None So Deadly

by David A. Poulsen

  “Got it.”

  “Everybody’s going to be mic’ed up so you can talk to us. We’ll hear your conversation with the kid when you go to the door.”

  “Can I hear you?”

  A pause. “I don’t think so. Too risky. The only people who can’t hear us are you and Pink. Everybody else will have two-way communication with me in the van. Because you two are the ones who will actually be face to face with Brock, we can’t take the chance of somebody talking when they’re not supposed to and Brock hearing it.”

  “Yeah, I get that.”

  “Good.”

  “What happens after you have the video, the audio, and the porn stuff from the computer?”

  “Then we set up a time to sit down with Scubberd senior and we chat.”

  “And what’s going to stop him from shooting our asses and taking the stuff.”

  “Come on, Adam. I bet you know the answer to that one.”

  I thought. “Copies.”

  “Bingo. I make it clear that if you or I disappear, there are several people with instructions to release all of it to the police and the media immediately. I think that will keep the MFs in check.”

  “And get me out of their clutches.”

  “That’s the plan.”

  “You trust all the people you have in on this thing?”

  “Trust? I wouldn’t trust The Grover as far as I can throw him.”

  “Which is the reason for the goofy nicknames.”

  Cobb nodded. “Exactly. I want Grover to know only what he needs to. Pink is a wild card. I don’t know her. But Grover owes me and I think they’ll deliver. The rest of them are good, even the drivers. I know them all, and I know they’ll do what’s needed. I’m hoping you’ll do the same.”

  “I’m pretty sure I can handle it. But I still don’t like —”

  He cut me off. “Adam, the alternative is you keep making runs to the States until you get caught, and Jill and Kyla can visit you in prison. Let me know if that’s your preference, and I’ll give everybody Monday night off.” He didn’t sound angry so much as tired of having to convince me that this had to be done.

  I knew he was right and I nodded slowly.

  He smiled. “We can end this, Adam.”

  “If everything goes according to plan.”

  “Yeah.”

  We both drank the beers, thinking hard about what lay ahead.

  “Oh, and by the way, we’ve got things to do in the meantime. I’ve got us a Monday morning audience with Rachel Claiborne. Well, Kemper made the arrangements.”

  “Busy start to the week.”

  “Monday, Monday,” Cobb said. “I’ll pick you up at your place at nine.”

  I picked up rye bread, herb pâté, an onion, an English cucumber, a small jar of apricot and chili cheese spread, and a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon from Southwood Vineyards in Ontario, and headed across town to Jill’s.

  All of my purchases were designed to curry favour with a couple of people who may have lost faith in my culinary talents after the Sunterra Market extravaganza — all of the food wonderful but none of it actually prepared by me. And while there wouldn’t be a lot of cooking involved on this night either, I was confident I’d win them over.

  I cheated a little and picked up a book for Kyla, a public relations move that had never failed me. I opted for Linda Bailey’s Seven Dead Pirates, reasoning that pirates, alive or dead, were a surefire way to win over a ten-year-old’s heart.

  And I actually felt upbeat, maybe even optimistic. There was at least a reasonable chance that Cobb’s plan would work. And if it did, the MFs and the endless threat of them owning me would go away.

  After a pre-dinner game of Scrabble — Jill prevailed over the well-read kid and the journalist — I cut up onions and cucumber, set out the rye bread, pâté, and the jar of spread. It was perfect. The great thing was that, with each bite requiring a little more work than simply loading a fork, there was ample time for conversation and laughter, and there was plenty of both.

  Dinner over and the cleanup done, Kyla scuttled off to her room, new book in hand. Jill and I, as we often did, topped up our wine glasses and took to the sofa, where we sat as close to each other as possible without actually sharing clothes.

  After a few moments of silence, Jill took my hand. “You seem funny tonight, as happy as I’ve seen you in a while. If I was looking for a word to describe you, I’d say you were carefree … or maybe relieved.”

