Amuse Bouche (33 page)

After one last glance at the ice-cold lake, the intended burial ground that instead had given up its dead, I put my gun back in my pocket and turned to walk away. Despite my lined coat, it was well past midnight on an October morning in the prairies and I was shivering. 1 felt my leg muscles work a little harder to move my body up the slope. The ground, now greyish with frost, was slippery. I took tiny steps to avoid a fall. I didn't relish the thought of rolling down the kill, over the dock and into the freezing water. 1 grabbed hold of a stray sapling to steady my progress. And that was when I saw it.

The beam of my flashlight had settled on a spot to my right, about halfway of the distance between the rear of the cabin and the lake. At first I wasn't sure what I was seeing. So I stepped closer and then even closer. I looked down and I knew.

I knew who killed Tom Osborn.

379

I TRAVELLED FROM PlKE LAKE TO SASKATOON in a night so dark it felt as if I was submerged in a vat of black oil. Where had the moon gone? Had it hidden its face behind a bank of clouds as if afraid? Was it the same cold, dark fear that filled me now? As 1 covered the kilometres from lake to city, my mind whirled. I checked and rechecked everything I knew, all the clues I'd collected, along with this last, most damning thing. I knew I was right. But how to prove it?

In the cocoon of my car the dashboard clock told me it was now after 1:00 a.m. The perfect time for clandestine activity.

Innovation Place was a glass and girder ghost town. I left my car in the now familiar parking lot and approached the building that housed QW Technologies. I peeked through the glass doors. Good news and bad news. The bad news was that a guard raptly reading a newspaper occupied the security desk. I was disappointed. I'd seen a guard here before, but only during the day and I'd hoped there wouldn't be one at night. The good news was that if there was a security guard, the front doors would more than likely be unlocked. That was a good thing because, although I had few qualms about Anthony Bidulka

breaking into someone's home, an office building was another tiling. I'd much rather sneak in.

Pushing myself closer to the side of the building and into the feathery protection of a handy globe cedar, I slumped down to the ground and began my wait. I knew that sooner or later, either exercise, the John or job description would send the guard off on a walk. Within half an hour my wish came true. Luckily for me he went in the opposite direction from where I needed to go. I tried the door. Yes! It was unlocked! With nary a sound I slipped into the building and away from the security station. I hurried down the series of dimmed corridors.

As 1 worked on the locked door to QW 1

knew I wouldn't have to worry about the security guard for a while—he was practically a mile away. 1 also wouldn't have to worry about an office alarm system. Not only had I not seen any evidence of one on either of my two prior visits (something I'd had the smarts to check for—just in case), but it made sense that if building management put out for a night watchman, they'd feel little need for one in each separate business.

After all, this wasn't a Royal Bank. As the door clicked open, I was glad to find 1 was right and management was oh, so wrong. The reception area, sans my favourite secretary, was in near darkness except for the red glow given off by an Amuse Bouche

exit sign. I winced when I realized that although I still had my gun in my jacket pocket, I'd left the flashlight in the car. Unlike at the cabin, I didn't dare take the chance of using the lights, just in case the guard came by. Fortunately I'd been in the office before and pretty much knew my way around. I circled behind the reception desk and let myself into the back. I was in the hallway. More exit signs. I walked down its length to Tom's office and tried the knob.

Unlocked. I pushed open the door. Something wasn't right. I was getting the creepy feeling that I was not alone. Slowly I turned my head to look behind me.

Nothing. Only red-tinged darkness.

I stood in the doorway to Tom's office and peered in. The windowless room would have been pitch black if not for the diffused glow of a desk lamp. By now I'd been in the dimness long enough for my eyes to adjust. I could make out shapes and the difference between grey and dark grey and darker grey. Behind Tom's desk with its back to me was the chair I'd sat in while searching his computer. Over the edge of the chair's back I could see the top of a head. For a tension-filled eon of indecision I stood frozen to my position in the doorway staring at the sil-houette, but the game of who's gonna move first could not go on forever.

