Cold City Streets

by L.H. Thomson

  He looked up, his attention more focused. “I’m not a great believer in living in false hope, Ms. Harper, ma’am. So we get to the time you think my goose is cooked, then you best tell me. Don’t lead me into thinking I’m going to see my wife and daughter again if I’m not, ‘cause I’m not having them out there waiting for me if I’m doing life.”

  “First off, there’s no way they’d get first-degree murder on this one. So it would likely be ten-to-fifteen years for second-degree, or less for manslaughter.”

  “That’s a real comfort there, eh?” he said sarcastically.

  “Second, we have a long way to go before your options are exhausted. So stick with me, okay? We’ll get you through this.”

  He nodded slightly, trying to feign a semblance of support. But the look on Paul Sidney’s face suggested he didn’t share her optimism.

  Jessie parked her car in the alley spot behind the legal clinic building. Around the corner, on the sidewalk ahead of the front door, the protesters continued to recommend she burn in Hell.

  She waved at them as she went past; a few booed and murmured insults, but a couple of the elderly lady-pickets held up one hand each in a little cupped wave back. It had all become so familiar in so little time, she thought, that it was even sillier than the day they arrived.

  Cobi Tate hadn’t checked in with her yet, though she’d told him the day prior that she’d be out at the Remand Center and on her phone. Maybe he had nothing new to report. After the assurances she’d given Paul Sidney, she hoped that wasn’t the case.

  “Hey, Jess!” The voice came from the old BMW pulling up to the curb across from the office.

  She crossed the street. “What’s up, Mr. Tate?”

  “I was just about to leave. We got a call this morning from Michel Edman, the eco activist who made the papers for threatening Featherstone. He’s willing to talk for a few minutes, but we have to meet him right away; he’s going out of town until next month.”

  “Where are we going?” she asked as she rounded the car and climbed into the passenger seat.

  “He wants to meet at Hawrelak Park. He said you’ll see a familiar face there who’ll take us to him. Dude sounded way-out paranoid. Like, real scared.”

  He fired up the engine and pulled the old BMW out onto Ninety-sixth Street.

  28

  At the nearly empty park, just a couple of cars occupied the expansive snow-covered lot, probably belonging to cross-country skiers. A wide-open series of fields with a central pond and band shell, the park was part of the much larger valley park system, extending for a dozen miles in either direction, bisecting the city. In the summer, it was a hub for music and kids’ festivals, but on a brisk February at noon, it was as deserted as winter allows.

  “You see anybody?” Cobi asked as they sat parked, the car facing the fields. “Because I sort of feel like we’re sitting ducks out here if someone wanted to get some target practice in.”

  “Hey… you booked this thing,” she said, casting her eyes across the park, looking for a sign they were either okay or very much in the wrong place at the wrong time. “Don’t start creeping me out now.”

  The extra snow and ice on the tree branches solidified the sense of stillness and bleak desolation emanating from the motionless park.

  They waited in silence for several minutes. “It’s quiet here, even though Groat Road is so close,” Cobi finally said. “Maybe I should keep the engine running…”

  A small blue sedan pulled into the park, following the short stretch of roadway that ran up to the lot entrance. It turned in, then turned right and drove to the other side of the gravel parking area, about a hundred feet away.

  Someone got out of the passenger side, and Jessie strained her eyes against the glare of the sun off the snow to identify them. The figure approached, coming into view after getting between her and the sun. It was Omri Hedrow, the student who had tried to hire her on campus.

  She lowered the passenger window. “Mr. Hedrow. Fancy meeting you here.”

  “Ms. Harper.” He smiled but didn’t have a wool hat on, and the steam rose from both his mouth and the top of his head. He looked like a high school student.

  “So… this is weird,” Jessie said.

  “My apologies for all the cloak-and-dagger,” he said. “But Michel is concerned for his safety right now. Can I ask both of you to join us in the car and we’ll talk?”

