It was going to be a long night.
Night shift.
‘Snowball’ Glen Frederick walked outside through the windowless back door of his business, GF Autobody Sales & Towing at 1665 Mountain Road, Moncton, New Brunswick.
It was the middle of the night.
His thirteen-year-old son, Derek, carried a milk crate full of supplies out to the company van.
Inside the white Econoline, Glen Frederick put the milk crate on his lap. There were three 40-ounce vodka bottles in the crate, each filled a third of the way with gasoline. Derek climbed in the passenger seat.
“Where’s the laundry soap?”
Derek opened a grocery bag he was carrying and pulled out a bottle of generic liquid laundry detergent. Snowball took it and filled the big blue cap twice for each bottle of gasoline, carefully pouring the detergent into the vodka bottles using a metal funnel. The van reeked of gasoline.
“Okay. I got the laundry soap,” Derek said. “Now what’s it for?”
Glenny didn’t speak until he was finished pouring.
“I’ll tell you.” He held up a finished bottle for Derek to see. The clear bottle was half full of thick blue liquid. “This is gasoline plus two scoops laundry soap.” Snowball swished the slow liquid around in the bottle. “The laundry soap thickens the gasoline. See? Now, when I throw it, it explodes and the flames stick better to their general target, almost like napalm, instead of just having the liquid spill and splash all over the place. If you want to do damage accurately but not necessarily burn the whole place down, you can do this. See?”
He passed the crate to Derek and started up the van, peeling out of the parking lot. They were both wearing puffy black coats and Derek looked like a smaller, chubbier version of his father.
Derek was thirteen now, an age of manhood in many cultures, including the culture of the Gypsies MC and their Moncton puppet club, the Butcher Kiddos MC, of which Glenny Frederick was seargent-at-arms.
Glenny was forbidden by international Gypsy charter rules from ever becoming a full member of the Gypsies MC, because he’s black.
As a Butcher Kiddo, and Dee Lee’s personal bodyguard, he commanded almost as much respect in the drug trade.
The reason Derek had been given such a relatively serious assignment as initiation had a lot to do with the fact that he had Glen Frederick as a father.
A lot would be expected of “little Glenny.” Unfortunately, Derek was basically a useful idiot.
At least this way, Glenny could teach his son first-hand how to be safe, how to take precautions and protect himself from the increasingly crafty RCMP.
He showed his son how to put the van up on the hoist and look for police GPS devices, and even how to make a fake license plate. They crafted a white Nova Scotia plate, complete with colour-matched blue lettering and the traced icon of the famous Bluenose racing schooner.
Glenny had bought a tin press a few years back and punched the plate out of tin sheeting and printed it on a printing table used to make automotive decals. It wasn’t perfect, but from a distance the plate looked almost perfect.
F0K 6UP.
Fuck 6-Up, which meant: Fuck the Police.
They headed toward Dieppe and got onto the highway and started out for Nova Scotia at around 2 a.m.
The sun would not be up for at least three hours, that’s all Glenny cared about. It would be dark while they did their business.
Traffic was non-existant all along the Trans-Canada Highway and on the 102 all the way to Lower Sackville just outside Halifax, but for some reason it got thicker once they got on the 101 towards the Annapolis Valley, even at this time of night.
Glen Frederick cruised at ten above the speed limit, fitting in perfectly with traffic but not passing anybody.
On a quiet stretch past Mt. Uniacke, he put one palm on the wheel and used the other to unfold the letter Derek had received last Friday from Tin-Tin.
His first mandate.
The letter and $350 cash had come to the garage Friday morning. The return address was the street number of Perry Paul “Cock” Spalding’s strip club, Lady Hercules.
The letter inside was blank except for an address and a small thumbnail photograph of a bungalow with white siding and a red clay chimney. The words “Toad House” were printed in pencil under the photograph.
Derek had to ask Glenny what the letter meant.
The nickname ‘Toad’ referred to a well-known jail guard at Burnside Jail, where ‘Cock’ Spalding was being held without bail pending the conclusion of his double-murder trial.
Derek was being asked to go to a jail guard’s home and burn it out.
Todd ‘the Toad’ Purcell was one of two guards who had been enlisted to keep ‘Cock’ Spalding happy during what was bound to be a two-year or longer stay at least in the provincial jail.
“Provincial guards have to deal with a lot of bullshit for $14 an hour,” he told Derek, always teaching. “Think about that. $14 an hour. I wouldn’t let you suck my dick for fourteen bucks an hour. That’s why a lot of them are interested in ‘extra work.’”
Toad made sure Spalding got good cuts of meat in the cafeteria, extra canteen privileges, nicotine gum, weight room time and good thriller novels to read by popular authors- not those Canadian ones nobody ever heard of.
But Spalding asked Toad to go a step further. He wanted him to ‘suitcase’ dope into the jail, which meant carrying packages in his rectum every morning as he came into work. Toad refused the offer.
“That’s what this Shitty’s about,” Glenny stressed, although Derek had already been told this. “This Shitty is about the importance of doing what you’re told. And about ass real estate. I can’t stress that enough. By the end of tonight, this guard won’t think it’s such a big deal to cram his suitcase every morning. I guarantee you that.”
“I’m gettin’ pumped up,” Derek said.
Glen Frederick turned the stereo down and pulled off Exit 4, doubling back toward St. Croix and then inland to Ellershouse via the old number one highway.
Wednesday, August 8, 2007
Chapter 2
“Whoops. That’s it right there. Dawson Road. I told you to keep your Jesusing eyes peeled.”
Glen Frederick lowered his head to read the small blue road signs out the van windshield. “See it?”
“Yeah. Number 15,” Derek said, pointing to his left. “17 must be the one in the trees there.”
The bottles clinked together as Glenny turned the wheel sharply and pulled over.
The small bungalow houses of Dawson Road were spaced far apart on country lots, shielded from view of their neighbours by dried-out lilac bushes and snow banks.
Perfect.
Glenny compared the home in real life to the one in the picture.
“Burn. Let it burn, wanna, wanna…” he mumbled a lyric from the old Sublime song that had been playing on the radio, the song about the 1992 riots in L.A.
There was a dark red Windstar in the driveway. Someone was home.
Toad was on a night shift rotation this week, which meant the minivan was his wife’s.
He would have to be careful not to kill her tonight.
Two picture windows sat at the right side of the house with frilly curtains drawn across them.
The living room.
“Stay in the car,” Glenny ordered. “And watch me, because next time it will be you.”
He got out and closed the door gently, clicking it shut.
He had bunched the bottles sideways under his arm like sticks of firewood and draped three automotive towels over top of them, feeling the adrenaline begin to form at the edges of his heart.
Anyone can get caught, he told himself, no matter how smart.
He'd performed hundreds of Shitties over the years, but nobody was perfect.
You could never be too careful.
He stole a glance back at Derek through the driver's side window.
His son was visible. A shadowy shape smoking a cigarette.
The van was parked up against a telephone pole with the back doors slightly open to reveal compartments of tools, like a phone or power company contractor.
As Glenny backed away he could see the little red light of Derek’s cigarette burning in the darkness of the van’s interior. It looked very odd and suspicious.
“…kill that kid,” Glenny mumbled.
Keeping to the shadows, he crept up slowly to the side of the small house, stepping through a copse of evergreen trees at the right flank of the snowy front lawn, opposite the driveway.
The house lights were off inside but he could see the unmistakable blue lightening flash of a television on in the living room.
He snaked a blue automotive towel into the first bottle, tippingit upside down and soaking it wet. He lit the cocktail, making sure the automotive towel was burning good against the night sky before lobbing it sidearm against the living room window.
Boomfffffff!
The bottle slammed right through what was apparently a single pane of glass, plunging deep inside the house and exploding in an orange fireball.
“Shit.”
A muffled woman’s voice began to screech inside the house like an injured animal.
Glenny felt the nerves electrify up his fingertips and wrists. He lit the second bottle and fired it at the second window, throwing it softer this time. Boommfff.
He hadn’t intended for that first bottle to go right through the window, but it didn’t really matter. The laundry soap appeared to be working. The flames didn’t seem to be splashing everywhere. The people inside would probably have enough time to escape.
He chucked the last firebomb at the front door to prevent anyone running out of the house that way and seeing him, then took off running.
“OK.” He climbed back into the van. “Buckle up.”
“Damn!” Derek was hopping up and down in the passenger seat, freaking out. “Burn that shit down, nigga!”
“-Shut up!” Glenny cuffed Derek in the lip with a loose set of fingers, hard enough to bleed. “I said keep quiet. What are you, fucking stupid?”
Glen Frederick lowered his head to read the small blue road signs out the van windshield. “See it?”
“Yeah. Number 15,” Derek said, pointing to his left. “17 must be the one in the trees there.”
The bottles clinked together as Glenny turned the wheel sharply and pulled over.
The small bungalow houses of Dawson Road were spaced far apart on country lots, shielded from view of their neighbours by dried-out lilac bushes and snow banks.
Perfect.
Glenny compared the home in real life to the one in the picture.
“Burn. Let it burn, wanna, wanna…” he mumbled a lyric from the old Sublime song that had been playing on the radio, the song about the 1992 riots in L.A.
There was a dark red Windstar in the driveway. Someone was home.
Toad was on a night shift rotation this week, which meant the minivan was his wife’s.
He would have to be careful not to kill her tonight.
Two picture windows sat at the right side of the house with frilly curtains drawn across them.
The living room.
“Stay in the car,” Glenny ordered. “And watch me, because next time it will be you.”
He got out and closed the door gently, clicking it shut.
He had bunched the bottles sideways under his arm like sticks of firewood and draped three automotive towels over top of them, feeling the adrenaline begin to form at the edges of his heart.
Anyone can get caught, he told himself, no matter how smart.
He'd performed hundreds of Shitties over the years, but nobody was perfect.
You could never be too careful.
He stole a glance back at Derek through the driver's side window.
His son was visible. A shadowy shape smoking a cigarette.
The van was parked up against a telephone pole with the back doors slightly open to reveal compartments of tools, like a phone or power company contractor.
As Glenny backed away he could see the little red light of Derek’s cigarette burning in the darkness of the van’s interior. It looked very odd and suspicious.
“…kill that kid,” Glenny mumbled.
Keeping to the shadows, he crept up slowly to the side of the small house, stepping through a copse of evergreen trees at the right flank of the snowy front lawn, opposite the driveway.
The house lights were off inside but he could see the unmistakable blue lightening flash of a television on in the living room.
He snaked a blue automotive towel into the first bottle, tippingit upside down and soaking it wet. He lit the cocktail, making sure the automotive towel was burning good against the night sky before lobbing it sidearm against the living room window.
Boomfffffff!
The bottle slammed right through what was apparently a single pane of glass, plunging deep inside the house and exploding in an orange fireball.
“Shit.”
A muffled woman’s voice began to screech inside the house like an injured animal.
Glenny felt the nerves electrify up his fingertips and wrists. He lit the second bottle and fired it at the second window, throwing it softer this time. Boommfff.
He hadn’t intended for that first bottle to go right through the window, but it didn’t really matter. The laundry soap appeared to be working. The flames didn’t seem to be splashing everywhere. The people inside would probably have enough time to escape.
He chucked the last firebomb at the front door to prevent anyone running out of the house that way and seeing him, then took off running.
“OK.” He climbed back into the van. “Buckle up.”
“Damn!” Derek was hopping up and down in the passenger seat, freaking out. “Burn that shit down, nigga!”
“-Shut up!” Glenny cuffed Derek in the lip with a loose set of fingers, hard enough to bleed. “I said keep quiet. What are you, fucking stupid?”
Chapter 3
Once they were back on the highway, Glenny selected one of three Blackberry’s from the glove box of the van and began to type an email message to Joe Robichaud “Tin Tin” Junior: Tintin. Derek got his deer. Watch the news at noon.
Joe Junior might be able to watch the fire on the local news at noon, if they were lucky.
As he was sending the message, the red Blackberry phone in the glove box started ringing, playing Ride of the Valkeries.
“Phone,” Derek said.
“Pass me that phone, the red one. Quickly.”
Glenny set down the phone he was using and grabbed the red one. The Dee Lee bat-phone.
“Hey?” Glenny answered.
“Snow? What are you doing?” Dee Lee’s voice on the other end did not sound happy.
“What? What’s goin’ on?”
“We have a big problem. Where the hell are you? I need you. Fuck Tin-Tin. I need you, tonight.”
“What’s going on?”
“Somebody’s missing. My fucking white boy disappeared!”
“Just now? Who?”
There was a violent sigh on the other end of the phone.
“Pussylips.”
Joe Junior might be able to watch the fire on the local news at noon, if they were lucky.
As he was sending the message, the red Blackberry phone in the glove box started ringing, playing Ride of the Valkeries.
“Phone,” Derek said.
“Pass me that phone, the red one. Quickly.”
Glenny set down the phone he was using and grabbed the red one. The Dee Lee bat-phone.
“Hey?” Glenny answered.
“Snow? What are you doing?” Dee Lee’s voice on the other end did not sound happy.
“What? What’s goin’ on?”
“We have a big problem. Where the hell are you? I need you. Fuck Tin-Tin. I need you, tonight.”
“What’s going on?”
“Somebody’s missing. My fucking white boy disappeared!”
“Just now? Who?”
There was a violent sigh on the other end of the phone.
“Pussylips.”
Chapter 4
Halifax Regional Police Det. Sgt. Bob Smith heard his own Blackberry go off in his pants around 6 a.m..
It woke him. He answered it in a growly voice covered over with morning mucous.
Not only was his name not on any roster this weekend, but he’d had a few beers the night before.
“Illo?”
“Detective Smith?”
“What is this, man? This better not be work, you morons. It’s Sunday for Christ sake!” He heard his own angry voice and was annoyed at the sound of it, but it was indeed Sunday.
“Bob. It’s Biz Digby, Southwest Nova Major Crime-“
Smith jerked up from the couch where he’d passed out. Oh God!
He’d failed to recognize the soft Muslim voice of Biz Digby, his all time favourite Mountie.
“Jumpin’s… I didn’t recognize ya. You’re too good to call me anymore?”
She laughed. “I’m calling you now, aren’t I? But it’s a business call, I’m sorry to say. I need your help.”
“Sounds serious.” He started looking around for his T-shirt.
“I guess. I’m at the scene of a firebombing in Ellershouse, your neck of the woods. There’s injuries to two children and a woman. I remembered you lived up here and figured I could use some CFIU input.”
Input… my God, Smith felt himself getting a boner.
“I’m here, yup. Ellershouse is a couple clicks down the highway from me. Who got torched?”
“A jail guard’s home,” Digby said. “They hit his private residence while he was at work. I figured it might be organized crime. Bikers. That’s one angle anyway.”
Smith clucked his tongue to the roof of his mouth.
“A jail guard, eh? From where?”
“Burnside.”
