Deadline (19 page)

Colin took a deep breath. “I’m not asking you, Darryl.”

Daryl looked at Colin in disbelief. “What are you talking about?”

Colin’s expression remained neutral. “You know what I’m talking about.” Colin could see in Darryl’s expression that he knew exactly what Colin was talking about.

“You’re kidding.”

“No,” Colin said, shaking his head. “I’m not.”

C
olin’s first big story on the newspaper had landed in his lap three weeks after he started.

An unusual number of technology students had passed their final Humanities exam from the previous term. All students were required to take the course. This was supposedly in the name of making them “well-rounded” students, but was, in reality, just a way of subsidizing the budget for the arts department, which had the lowest enrolment in the school. Westhill was not, after all, considered a magnet of culture. Students did not charge the gates every year desperate to study Dante’s
Divine Comedy
or the economic instabilities that contributed to the fall of the Czar at a technical school best known for churning out plumbers and mechanics.

The normal pass rate on the exam was 68 per cent. In contrast, of the 8,228 students who had taken the exam in the previous semester, 8,146 had passed—a rate just north of 99 per cent.

There was no question that the sudden spike was not due to an unexpected jump in the quality of the instructors or the ability of the students. The instructors were the same largely apathetic group that had seen 32 per cent of students fail the previous term. And the students as a whole were actually grading three and a half points lower than their predecessors in all other subjects.

What it was, of course, was cheating.

Because of the sheer number of students who were required to take the course, a handwritten exam that was submitted and graded by humans was impractical. As a result, the final exam was loaded on to a secured server. Students completed the exam online from a college workstation. The exam itself consisted of 150 multiple choice questions that were automatically graded. Once the grading was completed, the marks were usually submitted without anyone ever taking a second look.

This time was different.

The college administration quickly decided that it could not fail an entire year’s worth of students. The outcry and the publicity that would result from that would be brutal, especially since they weren’t yet in a position where they could prove who was guilty and who wasn’t. The administration decided that it would investigate first. The plan was to find out who had somehow leaked the information and then punish that individual or (preferably) small group.

The answer turned out to be remarkably simple. An instructor with a superuser account on the main server had left his ID and password in an open binder on his desk. Somebody had swiped it and used it to make the exam easily available to anyone with an internet connection.

What was not widely known, however, was that the original theft had happened two years earlier.

The original group who had stolen the ID had used it only for themselves. They never imagined that the school wouldn’t notice the error—let alone the fact that it would take two years for the administration to figure it out. The whole thing had come apart when one member of that group had gotten drunk and tried to impress a girl at a party by telling her that he could guarantee she would pass the hated Humanities exam if she was willing to disrobe and spend a little quality time with his friend John. Unfortunately for him, the website information was the only thing that passed between them—and it didn’t stay quiet for very long.

Colin had found out about it almost entirely by accident. He knew a friend of a friend of the girl who had been propositioned at the party and was able to get the name of the propositioner.

Which led him to Darryl.

Darryl, who was most anxious to not be named in the article, had agreed to explain how the whole process had worked in exchange for anonymity. Watterson would only agree to publish the story if Colin told him who the anonymous source was. Watterson had promised that the information would remain confidential, but Colin didn’t believe that for a second. He knew that anything he said to Watterson would find its way to Devries almost as soon as the words left his mouth.

Devries was in a rage about the whole thing. Word of the scandal had leaked into the mainstream media, making the college look like even more of a joke than it already did. He was making noises about not just expulsions, but lawsuits and criminal charges. When he found out about the article, he called Colin into his office for a friendly chat.

He started out with appeals to Colin’s sense of justice. When that didn’t work, he went for bribery. He knew one of the assistant editors at the Toronto Star personally and was willing to do whatever he could to help Colin land an internship when he graduated.

