Cal Rogan Mysteries, Books 1, 2 & 3 (Box Set)

by Robert P. French

  “Just one last question. How did they—”

  “I’m not saying no more. Are you going to leave or…?” He nods toward the giant behind me.

  I shrug.

  “Thanks for your time,” is all I say.

  I feel a huge paw lock onto my arm.

  I tense, my mind feeling the bite of the knife in his other hand.

  “Let’s go,” he grunts, leading me toward the door.

  He leads me down the stairs, across the lobby and out through the front door. The receptionist doesn’t even look up from her computer monitors.

  As I walk down the path, I rejoice in being out of there. I may not have got the answer to the last question I was about to ask but I’m pretty sure I know what it was.

  However, there is now another question to which I don’t have an answer.

  60

  Cal

  I dread why I’m here. Apart from anything else, it’s close to midnight and I am exhausted; I have had three hours sleep in the last forty. My mind is still spinning from my meeting with Stammo; we have put it all together, except for one thing, and that one thing is ostensibly why I’m here. Ostensibly. The other reason is too confusing to contemplate.

  She hugs me tightly. Too tightly.

  “It feels like an age since I saw you my love,” she says.

  My love? I might have felt good about the words before my time with Sam this afternoon but she’s right… it does seem like an age since yesterday afternoon.

  She takes my hand and pulls me toward the bedroom. When I resist, she looks at me, the hurt clear in her eyes.

  “Elizabeth, I’m here in an official capacity.” I feel like the lowest of the low.

  “Oh.” A single syllable carrying multiple meanings.

  We go into the living room and sit together on the sofa.

  “Do you remember the thing Terry was repeating, ‘Oboe is blood’?”

  “Yes, but they were just nonsense words.”

  “No they weren’t. It was the start of a computer code called a private key. The code belonged to the Toronto National Bank where your husband used to work. We believe that he was using the code as part of a money-laundering scheme.”

  “Oh. So that—” She cuts herself off.

  I wait for a moment then say, “Go on.”

  She bites her lip and avoids eye contact with me. She stares into the distance, looking like she is wrestling with a big decision. After a full minute, she shrugs and then sighs. “I was going to say ‘so that’s where the money came from.’”

  “What money?”

  More lip biting… then, “When Mark called me from the Golden Motel and asked me to go away with him, he said money would not be a problem anymore, he said he had lots of it. I didn’t believe him but when I found out he was dead, I checked our bank account. There was over two million dollars in it. It’s still there.” Tears are forming in her eyes.

  Two million dollars seems like a hell of a big fee for money-laundering, especially as he would have to share any profits with his partner, Harold Varga.

  “Cal, we could take it and go away somewhere, like I said before.” She is getting revved up with this idea. “Now that you’re no longer with the police, there’s nothing keeping you here. We could bring your daughter with us. We could be a family.” The tears are starting to trickle down her cheeks.

  An infinite sadness descends on me. I think that my feelings for Elizabeth are based on the fact that she is so broken. I feel a need to heal her of her wounds, comfort her for the loss of her son and her husband, make her whole again. I kiss her gently but she responds passionately. I take her by the shoulders and gently push us apart. “Wait.”

  Something is clawing at me through the swirl of emotion. Something important.

  But I need to get back to my agenda; this is still an interrogation whether I like the idea or not.

  “Elizabeth, we think this oboe code may be the reason Terry was murdered. To keep him from repeating it to anyone. I know this is difficult but do you think there is any possibility at all that Mark may have killed Terry to keep him quiet?”

  She is clearly horrified at the thought. “No. No. Mark could never do that. He loved Terry. He loved Terry like he was his own. Mark would never have done anything to hurt Terry… or me. Never!” The tears are cascading down her cheeks as the words come tumbling out. “How could you think such a thing?” An anger is rising in her. “He was devastated when Terry was killed. He blamed himself for the fact that Terry was upset that day. He kept blaming himself over and over again for not hearing Terry sneak out through his bedroom window. He even blamed himself for the fact that the video surveillance cameras weren’t—”

  “What video surveillance cameras?” The hair on the back of my neck is standing to attention.

  Her eyes dart around the room; she is thinking furiously, her breaths coming quickly… then she sighs and deflates.

  My voice gentle, I ask, “You said Mark blamed himself for the fact that the video surveillance cameras weren’t…?” I leave the question hanging.

  “He said they weren’t working properly the night Terry was killed.” I can see that she believes this… but I don’t.

  “Mark was very security conscious,” she says. “When he installed all that computer equipment in the basement, he installed security cameras all around the outside of the house. They were hooked up to motion sensors and spotlights. Some were infrared for nighttime use. He was terrified that someone would steal those ‘blades’ as he called them.”

  “Do you have the disks the cameras were recording on to?”

  “I don’t think they record to a disk. They’re webcams. The images go to a website. Mark sometimes had a window open on his computer displaying the images.”

  “Do you know the website’s URL?”

  “No.”

  “Are any of Mark’s computers still here at the house?”

  “No.”

  “Are the webcams still in place?” I ask her. My heart rate increases at the thought that they will have images of the night Terry was killed and there may be a juicy little bonus in there too.

