Death's Last Run (35 page)

CLARE

Outside of Arrivals at Toronto's Pearson International Airport, Clare spotted Roberta's blue pickup immediately. She climbed up into the cab and slammed the passenger door shut.

“I got you a coffee.” Roberta nodded to the two extra large Tim Hortons cups in the center console.

Clare picked up the one closest to her. “Thanks.”

Roberta pulled out of the snowy airport driveway onto the highway that would take them north. Clare sipped her coffee and wondered why she felt so homesick.

“I hope my dad finally kicks it this time,” Clare said.

“Really?” Roberta shot Clare a quick glance. Her thick red ponytail had more flecks of gray than the last time Clare had seen her.

“Really,” Clare said. “If he's not going to choose to live, I wish he would go ahead and die.”

“He
is
dying. Not much will save him except the impossible.”

“Good.”

“You're fooling yourself, kid. You'll be gutted when he goes.”

Clare blinked to keep the tears behind her eyes distinctly hidden. “We'd kill a horse if he was in less pain than my dad's in.”

“Don't tell your mother that.”

“Don't worry — I'm not interested in watching a waterfall cascade down her face.”

“Hey, my own eyes haven't been dry through all this, either.” Roberta shifted into four-wheel drive to account for the terrible weather. “When I was a single mother, your dad gave me a job I was no good at — purely so I could pay my bills by working daylight hours. He taught me how to troubleshoot car problems with the right combination of logic and intuition until I was not only competent, but great at the job. Without him, I'd probably still be on overnights at Pauly's Diner.”

“You would have found another job. And just because my father used to be soulful doesn't mean he gets to manipulate me now.” Clare remembered being a little kid — four or five — peering into an old Chevy engine with her father. He explained how all the parts worked separately, how they needed each other to work together so the car would run. But that man had died a long time ago.

“Okay, at least you're here. How's work going?”

Clare frowned. “I just got off a case. I guess it went well.”

“You nab your man?”

“Yeah. And as of half an hour ago, we have a confession.”

“So what's still nagging?” Roberta eased off the gas slightly.

Snow had begun to fall almost to whiteout proportions. They could barely see three car lengths in front of them, even with the wipers on full blast. Roberta turned north onto Highway 400.

“The killer was following instructions — but we don't know whose. I told my boss what I know, and he'll get the right people to pursue it. But it's frustrating not being the detective. I don't get to wrap it all up, tie the loose ends.”

“Would you rather be a detective?”

“No. I like what I do. I should probably just not get so invested, so I can let the case go when my part is finished.”

As Roberta drove past Canada's Wonderland, the landmark that unofficially meant they were leaving urban sprawl and entering their northern home territory, Clare felt her body tense. She wasn't sure she was ready to see what was waiting in the hospital.

WADE

Wade sat across from Norris. Lucy — Clare — had called from the Toronto airport to say that Norris had confessed to both murders. She asked Wade to get more information, if he could. In exchange for Wade's money laundering being forgiven, she said. Wade doubted Clare had jurisdiction to offer that kind of deal, but he trusted that she'd try.

“We done?” Norris said. Like he wanted to get back to his cell or somewhere more exciting. They'd been sitting silently for two full minutes. “I can feel your hate burning a hole through my skin. But thanks for coming.”

“Was murder your only fucking option?”

“At the time, I clearly thought it was.” Norris' eyebrows flickered. “You bring me anything? Cigarettes? Booze?”

Wade handed over his travel mug full of vodka, which he'd snuck past the guards without incident. “You can share my coffee.”

Norris gulped. He didn't pass the mug back.

“How come you rolled over so fast, confessed to the murders?” Wade wanted to shake his friend, make the truth fall out.

“Because I didn't do anything wrong.” Norris' shoulders slumped. “I would never have killed Sacha if . . .”

“If what?” Part of Wade wanted to strangle Norris, to kick him in the balls, to tie him to his car and drive down the highway with Norris screaming as the road burned through his clothes and eroded his flesh. But another part saw the guy who had kept the band's finances on track when Chopper and Wade had been too drunk or too stoned — or too busy with women — to care. Norris hadn't complained — he was happy to take the responsible role. To keep things in order.

