False Witness

by Scott Cook

  “What does it all mean? She was with Alex for weeks. I think he actually loved her.”

  “She was keeping tabs on him for Palliser. Making sure he was nice and distracted; making sure the writing kept on flowing smoothly.”

  Tess ran her fingers through her auburn hair, which had been tangled by their earlier activity. “God, I thought I was better at reading people. I didn’t see any of it.”

  “It explains everything,” said Sam. “The double bathroom break – the first time, in the cabin, she must have called Palliser to set up the extraction at the gas station. She had just been waiting for an excuse to get out of there.”

  “She hadn’t counted on the incident on the beach,” said Tess. “She couldn’t have known that it would happen, or that Shitbox would show up and take them to his cabin. She was totally cut off from Palliser as long as she was there. She probably phoned him that night to tell him what was going on. That would explain how Palliser and Flowers knew to come to Lost Lake. Up till then, they were in Calgary.”

  “Shooting at us.”

  “They must have been a few hours ahead of us on the road to the lake. Crowe would have spotted a tail if they were behind us.”

  “It was perfect. They knew that all they had to do was ‘kidnap’ Angie and the rest of us would come running to their door. And she would be the perfect bargaining chip if things went south.”

  “Palliser knew Crowe would try to find him, so he laid in wait for him while Flowers took care of the rest of us.”

  Tess lay there for several moments, breathing. Finally, she wrapped an arm around Sam’s neck and pulled him to her. She laid a long, slow kiss on his mouth.

  “Up till now, I never realized just how lucky we are to be alive,” she whispered in his ear.

  He squeezed her back. “I don’t know if it’s luck,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Angie – Sarah – distracted Palliser long enough for me to shoot him, remember. She had no reason to do that; Palliser wouldn’t have shot her. In fact, he didn’t aim at her in the end, he aimed at Alex.”

  “And Angie stopped him,” Tess said. “I saw the look on her face right before she rammed her head into Palliser’s nose. There was no mistaking it – she cared about him.”

  “That’s one way to look at it,” said Sam, frowning.

  “What’s the other way?”

  “The cops were on their way to the mine, and the only person who knew Angie was really Sarah Payne was Palliser. If she got rid of him, suddenly she’s Angie Dawson, and all she needs to do is walk out of the building with the rest of us.”

  Tess gave him a sidelong look. “That’s a little cynical, isn’t it?”

  “Maybe, but think of this: she would have also been the only person alive who knew where to find the eleven million in untraceable cash.”

  Sam watched Tess bite her lip again, a sure sign she was thinking something she didn’t want to think.

  “So what do we do with this?” she asked. “We can’t honestly say we know the truth one way or the other. It’s all conjecture.”

  “I don’t think we do anything,” he said. “Except maybe go to sleep. Unless you’re up for another round?”

  “After all this? Pardon me if I’m not in the mood, Romeo.” She flipped off the lamp as Alex put the laptop on a chair beside the bed. Then she snuggled back in with him. “Should we tell the police?” she said in the dark.

  “There’s a phrase in the vernacular that goes something like ‘Fuck the police,’” said Sam. “Why the hell should we do their jobs for them?”

  “Technically, we’re withholding evidence.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Sarah Payne’s name never came up. We just spent that last five minutes talking about my stellar performance in the sack.”

  She punched his arm. “What about Alex?”

  “Would it really do him any good to know?”

  “No. But when it comes to you and the truth, you’re a dog with a bone. You don’t let go, consequences be damned.”

  He leaned into her, wrapping his arms around her naked torso and twining his legs around hers.

  “I think maybe I’m learning there are more important things in life,” he whispered in her ear. They ended up making love one more time after all.

  EPILOGUE

  Alex Dunn sat in his cubicle in the Chronicle’s newsroom, trying not to smoke. He couldn’t remember wanting a cigarette so bad since the Rufus Hodge verdict, almost two months earlier. He drummed his fingers on the top of his desk. He stared at the empty screen in front of him, looking for the words that had eluded him since the moment he saw Angie’s body drop to the floor in front of him. Around him, the rest of the newsroom whirred and buzzed, but all of it seemed separate from him somehow, like he was watching a television show that didn’t particularly interest him.

  He had tried a hundred times today to push away the thought, just as he’d tried every other day in the weeks since it had happened. But it kept returning, like a stubborn wasp with a headful of late summer stupid, that just refused to go away. He rummaged in his desk drawers for something to chew, and came up with a package of buffalo jerky he’d picked up at a gas station months earlier as a novelty.

  It made him think of Shitbox. He had gone to see the big man in the hospital the day before. He was out of ICU, and the docs said they expected him to recover fairly well. “I’ll probably need to give up ballet,” Shitbox had said through his oxygen mask, his sides practically bursting the railings of his hospital bed. The other Roses had been to see him, he said. He was their leader now, as crazy as it sounded. But they were out of the business, he said. Once he was out of hospital, they would focus all their efforts on finding the eleven million in cash that was out there somewhere. “I got some ideas,” he told Alex. “When we find it, I’ll let ya know. You deserve some of it, too.” Alex had thanked him with a smile, doubting it would ever happen.

  Alex opened the package of jerky and tore off a stringy strip. The salt reacted quickly, almost painfully, with his salivary glands, and he spit it into the garbage can next to his desk. He stared at the screen for another long while, searching for words that wouldn’t come. He sought out another distraction, and landed on Leslie Singer. He would be called to testify at the old bird’s ethics commission hearing, and Gregory Larocque’s. He was pretty sure Leslie would be allowed to fade into full retirement with just a slap on the wrist. She and her addle-minded husband would likely pull up stakes and head back for Montreal, where they could reconnect with family and leave the scandal behind. No one out east gave two shits about what went on in Alberta, or anywhere west of Toronto, for that matter. Leslie could probably live out her life without anyone ever mentioning the scandal again.

