Deadline (21 page)

“Now you can’t take it out of this room,” she whispered, looking nervously back to where her boss was working in the back.

“Okay,” Colin nodded.

“And I can only let you look at it for a couple of minutes,” she said. “My boss was supposed to be taking lunch, but he’s putting it off until we get the planning documents filed.”

“Sure, right.”

She handed Colin the report. He took it quickly and flipped it around in his hands to see the title:

FRESH START EDUCATIONAL REHABILITATION
COMMUNITY PARTNERSHIP PROGRAM
(FSC5001-SCCPD)

Developed By
WESTHILL SUPERMAX DEVELOPMENT ASSOCIATION
[ SECURED DOCUMENT ]
[ SIGNATORY ACCESS ONLY ]

Colin flipped the cover open and found the list of signatories. Devries’s name was on the list. So was the mayor, the chief of police, the local MPP and the current justice minister.

“Holy shit,” he said, unable to contain himself. He flipped to the summary pages and started reading. The more he read, the wider his eyes got.

Nadine stayed at the window. She evidently didn’t trust him with the document alone. “Is that what you were looking for?”

Colin nodded. “Oh yeah.” It seemed like he had only been looking at it for a few seconds when the voice of Nadine’s supervisor barked from the back.

“Nadine! Where did you put the conditional zoning stuff?”

Nadine reached for the report. “Sorry. I need it back now.”

Colin clutched the report and gave her his best desperate face. “Two more minutes?”

Nadine looked conflicted. “Well…”

“Nadine!”

She sighed. “Okay. Two minutes. Just don’t run off on me!”

Colin gave her what he hoped was his most trustworthy smile. “Of course not.”

Nadine closed the window and headed back into the stacks. Colin waited until she was out of sight, then stuffed the report under his jacket and ran out of the room.

C
olin’s phone buzzed almost as soon as he stepped through the doors and onto the city hall rotunda.

It was starting to spit rain. The office workers who had been sitting at the benches and picnic tables around the fountain were hurriedly packing up their containers and tossing their fast food packaging to head back inside. The temperature had dropped noticeably and the wind was picking up. He could see the jazz festival banners on the light posts whipping sharply.

It was Janice.

“Colin! Where the hell have you been?” she almost yelled. “I’ve been trying to get a hold of you for the last half hour!”

“I was in the basement of city hall,” Colin said. “It’s like a copper mine down there as far as cell reception. Listen, though. You’re not gonna believe—”

“Colin!” Janice interrupted. “You’re all over the news! The cops are looking for you!”

Colin stopped next to the fountain. “What?”

Janice’s voice was just a notch below hysteric. “They’ve issued a warrant for your arrest!” she said. “They’re saying you should be considered armed and extremely dangerous!”

Colin laughed. She had to be joking. He had to admit, though, that her panic had seemed totally genuine. “Yeah, right! Listen, I was just—”

“Colin, I’m not kidding!” she said. “They said they found something at your apartment linking you to the murders! Your picture is all over the news!”

Colin realized that she wasn’t joking. “Found something? What the hell did they find?”

“They didn’t say!” Janice said. “But whatever it is, it must be serious enough that every cop in the city is looking for you right now!”

Colin racked his brain. He hadn’t thought Giordino was serious about wanting to search his apartment. Certainly not serious enough to go out and get a search warrant to do it, anyway. But what in the hell could they have found? There was nothing of much value in the place except for his coffee maker. His first thought was that Betts had planted something. That would almost make sense. But what?

Colin pushed that question out of his mind. He would deal with that later. His immediate concern was what he was going to do right now.

The square was emptying out pretty quickly, but it was still a public space full of people who might have seen the noon news. Drawing attention to himself was not a good idea. He tucked his head down and started moving down the steps to the street. He was parked four blocks over. If he could just make it to his car, maybe he could make it out.

“Listen, Janice,” he said, keeping his voice low. “I think I know what’s going on. Stay where you are. Lock the door and don’t open it for anybody else. Even if the police threaten to break it down.”

