Deadline

by Craig McLay

Colin scanned the others quickly and immediately recognized the tall one at the front. Now that they were standing in the same room, the resemblance the younger one had to his father was uncanny.

  “I know you,” Colin said. “You’re on Ludnick’s security staff. Your name’s Gus. I guess that’s short for Augustine. Augustine Levant.”

  The man, who Colin guessed was in his early twenties, looked anxiously at his father, who appeared to betray not the slightest concern that Colin was there. Like all followers, these ones appeared incapable of making a decision without their leader. At least, Colin hoped that was the case.

  “I’m guessing you’re the one I chased through the basement of the rec centre,” Colin said. “The one who stuck Devane’s body in the locker. The old man get you to do a lot of the grunt work, does he?”

  “Welcome, brother,” Crowley said, spreading his hands. “We give great thanks for your timely arrival.”

  “Save it for Sunday,” Colin said, gesturing towards Janice. “Untie her.”

  Crowley smiled, giving Colin the same view of his dental regimen that Janice had gotten. “Or what? You’ll shoot me? Anything you could possibly threaten to do is inconsequential when compared to what I would face if I contravened God’s will.”

  “It’s not God’s will, it’s mine,” Colin said. “Be advised: I already shot one guy today and, although he was a corrupt and maggoty excuse for a sentient life form, you’re a much more deserving target.” Colin was careful to stand out of striking distance of either Crowley or the others. He had seen what these guys were capable of.

  “We are not so different,” Crowley said. “We both seek to right the wrongs of others. The only difference between us is that my methods are far more effective than yours.”

  “That and the fact that you literally carve people up and I only do it metaphorically,” Colin said. “Now untie her.”

  Crowley shook his head. “I cannot do that.”

  Colin considered his position. Actually shooting Crowley was tricky and all hell would break loose. If he missed, the bullet might ricochet off the floor or the walls and hit Janice or himself. Hell, at this range, the bullet might even pass right through Crowley and do the same thing. He raised the gun and pointed it at Crowley’s head.

  “I’m not going to count,” Colin said. “And I’m not going to ask again.”

  “Very well,” Crowley said. “Rebecca.”

  For a fraction of a second, Colin wondered why Crowley was calling him Rebecca. It was the same fraction of a second it took Janice to open her mouth and yell “Colin, look out!”

  It was a fraction of a second too long.

  -60-

  Colin felt a sudden excruciating pain as the nail lodged in his shoulder blade.

  The Glock fell out of his hand and clattered on the floor. Colin tried to turn around to see who had stabbed him, but ended up tripping over his own feet and hitting the floor himself. He was lucky to fall on his left side so as to avoid driving the nail through his shoulder blade and into his lung. He managed to twist around to see what looked like an 18-year-old girl staring at him with a horribly vacant expression.

  Crowley stepped forward and picked up the gun, shoving it absently into one of the pockets of his cloak.

  “This is my daughter, Rebecca,” he said, gesturing to the girl. “Until last year, she was being kept in a home for what they call behaviourally challenged children. Have you ever heard of anything more ridiculous? She ran away from five foster homes because she was trying to find her way back to her true family. She was supposed to be participating in a later part of the ritual, but I believe she has just proved herself ready.”

  He put his hand on the girl’s head. She closed her eyes and bowed her head towards the floor. “Father.”

  Crowley leaned over and yanked the nail out of Colin’s shoulder. It hurt as much coming out as it had going in and he let out a screech of pain.

  “Savour your pain, my son,” he said, looking at Colin. “It is the same pain felt by the one who will deliver you from this place of darkness.” He motioned to the others. “Bring him.”

  Colin felt himself lifted up and carried across the room. His right arm was totally useless and Crowley had his left in a vice-like grip. He wrenched his left foot loose and kicked out blindly, connecting with something soft. He heard a thump and looked down to see the security guard, Gus, land heavily on the floor.

  “Quickly!” Crowley shouted as the guard’s place was taken up by another blank-faced son who was almost as large.