Det. Sgt. Smith’s boner turned rock solid. “What’s the address? I’ll be right there.”
It woke him. He answered it in a growly voice covered over with morning mucous.
Not only was his name not on any roster this weekend, but he’d had a few beers the night before.
“Illo?”
“Detective Smith?”
“What is this, man? This better not be work, you morons. It’s Sunday for Christ sake!” He heard his own angry voice and was annoyed at the sound of it, but it was indeed Sunday.
“Bob. It’s Biz Digby, Southwest Nova Major Crime-“
Smith jerked up from the couch where he’d passed out. Oh God!
He’d failed to recognize the soft Muslim voice of Biz Digby, his all time favourite Mountie.
“Jumpin’s… I didn’t recognize ya. You’re too good to call me anymore?”
She laughed. “I’m calling you now, aren’t I? But it’s a business call, I’m sorry to say. I need your help.”
“Sounds serious.” He started looking around for his T-shirt.
“I guess. I’m at the scene of a firebombing in Ellershouse, your neck of the woods. There’s injuries to two children and a woman. I remembered you lived up here and figured I could use some CFIU input.”
Input… my God, Smith felt himself getting a boner.
“I’m here, yup. Ellershouse is a couple clicks down the highway from me. Who got torched?”
“A jail guard’s home,” Digby said. “They hit his private residence while he was at work. I figured it might be organized crime. Bikers. That’s one angle anyway.”
Smith clucked his tongue to the roof of his mouth.
“A jail guard, eh? From where?”
“Burnside.”
Det. Sgt. Smith’s boner turned rock solid. “What’s the address? I’ll be right there.”
Chapter 5
It was still dark and cold out when Det. Sgt. Smith arrived at Dawson Road in Ellershouse. The houses along the dead-end road were dark, dull and Kentucky-fried, save for one bungalow on the left which was all lit up like a plastic Christmas scene.
Eliptical red and blue siren lights spun slowly on top of two Windsor Rural RCMP cruisers, mixing with the flashing oranges from Brooklyn Volunteer Fire Department pumper and tanker trucks. There was even a ladder truck on scene, Smith saw as he made his way closer up the secluded road, despite the fact that the fire took place in a single-story house.
Bored are we? Smith chuckled at the two dozen or so volunteer firefighters standing around in the driveway and front lawn, all decked out in their puffy yellow nomex flame suits.
The burned house was also illuminated with several emergency lights which were hooked to a generator running in the driveway.
A couple of elderly neighbours, still in their pajamas and housecoats were standing out in the driveway speaking to a uniform constable. The old people looked frazzled and terrorized.
Two more uniforms with flashlights were tying plastic police tape across the lawn of the house. They had created a long pathway in the snow protected by two rows of police tape held up like a tiny fence by twigs. What’s that now? The pathway began from a ditch on the neighbour’s lawn and travlled right up to the front of the burned house.
A path. Footprints?
The house had been reduced to a charred gyp-rock shell. Three huge gaping holes smoldered where the front windows and door used to be. It looked like Dick Cheney had fired a giant shotgun at the house’s face. Plus there was another square hole cut in the roof by firefighters to vent the smoke. It was not a pretty sight.
Sgt. Digby was standing in the gravel driveway with what looked to be Cpl. Ross Agarwal and Aubrey Microys, an arson investigator with the Fire Marshall’s office. And also Brooklyn District Fire Chief, Percy Burns, a man who probably grew up feeling like he had no choice but to become a firefighter, Smith thought. Either that or a reggae singer.
“Heh!” Smith said out loud. He crowded his bulky Chrysler in behind a white cruiser at the end of the driveway.
“Constable,” he boomed, getting out and speaking to a Windsor Rural uniform manning a line of police tape.
“Detective Sgt. Smith, Biker Squad.” He flashed his CFIU Halifax badge. His colours. “Talk to me Constable.”
Smith’s style with cops from other police forces was to sound like he was the one in charge. Most of these rural Members would suck your dick for directions.
“… Yes sir, the husband and family are currently down at the VG hospital,” the uniform stammered, calling Smith ‘sir’ although they were not even in the same police force. “Uh, the wife took second and third degree burns on about 25 per cent of her body. I guess the Jesus thing exploded on the coffee table, right in front of her. A Molotov cocktail. The EMT’s were pretty worked up when they got here. She was walking around in the street with her arms burnt bad.”
“Nice.”
“Yeah. The two girls were sleeping upstairs. The mother was in shock and just left them. Anyways, the kids took in a whack of smoke and they had to go down for oxygen treatment, but they’re okay, I think. Two girls, 11 and 9, both at the IWK.” The Constable looked up from his notes. “Not critical, but serious condition.”
Smith was so pissed off his jaw hurt.
The fact that children were injured made him want to scream. Like most parents, he had a soft spot for children in general, especially when they were thrust involuntarily into the ugly bullshit of the adult world.
Having kids was a weakness in police work, especially biker squad. It literally hurt him when kids got hurt. And what was to stop a high-level gang member from having Devin and Josh kidnapped or killed? Not much. An unlisted phone number.
“Alright. Talk to me about the burnout itself,” Det. Sgt. Smith continued. “Do we have any witnesses? Have you heard any rumours? Anything on the jail guard? Did you have anything good for breakfast this morning?”
The uniform stared blankly. He looked to be about 21 years old.
Sgt. Digby’s eyes meanwhile fell on Smith across the driveway.
She stepped down the porch and began to walk over, leaving her partner, Cpl .Ross Agarwal, and the fire chief and Aubrey Microys behind, probably to their great disappointment.
The woman moved silently, like a Geisha girl, with two fingers looped into the black fabric of her police belt which held her holster underneath a puffy winter jacket.
She had a dark red velvety chenile sweater pulled loosely over her big breasts and a black stylish pair of dress pants.
Her short hips moved side to side when she walked.
Man she must be amazing…
Smith noticed to his shock that Sgt. Digby had cut off all her long hair since the last time he’d seen her.
Noooooooooo!
She used to have very long, curly black hair that ran all the way down her back in a dense chain, but now it was all trimmed off and puffed up around her jawline.
It didn’t matter. She was still, and always would be, in Biz-ness.
A hard boner began to form again, slowly, inside his pantleg as she got closer to him, crunching on the cold gravel of the Purcell’s driveway.
Her skin was a spotless, antique cream colour.
The “mixed race” thing, he thought, had a lot to do with his crush.
Or maybe he just liked mixed-race girls now, because that’s what she was?
Either way, she was part British on her father’s side and Arab or Lebanese on her mother’s, which made her a nice in-between cream colour.
Apparently, her father was J Division in New Brunswick and went over to the Middle East somewhere to give a training course on how the RCMP do commercial crime cases. He met a sweet little thing over there and never came back. Then Biz Digby came over to Canada when she was 18 to study film or something and wound up joining the Membership, just like her old man.
The RCMP was desperate for non-white recruits back then, same as now.
She did a few years in the Valley during probation period and fell in love with Nova Scotia, for some reason.
Det. Sgt. Smith on the other hand was born, raised and would die in Nova Scotia.
He was as white as any person could possibly be. Bone white.
Smith white.
His skin was a weak, porcelain, skim-milk colour and his light, reddish-brown Scot hair ran from drapes to carpet. Same as his ugly wife, same as his allergic-to-the-sun children and same as every Smith he could think of.
It was as if his white-boy genes themselves cried out for Biz Digby’s darkness.
The dangerous thing about his crush, Smith knew, was not that he wanted to have an affair with Digby- that was pretty common enough, but that he wanted to have an affair with her and not wear a condom.
Eliptical red and blue siren lights spun slowly on top of two Windsor Rural RCMP cruisers, mixing with the flashing oranges from Brooklyn Volunteer Fire Department pumper and tanker trucks. There was even a ladder truck on scene, Smith saw as he made his way closer up the secluded road, despite the fact that the fire took place in a single-story house.
Bored are we? Smith chuckled at the two dozen or so volunteer firefighters standing around in the driveway and front lawn, all decked out in their puffy yellow nomex flame suits.
The burned house was also illuminated with several emergency lights which were hooked to a generator running in the driveway.
A couple of elderly neighbours, still in their pajamas and housecoats were standing out in the driveway speaking to a uniform constable. The old people looked frazzled and terrorized.
Two more uniforms with flashlights were tying plastic police tape across the lawn of the house. They had created a long pathway in the snow protected by two rows of police tape held up like a tiny fence by twigs. What’s that now? The pathway began from a ditch on the neighbour’s lawn and travlled right up to the front of the burned house.
A path. Footprints?
The house had been reduced to a charred gyp-rock shell. Three huge gaping holes smoldered where the front windows and door used to be. It looked like Dick Cheney had fired a giant shotgun at the house’s face. Plus there was another square hole cut in the roof by firefighters to vent the smoke. It was not a pretty sight.
Sgt. Digby was standing in the gravel driveway with what looked to be Cpl. Ross Agarwal and Aubrey Microys, an arson investigator with the Fire Marshall’s office. And also Brooklyn District Fire Chief, Percy Burns, a man who probably grew up feeling like he had no choice but to become a firefighter, Smith thought. Either that or a reggae singer.
“Heh!” Smith said out loud. He crowded his bulky Chrysler in behind a white cruiser at the end of the driveway.
“Constable,” he boomed, getting out and speaking to a Windsor Rural uniform manning a line of police tape.
“Detective Sgt. Smith, Biker Squad.” He flashed his CFIU Halifax badge. His colours. “Talk to me Constable.”
Smith’s style with cops from other police forces was to sound like he was the one in charge. Most of these rural Members would suck your dick for directions.
“… Yes sir, the husband and family are currently down at the VG hospital,” the uniform stammered, calling Smith ‘sir’ although they were not even in the same police force. “Uh, the wife took second and third degree burns on about 25 per cent of her body. I guess the Jesus thing exploded on the coffee table, right in front of her. A Molotov cocktail. The EMT’s were pretty worked up when they got here. She was walking around in the street with her arms burnt bad.”
“Nice.”
“Yeah. The two girls were sleeping upstairs. The mother was in shock and just left them. Anyways, the kids took in a whack of smoke and they had to go down for oxygen treatment, but they’re okay, I think. Two girls, 11 and 9, both at the IWK.” The Constable looked up from his notes. “Not critical, but serious condition.”
Smith was so pissed off his jaw hurt.
The fact that children were injured made him want to scream. Like most parents, he had a soft spot for children in general, especially when they were thrust involuntarily into the ugly bullshit of the adult world.
Having kids was a weakness in police work, especially biker squad. It literally hurt him when kids got hurt. And what was to stop a high-level gang member from having Devin and Josh kidnapped or killed? Not much. An unlisted phone number.
“Alright. Talk to me about the burnout itself,” Det. Sgt. Smith continued. “Do we have any witnesses? Have you heard any rumours? Anything on the jail guard? Did you have anything good for breakfast this morning?”
The uniform stared blankly. He looked to be about 21 years old.
Sgt. Digby’s eyes meanwhile fell on Smith across the driveway.
She stepped down the porch and began to walk over, leaving her partner, Cpl .Ross Agarwal, and the fire chief and Aubrey Microys behind, probably to their great disappointment.
The woman moved silently, like a Geisha girl, with two fingers looped into the black fabric of her police belt which held her holster underneath a puffy winter jacket.
She had a dark red velvety chenile sweater pulled loosely over her big breasts and a black stylish pair of dress pants.
Her short hips moved side to side when she walked.
Man she must be amazing…
Smith noticed to his shock that Sgt. Digby had cut off all her long hair since the last time he’d seen her.
Noooooooooo!
She used to have very long, curly black hair that ran all the way down her back in a dense chain, but now it was all trimmed off and puffed up around her jawline.
It didn’t matter. She was still, and always would be, in Biz-ness.
A hard boner began to form again, slowly, inside his pantleg as she got closer to him, crunching on the cold gravel of the Purcell’s driveway.
Her skin was a spotless, antique cream colour.
The “mixed race” thing, he thought, had a lot to do with his crush.
Or maybe he just liked mixed-race girls now, because that’s what she was?
Either way, she was part British on her father’s side and Arab or Lebanese on her mother’s, which made her a nice in-between cream colour.
Apparently, her father was J Division in New Brunswick and went over to the Middle East somewhere to give a training course on how the RCMP do commercial crime cases. He met a sweet little thing over there and never came back. Then Biz Digby came over to Canada when she was 18 to study film or something and wound up joining the Membership, just like her old man.
The RCMP was desperate for non-white recruits back then, same as now.
She did a few years in the Valley during probation period and fell in love with Nova Scotia, for some reason.
Det. Sgt. Smith on the other hand was born, raised and would die in Nova Scotia.
He was as white as any person could possibly be. Bone white.
Smith white.
His skin was a weak, porcelain, skim-milk colour and his light, reddish-brown Scot hair ran from drapes to carpet. Same as his ugly wife, same as his allergic-to-the-sun children and same as every Smith he could think of.
It was as if his white-boy genes themselves cried out for Biz Digby’s darkness.
The dangerous thing about his crush, Smith knew, was not that he wanted to have an affair with Digby- that was pretty common enough, but that he wanted to have an affair with her and not wear a condom.
Chapter 6
“Bob,” Sgt. Digby said. “Good of you to come.”
Prominent dimples appeared on each of her chubby cheeks.
Smith’s chest began to warm up.
“Well, I tried thinking about baseball,” he joked, “but it didn’t work. I had to come.”
She tilted her smile at him. “That’s cute, Bob. Listen, have you had any breakfast yet? We sent one of the Windsor Rurals off for donuts. He should be here any minute.”
“Sounds good. But, in the meantime, why don’t you tell me about that.” Smith pointed his gloved hand across the lawn to the path in the snow marked with police line. “You got some footprints there?”
“Yeah. Well, not really footprints, so much as big holes broken in the snow. We’re waiting for the Rurals to track down some foam and acrylic so we can make a casting of them, but I’m not too optimistic. I called Jerry in from Halifax.”
Cpl. Jerry Hoare was a Forensic Unit cop out of H Division headquarters. An expert in footwear impressions.
“The holes do seem to suggest that our suspect is a big man,” she said. “They look to be about a size twelve to fourteen foot.”
“Fourteen? Jesus, I don’t think my thighs are size fourteen,” Smith said, giving Digby a little hug around the shoulder.
“Oh, I thought you were going to say something else?”
Smith squeezed her shoulder again. “No my darlin’. Nothing on me is a size fourteen, believe me. Not even that. I just wear flattering pants I guess.”
Digby’s breath steamed out of her mouth in a little white cloud.
“Anyway, it’s definitely arson. Aubrey Microys found several glass shards, from at least two liquor bottles.”
“What kind of bottles?”
“Clear glass. One firebomb was chucked through each of the two living room windows. We don’t know what the fuel was yet. C’mere, let’s take a closer look….”