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Show me.”

  She takes me outside. There are eight small cameras, all installed under the eaves of the roof. None of them have wires coming out of them and into the house. I’ll get Forensics to check… Wait a minute, I can’t. I feel a hit of sadness that I no longer have access to Forensics.

  But I do have access to technical expertise.

  “Can I take one of the cameras?”

  She nods.

  After five minutes with Elizabeth’s step ladder and her late husband’s tool kit, I have one of the cameras in my possession.

  As we go back into the house, I ask her, “You remember you told me that you met the man who Terry worked for? The one who made you feel uncomfortable?”

  She nods.

  “Did you meet him here at the house?”

  “Yes.”

  “If we could retrieve the surveillance recordings, would you be able to identify him from them?”

  She shakes her head. “No. He was only here the one time and that was before Mark got the ‘blades’ and installed the cameras.”

  No juicy little bonus. “Damn.”

  “Rocky, no more questions. Let’s go to bed, I need you right now.”

  My body betrays my feelings for Sam; it wants Elizabeth so much right now and I know, or at least rationalize, that if I refuse her she will be hurt yet again. Another part of me is screaming out against it. It’s the cop part of me. I know I have to ask the question I came here to ask. The question I have been avoiding since I walked through the door.

  “I was at VGH this morning, visiting my partner,” I pause, not wanting to take the next step.

  She looks at me, puzzled.

  I have to go on. “After I left him, I went to the Human Resources Department.”

  I stop, hoping she will know where I am go
ing with this and allay my fears. She doesn’t.

  “On the night Terry was killed, you left the hospital at four-thirty. You didn’t finish your shift. You told me that you didn’t get home from work until eight.”

  She doesn’t move. She just looks at me. I cannot read any emotion on her face.

  The silence extends. It is as though she is willing me to take the next step, to make the accusation.

  “Where were you between four-thirty and eight o’clock, Elizabeth?”

  She turns away and walks over to the bookcase. She takes a CD case off the shelf. It is the hauntingly beautiful music she played when I was here a week ago. She looks down at the cover then lifts it up to her lips. Her back is to me and I can see the tension in her shoulders. She looks up, as though to the heavens, and her shoulders slump.

  “I was with Seth. We were making love.”

  With Seth dead, it is an alibi I can’t corroborate. Unless…

  “Where?”

  Her voice is barely above a whisper, “The Golden Motel.”

  The place where her husband was murdered. Is that just a coincidence?

  “Did anyone there see you?”

  “I don’t know. Seth—” She stops herself short as the implications of the question hit home; she turns to me. “I didn’t kill my son, Rocky.” Her voice is calm… too calm. More calm than I have ever heard it. “I don’t know how you could possibly think that.”

  Her denial does nothing to allay my suspicion.

  She turns back to the bookcase. “I think you should go now.”

  But I can’t. As much as I want to take that camera and have it yield its secrets, I have to stay and tell her that her former lover is dead.

  61

  Steve

  Saturday

  I am not sure I am doing the right thing here. Stammo looks unsure of himself and Rogan—who arrived late saying that he had to drop something off to someone—is looking downright hostile.

  “Why am I here guys?” I ask.

  Rogan looks at Stammo and shrugs, then nods.

  Stammo speaks first, “Steve, there’s a dirty cop in the department, someone senior.”

  His words fire through me like a high tension electrical current and I ask the question I dread.

  “Who?”

  It comes out more like a squeak than a word.

  “We’re not sure but we think it might be Superintendent Cathcart.”

  I regain my composure. “Cathcart? He’s the original Mr. Clean,” I say. “What evidence do you have?”

  “First thing,” Stammo says, “you remember those drug cases I had cold, how they both went south.”

  I know them only too well. “Yeah, on one of them, when you went to arrest the perp, he’d already run; on the other, the key forensic evidence went missing.”

  “Yeah, well I thought about it a lot and I figured that a dirty cop in a senior position in the department could easily have tipped off the first guy and arranged for that forensic tech to screw up the evidence for the second one.”

  Never underestimate Stammo.

  “Ok, but why Cathcart?”

  This time Stammo looks at Rogan and nods.

  “We’ve got nothing specific against Cathcart,” says Rogan, “except that he’s good friends with Harold Varga.”

  “Varga?” That might work.

  “You better tell him the whole thing Rogan,” Stammo says.

  Rogan is still not a happy camper but he nods. “OK Steve, you remember that thing that Terry Wright and his friend Michael Chan were chanting? We called it the oboe code.”

  I nod.

  “Well I had a friend look at it and he discovered that it is a computer encryption key that Toronto National Bank use. Anyone with the key, who can eavesdrop on people logging into their internet banking at TNB, can steal their passwords. Mark Wright was a former techie from the bank and he and Varga were using the code to launder money.”

  “How?”

  “They use the code to find out the passwords of thousands of different bank customers. Then they take the cash of the people they are laundering for and deposit it, in amounts each smaller than ten thousand dollars, in the accounts of the people whose password they have. Immediately, they transfer the money back out of the customer’s account into an account of their own. When the customers see their bank statements they see a deposit followed immediately by a transfer out. They assume that the bank made an error and corrected it immediately, no harm no foul.”