  Colin writhed and protested, but there were too many of them. He felt himself lifted up and dropped down forcefully on a skinny table. He looked down to see that it wasn’t a table, but a cross. Gus reappeared and threw a chain over Colin’s ankles, cinching it tight to hold them in place while his brother moved up to take hold of Colin’s left wrist. Crowley handed the nail to Rebecca and showed her where to position it on Colin’s lower arm before reaching down to pick up the sledgehammer.

  Colin struggled wildly to free his arm, but the security guard was much too strong and Colin didn’t have any leverage. Colin looked down to see one of the other kids approaching him. She was holding some sort of metal bowl up over her head. Colin managed to lift his left knee and started working to get his foot loose.

  “Suffering is the path to salvation,” Crowley intoned.

  The girl reached the bottom of the altar. Colin managed to get his left leg free and caught her with a glancing kick that knocked her off balance. The bowl tipped over, spraying her with what looked like blood. A lot of blood.

  “Hold him!” Crowley yelled.

  Colin felt himself grabbed on all sides. As hard as he tried, he couldn’t get his other leg or his arm free. Crowley raised the sledgehammer. He could feel the cold tip of the nail pressing down on the soft flesh of his inner arm.

  “Only in blood shall we wash away our sins!” Crowley yelled.

  Colin wasn’t sure, but he thought he heard somebody else yell something at almost the same time. Crowley didn’t take any notice. His eyes were wild, his face a mask of fervent devotion. He brought the hammer all the way up and tensed to bring it down with as much force as he could muster.

  At which point, two 9 mm slugs tore off most of the left side of his skull.

  Colin watched with almost dreamlike detachment as Crowley collapsed like a marionette, dropping the hammer on the floor, where it landed with a distant, echoing clang. It was the last thing Colin was consciously aware of before he passed out.

  -61-

  Giordino was sitting at the end of Colin’s hospital bed when he woke up.

  It took him a second to figure out where he was. His mouth was dry and his shoulder was tightly bandaged. Everything else seemed to be intact. There was an IV line running into his left arm that he guessed was feeding him some sort of analgesic to reduce the pain in his shoulder to a dull throb. He tried moving his right arm to reach for a cup of water and regretted it immediately.

  Giordino jumped up out of her chair and got the water for him, holding the cup forward so that he could suck some of it through a white bendable straw.

  “Thanks, detective,” he said as he angled his head back down. “Good thing you answered the phone.”

  “How are you feeling?” Giordino asked.

  Colin took a deep breath. Even breathing was painful. “Like a death cult tried to kill me. You here to arrest me?”

  Giordino smiled and sat back down. She reached into her briefcase and pulled out the Fresh Start prospectus. “Not exactly. I won’t ask how you managed to get your hands on this. Or the file you sent.”

  Colin stared up at the ceiling. “You know, that’s probably a good thing. I’m pretty sure I’m suffering from some sort of post-traumatic stress disorder, of which one of the key symptoms is memory loss.”

  “Crowley’s dead.”

  “That part I remember.”

  “It looks like he spent most of the last 12 years bouncing around
the country trying to track down and round up his kids,” Giordino said, pulling out another folder. “We know where they were placed. In some cases, they were runaways and in others, the adoptive family appears to have disappeared. One case was a fire, another was an apparent car accident. One family just vanished. Every homicide department in those jurisdictions is now going through their cold cases looking for anything that might match Crowley’s M.O. So far, we’ve turned up three probables.”

  “I’m sure you’ll find more,” Colin said. “Crowley doesn’t strike me as the type of guy who believed in taking time off.”

  “We have the rest of the family in custody,” Giordino said. “We’re still trying to determine how Crowley managed to stay off the radar for all those years.”

  “He said something about there being more of them,” Colin said. “More members of his cult, that is. He hinted that they had helped him hide out. We are legion is what I think he said. It was kind of hard to tell if he was just spouting off or if he was serious.”

