Gates of Power Read online

  A mixture of instant relief and guilt.

  Nicotine for relief, guilt on account of Claire.

  With a contrite apologetic smile, I looked towards an unlikely feature on the wall that reminded me of her: an antique mirror. We’d argued plenty about its location. I said it was too low to be practical for me to use without ducking. She said it wasn’t her fault that I was six-foot-four, and that it needed to be low, so it matched the pictures on the wall and balanced the room. She’d won out. Now I wouldn’t move it for the world, not that I thought she’d been right or anything, but in a small way it was a part of her, like most of the apartment really, which I’d kept the same since her murder.

  To change it now would feel like erasing that tiny bit of her I had left.

  Silly, I know. But there you go.

  An interior design feature of a very different kind had spurred Alfie Rose to install video cameras at his place. Soon after he’d been charged with murder, in an ominous gesture of things to come, an intruder had left an ax embedded in the floor of his living room.

  Alfie was out on bail now, set at a million dollars, and was required to turn over his passport due to his flight risk.

  I’d spoken to him again on the phone this morning. He’d sounded panicked, and nervous, a far cry from the uber confident image he portrayed online. It was hardly surprising given that there had been a genuine real-world attempt on his life. The arson attack was part of the escalating threats, part of the swelling disgust the public had for him, and I loathed to think where things were going to end up.

  The case was getting serious, and the constant stream of online abuse and threats from devoted fans of Brian Gates were increasing.

  We’d arranged a meeting, our first, and he wanted it kept quiet.

  His lawyers didn’t know about me and he wanted to keep it that way. It wouldn’t last for long, of course, not if others had already heard a whisper that I was on the case, but for now it served us both to keep it from them, lest they see my involvement as meddling in their affairs.

  I was ready for some face to face time with Rose. I wanted to watch his reactions, get a feel for him as a person, and ask myself the big question: did I believe him?

  I was familiar with the kid’s background, what had been in the press anyway: twenty-two years old, a likable giant, loved for his smile and personality, and wild sense of fashion, he was highly intelligent but dyslexic and had struggled at school but excelled with computers. The school jocks had bullied him, but he got back at them in spectacular style when he hacked into the school yearbook page and edited his tormentors’ entries with honest and witty appraisals, detailing their sadistic abuse of others and limited prospects when they finally graduated. He shared it far and wide and in no time, it went viral across the net. Three million likes on Facebook, with a hundred thousand corresponding comments, hundreds of thousands of retweets, front page of Buzzfeed; and plenty more besides.

  That little stunt got him expelled but he had the last laugh. He became an internet star, and within the year had pulled in his first million as a gamer, purchased a bright fire-engine red convertible Ferrari and decided to pay his main former tormentor a little visit—at the drive-through where the guy now worked. Pulling up with the top down and three adoring female fans in the back, Rose coolly placed his order with the bully, then asked to speak to the manager. On arrival he handed the manager five grand in cash, ‘paying it forward’ for the next two hundred plus customers.

  “Nice to see you, Chad. Good to see you’re doing so well,” remarked Rose, before wheel-spinning off into the sunset.

  As I pulled up at a towering luxury apartment block in the city’s exclusive West Loop district, the valet looked at me without warmth. I could see what he was thinking: “You want me to park that?”

  In exchange for my beat-up old Chevy truck keys, I received the sort of look one might expect were you to drop a half-eaten sandwich into the palm of a stranger.

  If he was expecting a tip, he forfeited it today.

  I left him to it and headed inside.

  Chandeliers, giant potted palms, and more marble than the Taj Mahal decked out the expansive lobby. ‘Mommy’s basement’ it most certainly was not, and Alfie Rose had the best suite of them all, the penthouse.

  After the arson attack on his house in Naperville, Illinois, around forty-five minutes from Chicago, Rose had moved into his downtown apartment.

  It was the right move, given the added security, which proved effective at vetting me thoroughly at the concierge desk before green-lighting my ride to the top floor in the elevator.

