“Long day,” he muttered as he grabbed her suitcase. “I’ve got a lot to tell you.”
“So do I,” she said, following him out to the car. He hoisted her bag into the back seat and walked around to open her door. Giving him a peculiar look, she yanked it open herself and slipped lithely inside. The cabbies were still cursing in a colourful array of languages as they drove away.
“So who goes first?” he asked as he merged the car into the existing traffic.
“I do,” she replied without hesitation, flashing him a triumphant smile. “Because whatever you’ve found out, I can trump it.”
He chuckled. “Dangerous lady. You haven’t even seen my hand yet.”
“No, but unless you’ve identified the murderer, I’ve got you beat.”
He almost drove off the road. “You got a hit on those photos?”
“I did. Lucky for both of us the bartender was in the place early, cleaning out the fridges. It took him all of ten seconds to look at all the pictures and pick out the man who killed Daniel Oliver.” She looked across at him excitedly. “The shit is really going to hit the fan, Mike. It was John Blakeley.”
“Hot damn! He’s sure? It’s a long time to remember a face.”
“Absolutely positive. He remembered the scar on the guy’s eyebrow.”
Green slapped the steering wheel with triumph. “Now we’ve got him six ways to Sunday, and we’re not wasting one more second doing this little off-limits dance that my super, the chief, the Liberal party and God knows maybe the queen wants me to do.” He drove one-handed as he groped in his pocket for his cellphone. Devine snapped up the phone before the first ring was over.
“Barbara,” he said, “you’d better warn the Chief. John Blakeley has been positively identified by an eye witness as the man who killed Daniel Oliver in Halifax ten years ago. The officer from Halifax is here now, and we’re going to swing by the station to pick up Brian Sullivan, then we’re going after him.”
“Mike!” Her shriek nearly hit high C . “Wait for the warrant. Do it by the book.”
“No! That little press conference was his farewell speech. He’s internationally connected, and I’m not letting him get on a plane and take all his secrets with him while I’m hunting down some justice of the peace at his Sunday dinner. We’ll bring Blakeley in for questioning, and we’ll get the paperwork in order while he’s there.”
“But—”
“I know the book, Barbara. Give me some credit.”
“All right, but you control it. Not Halifax. They observe, nothing more.”
Green glanced at McGrath, who was watching him expectantly. She had come two thousand kilometres, she had broken open the case...
Devine broke into his thoughts. “Do you hear me? Inspector?”
“I need to phone Sullivan,” he muttered and hung up. Before McGrath could get any questions in, he dialled Sullivan to set the wheels of justice in motion.
When he and McGrath arrived at the station, Sullivan was already waiting in the incident room with Detective Jones, reviewing the paperwork for the nationwide warrant on Blakeley. Sullivan greeted Kate McGrath with a broad smile and a hearty handshake, but he flicked a sideways glance at Green that spoke volumes. Green busied himself looking over the paperwork.
Once they had completed their instructions to Jones and dispatched him to finalize the warrant, they argued over their approach strategy. Until the warrant was completed and a justice of the peace tracked down to sign it, which might take hours, they hadn’t the legal means to apprehend Blakeley. Since it was a Halifax case and McGrath was the officer of record, she needed to swear the affidavit before the JP . Technically, nothing stopped them from dropping by for another informal chat with Blakeley in the meantime, but his lawyers and the courts would cry foul if he was questioned without being informed of the pending changes and given the chance to consult his lawyer. Yet Green feared that even now, two hours after his press conference, Blakeley was already long gone.
In the end, they settled on a compromise. Jones would write up the warrant and accompany McGrath to the JP while Green and Sullivan, along with a couple of plain clothes teams, would keep Blakeley’s condo under surveillance. A discreet call also went out to the head of security at the airport to delay Blakeley should he try to board a flight.
“Don’t you dare start the interrogation without me!” McGrath warned as they all prepared to leave. “Ten years this guy has been inside my head, Mike. I want a chance at him!”
Green faced her reluctantly. Her eyes glowed, and her cheeks were flushed. He understood her hunger, but the interview would be delicate enough without Devine barging into the middle of it. This was not about closure or settling the score. More than nailing the guilty, this was about keeping the innocent alive.
“I know,” he said as he and Sullivan headed out the door. They took the stairs two at a time down to the basement parking lot.
“She’s quite the woman,” Sullivan remarked ambiguously as they signed out a car.
“That she is.”
“Are you going to wait for her?”
“Devine vetoed it.”
“She’s going to be pissed.”
“I assume she’ll be professional.”
Sullivan chuckled as he started the car. “Don’t count on it. Where the two of you are concerned, you’re way past professional.”
Green busied himself with the seatbelt, hoping Sullivan couldn’t see his scarlet face. How the hell had the man figured that out in the brief hour since he met her? They pulled out of the parking lot in silence and headed up Catherine Street, both of them staring at the road ahead.
“Nothing is happening.”
“Oh. Right.”
Green risked a glance. A smile played at the corner of Sullivan’s mouth. “I mean, nothing is happening.”
“As long as you keep it that way. Sharon is way more than you deserve.”
“Oy, my conscience. It’s good to have you back.” Green gestured as they neared the intersection of Kent Street. “Now can we keep our minds on this case, before we stumble upon this guy totally unprepared?”
Ablaze in the slanting rays of the sinking sun, Blakeley’s condominium high-rise looked deceptively serene as long as one ignored the three media vans parked outside. Green and Sullivan slipped out of sight on a side street and coordinated the surveillance as unobtrusively as possible. They placed an officer at each of the exits, including the underground parking garage. A check inside revealed Blakeley’s Lexus SUV still parked in its spot, but Green dismissed it as irrelevant. If Blakeley was leaving the country, he would hardly leave his car at the airport as a billboard announcing his travel plans. He would leave it at home, hoping it would serve as a decoy for at least a day or two.
As Green predicted, a phone call to Blakeley’s apartment from an unlisted number went unanswered. Even if the man was at home, he would be crazy to answer his phone with all the media camped outside. Green and Sullivan accessed the high-rise across the street and selected an apartment on the twelfth floor.
“You’re the third person in the past hour who’s asked to get into my place to spy on them,” the tenant replied when they knocked on her door. She was shouting through the door over the blare of the television, but she sounded more intrigued than distressed.
“But we’re the police, ma’am,” Sullivan said. “We won’t take long.”
“We