False Witness (7 page)

“Christ,
now
what?”

“They found Richie Duff dead in his living room this morning.”

“What?”
Alex had thought at this point he was ready for anything; he was wrong. “What the fuck happened?”

“That’s the interesting part,” Shippy said with a malicious gleam in his eye. He was nothing if not a consummate newsman. “His mother found him about three hours ago when she came home with her groceries. His tongue had been cut out – ”

“What the
fuck?”

“– but that’s not the worst of it. Whoever did it rammed a giant hunting knife up under his chin and all the way through the inside of his skull. Cut the tongue off at the base from the inside.”

Alex blinked at the floor. He wasn’t surprised to discover he was trembling. “Execution style.”

“Still not the worst of it,” said Shippy.

“What could be worse than that?” Alex croaked. He wasn’t sure whether he was asking out of morbid curiosity or sheer terror.

“His mother found him with five thousand dollars worth of twenties stuffed in his mouth. His severed tongue was on his chest in a rose-shaped blood stain.”

Alex felt the sour tickle of vomit rising in the back of his throat, but before anything could escape, his Blackberry began to chirp. He hit the green answer button without checking the caller ID.

“Hello?” he said weakly.

“Dear boy!” Leslie Singer’s voice blared through the speaker. “Thank God you’re all right! I need to see you immediately!”

The sound of Leslie Singer’s voice usually had a calming effect on Alex. Talking with the old bird reminded him of his days at Carleton, where he’d whiled away many an afternoon (and more than a few jugs of draft) with his professors at the campus pub, delving into the mysteries that only undergrads and their instructors could hope to understand.

That wasn’t the case this afternoon. This afternoon, all Alex could think about was his own imminent death.

He was sitting in an oversized armchair in the oversized study of Singer’s oversized house. It was a sixty-year-old Tudor with servants’ quarters, and a cobblestone driveway wide enough to fit her Lexus, her husband’s Mercedes, and the pristine 1982 Bentley that they took for the occasional spin when the mood struck. All of it screamed old money from the east, especially in comparison with the huge, bleak McMansions that had grown up like weeds in Calgary’s new subdivisions in recent decades. Like the one he had spent his own teen years living in.

Singer had met him at the door with a motherly hug. Her wobbly old husband had politely excused himself shortly after meeting Alex; apparently, the murder of one of his wife’s colleagues and the possible demise of his wife herself at the hands of one Jason Crowe wasn’t quite as fascinating as a rerun of The Dog Whisperer.

Singer handed him a glass of some clear liquid that Alex thought might be aquavit – whatever it was, he hoped it would relieve his hangover, which seemed to be getting worse as the day wore on. Singer raised her own glass in a toast.

“To Charles,” she said gravely. “A man of singular character.”

“Hear, hear.”

Alex drained his glass quickly. He guessed he didn’t have long before Singer would be safely ensconced inside a bottle; he needed to get as much out of her as he could, and fast.

To Alex’s surprise, Singer took only a small sip before setting her glass down on the elegant glass end table. “We need to talk, Alexander.”

“That we do, Leslie.”

“First, I hope you can forgive me, and, in absentia, Charles.”

“Forgive you for what?”

“For not giving you the full perspective of the situation.”

“You mean for not telling me about Jason Crowe?”

Singer slumped in her chair. She looked even older and more like a worn out cushion than she had the day before, if that was possible. Alex felt bad for thinking the worst of the old girl – she was probably as scared as he was, maybe even more so.

“So you’ve heard. I always said you were an exceedingly clever young man.”

“All I know is he’s been visiting Hodge a lot in prison, and that no one on the fringes of the Wild Rose empire will talk about him. Sounds like he’s Hodge’s catspaw on the outside.”

“Mmm,” Singer said thoughtfully. “Had we been dealing with one of the eastern gangs, Charles would have had the advantage of firsthand knowledge, as well as years of investigative work by provincial police and the RCMP for reference. But the Wild Roses were an unknown commodity; very little is known about them because they’re relatively new. Crowe was Charles’s Bay of Pigs.”

“What do you mean?”

