Arrow's Rest by Joel Scott (best books to read all time .TXT) 📗

Danny looked uncomfortable. “Actually, there might be one more thing,” he said. “Cat’s job offer. The timing of it.”

“What about it?”

“Her sister gets attacked, and two weeks later she’s offered a job by the same outfit that had a boat moored at the yacht club? The club where someone used a stolen gate card that coincided with the West End assaults? What are the chances of all that being unconnected?”

Jared stared at him. “You’re talking about James Albright, a man who has been mentioned as a possible candidate for the leadership of his party. That’s crazy.”

“Maybe not all that crazy. You said Cat was on Albright’s boat last Sunday before she came across to Nanaimo. Could that have been the boat in the end berth that Merlynn saw that time?”

Jared shrugged. “I suppose it’s possible. Cat said it was a big boat. Maybe too big to fit in the end slot, although that berth is oversized with a raised roof for the big boys. We could probably find out the name of Albright’s boat, the trouble is there’s no record of the names of the boats using that end berth or the dates when they come and go.”

They sat quietly, lost in thought, and then Jared spoke.

“Cat came across to Nanaimo in a big Zodiac with twin Yamahas on the back. Couple of crew kitted out in wet gear dropped her off. I didn’t get a good look at them and wouldn’t know them again even if I did see them. But they were tall skinny guys, like Merlynn mentioned seeing that time. I suppose I could talk to Cat about all of this. The trouble is, I have to be careful or she might take the job with Albright just to spite me. She’s already implied that I’m jealous of him.”

“And are you?”

“Possibly a teeny tiny bit.”

“You damn well should be. He’s got a lot more going than you have in looks, money, and prospects.”

“Up yours,” Jared said affably.

Danny raised his beer.

The rain poured down.

They drank and pondered in silence.

Chapter 31

Clarke was flummoxed. It was a word he was fond of using with his superiors when a case wasn’t going well. It often resulted in terminating communications between the participants, an outcome he usually desired. “I’m sorry, Captain, but I’m completely flummoxed.” He thought it captured the tone of great intellectual energy having been spent, every avenue explored, no stone left unturned, etcetera, etcetera.

In the case of the West End attacks, that was an accurate description of the situation. Clarke was at his wits’ end. Fucking flummoxed. In spite of all the publicity, the questioning of family members and all known associates of the dead trio from the van, and dozens of interviews with past and present Queens Own Yacht Club members, he’d found nothing solid to proceed with. It was time for something different. Although he didn’t have the wide latitude of the old days when he could just round up a bunch of guys he didn’t like the looks of and lean on them in the hopes of springing something loose, Clarke was not averse to informal interrogations in off-station locales without lawyers present.

He was on one of these expeditions now, sitting in the corner of the Drake Hotel nursing a beer with three full glasses lined up on the table in front of him as he checked out the latest arrivals. Back in the day he’d had a large group of informants, many of them past offenders he paid or threatened, to keep him up to speed on what was happening in their particular corner of the criminal world. Nowadays there was no budget allocated for that sort of thing, a result of a new squeaky-clean police chief combined with predatory lawyers who were quick to exploit and discredit paid testimony on the stand. But there were still ways for devious old cops to sidestep the rules.

Clarke looked up and smiled. Speaking of which, just coming through the door, Froggy, an addict from Manitoba who’d moved west a few years ago to avoid being frozen to death in a drugged stupor. A raging alcoholic who, it being two days until Welfare Wednesday, would almost certainly be desperate. Clarke waved, and Froggy, after a hopeless, trapped look around the near empty bar, came over and sat down.

“How’s it going, Froggy? Here, help yourself.”

Froggy reached across and took one of the beers, and spilling only a little, drank it halfway down.

“I needed that,” he said. He wiped his mouth with a dirty sleeve and finished it off. Clarke slid another glass over, and Froggy put his hand around it and looked at Clarke. He knew from past experience that while the first one was free, the second one would cost him something. A third glass seemed like a distant dream.

“So what do you hear?”

“About what?” Froggy knew enough not to volunteer information indiscriminately. It was his sole remaining asset, and he couldn’t afford to squander it.

“The women on the park benches.”

Clarke knew it was a long shot, but what the hell, he had to ask. Froggy had been a smart man once, a successful chartered accountant they said, before a glowing red wood stove exploded and incinerated his family and his life one cold prairie night.

“Don’t know anything about that,” Froggy said, gripping his second beer tightly and already casting covetous glances at the final one. “Some crazy, everyone says.”

Clarke nodded. “They’re probably right. What do you know about the three men in the van?”

“I heard Louie Tardif was one of them. They say the other two sold drugs for him.”

“Yeah, we already knew that.” Clarke had suspected it, now he had another little piece of the puzzle. He finished his own beer and reached out and grasped the remaining glass and drew it towards him.

“Wait,” Froggy said. He closed his eyes, frowning in concentration. “I did some work a few years ago for Louie. Off the books. It was