They walked across the lawn to a semi-circle of thawed grass with no snow, approaching the stinking wet, burned-out front windows of the bungalow. Det. Sgt. Smith found himself looking at the back of her hair as they walked, not her ass.
Oh, you got it bad, boyo.
The lights from various emergency vehicles were casting a spotlight on the front windows.
“It looks like two craters,” Digby said as they reached the porch.
She pointed out the damage patterns just inside the window. Smith leaned his head inside. The house stunk badly, like the sweet piss smell of burned wood, paint and plastic.
“Aubrey Microys says he’s not sure if it was gasoline or not, judging by the way the fire spread, or didn’t spread. He says it definitely wasn’t a plain gas Molotov coctail. Something was different. The bomber may have known what they were doing, in other words.”
Smith nodded. “What do you mean it didn’t spread?”
“Well, look at the craters. It looks like a grenade exploded. None of the fire spread past the living room.”
Smith rubbed some ash off his shoulder.
“You know, I’ve never known a first-time firebomber to experiment with the tried-and-true method. Gasoline, bottle, rag. That’s the beauty of the Molotov coctail. It’s so simple. If somebody altered the recipe, and it worked, I’d say there’s a pretty good chance they’ve done this before.”
Standing closer to the damage now, Smith could see that the firefighters had been able to contain the blaze long before it spread beyond the front rooms, which seemed surprising given that the fire had breached the structure and that the nearest fire station was several kilometres away in Brooklyn. The whole house should have been incinerated from top to bottom, or at least that wouldn’t have surprised anyone.
“So you agree?” Digby asked. “Bikers? I mean, who else would do this to a jail guard?”
Smith rubbed his charcoal-stained fingertips onto his pants. He shrugged at her. “It’s too early to say. A burnout is the tool of retribution at any level of the drug trade. Anytime there’s a firebombing, I know it involves the drug trade, but not necessarily bikers. In this case, we know it was at least a slightly more sophisticated firebomb. Do I detect the distinct feces smell of bikers? Yes. Will I say this is definitely a biker case? Not yet.”
“But will you help me anyway?” She gave him a playful pleading expression with her big green eyes.
“Digby, I’d help you if this was a Jesus jaywalking.”
Prominent dimples appeared on each of her chubby cheeks.
Smith’s chest began to warm up.
“Well, I tried thinking about baseball,” he joked, “but it didn’t work. I had to come.”
She tilted her smile at him. “That’s cute, Bob. Listen, have you had any breakfast yet? We sent one of the Windsor Rurals off for donuts. He should be here any minute.”
“Sounds good. But, in the meantime, why don’t you tell me about that.” Smith pointed his gloved hand across the lawn to the path in the snow marked with police line. “You got some footprints there?”
“Yeah. Well, not really footprints, so much as big holes broken in the snow. We’re waiting for the Rurals to track down some foam and acrylic so we can make a casting of them, but I’m not too optimistic. I called Jerry in from Halifax.”
Cpl. Jerry Hoare was a Forensic Unit cop out of H Division headquarters. An expert in footwear impressions.
“The holes do seem to suggest that our suspect is a big man,” she said. “They look to be about a size twelve to fourteen foot.”
“Fourteen? Jesus, I don’t think my thighs are size fourteen,” Smith said, giving Digby a little hug around the shoulder.
“Oh, I thought you were going to say something else?”
Smith squeezed her shoulder again. “No my darlin’. Nothing on me is a size fourteen, believe me. Not even that. I just wear flattering pants I guess.”
Digby’s breath steamed out of her mouth in a little white cloud.
“Anyway, it’s definitely arson. Aubrey Microys found several glass shards, from at least two liquor bottles.”
“What kind of bottles?”
“Clear glass. One firebomb was chucked through each of the two living room windows. We don’t know what the fuel was yet. C’mere, let’s take a closer look….”
They walked across the lawn to a semi-circle of thawed grass with no snow, approaching the stinking wet, burned-out front windows of the bungalow. Det. Sgt. Smith found himself looking at the back of her hair as they walked, not her ass.
Oh, you got it bad, boyo.
The lights from various emergency vehicles were casting a spotlight on the front windows.
“It looks like two craters,” Digby said as they reached the porch.
She pointed out the damage patterns just inside the window. Smith leaned his head inside. The house stunk badly, like the sweet piss smell of burned wood, paint and plastic.
“Aubrey Microys says he’s not sure if it was gasoline or not, judging by the way the fire spread, or didn’t spread. He says it definitely wasn’t a plain gas Molotov coctail. Something was different. The bomber may have known what they were doing, in other words.”
Smith nodded. “What do you mean it didn’t spread?”
“Well, look at the craters. It looks like a grenade exploded. None of the fire spread past the living room.”
Smith rubbed some ash off his shoulder.
“You know, I’ve never known a first-time firebomber to experiment with the tried-and-true method. Gasoline, bottle, rag. That’s the beauty of the Molotov coctail. It’s so simple. If somebody altered the recipe, and it worked, I’d say there’s a pretty good chance they’ve done this before.”
Standing closer to the damage now, Smith could see that the firefighters had been able to contain the blaze long before it spread beyond the front rooms, which seemed surprising given that the fire had breached the structure and that the nearest fire station was several kilometres away in Brooklyn. The whole house should have been incinerated from top to bottom, or at least that wouldn’t have surprised anyone.
“So you agree?” Digby asked. “Bikers? I mean, who else would do this to a jail guard?”
Smith rubbed his charcoal-stained fingertips onto his pants. He shrugged at her. “It’s too early to say. A burnout is the tool of retribution at any level of the drug trade. Anytime there’s a firebombing, I know it involves the drug trade, but not necessarily bikers. In this case, we know it was at least a slightly more sophisticated firebomb. Do I detect the distinct feces smell of bikers? Yes. Will I say this is definitely a biker case? Not yet.”
“But will you help me anyway?” She gave him a playful pleading expression with her big green eyes.
“Digby, I’d help you if this was a Jesus jaywalking.”
Chapter 7
Rawle Powder stayed in bed for a minute, listening to Athan scream and wail in the bedroom next door.
Kelloway was breathing peacefully beside him. Fast asleep and perfectly content. She had her foam earplugs in.
Two days after Athan started sleeping through the night, he started having nightmares. Rawle had not slept through the night in close to two years.
He got up feeling like an 80-year-old man. His knees crackled. He shuffled into the next room wearing his black housecoat which tied up in the dark. He reached out and plucked Athan out of the crib and carried him downstairs over his shoulder, fireman’s carry.
Man, he was getting heavy.
They went to the bathroom and then father and son began their regular early morning ritual of cartoons, repeated bowls of Honey-Nut Cheerios, sippy cups of orange juice, and coffee for dad.
“Dat’s hot. -Da-ad?”
“Yes?”
“Wha loo doin’?”
“Drinking coffee. What are you doing?”
“I no-no.”
The phone rang during the 6 a.m. episode of Barney on PBS out of Boston.
It was Jack Lee, one of the only people in the world who knew Powder got up this early every morning. Jack on the other hand was probably still awake from the night before.
“Rawle. How’s it going?”
“Ugh. I still feel like shit. I don’t know how you do it at your age.”
“My age,” Jack laughed. “Listen, Powder. There was a big house fire last night, somewhere in Ellershouse, down past Windsor. Uhhh, Dawson Road. Ellershouse… You know where that is? Two kids and a woman were injured, I guess. Halifax wants a follow from us for tomorrow. We missed the actual fire. Or should I say you missed it? You were on call last night, were you not?”
“Fuck you. What time did the fire happen?”
“Three a.m. or something.”
“Oh, I see. So I should have been up sitting by the scanner at three a.m. should I?”
“Yeah, you should of, you little twat. That’s why you get paid the big bucks. You should sleep with the scanner on beside your bed.”
“I’ll set it in between me and your ex-wife.”
“Ohhhh-ho-ho! You couldn’t handle her. She’d eat you alive. Anyways, the Fire Marshall is ruling it arson. That’s what I hear. I’ll let you take this, Rawle. I’m going to be taking the week off. I know, I know. I’ve got to get over this- whatever it is. I’m still not feeling a hundred per cent…. You’re not working this weekend are you?”
“No,” Rawle said, dreading another busy week of covering Jack’s duties. “It’s Verryn’s weekend. I have to ask you though, dude. You’re still feeling the same way? I mean, you’ve been sick for weeks it seems like. Plus the nosebleed thing.”
“Yeah. It better not be nothing serious. I think it’s just the flu ‘though... You know? But then I get the nosebleeds and once time there was blood in my piss.”
“Oh, come on! You’ve got to go see the Man,” Rawle scolded. Jack was afraid of doctors and the depressing reality they represented for middle aged men.
“I know. I know. Just call me at noon about the arson thing. Okay?”
He hung up.
Ellershouse, in Hants County, was almost a suburb of Halifax by now the way the city kept expanding outward like a creeping mildew.
It would take 40 minutes to drive there.
Ellershouse was not really in the Annapolis Valley, but like most of Western Hants County it was considered part of Valley Bureau territory.
Kelloway got up at 9:30 to take over Toddler-watch. Rawle grabbed his digital camera, a fresh notepad and a couple spare pens and set out..
Fred Fenerty was out snow-blowing his driveway, crisply carving a wall of snow to form a perfect rectangle.
“Don’t get any snow on my side of the lawn, Fenerty,” Rawle called out to him, puffing his chest out a bit as he walked to the Golf in the gravel driveway.
“Christ,” Fenerty mumbled, his insect face flushing a bit under his fluorescent orange toque. “Why can’t you shovel your sidewalk once in a while, Rawle?” he retorted over the roar of his yellow snow blower. “It’s unsafe.”
“Some people work for a living I guess, Fenerty,” Rawle said, smiling.
He climbed into the Golf before Fenerty could respond, and tore out the driveway in a big cloud of powder.
Kelloway was breathing peacefully beside him. Fast asleep and perfectly content. She had her foam earplugs in.
Two days after Athan started sleeping through the night, he started having nightmares. Rawle had not slept through the night in close to two years.
He got up feeling like an 80-year-old man. His knees crackled. He shuffled into the next room wearing his black housecoat which tied up in the dark. He reached out and plucked Athan out of the crib and carried him downstairs over his shoulder, fireman’s carry.
Man, he was getting heavy.
They went to the bathroom and then father and son began their regular early morning ritual of cartoons, repeated bowls of Honey-Nut Cheerios, sippy cups of orange juice, and coffee for dad.
“Dat’s hot. -Da-ad?”
“Yes?”
“Wha loo doin’?”
“Drinking coffee. What are you doing?”
“I no-no.”
The phone rang during the 6 a.m. episode of Barney on PBS out of Boston.
It was Jack Lee, one of the only people in the world who knew Powder got up this early every morning. Jack on the other hand was probably still awake from the night before.
“Rawle. How’s it going?”
“Ugh. I still feel like shit. I don’t know how you do it at your age.”
“My age,” Jack laughed. “Listen, Powder. There was a big house fire last night, somewhere in Ellershouse, down past Windsor. Uhhh, Dawson Road. Ellershouse… You know where that is? Two kids and a woman were injured, I guess. Halifax wants a follow from us for tomorrow. We missed the actual fire. Or should I say you missed it? You were on call last night, were you not?”
“Fuck you. What time did the fire happen?”
“Three a.m. or something.”
“Oh, I see. So I should have been up sitting by the scanner at three a.m. should I?”
“Yeah, you should of, you little twat. That’s why you get paid the big bucks. You should sleep with the scanner on beside your bed.”
“I’ll set it in between me and your ex-wife.”
“Ohhhh-ho-ho! You couldn’t handle her. She’d eat you alive. Anyways, the Fire Marshall is ruling it arson. That’s what I hear. I’ll let you take this, Rawle. I’m going to be taking the week off. I know, I know. I’ve got to get over this- whatever it is. I’m still not feeling a hundred per cent…. You’re not working this weekend are you?”
“No,” Rawle said, dreading another busy week of covering Jack’s duties. “It’s Verryn’s weekend. I have to ask you though, dude. You’re still feeling the same way? I mean, you’ve been sick for weeks it seems like. Plus the nosebleed thing.”
“Yeah. It better not be nothing serious. I think it’s just the flu ‘though... You know? But then I get the nosebleeds and once time there was blood in my piss.”
“Oh, come on! You’ve got to go see the Man,” Rawle scolded. Jack was afraid of doctors and the depressing reality they represented for middle aged men.
“I know. I know. Just call me at noon about the arson thing. Okay?”
He hung up.
Ellershouse, in Hants County, was almost a suburb of Halifax by now the way the city kept expanding outward like a creeping mildew.
It would take 40 minutes to drive there.
Ellershouse was not really in the Annapolis Valley, but like most of Western Hants County it was considered part of Valley Bureau territory.
Kelloway got up at 9:30 to take over Toddler-watch. Rawle grabbed his digital camera, a fresh notepad and a couple spare pens and set out..
Fred Fenerty was out snow-blowing his driveway, crisply carving a wall of snow to form a perfect rectangle.
“Don’t get any snow on my side of the lawn, Fenerty,” Rawle called out to him, puffing his chest out a bit as he walked to the Golf in the gravel driveway.
“Christ,” Fenerty mumbled, his insect face flushing a bit under his fluorescent orange toque. “Why can’t you shovel your sidewalk once in a while, Rawle?” he retorted over the roar of his yellow snow blower. “It’s unsafe.”
“Some people work for a living I guess, Fenerty,” Rawle said, smiling.
He climbed into the Golf before Fenerty could respond, and tore out the driveway in a big cloud of powder.
Chapter 8
After interviewing the neighbours for most of the morning, Det. Sgt. Smith, Digby and Cst. Charlie Dawe, an RCMP LIO for Criminal Intelligence Service Nova Scotia, piled into Digby’s unmarked Impala and headed out to Burnside Jail, after a brief stop at Robin’s for coffee.
Digby paid.
Todd Purcell, the jail guard, was fellow law enforcement, albeit on the lowest possible rung beyond sheriff’s deputy.
They targeted his family.
The community of law enforcement in Nova Scotia, as a whole, was furious. There was a large amount of unspoken pressure that would be applied on Digby, to make an arrest.
Cst. Dawe was one of 10 liaisons in the province between the Mounties and CISNS.
His presence on a routine trip to Burnside was a pressure tactic. Digby could feel it hanging around her collar like a ten-pound freeweight.
The arson was being handled as a Major Crime file, presided by Digby and Southwest Nova Major Crime Unit, which also included Staff Sgt. James Keetch, her boss, Cpl. Ross Agarwal and Cst. Adam Halfkenny.
Keetch and Halfkenney were manning the fort at New Minas Detachment. Agarwal was pushing paperwork at the Cornwallis Street Justice Centre, getting court orders for cellphone tower records from the area of the firebombing.
The Combined Forces Intelligence Unit, CFIU biker squad, was assisting, mainly so Det. Sgt. Smith could share files and insights.
