Serpents Rising (26 page)

“Not a bad tradeoff.”

“Well, if there's any chance you haven't used up all the time your babysitter has available, maybe we could do something.”

“That would sound a lot better if you added the word
soon
.”

“How about this weekend? Soon enough?”

“Perfect.”

“Saturday night. My place. I cook.”

“You can cook?”

I grinned. “Within clearly defined limits. Care to risk it?”

“Absolutely.”

“Great.” I stood up. “My charioteer probably has the rig toasty by now so I better get going.”

“Yeah, I have to get home too.”

I walked to the door and she followed me. I turned to face her. “You've seen more of this than I have. A kid like Jay … you think he has a chance to kick it? Maybe take his life back?”

“Most of them don't. Maybe he'll be one of the ones who does.”

“Yeah.” I looked toward the upstairs. “Celia's been up there a long time. You think she's showering with the kid?”

“I think she's like your charioteer. Decided we could use a few minutes alone.”

“Remind me to stop forming first impressions. I'm lousy at it.”

She smiled, stood on her tiptoes, and kissed me lightly on the lips. “Not always.”

N
either of us spoke as Cobb circled the block three times.

“Looking for an Audi?” I asked.

“Hell, I missed the kid tailing us to the restaurant earlier tonight and he's not that good. So I figured a little recon might be in order, yeah.”

No sign of the Audi or anything else that looked out of the ordinary. Satisfied, Cobb pulled onto 9th Avenue heading east toward my place.

For a couple of minutes I looked out at the restaurants, coffee places, and antique stores that were a part of the new Inglewood.

“So, is that it for you?” I asked after we'd turned north toward the Zoo Bridge.

“Funny, I was just asking myself the same question. I told Larry Blevins I'd try to keep his kid from being killed by the bad guys. But in order to believe that I've done my job, we have to believe Scubberd when he says we have a deal.”

“And …”

“And I don't know if I believe that. And if I
don't
believe it then what do I do next? Short of whisking the kid off to something that acts like a witness protection program, I'm running out of ideas. Jay's an addict. His brain and his need for crack or whatever shit is his personal favourite will likely lead him to do stupid things. Dangerous things. Hell, there's no guarantee he'll be at the shelter in the morning.”

“Not a lot of wiggle room.”

“Not much,” he said.

I looked out my side window, watched the Calgary Zoo going by. It was a very different place from the one I'd grown up with. The area we were passing now had once been populated by huge dinosaur sculptures but all of them were gone, moved some years before to a massive prehistoric park that was now one of the zoo's showcases. But just at that moment I missed the way it had been. Wished that everything didn't have to change.

Neither of us said anything for the remainder of the drive. I was caught up in thoughts of my own and I guessed that Cobb was in a similar state.

Cobb pulled up in front of my apartment, slipped the Jeep into neutral, and looked over at me.

“Well,” he said.

“Yeah. Listen, this is the second toughest night of my life and I'm pretty much bagged but I can't help but think a celebration drink is in order.”

Cobb shook his head. “Not celebration. Not yet. But I could use a drink.”

“I happen to know a very capable bartender lives right in this building.”

“An offer I can't refuse.” He shut off the Jeep and we both stepped out onto the street. I listened to the quiet as Cobb came around the car holding his cell phone.

“I'm just calling home. I want to let Lindsay know I'll be a little while.”

He stopped on the curb, punched numbers, and a few seconds later had his wife on the line. I walked up the walk a few meters to give him some space and looked down the street.

I heard Cobb say, “Put her on,” and he glanced at me, rolled his eyes, and started toward the building.

It was a dad–little kid conversation that started with “Hi Angel, what are you doing up this late?” It wasn't long and I couldn't hear most of the words but it was a nice contrast to what most of this night had been about.

As we neared the front door of the building, Cobb slowed and turned slightly, I assumed to preserve a little privacy for the final seconds of the call, often the “Daddy loves you” part.

He pocketed the phone, glanced at me, and gave a little nod — ready now for that drink.

As I reached out to the pad to tap in the code that would allow us to enter the building, I said, “Beer your beverage or are a whisky man?”

“He's a fuckin'
dead
man.”

The speaker had to have come from around the corner of the building, and moved quickly past a large cedar that had conveniently blocked our view.

Cobb swore softly as first one man, then another materialized in front of us — Moretti, a very large, very menacing knife in hand and grinning, Minnis a step behind him and holding a revolver. I remembered Scubberd's warning that the smaller man, Moretti, was the one to fear because of his skills with a blade. And I remembered the savagery of the attack on Owen Harkness.

I didn't say anything partly because I didn't think there was anything I could say that would alter the situation we were in and partly because my mind was busy weighing all the possibilities. This was one of those moments, like right before a car crash, when everything slows down to a video replay.