  Giordino held up the Knights of the Holy Thorn manifesto document that Janice had printed out. It was sealed in a clear plastic evidence bag.

  “Mind telling me when you were planning to let the rest of us in on this little research project of yours?” she asked.

  “I was just on my way to do that when this last-minute thing came up,” Colin said. “It seemed pretty improbable at the time. Not so much now.”

  “Doctor said that nail did quite the number on your shoulder. You were in surgery for a good couple of hours. He said if it had gone in two centimetres to the left, it would have punctured the main coronary artery.”

  “Well, that’s a comforting thought.”

  Giordino shook her head in disbelief. “So you mind telling me how in the hell you managed to track this guy down before we did?”

  Colin motioned for some more water. Giordino got up and helped him with the cup.

  “Thanks,” he said. “It all started with the prison plan. Devries and some of his well-connected buddies got together to try and figure out how to get their hands on some of the giant pipeline of federal money that was going to come running through the town. It might even have been legit at some stage. However much it was, it wasn’t enough for Devries. He and his cabinet minister buddy must have gotten together and decided to start sweeping names onto the list en masse.”

  “They couldn’t have done that on their own,” Giordino said.

  “No,” Colin said. “I’m guessing that’s probably where guys like your partner would come in handy. When I tried to look up Devane’s record, it had been deleted. Only somebody on the inside could have done that. How is your partner, by the way?”

  “He sustained a skull fracture,” Giordino said. “He’s in a medically-induced coma until they can bring down the pressure on his brain.”

  “Probably the first time it’s been under any,” Colin muttered. “Anyway, Devries swept thousands of names onto that list. Some of them are still in prison. Some of them are probably dead. The more names on the list, the more money he got. I’m guessing it was a secret account that only the president had access to. The legitimate ones weren’t exactly model students. Most of them never showed up. And the ones who did were not exactly rehabilitated.”

  “Like Devane.”

  “Right,” Colin said. “I think that’s where Ludnick came in. It was his job to keep the whole thing quiet. If any complaints or issues arose with any of the students—if I can call them that—associated with the program, it was his job to make sure it went away as quickly and quietly as possible. Devane was kicked out for crushing a kid’s hand in a lift jack. Well, kicked out in the sense that he was told not to come back. His name stayed on the class lists.”

  “Like Crowley’s son, Augustine.”

  “Exactly,” Colin said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he wasn’t the only one Ludnick hired onto his security force. A perfect spot for someone looking to root out sinners. I recognized him as soon as I saw him. He was one of the security guys that had originally gotten involved in the whole thing with Devane. Shalene had said lots of girls had complained about being videotaped by Devane in the past, but nothing had been done about it. That changed in a hurry as soon as the Church of the Holy Thorn took an interest in the matter.”

  “We believe Seth Reznick was the one supplying Devane with at least some of his drugs,” Giordino said. “His number was pre-programmed into Devane’s cell phone.”

  “I always thought he was living beyond his means,” Colin mumbled.

  “All of Crowley’s children have had issues with the law,” Giordino said. “Augustine has a juvenile record for a couple of assaults, both against prospective foster parents or other members of their families. He picked up an adult conviction for attempted murder and arson when he tried to burn down one of their houses while they were still in it. We still don’t know how long he or the rest of the Crowley clan had been staying at that farmhouse. The land was bought years ago by a developer to turn into a new subdivision, but the financing got tied up and then the developer disappeared. It looks like they may have been there for as long as a year.”

  “Crowley had probably tracked his son Augustine to Westhill, Augustine ended up there because of the Fresh Start program,” Colin speculated. “Working for security would give young Gus the opportunity to apprise his father of all the horribly immoral goings-on at his place of work. That was likely when Crowley decided to take a more hands-on approach to things.”

  “You’re certainly not the first two people taken down into that basement,” Giordino observed. “Forensics is going to be going through that place for weeks.”