  Jessie and Cobi shared a look that said neither felt that comfortable with the idea.

  “What’s the worst that could happen?” Cobi said.

  Jessie’s look grew sterner, but she left it alone. They got out and followed Hedrow to the other car, their shoes crunching in the few inches of snow that had covered the lot since last scraped by a city plow. He opened the back door of the sedan and they climbed in, Jessie first. Hedrow climbed back into the driver’s seat.

  In the front passenger seat, a short, bearded man with square glasses turned around to face them, leaning through the gap to shake hands. “Thank you both for going out of your way. I have to apologize for that, but I can’t be too careful right now.”

  Cobi said, “You’re scared of PetroMas? Or being arrested? We saw the story in the paper about you threatening to kill Brian Featherstone last year.”

  The activist shook his head. “A complete fabrication. I’ve never threatened to hurt anyone in my life, and there are a few thousand Edmontonians who would back that up. But I’d made several public statements about that company’s involvement in destroying the ecosystem and legacy of Northern Alberta, as well as its involvement in a gold mine.”

  “Au-rex.”

  Edman smiled. “You’ve been doing your homework.”

  “It wasn’t exactly a secret,” Cobi said. “But what made you different from everybody else who was suggesting Featherstone was involved in the scam? There were lawsuits, news stories…”

  “They didn’t have what we have.”

  “Which is…?”

  “A recording of Featherstone mocking an investor, basically admitting he walked away without a scratch.”

  “Yeah… uh huh,” Cobi said. “If you had that tape, it’d be all over the news in a minute.”

  Edman shook his head. “There’s a problem with it. No one is identified on the recording.”

  “So it could be anyone talking?” Jessie said.

  “It’s him.” Edman said.

  “How can you be sure?”

  “We know the guy he was talking to.”

  “So why not get that guy to go to the press?” Jessie asked. “Why go into hiding?”

  “The guy is terrified. He knows what these people are capable of. We tried to take it to the media without him,” Edman said. “We told them all they would need to do is get some recordings of Featherstone’s voice from old T.V. or radio interviews, then have a voice analyst compare them.”

  “And they didn’t go for that?”

  “They laughed at the idea. They said there was no way the chains that own them would allow them to spend time and money chasing something so risky.”

  “What about the CBC? Or the independent bloggers?” Cobi suggested.

  “We gave a copy to the CBC, but they haven’t done anything with it yet and it’s been three months. Omri checked with them last week, and they promised they’re working on it, but that it’s not as simple as voice analysis, and that the recording quality is too rough to be of legal value.”

  “You think they gave up?”

  “No. I just think they have a lot more hoops to jump through than what people realize,” Edman said. “They expose themselves to a lot of risk, going after the estate – and widow – of a dead guy.”

  Jessie said, “You must be pretty worried about PetroMas to be in hiding…”

  He nodded. “I was being followed; my apartment was broken into. The final straw was two weeks ago when a nail ‘conveniently’ punctured a hole in my brake lines. I ran out of brake fluid on Ninety-seventh Street in rush
hour traffic. If it hadn’t been for the railway underpass and the hill on the other side, I wouldn’t have been able to slow down enough to steer into the light standard in neutral and stop the car.”

  Possibly, he was just being paranoid. Brake lines did rupture; people’s apartments were broken into. “Did you take this to the police?”

  Edman scoffed at that. “With the number of times they’ve arrested me for peacefully demonstrating….?”

  Jessie questioned that. “You rappelled from the top of the legislature rotunda with a flag that read ‘We’re Burning Your Children’s Future’ and a giant picture of the former premier lighting a stogie with a thousand-dollar bill.”

  Edman smirked and looked down slightly, conscious that he shouldn’t be self-satisfied in the moment. “Oh come on. You didn’t think that was funny? And true?”

  “She looked less than dignified,” Jessie pointed out.

  “Hey, they’re out of office now anyway,” Edman said. It was true: a provincial election just months earlier had turfed the spendthrift right-wing Conservative party after forty years in office. “We won. Sort of. The fat cats are scurrying for the hills.”