It took only seconds to realize that there were no possibilities to weigh. I didn't know if Cobb was carrying a gun or not but it didn't matter. If Cobb tried to go for it he'd be cut down either by Moretti or Minnis or both before he got his hand to his revolver.

Moretti's grin broadened. In that instant I was certain that he had killed Owen Harkness. This was a man who enjoyed killing.

“I guess we're about to find out if the badass killer is a clumsy fuck or not.”

I felt Cobb move up alongside me, putting himself closer to Moretti. I looked down at the knife. It looked like it could carve a path through jungle.

Cobb's voice was barely more than a whisper and it was unwavering. “I didn't say clumsy fuck, I said clumsy snake. I hate to be misquoted.”

Moretti was done talking. His eyes narrowed and I knew he was about to strike. I figured he'd take Cobb first, that's what I'd have done. I was much less a threat, especially with Minnis's gun pointed at my forehead.

The sound came from our right, from the street. It came fast and Moretti hesitated, though his eyes never left Cobb.

A car pulled to a hard stop at the curb. I turned my head just enough to see the street. Hoping for cops.

It wasn't cops.

An Audi. Mrs. Scubberd was at the wheel. The passenger door opened and Scubberd climbed out, stepping toward the front of the car. He turned, leaned on the hood facing us. He too was holding a revolver, both hands on it, and he pointed it at us.

“Just in case you need us,” he said in a voice that was low and blizzard cold.

“Shit,” I said.

Moretti took a half step toward Cobb.

It didn't sound like shots, more like two pops, like the sound I remembered my BB gun making when I was a kid. Moretti fell, the knife making more noise as it clattered on the cement than the shots that had killed him.

I looked at the car. Scubberd hadn't moved but he spoke again.

“I warned you once, don't ever think you can go freelance on me.” Talking to Moretti like the guy could still hear him.

I looked back at Minnis. He was putting his gun back into the shoulder holster inside his suit jacket. He bent down, picked up Moretti's body like it was a sack of grain, threw it over his shoulder, and bent down again to pick up the knife.

He moved quickly for a big man — down the sidewalk to the Audi. Scubberd was already at the back of the car opening the trunk; Minnis threw Moretti's body in and slammed the trunk lid.

Then he came back up the sidewalk, veered off, and disappeared in the direction he and Moretti had come from. I never found out how they had got to my apartment. But it hadn't been on motorcycles — not on this night.

Scubberd climbed back in the passenger side of the Audi. The whole thing had happened in less than thirty seconds.

Mrs. Scubberd was looking at us through the open driver's side window. “As I was saying, gentlemen, my husband is an honourable man.”

And they drove off.

T
he cops questioned us for about an hour each. Separately at first, then for maybe twenty minutes together. Of course, Cobb and I had our story put together in the time between phoning it in and when a small army of homicide detectives and techs arrived.

Cobb had created most of it. We'd arrived at the apartment and were about to enter the building when a man ran up toward the door wanting in. He didn't appear to know the code and asked us to let him in. He was agitated and as I didn't recognize him as a resident and the apartment has a policy about admitting strangers to the building, I told him I couldn't do that. At about that moment a vehicle stopped at the curb opposite the entrance and the man was cut down by a shooter who was in that car. We had dived for cover inside the building. When we looked out again the body of the man who'd been shot was gone. And so was the car.

No, we didn't know the victim. No, we hadn't seen the face of the shooter. No, we didn't get a good look at the car.

One of the detectives seemed skeptical. He seemed to think that as a former cop Cobb should have been able to provide more information. Cobb was apologetic. It was dark, it had happened quickly and our first reaction was to get the hell out of the line of fire.

“So you punched in the code, opened the door, and hid inside the building?”

“Yes.”

“Lucky you didn't get shot.”

“I guess if they'd wanted to kill us they could have,” Cobb said.

“But they didn't want to even though you were witnesses to the whole crime.”

“Maybe they thought we didn't really have time to see anything.”

“Which would appear to be the case.”

“Yes.”

“How long were you inside the building?”

“A couple of minutes or so.”

“Did you hear the car leaving?”

“Yes.”

“And that's when you decided to look outside?”

“Yes.”

“You didn't see who removed the body?”

“No.”

Of course, all of this was dependent on there being no eyewitnesses, no one in a nearby building who was sitting at the window looking out as it had unfolded. I was worried about that, but Cobb pointed out that there had been almost no noise to draw attention to what was happening. I thought about that and decided he was probably right. There'd been no yelling, no squealing tires, and the silencer on Scubberd's gun meant that Moretti's execution had been less of a disturbance to the neighbourhood than teenagers coming home from a high school dance.

By the time the cops left — after warning us that further questioning at the station was a virtual certainty — neither of us felt like that drink anymore. We agreed to meet for breakfast the next morning. Cobb left and I sat in my apartment for a long time looking at the lights of Drury Avenue and the rest of Bridgeland.

