False Witness

by Scott Cook

  “Look at him,” said Crowe. “He’s fine.”

  Alex didn’t think we has fine, but there was no way he was going to admit that in front of Crowe and Walsh. “Yeah,” he said. “Don’t worry about me.”

  He heard Angie clear her throat behind him, turned and saw her raised eyebrows. Jesus, he groaned inwardly. This is like being the mutual friend at a really bad party. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Angie Dawson, this is Tess Gallagher and Sam Walsh from the Chronicle. Guys, this is Angie Dawson.”

  Crowe frowned. “Shitbox said you’d made a friend. I take it this is her?”

  “Yeah,” said Angie, eyes hot. She stepped out from behind Alex. “I’m her. And I’d appreciate it if you didn’t talk like I wasn’t here. Everything was going great with me and Alex until I found out about you people. And thanks to you, I’m caught up in something I don’t understand, which, according to Shitbox, could get me killed. So cut me a little slack, okay?”

  Alex wrapped an arm around her waist and gave the rest of the group a defiant look. He was proud of her for standing up for herself. This wasn’t her fight.

  Crowe held up his hands in surrender. “I’m sorry,” he said. “You’re right. But this is a fucked up scenario for all of us, and we all have a lot of talking to do. We should get to it.”

  Angie crossed her arms on her chest. “I’m not a part of this,” she said. “I mean, other than the fact that Alex and I are . . . involved. You all can do what you need to do. I won’t go to the police, or anyone else, I promise. I just want to go home.”

  “I agree,” said Alex. “Whatever’s going on here, Angie isn’t a part of it.”

  Shitbox was fidgeting with his enormous fingers, clearly rattled by the argument. You’ve got to be kidding, Alex thought. He can wipe out five guys like a buzzsaw, but he can’t handle a little confrontation?

  “I tried to tell em, Jason,” the giant said. “But I don’t know everything. Maybe you can?”

  Crowe sighed. The look on his face made Alex think of a line his grandfather used to say: rode hard and put away wet. Dark crescents hung under the man’s eyes, and he looked like he hadn’t shaved in a week. He seemed to have a perpetual scowl. For some reason, it made him think of Chuck Palliser.

  “I wish we could do that, Angie,” said Crowe. “I really do. The last thing I wanted was another person tangled up in this. But there are too many dead bodies tied to this thing already.”

  “Shitbox told us about Diane Manning last night,” said Alex. “You’re all lucky to be alive.”

  Tess stepped forward. “We have Jason to thank for that,” she said. “And Sam.”

  The smirk on Walsh’s face was annoying, but Alex had to admit the guy had guts. And he had saved Tess’s life. That alone was worth giving him a break. Not to mention the fact he was here to help Alex, when he really had no reason to.

  “We can pat ourselves on the back later,” said Crowe. “We need to get inside and start figuring this out.” He turned to Alex. “I found you here weeks ago, which means whoever’s behind this has probably figured it out, too. They may not be here right now, but I’m not willing to bet anyone’s life on that.”

  That jogged Alex’s memory. “About that,” he said. “How the hell did you find me so quickly? I had a whole new identity set up by Chuck Palliser and Leslie Singer. I drove a rented car, stayed under the radar.”

  Crowe gave him a sardonic grin. “I know a guy with an IQ of 170,” he said. “Sort of an asshole savant. He cross-referenced info from you and your friends on social media, then used that to come up with a likely place for you to hide. Then he started hacking into hotel databases and found someone named Alex Wolfe. A little fidgeting with the cheap wifi security camera and there you were. He’d never admit it, but I’m sure there was more than a little luck involved.”

  “Jesus,” Alex breathed. “I told Singer I should have gone to the cops instead of hiding out!”

  “That wouldn’t have stopped these guys,” said Crowe. “It didn’t keep them from taking out Palliser.”

  “Funny,” said Alex. “That’s just what Leslie Singer said. Has anyone heard from her?”

  “Nothing,” said Walsh. “Wherever she went, she’s good and lost.”

