A Killing Spring (29 page)

The host of the show, Cameron McFee, was an unflappable Scot with an easy manner and a ready wit that made him a natural for live television. He couldn’t have had time to do much more than glance through the new introduction, but he read Rapti’s lines about the immorality of journalists who pass hybrids off as truth with real conviction.

Until Cam began to describe the Janet Cooke case, Tom looked alert but not alarmed. However, when Cam started to give details about how Janet Cooke had entrapped herself with her lies, Tom’s chest began to rise and fall rapidly, and sweat appeared on his upper lip. As the awareness hit him that Cam’s homily about unethical journalists was a prelude to real trouble, I could see the panic rise sharply. Attentive as a lover, the camera moved in for a tight shot of Tom’s face, found the desperation in his eyes, and moved closer.

At that moment, I could think of few activities more rewarding than watching Tom Kelsoe’s persona crumble, but I had a part to play too. I picked up Kellee’s photograph and started towards the studio. There were no police in the
corridor, and I felt a tingling of apprehension. From what I’d seen on the monitor, Tom was close to the edge, and I would have welcomed the presence of some officers in blue. When I walked into the studio, Troy Prigotzke, a member of the crew on “Canada Tonight,” was standing in the shadows near the door.

I moved close enough to him so I didn’t have to raise my voice. “Troy, did anyone tell you that the police are supposed to show up here tonight?”

“Rapti did,” he said. “That’s why I’m here, but she didn’t elaborate. She just told me that it was Jill’s call, and that, when the cops arrived, I should make sure they got in.”

“Well, as long as you’re watching …,” I said, and I started towards the riser.

“Jo!” Troy’s whisper was insistent, and I turned. “All the outside doors to the lobby are locked,” he said. “Nobody can get in without a security card. Did Jill send somebody to let the cops in?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“I’d better get up there and check,” Troy said.

I went to the riser and sat down. When he saw me, Tom was in mid-sentence, but the sight of me seemed to derail his train of thought. He stumbled through a few more words, then fell silent. Our eyes locked. I pulled Kellee’s photograph out of the Safeway bag. Then I leaned forward and held it out to him.

I’d expected that the sight of his victim’s face would rock Tom. It demolished him. The photograph seemed to shatter whatever vestiges of ego were keeping him in front of the camera. I wasn’t ready for what happened next. He bolted out of his chair and started to run off the set. In a moment straight out of a sitcom, the wire on the lapel mike Tom was still wearing jerked him back. He ripped it off, then darted past me towards the door that led out of the studio. My most
fervent hope was that he would collide with Troy and the Regina City Police, but I couldn’t take that chance.

I was on my feet in a split-second. By the time I got out of the studio, Tom had already made it past the green room and was heading towards the stairs. He spotted the two uniformed police officers emerging from the stairwell before they caught sight of him. It took the police a moment to get their bearings, and by then Tom had doubled back and was running towards me. When he turned left at the corridor that led to the elevators, I was right behind him. So were the police and so was Troy Prigotzke. As I ran, I could hear their shouts and their footfalls behind me. On the wall facing us at the end of the hall was the same poster that I had seen the day before on the side of the city bus. Tom’s likeness, poised, ironic, eyes burning with integrity, hovered over us all as we raced along. I caught up with him in front of the elevators. As he reached over to punch the button, I jumped in front of him. “Oh no, you don’t,” I said. “You’re not going anywhere.”

My intention was simply to block his way until Troy and the police reached us, but events spun out of control. It happened in a flash. I heard the mechanical groan of the elevator approaching; I felt the doors open behind me; then Tom Kelsoe pounded his outstretched hand against my collarbone and shoved me into the elevator. The police got there just as the doors were closing. My grandmother would have said they made it just after the nick of time. As the elevator started its ascent, Tom Kelsoe took a step towards me. He was panting with exertion, filling the small space with the smells of leather and fear.

I was breathing hard too. “Don’t make it any worse for yourself,” I said. “There are police all over this building.”

Tom laughed and punched the stop button on the panel
beside the doors. The elevator lurched to a halt. “There are no cops in here,” he said.