Todd Purcell was too grief stricken, or too scared, to speak to the police. He was refusing to allow Sgt. Digby to visit him at the hospital, where his wife was laid up in an isolation room.
The only promising lead so far had come from Smith, who was contacted by a friend of his, a Bunside guard and chief steward in the jail guard union.
The factory-size provincial jail was located in Burnside Industrial Park in Halifax’s sister city, Dartmouth, just across the harbour.
Traffic over the bridge was heavy and Cst. Charlie Dawe and Det. Sgt. Smith killed time by talking about biker stuff while Sgt. Digby sat patiently in the driver’s seat inching toward the toll booth on the Dartmouth side of the MacKay Bridge.
“Special Investigations picked up something good from Dee Lee’s phone,” Dawe was saying.
“Are you serious?” Smith said. “I’m skeptical that he’d be caught on that. What was he saying?”
“Hold that thought. I made notes. I’ve got them here somewhere.” Cst. Dawe searched the zippered pockets of his Creamsicle-orange Adidas tracksuit. “He sounded pretty freaked out, like something big went down last night.”
RCMP Special Investigations had taps on all Dee Lee’s home and business phones, same as most bikers and top prospects under investigation in the province, all depending on how much business they did.
SI also had a surveillance camera hidden outside the back entrance of Alan Lee’s fitness club, Black Dog Fitness on Dutch Village Road, and they were starting to put GPS trackers on all vehicles owned by Gypsy members, and search their safety deposit boxes at local banks.
Dee Lee was aware of most police efforts to spy on him and he certainly would never speak freely on a normal telephone.
He was known to use a staggering array of stolen and cloned DSL cellphones, which were almost impossible to intercept with a scanner, satellite phones, walkie-talkies and hotmail and gmail accounts.
At the same time, everyone had to use a landline sometime, or a shitty cellphone, whether to mutter a few things in code, or out of occasional human laziness.
The set of daily transcripts made interesting reading. It was like trying to make sense out of whack-job writers like James Joyce and Willam S. Burroughs. The code often made no literal sense, but you just had to try and keep your mind open and pick up on the vibe.
“OK,” Cst. Dawe said, opening a little black notepad. “This was Saturday night. 3:43 a.m. Dee Lee phoned someone he calls ‘Snow.’ We don’t have a name for that yet, although there is a biker in Moncton with the nickname ‘Snowball.’ ‘Snowball’ Glen Frederick. He’s a member of the Butcher Kiddos Motorcycle Club, in Moncton, which is a puppet club of the Gypsies. I think he’s their sergeant-at-arms. He’s black, so he’ll never be allowed to become a Gypsy.” Dawe raised his eyebrows. “Glen Frederick also had dealings with the Lee family previously. He tortured that real estate developer in Halifax back in the 90’s. Remember that? Anyways, Dee Lee is speaking first. He says: ‘…Snow. We have a big problem. I need you. Fuck Tin-Tin. I need you, tonight… Somebody’s missing. My fucking white boy disappeared.’ And you have to imagine, there’s a lot of emotion in his voice. He’s really pissed off”
Dawe looked up at Smith, then across the car to meet Digby’s eyes in the rearview mirror.
“Then Snow asks him for some particulars on who is missing. Dee Lee says: “Pussylips.”
Dawe closed the notebook and looked up. “That’s it. End communication.”
Sgt. Digby knew white was common phone code for cocaine. Drug dealers not being reknowned for their excessive creativity.
“So, white boy a coke shipment of some kind? A boat maybe?”
“Something to do with coke,” Cst. Dawe said, nodding. “White boy means mule, I think, And Pussylips is the specific mule in question. Probably, we’re talking about a coke mule that has physically gone missing, as in somebody killed him and stole the coke shipment. It’s probably someone driving in a car, or riding the bus or the train. Something like that.”
Dawe and Digby seemed to be hitting it off, Det. Sgt. Smith thought.
Say something you idiot.
“Well,” Smith said taking a big gulp of his boiling hot tea with cream and sugar, “if a body pops up in the harbour over the next few days, we’ll have a good idea what it’s there for.”
Digby paid.
Todd Purcell, the jail guard, was fellow law enforcement, albeit on the lowest possible rung beyond sheriff’s deputy.
They targeted his family.
The community of law enforcement in Nova Scotia, as a whole, was furious. There was a large amount of unspoken pressure that would be applied on Digby, to make an arrest.
Cst. Dawe was one of 10 liaisons in the province between the Mounties and CISNS.
His presence on a routine trip to Burnside was a pressure tactic. Digby could feel it hanging around her collar like a ten-pound freeweight.
The arson was being handled as a Major Crime file, presided by Digby and Southwest Nova Major Crime Unit, which also included Staff Sgt. James Keetch, her boss, Cpl. Ross Agarwal and Cst. Adam Halfkenny.
Keetch and Halfkenney were manning the fort at New Minas Detachment. Agarwal was pushing paperwork at the Cornwallis Street Justice Centre, getting court orders for cellphone tower records from the area of the firebombing.
The Combined Forces Intelligence Unit, CFIU biker squad, was assisting, mainly so Det. Sgt. Smith could share files and insights.
Todd Purcell was too grief stricken, or too scared, to speak to the police. He was refusing to allow Sgt. Digby to visit him at the hospital, where his wife was laid up in an isolation room.
The only promising lead so far had come from Smith, who was contacted by a friend of his, a Bunside guard and chief steward in the jail guard union.
The factory-size provincial jail was located in Burnside Industrial Park in Halifax’s sister city, Dartmouth, just across the harbour.
Traffic over the bridge was heavy and Cst. Charlie Dawe and Det. Sgt. Smith killed time by talking about biker stuff while Sgt. Digby sat patiently in the driver’s seat inching toward the toll booth on the Dartmouth side of the MacKay Bridge.
“Special Investigations picked up something good from Dee Lee’s phone,” Dawe was saying.
“Are you serious?” Smith said. “I’m skeptical that he’d be caught on that. What was he saying?”
“Hold that thought. I made notes. I’ve got them here somewhere.” Cst. Dawe searched the zippered pockets of his Creamsicle-orange Adidas tracksuit. “He sounded pretty freaked out, like something big went down last night.”
RCMP Special Investigations had taps on all Dee Lee’s home and business phones, same as most bikers and top prospects under investigation in the province, all depending on how much business they did.
SI also had a surveillance camera hidden outside the back entrance of Alan Lee’s fitness club, Black Dog Fitness on Dutch Village Road, and they were starting to put GPS trackers on all vehicles owned by Gypsy members, and search their safety deposit boxes at local banks.
Dee Lee was aware of most police efforts to spy on him and he certainly would never speak freely on a normal telephone.
He was known to use a staggering array of stolen and cloned DSL cellphones, which were almost impossible to intercept with a scanner, satellite phones, walkie-talkies and hotmail and gmail accounts.
At the same time, everyone had to use a landline sometime, or a shitty cellphone, whether to mutter a few things in code, or out of occasional human laziness.
The set of daily transcripts made interesting reading. It was like trying to make sense out of whack-job writers like James Joyce and Willam S. Burroughs. The code often made no literal sense, but you just had to try and keep your mind open and pick up on the vibe.
“OK,” Cst. Dawe said, opening a little black notepad. “This was Saturday night. 3:43 a.m. Dee Lee phoned someone he calls ‘Snow.’ We don’t have a name for that yet, although there is a biker in Moncton with the nickname ‘Snowball.’ ‘Snowball’ Glen Frederick. He’s a member of the Butcher Kiddos Motorcycle Club, in Moncton, which is a puppet club of the Gypsies. I think he’s their sergeant-at-arms. He’s black, so he’ll never be allowed to become a Gypsy.” Dawe raised his eyebrows. “Glen Frederick also had dealings with the Lee family previously. He tortured that real estate developer in Halifax back in the 90’s. Remember that? Anyways, Dee Lee is speaking first. He says: ‘…Snow. We have a big problem. I need you. Fuck Tin-Tin. I need you, tonight… Somebody’s missing. My fucking white boy disappeared.’ And you have to imagine, there’s a lot of emotion in his voice. He’s really pissed off”
Dawe looked up at Smith, then across the car to meet Digby’s eyes in the rearview mirror.
“Then Snow asks him for some particulars on who is missing. Dee Lee says: “Pussylips.”
Dawe closed the notebook and looked up. “That’s it. End communication.”
Sgt. Digby knew white was common phone code for cocaine. Drug dealers not being reknowned for their excessive creativity.
“So, white boy a coke shipment of some kind? A boat maybe?”
“Something to do with coke,” Cst. Dawe said, nodding. “White boy means mule, I think, And Pussylips is the specific mule in question. Probably, we’re talking about a coke mule that has physically gone missing, as in somebody killed him and stole the coke shipment. It’s probably someone driving in a car, or riding the bus or the train. Something like that.”
Dawe and Digby seemed to be hitting it off, Det. Sgt. Smith thought.
Say something you idiot.
“Well,” Smith said taking a big gulp of his boiling hot tea with cream and sugar, “if a body pops up in the harbour over the next few days, we’ll have a good idea what it’s there for.”
Chapter 9
Rawle Powder was speeding down the 101, heading to the scene of the firebombing in Ellershouse.
He called the Brooklyn Fire Chief, Percy Burns, en route, and got the official version of what happened.
It was definitely arson. Someone had thrown an incendiary device through the window of the home. Two young children were suffering from smoke inhalation and a woman suffered second and third degree burns on 18 per cent of her body.
He found Dawson Road fairly quickly and pinpointed the burned house.
He parked in front of the driveway next to a ditch. The snow was black and dirty in places. The house itself looked like a charcoal-blasted fireplace, but it was still standing.
Not just the facts, ma’am.
He knew he would need some good ‘colour’ for his story, in order to give it legs. He would need to quote emotional outbursts, or a raving diatribe. He would need graphic details. Colour photos of some of the burns maybe.
It was a day and a half now, after the fact, and the TV stations had all gotten film last night, during the fire, and packaged it in time for their morning news.
They had pictures of the fire blazing.
Rawle was on the trail of what would end up being a two-day old story by the time it got into the paper tomorrow morning.
Jesus. If he couldn’t dig up some colour, the story might not even run.
He stuffed his small digital camera, notebook and pens deep down into his pants pockets, then climbed out of the Golf and walked straight up to the charred house, feeling nervous.
The home-owners were not at home, obviously, but at least the structure was still standing.
Part of the roof was missing and there were downed powerlines snaked across the snowy yard.
He snapped a few close-ups. There was a wet smoke-smell still in the air. He leaned his head through a chewed-up window and snapped some more pics of what was probably once a living room. All the walls and debris and furniture in the room was stringy intexture and had been reduce dtot he colour of ashes.
Everything was ruined.
He leaned his head back out.
The property had been taped off with a yellow strip of plastic Fire Line Do Not Cross, which always helped colour-up a photograph. The tape was probably the only thing keeping the house from being bulldozed. It meant an ongoing arson investigation was taking place.
No one was home at the neighbours to the right, either, but he found a nice retired couple living in a bungalow on the left.
An old man and woman were fiddling around in their kitchen when he came up and rapped on the screen door.
A small dog started yapping somewhere inside.
“How are ya-now?” the old man said, cheerfully swinging open the main door.
“Hi,” Rawle waved. “Mind if I talk to you for a minute?”
The couple walked toward the door, holding baking utensils in their wrinkled hands, both grinning widely.
“Sure,” the man said.
“Hi. My name is Rawle Powder… I’m a newspaper man,” he said, trying to speak old-person lingo. "I work for the Halifax Gazette."
“You must be here about that awful fire,” the man said, looking over his shoulder and nodding in the direction of the ruined house. “Terrible thing.”
“Yes,” Rawle said, feeling his pulse quicken. “I’m wondering if the family is still around or…?”
“The Purcell’s? They’d be at the hospital,” the man said.
Purcell’s, Rawle committed the name to memory.
Purcell, Purcell, Purcell.
“They’re staying with some friends down in Halifax,” the old woman said, in a dottering voice. “But I don’t want to say anything I shouldn’t. Maybe you should talk to the authorities? The policemen or the firefighters? It was such an awful thing that happened.”
“Terrible,” agreed the glinty-eyed man. “It was like a war zone. This is a pretty quiet neck of the woods. We don’t see that kind of commotion too often.”
“-I told Roger,” the woman said, looking at her husband, “after the war he had to buckle down and take a civil service job. Roger thought about being a police officer too, you know. But I told him ‘over my grave.’ And come to think of it, I told the same thing to Sally. That’s the lady. They’re a nice, young couple. I told Sally what her husband did for a living was downright dangerous, what with them kids, and he was liable to get hurt. But never did I imagine it would be her that got hurt. And those poor little girls. Oh-” She put her hand over her mouth in shock, as if remembering something terrible.
Rawle’s adrenaline was going ape-shit. Did she say police officer?
“I’m sorry. Ahhh, what do you mean,” he said “when you say ‘police officer’? Are you saying Mr. Purcell is a cop?”
“No, no,” the man said. “I wanted to be a policeman. Purcell is a prison guard.”
Son of a… Rawle’s heart still pounded. It was still good news.
A prison guard.
“I didn’t know that,” Rawle said, trying to act casual.
The nearest things to Hants County that would qualify as a prison was the provincial jail in Dartmouth, or maybe the old man meant the Young Offender prison in Waterville?
Rawle knew he really needed to get the first name of the jail guard, badly. He had the last name and the woman’s name, Sally.
Authorities like the Fire Chief won’t tell the press victim’s names, not unless you had a good source.
But “news is names” as assignment editor Bert Mittelstaedt was fond of saying.
Without names, local news was all but pointless. The reason people read local news was to find out if the terrible thing that happened, happened to anyone they knew.
Rawle needed names, but he also didn’t want to push too hard and scare the couple off. The trick was to keep things conversational and make the neighbours feel like they were talking to a neighbour or something, not reciting quotes that tomorrow would be read by a third of the province.
“What prison does he work at? One around here?”
“It’s the Dartmouth jail,” the old man said. “The new jail. I forget what it’s called.”
Burnside,
“Because I know some Purcell’s who live in Dartmouth,” Rawle said, improvising. “That’s why I wondered if they were related. What’s his first name?”
“Who? This fella?” The old guy pointed back at the burned house.
“Yeah….” C’mon tell me, you old bastard.
“-Todd. That’s Todd Purcell.”
Yes!
Todd and Sally Purcell. He had the names. It wasn’t necessary to name the children, although that would have been even better. The parents were enough for now.
He felt an urge to whip out his pen and start scribbling notes, but he worried that would spook his rabbits. It was important not to act like a reporter, one of the most reviled professionals in the world, a step above politician.
A Jesus jail guard! Rawle’s mind raced with the possibilities.
He thought about the story’s potential and felt a warm, familiar prickly nervousness deep in his belly, the feeling he got whenever a story had page one potential.
The feeling was the best part of the job.
