Deadline (6 page)

Darryl leaned forward and dropped his voice a notch. “Yeah, and crooked as hell, too. There were kickbacks and phoney
incentives
like you wouldn’t believe. ‘Course, officially I don’t know about any of that stuff.”

Colin grinned. “Right.”

Darryl looked around. “So where you headed? You need a ride or something? You look kinda lost.”

Colin perked up. “Actually, that’d be great.”

Darryl nodded his head for Colin to follow. “No prob. I’m just heading out for the day anyway. You still at Westhill?”

Colin nodded. “Is that out of your way?”

“Nah,” Darryl shook his head. “I moved in with Tracey. We’re getting married next summer. Her apartment’s not far from there.”

“Tracey? What about that other one you were going out with? Beth?”

Darryl frowned. “She drove my car through the front window of a pharmacy.”

“Sorry to hear that.”

“You should be,” Darryl said. “You introduced us.”

Colin apologized again and held the door so that Darryl could get through with the box. Having also briefly dated Beth, he thought it was a good idea to change the subject.

C
olin ordered another beer and looked up at the TV.

The murder was the lead story. They had just shown what he supposed was Devane’s student ID photo. In it, Devane had the slightly emaciated look and lazy, size-you-up-and-roll-you eyes of an ex-con, complete with a spiderweb tattoo on his neck. They had very few details. An unnamed victim had been found on Westhill campus and police were looking to question Devane in connection with the incident. That was all.

Once he had gotten back to the campus, Colin had thought about going back to the newsroom and decided against it. He wasn’t editor over there anymore, anyway. Let Seth worry about how to write up a version of this that would make it past Watterson. What else was there to do? Drive down to Cornwall and cover a hockey game? The hell with that.

Realizing that he hadn’t eaten at all, he had made instead for the campus bar, which was predictably deserted. The bar was on the southeast corner of the giant campus recreation centre, which sat on the edge of the forest just down the access road from the arts building. Most of the access routes through the forest had been blocked off by police tape, but Colin figured that was probably the least of it. Not many people felt like going out to a place for wings and beer when body parts had been found less than a hundred yards away.

Colin was too tired and hungry to care. He had walked in, ordered a plate of chicken fingers and fries, and settled in to watch the news. He had just ordered his second beer when Seth arrived.

“Hey, Mitchell! Thought I might find you in here.”

Colin recognized the voice and didn’t bother looking over as Seth slid onto the stool next to him. In truth, though, the smell was the first giveaway. Seth always wore enough cologne to hide a cadaver. Colin wasn’t sure which one it was, but it was almost enough to put him off the rest of his food.

“Look,” Seth said, pulling out a notebook and dropping it on the bar. “I know this is awkward as ass and everything, but Hal asked me to write up the story on this thing today and I know you have some inside info. Hey, those look good.”

Colin watched as Seth’s hand darted over, grabbed one of the fries off Colin’s plate, and popped it into his mouth. “So,” Seth said, munching away. “What can you tell me?”

Colin’s beer arrived. The bartender asked Seth if he wanted anything. Seth asked for a mineral water, which he jokingly suggested be added to Colin’s tab. The bartender looked uncertainly at Colin, who shook his head.

“You know, Seth,” Colin said after the bartender had gone. “You dress pretty well.”

Seth looked momentarily confused. “Huh?”

Colin took a sip of his beer. “You know, your Versace frames, Rolex watch, Gucci loafers. That three-thousand-dollar leather jacket you’re wearing.”

Seth looked down at his jacket like he just realized it was there. “My what? Oh. Uh, thanks, I guess.”

“Then there’s your Beemer,” Colin continued. “Not top end, but not exactly old, either. And let’s not forget your spacious loft in the trendy and historic old tannery building. Never live there myself, of course. A—because I couldn’t afford it and, B—because who knows what kinds of chemicals leached into the ground around there. Not to mention all those immigrant labourers who died and were probably just buried underneath what is now a parking lot.”

