“Change, how?”
Branton shrugged. “Today he’s a sniper. Perhaps he will change to another crime.”
Brad rubbed his face. “Back to the phone call. Tell me about it.”
“He told me to write down a message,” Branton said. “At the time, it didn’t make any sense. He repeatedly talked about Rocky Mountain House. It all began there. It was a rant, and as I mentioned, I couldn’t understand a lot of what he said.”
“Why didn’t you call us?” Brad asked.
“Frankly, I thought it was a hoax.” Branton held a hand out and shrugged. “I know the police had been receiving a lot of false calls, and your system was overwhelmed. I figured it was someone playing a joke. It’s not unusual to get crank calls.”
“Was there anything about the voice that stood out?”
Reverend Branton shook his head. “I didn’t hear an accent, but it was hard to hear him most of the time. His speech was simple. A common man, if that makes sense. Not an educated man. But that’s just a guess on my part.”
“Thank you. This was helpful.” Brad stood and held out his hand.
Branton stood and gripped Brad’s hand in both of his. “I will pray to Saint Michael, the patron saint of police officers. I will ask him to guide you, Brad Coulter, and protect you in your battle. Crime and personal.” He bowed his head. “Please come visit me again.”
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Brad sat alone in the zoo. He glanced up at the glass wall. A half-dozen dispatch staff on break drank coffee and stared.
Brad swung back to his desk and checked the equipment. He had two radios, one for their assigned dispatch channel, the other to communicate with Air One. Next to the radios sat an audio recorder and finally, the tracing unit. When the snipers called, the tracing unit would automatically trace the call and first display the telephone number, then location. The key was to keep the sniper talking long enough.
Brad glanced at the clock. Two minutes to four. “Two minutes. Let’s see if they call.” Brad drummed his fingers on the metal desk and watched the second hand.
4:00
4:01
4:01:30
4:02
When the phone rang, Brad nearly jumped out of his seat. He glanced at the dispatcher who nodded. Brad picked up the phone. “Coulter.”
“Just listen. Another person died yesterday because of your incompetence. We don’t know how we can make this clearer. Enough with the telephone tag games. You have tried our patience for the last time.”
The dispatcher keyed his mic. “All units. We have them on the phone.”
The radio clicked twice in acknowledgement.
“You have our demands. Meet them or pay the price. We wonder if you like finding bodies as much as we like killing. Coulter, you have one last chance. You know no one is safe. Not kids, cops, no one.”
“Wait, I want to talk.” It hadn’t been enough time to trace the call. “Why ask for me?”
“Don’t think you’re anything special. The first guy on TV was obviously an idiot. You were the guy in charge. No sense dealing with a middleman.”
“But you sent the first note to a reporter.”
There was laughter on the phone. “You’re making this too complicated. She’s hot and we weren’t going to walk into the police station with a note for you. We aren’t stupid. We know you are tracing this call. I won’t use 911 or the hotline. Good luck finding us. Like the hot reporter said, we’re ghosts.”
“Wait …”
“Oh, and Coulter. Fuck you!”
The voice was gone, but it sounded like the line was still open. Brad stared at the tracing monitor. The phone number came up. Then the line went dead. Fifteen seconds later, the address appeared.
Brad keyed his radio. “All units. I have the location.”
Steele and Zerr crouched low in the outdated motorhome in the parking lot of the school at Fourteenth Street and Nineteenth Avenue SW. They didn’t want to take any chances with the black Suburbans that shouted tactical team.
Steele glanced across at Zerr, who wore a ball cap with a long-haired wig glued inside. “You’re kinda cute in long hair.”
“Screw you,” Zerr replied. “I’m not sure a backward ball cap and Ray-Bans count as a disguise.”
“Sitting next to you, it does.”
“How long do you figure it will be until some mom with her kids in the park calls 911 about two perverts in a motorhome?”
“Not in this area. She’ll rush them home and keep them there. Residents of this neighborhood don’t like police parked outside their house. It gets the neighbors talking. One police cruiser in a driveway can ruin your uppity-up reputation forever.”
“Now we wait,” Steele said.
Zerr took a drink from a brown sandwich bag.
“What the hell is that?” Steele asked.
“Chocolate milk.”
“Bullshit.”
“Truly.” Zerr held it out. “Learned that from Devlin. That was part of his homeless schtick when he was undercover.”
“You could have got one for me, too.”
“Do you think the boss is right?” Zerr asked. “That the snipers will phone from inside the area of the shootings?”
Steele shrugged and stared out the window. “It’s as probable a theory as any. Brad thinks they’re staying somewhere in this area. That’s how they can shoot and disappear so fast.”
“Makes sense.”
“All units. We have them on the phone.” the dispatcher said.
Steele clicked the mic twice in acknowledgment. Then they waited. Zerr tapped the steering wheel.
Then Brad came across the radio. “All units. I have the location. The 7-Eleven, Fourteenth Street and Fifteenth Avenue SW.”
“Yee-haw,” Zerr shouted as he wheeled the motorhome out of the parking lot and onto Fourteenth Street. “That’s us.”
Steele got air, then his seatbelt locked as the camper launched off the sidewalk onto the street.