  “Smart woman,” said Crowe, walking to the back of the Yukon. “There’s no point in going to the cops now, either. Even if they could protect you, as soon as they found out I’m involved, they’ll turn the investigation on us, not the ones who want us dead.” He popped the latch, lifted the door and reached inside. He emerged with a heavy black nylon bag on his shoulder. Walsh and Tess followed suit, pulling out overnight bags.

  Walsh watched Crowe as he pulled the back door closed. “You told us to travel light,” he said. “What have you got in there?”

  Crowe looked at him like it was the stupidest question he’d ever heard. “Guns,” he said simply.

  Alex felt his stomach turn. If there was any residual hope that this situation would somehow just go away, that single word drove it from his mind completely. This was life and death. This was real.

  Crowe headed into the cabin and everyone followed. Shitbox grinned as they got to the kitchen.

  “Anybody want bacon?” he asked gleefully.

  #

  The next hour consisted of each one telling what they knew about the night of Tom Ferbey’s murder, the trial, and the following events from their perspective (except, of course, for Angie, who stayed silent). Shitbox listened intently, but his glazed eyes betrayed his lack of understanding. He finally left the room and moved to the kitchen to do the dishes. Crowe got up periodically to peer out the living room window at the road below. A couple of times he left the conversation entirely and walked the perimeter of the cabin.

  Revelation followed revelation for Alex. It hadn’t been Tom Ferbey at all who had annoyed him with phone calls about a stockpile of meth at Highland Storage. Now Alex realized that whoever had been on the phone also influenced what he ended up believing about that night, and hence his testimony. It hadn’t been Tom Ferbey on the phone, and it hadn’t been Rufus Hodge he’d seen shooting Tom. Alex had been played like a chess piece, and his testimony had helped convict an innocent man. And Jason Crowe, the boogeyman, might just be the only person who could keep him alive.

  Finally, Tess came out with the question Alex had been dreading since they had begun talking things through.

  “There’s one thing I don’t get,” she said. She sat Indian style on the floor next to Sam, sipping her second cup of Shitbox’s surprisingly good coffee. “The verdict. Gregory Larocque is known across the province as a liberal judge. Sam and Diane both said that, looking back, there wasn’t nearly enough hard evidence for a conviction.”

  “Maybe it was optics,” said Sam. “Diane said she wasn’t going to bother with an appeal because Hodge was just too unlikeable to be a sympathetic case. Especially after Palliser and Duff were murdered.”

  Crowe returned from outside. Alex hadn’t even noticed he was gone. The guy was amazingly quiet in spite of his boots. “That’s just it,” said Crowe, turning a kitchen chair and straddling it. “Larocque ruled before the killings. I know Hodge wasn’t exactly Little Miss Sunshine during the trial, but he wasn’t a cop-killer at that point. That couldn’t have influenced the verdict.”

  “It didn’t,” Alex said quietly. “But something else did.”

  All eyes turned to him, except for Angie’s. She had been staring at her hands for several minutes. Here we go, he thought. Time to pay the piper.

  “What do you mean?” Tess asked.

  “Look, I know how this is going to sound, but hear me out first, okay?”

  “Just get to the point,” Crowe groused.

  “Larocque had a hate on for Hodge because Hodge attacked his daughter in Fish Creek and threatened her. Told her to tell Larocque that they could get to her any time.”

  Sam frowned. “Larocque doesn’t have a daughter.”

  “She’s illegitimate. Na
me’s Sarah Payne.”

  Crowe’s eyes narrowed. “No way,” he said. “Didn’t happen.”

  “She called him up herself and told him about it.”

  “All right, maybe it happened, but if it was one of the Roses – and I’m not saying it was – it sure as hell wasn’t under my orders.”

  Shitbox came back into the living room, drying his hands on a dish towel. Red spots had blossomed high on his heavy cheeks. “Um, boss?” he squeaked. “I don’t wanna accuse anybody, but you did say you couldn’t trust the rest of the guys.”

  Crowe looked agitated. He slammed a fist on the back of the chair. “Goddammit,” he said finally. “All I do know is that Hodge didn’t have anything to do with it, and neither did I. If it was one of the Roses, he was doing it on his own.”

  “But why?” asked Tess. “Whoever it was obviously tried to manipulate the verdict in the other direction.”