For the first time since I’d fled the studio, I was afraid. I ran through my options. There weren’t many. For a woman of fifty, I was in good shape, but Tom Kelsoe was forty, and he had spent a lot more hours in the gym than I had. In the close confines of an elevator, I wouldn’t have a chance against him. I couldn’t even appeal to Tom’s highly developed sense of self-interest. He had already killed twice. He had nothing to lose by battering me. All I had going for me was the possibility that, like all egotists, Tom would be unable to resist the chance to tell his tale.

I tried to keep my voice steady. “I’ve always told my kids there are two sides to every story,” I said. “Maybe it’s time I got your perspective on everything that’s happened.”

His fist seemed to come out of nowhere. I jumped aside, and the punch he’d aimed at me landed on the elevator wall. The pain goaded him. He pulled his fist back and struck again. This time, he connected. My head snapped back, and my nose gushed blood. I cried out. As soon as he saw that he’d hurt me, Tom Kelsoe was transformed. The fear and confusion went out of his face. He looked like a man who had come to himself. “Don’t patronize me, bitch,” he said. “And don’t you ever underestimate me.”

“Is that what Reed Gallagher did?” I asked, and my voice sounded small and beseeching.

“He thought I needed help,” Tom said, spitting out the word
help
as if it were unclean. “But Reed Gallagher was the one who was weak. When Kellee Savage came to him with her accusations, he should have thrown her out of his office. If he’d shown some balls then, the problem would have solved itself. But Reed said he had ‘an obligation to the truth.’ ” Tom shook his head in wonder. “The truth. As if
anybody gives a rat’s ass about the truth any more. I tried to tell Reed that nobody cared if the characters in the book were composites. All people wanted was a chance to get their rocks off reading about a whore with a heart of gold. And they sure as hell didn’t care if I used Kellee’s interviews to give them their little catharsis.”

I could taste the blood in the back of my mouth. I swallowed. If I didn’t want to get hit again, I had to keep Tom talking. “But Reed didn’t see it that way,” I said.

“No,” Tom said. “Reed didn’t see it that way. Kellee Savage was useless, a total waste of skin, but Reed decided she needed an advocate. That’s how I got him to come to Scarth Street that night. I told him I’d had a change of heart, that I was ready to accept the conditions he and that little toad had decided upon.”

“What did they want?” I asked.

“Not much at all,” he said bitterly. “Just a public admission that Karen Keewatin was a created character and that Kellee Savage had been an invaluable colleague in researching the book. Can you conceive of anybody obtuse enough to cave in to those conditions?”

Thinking the question was rhetorical, I remained silent, but silence seemed to be the wrong response. Tom took a step towards me. “Well?” he said.

“No,” I said meekly, “I can’t imagine anybody that obtuse.”

Tom punched the air with his forefinger in a gesture of approbation. “Right,” he said. “I know you’ve got a somewhat negative opinion of me, Joanne, but even you will have to admit that I’m not stupid.”

“No,” I said, “you’re not stupid.”

“Well, apparently Reed lost sight of the fact. When I told him I’d decided to apologize publicly for what I’d done, he fell for it. In fact, he was
thrilled
. He said that he knew all
along that I’d do the right thing, and that he’d stand by me and help me salvage my career. As if there would have been any career left to salvage after I’d gone through that charade.” Tom’s eyes burned into me. “He didn’t leave me any choice. I didn’t enjoy what I had to do, but it had to be done.”

My head was pounding. I thought of Reed Gallagher telling Julie that his greatest dream was to grow old with her. The words seemed to form themselves. “Why did you have to humiliate him like that?” I asked. “Why couldn’t you just kill him?”

Tom looked at me incredulously. “Because I had a plan,” he barked. “What the police found when they walked into that room on Scarth Street was a scene perfectly calibrated to divert their attention away from all the questions I didn’t want asked.”

“But Kellee would have asked the right questions.”

Tom’s tone was almost dreamy. “She would have, and from the moment I heard that they’d found Reed’s body, I knew she’d be a problem. That’s why I was in my office that night – trying to come up with a solution. I hadn’t thought of a thing, then that stupid cow just came lumbering in.” As he remembered the night of March 17, it was apparent that Tom’s focus had drifted from the present. Wherever he was, he wasn’t in the elevator with me. I calculated the distance between me and the panel beside the doors. The buttons that would restart the elevator were seductively near. I moved closer.

“What did Kellee want?” I asked.