“If I hadn't have been lured by the so-called
DEA'S
promise to make me a hero. I believed them when they told me that once our operation was over — once they told the
RCMP
how helpful I'd been, nailing a big-time criminal enterprise — I'd be able to write my own career ticket on either side of the border.” Norris grabbed at his short hair and tugged. He looked like he was enjoying the pain. “I wanted to see Zoe grow up. To watch her play in a big American Philharmonic one day.”

“You haven't been sentenced yet.” Wade was amazed that Norris hadn't once expressed remorse about Sacha's death — about Wade's loss, and Martha Westlake's. And Richie's family. But Wade was here for his own selfish reasons, too: to get the information for Clare, to maybe save his own ass. He said gently, “I think there's a good chance you'll see Zoe play cello one day.”

“She won't want me there. I'll be her fuck-up dad, the mercenary murderer.”

“Even if she knows you thought you were acting on the side of the law?”

Norris shrugged. “I guess I kind of knew it wasn't
DEA
, by that time. They wouldn't have had Sacha killed — maybe just warned, or relocated.”

Several beats passed as the two men stared at each other. Amazing how a friendship that took years to build could disintegrate so damn quickly.

“I lied to Clare,” Norris said.

“About what?”

“I didn't actually lie, but I gave her incomplete information.”

“Why?”

“To screw her up. Make her look like an idiot when she got back to New York and started pursuing a false lead. I wanted her to lose her job, lose face.”

“Why bother?”

“Because she's responsible for my new home.” Norris spread his arms around the suburban Vancouver holding center. “If Clare had never come to Whistler, I'd be leaving for Argentina in the morning.”

“But you're not.”

“No. I'm not.” They sat quietly for a moment before Norris spoke again. “I told her I traced a phone call back to Governor Kearnes' campaign. Which was true. But when I called the number back the next day, I got a confused response from a guy I'd never spoken to.”

“I'm missing something,” Wade said.

“Whoever pretended to be calling from the
DEA
also falsified their caller
ID
, I think to frame Geoffrey Kearnes.”

Wade had no idea what to make of this. Or why it mattered.

“Just tell Clare,” Norris said. “My lawyer says it will be easier to get my charges reduced if we can find out who was pulling the strings.”

Wade looked covetously at his coffee cup in Norris' hand. He wanted to reach for it, but didn't. Maybe he should take Chopper's and Georgia's advice, go to rehab.

Maybe there was no fucking point.

CLARE

Clare's father lay in the hospital bed. His arms were blotchy, sticking out like twigs from his pale green hospital gown. Tubes and wires connected his wrists and chest to an
IV
machine and monitors above his bed. Clare wished she could turn around, have Roberta drive her straight back to the airport, but the nurse had already announced Clare's arrival — in a chipper voice like she thought it was a good thing.

Her dad lifted his head and winced. His face was thinner than before. His dark brown hair was almost entirely gray. People used to say they looked alike, Clare and her dad. She hoped that wasn't still true.

“I'm alone,” Clare said. “There's no one here who believes your martyr act.”

He frowned. “I understand your anger.”

“You say that whenever I get mad at you.”

“You get mad for good reasons.”

Clare felt her shoulders trembling. “You're only saying that to make me less angry.”
To make me weak
, Clare didn't say.

“I'm glad you came.”

“I came because Roberta says you're dying.” Clare stared at the heart rate monitor. Eighty-six, whatever that meant.

Her dad wheezed. “Well, I appreciate that. I know you're busy.”

Clare waited for the next line, the inevitable guilt trip. Or maybe that was supposed to have been implied.

“How are you enjoying Brooklyn?”

“Manhattan. I haven't been home for a few weeks.”

“Clarissa the Brave.” Her dad rolled over and faced the window. “Why don't you move your chair to this side? It's brighter.”

Clare moved her chair, but slowly. Her mind had fired on something her dad had said.

“You look deep in thought.”

