Never Say Spy (3 page)

One of the ERT men, Archer, I thought, sidled over.  “Shut up, Webb,” he said in low tones.

Webb turned a hurt expression to him.  “What?”

Archer muttered, “How do you think he feels?  Why do you think he’s got a skinny, useless analyst for a sidekick instead of real partner?”

Webb evidently took no offence.  “That wasn’t his fault,” he murmured.  “Everybody knows Kane is the best of the best.  He couldn’t have done anything to change what happened.”

Archer sighed.  “Yeah, try telling him that.  So don’t rub it in, okay?”  They both clammed up as Kane returned.

“Are you finished here?” Officer Kane asked the paramedic.

“Both of them have declined a trip to the hospital.”

“Fine,” Kane responded.  “The other team is doing the cleanup over on the street, so you can head out.”  He turned to me.  “I’d like to take your statement now and ask you some questions.”

I made a vague gesture that encompassed Webb along with the uniforms, ambulance, armoured men, and general chaos in the parking lot.  “I’m really sorry about all this.”

He regarded me gravely.  “I don’t think you have anything to apologize for at the moment.  Let’s go and sit in the coffee shop and you can tell me what happened.”

Kane, Webb, and I trooped back into the building and appropriated one of the quiet corners.  A couple of uniformed city police officers were finishing up with the last of the witnesses, and they waved a casual goodbye to Kane as they left.

Kane sent Webb to get writing materials from their truck, and I tried not to squirm guiltily in my chair while we waited in silence.

What the hell was taking Webb?  I shifted in the chair again before forcing myself to lean back and feign composure.

God, what if they arrested me for assaulting a police officer?  But dammit, it wasn’t my fault I got carjacked by some nutcase.  Surely they couldn’t blame me for being a little panicky.  And my squeaky-clean record had to be good for something.  Only one little speeding ticket in my entire life...

Shut up, already.

I shook off my anxious ruminations and straightened as Webb rejoined us, dropping into the chair across from me.

Kane regarded me neutrally as he opened the notebook Webb had brought.  “Let’s start with your name and address.”

I told him my name and spelled it out.  “I’ve been living near Silverside, Alberta since the beginning of the month, but I haven’t done my address change from Calgary yet,” I added.

At the mention of Silverside, Webb glanced at Kane, his mouth opening.  Then he snapped it shut, his gaze returning to me.  Kane’s face remained expressionless while he wrote down my Silverside and Calgary addresses, along with my phone numbers and other identification.

When I told him my date of birth, Webb’s face lit up.  “Oh, hey, that’s exactly the same as my Mom’s!  I didn’t think you were that old.  I mean...” he fumbled, “You look great!  I can’t imagine my Mom taking somebody out like that.  You were like, Madame Rambo or something!”

I winced.  “Thanks for that, I think.  But Madame Rambo sounds a little too much like a 1-900 number for my taste.”

Webb turned pink and I thought I caught a glint of amusement in Kane’s eyes, but it passed too quickly to be sure.  Kane brought us back to the business at hand by asking for a chronological list of events.

“You were right behind me, so I think you saw most of it,” I told him.  “That guy was hiding in my trunk, and he came through the back seat with a gun in his hand.  I slammed on the brakes and jumped out, and that’s when you arrived.  But I don’t know how he got in there, because I bought some stuff at the hardware store earlier and put my bags in the trunk.  He wasn’t in there then.  And I went straight to my house after the store.”

I pondered that for a moment.  “So he must have sneaked in while I was inside the house.”

“Yes,” Kane confirmed.  “We’ve had him under surveillance since Friday afternoon.”

“What!” I squawked.  “You watched him crawl into my trunk and you didn’t
do
anything?”

“We’ve been watching him for several months now, both here and in Silverside.  His name was Samir Ramos.  We suspected him of espionage, but we couldn’t find solid proof.  We thought you might be his contact.  We were a little surprised when you jumped out of the car.”

I opened my mouth, but nothing came out.  Deciding that open-mouthed gawping was probably not an attractive look for me, I closed it and sat for a few seconds, assimilating this new information.

“But,” I said, and then shut up, trying to organize my thoughts.

“Okay,” I tried again.  “So you and Officer Webb are working on a case, and you think this Samir guy is a spy?”

Webb let out a whoop of laughter.  “
Officer
Webb!  I like the sound of that!”

At my look of utter bafflement, Kane explained.  “Webb is a civilian.  He’s an analyst with CSIS.”