  The doors opened and there he stood. He was taller than I imagined, about six-foot-two and well turned out, good-looking, I guess, in an androgynous kind of way, with long curly hair and a well-kempt beard. Dressed in a combination of rock star meets lord of the manor attire, he looked like he’d come off a fashion show catwalk, sporting his trademark steampunk top hat complete with cooper aviator googles, a gentleman’s waist coat and open-neck shirt combo, displaying several prayer beads and crucifixes. Skintight ripped jeans and cowboy boots finished the look.

  Subtle he wasn’t, but the girls were crazy about him.

  “Thanks for coming, Mr. Valentine,” he said, flashing a smile and shaking my hand, firm and strong. “Please, come in.”

  I stepped into an ultra-modern palace overlooking the city. Open-floor plan and the size of a couple of basketball courts, giant floor-to-ceiling glass walls framed it on every side, making it stretch out into the sky and providing a sprawling eagle’s-eye view of the city. Strewn about among the collections of modern sculptures and artwork was every conceivable gadget, from miniature drone aircrafts to virtual reality headgear and gloves. Much of this I recognized, with the apartment serving as a suitably impressive backdrop to many of Rose’s online videos and Instagram posts.

  It was kind of interesting, if you like that sort of thing, but I was no real estate agent—thank God—and I sure wasn’t here to sightsee.

  We’d already exchanged pleasantries on the telephone, so I decided to skip the preamble and get down to business. After all, time was ticking.

  “I’m going to run through the prosecution’s case against you,” I said, pulling out a chair to sit at the glass dining table. “Then I want to hear your version of events, every detail, understand?”

  He nodded with the obedience of a drowning man thrown a lifeline, then pulled out a chair and settled in for my evaluation.

  At first glance the prosecution’s scenario appeared watertight: while at a star-studded charity event, the two arch rivals, Brian Gates and Alfie Rose, finally came face to face. Gates, who was presenting the second half of the event, proceeded to make Rose the butt of several jokes, which became more disparaging as the evening progressed.

  Allegedly, when the evening came to a close, Rose followed Gates back to his dressing room to have it out with him. Here an argument took place which turned physical. Rose struck Gates, who fell, hit his head and then when he was unconscious, struck him with a fatal blow, this time to the temple with a champagne bottle, the resulting impact cracking Gates’ skull.

  In a panic, Rose tried to cover up the incident, but did so in an amateurish manner, moving the body and wiping blood from the chairs but not the carpet, before jettisoning the whole silly idea of concealing what had happened, fleeing with it only partially done.

  As for witnesses, they confirmed that Rose had entered Gates’ dressing room. And the material evidence was incriminating too, Gates’ blood was discovered on Rose’s clothing. Alfie Rose was arrested and charged with murder.

  “Obviously, that’s not the way it went down, Mr. Valentine,” said Alfie, with a pained smile after hearing my summary. “But bits of it are true, just not the crucial bits.”

  “Take me back to the start,” I said. “How did the evening begin?”

  “It began with a charity auction, not hosted by Brian Gates but by a professional auctioneer, and the
first item up for grabs was a bottle of champagne; just to get the event started, you know. Now I don’t care too much for alcohol, but I threw in a bid or two for the fun of it, at which point Brian Gates realizes that I’m there too and starts bidding against me with a vengeance. Everyone knows there’s a beef between us, so the other bidders drop out and leave us to it, so it’s just Gates and me going head to head, for something I didn’t really want in the first place.”

  “But by now the wheels were in motion, and you don’t want to back down and lose face, right?” I said.

  “Exactly. Anyway, the auctioneer was loving it, ‘Do I have fifteen thousand? Fifteen bid. Do I have sixteen thousand? Sixteen bid. Seventeen?’ On and on it went, up and up, the crowd egging us on, by the time it reached fifty thousand I think both of us were looking for an exit, but he didn’t want to blink first. At fifty-five I bowed out, as gracefully as I could. In that moment Brian Gates jumped to his feet and punched the air in triumph, until, I think, it dawned on him that Alfie Rose, of all people, had just made him pay fifty-five thousand dollars for a bottle that was probably worth a thousand.”