  I thought about the best way to answer without lying any more than I already had.

  “You’re probably right,” I said. “It feels like maybe Cobb and I are making a little progress with a couple of things we’re working on.”

  “Wanna share?”

  “Maybe not yet. Not tonight. Give us a few days to see if we really are going in the right direction. Then we’ll talk, okay?”

  “Of course.”

  “Thanks, babe.”

  “So, can I ask you a question?”

  I held my hands in a gesture of surrender. “Okay, it’s Jennifer Aniston. I admit it. She’s the one I think of when we’re making love.”

  Jill punched me on the arm. “Idiot, that wasn’t the question.”

  “Oops.”

  She punched me again.

  “Okay, I’m serious,” she said. “Let’s say we couldn’t live here and we couldn’t live in your apartment … where would you want to live?”

  I sipped my wine. “Wow, that’s a tough one. Well, I always thought I’d want to live in one of those family-type neighbourhoods, like maybe Lake Bonavista, but I’m not totally sure. I love a lot of the older parts of the city, too.”

  “Like Bridgeland?”

  I nodded. “I do like where I live. I like it a lot. I’d want wherever we lived to be really great for Kyla, that’s important to me.”

  She kissed me then.

  “I have to say, I like that a lot better than the punching.”

  She laughed. “If you’d behave, you’d get more kisses and less punching.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind. What about you? Where would you want to live?”

  “I guess I’m kind of like you. There are quite a few places I could be happy in.”

  “What about the country? With your love of horses, I’d have thought you’d like a home out of the city.”

  She nodded and smiled. “Yes, that too. Decisions, decisions.” She smiled and moved in close to me, the smell of her hair and the nearness of her warmth pushing aside, at least for now, the thoughts of what was to come on Monday.

  TWELVE

  “Thank you for seeing us, Mrs. Claiborne,” Cobb said as we slid into chairs on the opposite side of a cold grey metal table. I had anticipated we’d be separated by glass with a speaker on each side, so this was better.

  Rachel Claiborne smiled. It wasn’t a big smile and didn’t involve her eyes. She looked smaller than I’d expected. I guessed that jail, even a remand centre cell, could do that to you.

  “Mike Cobb, Mrs. Claiborne; this is my partner, Adam Cullen. I believe your attorney told you that we have been representing Danny Luft.”

  “She did, yes.”

  “They don’t give us a lot of time here.” Cobb leaned forward, his elbows on the table. “So, I’ll get right to it. Danny told us that you didn’t shoot your husband, Mrs. Claiborne.”

  A pause. “And he would know that how?”

  “He said he just knows. He told us he’s sure you’re covering for someone.”

  “I shot my husband. He deserved to be shot, and I’d do it again if I was faced with the same opportunity. Danny Luft is a nice boy … but he’s wrong.”

  “What opportunity was that, Mrs. Claiborne?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean when did you shoot your husband and how did it take place?”

  “What difference does any of that make now?”

  “Did you have the gun with you when you entered his office?”

  “What?
”

  “The gun, did you bring it with you? We know that he kept it upstairs in a bedside table. Had you planned to kill him? If so, I expect you brought the gun with you from upstairs.”

  Cobb was firing the questions at her, I assumed to try to catch her off guard.

  “I … I told you I don’t see the purpose in any of this. I don’t need to answer any of your questions. And I’m not sure why you are asking them. Your client is in the clear. He’s no longer a suspect. Which he shouldn’t be, because I’m the one who shot Wendell.”

  I spoke for the first time. “Danny was very firm in his belief that you didn’t shoot your husband, Mrs. Claiborne. He doesn’t think you are capable of killing someone.”

  She looked at me. “Do you know anything at all about me … about my life before I married Wendell? Because I promise you, Danny Luft, as fine a young man as he is, knows nothing about me and what I’m capable of.”

  Cobb said, “As a matter of fact, we do know about your former life, Mrs. Claiborne.”