He must have noticed my unenlightened look, because he went on to explain, “CSIS stands for Canadian Security Intelligence Service.  Their role is to protect Canada’s national security.  Webb and I are part of an INSET team.  INSET stands for Integrated National Security Enforcement Teams, and our role is counterterrorism.  We believe that Ramos was attempting to steal classified information and deliver it to a terrorist group.”

Webb spoke up again.  “So I’m not ‘Officer’ anything, just plain old Clyde Webb.  But you can call me Spider.  All my friends do.  Get it?  Spider Webb!”

I smiled and nodded.  Quite apart from the wordplay on his name, his lanky arms and legs did make him look spiderish.  “Got it.”  I turned back to Kane, still trying to figure it all out.  “But you’re RCMP?”

“Yes, INSET teams can be made up of police, military, and civilian members.”

“Okay...  So who were the other acronyms?”

He raised an inquiring eyebrow.

“You said ERT earlier, I think?”

“Yes.  ERT stands for Emergency Response Team.  It’s Canada’s answer to SWAT.”

I rubbed my aching temples.  Already I’d forgotten what INSET meant.  I moved on.  “So back to the spy.  Were you able to catch him, or did he get away?  Can you question him?  Why was he trying to shoot
me
?”

“We’d very much like to know why he was trying to shoot you.  Or, more likely, capture you.  If he’d wanted to kill you, he would have shot you as soon as you got into your car.”

I shuddered.  Which was worse, a bullet in the brain, or being captured by a creepy spy for purposes unknown?

“Unfortunately,” Kane continued, “We can’t question him because I killed him.  There were too many bystanders in the vicinity, and I couldn’t let him keep shooting.”

Oh.  I flashed back to Kane’s comment to the paramedic about doing the cleanup on the street.  Wet cleanup on Aisle 3.  Eeuw.

I wrenched my mind away from the inappropriate humour when I realized Kane had asked me another question.  “Sorry, what?”

“Did you know Ramos?  Have you ever seen him before?”

“Uh,” I said, my mind working furiously.

Yes, Officer Kane, I met him in a steamy fantasy.  Bad, bad answer, on so many levels.

“I think... I saw him in Silverside,” I ventured.

“When and where do you think you saw him?”

“It’s... a little confusing.”

Kane was watching me intently, and it took all my self-control to keep my eyes from shifting away from his steady gaze.  Lying was probably a very bad idea, but telling the truth would make me sound at best, like a crackpot, and at worst, like a pathetic slut.

Hell, my fantasies were nobody’s business but my own.  I went with simple, true, and incomplete.

“I slipped and hit my head.  I guess I was knocked out for a while.  I think I saw him about the time the paramedics arrived.”

“Exactly where and when was this?”

“Thursday.  Around 12:30 in the afternoon.  I slipped on the sidewalk in front of the ice cream shop on Main Street.”

“So there should have been a few witnesses,” Kane said.

“Um, I don’t know.  Maybe the paramedic saw him.”

The paramedic sure as hell did see him, but I’d be damned if I knew how.  How did he get inside my head, anyway?

“Maybe I hallucinated the whole thing,” I added.  “I was a little disoriented.”

“Are you sure the man in your car today was the same one you saw in Silverside?”

“I... think so.  But that wouldn’t make any sense.  If I saw him in Silverside, how could he possibly show up at my house here in Calgary?  It’s not like he would have had my name and address.”

...Because I’d been too busy sucking face with him to exchange names...

Gah.  Focus.

Kane exhaled wearily.  “I’m sorry to ask you this, but will you look at the body and see if you can be positive about whether it’s the same man?”

My stomach lurched, but I nodded.  Looking at dead people wasn’t high on my list of favourite activities.  And I didn’t think I was going to like seeing somebody freshly dead from a gunshot wound.

“I’m going to have to eat first, though,” I said.

Webb spoke up.  “You may want to wait until after we visit the medical examiner’s office.”

“No, I’ll definitely want a full stomach.”

Both of them regarded me doubtfully.  “Okay, whatever you say,” Webb replied.

“When should I go?  And where’s the morgue?  Oh, and I forgot to ask, what about my car?  Were you able to get it stopped before anybody got hurt?  Where is it?”

“Ramos had to stop it before he could get out and start shooting,” Kane responded.  “Leaving it in gear probably saved your life.  The car will be impounded until our team gets a chance to check it for possible clues, but that should only take a few days.  Your insurance may cover the repairs.”