“Todd’s father lives in Dartmouth,” the old man was saying. “That might be who you’re thinking of. His father used to work at the Volvo plant. Jack Purcell, if my memory serves.”
“Aw-yeah,” Rawle went along, nodding. “That sounds familiar. That makes sense. ‘See my family’s from Dartmouth too. The Powder’s. My dad was a machinist at Volvo before he went to IMP in Enfield. Then we moved up to Hants County.”
“Oh yeah?”
They bullshitted for a while more. Eventually, the elderly couple took Rawle through what they heard and saw the night of the fire, very gradually and with Rawle still standing on the front step in the freezing cold. They did not invite him inside.
They told him the woman got burned badly on both her arms.
The old couple had been asleep but woke up and went outside when they heard the screaming.
The old woman gave a tear-filled account of what Sally Purcell looked like pacing up and down the street before the ambulance came. Rawle almost wished he had a TV camera.
“I can’t forget what I saw. Yesterday, we just did what we had to do, but today I keep seeing what I saw. I keep seeing that poor woman with her face pitch black with soot. You know? She had her arms crossed in fornt of her face and the skin was hanging down off her arms… She couldn’t stay still, she was in so much pain. She just kept pacing up and down the street. How could anyone do something so evil?”
Rawle shook his head and burned that quote into his memory. It was a page one quote. Skin hanging from her arms. Face black with soot. The woman pacing. How could anyone do something so evil?
He had no idea, but the world was full of evil, and his job was to expose it to a shell-shocked citizenry.
He still had to get the old couple’s names so he could quote them by name, especially the woman. Day assignment editor Bert Mittelstaedt hated anonymous quotes and punished reporters who used them with shitty assignments.
After talking for nearly an hour on the doorstep, the couple began to pull back into their home. Rawle saw his last chance to learn their names slipping away. He put out a stiff hand and re-introduced himself as he turned to leave. “I appreciate it very much. I’m Rawle Powder.” He was hoping they would spit out their own names in reflex as they shook hands, which they did. “Roger Biggar” and “Heti. Nice to meet you.”
Thank God for old-fashioned manners.
Rawle left abruptly after that and drove home with the heat blasting.
It was noon so he called Jack en route for a check-in.
He called the Brooklyn Fire Chief, Percy Burns, en route, and got the official version of what happened.
It was definitely arson. Someone had thrown an incendiary device through the window of the home. Two young children were suffering from smoke inhalation and a woman suffered second and third degree burns on 18 per cent of her body.
He found Dawson Road fairly quickly and pinpointed the burned house.
He parked in front of the driveway next to a ditch. The snow was black and dirty in places. The house itself looked like a charcoal-blasted fireplace, but it was still standing.
Not just the facts, ma’am.
He knew he would need some good ‘colour’ for his story, in order to give it legs. He would need to quote emotional outbursts, or a raving diatribe. He would need graphic details. Colour photos of some of the burns maybe.
It was a day and a half now, after the fact, and the TV stations had all gotten film last night, during the fire, and packaged it in time for their morning news.
They had pictures of the fire blazing.
Rawle was on the trail of what would end up being a two-day old story by the time it got into the paper tomorrow morning.
Jesus. If he couldn’t dig up some colour, the story might not even run.
He stuffed his small digital camera, notebook and pens deep down into his pants pockets, then climbed out of the Golf and walked straight up to the charred house, feeling nervous.
The home-owners were not at home, obviously, but at least the structure was still standing.
Part of the roof was missing and there were downed powerlines snaked across the snowy yard.
He snapped a few close-ups. There was a wet smoke-smell still in the air. He leaned his head through a chewed-up window and snapped some more pics of what was probably once a living room. All the walls and debris and furniture in the room was stringy intexture and had been reduce dtot he colour of ashes.
Everything was ruined.
He leaned his head back out.
The property had been taped off with a yellow strip of plastic Fire Line Do Not Cross, which always helped colour-up a photograph. The tape was probably the only thing keeping the house from being bulldozed. It meant an ongoing arson investigation was taking place.
No one was home at the neighbours to the right, either, but he found a nice retired couple living in a bungalow on the left.
An old man and woman were fiddling around in their kitchen when he came up and rapped on the screen door.
A small dog started yapping somewhere inside.
“How are ya-now?” the old man said, cheerfully swinging open the main door.
“Hi,” Rawle waved. “Mind if I talk to you for a minute?”
The couple walked toward the door, holding baking utensils in their wrinkled hands, both grinning widely.
“Sure,” the man said.
“Hi. My name is Rawle Powder… I’m a newspaper man,” he said, trying to speak old-person lingo. "I work for the Halifax Gazette."
“You must be here about that awful fire,” the man said, looking over his shoulder and nodding in the direction of the ruined house. “Terrible thing.”
“Yes,” Rawle said, feeling his pulse quicken. “I’m wondering if the family is still around or…?”
“The Purcell’s? They’d be at the hospital,” the man said.
Purcell’s, Rawle committed the name to memory.
Purcell, Purcell, Purcell.
“They’re staying with some friends down in Halifax,” the old woman said, in a dottering voice. “But I don’t want to say anything I shouldn’t. Maybe you should talk to the authorities? The policemen or the firefighters? It was such an awful thing that happened.”
“Terrible,” agreed the glinty-eyed man. “It was like a war zone. This is a pretty quiet neck of the woods. We don’t see that kind of commotion too often.”
“-I told Roger,” the woman said, looking at her husband, “after the war he had to buckle down and take a civil service job. Roger thought about being a police officer too, you know. But I told him ‘over my grave.’ And come to think of it, I told the same thing to Sally. That’s the lady. They’re a nice, young couple. I told Sally what her husband did for a living was downright dangerous, what with them kids, and he was liable to get hurt. But never did I imagine it would be her that got hurt. And those poor little girls. Oh-” She put her hand over her mouth in shock, as if remembering something terrible.
Rawle’s adrenaline was going ape-shit. Did she say police officer?
“I’m sorry. Ahhh, what do you mean,” he said “when you say ‘police officer’? Are you saying Mr. Purcell is a cop?”
“No, no,” the man said. “I wanted to be a policeman. Purcell is a prison guard.”
Son of a… Rawle’s heart still pounded. It was still good news.
A prison guard.
“I didn’t know that,” Rawle said, trying to act casual.
The nearest things to Hants County that would qualify as a prison was the provincial jail in Dartmouth, or maybe the old man meant the Young Offender prison in Waterville?
Rawle knew he really needed to get the first name of the jail guard, badly. He had the last name and the woman’s name, Sally.
Authorities like the Fire Chief won’t tell the press victim’s names, not unless you had a good source.
But “news is names” as assignment editor Bert Mittelstaedt was fond of saying.
Without names, local news was all but pointless. The reason people read local news was to find out if the terrible thing that happened, happened to anyone they knew.
Rawle needed names, but he also didn’t want to push too hard and scare the couple off. The trick was to keep things conversational and make the neighbours feel like they were talking to a neighbour or something, not reciting quotes that tomorrow would be read by a third of the province.
“What prison does he work at? One around here?”
“It’s the Dartmouth jail,” the old man said. “The new jail. I forget what it’s called.”
Burnside,
“Because I know some Purcell’s who live in Dartmouth,” Rawle said, improvising. “That’s why I wondered if they were related. What’s his first name?”
“Who? This fella?” The old guy pointed back at the burned house.
“Yeah….” C’mon tell me, you old bastard.
“-Todd. That’s Todd Purcell.”
Yes!
Todd and Sally Purcell. He had the names. It wasn’t necessary to name the children, although that would have been even better. The parents were enough for now.
He felt an urge to whip out his pen and start scribbling notes, but he worried that would spook his rabbits. It was important not to act like a reporter, one of the most reviled professionals in the world, a step above politician.
A Jesus jail guard! Rawle’s mind raced with the possibilities.
He thought about the story’s potential and felt a warm, familiar prickly nervousness deep in his belly, the feeling he got whenever a story had page one potential.
The feeling was the best part of the job.
“Todd’s father lives in Dartmouth,” the old man was saying. “That might be who you’re thinking of. His father used to work at the Volvo plant. Jack Purcell, if my memory serves.”
“Aw-yeah,” Rawle went along, nodding. “That sounds familiar. That makes sense. ‘See my family’s from Dartmouth too. The Powder’s. My dad was a machinist at Volvo before he went to IMP in Enfield. Then we moved up to Hants County.”
“Oh yeah?”
They bullshitted for a while more. Eventually, the elderly couple took Rawle through what they heard and saw the night of the fire, very gradually and with Rawle still standing on the front step in the freezing cold. They did not invite him inside.
They told him the woman got burned badly on both her arms.
The old couple had been asleep but woke up and went outside when they heard the screaming.
The old woman gave a tear-filled account of what Sally Purcell looked like pacing up and down the street before the ambulance came. Rawle almost wished he had a TV camera.
“I can’t forget what I saw. Yesterday, we just did what we had to do, but today I keep seeing what I saw. I keep seeing that poor woman with her face pitch black with soot. You know? She had her arms crossed in fornt of her face and the skin was hanging down off her arms… She couldn’t stay still, she was in so much pain. She just kept pacing up and down the street. How could anyone do something so evil?”
Rawle shook his head and burned that quote into his memory. It was a page one quote. Skin hanging from her arms. Face black with soot. The woman pacing. How could anyone do something so evil?
He had no idea, but the world was full of evil, and his job was to expose it to a shell-shocked citizenry.
He still had to get the old couple’s names so he could quote them by name, especially the woman. Day assignment editor Bert Mittelstaedt hated anonymous quotes and punished reporters who used them with shitty assignments.
After talking for nearly an hour on the doorstep, the couple began to pull back into their home. Rawle saw his last chance to learn their names slipping away. He put out a stiff hand and re-introduced himself as he turned to leave. “I appreciate it very much. I’m Rawle Powder.” He was hoping they would spit out their own names in reflex as they shook hands, which they did. “Roger Biggar” and “Heti. Nice to meet you.”
Thank God for old-fashioned manners.
Rawle left abruptly after that and drove home with the heat blasting.
It was noon so he called Jack en route for a check-in.
Chapter 10
Det. Sgt. Smith’s friend, the guard captain, Caleb Chega, met them at the front entrance of Burnside Jail.
The blue walls of the warehouse-style building and pyramid-shaped front entrance constructed aout of triangles of tinted glass, made the facility look more like an upscale Lowe’s than a provincial correctional centre.
The investigators signed-in at the admissions desk, and checked their guns and then walked down a long shiny white hallway to South Unit where Perry Paul Spalding’s jail cell sat packed in a cluster of nine others.
Smith had requested in advance that the biker be removed from his living quarters and placed in a private room in Isolation Ward, with no canteen.
The officers would not be able to interview him without his lawyer present. Smith expected he wouldn’t get squat from Spalding, especially with Alan Lee’s legal team there, cutting every sentence. Interviewing him without clear evidence of wrongdoing would be a waste of time.
For now, he was more interested in tossing Spalding’s two-by-four metre jail cell, reading his mail and looking over any transcripts of his phone calls to see if anything could tread water.
Phone calls the gang leader made were all monitored and recorded, except calls to his lawyer, which by law could not be recorded, and calls to his mother.
The cell had a solid, off-white steel door with a tiny vertical slot for a window.
Chega heaved the door open after signaling a floor guard to buzz the lock.
“Some of the guys listened to a call between Spalding and his mother,” Chega mumbled as they filed into the cell. “You’ll be pleased to hear that- she’s what? 70? She’s been patching gang members into her calls with her son, using three-way calling. In the one phone call we listened to, she patched in two different gang members. Bill Tiffen and a biker named Fernand Boudreau, from Quebec City.”
“Jesus Christ,” Smith whispered.
“Yeah. Mom and son talked for a minute or two, then all of a sudden she puts him on hold and calls up Bill Tiffen. He comes on the line and Spalding’s mom sets her end down and goes off to do her knitting and Spalding and Bill Tiffen talk about dressing a bunch of boys up as RCMP tactical troop officers or something and sending them to Christine Harold’s house in the middle of the night. To silence her and say ‘guess what? Perry Spalding has friends in the RCMP. They can’t protect you from him.’”
“-Holy mother.”
“Yeah.”
Christine Harold was a minor witness in Spalding’s upcoming murder trial. “Did you get anything on tape?” Smith couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Did you record the call?”
“You’re missing the point. On our end it was an ordinary call to his mom. We don’t record calls to his mom. She patched the other line in on her end. There’s no way we would know. We just happened to pick up part of the call by mistake. We didn’t get anything on tape.”
“Un-frigging-believable.”
“Next time, we’ll be recording.”
“You’re right you will be,” Smith hissed. “And how many unmonitored calls has Spalding made to gang members this way?”
Chega shrugged. “How many murders has he ordered on the Department of Public Safety phone bill?”
The blue walls of the warehouse-style building and pyramid-shaped front entrance constructed aout of triangles of tinted glass, made the facility look more like an upscale Lowe’s than a provincial correctional centre.
The investigators signed-in at the admissions desk, and checked their guns and then walked down a long shiny white hallway to South Unit where Perry Paul Spalding’s jail cell sat packed in a cluster of nine others.
Smith had requested in advance that the biker be removed from his living quarters and placed in a private room in Isolation Ward, with no canteen.
The officers would not be able to interview him without his lawyer present. Smith expected he wouldn’t get squat from Spalding, especially with Alan Lee’s legal team there, cutting every sentence. Interviewing him without clear evidence of wrongdoing would be a waste of time.
For now, he was more interested in tossing Spalding’s two-by-four metre jail cell, reading his mail and looking over any transcripts of his phone calls to see if anything could tread water.
Phone calls the gang leader made were all monitored and recorded, except calls to his lawyer, which by law could not be recorded, and calls to his mother.
The cell had a solid, off-white steel door with a tiny vertical slot for a window.
Chega heaved the door open after signaling a floor guard to buzz the lock.
“Some of the guys listened to a call between Spalding and his mother,” Chega mumbled as they filed into the cell. “You’ll be pleased to hear that- she’s what? 70? She’s been patching gang members into her calls with her son, using three-way calling. In the one phone call we listened to, she patched in two different gang members. Bill Tiffen and a biker named Fernand Boudreau, from Quebec City.”
“Jesus Christ,” Smith whispered.
“Yeah. Mom and son talked for a minute or two, then all of a sudden she puts him on hold and calls up Bill Tiffen. He comes on the line and Spalding’s mom sets her end down and goes off to do her knitting and Spalding and Bill Tiffen talk about dressing a bunch of boys up as RCMP tactical troop officers or something and sending them to Christine Harold’s house in the middle of the night. To silence her and say ‘guess what? Perry Spalding has friends in the RCMP. They can’t protect you from him.’”
“-Holy mother.”
“Yeah.”
Christine Harold was a minor witness in Spalding’s upcoming murder trial. “Did you get anything on tape?” Smith couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Did you record the call?”
