Serpents Rising (10 page)

I sat for an hour, not sure exactly what I was watching for and mostly wishing I'd had the foresight to bring along a coffee. I shut the car off a couple of times to save fuel, and both times started it again after about five minutes, opting for warmth and polluting the environment over conserving gasoline and freezing my ass off.

No one had gone into or come out of the building in the time I'd been there. I wasn't sure what I'd do if sud­denly a vehicle screamed to a stop in front of the building and three guys leaped out of the car carrying semi-automatic weapons and running for the rear entrance.

I shut off the Honda for the third time and was contemplating that unpleasant scenario as a car did come into view in my rear-view mirror and pulled to a stop just behind me. I had one hand on the ignition key, just in case. Only one person climbed out of the car. It was too dark to see much, but I was pretty sure the person who was now coming alongside my car was a man and wasn't carrying a gun, at least not out in the open. I'm also pretty sure I stopped breathing. I started to turn the key in the ignition.

A tap on the window. I looked out into the darkness as the man bent down and looked back at me, an unhappy look on the familiar face. Motioned for me to roll down the window. I did.

“Nice night for a drive,” Cobb said.

“It might be, if I was driving.”

“Which leads me to my next question — what are you doing here?”

“Why don't you climb in the other side and we can talk about it without risking frostbite.”

He hesitated, then nodded and crossed in front of the Accord. I flipped open the lock on the passenger side and started the car. I was due for a warm-up.

Cobb climbed in and looked across at me. “Frostbite? It's barely below freezing.”

“I have thin blood.”

“Are you going to be a jerk about this?”

I knew by “this” he meant my being around when he'd told me to get lost.

“Probably.”

“To repeat — what are you doing here?”

“I don't honestly know. I just needed to get out of the house, went for a drive, ended up here. Then I got thinking about Zoe and the guys that are looking for Jay. Thought I'd just hang here for a while.”

He made a noise that was half grunt, half cough. He looked at the CD player where Gould was wrapping up the eighth variation.

“Classical?” He looked surprised or maybe miffed.

“Yeah.”

“You like classical?”

“Among other things, and when I'm in the right mood, yeah.”

He made the same noise he'd made a few seconds before, then looked across the street at the darkness of the building, and back at me.

“And you thought you'd ‘hang here.'”

“Yeah.”

“‘For a while.'”

“Yeah.”

“Not a bad thought.”

Surprised me. “You think she could be in danger?”

He shrugged. “I don't know. These guys are hardasses. They offed the old man, but that might not be enough.”

“They could be worried that the kid is pissed off enough to tell the cops whatever he knows about the house on Raleigh.”

Cobb nodded. “That's possible. One thing's for sure, if they target Jay, nobody in his circle is home free. That includes Zoe … and you.”

“And you.”

He nodded again. “This is my line of work.”

“You think I didn't run up against some bad guys in my research?”

“I'm sure you did. Encountering violent people when conducting research isn't the same as encountering them when they see you as the enemy.”

“I think I can be of some help without doing something stupid. The fact that you're here says you're worried about Zoe. You can't watch her twenty-four-seven and look for Jay at the same time. You need help.”

He looked at me. “So what do you do if you're watching this place and a couple of thugs show up, heading for the back door?”

“I was just sitting here having that same thought.”

“You call me on my cell, that's what.”

“And she's dead before you get here. How does that help anything?”

“So you play John Wayne and go running in there and you're
both
dead before I get here. How does
that
help anything?”

“Fair enough, I call you on your cell … then what?”

“You wait and you watch and you do what I tell you.”

“I'm fine with that.”

“Good. Here's your first order. You go get us some coffee, maybe a couple of donuts, no icing on mine.”

He didn't wait for me to agree, just got out of my car and walked back to the Jeep. I put the Accord in gear, made a U-turn, and headed back toward lights and civilization. And Tim Hortons.

I was back in less than fifteen minutes. This time I parked behind Cobb and juggled hot coffee cups and old- fashioned plain donuts all the way to the passenger seat of Cobb's Jeep.

I passed him a coffee and one of the donuts. I stared for a minute at the warehouse. “Any action across the street?”

Cobb had just taken a large bite and shook his head to answer. Swallowed, sipped coffee, pointed with his coffee cup.

“The light flicked on, then off in one of the places in there. Maybe … what was that guy's name?”

“Jackie Morris.”

“Yeah, maybe his place. Hard to tell from here. And that's it for ground pounding excitement.”

“How do we know she's in there?”

“I took a little walk while you were getting the refreshments. She's there. Alone.”

“So she knows we're out here.”

He shook his head.

I decided against asking how he'd found out that Zoe was in there by herself without her knowing he was there. We drank coffee in silence for a while. The dash clock read 10:22.

“You any closer to finding Jay Blevins?”

Another head shake. “And it might get still tougher. By now he probably knows about the shooting and maybe that his old man was the shooter. If his brains aren't totally addled from the shit he's been putting into his body, he might have figured out that a low profile would be a good idea.”

“No profile would be even better.”

He nodded.

“Which makes
you
somewhat redundant,” I said.

“That thought has occurred to me.” Cobb turned his head and looked at me. “I followed up on our conversation with Sharp, the million dollar realtor. The house on Raleigh belongs to a group called the MFs. You know them?”

“I know a little. Catchy name for starters. Bikers. Badass. Shadowy. I was never able to gather enough to actually write about them.”

He nodded. “Yeah, it's not like they're on Facebook announcing it to the world every time one of them goes to the john. What is fairly common knowledge is that they're a motorcycle gang that would like to rival the Hells Angels. Drugs, prostitution, loan sharking, history of violence — make that
rumoured
violence. So far nobody's been able to nail them for much more than speeding tickets. Smart guys.”