“Colin, I’m freaking out in a pretty major way over here,” she said. “I was looking at some old land transfer records when your face suddenly popped up on a news alert and—”

“I don’t know what they found or say they found at my apartment, but I haven’t killed anybody, I promise,” Colin said. “I know how that sounds, but it’s the best I can do. Just sit tight and I’ll be right there.”

“Colin—”

“I just have one more interview to do first,” Colin said. He hung up and stuck the phone in his pocket. The rain was starting to fall harder now. It was awkward walking with the binder under his jacket, but he didn’t have anywhere else he could keep it where it wouldn’t get soaked. It was too thick to roll up and stuff into one of the pockets of his leather jacket.

He hopped down on to the sidewalk and started up the street. Two uniformed cops were walking straight towards him.

Fuck
.

Nothing to do. It was too late, now. He would just need to walk right past them. If he changed course or crossed the street, he would only look suspicious and draw attention to himself, like a car screeching to a stop ten yards short of a RIDE checkpoint.

Colin wiped some of the raindrops off his forehead and ducked his head down against the rain as he passed them on the inside. He had to force himself to keep walking at the same pace. Every part of him wanted to break into a run.

All I have to do is get to the corner
, he thought.
If I can do that, then I’m home free
.

He looked up. The corner was about 30 yards away. Ten yards shy of that was a bus shelter. As he got closer to the shelter, he could see his reflection in the glass. He could also see the reflection of the two cops. They had both stopped and were looking back in his direction. One of them was talking on his radio.

Fuuuuck
.

Colin kept walking. The cops were moving toward him now. One of them even broke into a jog.

“Here we go,” Colin said under his breath.

Without looking, he jumped off the sidewalk and sprinted across the street. A taxi leaned on its horn and swerved wildly to avoid hitting him, crashing head on into a paid parking machine. Colin closed his eyes and kept running. If he made it to the other side of the street without getting killed, he was going to consider it a great personal accomplishment.

G
iordino and Betts were en route back to police headquarters when the call came in over the radio.

“We spotted Mitchell!” said the voice. Giordino recognized it as belonging to one of the uniforms that did the foot patrols on the downtown circuit. There were two of them who were so close in appearance that they had picked up the nickname “the twins”. They were very similar, both having 18-inch necks and more devotion to gym time than any other aspect of their jobs. “He’s on foot! Just left city hall! Headed east on Carlyle!”

City hall?
Giordino wondered.
What the hell was he doing in there?

“Shit!” Betts exclaimed. “That’s only two blocks from here!”

Betts spun the wheel. Giordino felt her head smack against the window as the cruiser made a wild U-turn and rammed up over the curb, nearly killing an old man out walking his dog.

“Watch where you’re going!” Giordino yelled as Betts swung the car back onto the road and gunned the engine. She had seen him do this kind of thing before, and the end results often involved the Special Investigations Unit.

Betts screeched around the corner against a red light onto Watson and then made a sharp left onto Carlyle. Giordino could see the Church of Our Lady up ahead and mentally crossed herself. She did not want to end her career in a coma. Or in traction.

“There he is!” Betts yelled, pointing. “South side!”

Giordino peered through the rain and saw Colin racing down the street towards them. The two uniforms were about 100 yards behind. They were coming up to the intersection of Carlyle and Norfolk. That was where the north- and southbound lanes of Norfolk widened out around Grant Park, which sat in a large rectangular island in the middle. Locals nicknamed it central park because of the way it took up an entire block. The park was surrounded by a ten-foot high iron fence and had large gates at the south end. At one time, it had been a gathering place for families, but now it was mostly rundown. The large stone fountain in the middle had been donated by Westhill’s sister city of Pallacio in Italy. Many cynical voters believed that the sister city selection had been made solely because counsellors got a free trip to Tuscany. The motives of the residents of the Italians, however, were a mystery.

Betts pulled the car to a screeching halt across the intersection that put it on an angle and blocked almost all four lanes. Before Giordino could say anything, he threw open his door and jumped out, grabbing the shotgun from the centre mount in the process.