“You’re missing the point. On our end it was an ordinary call to his mom. We don’t record calls to his mom. She patched the other line in on her end. There’s no way we would know. We just happened to pick up part of the call by mistake. We didn’t get anything on tape.”
“Un-frigging-believable.”
“Next time, we’ll be recording.”
“You’re right you will be,” Smith hissed. “And how many unmonitored calls has Spalding made to gang members this way?”
Chega shrugged. “How many murders has he ordered on the Department of Public Safety phone bill?”
Chapter 11
There was a white, rectangular marble bench-style bed molded to the floor on the far wall, with a thin white foam mattress on it and a pillow for bedding.
There was a steel toilet with no lid in the left corner, plus a small hexagonal steel sink and a round white molded concrete stool and desk built into the floor with no screws or visible seams.
The tiny space looked minimalist and modern.
There was not so much as a single poster on the off-white walls. One small calendar was taped above the desk, with pictures of women in bikinis sitting on shiny chrome motorcycles.
Smith, Chega, Digby and Dawe meticulously sifted everything, finding a few interesting un-mailed letters addressed to post office boxes around the country, but nothing else.
The letters almost certainly contained coded instructions of some kind, but nothing that struck Smith as particularly important. He made some rough notes on their contents.
The real reason the officers had come to Burnside was to hear what Caleb Chega had to say.
The longtime corrections officer was chief steward for Nova Scotia Government Employees Union local 1187 and the Local Intelligence Officer for Criminal Intelligence Service Nova Scotia, liaising between CISNS and the seemy underworld of provincial corrections.
More than anyone else, and in more ways than one, Chega was the eyes and ears of Burnside Jail.
Smith had become friends with him over the years through many previous investigations of gang activity within the jail system.
Few provincial level guards were as committed as Caleb Chega. Chega was a lifer, while most provincial guards see jail duty as a short-term, feces-filled purgatory through which they have to crawl in order to get accepted into the Federal Corrections Academy in Memramcook, New Brunswick. The federal level of the guard game was where the real wages were found, plus the gang intelligence support, the proper riot gear, the pension, the whole package, including a lifetime membership in perhaps the most powerful gang of all in Canada, the Public Service Commission.
There was a steel toilet with no lid in the left corner, plus a small hexagonal steel sink and a round white molded concrete stool and desk built into the floor with no screws or visible seams.
The tiny space looked minimalist and modern.
There was not so much as a single poster on the off-white walls. One small calendar was taped above the desk, with pictures of women in bikinis sitting on shiny chrome motorcycles.
Smith, Chega, Digby and Dawe meticulously sifted everything, finding a few interesting un-mailed letters addressed to post office boxes around the country, but nothing else.
The letters almost certainly contained coded instructions of some kind, but nothing that struck Smith as particularly important. He made some rough notes on their contents.
The real reason the officers had come to Burnside was to hear what Caleb Chega had to say.
The longtime corrections officer was chief steward for Nova Scotia Government Employees Union local 1187 and the Local Intelligence Officer for Criminal Intelligence Service Nova Scotia, liaising between CISNS and the seemy underworld of provincial corrections.
More than anyone else, and in more ways than one, Chega was the eyes and ears of Burnside Jail.
Smith had become friends with him over the years through many previous investigations of gang activity within the jail system.
Few provincial level guards were as committed as Caleb Chega. Chega was a lifer, while most provincial guards see jail duty as a short-term, feces-filled purgatory through which they have to crawl in order to get accepted into the Federal Corrections Academy in Memramcook, New Brunswick. The federal level of the guard game was where the real wages were found, plus the gang intelligence support, the proper riot gear, the pension, the whole package, including a lifetime membership in perhaps the most powerful gang of all in Canada, the Public Service Commission.
Chapter 12
The police officers and Chega stood silently in the narrow white cell of the most powerful gang member in the Maritimes.
Det. Sgt. Smith picked up ‘Cock’ Spalding’s thin, vinyl-coated pillow and wiped his ass with it.
Everybody laughed.
Det. Sgt. Smith picked up ‘Cock’ Spalding’s thin, vinyl-coated pillow and wiped his ass with it.
Everybody laughed.
Chapter 13
“-No. The riot was more like an ordinary, gang-up type fight,” Chega was saying, talking about a jailhouse riot that had made the papers a month or so ago.
It was Chega’s belief that the firebombing of Todd Purcell’s home was payback for the way some Gypsy-affilated inmates were treated during the incident.
Todd Purcell was part of an intervention team that broke up the fight.
“The native gangs and Gypsies are at war right across the country,” Chega said. “Mostly in our institutions. The fight broke out on the basketball court. Five Gypsies on three Warriors. By the time the team stormed in and tear gassed everybody, the natives were beat bad. One of them had a pencil they use for keeping score jammed up his nose, all the way. Can you imagine how much that shit hurt?”
“Geez,” Dawe said, wincing. “A pencil?”
“Brain damage,” Chega said.
Digby was anecdotally aquainted with Burnside’s reputation for violence. In many respects, she knew, the provincial jail was more brutal than any federal prison in the Maritimes, even Renous.
The Dartmouth jail had over 250 inmates and was easily home to as many hard offenders, percentage-wise, as a federal institution. Inmates at the jail were often hard-core criminals who just hadn’t been convicted yet of their most recent crime.
Perry Paul Spalding was a good example: The president of the Gyspies Motorcycle Club Halifax chapter, a reputed killer of 13, and perhaps the most dangerous man in the Maritimes, facing two counts of first degree murder, yet here he was languishing in provincial jail, waiting for a trial that would likely go on for years, next to your average gas station robber and pot dealing dipshit.
Something not quite right about that, Digby thought.
She picked up the skinny foam mattress on Spalding’s bed and scanned underneath.
“They dosed everybody,” Chega continued with his story. “They hose ‘em down with gas. Down on the Ground. Move! Then it’s up to the cells, everybody drenched in tear gas. But while the natives are off to the infirmary, the Gyspies get put in their cells for the next 24 hours, without being allowed to shower. Shower or even so much as clean linen. All they had was these tiny sinks to wash their dicks in-” He pointed to the petite hexagonal wash basin in Spalding’s cell. “-They had that Jesus tear gas on their skin all night and all the next day. Now that hurts. That’s enough to drive you nuts.”
He paused for effect.
“That is the new superintendent Doherty, new and improved, since his wife died, I’m sorry to say. God love her. He’s hard core now. He finally sprouted a set of nuggets after all these years...” Chega’s face was red and his eyes were watering. “I’ll tell you something, we guards were just starting to get some morale going around here. Now this happens….” He shook his head in disgust. “You cross a line when you bring our families into it. Something’s got to be done about it!”
It was Chega’s belief that the firebombing of Todd Purcell’s home was payback for the way some Gypsy-affilated inmates were treated during the incident.
Todd Purcell was part of an intervention team that broke up the fight.
“The native gangs and Gypsies are at war right across the country,” Chega said. “Mostly in our institutions. The fight broke out on the basketball court. Five Gypsies on three Warriors. By the time the team stormed in and tear gassed everybody, the natives were beat bad. One of them had a pencil they use for keeping score jammed up his nose, all the way. Can you imagine how much that shit hurt?”
“Geez,” Dawe said, wincing. “A pencil?”
“Brain damage,” Chega said.
Digby was anecdotally aquainted with Burnside’s reputation for violence. In many respects, she knew, the provincial jail was more brutal than any federal prison in the Maritimes, even Renous.
The Dartmouth jail had over 250 inmates and was easily home to as many hard offenders, percentage-wise, as a federal institution. Inmates at the jail were often hard-core criminals who just hadn’t been convicted yet of their most recent crime.
Perry Paul Spalding was a good example: The president of the Gyspies Motorcycle Club Halifax chapter, a reputed killer of 13, and perhaps the most dangerous man in the Maritimes, facing two counts of first degree murder, yet here he was languishing in provincial jail, waiting for a trial that would likely go on for years, next to your average gas station robber and pot dealing dipshit.
Something not quite right about that, Digby thought.
She picked up the skinny foam mattress on Spalding’s bed and scanned underneath.
“They dosed everybody,” Chega continued with his story. “They hose ‘em down with gas. Down on the Ground. Move! Then it’s up to the cells, everybody drenched in tear gas. But while the natives are off to the infirmary, the Gyspies get put in their cells for the next 24 hours, without being allowed to shower. Shower or even so much as clean linen. All they had was these tiny sinks to wash their dicks in-” He pointed to the petite hexagonal wash basin in Spalding’s cell. “-They had that Jesus tear gas on their skin all night and all the next day. Now that hurts. That’s enough to drive you nuts.”
He paused for effect.
“That is the new superintendent Doherty, new and improved, since his wife died, I’m sorry to say. God love her. He’s hard core now. He finally sprouted a set of nuggets after all these years...” Chega’s face was red and his eyes were watering. “I’ll tell you something, we guards were just starting to get some morale going around here. Now this happens….” He shook his head in disgust. “You cross a line when you bring our families into it. Something’s got to be done about it!”
Chapter 14
“Eight of us guards went for a drink last night,” Chega continued in his Whitney Pier accent, dulled somewhat by living most of his life in Dartmouth. “We’re a real close group. Normally, that includes Todd. Not last night…” He trailed off and his face started to go red again.
“Go on Caleb,” Smith said.
“I’m sorry, it just makes me so mad... I got pride for what we do here, you know? We’re all South Unit. With your hardened criminals. We share intelligence with eachother. We’re a real tight bunch. Common misery, eh?”
“You got that right, bud,” Smith said, laughing.
Chega and Smith talked with their heads very close together, likeold friends.
“Anyway’s, two weeks ago, two of the boys on day shift opened an incoming letter addressed to ‘Cock’ Spalding-“
Smith tilted his face slightly at the words “letter” and “Cock Spalding.” Evidence. He almost started salivating. “Can we get a copy of that?”
“Yeah, yeah, just listen for a minute. So, they scan all the mail in here and we pay strict attention to Spalding’s mail. We read every Jesus letter he gets. Anyways, he received a letter from an offender at a Quebec prison who said he was at his mandatory release date and he was willing to come and help Spalding with his problems. He wrote something like: ‘I’m getting out Monday. I hear about the fun down there, dada-dat-da, dee-deet-deet-dee, I’ll see about getting someone on the list.’”
Smith’s ears perked up again. “The ‘list?’ What list?”
“-Quit interrupting me, Bob. Jesus. The letter also referred to Todd Purcell by his inmate nickname. Toad or The Toad.”
Sgt. Digby interrupted this time. “-What Quebec offender? Was it anybody we know?”
She was seated on Spalding’s platform bed with her pen and notebook out.
“Yes. You’ll know the name. Joey Robichaud Junior,” Chega said, looking from face to face, making sure everybody registered the significance of the name.
Smith smiled to himself and shook his head. “Joe Junior. That makes perfect sense. We’ve seen him back in Halifax. I guess he served every day of his Jesus sentence. No parole.”
In Canada, every offender is entitled to parole after serving two-thirds of their sentence. The only way to not get paroled is if your case mangement team feels it’s a 100 per cent certainty you will commit a violent crime upon release.
Joe Junior was a Nova Scotia-born thug, who had been incarcerated in Quebec for the past few years for conspiracy to drug traffick, Digby knew.
He was transferred to Quebec from the maximum security Atlantic Institution in Renous, New Brunswick after allegedly forming a brutal prison gang there and badly disfiguring another inmate.
The story was well-known. For work detail, prisoners at Renous do body work on vehicles for the Canadian Armed Forces, like the Jeep ambulance.
After a shift in the workshop, all tools must be returned to a large peg board with the shape of each tool outlined on it and nobody is allowed to leave the shop until every tool is back in its rightful place. It’s a low-tech security system that had generally proven foolproof over the years.
Generally.
Joe Junior was said to have constructed a foldable replica of the hand-held circular grinder out of cardboard and a hairbrush. He hung the fake grinder on the pegboard and smuggled the real one back to his cell with the handle stuck in his ass.
The next morning, instead of lifting rust off a Jeep ambulance chassis, he lifted the face off a rival gang member.
“Go on Caleb,” Smith said.
“I’m sorry, it just makes me so mad... I got pride for what we do here, you know? We’re all South Unit. With your hardened criminals. We share intelligence with eachother. We’re a real tight bunch. Common misery, eh?”
“You got that right, bud,” Smith said, laughing.
Chega and Smith talked with their heads very close together, likeold friends.
“Anyway’s, two weeks ago, two of the boys on day shift opened an incoming letter addressed to ‘Cock’ Spalding-“
Smith tilted his face slightly at the words “letter” and “Cock Spalding.” Evidence. He almost started salivating. “Can we get a copy of that?”
“Yeah, yeah, just listen for a minute. So, they scan all the mail in here and we pay strict attention to Spalding’s mail. We read every Jesus letter he gets. Anyways, he received a letter from an offender at a Quebec prison who said he was at his mandatory release date and he was willing to come and help Spalding with his problems. He wrote something like: ‘I’m getting out Monday. I hear about the fun down there, dada-dat-da, dee-deet-deet-dee, I’ll see about getting someone on the list.’”
Smith’s ears perked up again. “The ‘list?’ What list?”
“-Quit interrupting me, Bob. Jesus. The letter also referred to Todd Purcell by his inmate nickname. Toad or The Toad.”
Sgt. Digby interrupted this time. “-What Quebec offender? Was it anybody we know?”
She was seated on Spalding’s platform bed with her pen and notebook out.
“Yes. You’ll know the name. Joey Robichaud Junior,” Chega said, looking from face to face, making sure everybody registered the significance of the name.
Smith smiled to himself and shook his head. “Joe Junior. That makes perfect sense. We’ve seen him back in Halifax. I guess he served every day of his Jesus sentence. No parole.”
In Canada, every offender is entitled to parole after serving two-thirds of their sentence. The only way to not get paroled is if your case mangement team feels it’s a 100 per cent certainty you will commit a violent crime upon release.
Joe Junior was a Nova Scotia-born thug, who had been incarcerated in Quebec for the past few years for conspiracy to drug traffick, Digby knew.
He was transferred to Quebec from the maximum security Atlantic Institution in Renous, New Brunswick after allegedly forming a brutal prison gang there and badly disfiguring another inmate.
The story was well-known. For work detail, prisoners at Renous do body work on vehicles for the Canadian Armed Forces, like the Jeep ambulance.
After a shift in the workshop, all tools must be returned to a large peg board with the shape of each tool outlined on it and nobody is allowed to leave the shop until every tool is back in its rightful place. It’s a low-tech security system that had generally proven foolproof over the years.
Generally.
Joe Junior was said to have constructed a foldable replica of the hand-held circular grinder out of cardboard and a hairbrush. He hung the fake grinder on the pegboard and smuggled the real one back to his cell with the handle stuck in his ass.
The next morning, instead of lifting rust off a Jeep ambulance chassis, he lifted the face off a rival gang member.