  “And rumor has it he was really tight,” I said, poorly suppressing a smile.

  “Yeah, they say he made scrooge look like a public benefactor,” laughed Alfie. “So, no prizes for guessing who was the focus of his jokes when he took to the stage as presenter for the rest of the evening.”

  “And after the event, you admit that you went back to his dressing room?”

  “Yeah, of course, but it wasn’t to have it out with him. I wanted to smooth things over, bring an end to the constant jibes back and forth and to offer him a truce. Honestly, I’ve got better things to do with my time than perpetuate some pointless feud with a TV dinosaur. He lived in a different world than me, and his audience wasn’t my audience, so I saw no point in continuing to argue. I went to his dressing room to see if we could put it all to rest.”

  “What was his response?”

  “By this stage he’d been drinking all evening and was pretty hammered, but to my surprise, he agreed. He seemed a pretty happy drunk to me, not one of those down and depressed drunks that wants to fight, but the sort that loves everybody, and wants to let them know. I believe his words were, ‘You know I love you really, Rosie-boy!’ Then he put his arm around my shoulders and said, ‘Take one of your selfie photos of us, together! Let’s give them something to talk about!’ So, I did, with both of us smiling for all the world to see. He then reached under a table and pulled out the bottle of champagne, all fifty- grand’s worth, and says, ‘Let’s have a drink, come on, have a drink on me, Alfie!’ We tried to toast each other but, like I said, the guy was drunk, and as he tried to clink his glass on mine, he broke it. That’s when he cut his hand. I tried to stop the bleeding with a Kleenex, but it was gushing everywhere, not that he seemed that bothered, in fact, he kept laughing at my useless medical assistance. Anyway, that’s how his blood got on my clothing.”

  I watched Rose closely as he told me this. His hands shook and he fought back tears as he talked, but who wouldn’t be nervous given his situation? His world had been turned upside down—he’d gone from hero to zero in the matter of months, and the love that people had for him had been replaced by vile hatred. As a man that lived in his own cocooned world, he obviously never thought he’d have to deal with regular death threats, and yet, here he sat, having survived an arson attack.

  Herd mentality had always been a social phenomenon, but the age of social media had turned it into a weapon. The keyboard warriors had focused their animosity towards Rose, and the herd quickly jumped onto the bandwagon. Under the effects of herd mentality, people are known to make highly emotional decisions, rather than rational ones, making different choices than they would individually. Gates had experienced a lot of love from the public before he died, and the feelings of loss, grief and anger had to be directed somewhere—unfortunately it was all aimed at the man who was claiming he was innocent.

  Did I believe Rose had nothing to do with it? To be honest, I hadn’t made up my mind yet.

  “And you left after he cut his hand?” I asked.

  “Yeah, after we stopped the bleeding by wrapping his hand in a cloth, I gave him my hat as a present, the same type as this one, to sort of commemorate our newfound friendship, and then I left.”

  “Did anyone see you leave?”

  “Not that I’m aware of.”

  “And the photo, you posted this to social media at what time?”

  “10:30pm, but the police won’t consider this as evidence. His body wasn’t found until the next morning and they’re estimating the time of his death as 11pm.”

  “So, their reason being: no big deal, you just killed him after taking the photo?”

  He nodded, glumly this time.

  “Do you think you can help me?” he asked, a marked degree of concern registering on his face. “I’ve hired the best defense team money can buy, but, like I said on the phone, they’re pushing for me to take the deal. It feels like they’re more concerned with not losing a case, rather than keeping me out of prison. And even if I switch at this late stage, I doubt I’ll get a better team, only more of the same with even less time to prep. I’m sure they don’t want to take this case to trial.”