  “So why not take this to the province?” Cobi asked. “The new government is sympathetic to the environment.”

  “Sure, maybe. Assuming I can find a department that will take on Peter Kennedy. But that could take months, and I’m already worried PetroMas is trying to have me killed,” Edman complained. “But if I give the audio recording to you, and you leak it to the press…”

  Jessie looked irritated. Cobi saw her reaction. “I don’t get it,” he said. “What’s wrong with that?”

  “Mr. Edman is suggesting that if I leak it, the media will treat it as if it’s evidence from the case, and assume it’s genuine, and run with it.”

  “And… that’s bad?” Cobi asked.

  “Yes, that’s bad,” Jessie said. “I’m an officer of the court and could be both held in contempt and disbarred by the law society for deliberately lying to the press to influence a case.”

  “If you were caught,” Edman said. “The press wouldn’t use your name.”

  “It would also require the press to pretend they didn’t know it was an item in evidence or the outlet that published it could face criminal contempt charges.”

  “Uh huh,” Cobi said. “So basically, he wants you to take a whole lot of risk, so that he doesn’t have to.”

  Edman didn’t like that version. “Hey, this is for a greater good,” he said. “These people are complete scum; they ruin the groundwater for farmers and their livestock; they pollute the rivers; they send toxic agents downstream that have led to cancer clusters among aboriginal populations. They’re murderers.”

  “Yeah?” Cobi said. “What about you, Mr. Edman? You an ‘eye-for-an-eye’ kind of dude? If you had a chance to stop the Brian Featherstones of the world by shooting them dead… would you do it? I mean, if he was that bad, and all.”

  The environmentalist appeared disappointed. “Mr. Tate, I’m a pacifist and a peace activist. I truly believe there are non-violent solutions to the problems that divide us.”

  “That’s not really an answer to the question,” Jessie said.

  Omri Hedrow turned around in the driver’s seat. “That’s a disrespectful thing to ask Mr. Edman,” he warned.

  Edman put a hand on his young follower’s shoulder. “It’s okay, bud. It’s all good. Look, to make myself absolutely clear: I didn’t shoot Brian Featherstone.”

  “And you didn’t hire anyone else to do so?” Cobi said.

  “I did not.”

  “If you’re so peaceful, why the uttering threats charge?” Cobi said.

  “Because he had his driver as a ‘witness’ to an event that didn’t happen, and the cops in this town don’t particularly like me.”

  He came across as smug and too self-confident, Cobi thought, even if he said the right things. “So you figure that we get this tape out there, PetroMas will be under the kind of attention that’ll make it easy for you to stop worrying?”

  “Something like that,” Edman said. “As I said, it’s for the greater good.”

  Jessie studied him for a moment, letting the idea sink in. She had no intention of doing his dirty work, even if Featherstone had been a bastard. The risk of compromising a trial for a client who was already innocent made it unthinkable, not to mention the fact that she had little chance of being sure the recording was original, unaltered, in context. “You’re going to have to find someone else to look out for you, Mr. Edman,” she said.

  He frowned again, but this time his eyes saddened, as if he felt slightly sorry for her. “That’s too bad, Ms. Harper. I can be a good friend to have in the environmental community.”

  Class act, Cobi thought. He wondered if Jessie recognized it for the threat it was.

  29

  They drove back to the office in near-silence, the radio off and the only sounds the slush of the tires on the wet road along with the occasional clearing swipe by the windshield wipers.

  Cobi drove at the speed limit, cautious of the slippery surfaces in February and of braking too hard, too fast and going into a slide, or hitting the car ahead. He seemed deep in thought.

  “That didn’t go very well, did it?” she suggested. It was something, at least, to snap him out of what looked like a contemplative mood.

  “No, not really,” he said. He let it hang there for a few more seconds then said, “Ran into your ex-boyfriend again last night.”