Chapter 15
“C’mon. What’s this list all about?” Smith said, jiggling a set of keys in his pocket. “Tell me.”
“You’re persistant, Bob, I’ll give you that. The List is a list of guards on the Gypsy shit-list. The letter talked mentioned three guards on the list, using their jailhouse nicknames. Todd Purcell- Toad, and two others, Wendell Ferris and Vernon Fequet. All three were on in the intervention that stormed the basketball court. We immediately saw the letter as a credible threat to those officers and filed a report with management. Nothing happened. They downplayed it-”
“What were the nicknames?” Digby said, interrupting again. “What were the nicknames the offenders had for officers Ferris and Fequet?”
Chega looked at her, wearily. “Fairy and Fuck-it,” he said. “You can probably figure out which is which?”
Smith and Dawe flashed eachother a quick smirk. Digby wrote down the nicknames with a straight face.
“Creative inmates you got here,” Smith joked.
“Now listen to me,” Chega said. “A man’s home got firebombed. They waited ‘til his wife and kids were home alone. Now Sally leaves a ring of skin behind her in the bathtub. How do you think the other two feel right now? Hey? Ferris and Fequet went out on stress leave this morning, but not because they’re pussies- but so they can be home protecting their families, because, by Jesus, nobody else will. Fequet’s installing a camera above the back door. Who you think pays for that? You think the province pays for that? Not in your life.” Chega was exasperated, understandably.
Det. Sgt. Smith did his best to reassure the man.
“They’ll be protected. Major Crime will put a car outside their homes tonight, for as long as they need. Digby? Am I right?”
“Of course,” Digby said, softly.
“I don’t want you guys to worry. The only thing you need to do is convince Todd Purcell to talk to us. I understand he’s reluctant or whatever, but we’re on the case, all the way. We’re going to crack skulls.”
“You’re persistant, Bob, I’ll give you that. The List is a list of guards on the Gypsy shit-list. The letter talked mentioned three guards on the list, using their jailhouse nicknames. Todd Purcell- Toad, and two others, Wendell Ferris and Vernon Fequet. All three were on in the intervention that stormed the basketball court. We immediately saw the letter as a credible threat to those officers and filed a report with management. Nothing happened. They downplayed it-”
“What were the nicknames?” Digby said, interrupting again. “What were the nicknames the offenders had for officers Ferris and Fequet?”
Chega looked at her, wearily. “Fairy and Fuck-it,” he said. “You can probably figure out which is which?”
Smith and Dawe flashed eachother a quick smirk. Digby wrote down the nicknames with a straight face.
“Creative inmates you got here,” Smith joked.
“Now listen to me,” Chega said. “A man’s home got firebombed. They waited ‘til his wife and kids were home alone. Now Sally leaves a ring of skin behind her in the bathtub. How do you think the other two feel right now? Hey? Ferris and Fequet went out on stress leave this morning, but not because they’re pussies- but so they can be home protecting their families, because, by Jesus, nobody else will. Fequet’s installing a camera above the back door. Who you think pays for that? You think the province pays for that? Not in your life.” Chega was exasperated, understandably.
Det. Sgt. Smith did his best to reassure the man.
“They’ll be protected. Major Crime will put a car outside their homes tonight, for as long as they need. Digby? Am I right?”
“Of course,” Digby said, softly.
“I don’t want you guys to worry. The only thing you need to do is convince Todd Purcell to talk to us. I understand he’s reluctant or whatever, but we’re on the case, all the way. We’re going to crack skulls.”
Chapter 16
“Rawle. How’s it going down there?”
It was lunchtime and Jack Lee, Halifax Gazette Annapolis Valley bureau chief was checking up on his reporter.
Rawle felt pretty good about the progress of the firebombing story, so far. He still had half the day left to shape his paragraphs and throw in some standard quotes from the police spokesman.
“Pretty good,” he told Jack. “The guy was a jail guard, eh? Somebody threw two Molotov cocktails through a jail guard’s window. Maybe it has something to do with an inmate? Anyway, his daughters are in hospital in Halifax with smoke inhalation. That shit can kill you, you know. And the wife got burned bad, on her arms.”
“OK, good. I heard it was three cocktails. You heard two coctails?”
“Yeah. From the Fire Marshall.”
“Okay. Whatever the Fire Marshall said, print that.”
“Yeah.” Jack’s off-duty and he knows more than I do, Rawle thought. “Who told you it was three?”
Jack didn’t answer but broke instead into a fit of gut-wrenching coughs, muffled on his end of the phone, by his hand perhaps.
“Geez,” Rawle said. “Would you hurry up and die?”
The coughs sounded cruel and full of liquid, like Jack should be lying in a hospital bed somewhere, breathing into a chest tube.
“Arggh….” He croaked, trying to force composure into himself by willpower alone. “Listen… I want you to send me what you got so far. I’ve got some stuff to add to your story. You confirmed he’s a jail guard?”
“Just with the neighbours.”
“Confirm with the cops if you can. And ask if the investigation is being treated as a major crime case because the guy’s in law enforcement. And ask if they’ve conducted interviews at Burnside Jail. And if they say ‘yes,’ find out if they think Purcell’s job was a factor. Just yes or no, ‘was his job a factor.’”
“You know the guy’s name?”
“I told you,” Jack said in the clipped voice of a man who’s trying not to cough. “I told you, I have some stuff to add to your story.”
It was lunchtime and Jack Lee, Halifax Gazette Annapolis Valley bureau chief was checking up on his reporter.
Rawle felt pretty good about the progress of the firebombing story, so far. He still had half the day left to shape his paragraphs and throw in some standard quotes from the police spokesman.
“Pretty good,” he told Jack. “The guy was a jail guard, eh? Somebody threw two Molotov cocktails through a jail guard’s window. Maybe it has something to do with an inmate? Anyway, his daughters are in hospital in Halifax with smoke inhalation. That shit can kill you, you know. And the wife got burned bad, on her arms.”
“OK, good. I heard it was three cocktails. You heard two coctails?”
“Yeah. From the Fire Marshall.”
“Okay. Whatever the Fire Marshall said, print that.”
“Yeah.” Jack’s off-duty and he knows more than I do, Rawle thought. “Who told you it was three?”
Jack didn’t answer but broke instead into a fit of gut-wrenching coughs, muffled on his end of the phone, by his hand perhaps.
“Geez,” Rawle said. “Would you hurry up and die?”
The coughs sounded cruel and full of liquid, like Jack should be lying in a hospital bed somewhere, breathing into a chest tube.
“Arggh….” He croaked, trying to force composure into himself by willpower alone. “Listen… I want you to send me what you got so far. I’ve got some stuff to add to your story. You confirmed he’s a jail guard?”
“Just with the neighbours.”
“Confirm with the cops if you can. And ask if the investigation is being treated as a major crime case because the guy’s in law enforcement. And ask if they’ve conducted interviews at Burnside Jail. And if they say ‘yes,’ find out if they think Purcell’s job was a factor. Just yes or no, ‘was his job a factor.’”
“You know the guy’s name?”
“I told you,” Jack said in the clipped voice of a man who’s trying not to cough. “I told you, I have some stuff to add to your story.”
Chapter 17
When Sgt. Digby got back to the office she had to buzz herself in with her ID card.
The front desk clerk was not in the Plexiglas booth.
The entire building seemed empty.
She passed through the booking area to hit the main corridor running the length of New Minas Detachment.
A murmur of activity could be heard as soon as she entered the offices area through another grey fire door.
She couldn’t recall the last time she’d seen everybody pitching in like this on a file. Ten or fifteen cops and civilians were huddled up at the end of the building at the desks of South West Nova Major Crime.
It was like a hornets nest back there. Constables had phones to their ears, sending faxes, and hunching over computer terminals tapping away, or bringing in coffee and donuts.
The media spokesman for Kings County, Cst. Llewellen Moss, was talking on two cellphones over by the coffee maker.
“ATV and Global,” he whispered holding up each phone alternatively as Digby walked by in amazement. It wasn’t often the TV News from Halifax was interested in Valley goings-on.
She pushed her way through everybody and joined Agarwal and Staff Sgt. Keetch in the small glassed-in office that overlooked the unit from one side, like a penalty box.
Kings RCMP Inspector Scott Palipschuk, one of the highest ranked officers in the Valley, sat in the heavy blue ergonomic chair facing Keetch and Agarwal. The inspector was getting his update on last week’s files.
Digby inched her way into the office, a copy of Joe Robichaud Junior’s letter to Perry Spalding was folded neatly end-to-end in her fingertips.
“I’d like to hear this too,” she said, winking to everybody. The fire door clicked shut behind her.
“Biz. Good,” Staff Sgt. Keetch said. “Ross has cell tower receipts for your firebombing. We’re running some names, but he was explaining a graph.”
He handed Digby a sheaf of papers, including one with a printout of a line graph.
“Okay,” Agarwal continued. “There’s only one cell tower, 333857, in range of the Purcell home. What the call centre girl- the call girl- said was that, according to this graph, we can see who approached tower 333857 and who left again, whether or not they made or received calls- as long as they had their phones turned on. There’s four phones in particular that approach the Ellershouse tower at the time of the firebombing, shorty after three-thirty a.m. I’ve highlighted the four phones. All four register with the tower at the same time, to the extent that they probably had to be in the same vehicle. This is a pretty rural area.”
Digby was flipping through the pages, looking for any account names she recognized right off the bat. A constable out in the unit was no doubt running each name through CPIC and the National Database, looking for anyone with a criminal record.
“Holy,” she said. “Look at the second highlighted phone. Page two. There’s a call at 3:43. a.m. from the phone number 902-542-2323, registered to D. Lee. This is Dorchester ‘Dee’ Lee’s home phone number. Alan Lee’s son.”
“Dee Lee?” Insp. Palipschuk said, looking for the entry himself in his copy of the paperwork. “Dee Lee, as in Alan Lee?”
“Yeah. The biker. This is weird. The biker squad boys were just telling me about a phone call from Dee Lee that they picked up on their wires. I thought they said it was Saturday night, the night of the firebombing, at 3:43 a.m.”
“Dee Lee?” Keetch said. “If there’s even the slightest chance he’s involved in this burn-out, I wanna know about it.”
Insp. Palipschuk found the entry in his stack of papers. “It says the cell phone he called is registered to a girl. Amanda Jones. Do we really think she’s one of the firebombers then? Does she have a record?”
“We don’t know,” Agarwal said. “We’re still waiting for Halfkenney.”
“-It’s probably a cloned phone,” Staff Sgt. Keetch added, saying what Digby was thinking. “This Amanda girl is probably nobody.”
“But you never know,” Palipschuk said. “Maybe she was along for the ride, or maybe she gave her phone to her boyfriend. See what I mean? We need to find out everything we can about her and all the others. From a court perspective, all we have is Dee Lee making a phone call to someone in the mile radius- or whatever it is- around the site of the firebombing, at the time of the firebombing. It’s nothing.”
Digby nodded.
“Amanda Jones. I’ve never heard of her before,” Keetch said. “We’ll need a warrant for Dee Lee’s phone records.”
“All I’m saying is, it would be highly coincidental if Dee Lee called a cell phone in Ellershouse, minutes after the firebombing of a jail guard there, and it wasn’t related,” Digby said, but she digressed. “It doesn’t prove anything, but it points me in his direction, does it not?”
“Yes,” Palipschuk said, satisfied.
“-What about the other phones?” Keetch said, stating the obvious, which he tended to do in these meetings. “Was it a vanload of thugs sent to do the firebombing? Were they all cloned phones? We really need the other account names run through CPIC. Nicole King, Samantha Bye, Edward Ketchum and Amanda Jones. Have we run these names yet?”
“We’re waiting for Halfkenney,” Digby said.
“Halfkenney’s on the job,” Agarwal said. “He should have it done by next Christmas.”
He picked up the black phone on Keetch’s desk and hit four keys, dialing an internal extension. “… Halfkenny. Have you run my account names yet? Or are you too busy wanking it?” Agarwal smiled and picked up his pen. “Okay. Nicole King, Samantha Bye, Edward Keetch- Ketchum. Keetch has an alibi, I swear, he was with me all night-“ Agarwal winked at Staff Sgt. Keetch. Keetch shook his head, not even smiling. “-Amanda Jones. Okay. No record for Amanda,” Agarwal said to the group in Keetch’s office, keeping the phone pressed to his ear. “And the others? Nicole…? I remember, I think. Alright, pull up everything on them two and fax it to my computer.” He set the phone down.
“We got something. Nicole King. She has a record for obstruction. She was the one that cleaned the blood off the walls after her husband tortured that real estate developer in Halifax, back in the day. Do you guys remember that? Nicole King and his name was Glen Frederick. He’s a biker enforcer from Moncton. There was all that coke in one of the developer’s suites that went missing, so they kidnapped and tortured him. Nicole King is Glen Frederick’s common law wife.”
Staff Sgt. Keetch looked impressed. He had his arms crossed. “A biker? That’s very good. ”
“Did you say Glen Frederick?” Digby said. She pulled out her notebook from her coat pocket. She had neglected to jot down everything Cst. Dawe said in the car, but she was pretty sure he mentioned Glen Frederick because he had a biker nickname that was similar to “Snow,” which Dee Lee had said on the phone tap.
“Glen Frederick it is,” Insp. Palipschuk said. “Dump Dee Lee’s home phone records and let’s get Glen Frederick under surveillance immediately.”
Palipschuk stood up and grabbed his coat, another case solved in his mind, the rest was only going through the motions. “Match up the records. Contact J Division and follow Glen Frederick like a dog, if they’re not doing so already. If you want I can get Gordon to start writing up an information for Frederick’s house. We could search for arson materials, bottles. You guys get down to Moncton and start putting Glen Frederick under the microscope. We’ll see if the phone records are enough for a search warrant and then we can fax it through toyou guys.”
“-It’s not very much,” Digby said. “It’s probably not enough for a warrant, I don’t think. But we can bring Frederick in, right?” She put her copy of Joe Junior’s letter in her back pocket for now, like a good luck charm. It was her habit, honed and developed over years as a Major Crime investigator, to keep all investigative details secret for as long as possible, even from her immediate superior officers. That way, nothing risked compromising the strict integrity of the case. The only person she would possibly show the letter to at this stage was Ross Agarwal.
“Yeah. Bring him in,” Keetch said. “But only if we bring the wife too. She’ll make great leverage. It’s her name on the cell phone.”
Everyone nodded agreement.
First they had to try to get a warrant for Frederick’s home, then they would slap him and his wife in handcuffs and drag them in.
No man, not even Glen Frederick, liked seeing their wife in handcuffs, not unless they were doing you-know-what.
The front desk clerk was not in the Plexiglas booth.
The entire building seemed empty.
She passed through the booking area to hit the main corridor running the length of New Minas Detachment.
A murmur of activity could be heard as soon as she entered the offices area through another grey fire door.