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"Hello," I said into the darkness. "I can see you." I felt a little silly as if I was playing a child's game of hide-and-seek.

The person who'd obviously been using Tom's computer remained silent.

"I can see you," I repeated, slowly inching closer to the chair.

Nothing.

I knew the situation was not as it appeared.

The head was too still. Another few feet closer. I pulled out my revolver.

"I can see you!" I exclaimed one more time as I put my left hand on the chair's back and spun it around.

Even though 1 knew I'd find someone sitting there, I jumped back, startled, as he was revealed to me in the halo of the desk lamp's hazy illumination. I stood ready, in front of the man, my gun pointing at his chest. But he did not react to being in the sights of my weapon. I squinted at the man trying to make out features.

Was he dead? Had someone caught Randy delving into Tom's computer and killed him because he was getting too close to the truth?

Was that someone still here? Had I been so wrong? I moved a step closer and stared at the familiar face. Familiar but not the face I'd expected.

The body in the chair wasn't Randy Wurz.

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It was Dave Biddle.

The local entrepreneur, the owner of Quasar, was sitting straight-backed in the chair, his hands tied together with a man's tie and sitting helplessly on his lap. His feet too were bound. A scarf covered his mouth. And then I saw the most frightening thing of all.

The whites of his eyes.

Dave Biddle was staring at me with a look of utter horror. The pupils of his eyes were moving wildly back and forth from my face to some spot behind me. But by the time I realized what the man was trying to tell me, it was too late.

"Get rid of the gun!"

The voice was higher than normal, probably matching an escalating stress level, but I still recognized it.

1 looked at Dave Biddle. His eyes had now ceased their desperate dance and fallen into a gaze of despair. I noticed blood, a red trail from somewhere in the back of his head into the depths beneath his once crisp, white shirt collar.

I crouched down slowly and placed my gun at my feet. When I rose I used my right foot to push it away from me. I heard the office door close and then I turned around to face my aggressor. My eyes burned as he switched on the overhead lights, but I did not flinch at the sight of Tom Osborn's murderer.

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Randy Wurz was wearing the same suit I'd last seen him in yesterday morning. It appeared as distressed as he did. I could only guess what had transpired in Randy's life since I'd last seen him outside TechWorld, supposedly off to search Tom's computer. In his hand he held a gun. It was pointed at me.

"Randy..." I began.

"Shut up!" he cut me off with a sharp bark. As he stared at me his lips were drawn into a tight grimace, his eyes glittered with a frenetic sheen and his normally precise hair was mussed about his face.

After a moment of silent communion, he finally said, "Why did you come here?" He ran his free hand over his neck. His shirt collar and cuffs were unbuttoned and his tie was missing—obviously it was now around Dave Biddle's ankles. A nice casual look for him.

"Why the hell are you here?"

His sleeves were rolled up and I pointedly looked at the underside of his right forearm. I was right. But what good was it going to do me now?

Randy glanced at his arms. "What?" he demanded, his voice gruff. "What are you looking at?"

It wasn't much of a rash now, but it must have been a doozy when he first got it. "Poison Amuse Bouche

ivy?" I asked.

He looked at me closely, trying to figure out what I was getting at. "Yeah, so what?"

"You're not even sure where you got it, are you?"

He was silent. He wasn't sure. But he probably had a good idea.

"The cinder blocks," I told him. "The cinder blocks you used to weigh down Tom's body and his luggage. They were in a bed of poison ivy."

He let out a derisive laugh and smirked at me. "Is that all you've got, Quant? That doesn't prove anything!"

"No," I readily agreed. "But it brought me here and I'd say having one man tied up and gagged and another at gunpoint is fairly good indication that you're guilty of something, wouldn't you say?"

"Shut up!" he ordered once more. I've always felt it wise to heed the instructions of a person with a gun. "Sit down!" he told me.

I looked around me. Dave Biddle was in the only chair in Tom's sparsely furnished office. I debated plopping myself down on his lap but thought better of it. Instead 1 looked at Randy and shrugged.