Zerr jammed his foot down on the accelerator as the light changed to yellow. The motorhome continued at its slow pace.
“Oh, shit.” Steele braced for impact.
Somehow Zerr zigzagged the heavy, unbalanced vehicle through traffic to a chorus of honking. He got air again as he wheeled into the 7-Eleven parking lot.
They both had their doors open before they stopped.
A white station wagon was parked in front of the payphones. A man fumbled around in his pocket, inserted a coin, and dialed. He glanced over his shoulder a couple of times but ignored Zerr and Steele racing toward him. He was whispering. Steele reached him first, dragged him away from the phone and tossed the man onto the ground. Steele held the man down with his knee and tightened the cuffs.
Steele heard a door open and glanced over in time to see Zerr pull the passenger out of the car and onto the ground by Steele’s prisoner.
Sirens sounded from all directions, and cruisers skidded to a halt around them.
Steele and Zerr lifted their prisoners to their feet.
“You two are under arrest for murder.”
Steele’s prisoner protested. “No. See. Not true. Call my wife. She misses me.”
“Oh, I forgot to say you should shut up.”
They shoved the prisoners ahead of them. Before they reached the cruisers, the press swarmed the parking lot. If possible, more reporters than cops. They shouted questions.
“Are these the snipers?”
“What led you to this location?”
“Have they confessed?”
Pittman and Hirsch were at the pickup window at A&W when they heard the sirens. Police cruisers raced past. More cruisers arrived from the north.
Pittman pulled out onto Fourteenth Street, then drove south a block. He parked at the curb in front of the Sacred Heart Church.
They munched burgers and fries as the cops swarmed around two men on the ground.
They slurped some root beer and watched as the cops shoved two men
into separate police cruisers. The cruisers raced away with an outdated motorhome trying to keep up.
Two officers unrolled police tape around the parking lot. Others put up barricades to the avenue.
Marvin picked chunks of beef out of his teeth with a fingernail, then used the end of the straw to catch the meat he couldn’t suck out. “I don’t think we can let this go unchallenged.”
They spent an hour interviewing the suspects, then met in the hall outside the interview rooms and compared notes.
“I have nothing,” Brad said. “My guy says they’re from Newfoundland and came here searching for work. They do handyman jobs.”
“My guy, the same,” Griffin said. “When they get paid, they call their wives and talk to their kids.”
“There weren’t any weapons in their vehicle. Their licenses and registration are up to date,” Brad said. “Neither have a criminal or military record.”
Devlin headed down the hall toward them. “It’s confirmed.” He glanced at Griffin. “Your suspect was on the phone to his wife. RCMP out east confirmed it.”
“Shit.” Brad leaned his head into the wall. “TSU and cruisers were there within a minute.”
Brad headed back into the interview room. “Was someone on the phone before you?”
“What?” the suspect asked.
“Before you used the phone, was someone else using it?”
“Oh, yeah.” He nodded vigorously.
“Can you describe him?”
The suspect shrugged. “Just a guy.”
“Tall? Short? Fat?”
“Not tall, not short. Not fat. Just a guy.”
“Facial hair?”
“No. Maybe. I’m sorry. I didn’t know I needed to remember him. I just wanted to call home. I was excited to call my wife. I just rushed up to the phone.”
Damn. Brad hung his head. We can’t catch a break.
Chapter Fifty-Nine
After the interviews, Brad was back in the zoo trying to figure out what went wrong. Zerr and Steele were there in less than a minute and arrested the wrong guys. Sturgeon and his team were dismantling the payphone. They could do a better analysis in their lab.
He spun in his chair and stared at the map. He had been right—the snipers were staying inside the target area he’d marked. Not that the information had done them any good.
There was a knock at the door, and Mullen popped his head in. “Detective Coulter, call for you.”
Brad nodded and picked up the phone. “Coulter.”
“Detective. It’s Sadie Andrus.”
“I expected to hear from you.”
“I just wondered—”
“I’m not your personal unnamed source.”
“You sort of are.” He imagined her smirk.
Brad leaned back and rolled his eyes. “Ms. Andrus. I apologize—my fault. I made the mistake of talking to you last week. Now you think we’re friends, or whatever it is you think. I’ve got work to do.”
“Does that mean the men you arrested are the snipers?”
“No comment.”
“Ha, you know that a no comment means yes.”
“No, it does not. I don’t know how to make this clear. I have nothing to say either way.”
“Okay. I’ll go with the story as I have it: Police Capture Snipers. We’ve got excellent film footage from the arrest. A shame you weren’t there.”
Brad rubbed his temples. “Don’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“I’m busy, Ms. Andrus. I have snipers to catch.”
Silence on the line.
“I just don’t think that’s the career-making story you think it is,” Brad said.
“You said you’re still searching for the snipers. You’ve said all I need to know.”
The volume was down on the television in the zoo when Brad entered. When he saw the banner across the bottom of the screen saying regular programming would be interrupted, he increased the volume.
The CFCN and CTV logos replaced Grizzly Adams as he stumbled through the snow-covered forest. Like the weather here today.