“Freeze!” he yelled, pointing the barrel of the shotgun in Colin’s direction. There were pedestrians running all over the place, but he put them out of his mind. As far as the public was concerned, Mitchell was a dangerously disturbed serial killer. If somebody else got nicked in the process of apprehending him, well, they could just suck it up and thank him later.

C
olin heard the screeching tires and looked up to see Betts pointing a shotgun at him.

Colin froze. He didn’t doubt that Betts would fire as soon as he got a clear shot. It didn’t matter that it was a public street in the middle of the day with eyewitnesses all around. Betts was so wound up that he’d probably empty the tube before he was even aware that he’d squeezed the trigger.

Colin could hear the uniforms coming up behind him fast. He looked around wildly. There was a city bus stopped next to the sidewalk near the park’s south entrance only ten yards away. Without thinking, he dropped his head and made a beeline for it, trying to use the other stopped cars for cover as he ran.

He heard a boom as Betts squeezed off a shot and tinkling glass as the pellets tore through the window of the electronics shop behind him, blasting a massive hole in a 70-inch plasma flat screen TV that was supposed to be first prize in a raffle designed to raise funds for a new MRI machine at the hospital. Colin kept running. He didn’t hear any screams, so maybe no one had been hurt. He didn’t really have time to check.

Colin sprinted along the side of the bus as the two uniforms behind him stopped to help a woman who had been sprayed with glass when the window was blown out. A marked police cruiser squealed to a stop on the far corner, forcing him to turn left into the park.

“Betts, you fucking idiot!” Giordino yelled, getting out of the car.

Betts ignored her, tossing the shotgun back into the driver’s seat and then slamming the door. He pulled his sidearm roughly out of his shoulder holster and took off in pursuit.

Colin entered the park and ran to the left around the large marble fountain. Poseidon stood on a platform in the middle, pointing a trident into the air in silent rebuke to the pigeons who routinely crapped all over him. The waterfall that was supposed to run down between his feet was not running because the pump had been improperly installed. Fixing it would apparently require the dismantlement of part of the fountain and the shifting of 13 tonnes of imported stone, which no one in city management was keen to do.

Grant Park was named in honour of the city’s first mayor, Angus Grant, whose family mansion was currently home to the Black Light Gentlemen’s Entertainment Club. The park attracted fewer junkies and homeless people than Coughlin Park three blocks away because there was no shelter and only one entrance, which made it hard to clear the scene if the cops decided to do one of their periodic rousts.

The fact that he had run into a place with only one way out did not enter Colin’s mind until he reached the edge of the fountain and saw the ten-foot iron fence that now blocked him in on all sides.

“Shit!” Colin gasped as he ran. “Who builds a park with only one exit? Idiots, that’s who.”

Colin looked quickly over his shoulder to see Giordino and Betts run through the gates behind him. Giordino appeared to be trying to say something to Betts that Colin couldn’t make out, but it didn’t matter, because Betts didn’t appear to be paying any attention, either. He stopped and shakily pointed his gun at Colin, but Giordino grabbed the weapon with both hands and pushed the barrel to the ground just as a jogger stumbled in front of them.

“Outta the way, fuckwad!” Betts yelled, shoving the jogger aside and taking off after Colin again. The jogger stumbled to the ground and rolled up into a protective ball as the heavy detective scrambled over his legs.

Colin reached the other side of the fountain and scanned the ground up ahead. On the left was a memory garden for emergency services workers. It had a bench and a few small trees, each one with a plaque identifying which police or fire department it had been planted for. At the back corner on the right was a maintenance shed. The ground rose steadily towards the shed and then dropped off steeply to the bottom of the fence.

The only exception to that was the ground immediately around the shed. The city had wanted the shed tucked into the far back corner so that it took up as little usable space as possible. As a result, there was a concrete foundation about a foot wide on all sides. Because the ground dropped off so steeply, the base of the foundation was almost level with the top of the iron fence. There was maybe six feet of open space between the back of the shed and the fence.