by Jonas Saul
Mason watched the road while listening to his partner. They were minutes away from arresting Sarah Roberts and then making her disappear forever. She would have no idea what hit her. It was late afternoon. The sun was still high. He took a deep breath, then exhaled. Today was a good day to execute a meddling bitch. Barry would be proud.
“I understand,” Calder was saying. “Fair enough. Thank you.” He paused, rubbed his chin, then tapped his hands on the steering wheel. “Mr. Florko. This is Officer Jeff Calder with the Kelowna RCMP. Could you return my call at once? It is an emergency.” Calder recited his cell number twice, then hung up.
“They wouldn’t put you directly through to him?” Mason asked.
Calder shook his head. “Wouldn’t give his cell number out over the phone.”
“You’re a cop,” Mason nearly shouted.
“I know, but this is unofficial. I can’t play that card all the time.”
Mason slammed the dash again. “Okay, think. Where would Florko take Sarah?”
“Or better yet, where would Sarah force Florko to take her?”
“I hadn’t thought of that.” Mason tapped his leg twice, then turned to Calder. “Where can the public access something like Kevlar?”
Calder shrugged noncommittally. “No idea. Never had cause to buy one.”
Mason thought about his city, his contacts. Were there any kind of arms dealers in Kelowna? The Hell’s Angels’ clubhouse on Ellis Street was tied up in a court case as the government was trying to take their house. Would they have Kevlar that Sarah could access? If so, could Florko have those kinds of contacts? Mason didn’t think so. He didn’t know Florko all that well, but what he did know of him, the man was clean.
“This is maddening,” Mason said. “While we sit here sucking our thumbs, Sarah’s getting away. Did that clerk tell you anything else? Like how Florko and Sarah got together? I mean, did he see them meeting for the first time? Did he overhear anything they said? Like where he was taking her?”
Calder opened his door. “I’ll go check.” Then he was gone.
Mason closed his eyes and steadied his breathing. The wounded bone in his arm throbbed and his nose ached something fierce. The broken nose affected his voice, but Calder hadn’t said anything about it—which was a safe move on his part.
He ground his teeth as heat flushed through his body. Making him chase her would only make it worse for her. When he finally caught up with Sarah, he would be unable to contain his fury. He had never hated someone as much as he hated Sarah Roberts.
Why? Because she had murdered his best friend and cop, Barry Ashford. She had attacked Mason, broke his arm and nose, and guards had been placed at his hospital room door.
“Who the fuck is this girl, anyway?” he asked out loud. “Why is she so important? Who made her King Shit?”
Soon, very soon, she would learn that she was not King Shit or Queen Shit. She was a piece of shit and when he was done with her, he would wipe the shit from his shoe.
The door opened and Calder dropped back in the car. “The clerk knew nothing.” He cranked the ignition. “So I called Marcus and had him get me Florko’s cell number. Took him seconds.”
“And? Did you call him?”
Calder shot a glance at Mason. “No. I did something better.”
“What?” Mason shouted, his nose aching because of it.
“Marcus did some magic like that find my phone app. He’ll be able to tell us where Florko is in seconds and then we’ll go grab him.” Calder’s phone dinged. “There it is.” Calder grabbed his phone and stared at it. “Looks like Florko is minutes away on Ambrosia Road.” He put the car in gear and skidded out of the parking lot. “Let’s go grab that bitch.”
Chapter 30
Inside the Army Surplus store, Sarah waited until the clerk was freed from talking to another customer. The store was mostly hunting gear and clothing. Near the counter, she had spied pepper spray canisters and various hunting knives, but nothing like she was looking for.
After several minutes, the clerk plodded toward her. “Can I help you find something?” His age hadn’t crept into his voice yet. The man had to be in his sixties but he had the voice of a thirty-year old.
“I’m in need of a Kevlar vest,” Sarah said, wanting to get right to the point. She studied the man’s blue eyes. He stared back at her, unwavering.
“I might be able to help with that. How much you looking to spend?”
“Whatever it costs.”
His eyebrows rose, but his eyes remained fixed on her. After a moment, the man’s lips parted. He tapped them with his finger. “You a cop?” he asked.
“Do I look like one?” He didn’t respond. “The answer is no, I am not a cop.”
“Give me a minute. Let me deal with this customer and I’ll lock up for the day. Stick around. I might have what you’re looking for.”
Sarah stayed by the side window of the store. She thought about what might be waiting for her at the Campbell Winery. Was Thirio directly connected to them? Or maybe it was the Martin Winery farther up the road as Florko had mentioned.
She wondered if Florko would go to the police after seeing her gun. If so, she needed to leave this Army Surplus store very soon.
Her cell rang. She yanked it out to see Lee’s number.
“Yeah,” she answered.
“It’s Parkman. We’re leaving the location of the murder in Vernon.”
“And?”