I nodded, took a long drink of my double-double. “I picked up some stuff in my research but a lot of it was rumours. Flamboyant on the surface but pretty low key when it comes to some of their non-motorcycle related activities. The name Blair Scubberd came up a few times. Calls himself Rock. Snappier handle than Blair, I guess. Not much out there about him either except that he's not a person you want to piss off. I didn't hear the MFs were into the drug industry, I guess that's why I didn't mention them when you asked before.”

“Might be a fairly recent development. The place on Raleigh has been a crack house for a while, maybe ten years, but it used to have a different owner-operator. Independent named Jerzinsky.”

“Jerzinsky,” I repeated. “Never heard of him at all.”

“Died a little over three years ago. He was found at the bottom of a ravine on the Calgary to Banff highway. A couple of bullet holes in his head. A year or so later the crack house was up and running again. Under new management.”

“Let me guess. No arrests ever made.”

“Good guessing.”

“Okay, so we fast-forward to the present and the new entrepreneurs are operating a thriving little business out of the house on Raleigh that used to belong to a rival who met with an untimely end.”

“Bingo.”

“The MFs.”

Cobb nodded.

“M and F Holdings.”

“Bingo again.”

“Mr. and Mrs. Smith, aka Scubberd. Well, at least you know who you're dealing with.”

“Sort of. Like you said, this guy Rock is pretty much invisible. The most recent picture I've seen of him is at least five years old. He looks tough, like the name fits. Can't find out much about him other than he's originally from the Maritimes and he's a gym rat. I've been calling gyms to see if I can find somebody who knows him even a little. No luck so far. And his close associates seem to be just as diligent about staying out of the public eye. No names, no faces … so far.”

“Except for Schapper and McGowan.”

Cobb raised an eyebrow at me.

I shook my head. “It was in the paper.”

“Here I am working my ass off and I could have saved myself the trouble and read it in the newspaper.”

“We journalists are a bright bunch.”

“Paper say anything else?”

“Nothing of note,” I answered. “Didn't mention the MFs.”

Cobb nodded. “Schapper, the one Zoe called Stick, has been an MF for quite a while, a few years anyway. The other one, McGowan, was a recent recruit.”

For a few minutes neither of us said anything.

“So it's back to trying to track down Jay,” I said.

“That's all it's ever been. I'm not being paid to butt heads with the MFs. My job is to find and protect Jay Blevins. Period.”

“Doesn't matter that your employer is deceased?”

Cobb shook his head. “He paid in advance. But even if he hadn't …”

“You'd keep looking for the kid.”

“Right.”

“And maybe keep an eye out for a girl named Zoe.”

“Which I hope might eventually give us Jay Blevins. And, by the way, watching a warehouse is something I can do by myself. Why don't you take the rest of the night off?”

I nodded. “Sure, but how about I take tomorrow night? Give you a break or an opportunity to pursue other avenues. I've got a whole lot more classical music I can play and I won't do John Wayne.”

He looked at me for a minute then smiled and nodded. “Deal. There are a few things I'd like to follow up on and I could use the time … no John Wayne.”

I grinned but wasn't in a hurry to leave. “There's something I'd like to talk to you about.”

“Sure. Talking during surveillance is good, like classical music.”

“Is that what this is? Surveillance?”

“That's what this is.”

“I like the word stakeout better. Sounds more detective-ish.”

“Detective-ish?”

I shrugged.

“What's on your mind?”

I told him about my looking into Donna's past. Finished up with the conversation with Kelly. When I'd finished he was silent for what felt like several minutes, staring at the building across the street.

“Give me the wording of the note again.”

“‘Kelly, the bastard did it again. D.'”

“That's all of it?”

“Except for Kelly's answer. One word. ‘Pig
.
' That's it.”

“A girl-to-girl note in high school complaining about some guy. It's not much. There can't be more than a few hundred reasons a girl in high school might write those words to a buddy.”

“I've already considered that. But the note is uncharacteristic of Donna.”

“The Donna
you
knew. This is the teenage, hormonal version, may be a different person.”

“Maybe. But there's something else. I'm not sure Kelly was being totally straight with me. I had a feeling she knew what or who the note was referencing but didn't want to share.”

“Again, lots of possible reasons for that.”

“Maybe. But what about Kelly's response to Donna's note? ‘Pig' has a certain connotation. Maybe sexual. A pervert maybe. Or a flasher.”

“Or a cop. Or a whole lot of other possibilities, all of them innocuous. Look,” Cobb said, “I know I'm the one who got you thinking about this stuff. And I'm not trying to throw cold water on what you've learned so far. There could be something there. I'm just saying it's a long shot.”

“You know what's a long shot? That some psycho killed my wife for no reason. Either he was after me or he had some madman's desire to see Donna dead.”

Cobb nodded slowly. “Something I've wondered about. If the killer was targeting you, why didn't he try again when he realized he'd failed?”

“Maybe one murder scared him off. Or if I was the target, maybe he figured that having my wife killed was worse for me than dying myself. If that's what he was thinking, he wasn't wrong.”

We were silent again. I think Cobb was giving me a minute. I needed it.

Finally he said, “Possibilities for sure. And you're right, a certain kind of twisted bastard may have thought that the pain he caused you was enough revenge … if revenge was the motive. But there's still that other possibility …”

“That Donna
was
the target,” I finished the thought.

“Uh-huh.”

“I think I'll talk to Kelly Nolan again.”

“Can't hurt,” Cobb said.

We finished our coffee in silence. I said good night, walked back to the Honda, and was home in twenty-five minutes. Not much traffic at that hour. And the road crews had the main streets pretty much cleared off. I shucked my coat and shoes at the door, pulled a Rickard's Red out of the fridge, and picked up the phone. The telltale beeps told me there was a message. It was Joan.