Seth shifted uncomfortably. “Colin, I don’t get—”

“And yet I still see you standing in line to pick up your student loan at the beginning of every semester,” Colin said. “Why is that?”

Seth forced a laugh to try to change the subject. “Right, but—”

“It’s not from your family,” Colin continued. “Your father was a welder in an auto plant before GM closed the place down and your mother works part-time in a dry cleaners. You don’t have any rich uncles or grandparents, so you didn’t inherit it. Could it be that your revenue stream is, as we euphemistically like to say,
off the books
?”

Colin turned his head to study Seth’s reaction. Seth was, as he assumed he would be, sitting with his mouth hanging open trying to figure out what to say next.

“Colin…how in the hell…”

Colin turned back to his food. “That’s just casual observation and a few phone calls, Seth. You know, basic reporting. Well, you wouldn’t know because you never really do any. Your notion of research doesn’t really extend beyond Google.”

“Look, Colin,” Seth said. “I know you’re pissed that Hal canned you and made me editor, but—”

“Actually, I fully expected him to do that,” Colin said. “I’m just surprised it took him as long as it did. What I’m trying to say here, Seth, is that I have so far completed only as much digging as I might do for a minor story. One, like yourself, that is of little significance. However, if you don’t remove yourself from that stool in the next 30 seconds and stop pestering me with questions that I have no intention of answering, I may decide to bump you up to the status of a full feature investigation. And I don’t think you would enjoy being the subject of one of those.”

“Are you serious?”

“I’m always serious, Seth. By the way, I have no intention of writing about varsity sports, so you better find somebody else to cover that. Twenty-five seconds.”

“But what am I supposed to do for this murder story?”

“Good question, Seth. Perhaps you should try some research. Go interview a few primary sources. You know, reporting? That field of study you’ve been pursuing for the last three years? When you bother to show up to class, that is. Five seconds.”

“You said I had 25 seconds a second ago!”

“I arbitrarily decided to reduce your allotted time because you were annoying the piss out of me.”

Seth jumped down off his stool. “Fine! I’m going. I’ll leave you to work your way into another hangover.”

Seth stuffed his notebook awkwardly back into his pocket and stormed out. Colin looked back up at the TV, where the anchor was excitedly reporting a rumour that Kim Kardashian was pregnant.

“Oh good,” Colin muttered to himself. “News.”

C
olin left the bar a few hours later. The fastest way back to his apartment was to cut around the back of the rec centre and use the forest path. He only made it about halfway before he realized that his need to pee had quickly shifted from vague inclination to critical status. He ducked into the shipping/receiving area, where he found a large skid of recalled newspapers set to be dumped in the giant recycling bins. Perfect.

Colin snuck in behind the newspapers and let fly. Why was it that once a seal was broken the capacity seemed to reduce? When he’d left the bar, he’d felt almost nothing, and now here he was, urinating all over yesterday’s news.

Colin was mulling the irony of his situation when he heard the noise and looked over to see that the receiving door was ajar. He zipped up and checked his watch. It was after 10 p.m. The receiving bay closed at 4. The noise had sounded like something metal being dropped on a concrete floor.

If he hadn’t just put away five large draughts, he probably wouldn’t have been quite as likely to stroll over to the open door, stick his head inside and say “Hellloooo?” But he had, so he did.

Inside was surprisingly bright. Colin noticed that the overhead maintenance lights had come on. Those lights were only activated when they detected movement. That meant somebody had passed one of the sensors in the last 15 minutes, because those lights automatically shut themselves off again after that much time.

Colin allowed his gaze to drift slowly down from the lights past the pipes, ducts and bundles of electrical cable to the floor.

Where he saw the trail of blood.

It led from the floor in front of him across the receiving area and down the hall into the main complex. It wasn’t a smooth, dribbling line. It looked slightly smeared in places, almost as if somebody had clumsily tried to clean it up as they went. Colin could see from the lights that it was still shiny, which meant that it hadn’t dried.

Which meant that it was fresh.