"Goddamn!" he bellowed, for a moment moving the gun off my heart as he used it to 386

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scratch the back of his head. He began a nervous pace back and forth in front of the office door. He swore some more. Things were obviously not going his way today. After a minute of that he somehow managed to control his adrenaline infusions and leaned back against the door, the gun once again threateningly pointed in my direction. "We need to just relax here."

Yeah, right.

He studied me in a way an alien might look upon a human for the first time, as if trying to figure me out. More likely figuring out what he was going to do with me. He'd already killed once. And I was betting he had been planning the same fate for Dave Biddle. But with me suddenly in the picture perhaps the mounting body count was beginning to bother him.

I decided my best bet for a longer life was to try to get him talking. It would distract him from coming up with a plan to get rid of me and also give me a chance to figure out how the hell I was going to get out of this. "It was you in France, wasn't it?"

"Yes," he admitted almost absent-mindedly.

"It was."

Hmmm. Not quite the verbal discourse I was hoping for. He looked frustrated. Worried.

What was wrong with him? Didn't all criminals have a senseless but uncontrollable desire to 387

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reveal the details of their crimes?

"How did you get Tom to meet you at Pike Lake on the day of his wedding?"

He shrugged and changed his position against the door, crossing his legs. It was an attempt at a casual stance that I wasn't buying.

"I didn't have to do a thing. He'd told me he'd be spending the afternoon at the cabin packing for the trip. That's where he kept most of his things, not at the apartment in the city. So I took a cab out there, even went for a little walk.

Eventually he showed up. I waited outside, watching him pack through a window and then..." He didn't seem willing to finish the sentence.

So I did. "And then you forced him at gunpoint—with Chavell's gun—down to the water's edge and you killed him."

He said nothing.

"After you shot him you found the cinder blocks, which were unfortunately surrounded by poison ivy, tied them to the body and luggage and after a brief ride in the boat you dumped the body and bags into the lake."

"After I got the keys out of his jacket pocket.

I needed them to get his truck back to the city and myself into the TechWorld lab."

This was more like it. Talk sucker, talk. "It was the middle of the afternoon. Weren't you 388

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afraid someone would see you or hear you?"

He snorted, "Didn't matter, did it? Tom was in France. There was no murder at Pike Lake that day. Besides, I shot him through a pillow. It didn't really make all that much noise and anyone who'd heard it could have mistaken it for all kinds of different things. And I didn't have to go that far out in the boat, just far enough so he'd sink below the surface."

"His ticket was gone, his luggage was gone, Tom was gone. The illusion was complete."

He nodded, his face an expressionless mask.

It was almost as if he'd frozen himself into an emotional numbness as he recalled the details of the ultimate betrayal.

"So you attended the wedding and acted as surprised as everyone else when Tom didn't show."

Another bob of the head.

"How could you do this to your friend?"

"Oh for chrissakes!" Aha. A crack in the controlled facade. "You have me unimaginatively pegged as the perfect, evil villain. Well, you're wrong. I didn't enjoy doing what I had to do.

Tom
was
my friend. I shed my tears. I have my guilt. I'll have to live with that forever."

Give me a break! I couldn't believe what was coming out of this guy's mouth. Was I suppose to feel sorry for all the inner turmoil he was Amuse Bouche

experiencing? What an idiot. But was he an out-of-control idiot? How much time did I have before he shot me? I had to keep him talking until I figured something out. If this had been an episode of
Starsky and Hutch
(me being Hutch), I'd have wisely called for backup before I got there. Or someone I'd been working with on the case would figure out I was in danger and burst in at the last moment to save the day (and my ass). Perhaps a knight in bulletproof armour? Not likely. Sereena thought I was somewhere on Navy Avenue (where I no longer was), but even so, she had no reason to suspect I was in trouble. Errall? Darren? Nope. I was in this alone. I definitely needed to look into a trusty sidekick arrangement.

I had the grim premonition that only one of us was leaving QW alive. I was hoping it would be me. "But why, Randy? Why did you go through all this elaborate planning to commit this murder? What would make you kill your best friend?"