  “How did you work it out?” I ask.

  “My buddy who worked out the significance of the oboe code put the idea in my head and Nick worked it.”

  “So you think they killed the Wright kid to stop him repeating the code?” I ask.

  Rogan looks uncomfortable. “I dunno,” he says. “Terry Wright was autistic. If he was repeating something that sounded like gibberish no-one would take any notice of him. Who could possibly guess that it was a bank code being used for money-laundering? I don’t really see that it was a motive for killing Terry. But it was a motive for the attempted kidnapping of Michael Chan.”

  “How come?”

  “With Terry dead, Michael was now repeating the code. Suddenly someone is taking notice, that someone being the police. Michael had to be stopped.”

  Smart deduction. Let’s see what else that clever mind of his has worked out. “So why was Terry killed and why was Varga’s wife killed?” I ask.

  “We’re not sure yet,” Stammo answers, “but here’s what we think is going on. You remember how last year, Rogan was investigating his buddy’s murder and we put that big drug dealer away. Well, it turns out that Seth Harris, the guy who was killed at the weirdo church, was working for Mr. Big. His sister, the minister, told Rogan about it. Harris was running his drug business for him. But Mr. Big’s money-laundering scheme was shut down when we put him away, so he needed a new way to launder their drug money. Well, Seth is living at the Church with his sister and he has access to all the Church records. Rogan found a bunch of copies of all sorts of stuff in Seth’s room, including two very interesting documents. One was a copy of his sister’s notes on her counseling sessions with Varga’s wife. She talks about the fact that her husband was a big gambler and that he was deep in debt to what she called an illegal casino. Another was the notes on the minister’s counseling sessions with Elizabeth Wright. Seth found out that Mark Wright was a genius-level techie who was out of work but that he used to work for Varga’s bank.

  “So here’s what we think happened. We know that Mr. Big’s organization had been laundering money from his drug businesses and also for a number of illegal gambling joints, so Seth makes a couple of calls and finds out that Varga is in hock to this one guy Dominique Dufresne. Seth approaches Mark Wright and offers him the chance to make a lot of money. He simultaneously approaches Varga and tells him that if he will work with Mark Wright on setting up some form of money-laundering scheme, he will see that his gambling debt is written off; if he doesn’t cooperate, Seth will tell the Bank that their Senior VP of Private Banking is on the hook to a crooked gambler. Varga and Wright agree and they work out this money-laundering scheme. Seth uses Mr. Big’s money to buy Mark a bunch of computer equipment and somehow they get hold of the encryption key and put the plan into action.

  “Now Mr. Big, although he’s locked up in Millhaven, is back in business money-laundering and Seth is his front man, rebuilding the drug business and laundering the money through Varga’s bank.”

  For some reason, Stammo seems to be trying too hard to sell me on this. “How much of this do you have evidence for and how much is just guesswork?” I ask.

  Rogan jumps in with the answer. “I searched Seth’s room at the church yesterday afternoon and found all his documents. Seth’s sister confirmed that they were her counseling notes. She also confirmed that Seth, Dufresne and Mr. Big were buddies. I was at Dufresne’s gambling joint last night and confirmed that Varga was in hock to him and that Seth was doing
his money-laundering.”

  “How the hell did you get him to admit that?” I ask. Rogan may be a good interrogator but that’s crazy.

  He laughs. “You remember Nick saying in our meeting ten days ago, after our first visit to the Church, that Seth looked like me. When I went to see Dufresne, I pretended to be Seth’s brother. Dufresne bought it.”

  I’ve got to hand it to Rogan, he is one inventive SOB. But we are not at the heart of the matter yet, not by a long shot. I need to find out what they know and what they are guessing. “So where does this supposed dirty cop come in?” I ask.

  Rogan and Stammo exchange looks but I can’t read them. Rogan turns to me and looks hard into my eyes for what seems like a long time. I get it. He is wondering if I am the dirty cop. I just look straight back at him but inside, I’m tense. Rogan and I were friends. We worked together for a lot of years and despite all the drugs and shit that’s gone down recently, for some reason his good opinion still matters to me.

  He seems to come to some conclusion. “Here’s the thing,” he says. “We think Cathcart has been doing this for a while. Nick has been doing some research and there have been instances of drug cases going sideways for years. The one big drug case we won last year could not have been influenced by him, because it was being pursued from outside the department, by me. It ended up with Mr. Big in prison.

  “So Cathcart sees an opportunity. Maybe he can take over Mr. Big’s operation. He cozies up to Seth and finds out all about the money-laundering scheme, but when Terry Wright is killed, he sees his chance. He tells Seth that Michael Chan is repeating the oboe code to the police and uses that as an excuse to bring in some muscle from out of town, the two women who tried to kidnap Michael and who put Nick in that chair. Seth even helped the woman by lending them his sister’s SUV, only to be killed by them for his trouble. With Seth dead, Mr. Big is out of business.”

  Rogan stops again and looks long and hard at me. “So who are these women, Steve?” he asks “and don’t give me any of that national security BS.”