Colin reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. The battery still had a tiny bit of charge left, but the signal strength was zilch. Cell reception around the college was notoriously awful. He would probably have to walk 200 yards into the woods just to get a single bar, at which point his battery would probably die.

He stuffed the phone back in his pocket and cursed under his breath. The logical thing to do would be to run like hell and call the cops.

But then he thought of Shalene Nakogee. He had promised her that he would help and had failed her miserably. He thought of Terrence Devane and all the women he had used and would go on using. He thought about the fact that there was a decent chance Devane would get away with it again unless he was caught in the act.

He spotted a sledgehammer leaning against the main receiving desk. He stepped carefully over the blood and grabbed it. It weighed at least 25 pounds and he had to hold it in both hands to keep it steady. The weight was reassuring. If anything happened, though, he figured he was far more likely to drop it on his own foot than clobber an intruder.

What the hell am I doing?
he wondered as he made his way down the hall. The first door he came to was labelled ‘Electrical Room #2’. He tried the handle. Locked. He looked down. The trail continued down to the end of the hall and around the corner to the left.

He tried to remember where he was in the building relative to everything else, but his brain was fogged and wasn’t coming up with any answers. There was a gym, an ice rink and a swimming pool in here somewhere. He had never used any of them, however, so he was at something of a loss geographically.

He peeked around the corner to make sure there was no one lurking with a hatchet, waiting to take his head off at the Adam’s apple. The lights in the main hallway weren’t on. Either they didn’t work on motion sensors or the sensors were broken.

Colin rounded the corner slowly. His foot slipped and he slammed his shoulder against the wall, but managed to avoid dropping the hammer. In the low light, it was hard to see the trail. He cursed silently and stood back up.

This is stupid
, he thought.
I need to get the hell out of here.

Then he saw the light coming from under the door up ahead. Unable to stop himself, he tiptoed carefully forward. The sign on the door read ‘Women’s Change Room’. He pushed it open slowly.

Inside was a long wooden bench flanked on either side by a row of tall metal lockers. The only light was a faint blue glow coming from the other side of the lockers on his right. Colin strained to hear over the sound of the HVAC system. Was that a tinkling noise? And breathing. Yep. No doubt about it, somebody else was in the room with him.

He looked down. He could see the trail of blood move into the room and then right, banking behind the row of lockers.

Colin swallowed. His heart seemed to have relocated itself to his throat, which was causing his breath to come in short gasps. The sledgehammer suddenly felt like it weighed a tonne.

Okay, smartass. Now what?

T
he man didn’t look at all the way Devries had expected.

He had suggested they meet in the lobby of the Ramada hotel, just off the highway. Devries had expected they were going to meet in a bar or parking lot somewhere. When he commented on it, the man pointed out that men in suits exchanged briefcases in hotel lobbies every day. It wasn’t the kind of activity that was as common in cowboy bars or doughnut shops.

The man looked like an investment banker. He was tall and thin and looked to be in his middle fifties. Being something of a clothes horse himself, Devries recognized a Hugo Boss suit when he saw one, although he did raise an eyebrow at the platinum cufflinks and Chopard watch.

Devries had been instructed to enter the lobby, place the briefcase in the chair next to the courtesy phone, and then sit down in the chair opposite. Devries sat chewing his nails in the parking lot for 30 minutes before he went in. It was a good thing he was wearing his suit jacket or the guy would have seen the massive sweat stains under his arms. Devries had debated whether or not to bring the Glock in with him and in the end had decided against it.

Devries had been sitting in the chair for only about 30 seconds when the man emerged from the elevator and sat down opposite him. Externally, he appeared to be as relaxed as Devries was tense.

Of course, Devries reminded himself, this guy probably killed people for a living. Or knew people who did. As the special executive assistant to the justice minister, the guy was used to dealing with crooks.

The man glanced down at the briefcase, then looked up at Devries and smiled. Devries wondered how many people might have left the earth with that very same smile being the last thing they saw. He tried not to think about being one of them.

“How much?” the man asked quietly. His voice was soft. He might have been asking about the price of rolls in a bakery.