  “You won’t take the deal for ten years?”

  “No way,” he said, shaking his head in despair. “I won’t survive that. I know I won’t. School was a hideous prison for me, and I’m not going to a literal, infinitely worse version. At least not without a fight. I have to do everything I can to prove my innocence.”

  I admired the kid’s spirit, but the way events were unfolding, he would be lucky to make it to his trial date.

  I didn’t tell him this, but he knew it well enough. The crazies were out there screaming for blood, the obsessive Brian Gates fans who had pronounced him guilty as charged and would love to put him six feet under.

  The question was: could I solve the case before they succeeded?

  Chapter 3

  If your resume includes getting fired for arguing with a colleague during live-on-air news crosses, then chances are you won’t get another interview for a job, let alone an actual job, with a serious news agency. But if you also had a physical altercation with the same colleague, then I’d say your chances are zilch.

  So why did I hire Casey May as my assistant?

  In a word: character. I respected that more than social niceties. And the way I saw it, there had been extenuating circumstances.

  A college dropout, she had found a job in the mailroom of News Incorporated, where she proceeded to work her way up, landing a gig as a feature writer for one of their magazines, but eventually the role of deputy editor—their youngest ever at the time. From there she moved to the television division as part of an investigative journalism team, then scored a role in front of the camera as an on-the-ground reporter.

  For someone whom the word ‘sassy’ could have been minted, it was a risky move.

  It wasn’t that she couldn’t take criticism, but she didn’t take BS from anyone: male or female, young or old, higher up the corporate chain or lower down, behind the camera or in front of it. It didn’t matter to Casey, if you didn’t treat her with respect then she was going to call you out on it, sometimes in spectacular style, regardless of the consequences.

  At first her move into television had gone swimmingly, a successful career as a reporter punctuated by a couple of minor awards for investigative journalism—and a couple of major ones narrowly missed—she was definitely going places and was getting noticed by all the bigwigs at the station, and for the right reasons.

  Not that it was all high-brow investigative content that garnered people’s attention, she once was named in a poll that became the source of much tongue-in-check amusement to her, and her former work colleagues: an online vote to find Chicago’s Top 10 Hottest News Reporters. Yeah, it’s fair to say, that for a while, “Number Nine’s” brand was on the rise
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br />   But then she reported on an upgrade to municipal cycle lanes—sometimes it’s a slow news day and you gotta go where the producers send you—and things fell apart faster than cheap particle board furniture left in the rain.

  She asked a woman on one side of the argument her opinion then turned to a man on the opposite side of the issue for his. A couple of bland responses and it was time to wrap things up, with her allocated timeframe almost at an end. A quick “thank you,” a “back to the studio,” and Casey’s work was done.

  Or so she thought.

  But the female anchor wanted more.

  “Is that it?” the anchor remarked with marked condescension. “I’d like to hear more from the woman. She made an interesting point. I’d like to hear her elaborate on it. Ask her about it.”

  By this stage the woman had walked off.

  “She’s departed, I’m afraid,” replied Casey, doing her best to keep it professional.

  But the anchor wouldn’t let it go.

  “Well, that’s a shame, you really should have dug a little deeper. That was poorly executed.”

  “Sounds like you’re telling me how to do my job, Jessica.”

  “Well perhaps I need to. Maybe I should give you some lessons.”

  “Maybe you need some lessons on how to conduct yourself professionally. What’s the matter, have you been hitting the wine again? It wouldn’t be a first for you this early in the morning, would it?”

  By this stage the producers were screaming in Casey’s earpiece to shut up.

  For a second the anchor was dumbfounded, left open mouthed after being comprehensively “owned like a boss” on air by a subordinate.

  “Wow… err… well… it will be interesting to see if you’ve got the guts to say that to me in person.”

  “Happily. And then I’ll wipe that fake tan right off you afterwards!”

  The producers cut away to a commercial break, but the damage was done.

  And the worst was yet to come.