. When he spoke, he tried a little too hard to sound nonchalant. “Nothin’.”

“Come on, man,” Colin said. “You must have heard something about it.”

Paolo looked nervously towards the door. “Look, Colin, my shop’s about to close. I need this job, okay?”

“Then who?”

Paolo chewed for a minute before answering. “Try Keith. He’s about to retire. His wife’s sick. He doesn’t give a shit.”

Colin nodded. What the hell was going on that this guy was afraid of losing his job over it? “And where might I find Keith?”

Paolo stabbed a thumb toward the back. “He’s teaching a class in the repair bay right now. Should be done any time.”

“Thanks,” Colin said, turning to leave.

“Just don’t tell him I told you,” Paolo said, going back to his bagel. “Don’t tell nobody.”

T
he man who called himself C-Note banged on the door and rang the doorbell for the fifth time.

C-Note, whose real name was Charles North, had five convictions for possession, one trafficking charge that had been dismissed because it took too long to get to trial, three convictions for possession of stolen property, two minor assault convictions and one conviction for aggravated sexual assault. He considered the last one to be a joke. It had brought by a crack whore who was trying to shake him down for some free merchandise when the cops showed up unexpectedly. He had spent five of the last ten years in the Kingston Penitentiary.

He was not a man who liked to be kept waiting.

He had missed the initial pickup date because the shipment had been late coming across the border. Now he was here to get his money and Seth was nowhere to be seen. He had tried calling, texting and even dropping by the college, but nobody had seen the idiot anywhere.

North looked at his watch. He was supposed to have been in St. Catharines an hour ago. The guys who were waiting for him enjoyed waiting even less than he did. The shipment was parked out front in the trunk of his car.

North glanced around nervously. He was standing at Seth’s back door. The back of Seth’s unit faced a shallow ravine with parkland on the other side. There was no one who could really see him standing here, but he still felt exposed.

Fuck this
, he thought. He knew where Seth kept the money. He would let himself in and find it himself. If Seth had any complaints, he could forward them in writing to the legal firm of Fuck You & Get Lost.

North considered using the butt of his 9 mm to smash the glass in the upper half of the door frame, but, in a rare moment of advanced decision-making, decided to try the handle first. It turned easily and the door swung open.

What a putz
, North thought.
He’s got over a hundred grand stashed upstairs and doesn’t even bother to lock the door.

It occurred to him then that perhaps the door was unlocked for some other reason. The thought made him nervous and he removed the 9 mm from his pocket anyway. He knew that Seth had a gun, but he also knew that Seth had never fired it. Had probably never even used it. Still, it would be just his luck to get shot with the damn thing sneaking into the house.

“Seth?” he said, closing the door behind him. “It’s me! Where the hell are you?”

North moved down the hall towards the kitchen. Something wasn’t right. He was getting the same creeping feeling in his guts he had gotten the last two times he had been arrested. Part of him wanted to just turn around and head right back out the front door. The more responsible part of him knew that it would be an extremely bad idea to show up at his next destination without the money he was supposed to collect.

“Seth?” he said, louder. “Come on, man! Where the he—”

He rounded the corner of the kitchen. Something large and blue was attached to the wall. It took him a moment to realize that it was a body. The body was stripped naked and attached to the wall crucifixion-style by what looked to be hundreds of hypodermic needles. A cross inside some sort of circle was painted in blood overhead.

North gagged and almost threw up. He had seen dead bodies before, but never like this. The body on the wall was Seth. His first thought was that whoever had killed him was obviously trying to send a message. It had to be the rival gang that had been trying to move in on this territory for the last couple of months. They had started out with a few grow ops in the west end and were looking to expand. Their leader was a 17-year-old firebug who had burned down three houses belonging to North’s other distributors, two of which still had people in them when they went up.

His second thought was that they might still be here. He decided that he would be leaving without the money after all.

S
tudents were shuffling out of the repair bay as Colin walked in.

The repair bays were just two large storage rooms that had been converted by installing a couple of power lifts and garage doors that could be opened to the outside to allow the vehicles to move in and out. Students generally worked on junkers, sometimes doing some free work on vehicles belonging to faculty or other students. An idea had been floated a few years back to turn the facility into a kind of teaching for-profit enterprise where the public could have work done, but Devries’s distaste for the idea and the prohibitive cost of liability insurance had put the kibosh on that.

Colin spotted a guy in his late fifties or early sixties washing his hands at a rusty metal sink on the far side of the room. He was wearing blue overalls stained with black oil streaks and talking to a student who was carrying a large red toolbox in one hand. Colin waited until the conversation ended before he approached.

“Hi, are you Keith?”

The older man turned to look at Colin. He had brush-cut hair that showed the dome of his head where he was balding on top. Although his overalls were stained, Colin noticed that they appeared to have been ironed. When he spoke, his voice was rough and rumbling, like so many of the engines with which he spent his time.

“Yep,” he said. “What can I do for you?”

“I’m Colin Mitchell,” Colin said, sticking out his hand. “I’m a reporter with the school newspaper.”

Colin was used to people being suspicious of him. As soon as you told anyone that you worked for a newspaper, even a college newspaper, they immediately became defensive and self-conscious. Some of them clammed up altogether. This guy did none of that. Much to Colin’s surprise, he smiled and shook Colin’s hand firmly.

“I know you,” he said. “You wrote that story about Devries gettin’ his car towed.”

Colin was surprised. “Yeah. Didn’t think anyone saw that one.”

“He didn’t manage to pull all of ‘em,” the man said. “‘Bout time somebody stuck it to that asshole. Keith Abernathy.”

The man finally released his grip on Colin’s hand. “You’re not a fan of our esteemed college president, then?”

Keith tossed the towel he was using to dry his hands over the edge of the sink. “My wife’s got Rifkin’s disease. Ever heard of it?”

Colin shook his head. “Sorry, no.”

“Consider yourself lucky,” Abernathy said. “That asshole cut our medical benefits last year, so now I’ve gotta pay for half the fuckin’ drugs myself. And it ain’t cheap, believe me.”

Colin decided not to ask about that. If he did, he could be here all day. There was no need to tap into a tirade that wouldn’t get him any closer to what he needed to know. Better to get to the point as quickly as possible.

“You ever deal with a student named Terrence Devane?” Colin asked.

Abernathy looked at Colin for a long moment and then smiled. “Oh yeah. He was one of the phantoms.”

Colin frowned. “Sorry. The what?”

Abernathy took a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and motioned for Colin to follow him out through the open bay doors. The wind was blowing and it took him a minute to light his cigarette. Colin tried to stand upwind.

“You have any idea what the wait list is for this program?” Abernathy said, his first puff of smoke vanishing from his lips like an object thrown out the window of an aircraft.

Colin honestly had no idea. “No.”

“Two years,” Abernathy said. “The economy turns to shit and suddenly everybody wants to be an auto mechanic. The program’s partially funded by the government, see, so we only take in so many students each year. College just can’t boost the enrolment whenever it feels like it, the way they could with computer programming or whatever. Least, that’s the way it was until last year.”

Colin wondered if he should turn on his recorder and decided against it. It wouldn’t pick up anything but the wind anyway. “What happened then?”