  “Start going through your missing persons cases,” Colin suggested. “Especially for the downtown sex workers. I couldn’t help but notice that the alley behind Carlyle wasn’t quite as busy as it usually is. Not that I spend any time down there, I hasten to add.”

  “This little scoop of yours is already causing quite a stir,” Giordino said. “The opposition’s already calling for the justice minister to resign. He’s saying he didn’t know anything about any illegal activity. The whole prison project might be scrapped.”

  “I’m sure the neighbours will be happy to hear that,” Colin mused. “What did Devries have to say for himself?”

  Giordino smiled. “We caught up with him at Pearson. He was trying to board a flight to Costa Rica.”

  “I think Peter might owe some money to some less than savoury people,” Colin said. “Either that or he has 500 mistresses hidden away in various apartments around town.”

  “Oh, and Jerome Ludnick was taken to hospital this afternoon with what he described as a self-inflicted gunshot wound.”

  Colin raised his eyebrows. “He said what?”

  “That’s right,” Giordino said. “He said he’d been cleaning it when it discharged accidentally into his thigh. Only problem was, he couldn’t produce the weapon that had caused the injury. Bullet came from a Glock 9 mm semi-automatic. He doesn’t have one of those registered in his name. His residue test came up negative, too. There was no gunpowder on his hands.”

  Colin couldn’t help but smile. “Really?”

  “Really,” Giordino said. “He wanted to make it very clear that he didn’t know anything about any security irregularities at Westhill. Said he’d never even heard of the Fresh Start program. If anything like that was going on, it was all Devries. What kind of gun were you carrying when you walked into that basement?”

  Colin tried to look confused. “Beats me. I’m just a reporter. I can’t tell a Glock from a Kalashnikov.”

  “Uh huh,” Giordino said. “And I don’t suppose you remember how you came to be in possession of that Glock 9 mm semi-automatic you were carrying?”

  “No idea,” Colin said. “Maybe I’ll be able to recall after the years of therapy that will be required to get over this PTSD-inducing experience.”

  Giordino started packing the documentation back into her brief
case. “I am going to need you to come downtown as soon as you’re medically fit to provide us with a detailed statement.”

  “Nothing would please me more,” Colin said. “Should I bring my lawyer with me?”

  “If you feel you might need one,” Giordino said. She got up and headed over to the door. “You know, half the reporters in the western world are in the lobby right now trying to get in here for an exclusive interview.”

  Colin winced at the thought. He’d never been on the other side of a story before and had a feeling he wasn’t going to like it. “Ugh.”

  “I hope you don’t mind, but I took the liberty of letting one of them in,” Giordino said. She opened the door and Janice stuck her head inside.

  “Colin? You okay?”

  “Janice!” Colin said, relieved. “I’m alive. How are you?”

  Giordino pulled the door open so that Janice could enter, then waved and headed out into the hallway. “Mister Mitchell, I’d like to thank you for all your cooperation.”

  Colin managed to wave a couple of fingers, which was about as much as he could manage. Janice gave him a kiss and then looked at his heavily bandaged shoulder. “Are you okay? Does it hurt a lot?”

  “Not too bad,” Colin said. “But when we write this one up, I think you’re going to have to do most of the typing.”

  ONE YEAR LATER

  Knightsbridge, London

  Surprise, surprise, it was raining.

  They had been in London for three weeks and Colin still wasn’t used to the weather. He had checked the weather online and saw that Westhill already had 12 centimetres of snow and was expecting at least five more. Christmas was five weeks away and the only festive mood existed on the brightly lit shop floors of retailers like nearby Harrods. London itself was chilly and damp; the sky a persistent and unbroken slate grey.

  Colin was familiar with this part of the city, having been here many times with his father, who had worked out of an office on Fulham Road. The apartment they were using on Walton Street had also belonged to Colin’s father. When the leasing firm that normally rented it out on the family’s behalf had advised that the current tenant would be moving out at the end of October, Colin had told them not to sign any new contracts on the place. He and Janice had moved in in the middle of November.