Singer smiled like one of his old professors right before they started pontificating. “When Kennedy invaded Cuba, he did so with poor intelligence, and he paid a high price. I believe the same happened in this situation. Charles knew about Crowe, of course, but it appears he severely underestimated him. It would seem Charles paid the ultimate price for his mistake.”

Alex thought about that for a moment. Maybe his blind faith in Chuck Palliser had been misplaced. Alex had been looking for someone to kick ass and take names when Tom Ferbey was killed. His outrage as a witness, as a journalist – hell, as a human being – demanded that someone take charge of the situation and make sure that Ferbey hadn’t died in vain. To see that justice was done. To reassure him that the world worked the way it was supposed to, that bad guys got what they deserved, and that decent folk could sleep easy at night, knowing that they were protected.

Chuck had been given the case the day after the murder. He was seconded to the Organized Crime task force after more than ten years undercover. When Alex told police what he’d seen – Rufus Hodge pulling the trigger on Tom Ferbey in cold blood – Chuck had been the one who took the single blurry, dark photo that Alex had managed to snap and enhanced it to corroborate Alex’s description. Chuck was the one who painstakingly uncovered the meth distribution system that started in labs near the oilfields up in Fort McMurray, and tied them to the Highland Storage Yard in Calgary, which was the hub of distribution. From there it went as far east as Winnipeg, as far south as the U.S. border, and as far west as Banff. Chuck was the one who had investigated Richie Duff, had browbeat him and slapped him with evidence until he finally broke down and admitted that Hodge had been nowhere near his house on that fateful October night, and that he had lied on the stand for money and status within the Wild Roses.

But now . . . now Alex was left with the very real possibility that maybe Chuck wasn’t the all-powerful super-cop that he had wanted him to be. Maybe, when the bullet hit the bone, he was just a guy, like everybody else. A guy who made mistakes like everybody else. Except Chuck’s mistake had cost him his life.

And it could very well cost me mine, too
.

“Look, Leslie, I need to know everything you know about Crowe.”

Singer nodded. “Yes, you do.”

“Really? Just like that? You’re not going to pull the ‘ongoing investigation’ card on me?”

“Alexander, your life is in danger, as is mine. We don’t have the luxury of following the constraints of jurisprudence and media relations.”

“Speak English, Leslie.”

“Fuck the system, is what I mean. We must speak freely, and of many things, my boy. First, Jason Crowe. I hate to admit that we know very little about him other than the fact he spends a great deal of his time with Rufus Hodge. According to his admittedly short paper trail, he was born in Quebec. He is thirty-eight years old and has lived in Calgary for the past two years, has never been arrested and, according to his tax records, is a mechanic. Before that, he was a professional student at half a dozen universities, again, according to his tax records.”

“What’s his actual status in the gang?”

“It’s difficult to know. You see, gangs in Eastern Canada and the U.S. are very much about status, both within the organization and in relation to other gangs, which makes it easier to predict their behavior. Members often go through elaborate rituals to get promoted – they may have to endure a savage beating from the rest of the club, for example, or offer the sexual services of their girlfriend to the leader.” Singer surprised Alex by blushing. “You get the idea. Territories are also strictly defined, which can lead to conflicts. You’ve no doubt read about the turf wars in Montreal that flare up every few years between the Hells Angels, the Rock Machine and others. Something as innocuous as drinking in the wrong bar can spark a conflagration that leaves a dozen people dead in the streets.”

Alex sipped his drink. “But the Wild Roses are different?”

“Yes. In many ways, the club is quintessentially Albertan – young, fiercely independent, pragmatic, and concerned solely with making money. Rufus Hodge is their undisputed leader; he is utterly ruthless, and his word is law.”

Alex nodded. He had gleaned some of this from Chuck during the trial. Back in the early 2000s, Hodge had come seemingly out of nowhere, taken over a loosely affiliated group of small-time criminals, and, over the space of just a handful of years, shaped them into an extremely efficient – if highly illegal – business. While the small satellite clubs of the big eastern gangs were busy strutting around Calgary and Edmonton, selling pot and getting into brawls, Hodge was quietly building his methamphetamine empire with a dozen labs scattered throughout the bush in the sparsely populated northern half of the province. By the time anyone realized what was going on, the Wild Roses had sewn up the burgeoning crank market across three provinces. And the more people flocked to the new gold rush of the oil sands, the more people wanted the product.