I sat for maybe an hour, not moving. It was all I could do to get undressed before I fell into bed.

But even then sleep didn't come. I tossed, turned, punched the pillow into myriad shapes, read, drank orange juice, then chamomile tea, and read some more. I listened to Valdy, the Barenaked Ladies, and the Saskatoon band The Deep Dark Woods. Finally, desperate, I sorted tax receipts. And fell asleep. Thank God for Revenue Canada.

The next morning I had to go out the back door to leave the apartment. Yellow crime scene tape cordoned off the area around the front entrance.

Cobb and I met at the Diner Deluxe on Edmonton Trail, a terrific retro spot with great food and an upbeat atmosphere. I needed upbeat. It was another of the places I hadn't been to in a long time. It was as busy as I remembered.

Coffee and menus arrived seconds after we sat down. As we fixed our coffee I told Cobb I'd phoned Let the Sunshine Inn. Jill was already there and she said Jay was having breakfast after a night's sleep that “wasn't great but wasn't terrible.”

“She said she'll be talking to him after he's eaten, hoping she might get him to commit to a program. I asked her if she thought it would be a good idea if we were to stop by. She said maybe later, that it might be best if she were to try talking to him alone, at least at first.”

I drank some coffee. Yawned.

“Not enough sleep?” Cobb smiled.

“Not even close.”

“What … an armed standoff in a restaurant, chasing down a druggie, going face to face with two guys armed with a machete and a nine millimetre; follow that up with being interrogated by the cops and you're finding things stressful? What a wuss.”

I smiled. “Well, when you put like that I can see I should have slept like a baby.”

He nodded. “Actually, kidding aside, we should both be happy. We're alive and that was very much in doubt for a while there last night.”

I fought off another yawn. “About last night. One question. How did Scubberd know that Moretti was planning to take us out? What did he call it … freelancing?”

Cobb nodded. “My guess is Minnis must have let him know, probably called him on his cell phone. Scubberd decided to drop by and … do what he did.”

“Honourable man,” I repeated the words of the lovely Mrs. Scubberd from the night before. “It's a damn good thing he wasn't a few seconds later.”

“He might still have shot Moretti but it wouldn't have done us much good.”

“Of course, he might have told Minnis to take care of it if he didn't get there in time.”

Cobb shrugged. “I guess that's one of those things that will remain forever a mystery.”

“I didn't get the feeling that Scubberd was our biggest fan. I wonder why he'd sacrifice one of his guys to keep us above ground.”

“Two answers,” Cobb said between sips of coffee. “The guy he offed wasn't a big sacrifice. The MFs are no different than General Motors or the Royal Bank or the Green Bay Packers. To be effective requires discipline. If people just go off and do their own thing — freelance — the organization breaks down. Scubberd figured it was more important to maintain discipline in the outfit than it was to have that little psycho go rogue and take out a couple of guys who really weren't much more than a minor irritation anyway.”

“Rogue?”

“Maybe Moretti thought he was taking care of MF business on his own or maybe he just wanted us dead because I made him look bad at the restaurant. A guy like that doesn't need much of a reason to murder people.”

I thought again of Owen Harkness. “Psycho.”

“Yeah.”

“And reason number two for Scubberd doing what he did?”

“Is this: I guess we found out that the Scubberds keep their word.”

“Although technically the agreement was to take Jay off the hit list. There wasn't really anything in there about leaving us upright.”

“Now there I disagree. When Mrs. Scubberd asked me to call off the boys in the restaurant, I think what she was really saying was make nice here and we'll take that into consideration sometime.”

“And if you'd decided to be a hardass at the diner and kept the guns on the Scubberds and company until we were clear of the place …”

“That's another one of those things that will remain —”

“Forever a mystery. Yeah, I know.”

I ordered eggs Benedict with Canadian bacon and Cobb opted for a southwest scramble breakfast burrito.

As we waited for our order, I said, “What's next?”

“We promised Zoe we'd let her know when we found Jay. I'm planning to head over there right after breakfast. Care to join me?”

I nodded. “Yeah, I would care to do that. A lot.”

We drank coffee and I people-watched for a couple of minutes.

“Can I ask you something?” I asked.

Cobb sipped more coffee. “Sure.”

“Do you think I'm nuts for still wanting to find the son of a bitch who set fire to my house and killed my wife? Because I'm having a hell of a time letting it go. Even in the middle of all of this I … can't let it go. Last night we were a few seconds from being dead and I was thinking I'd never be able to …” My voice wouldn't let me finish the thought.

Cobb's voice was softer than usual. “If somebody hurt one of my family I'd feel exactly the same way.”

I waited a few seconds before I said, “Thing is, I don't know what to do.”

Cobb nodded.