“Looks like it’s our guy, Thirio. A witness placed a guest in the house about the time of the murder. The owner of the house and the guest walked around the garden. The neighbor said it looked like Ray Durowitz, the deceased, was getting an estimate for something.”
“Makes sense. Thirio is driving a lawn maintenance pickup truck. Before going into the grocery store in Vernon, I noticed a red pitchfork in the back.”
“That’s him. The neighbor said he saw the guest take a pitchfork from the garden and place it in the back of his truck before driving off. Lee requested Vernon police check Durowitz’s bank accounts. As a courtesy, that information was provided by the bank. It appears Mr. Durowitz’s account had a cheque written on it and withdrawn today. The bank is pulling surveillance cameras as we speak. We’ll get a photo on this guy within hours.”
“Good work. Listen, Parkman. You still need to get Lee to call his son.”
“For an ID? We’re going to get that.”
“No. Not just an ID.”
“Then why? Give me something.”
She hesitated a moment, watching the clerk cash out the other customer. “This is his last chance. Nick is terminal and he doesn’t know it. He does have a picture of Thirio. I thought that would bring these two men together. But since it might not, tell Lee he needs to fix this thing with his son anyway.”
“I will. And Sarah?”
The Army Surplus store clerk used a thumb lock to secure the door. He flipped the open sign to closed.
“Parkman. I’ve got to go.”
“Wait. Sarah—”
She hung up, slipped the phone away, and meandered through the overburdened clothing racks to where the clerk waited by a side door. The opening led down into a basement.
“What’s down there?” Sarah asked, her hand twitching, ready to reach for the gun if she needed it.
The old man held up his hands. “I don’t have a Kevlar vest, per se.” He coughed into his elbow, then started down the stairs. “Come on down and see what I do have. It’s something far better than Kevlar. It’s British made.”
Chapter 31
Thirio made it back to Kelowna in good time. He drove the busy streets, whistling to himself while driving. The warmth of the sun soothed him as it slowly dropped from the sky toward dusk. He’d listened to Blue October, then the Dayglo Abortions again, but ended up playing Sevendust, keeping the bass high, the treble low.
Once he’d made it through the most congested areas of Kelowna, he took Chute Lake Road to Upper Mission Drive, and
finally turned off onto Gillard Forest Service Road. This road allowed him access to the rear of the winery where he’d been staying recently. The Campbell Winery had a long history of being a detested rival in the wine business. His previous family, before he killed himself and by doing that, excommunicated himself—the Martins—had their winery abutting the Campbell’s property. Like the Hatfield’s and McCoy’s, a long-standing feud between the families had originated before Thirio was born. Stories his grandfather had once relayed to him led Thirio to believe the conflict was sparked by land disputes—disputes that were never settled, or had been dealt with unfairly. No arbitrator or mediator, whether private or from the city, could ever appease either side equally. In the decades-long fight, there had been property damage, random fires, and even gags that went wrong. Thirio knew, without a doubt, that the gags weren’t actually meant as jokes. The Campbell family had always intended to do harm and harm they did.
His fiancée Julia had died at their hands, her death ruled an accident. The Campbell family got away with it—no criminal charges. The legal system let them off the hook. Thirio wouldn’t make that mistake. He meant to make the Campbell family pay.
Thirio parked in a cutaway area just off the road, locked his truck and started up the embankment with the last of the tools he would need. If he survived the night, he would take the rest of the poison-filled bottles and use them tomorrow. With the extra money he obtained today, he would create more havoc and not stop until he was killed and brought before the ruler of Hell, his new father.
The forest road behind him was rarely used. With the work truck parked there, no one would pay special attention to it.
He used the valley behind the Campbell Winery property to access their land and moved from tree to tree undetected until he reached the empty guesthouse. He always tried to come when the shadows were long and the sky darkening. In these particular trees, the light had to fight to reach the ground, and at this hour of the day, it was a losing battle. At the back of the winery property, the Campbells had left an abandoned guesthouse to rot. It hadn’t seen visitors since the 1960s. The building had no running water and no electricity, but Thirio had used it just fine in the first month of hiding. The irony was that it was in their own abandoned guesthouse that he’d cooked up his plan of revenge to murder their family, or as many as he could kill before someone stopped him. But first, he would cripple them with his bombs and destroy their financial interests with the poison.
His denouement, his final act, were the sharpshooters. Once the winery got a taste of the glassy-winged sharpshooter, there would be no coming back. Thirio had released them on Campbell’s Winery over a month ago and even though the sharpshooters weren’t indigenous to the Kelowna area, they had a strong will to survive. Kelowna was known for its intense summer heat. These grapevine enemies usually survived in warmer climes like Florida, Texas, and southern California where they wreaked havoc by releasing Pierce’s Disease. The sharpshooter decimated the Los Angeles basin in the 1880s and again in the decade between 1930 and 1940.