  “Then you know that the world I inhabited was dark. Dark and dirty and dangerous. Human life was not as valuable as the next sale of crack or the next john’s blowjob. Money ruled everything. And it ruled my life. So forget about what Danny thinks of me or even what you think of me. I know what I’ve done in my life and I know what I did that night. I think this interview is over.” She stood up.

  “Mrs. Claiborne,” Cobb said, his voice low and flat. “I know who killed your husband.”

  She started to turn away, then turned back, the mask that had been her face until that moment now gone, replaced by anger. Anger and maybe fear. “What is it you think you know?”

  “First of all, Mrs. Claiborne, I promise you that we will not reveal what we know without your permission, and I know you can’t give that permission. We both know that, don’t we, Mrs. Claiborne?”

  She didn’t answer. Her features were tight, as if they were glued in place. “I’m going to give you and this fantasy of yours thirty seconds more, Mr. Cobb. Then I will walk out that door and in a few weeks I will be sentenced to a number of years in prison for shooting my husband. And that’s exactly as it’s supposed to be. Crime and Punishment.”

  The room was quiet for a moment, and in that time I knew, or at least I thought I knew, what Cobb was saying to her, without actually saying it.

  “Did you ever read that novel, Mrs. Claiborne, Crime and Punishment?”

  She looked at me and shook her head.

  “In it, the main character is a man — Raskolnikov, who murders two women. His punishment is internal — the guilt he feels at what he has done. This is different — this is a case of someone willing to bear the punishment for something she hasn’t done.”

  “Actually, I wasn’t talking about the book, Mr. Cullen. But thank you for the literature lesson.”

  Chastened, I didn’t have a response. Cobb stepped in. “I’d like to ask you a few specific questions, Mrs. Claiborne.”

  “You can ask any questions you like.”

  “And I’d appreciate it if you’d answer those questions.”

  “I will if I can.”

  “Did you bring the gun with you from the bedroom upstairs?”

  She looked at him a long time before she nodded.

  “Did anyone else see you shoot Wendell Claiborne?”

  “No.”

  “Where was your daughter when the shooting took place?”

  “She was outside taking our dog, Tater, for his evening walk.”

  “Did she hear the shot?”

  Hesitation. “Yes … no. Wendell was already … I’d already shot him. Glenna had come back into the house and still had her coat and mitts on; it was a cool night. She came into the office to say good night to her father and saw him lying there.”

  “What did you do with the gun after you shot your husband?”

  “I … I dropped it.”

  “Then what?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What happened after you shot your husband and dropped the gun on the floor?”

  “I called 911.”

  “Right away?”

  “Well, there might have been a few minutes — I was upset, as you can imagine.”

  “And what did Glenna do after she came into Claiborne’s office?”

  “What did she do?” she repeated the question.

  “You said she came into the office and saw him on the floor. I’m wondering what she did. Did she scream, did she run over to her father’s body, did she run back out of the room?”

  “I … there was some confusion, as you can understand. I’m not sure exactly what. It took me some time … I mean, to recover myself … a few minutes.”

  “Recover yourself,” Cobb said.

  “Yes, I … Glenna ran into the room and she screamed, and she, I believe, went to her father. She was … in shock … as you might expect. Then she came to me and we held each other.”

  “Did you come into the office before or after your daughter shot her father?”

  I glanced over at Cobb. This was the homicide detective on full display. Aggressive, relentless, determined and pulling no punches. Rachel Claiborne looked like she was thinking about leaving again but this time changed her mind before she got to her feet.

  “That is absurd.”

  “Please tell us what happened in that room that night, Mrs. Claiborne,” Cobb said. “Sometimes there are extenuating circumstances. We may be able to help. And I reiterate my promise that we reveal nothing of what you tell us without your permission.”

  “You seem quite confident that you are right.”