I ran my fingers along the rim of my coffee cup. “When I found out Appleton had sexually abused those girls … Donna … I was sure there had to be a connection between that and the fire.”

“And now?”

I shook my head. “I just don't know. It's killing me that I can't find out who murdered my wife but I don't know what to do next.”

“Look, Adam, I'm sorry I haven't been much help to you. I've been kind of tied up with this.”

“Hey, no need to —”

He held up a hand. “How about we see Zoe, and I take a couple of days to be a husband and a dad. Then we sit down and look at it all again. Okay?”

“I'm happy to pay you.”

“Hell, Adam, you think I'm going to take money? First of all, you've helped me a lot more than you know with this Blevins thing. And you paid me before and didn't get your money's worth. No, that's not right, I gave everything I had like I do on every case. What you
didn't
get was resolution. So how about we see what we can do about that.”

“Sure.”

“Just promise me that you're not going to go off on your own.”

“Damn, I was just starting to enjoy all this John Wayne stuff.”

He smiled. “Give me a few days and then we'll see if we can't raise a little hell.”

I grinned at him.

“What?”

“My Canadian music collection is having its effect on you.”

“Yeah, how's that?”

“‘Raise a Little Hell.' Trooper song. Big hit back in the —”

“What, do you think I just fell off the turnip truck? I know who performed ‘Raise a Little Hell.'”

He gave me a pretty decent cover of the iconic opening lines, beating out a rhythm on the table top to accompany his singing. Only a few diners turned to look at us.

Zoe was sitting on the front step of the house in Tuxedo wearing a light blue down-filled jacket, sweat pants, and fuzzy pink slippers. The weather guy on the car radio had said it was minus four. Tough kid.

She was drinking something steaming from a Starbucks mug that celebrated Vancouver and reading a beat up paperback. She looked up from it to watch us come up the walk.

I think she was trying to gauge from our faces and the way we were walking if the news was going to be good or bad. She stood up as we got closer. I could see the cover of the book —
Tomorrow, When the War Began.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hi Zoe.”

Cobb nodded and smiled.

“Did you find him?”

We stopped a couple of paces from the steps. I figured Cobb should do the talking.

“We did,” he said.

“Is he … alive?”

“He's alive.”

“And?”

“He's okay.”

Zoe tossed the book in the air and leaped at Cobb like he'd just scored the winning goal in overtime, throwing her arms around his neck and screaming. Cobb spun once with her clinging to him and set her down.

She was only slightly less enthusiastic with the hug she gave me. She left out the scream and I left out the spin. She stepped back and looked at us and the grin faded.

“You guys don't look the way people are supposed to look when something is really good. Is there something about this that
isn't
really good?”

“Like I said, he's fine and it looks like the danger he was in … that's been taken care of.”

“Did you kill the bastard that murdered Owen?”

“No. Someone else did.”

“And the creeps aren't after Jay anymore?”

“No. Or you either.”

“So why don't you look happier? Where is Jay?”

“He's at a shelter.”

“Which one?”

“Let the Sunshine Inn.”

“I know the place. Let's go.”

Cobb looked at me.
Great, I get the bad news.

“Well, Zoe, it might be a good idea to let him have a couple of days to get himself sorted out … uh …”

“What's to sort out? I want to see him and if you won't take me there, I'll figure out another way.”

“The thing is … it's just that Jay … might not want to see you.”

“What do you mean?”

“He told us he didn't think you two should be a couple anymore. That he'd just mess you up and keep you from staying clean.”

She thought about that. “Is he using?”

I nodded. “Until eight, no, make that nine days ago. He's been clean since then. At least that's what he told us.”

“That old joke about how can you tell if an addict's lying?”

I provided the punchline. “His lips are moving. Yeah, I can't say for sure but I would say he's clean. I can't swear to the nine days part. But maybe.”

“I want to see him.”

I looked at Cobb who gave me a blank face. My call. “Okay. Why don't you go change and we'll wait for you here.”

“You want to come in and wait?”

“Thanks, we're good out here,” Cobb said.

“I'll be quick.” She turned and raced back into the house.

Cobb and I walked back to the Jeep, climbed inside, and turned the heater on high.

“She was sitting outside reading and here we are huddled in our vehicle with the heat cranked. What does that make us?”

“I became a wimp when I turned forty,” Cobb said.

I leaned forward and put my hands by the heat outlet.

“I didn't wait that long,” I said.

The Let the Sunshine Inn was a happening place. One couple, a woman with a son who looked to be about nine or ten and a family of four, two of them bored teenagers, were in the food bank with Jill moving efficiently between them and the food stocks, filling bags and boxes and chatting idly with the nine-year-old. I heard her call him Tim. Tim looked happier than either of the teenagers, who I guessed were brother and sister. Both looked like they hated life. Maybe they had good reason or maybe they were just being teenagers.