When Chuck was undercover, he’d heard rumblings of a skirmish between the Hells Angels and the Roses in Winnipeg. Five men had been found dead in a minivan that had rolled down an embankment into the Red River. The coroner’s report indicated that it was massive trauma, not drowning, that had killed them. He attributed it to the drop into the river. As it turned out, the Angels had sent six men to intimidate Hodge into giving up the territory they saw as theirs. Five of them ended up beaten to death and placed in the van; the sixth managed to pass along a dire warning from Hodge before he died of internal injuries in hospital a few days later.

“The silence on the street would suggest that Crowe is someone who’s not to be messed with,” Alex offered.

“So it would seem,” said Singer. “And that, coupled with the fact that none of the other Roses are talking to Hodge, would suggest that Crowe is now running the show in his absence. Charles had suspected as much, but didn’t seem to ascribe much significance to it.”

“So if we run with our assumption here, Crowe is taking care of Hodge’s agenda, and that agenda is revenge. We need to talk to the cops and get some protection until he’s caught.”

Singer got up from her chair and closed the study door. Then she opened the drawer of a small side table next to the sofa and withdrew a manila envelope. When she sat back down, she looked as sober as Alex had ever seen her.

“The chief of police contacted me this morning with that same thought, and they’ll no doubt try to get in touch with you later today. But police protection is
not
what we need, my boy. Charles was the toughest, smartest cop I’ve ever met, and he was taken out as quickly and easily as a sacrificial pawn on a chessboard. Besides that, as far as anyone can prove, Jason Crowe is a law-abiding citizen whose only vice is his questionable taste in friends.”

Singer leaned forward earnestly. “Charles and I had many discussions during the trial, about many things. One of them was the possibility of reprisal from the Wild Roses. He believed it was unlikely, and I believed
him
. But he was also a thorough cop, and he was a realist who believed in contingency plans.”

“What are you getting at?”

“I’m ashamed to admit this, Alexander, but I’m afraid the attack on Sarah Payne is not the only secret we were keeping from you. Charles knew there was a possibility, however slight, that you and I might end up in the line of fire in the event of a guilty verdict. So late last year – this was long before we learned of Ms. Payne, mind you – he used some of his influence to create these.”

Singer opened the envelope she’d taken from the table. From it she produced a small plastic card and handed it to Alex.

“This is yours.”

Alex looked down to see his own face looking back at him from a Saskatchewan driver’s license. The name on the card was Alex Wolfe, born July 22, 1982.

“Alex Wolfe?” he asked.

“Charles said it was important that you keep your first name, rather than trying to get used to someone else’s. People tend to get suspicious when the new fellow in town doesn’t answer to his own name. As for Wolfe, it was Charles’s mother’s maiden name.”

“Okay, let’s say for the sake of argument that this
isn’t
batshit lunacy. What about you?”

“Leo and I will be safely aboard a cruise ship some six thousand miles from here two days from now. We’ll be gone for eight weeks, which should give our boys in blue ample time to get the situation under control. If not, we’ll simply extend our stay.”

Alex’s hangover had given way to a dizzying sense of unreality. The trial was over – he was supposed to get on with his life as Alex Dunn, not Alex Wolfe. Dunn had a lot of work to do, women to chase, a bestselling book to write. Wolfe didn’t fit into those plans.

“That’s all well and good for you,” he said. “You’re semi-retired . . . ”

“
Fully
retired as of today,” Singer said gravely.

“The point is,
I
have a life. Plus I think the sum total of my bank accounts is something in the neighborhood of two grand. How far is that going to get me on the run? Plus I’ve got a mortgage and bills to pay, not to mention a job where my boss might get a little peeved by the fact that
I haven’t shown up to the office for a couple of months!”

Singer made a patting motion with her hands in the hopes of soothing him. Alex noticed the old girl’s face was flushed, and this time it wasn’t from alcohol.