  “Mrs. Claiborne, I think Danny Luft was right when he said you would take the hit for someone else. But not just anyone else. You’d do it for Danny Luft because you knew he was innocent. And you’d do it for your daughter because you are her mother.”

  The room was quiet for a time. Rachel Claiborne was looking down at her hands. Finally, she looked up.

  “You are right about that, Mr. Cobb. I would do anything for my daughter. But it was Danny who had been arrested and charged. And all of us in this room know he didn’t kill my husband. I’m told that the police had sufficient evidence — phone messages, texts, his fingerprints on the gun — that he may well have been found guilty. I couldn’t let that happen.”

  Cobb was gentler now. “Mrs. Claiborne, your first statement to the police was very different. It talked of your coming into your husband’s office some minutes after he was shot and discovering him lying on the floor.”

  “Of course. That was when I believed we could perhaps convince the police that someone else had killed Wendell, some stranger breaking into the house. But, as I said, once I learned about Danny and the evidence the police indicated they had, well, I had to … I had to do what I did.”

  “I understand,” Cobb said. “Mrs. Claiborne, I’m going to present a slightly different scenario. I’d appreciate your hearing me out and I’d like to hear your reaction. I’m thinking that you and your husband were discussing something, perhaps arguing. Maybe it was about money. Maybe it was about women. Or maybe it was about the fact that he wanted you gone from his house and his life. The argument became heated, nasty. Your husband picked up the gun that was on his desk and was threatening you. Glenna came in from outside, having taken the dog for a walk. As you said, she still had her coat and gloves on. She looked in to say good night and saw Mr. Claiborne waving the gun around and pointing it at you. The gun, by the way, was not upstairs in the night table, because he had it with him to show Danny earlier that evening.

  “Now I doubt that he was going to shoot you because, of course, he already had a plan in place for that. But Glenna couldn’t know that he was only threatening. She saw him out of control and threatening her mother with a firearm. She did the only thing she could think of. She ran at him to keep him from shooting you. There was a struggle, the gun went off and your husband fell to the floor.

  “Perhaps you, t
oo, became involved in the struggle … it doesn’t matter. What does matter is that you are protecting your daughter and have been all along. And while that is understandable and even admirable, it may not be necessary.”

  “Mrs. Claiborne,” I said. “I covered the crime beat for the Calgary Herald for several years, sat in on a lot of trials, wrote about dozens of cases from fraud to robbery to murder. If this came to court, a jury would almost surely be very sympathetic to your daughter and to you. This was someone trying to disarm someone with a gun. You both should be — and, I think, would be — looked at as heroes.”

  Rachel Claiborne looked first at me, then at Cobb, her mouth, her posture, and her voice combined in one thin, unyielding line. “I will not allow some lawyer to pick apart my daughter in a courtroom and I will not have her sit there while that same lawyer dredges up every sordid detail from my past. Neither of those things is going to happen, gentlemen, and that is my last word on the matter.”

  “Glenna doesn’t know about your former life,” I said.

  “She does not and she will not find out about it in a courtroom surrounded by people she doesn’t know and, you’ll forgive me Mr. Cullen, by reporters who couldn’t care less about breaking a young girl’s heart as long as the whole vulgar story is told.”

  Sadly, she was speaking the truth. I nodded my head.

  “And I remind you that you began this conversation, Mr. Cobb, by giving your word that you would say nothing of this insane little potboiler of yours. And I most assuredly do not give you my permission.”

  Cobb looked worn but he nodded. “You don’t need to remind us, Mrs. Claiborne. We will keep our word.” He took out a business card and handed it to her. “If you change your mind or if you ever want to talk some more, you can call me anytime. Thank you for taking the time to speak to us. We wish you well.”

  Rachel Claiborne stood up. “Thank you, Mr. Cobb … Mr. Cullen.” She shook our hands. “I appreciate what you are trying to do. But I’m going to hold you to your promise. You will say nothing; you will do nothing, as we agreed.”