Importing a batch of them had been easy. After driving to southern California, he met with an entomologist, bought a group of them, and drove back across the border with the insects stuffed in a suitcase in the trunk of his family car. All this was done before Julia was murdered. The irony wasn’t lost on him. The timing, simply perfect. The Campbells had brought their own destruction upon themselves by going after Thirio.
He made it to the guesthouse undetected as usual. Their main house was a couple of hundred yards away and separated by a fifteen-foot row of hedges. Someone would have to be standing in a specific spot on their winding driveway to catch a glimpse of a dark shadow crossing the front stoop of the guesthouse in order to see him. All his work, all his preparation was done in the basement of the guesthouse where the use of small lights never posed a problem. And now all that work was coming to an end. Soon the Campbells would discover the aggressive leaf-hoppers and the Pierce’s Disease bacterium in their vines that the glassy-winged critters spread. Since there’s no known cure for Pierce’s Disease, the Campbell Winery would succumb to ruin.
The poison Thirio had sprayed in their grocery stores would make headline news and their stores would suffer financially. The random bombings throughout the city would lead back to the Campbells after Thirio’s last explosion—on their property—and all would be right with the world.
Thirio used his iPhone flashlight to lead him down the stairs to the basement, making sure to watch for the second last stair as it had lost its integrity years ago. Once in the basement, he swung the light over onto the table and bench where all his bomb-making tools waited discovery by the authorities. He’d had his twin brother help him bring everything down there, then when his twin brother got cold feet—which Thirio suspected would happen and prepared for it anyway—Thirio came up with his most brilliant plan. With his brother dead and disposed of—body dumped in Okanagan Lake—Thirio could continue his work without anyone knowing he was alive. His identical twin would take his place in death. There were two sides to the family dispute and his brother never saw Thirio’s side. There were always two sides. Good and evil. You were either with the Martins or you sided with the Campbells, and Thirio was a Martin through and through.
When Julia died, family and friends from all over the globe began arriving for her funeral. It was all very pompous because no one knew her like Thirio had. No one really cared about Julia. It was an excuse to come to sunny Kelowna for a vacation at the Martin Family Winery.
When his long-lost twin brother called from Rome, Italy, it just so happened that Thirio had answered the phone. His brother had been away an entire decade, a decade since he’d talked to their mother. No one had been able to get a hold of him in over five years. Then he called to come to the funeral after having read about it on an online Kelowna newspaper.
Thirio impressed upon his brother to keep his arrival a secret. Thirio would fetch him at the airport and set him up in a hotel. On the day of the viewing, it would be Thirio who would bring his brother to the funeral home.
His brother agreed to everything and Thirio got to work. When he picked him up at the airport, he had him spend the next sixteen hours—with minor rest times—setting up the basement of the Campbell’s abandoned guesthouse. It had been a decade, Thirio had argued. To make things right for the family and especially Julia, his brother needed to atone to his identical twin, and atone he did. His brother needed to show him due respect.
When his brother had cast doubt on Thirio’s plans and attempted to talk him out of it, he’d sided with the Campbells. At that moment, his brother became the enemy, the very enemy that had murdered Julia.
Even before his brother flew in from Rome, Thirio had lost any feelings for him. The brother who had abandoned the family. The brother who had walked away callously, leaving behind an abundance of pain for their mother. Furious, Thirio had argued that his twin had no right to return as the prodigal son. Thirio would show him who was the real son, what real family looked like, and that he did.
When the body was found in the lake, everyone would think it was Thirio. The family would perform a positive ID at the city morgue. It would make sense, too. With Julia gone, how could Thirio go on? But who killed him? The police would never know. More importantly, they wouldn’t perform a DNA test on a body that looked like him, especially after his own family identified him, but if they did it wouldn’t have mattered.
His was the perfect crime, the perfect murder. His asshole brother was gone—no one was looking for him—and Thirio was free to do what he wanted with wanton abandon. The triumph of evil over good.
As he prepared the last bomb in his possession under the dim gleam of a tiny penlight, thoughts of Lucifer drifted into his mind. He wondered what the angel would look like. Would he still have his wings? If so, would they be black or white? Thirio guessed they’d be black. Would the devil’s laugh cause chills? He was so excited with the opportunity of headin
g south of the soil that he almost hit the wrong key on his cell phone and detonated the bomb.
“Damn it,” he murmured.
He set a six-digit deactivation code on his phone in case for some unknown reason he sat in the chair it was attached to or was pushed into it. Whoever sat in the plush piece of furniture was going to be disintegrated with the blast. Actually, anyone inside the basement would most surely die. Unless they had Thirio’s cell phone and its deactivation code, there was no hope.
As he prepared the rest of the damning evidence against the Campbells, he only hoped it was possible to have Sarah Roberts sit in that chair. To see her blown to tiny bits of flesh and bone would be a most delightful sight.
Chapter 32
On Ambrosia Road, Calder parked half a block from the address Marcus had texted.