  “I don’t know,” said Alex. “The judge called Chuck that same night, and Chuck made sure Sarah was protected. He sent a uniformed cop for her, so maybe she went into official witness protection. I don’t know exactly what happened to her after that.”

  Sam held up a hand. His expression was dark. “Wait a minute,” he said. “You’re saying you knew the verdict had been influenced?”

  Alex hung his head. “Yeah,” he said. “I found out that night. Chuck and Singer were in on it, too. Chuck was a hard guy, unforgiving. He believed that what they’d done was justice. He made me believe it, too.”

  Saying it out loud, Alex realized now how wrong he’d been. It seemed so right that night in Singer’s office, so natural. But now he knew in his heart that it should have gone against every instinct he had as a reporter. With that came another realization: the book. Everything he’d written so far, almost fifty thousand words, was bullshit. And had he ever planned to address the subject of Larocque’s tainted verdict? No, he hadn’t.

  Angie put a hand on his. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah. No.”

  Crowe surprised Alex by cocking his head at an odd angle and pretending to play the violin. “Boo-fucking-hoo,” he said testily. “Any one of us would’ve done the same thing in your situation. Get over it.”

  Alex saw Sam open his mouth to speak, then close it again as Tess’s elbow struck home in his ribs. Sam gave her an odd look, then opened his mouth again. “As I was going to say, influencing the verdict plays along with their general modus operandi, assuming the killers knew that Larocque would flip out and go to Palliser. Even if it did come out, there would be a huge public outcry against Hodge, not the judge. The worst-case scenario is the attorney general would fire Larocque. No politically-minded judge in the country would threaten to overturn Hodge’s conviction based on something like that. If anything, it would end up in a legal battle that would drag on for years. From the public’s perspective, it’s just another reason to hang Hodge from the nearest flagpole.”

  A look of sudden realization crept across Tess’s face. “That’s why they tried to kill Hodge in prison!” she said, clapping her hands together. “If he was dead, it wouldn’t matter if the tainted verdict ever came to light; no one would go over the case again. Who cares about a dead criminal? It would all just go away. And they would get away with everything.”

  Crowe jumped as if he’d sat on a live wire. “Shit!” he yelped. “I’ve been so wound up in all this, I forgot to check in on Hodge.” He pulled his old folding cell phone from the front pocket of his jeans and dialed a number. Everyone sat silently. Alex could feel Crowe’s tension as he heard the tone whirring faintly on the other end of the line. After the sixth ring, Crowe’s brow began to furrow. After the tenth, he finally clapped the phone closed.

  “This isn’t good,” he said.

  “What’s going on?” Sam asked. “Who did you call?”

  “I have a guard inside the Badlands. The one who beat that Aryan inmate into a coma. He’s my go-between with Hodge.”

  Sam blinked, eyes wide. “Holy shit, man. You’re like some kind of James Bond villain.” He seemed to realize what he’d just said, because he quickly added: “I mean that with total respect.”

  Crowe sighed. “He didn’t answer the phone I gave him. That means something’s wrong. I’m positive that whoever lit the swastika outside the Rosebush took out another paid hit on Hodge. To finish the job they started with Billy Trinh.”

  “Maybe the guard was just in the john,” said Alex.

  “That wouldn’t stop him from answering. Trust me.”

  “Uh, guys,” said Sam. He was looking at the screen of his smart phone. “I just checked Twitter.” He looked up at Crowe. Alex saw Sam’s Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed hard. “It’s all over the news. Hodge is in intensive care at Rockyview General. Extensive stab wounds and trauma.”

  Alex sat there, silently processing. The man who had played the role of the devil in his mind for almost a year was at death’s door, and he couldn’t even feel good about it. Another thing that would have seemed insane sixteen hours earlier.

  Crowe closed his eyes. Everyone else in the room seemed to be holding their breath. Alex could see tears welling up in Shitbox’s eyes.

  “Goddam it,” Crowe muttered. He opened his eyes. They seemed a shade darker than they had been moments earlier. “Gimme the details.”