  He couldn’t say the same for Larocque. He’d already been removed from the bench; scuttlebutt among Alex’s sources was that he would be disbarred, as well. Prosecution wasn’t entirely out of the question. Alex himself had kept quiet about his own knowledge of the verdict. Singer, along with Sam and Tess, had agreed to as well.

  He thought about his parents. They had called, panicked, when the news first started to break. It turned out that neither of the two scenarios he had imagined when Chuck Palliser’s gun was pointed at his face had come to pass. The situation hadn’t brought his parents together, nor had it prompted a new war between them. It hadn’t changed anything. Despite their talk about how glad they were that he was still among the living, neither of them had even mentioned visiting him.

  I am alone, he typed on the keyboard. The words appeared on the screen in front of him in black letters. He stared at them for a long time, until he realized he wasn’t even seeing them anymore; all he could see was Angie’s face.

  “Anything yet?” said a voice above him, startling him out of his reverie. He looked up to see Sam Walsh’s face. Alex erased the letters quickly, embarrassed.

  “Nah,” he said. “I don’t know where to start.
”

  “I usually start at the beginning myself,” said Sam.

  “That’s some sage advice. You should be teaching at the university.”

  Sam stuck his thumbs into his armpits, pretending they were overall straps. “Us country folk don’t know nothin about fancy book learnin,” he said.

  Alex surprised himself by laughing. Two months ago, this exchange would have set off a volley of insults, quite possibly ending in Shippy separating the two. Today, the managing editor had him working on a project to come up with a narrative that the Chronicle could publish as a special edition. It would tell the story of him, Sam and Tess, and their brave deeds. Guaranteed sales, and Alex got to hold the copyright, which meant he could turn it into a book later if he wanted.

  “Seriously, though,” said Sam. “Maybe you should come right out of the gate admitting that you were duped.”

  “I don’t think that would go over to well with Vogt,” said Alex. “I’m far from the ‘hero reporter’ these days.”

  “Bill Vogt can go fuck himself,” said Sam. “Let’s not forget, if you hadn’t smuggled in that stun grenade, none of us would be here today.”

  Alex hadn’t thought about that.

  “The truth is always your best bet,” said Sam. “I mean, not all of it, obviously.” He glanced around to see if anyone was in earshot. “But really, doesn’t it all come down to our own perspective? Everyone has their own truth; just tell yours, and it should work out.”

  “Maybe,” said Alex. “Or maybe you should write this series.”

  Tess Gallagher appeared next to Sam. “Don’t even joke about that,” she said.

  Sam looked at her. “What are you trying to say?”

  “Alex is a better writer than you. Or me. Or anyone else in this room.”

  Sam clutched his chest. “Take thy beak from out my heart, woman.”

  “Kiss my ass, man,” she said with a dazzling smile.

  Alex smiled, too. This was the distraction he’d been looking for without even realizing it. He wasn’t alone; why had he thought that? He grabbed his sport jacket from a hook on the wall of his cubicle and shrugged into it.

  “Here’s my truth,” he said. “I’m going to take the two of you to lunch, and then we’re going to take the afternoon off and go out for really expensive scotch, and we’re going to get falling-down drunk.”

  “I’m with you so far,” said Sam, grinning.

  “That’s not even the best part,” said Alex. “I’m going to send the expense voucher to Bill Vogt, and if he has a problem with it, I’ll tell him I’m considering other job offers. That ought to shut the little bastard up.”

  Tess’s eyes were wide. She slid an arm through Alex’s and batted her eyelashes at him. “You had me at hello,” she breathed.

  Alex was as good as his word, and they ate well, and they drank Dalwhinnie until they could hardly stand. As they stood waiting for their cabs, swaying slightly in the late summer night breeze, Sam leaned close to Alex’s ear.

  “Hey,” he stage whispered with boozy breath. “There’s something I gotta tell you.”

  Alex peered at him, trying to turn the two Sams in his line of sight into one. “Yeah?” he said. “What’s that?”

  Tess staggered over, cheeks flushed. She wagged a warning finger at Sam. “Don’t,” she said. “Whatever you’re thinking, just don’t.”

  Sam looked offended. Alex said, “What are you talking about?”

  Sam put an arm around each of their shoulders and pulled them close. “Okay here’s the thing,” he slurred. “There’s an elephant – ” He hiccupped. “I mean there’s eleven million dollars out there somewhere.” His voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. “In untraceable twenny dollar bills. Just waitin to be found.”

  Tess’s eyes widened. Alex pondered. Sam swayed.

  “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?” asked Alex.

  “Crowe said before he left, he said, I asked him about it and he said to me, ‘finders keepers.’” Sam’s brows waggled above his crimson eyes. “Finders keepers. Eh? Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

  “Finders keepers,” Alex mused.

  “Finders keepers,” Tess breathed.

  But that’s another story.

  THE END

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Scott Cook is a former journalist and current communications consultant who lives and writes in Alberta, Canada. He and his wife, Janine, also a former journalist, have two grown children. False Witness is his first novel.

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  If you have a comment or question about False Witness, or would like information about my upcoming novels and giveaways, please email me at: scottcookauthor@gmail.com.

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