  Jessie tensed up. David? What now? “You saw David?”

  “I think he was following me. You know I said I was going to talk to Buddy, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That part didn’t go so well. Ended out getting hit over the head; I wake up, I’m being grilled by Leon Gross and Darren Reed, getting threatened and shit.”

  “You’re kidding? Why didn’t you tell me this?”

  “I am telling you. This just happened last night, and the whole thing with Michel Edman came up meantime. Anyway, I think your boyfriend…”

  “Ex-boyfriend.”

  “I think your ex-boyfriend was following me, because they took me to some gym on the south side, hell and gone from downtown. Next thing you know, he’s strolling through the door. Timing was good, because Deathtouch was about to do bad shit to me.”

  “So he saved you from getting beaten up?”

  “Sort of, yeah. Then he took me out to the lobby and stuck a gun against my head and ranted about you for about two minutes while threatening to blow my brains out.”

  “He did what?!”

  “No joke,” Cobi said. “I take care of myself just fine, you know, and my pops was a cop for a lot of years. But your boy scared the shit out of me. You need to do something about that. Like, get a restraining order and a gun.”

  The light changed again, and Cobi gently stepped on the gas.

  Jessie kept her her cool. What do I do? He hasn’t threatened me. He’s a cop. He always bumps into me, it’s never like he’s stalking me. “I don’t think they’d give me one,” she said. “I’ve handled cases for women in this situation, and you need an incident, evidence of harassment.”

  “Man, that is some bullshit right there,” Cobi said. “Guy like that shouldn’t have a gun and a badge.”

  “He has, like, nine commendations for exemplary service. He once went into a burning crack house and saved an addict.”

  Cobi turned and stared at her. “You’re serious? Your insane stalker boyfriend is a local hero?”

  She took a deep breath. “Now you understand why my mother thinks I should marry him. Or, she did. She won’t after I tell her about this. Cobi…”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m really sorry. I mean, I know this isn’t my fault or that I shouldn’t need to apologize…”

  “I ain’t mad at you.”

  “I know. But I feel guilty that you’re being dragged into my mess.”

  Cobi shrugged. “
That’s life. We’ve all got problems, you know? You think I come with a squeaky clean biography? My last employer was a loan shark. Who knows what kind of shit that could bring down on you later. You good with that?”

  She smiled. “Do I have a choice?”

  “Then I’m good with you paying me to work for you, so long as Crazy Town there doesn’t end my life prematurely.”

  “Sure… well, no guarantees, apparently.”

  He turned to look at her. “You can be pretty damn blunt sometimes.”

  “You just let me know if that becomes a problem for you.” She sounded tough when she said it, fearless.

  “So what now? We wait for a trial date and throw these fools up on the stand? See which one squirms the most?”

  “That’s the measure of last resort,” Jessie said. “First, we still have leads to chase. That line from the Crown about the police not needing Featherstone’s credit cards and call records… did that strike you as a bit weird?”

  “Sure, a little. I mean, it’s the police, right? Sticking with the program has never been high on the priority list.”

  Outside the office, the protesters were in an ugly mood. They were being held back from the front steps by a uniformed patrolman; a dozen or so people – most surprisingly middle-aged, Jessie thought as they parked at the curb – were shoving against him, yelling something at him.

  Or … someone behind him? They got out and crossed the street. The air was bright and unseasonably warm, near zero, and the snow on the road lay under a topcoat of slush. Jessie watched for traffic as they crossed. They skittered between the two parked cars adjacent to the small mob, so they could see what was going on from the sidewalk.

  “YOU DESERVE TO DIE!” a woman with greying hair yelled to the small figure standing behind the officer.

  Andrea Sidney clutched her purse and looked every bit a small child in the corner of a playground, being menaced by the bigger children. The officer was doing a good job of making sure they couldn’t get to her. For a moment, Jessie didn’t understand what was going on; then she glanced at the door.

  “Back in twenty minutes,” the small sign read.