  Sam peered at his screen. “Four members of the Aryan Brotherhood attacked him in his cell. They apparently knocked out a guard and took his uniform and keys to the security wing. Two of them were killed, the other two are in hospital.” He looked up again. “The guard who was with Hodge was killed.”

  #

  No one spoke for a long time. The only sounds in the room were the ticking of the Black Label clock, and Shitbox snuffling quietly near the kitchen. It was Angie who finally broke the silence.

  “What happens now?” she asked.

  Crowe rubbed his hands over his face, driving the heels of his palms into his eyes. He’d been fighting this battle for weeks – months, really – and he was dead tired of it. He had known the odds were stacked against him from the outset, but he felt compelled to see this through to the end, out of loyalty to Hodge. But now Hodge was, in all likelihood, a dead man. Even if he lived – even if, by some miracle, they could somehow get his conviction overturned – his days as the head of the Wild Roses were over. Crowe’s obligation was finished. God knows he didn’t need the money. He could cut his losses right now, invoke the sacred authority of the Church of the Almighty Number One, and bolt. He could be at the Calgary airport in less than five hours. Book the next flight to Istanbul; it was only a twelve-hour direct flight. With a little luck, he was less than a day away from freedom.

  He could feel the eyes of everyone in the room on him, like greasy fingerprints on a window. They were looking to him for answers. For salvation. What would happen to them if he left? Would the killers finally let this go if he stopped pursuing them? For that matter, would the killers even let him leave, or would they try to kill him? Too many what-ifs. He wanted this burden off his shoulders.

  He looked around the room at the expectant faces. Walsh and Tess. They didn’t have to get involved in this, but they had, because they wanted the truth. If it hadn’t been for them, Crowe never would have been able to piece everything together. Dunn was a complete pawn in this game; he’d been moved around the board by forces beyond his control, manipulated into being an unwitting accomplice to murder. Angie Dawson was an innocent, what they’d called collateral damage in his military days. She had been swept into this from the sidelines. And then there was sweet, loyal Shitbox, the one Wild Rose he knew he could still trust.

  As if on cue, his phone rang. He opened it and looked at the screen. It was Max Pulaski’s number. How stupid do you think I am, you fucking Polack? he thought. The phone quieted after the sixth ring. Five seconds later, the chorus of I’m Too Sexy rang through the cabin. Shitbox flinched and fumbled for his smart phone. He looked at the screen. “It’s Pulaski, boss.”


  “Don’t answer,” said Crowe. Eventually, Right Said Fred stopped bragging about being a model and doing his little turn on the catwalk. There was silence again.

  “Jason?” Tess said after several moments. “I think we deserve to know what your plans are.”

  He looked at her, and suddenly his mind’s eye was filled with the face of Diane Manning. He remembered the look on her face when they made love in the cot at the Rosebush. The fire in her eyes. The hunger in her mouth. The image was suddenly replaced by the look of confusion and terror when the bullets started flying less than half and hour later. The cold whiteness of her face as she lay on the floor of the safe room, little Katie’s blood-soaked hands still on the hem of her dress.

  “Boss?” Shitbox said, voice quavering. “What happens now?”

  Crowe finally stood up and crossed to the spot on the kitchen floor where he’d left the cache of weapons. He unzipped it and withdrew his Sig Sauer. It felt obscenely good in his hands.

  “I’m going to find these fuckers,” he said. “And I’m going to finish this.”

  CHAPTER 32

  The coldness in Crowe’s voice made Sam’s stomach flip, but he wasn’t quite sure whether it was anxiety or excitement. Maybe it was both. He could still recall the adrenaline rush in his system as he fired off shotgun blasts in the Rosebush, bullets flying around him. The sudden clarity of thought as he did so, the feeling of doing something. Had it only been twenty-four hours ago?

  Tess must have seen something on his face. “You’re not serious,” she said sternly. “You are not getting involved in this.”

  “He’s going to need help,” Sam said.

  “That’s my job,” said Shitbox, who seemed to have gotten himself under control. He was apparently unaware of the film of snot that had pooled in his prodigious moustache.

  “Nobody’s coming with me,” said Crowe. “Shitbox, you need to stay with them in case I don’t make it back. I’ll stay in touch; make sure your phone is charged.”