Deadline by Craig McLay Read Free Book Online Page A

black nametag identified him as “SGT PETROVSKI”.
    “City cab,” the desk sergeant grunted, pointing back over Colin’s shoulder. “From any one of those pay phones outside.”
    Colin gave him a
you’ve got to be kidding
look. The desk sergeant responded with the kind of condescending smile that indicated that telling average citizens to go piss up a flagpole was one of the only satisfactions that his job afforded.
    “Christ,” Colin muttered as he turned around. “Really pays to be a good citizen.”
    He turned towards the front doors and pulled out his phone. The battery was almost dead because he had forgotten to charge it last night. How much would a cab cost to take him from here to the college? He had no idea. He only had $15 in his wallet. Did they take credit cards? Some did, but some didn’t. If they didn’t, he was going to have to go to the bank machine to get money out first. The nearest bank branch was three blocks away. What a pain in the ass.
    He was standing in front of the doors trying to decide what to do when he heard a familiar voice call out from behind him.
    “Colin?”
    Colin turned around to see Darryl Harrington coming towards him across the lobby, carrying what looked like a box of electrical wire in his arms. Darryl had been in his last semester of a network engineering course at Westhill when Colin had started on the newspaper. The two of them had known each other peripherally in high school, but it had been Darryl’s help with Colin’s first big story that had really cemented their acquaintance.
    “Hey Darryl,” Colin said. “What are you doing here?”
    Darryl shrugged with the box to indicate that he couldn’t shake hands. “Got a job with Westhill SecuriNet,” he said. “We got the contract to re-network this place and city hall after that big system failure they had last year.”
    Colin knew that the system failure Darryl was talking about had resulted in the police department losing all of their incident reports for the last three years. The incident reports were an electronic record of every situation where a police car was dispatched to a particular location. Even if no arrests were made, it was useful to have a record of how many times they had been somewhere, particularly for domestics and for use by third-party agencies, like Children’s Aid.
    Darryl glanced down at Colin’s fingers. “Shit man, what’d they bust you for?”
    Colin stopped rubbing his fingers and stuck them in his pockets. “Nothing. I just handled some evidence, that’s all.” He was keen to change the subject. “So your company got the contract on this place? That’s a pretty big deal.”
    Darryl leaned forward and dropped his voice a notch. “Yeah, and crooked as hell, too. There were kickbacks and phoney
incentives
like you wouldn’t believe. ‘Course, officially I don’t know about any of that stuff.”
    Colin grinned. “Right.”
    Darryl looked around. “So where you headed? You need a ride or something? You look kinda lost.”
    Colin perked up. “Actually, that’d be great.”
    Darryl nodded his head for Colin to follow. “No prob. I’m just heading out for the day anyway. You still at Westhill?”
    Colin nodded. “Is that out of your way?”
    “Nah,” Darryl shook his head. “I moved in with Tracey. We’re getting married next summer. Her apartment’s not far from there.”
    “Tracey? What about that other one you were going out with? Beth?”
    Darryl frowned. “She drove my car through the front window of a pharmacy.”
    “Sorry to hear that.”
    “You should be,” Darryl said. “You introduced us.”
    Colin apologized again and held the door so that Darryl could get through with the box. Having also briefly dated Beth, he thought it was a good idea to change the subject.

-14-
    C olin ordered another beer and looked up at the TV.
    The murder was the lead story. They had just shown what he supposed was Devane’s student ID photo. In it, Devane had the