“Justice,” Tom said in a mockingly declamatory voice. “Revenge. Who the fuck knows? She was drunk, and she was half out of her mind because she’d just heard about Reed. It was so easy. There were some cases of beer in the Journalism lounge. I offered to get us a couple of bottles to drink while
we talked things over. When Reed and I had had our meeting on Scarth Street, I’d added some secobarbital to the Dewar’s I’d brought for him to sip while we discussed my rehabilitation. There was enough left over to make Kellee’s beer a real powerhouse. It hit her like a bag of hammers. She started to cry. Then she asked me to take her home.”

I backed along the wall of the elevator till the panel of buttons was within striking distance. “But you didn’t take her to Indian Head,” I said. “You dumped her in that farmer’s field.”

Tom shrugged. Suddenly he seemed bored by the turn the conversation had taken. When he dropped his glance, I shot my hand towards the panel of buttons. I thought Tom had lost interest in my movements, but I was wrong. As my finger touched the button for the mezzanine, Tom chopped my forearm with the edge of his hand in a gesture so violent it brought tears to my eyes.

“You knew Kellee would die if you left her there,” I said.

He brought his face close to mine. “And I couldn’t have cared less,” he said. “Because I’m not like Reed Gallagher. I
do
have balls.”

“And that’s where you found the courage to kill a man who thought of you as a son and a twenty-one-year-old woman who was too drunk and too drugged to find her way home.” I leaned toward him and whispered, “You really are piece of work, Tom.” Then I raised my knee and caught him square in the crotch. He yelped in pain, and fell to the floor. I reached past him and hit
M
for mezzanine. This time Tom Kelsoe was too busy moaning to rip my finger from the button. All the same, it wasn’t until the elevator began to move that I felt safe enough to cry.

My memories of the next few minutes are fragmented: sharp and separate vignettes as distinct as stills from a movie.

The elevator doors opened, and Jill and Rapti were there. So were five members of the police force, and a lot of people from the show. I was glad to see that one of those people was Troy Prigotzke who, in addition to being a nice guy, was a body builder. Beside me, Tom Kelsoe was struggling to his knees. When Troy saw him, he reached down, grabbed Tom’s jacket collar and dragged him into the lobby. Then in a smooth and effortless move, he lifted Tom up and handed him to one of the cops. “I believe you have some interest in this piece of shit,” he said.

Rapti had a sweatshirt tied around her waist; she took it off and draped it around my shoulders. Then she took the sleeve and mopped at the blood on my face. “Poor Jo,” she said.

“I’m okay,” I said, but my tongue felt thick, and my words didn’t sound right.

As the police put the handcuffs on Tom Kelsoe, he shot Jill a pleading look. “You’ve got to help me, baby,” he said. Jill gave him a glance that was beyond contempt, and turned to me. “Let’s get out of here,” she said.

Before the police left, they offered to radio for someone to take Jill and me to the hospital to get checked out and then bring us downtown to make our statements. I asked if Constable Marissa Desjardin was on duty, and they said they’d see.

While we were waiting, I went over to a pay phone and called Sylvie O’Keefe to ask if Taylor could stay the night. After Sylvie and I made our arrangements, Taylor came on the line. I started to ask what she’d been up to, but she cut me off. “You sound funny,” she said.

“I have a nosebleed,” I said.

“But you’re okay.” I could hear the anxiety in her voice.

“I’m fine,” I said. “I’m just trying to be as brave as you were when you cut your hand. Now, you have fun, and I’ll pick you up tomorrow morning.”

Marissa Desjardin shuddered when she saw my face, but after the doctor in emergency had checked me over, he said nothing was broken and I’d live to fight another day. He said the same thing to Jill. When he went off to write a prescription for painkillers, Marissa Desjardin rolled her eyes and whispered “asshole” at his retreating back.

We were out of police headquarters in twenty minutes. Marissa Desjardin was a whiz at taking statements, and, as she said, she knew Jill and I were fading fast. It was a little after 8:00 when we walked through my front door.

After I’d helped Jill off with her coat, I said, “We can’t combine painkillers and Glenfiddich. Which would you prefer?”

“The Scotch,” she said. “And Carly Simon. Have you still got those old tapes of hers? The ones we used to listen to when we’d stay up and talk all night.”