“I am.” Clare couldn't look at the hospital bed, so she stood up and looked out the window, at the flat parking lot she knew so well from so many other visits there. None, though, had had this finality.

Clarissa the Brave . . .
the name played over in her head. Norris had called Sacha “Alexandra the Great.” Was that her real childhood nickname? And if so, how did Norris know it?

“You used to get that look when you were a kid. Watching something, learning something new.”

The soft sound of air whooshing filled the room. Clare turned back around to see the blood pressure machine pumping itself up around her father's skinny arm. She was almost worried that it would snap his arm off, but then the pressure abated, the arm bands deflated. Clare looked at the monitor, which showed that his heart rate was higher than on the last measure. No doubt that was her fault. She met her father's eye. “I think you've twigged something for me — for the case I've just finished.”

Her dad's eyebrows lifted — slowly, like even that was so damn painful.

It didn't work, though, if her hunch was right — it didn't work that the person pulling strings could be someone from the Kearnes campaign. Or did it? Sacha had grown up around politics — someone from the Kearnes camp could have known her as a kid. And Geoffrey Kearnes
was
Sacha's biological father — though a posthumous paternity test had yet to confirm it.

Alexandra the Great.
Could have been Norris' own nickname for her. But if it was also her childhood nickname, if Norris had heard it from the voice on the phone, Clare would put money on the person prodding Norris being someone who knew Sacha very, very well.

But there was still nothing Clare could do — just pass the idea to Bert and let him do what he liked with it.

In her pocket, Clare felt her phone vibrate. She pulled it out and saw that the call was from Wade.

“I have to take this,” she told her dad. He grumbled, so Clare said, “It's work, Dad. It's important.”

Clare moved to the window as she pressed Accept to the call. In the parking lot, she saw Roberta in her blue truck, drinking coffee and moving her head to some music — probably country. It made Clare homesick — she was glad she was coming back soon for a real visit.

As Wade ran through his conversation with Norris, Clare felt a small laugh bubble up to her surface.

“What's so funny?” Wade said.

“That Norris lied to me. It's awesome.”

“Oh.”

“It throws the possibilities wide open, unfortunately, but it helps because what he said wasn't sitting right. Thanks, Wade. I'll make sure I let my bosses know you dug that out for me. Seriously hope it can help you in return.”

Clare hung up with Wade and turned back to face her father. He looked even more shriveled now, like he was shrinking into death with each passing moment. Which Clare supposed everyone was doing, every second of their life, but maybe not quite this visibly.

“I have to go,” she said.

“You just got here.”

“There's a lead I have to follow.”

“Another agent can't do that? I'm dying, Clare. You could at least stay the night.”

Clare pictured the trailer: heaters blasting, her mom drinking and crying with one or more neighbors there drinking, too, all of them trying to rope Clare into the whole stupid sad cycle of grief. If she stayed, she would be pulled back into the headspace of an angry adolescent, raging against the futility — the banality — of the life her parents chose to live. She would also start smoking again.

She would come back, but with Noah beside her for strength.

“I need to make a phone call, fast. I need a friend to ask a suspect a question. And I can't afford to miss my plane back to New York. But really, Dad, thanks for your help. You totally got my mind working in a new direction. I'll come back up north as soon as I can.”

“Don't trouble yourself.”

Clare rolled her eyes.

“Can I at least have a hug? I might not be here when you get back. Though I'm sure your mother will appreciate the company with the funeral arrangements.”

Clare cringed. She hated touching her father. He smelled — and felt — like disease.

“Am I that bad?”

She pulled at the thin, tattered blanket that covered her father's legs. “Are you cold?”

“No.”

Clare chewed her lower lip. “I'll be back in a few days. Don't die without me.”

“You put on these airs,” her dad said. “Like you're too good for us now. We made you. You can never escape us.”

“I love Orillia. What I hate is watching you cut off all your lifelines just to feed your addiction for one more fucking day.”

“Clare. Language.”

“I could say worse.”

Her father sighed. “Have you ever tried to quit smoking?”

“I quit yesterday.”

“Yeah.” Her father snorted. “I can tell by your mood. Good luck staying quit.”