False Witness (6 page)

Richie dropped to his knees, dead as dead could be. His killer quickly glided behind him and lowered his back slowly to the floor, so that Richie looked like some crazy limbo dancer. The killer took the case from Richie’s hand, opened it – Richie hadn’t bothered to lock it while he was at home – and pulled out two stacks of twenties secured by elastic bands. Gloved hands carefully counted out fifty bills from a third stack, then placed the rest of it back in the case. The hands removed the elastics from the other two stacks, leaving five thousand dollars in cash.

The killer knelt beside Richie, reached into his mouth with gloved hands and removed his severed tongue, then stuffed the cash into the empty cavity, tearing the cartilage around the jaw to fit all two hundred and fifty bills inside. Then the killer carefully positioned the tongue in the center of Richie’s chest. Blood bloomed into the white shirt underneath, forming a stain that vaguely resembled a black rose.

The killer smiled faintly at the image before wiping the blade on the curtains and returning it to its sheath. The black briefcase glared for a moment in the early morning sun before being shuttled outside and into the saddlebag of a waiting motorcycle. The door swung closed a few moments later, leaving Richie Duff to decompose in the soon-to-be stifling heat of the day.

Like Richie Duff, Alex awoke with a hangover. He’d driven home after parting company with Singer and Chuck Palliser, and cracked a bottle of twelve-year-old Dalwhinnie scotch that Calgary’s chief of police had presented him with at the launch party for
The Devil’s Wristwatch
two years earlier. He wondered idly when he opened it whether the extra two years meant the scotch was actually fourteen years old, and thus somehow better.

Alex drank more than he’d planned to, which is often the case with young, single men who open a bottle alone, especially when it’s good booze, but he didn’t really give it much thought. He was running on autopilot after the verdict, a sort of mental and spiritual exhaustion. It had been a crazy eight months to begin with, then the verdict and the secret revelation that the judge had found Rufus Hodge guilty as revenge for a brutal attack on his illegitimate daughter –
sorry, folks, show’s over. Alex’s brain is temporarily out of order, please try again later.

He’d finally passed out in his clothes on the leather recliner in the living room. At some point in the night, he dreamed that Rufus Hodge was standing over him, forcing his legs open and whispering in his ear:
Your ass belongs to me, and I can come collect it any time I want.
Alex tried to fight back, but his body felt slow and heavy, like it was swimming in quicksand. He screamed for help, but the only response came from Leslie Singer, who was standing next to Hodge with a glass of cognac in her hand. She raised her glass to Alex and slurred,
That’s what you get for being a cocksucker, my boy.

Alex woke up damp with sweat and smelling like a sack of dirty laundry. His eyes felt too big for his skull, and his mouth tasted like a litterbox. He got up slowly, worked the kinks out of his back, and shuffled his way to the shower, secure in the knowledge that today, of all days, no one was going to be on his ass if he was late for work. He stood in the stall with his arms propped against the wall, letting the hot water run over his head and neck until it turned cold.

He dried himself, brushed his teeth, scrunched his hair with styling putty and threw on some jeans, a shirt, and his corduroy blazer. According to the mirror, he looked like he did most other days, except for the glowing red eyes. He wondered for a moment how Leslie Singer managed to pull it off day in and day out for as long as she had. That thought prompted a memory of his dream, and a shudder along with it.

He grabbed his cellphone and climbed into the paid-for Volvo, not sure what the day was going to hold. Sam Walsh had been covering the trial up till now (and doing a boring-ass job of it, in Alex’s not-exactly-unbiased opinion), but Alex assumed Bill Vogt, the publisher, would probably want some first-hand account of the ordeal from him pretty soon. Maclean’s magazine was also interested in a piece, and they paid a hell of a lot better than the
Chronicle
. Chuck Palliser had suggested he write a book about it, an idea Alex’s literary agent had also considered. The story of himself, Tom Ferbey, and Rufus Hodge would probably sell much better than
The Devil’s Wristwatch
, if only because this time, he had witnessed the murder himself. He was an active part of the story. He might even have an American-style bestseller on his hands, the kind that buys not just Volvos, but beach houses in Florida.