When that didn’t work, he tried threats. Colin was, in his opinion, in possession of information that should be disclosed as part of an investigation. Failure to do so could do irreparable harm to the school and would violate the student code of conduct, which could lead to suspension or even expulsion. Not to mention that fact that the police might be getting involved. Someone had digitally trespassed on college property and stolen material that had done great financial damage.

Colin had refused. As far as Colin was concerned, this was his first big story as a reporter and the last thing he was about to do was violate a basic tenet of journalistic ethics by burning a source.

The tenor of the meeting did not improve after that point, but Colin held firm. Since that day, he had not mentioned Darryl Kieswetter’s name in connection with the cheating scandal to anyone. The fact that he was threatening to do so now was testament to one simple fact: as far as he was concerned, he didn’t have any other choice.

“D
o you have any idea what would happen to me if you did that?” Darryl asked.

Colin nodded. “The college would yank your diploma. And Devries would probably sue you. It’s probably past the point where the cops would show any interest, but I’m sure once your employer found out about it that they’d probably cut you loose faster than skin cancer, especially if they rely on a lot of city and government contracts for their bread and butter. Devries has a lot of friends at the chamber of commerce. Which means you could kiss the new house goodbye. And probably the honeymoon in Hawaii, too.”

“You promised me that you would never mention my name,” Darryl said in a pleading voice.

“I need five minutes of your time, Darryl,” Colin said. “That’s all. I wouldn’t be here if I had any other choice. Somebody out there is killing people. I think you can help me find out who it is. I need you to look up one thing. That’s all. After that, you’ll never see or hear from me again. If you want, I’ll mail you the original interview transcripts, the recordings, everything. Have a little bonfire in your backyard. After that, even if your name did come out, there’d be no evidence. It would be your word against theirs.”

Darryl sagged against the ladder. “Five minutes?”

“That’s all,” Colin agreed.

Darryl groaned. “All right. But if anyone asks me, I’ll say you pulled a gun.”

“That’s fair.”

Darryl waved Colin towards the door. “Let’s go.”

Colin looked at the door nervously. “Where?”

Darryl held out his hands. “You see any terminals in here?” he asked, gesturing to all the open boxes and lengths of cable strewn around. “We’ll have to use one of the ones downstairs.”

Colin followed hesitantly. “But there are cops all over the place down there.”

“Well, it is a police station,” Darryl said. “But if you’d rather not—”

“No!” Colin said. “I’m coming.”

Colin rode down in the elevator with Darryl and a group of four uniformed officers who looked like they were just about to go out on foot patrol. Colin did his best to try to look like somebody who was not breaking the law right under their noses. Darryl was more used to the presence of armed people in uniforms and appeared genuinely oblivious to their presence.

They got off on the second floor and Colin followed Darryl down to a large, unoccupied corner office. Most of the ceiling tiles had been removed and there was cable hanging down everywhere.

“Whose office is this?” Colin asked as Darryl closed the door. The windows offered a view of the park on one side and the parking lot for the municipal court on the other.

“The chief’s,” Darryl said nonchalantly. “Relax. I think he’s at a conference in Boulder or something right now. We’re re-doing the whole building. He’s using a temporary office on four.”

Colin looked around the office. The walls were lined with framed certificates and commendations. One photograph showed the chief shaking hands with former New York mayor Rudolph Guiliani. Another showed him holding an AK-47 at a firing range.

Colin thought it was strange that people aspired to work in a corner office. So much of achievement seemed to be based on location. It was like people aspiring to celebrity in order to get the best table at a restaurant. Colin had never understood the impulse. He didn’t care where he was sitting so long as the food was good. What was the point of doing a job you hated just because you had a view of a water fountain? Or, in this case, a parking lot? It was bizarre.

“Okay,” Darryl said, sitting down and logging on to the computer. “So what do you want me to check?”

Colin walked around behind Darryl and watched over his shoulder. “I need you to pull up whatever you can on a guy named Devane. Terrence Devane. Terrence with two Rs.”

Darryl typed in the information and waited. After a moment, the screen flashed a load of technical information.