“I’m Angus Ferguson. At 4:00 p.m. today, my cameraman and I witnessed the arrest of the snipers. In a lightning-strike raid, police descended on the 7-Eleven on Fourteenth Street and Fifteenth Avenue southwest.”
The screen changed to a bumpy film out the front of a vehicle. Police cruisers raced past. The video bounced as the picture showed the parking lot.
“We could get these images as we raced to the scene. My cameraman kept filming as we jogged closer to the arrests.”
The image switched to a tactical officer grabbing a suspect running away from a telephone booth. A second tactical officer pulled the other suspect out of a white station wagon.
“While police have released little information, it is apparent police were acting on reliable information and conducted this arrest with overwhelming police presence. The scene is taped off. They towed the white station wagon to Police Headquarters for examination. We will interrupt programming as additional information becomes available.”
Shithead.
Brad switched channels to CFAC. He was treated to Charlie’s Angels saving the world. Just as he was getting interested, the screen changed to the CFAC logo, then Sadie Andrus appeared.
“Earlier today, police arrested two men at a payphone on Fourteenth Street and Fifteenth Avenue in front of a 7-Eleven.”
The video on the screen showed police cars converging. The sound of sirens came from all directions.
“Police quickly rushed the men away from the scene. While there has been no formal announcement from the police, other news outlets are reporting this is the arrest of the snipers.”
The screen switched to a white car.
“Also, at the scene was a white station wagon. Those same news outlets are reporting the white van police have been searching for is a white station wagon. I have it on excellent authority these are not the snipers. Citizens should maintain caution until we have additional information from the police. Sadie Andrus, CFAC News.”
Brad shut off the TV, slumped in his chair, and rubbed his temples. A tension headache had worked its way across his shoulders, up his neck and lodged in his temples. He opened his desk drawer and searched for Tylenol. He pulled out a bottle and dumped the pills into his hand. He popped two Tylenol in his mouth and swallowed. They lodged in his throat. He grabbed a cup of coffee, washed the pills down, then gagged on the cold coffee.
Chapter Sixty
Monday Day Thirteen
By seven, Brad and Griffin were pouring over stacks of tips. Stinson knocked on the door of the zoo and glanced in. Brad waved him to a chair.
“We’re on to something,” Stinson said. “We figured out what the snipers meant about Rocky Mountain House.”
Brad leaned forward in his chair.
“Ten days ago, an oil field worker was killed at a pump station near Rocky Mountain House. He’d been dead for hours before they found him. He’d been shot with a rifle.”
“Why didn’t we know this before?” Brad asked Stinson. “No one thought it was related to the Calgary shootings?”
“No, because we had a guy in custody.”
“He confessed?” Griffin asked.
“No, but he was a suspect in several other shootings.” Stinson slid a file over to Brad. “His name is Karl Vogel. We suspected him of sabotaging several oil and gas wells. He had a hate-on for oil and gas. He felt the wells were sour gas wells and were poisoning his drinking water and making his family sick. Not just his family, but that the sour gas was responsible for stillbirths, miscarriages, and deformations that started after they drilled the sour gas wells. He lost it in a bar in Rocky Mountain House when his granddaughter was born stillborn. He ranted that night about how the oil companies would pay. Three days later the oil well worker was killed. Karl was arrested that night and his guns seized.” Stinson sat back in his chair and sighed. “They questioned him for hours. He didn’t confess, bu
t he didn’t deny it. He sat and grinned at the investigators. Through a lawyer, he pled not guilty and they set a court date for September. Bail was denied.”
Brad slid the file back. “Were any of his guns a match to our sniper?”
Stinson shook his head and rummaged through the file. “No, but the bullet is a match to your sniper.”
“How did you find that out?” Brad asked.
“The evidence was bagged and tagged and sent to the crime lab. But there was no rush on the analysis because we had our man. Or so we thought.”
“Oh, shit,” Brad said.
“One of the Mounties in Rocky believed Karl was taking responsibility because it helped his cause, not because he did it. That made Karl a celebrity and hero in the community. The Mountie put a rush on getting the bullet analyzed. That’s how we know the bullets match.”
“So, the snipers were in Rocky Mountain House ten days ago.” Brad grabbed the file and flipped through the pages. “Was this the first murder?”
Stinson shrugged and swallowed hard. “That’s not all.”
“What do you mean?” Brad’s head snapped up from the file.
“There was a shooting in Airdrie later that same day—Friday.”
“What the heck?” Brad glared across the desk at Stinson. “You’re just telling me now?”
Stinson pushed his chair back against the wall. “Airdrie RCMP thought it was a robbery. The salesman was shot with a handgun, probably a large caliber pistol.” Stinson shrugged and cast his eyes down. “He wasn’t found until the next day when the dealership manager came to work. The credit card slips were on the floor and the cash was gone.”
Brad knew he had to make this quick, there was a lot happening, but his gut told him the shooting at the Airdrie dealership was important. He could have phoned, but he wanted to talk to the manager in person. He headed up Highway 2 to Airdrie, swung onto the exit ramp, and stopped in front of the dealership. He had his badge out as he headed to the receptionist. “I’m Detective Coulter. I need to see the manager, urgently.”
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