Traffic was pretty tame for the lunch hour as he made his way up Deerfoot Trail freeway to the
Chronicle
building in the northeast. On the Volvo’s CD player, the Tragically Hip, those great inscrutable poets of Generation X, sang about how courage hadn’t come, but it didn’t matter.

If only he could write about Gregory Larocque’s daughter! That had HBO movie written all over it. But even now, in hindsight, he knew that was a rock that could never be overturned. It would mean an instant appeal for Hodge and, once the media blew the lid off the story, he’d be out of prison and on the street within days.

Of course, it was pretty much a Mexican standoff. Hodge had nothing to gain by going public, unless it was absolutely impossible to trace the attack back to him. The odds of that seemed pretty slim – if Hodge was that clean, Diane Manning would have screamed blue murder and run straight to Barb Foster, the Talking Tits, with her story.

Thinking of Foster reminded Alex that he had to talk to Chuck Palliser sometime before the end of the week about profiling him for the
Chronicle
. He knew the story would go over like gangbusters: veteran undercover cop spends years sleeping with the enemy, then has the guts to go public and take down one of the country’s biggest and most dangerous organized crime figures. The bastard would be up to his badge in horny cougars by the weekend. Watch for the movie starring Ed Harris.

The midday heat mixed with his hangover like sour milk with Southern Comfort, so Alex hit the air-conditioning and thought about nothing much until he arrived at the
Chronicle
twenty minutes later.

#

The first face Alex saw as he entered the newsroom was the last one he wanted to see: Sam Walsh was walking toward him with a stride that said there was serious shit to be discussed. Alex was in no mood for serious shit.

“Where the
fuck
have you been?” Walsh barked. “Why didn’t you answer your cell phone?”

Alex sidestepped Walsh and waved a dismissive hand. “Last time I looked at my paycheck, your name wasn’t on the signature line, so feel free to go find a rope and piss up it.”

Alex expected a smartass comeback from Walsh, but all he got was a blank look. “Whatever, man,” Walsh said with a shrug. He turned and stalked back towards his cubicle.

Alex reached his desk and sat down, wondering what kind of bullshit Walsh was up to now. He was always trying to one-up Alex, had been ever since
The Devil’s Wristwatch
was published. Was Shippy mad that he’d shown up late? If so, he could go fuck his hat – Alex would have been well within his rights not to show up at all today.

He barely had time to boot up his computer before he heard Bob Shippobotham calling out from his office across the newsroom. “Dunn! Get in here now!” He glanced up from his screen and saw Walsh leaving Shippy’s office.
What is this, some kind of schoolyard tattling? “Boss! Boss! Alex is being mean to me!”

Alex rubbed his eyes and sighed. He was usually up for playing the maverick reporter, busting his editor’s chops and doing his own thing, but not today. “Just let me get a coffee,” he said, annoyed.

Then Shippy did something Alex had never seen: he leapt up from his desk and crossed the newsroom in three seconds flat. His basset hound face was as serious as Alex had ever seen it as he grabbed Alex’s elbow and pulled him from his chair.

“
Now,
” Shippy said quietly, with a look that reminded Alex of Chuck Palliser’s cop face.

“Sure thing, boss.” As they made their way to Shippy’s office, Alex could feel the eyes of the other reporters and editors on him. He wondered for a brief moment whether he was about to be fired. It was like being hauled away from the schoolyard by the principal.

Shippy guided him into his corner office, depositing him in one of the ancient, mismatched chairs that passed for office furniture on the second floor of the Chronicle building. His boss closed the door behind them and drew the ratty vinyl shade in the window that he used to keep an eye on his staff. Alex had been working for the Chronicle for seven years and had never seen the managing editor act this way. In light of what he’d been through since October – not to mention the single-copy sales he’d generated in those eight months – he felt justified in being a little bit pissed.

“Listen, Ship . . .” he began, but stopped when Shippy sat down across from him. Face to face, Alex could see his boss wasn’t angry; his face was pale, and his greasy black hair was even messier than usual. He looked the way Alex felt.

“What the hell is going on?” Alex demanded.

“You’ve been off the grid since Hodge’s verdict yesterday afternoon,” Shippy replied. It was a statement, not a question. “I’m not trying to bust your balls, Alex, but you picked a really bad time to go dark.”