I felt the blood drain from my face.  “Repairs?  How bad?”

My poor little car.

“Just a couple of bullet holes.  You can ride with us to the medical examiner’s office, and then we’ll call you a cab to get back to your house.”

Just
a couple of bullet holes.  Bullet holes were not minor in my world.

I faked calm.  “Okay.  I’ll grab a sandwich and a drink to go and eat them on the way, if you don’t mind me eating in your truck.”

Kane shrugged.  “It’s a surveillance vehicle.  It’s already full of fast-food wrappers.”

I rose to go to the sales counter and stopped as a thought hit me.  “Oh, crap!  I forgot, all my overnight stuff is in the car.  I have nothing at the house.  Can I get my backpack out of the car, or is that impounded, too?”

“It’s part of a crime scene, so technically it should stay.  But you can get a few things if I supervise and catalogue their removal,” Kane replied.

“Good, that’ll work.”

Lucky I’d worn my waist pouch as usual.  Someday the fashion police were going to take me down for wearing it in public, but it was convenient and impossible to leave behind.  I might not be stylish, but at least I still had all my money, credit cards, and other essentials despite my wild flight.

I paid for my food and we left the coffee shop to head toward the cordoned area in the street.  The ambulance had departed, but there were still two police cruisers and a fire truck parked in the street along with Kane’s Suburban and my Saturn.  As we approached, a television van drove away, and I thanked my lucky stars they’d given up moments too soon.  I could imagine the TV reporter slavering over an interview with a carjacking victim.

I glanced up at Kane pacing beside me.  He had to be at least six-foot-four.  It was unusual for me to have to look up at anybody, and it was a nice change.  He noticed my glance and returned a questioning look.

“I was wondering about the media coverage,” I explained.  “How did you get rid of them without a whole round of interviews?”

“Part of the clean-up crew’s job is to deal with media questions.  Tonight on the news, they’ll report that there was a shooting this afternoon, and that it was probably drug-related.  That keeps the public calm, thinking it can’t happen to them.  In a couple of days, it will be old news.”

“Drug-related?  Jeez, I hope nobody recognizes my car.”

Kane flashed his ID at the uniformed officer and lifted the police tape for Webb and me to duck under.  Webb winced when he folded his skinny torso, and I offered him another repentant ‘sorry’.  He waved a magnanimous hand.

When we arrived at my car, I sadly regarded the bullet hole in the trunk.  With the white topcoat cracked away and the grey primer showing underneath, it looked very much like the gunshot decals the kids put on their cars to look cool.  I wasn’t feeling very cool at all.

I brushed my fingers over the hole and murmured, “Poor little car.”

Realizing Kane and Webb were watching me, I reached into my waist pouch for my keys and encountered empty space in their usual pocket.  “Oh, my keys are still in the ignition.”

Kane strode to the open driver’s door and reached in around the steering wheel.  I started to follow him, but jerked to a halt when I noticed the ugly splatter at the top of the rear passenger door and over the roof.  I looked away quickly.  Maybe their evidence team would clean it off.

Kane handed over my loaded keychain, and Webb raised amused eyebrows.  “How many keys do you need, anyway?”

“All of them.  Believe it or not, I actually know what each of those keys is for.  My friends call it the janitor’s set.”

“I know janitors that don’t even have that many keys,” he chuckled as I unlocked the trunk.

Before I could touch anything, Kane reached in and retrieved my small backpack.  “Is this it?”

I nodded, and he opened the zipper.  “Tell me what you need from this,” he said as he began to withdraw items and lay them out in the trunk.

“I’ll need everything in there,” I blurted, hoping to forestall the unpacking process.

He continued without comment, and I felt a blush spreading up my face when he pulled out my bright yellow thong underwear.  Webb strolled away with heavy nonchalance, his face scarlet.

Yeah, that was probably more than he wanted to know about me.

As Kane extracted the matching yellow bra, I took myself in hand.  Dammit, I was pushing fifty.  Surely I was past adolescent simpering over my undies.  Kane’s face showed nothing but professional detachment, so I stood a little taller and watched in silence while he completely unpacked my few items from the backpack and checked the pack itself over thoroughly.

He laid the pack in the trunk before taking a small camera out of his inside pocket to photograph the trunk and its contents.  He made a note in his notebook, then methodically repacked the bag and handed it to me.