“Huh,” he said. “That’s weird.”

“What?” said Colin, trying to make sense of all the text.

“It’s telling me his record is temporarily unavailable,” Darryl said.

“What does that mean?” Colin asked. “Does that mean he has a record but you just can’t pull it up?”

Darryl nodded. “Yeah. I’ve never seen that kind of error before. Maybe the file got corrupted or something. It knows he’s in the system, it just can’t bring down his record.”

Colin cursed under his breath. “Is there no way of bringing it up?”

Darryl shook his head. “Nope. Not unless you want to go strolling into the archive and pull up the paper version. And there’s no way in hell I’m going down there with you, no matter what you say.”

“Shit,” Colin hissed. “Could somebody have done this? Messed with the system in such a way that this would have happened?”

Darryl shrugged. “Sure, I guess. It’s pretty old. It goes down a lot. I guess you heard they lost all their incident reports a little while back? That’s part of the reason the money appeared for my company to do the upgrade.”

“But there’s no way to pull it up?” Colin said.

“Nope,” Darryl said. He started to log out and push away from the desk. “So is that it? We’re done?”

Colin’s mind raced. He didn’t want to come all this way and risk so much to come up blank. “No, wait! There’s one other!”

“You said just one thing.”

“I need you to look up one more guy!” Colin said. “His name’s Dan…” Colin realized that he had suddenly blanked on the last name. He had seen the guy just this morning! What the hell was his last name?

Darryl pushed himself reluctantly forward again. “Dan what?”

Colin grabbed his head with both hands, almost physically trying to pull the information out of his uncooperative cortex. “Dan…. Shit! It sounds like a duck. Mal…Mellard! That’s it! Daniel Mellard!”

Darryl entered the name and waited while the system chewed on it. When the screen came up this time, the results looked markedly different. Colin could see a photograph in the top left corner along with biographical data and what looked like a sizable record of offenses running down the right.

“Jesus,” Darryl said. “This guy looks like a real charmer. Three counts of assault. Five counts of possession of stolen property. Ooh, and an aggravated, too. How do you know him?”

“I went to high school with him,” Colin said. “I ran into him today in the hall of the arts building.”

“The arts building?” Darryl said. He flipped to another screen and looked closely at one of the fields. “What the hell is that?”

Colin leaned over his shoulder, desperately trying to figure out what he was looking at. “What?”

“I gotta give you credit, Colin,” Darryl said. “I’ve been working here for a while. Then you show up and suddenly I see two things I’ve never seen before in as many minutes.”

B
etts grabbed a bottle of wine off the rack in Colin’s dining area and held it up to read the label.

“Amarone,” he said, pronouncing it
amar-won
. “That any good?”

Giordino, who was checking through the file cabinet next to the desk, did not bother to correct her partner’s pronunciation. “Only if you like wine.”

“Got an anniversary comin’ up with the wife,” Betts said, grinning. “Maybe I should impound this as evidence.”

Giordino immediately thought of something else he could do with it, but she liked wine and didn’t want to inflict such a horrible fate on a valuable bottle.

They had been in the apartment for almost 20 minutes and had turned up nothing connected to the investigation. Betts was right that the apartment wasn’t much to look at from the outside, but the interior was a different matter. She wondered if her partner was right about Mitchell being a millionaire. It was extremely unlikely that they’d get a warrant to go through his financial records and there didn’t appear to be any reason to try. The only indications that he wasn’t just another poor student were some of the kitchen appliances, the wine rack, his laptop (which was the latest Mac) and some of the furniture, which wasn’t the usual assemble-it-yourself Ikea stuff.

Giordino dismissed the thought and continued with the search. The filing cabinet was full of transcribed notes, clips and photographs. Some of them were for stories Mitchell had worked on at the college newspaper and another dealt with the death of his father in Iraq. Based on the size of the latter clip file and some of the research that accompanied it, it looked like Mitchell didn’t entirely accept the official version of events.