“I think I earned a little time to myself, don’t you?”

“Look, Alex, there’s no easy way to say this, so I’m just going to come right out.” He put a hand on Alex’s shoulder. The bags under his old hound dog eyes looked like they were loaded with cement. “Chuck Palliser was murdered around two o’clock this morning.”

Alex blinked. “
What?
”

“Someone blew up his car with him in it. Right in front of his goddamned house. The overnight kid, whatsisname, Henderson, got it off the scanner. Didn’t have enough time to get it in the second edition, but it’s been all over the radio and social media this morning. I’ve got Walsh on it.”

Alex felt like he was in free-fall, as if someone had hit a switch and dropped the floor right out from under him.
You can’t kill Chuck Palliser
, he thought stupidly.
The guy makes Dog the Bounty Hunter look like Mister Rogers, for Christ’s sake.

“No,” he said quietly. “It’s got to be a mistake.”

Shippy leaned forward so that his face was only a few inches from Alex’s. Under normal circumstances, the coffee and cigarette smell on the man’s breath would have been enough to make Alex’s hungover stomach turn upside down, but now it barely registered.

“I wish it was,” he said. “Not for his sake, but for yours. I mean, Palliser knew the rules. He painted a target on his back the minute he surfaced from undercover and let his face get out there. You, though – you’re innocent in all this.”

“But . . . but Chuck said the Wild Roses couldn’t take a shit without Hodge . . . ”

“The cops said Palliser’s car was stuffed with so much plastic explosive that it was nothing but a slag heap by the time they finally got the fire out. Took out windows up and down the street and toasted two cars parked next to it. Henderson said the cops told him off the record that if the warehouse explosion was just overkill, then Palliser’s car was a message. A loud one.” Shippy saw the look on Alex’s face and softened. “Sorry, son. I guess you know more about the subject than I do.”

Alex leaned farther back in his chair and ground the heels of his hands into his eyes. It was just so . . .
wrong
. The Roses were supposed to be over,
finito
. Life was supposed to get back to normal. He was supposed to write another “bestseller” and go out with Chuck Palliser for drinks every couple of months. That’s what friends do, and they
were
friends. Alex had never thought of a cop as a friend before – he drank with them sometimes at the Cuff and Billy downtown, talked off the record, understood where they were coming from – but none of them were really
friends
.

Except Chuck. Staff Sergeant Charles MacRae Palliser. Don’t-Fuck-With-Chuck.

Alex let out a shaky sigh while Shippy soldiered on, trying to keep himself together. Alex had worked under the man long enough to know that, as far as he was concerned, public displays of emotion ranked right up there with public testicle shaving.

“Walsh is following a lead on who might be behind it,” said Shippy. “He called out to Calgary Remand to find out who’s been visiting Rufus Hodge in lockup. Turns out there’s one guy who’s been spending a lot of time with him.”

Alex was impressed in spite of himself. That was a pretty inspired move on Walsh’s part. He had to admit he, himself, probably wouldn’t have thought of it. “Has this guy got a name?” he asked.

“Eveybody’s got a name,” Shippy answered curtly. It reminded Alex of a staff meeting once, where the boss had gone on a tirade over the term “unnamed source.” He reminded them that all sources have names. They’re
unidentified
, not
unnamed
. Alex had crooned,
Well, I been through the desert on a source with no name
until everyone cracked up and Shippy adjourned the meeting in frustration.

“So who is it?” he asked.

“Did Palliser ever mention a guy named Jason Crowe to you?”

“He’s one of the Roses. Why?”

“Walsh says none of the other members has been to see Hodge. Just Crowe.”

Alex ran a hand over his stubble. “Maybe Hodge is running the show through Crowe now. Chuck never really talked about the pecking order in the Roses, just that Hodge was the ruler and everybody knew it.”

“It’s worth following up, anyway,” Shippy said. “I’m going to let Walsh run with this, see what he can dig up.”

Alex rubbed his neck, suddenly exhausted. “Whatever,” he said. “Look, Ship, this has been a shit afternoon. I’m gonna –”

“We’re not done yet,” Shippy interrupted. “I’m afraid it gets worse.”