She couldn’t recall the last time she’d seen everybody pitching in like this on a file. Ten or fifteen cops and civilians were huddled up at the end of the building at the desks of South West Nova Major Crime.
It was like a hornets nest back there. Constables had phones to their ears, sending faxes, and hunching over computer terminals tapping away, or bringing in coffee and donuts.
The media spokesman for Kings County, Cst. Llewellen Moss, was talking on two cellphones over by the coffee maker.
“ATV and Global,” he whispered holding up each phone alternatively as Digby walked by in amazement. It wasn’t often the TV News from Halifax was interested in Valley goings-on.
She pushed her way through everybody and joined Agarwal and Staff Sgt. Keetch in the small glassed-in office that overlooked the unit from one side, like a penalty box.
Kings RCMP Inspector Scott Palipschuk, one of the highest ranked officers in the Valley, sat in the heavy blue ergonomic chair facing Keetch and Agarwal. The inspector was getting his update on last week’s files.
Digby inched her way into the office, a copy of Joe Robichaud Junior’s letter to Perry Spalding was folded neatly end-to-end in her fingertips.
“I’d like to hear this too,” she said, winking to everybody. The fire door clicked shut behind her.
“Biz. Good,” Staff Sgt. Keetch said. “Ross has cell tower receipts for your firebombing. We’re running some names, but he was explaining a graph.”
He handed Digby a sheaf of papers, including one with a printout of a line graph.
“Okay,” Agarwal continued. “There’s only one cell tower, 333857, in range of the Purcell home. What the call centre girl- the call girl- said was that, according to this graph, we can see who approached tower 333857 and who left again, whether or not they made or received calls- as long as they had their phones turned on. There’s four phones in particular that approach the Ellershouse tower at the time of the firebombing, shorty after three-thirty a.m. I’ve highlighted the four phones. All four register with the tower at the same time, to the extent that they probably had to be in the same vehicle. This is a pretty rural area.”
Digby was flipping through the pages, looking for any account names she recognized right off the bat. A constable out in the unit was no doubt running each name through CPIC and the National Database, looking for anyone with a criminal record.
“Holy,” she said. “Look at the second highlighted phone. Page two. There’s a call at 3:43. a.m. from the phone number 902-542-2323, registered to D. Lee. This is Dorchester ‘Dee’ Lee’s home phone number. Alan Lee’s son.”
“Dee Lee?” Insp. Palipschuk said, looking for the entry himself in his copy of the paperwork. “Dee Lee, as in Alan Lee?”
“Yeah. The biker. This is weird. The biker squad boys were just telling me about a phone call from Dee Lee that they picked up on their wires. I thought they said it was Saturday night, the night of the firebombing, at 3:43 a.m.”
“Dee Lee?” Keetch said. “If there’s even the slightest chance he’s involved in this burn-out, I wanna know about it.”
Insp. Palipschuk found the entry in his stack of papers. “It says the cell phone he called is registered to a girl. Amanda Jones. Do we really think she’s one of the firebombers then? Does she have a record?”
“We don’t know,” Agarwal said. “We’re still waiting for Halfkenney.”
“-It’s probably a cloned phone,” Staff Sgt. Keetch added, saying what Digby was thinking. “This Amanda girl is probably nobody.”
“But you never know,” Palipschuk said. “Maybe she was along for the ride, or maybe she gave her phone to her boyfriend. See what I mean? We need to find out everything we can about her and all the others. From a court perspective, all we have is Dee Lee making a phone call to someone in the mile radius- or whatever it is- around the site of the firebombing, at the time of the firebombing. It’s nothing.”
Digby nodded.
“Amanda Jones. I’ve never heard of her before,” Keetch said. “We’ll need a warrant for Dee Lee’s phone records.”
“All I’m saying is, it would be highly coincidental if Dee Lee called a cell phone in Ellershouse, minutes after the firebombing of a jail guard there, and it wasn’t related,” Digby said, but she digressed. “It doesn’t prove anything, but it points me in his direction, does it not?”
“Yes,” Palipschuk said, satisfied.
“-What about the other phones?” Keetch said, stating the obvious, which he tended to do in these meetings. “Was it a vanload of thugs sent to do the firebombing? Were they all cloned phones? We really need the other account names run through CPIC. Nicole King, Samantha Bye, Edward Ketchum and Amanda Jones. Have we run these names yet?”
“We’re waiting for Halfkenney,” Digby said.
“Halfkenney’s on the job,” Agarwal said. “He should have it done by next Christmas.”
He picked up the black phone on Keetch’s desk and hit four keys, dialing an internal extension. “… Halfkenny. Have you run my account names yet? Or are you too busy wanking it?” Agarwal smiled and picked up his pen. “Okay. Nicole King, Samantha Bye, Edward Keetch- Ketchum. Keetch has an alibi, I swear, he was with me all night-“ Agarwal winked at Staff Sgt. Keetch. Keetch shook his head, not even smiling. “-Amanda Jones. Okay. No record for Amanda,” Agarwal said to the group in Keetch’s office, keeping the phone pressed to his ear. “And the others? Nicole…? I remember, I think. Alright, pull up everything on them two and fax it to my computer.” He set the phone down.
“We got something. Nicole King. She has a record for obstruction. She was the one that cleaned the blood off the walls after her husband tortured that real estate developer in Halifax, back in the day. Do you guys remember that? Nicole King and his name was Glen Frederick. He’s a biker enforcer from Moncton. There was all that coke in one of the developer’s suites that went missing, so they kidnapped and tortured him. Nicole King is Glen Frederick’s common law wife.”
Staff Sgt. Keetch looked impressed. He had his arms crossed. “A biker? That’s very good. ”
“Did you say Glen Frederick?” Digby said. She pulled out her notebook from her coat pocket. She had neglected to jot down everything Cst. Dawe said in the car, but she was pretty sure he mentioned Glen Frederick because he had a biker nickname that was similar to “Snow,” which Dee Lee had said on the phone tap.
“Glen Frederick it is,” Insp. Palipschuk said. “Dump Dee Lee’s home phone records and let’s get Glen Frederick under surveillance immediately.”
Palipschuk stood up and grabbed his coat, another case solved in his mind, the rest was only going through the motions. “Match up the records. Contact J Division and follow Glen Frederick like a dog, if they’re not doing so already. If you want I can get Gordon to start writing up an information for Frederick’s house. We could search for arson materials, bottles. You guys get down to Moncton and start putting Glen Frederick under the microscope. We’ll see if the phone records are enough for a search warrant and then we can fax it through toyou guys.”
“-It’s not very much,” Digby said. “It’s probably not enough for a warrant, I don’t think. But we can bring Frederick in, right?” She put her copy of Joe Junior’s letter in her back pocket for now, like a good luck charm. It was her habit, honed and developed over years as a Major Crime investigator, to keep all investigative details secret for as long as possible, even from her immediate superior officers. That way, nothing risked compromising the strict integrity of the case. The only person she would possibly show the letter to at this stage was Ross Agarwal.
“Yeah. Bring him in,” Keetch said. “But only if we bring the wife too. She’ll make great leverage. It’s her name on the cell phone.”
Everyone nodded agreement.
First they had to try to get a warrant for Frederick’s home, then they would slap him and his wife in handcuffs and drag them in.
No man, not even Glen Frederick, liked seeing their wife in handcuffs, not unless they were doing you-know-what.
Chapter 18
Glen Frederick and Nicole King lived in a high-crime couple of blocks on the west end of Eighth Street in Moncton, New Brunswick, a downtown area made up of big old rental houses, rundown businesses and strip clubs.
Moncton was a smaller city than Halifax, but it had six or seven strip clubs, more than any other city in the Maritimes.
The Frederick saltbox was painted shiplap grey.
The yard and back lot was in a lot better shape than most of the neighbouring properties. The snow-blown driveway had three late model vehicles sitting in it. Most other driveways on the street were empty or filled with K-cars. Then again, Digby thought, most Monctoners didn’t make $300,000-a year in the drug trade.
“At least he’s keeping it real,” Agarwal said. “Living right in Monkey town. He could be out in the suburbs or something.”
“He likes to keep watch over business,” Digby mused. “And don’t say ‘Monkey.’”
“Why not?”
“It’s racist.”
“No, it’s not. I’m not being racist. I’m saying people that live in Moncton are as dumb as monkeys.”
“You’re being something then. A prick.”
They were positioned in an unmarked silver Saturn in back of a Needs convenience store. It was around 6 p.m., just before sun-set.
Once Frederick was detained, he could be held without charge for up to 24 hours. By detaining him in the evening, Digby could question him all night long, which would hopefully make him groggy and less able to defend himself.
Digby had a side view of the Frederick front driveway.
The Codiac RCMP ERT team was backing their grey cube van into the Needs’ parking lot. As soon as the wheels stopped turning, a sea of Emergency Response Team cops in full body armour poured out, holding MP5’s and shotguns. Some circled around back, some took crouching positions going up the front steps.
The front door lock was picked.
Surveillance confirmed that Frederick and King were inside, naked and having sex on the floor of the upstairs master bedroom.
The couple’s two sons, Derek and Mathias, were in the rec room downstairs watching TV. They would be taken by a social worker from Children’s Aid and would spend the night in a shelter for battered women in Dieppe.
Agarwal lowered his window and lit a cigarette.
“I thought you quit that?” Digby said.
“I made it two weeks. I was on a break.”
The ERT team was on the move. They poured up the steps and pushed through the front door, in one smooth, silent motion, staggering themselves up the front hall stairs and holding position.
Digby could see the last two officers inside the door.
She turned up the volume on her digital scanner, out of reflex, but the operation was radio silent.
Glen Frederick reputededly had several scanners running at all times, including a Uniden scanner that he manually altered to the point where it can pick up high gigahertz digital cellphone frequencies.
A Codiac plainclothes Member stepped up to the front door and nodded his head.
In seconds, four ERT cops in gray-blue Kevlar came bursting out the front door, coralling the massive, naked body of Glen Frederick with them, down the steps.
He was handcuffed in back. He looked like a wild bull, snorting steam from his nostrils into the winter air.
Someone was trying to cover him up downstairs with a blanket, but he was refusing to keep still.
Right after him, came the wife, covered with a wool blanket. She looked like a normal, middle-aged woman being rescued from a flood or a car accident.
“She’s no stripper,” Agarwal pointed out.
Digby smiled. Nicole King was a little on the chunky side. “She’s probably been with him the whole time. Right from the start. The loyal wife. He probably has two or three strippers on the side.”
The ERT team piled the couple into seperate police interceptors.
Frederick looked furious as they jammed his head down into the backseat.
“Kind if a sin,” Digby said. “The wife I mean.”
“Yeah, but she’s no innocent bystander. She cleaned up the blood when he tortured that Jesus developer. You just imagine the stuff she’s done that we don’t know about. As far as I’m concerned, there’s no innocent people in Glen Frederick’s life. I’d cuff his ole grandma.”
A back window of the police car carrying Glen Frederick exploded outward in a loud shower of broken safety glass. The black metal cage in the window remained intact, but it looked like Frederick had dented it outward with a mighty kick.
Digby and Agarwal could not help but be impressed.
Two ERT pulled their Tasers and fired through the steel mesh covering the window. Digby could see sparks dancing.
After that, the ERTs loaded back up in the cube van and the procession of police vehicles began to vacate the street.
A small crowd of civilians from nearby townhouses had gathered on the sidewalks to watch. Some of the young boys banged the cop car hoods with their palms as they went past. One cruiser flared his siren, Boo-up and accelerated, dispersing the crowd.
Then all the cops were gone again and the locals shook their heads and went back inside their homes.
“Time to go.”
Moncton was a smaller city than Halifax, but it had six or seven strip clubs, more than any other city in the Maritimes.
The Frederick saltbox was painted shiplap grey.
The yard and back lot was in a lot better shape than most of the neighbouring properties. The snow-blown driveway had three late model vehicles sitting in it. Most other driveways on the street were empty or filled with K-cars. Then again, Digby thought, most Monctoners didn’t make $300,000-a year in the drug trade.
“At least he’s keeping it real,” Agarwal said. “Living right in Monkey town. He could be out in the suburbs or something.”
“He likes to keep watch over business,” Digby mused. “And don’t say ‘Monkey.’”
“Why not?”
“It’s racist.”
“No, it’s not. I’m not being racist. I’m saying people that live in Moncton are as dumb as monkeys.”
“You’re being something then. A prick.”
They were positioned in an unmarked silver Saturn in back of a Needs convenience store. It was around 6 p.m., just before sun-set.
Once Frederick was detained, he could be held without charge for up to 24 hours. By detaining him in the evening, Digby could question him all night long, which would hopefully make him groggy and less able to defend himself.
Digby had a side view of the Frederick front driveway.
The Codiac RCMP ERT team was backing their grey cube van into the Needs’ parking lot. As soon as the wheels stopped turning, a sea of Emergency Response Team cops in full body armour poured out, holding MP5’s and shotguns. Some circled around back, some took crouching positions going up the front steps.
The front door lock was picked.
Surveillance confirmed that Frederick and King were inside, naked and having sex on the floor of the upstairs master bedroom.
The couple’s two sons, Derek and Mathias, were in the rec room downstairs watching TV. They would be taken by a social worker from Children’s Aid and would spend the night in a shelter for battered women in Dieppe.
Agarwal lowered his window and lit a cigarette.
“I thought you quit that?” Digby said.
“I made it two weeks. I was on a break.”
The ERT team was on the move. They poured up the steps and pushed through the front door, in one smooth, silent motion, staggering themselves up the front hall stairs and holding position.
Digby could see the last two officers inside the door.
She turned up the volume on her digital scanner, out of reflex, but the operation was radio silent.
Glen Frederick reputededly had several scanners running at all times, including a Uniden scanner that he manually altered to the point where it can pick up high gigahertz digital cellphone frequencies.
A Codiac plainclothes Member stepped up to the front door and nodded his head.
In seconds, four ERT cops in gray-blue Kevlar came bursting out the front door, coralling the massive, naked body of Glen Frederick with them, down the steps.
He was handcuffed in back. He looked like a wild bull, snorting steam from his nostrils into the winter air.
Someone was trying to cover him up downstairs with a blanket, but he was refusing to keep still.
Right after him, came the wife, covered with a wool blanket. She looked like a normal, middle-aged woman being rescued from a flood or a car accident.
“She’s no stripper,” Agarwal pointed out.
Digby smiled. Nicole King was a little on the chunky side. “She’s probably been with him the whole time. Right from the start. The loyal wife. He probably has two or three strippers on the side.”
The ERT team piled the couple into seperate police interceptors.
Frederick looked furious as they jammed his head down into the backseat.
“Kind if a sin,” Digby said. “The wife I mean.”
“Yeah, but she’s no innocent bystander. She cleaned up the blood when he tortured that Jesus developer. You just imagine the stuff she’s done that we don’t know about. As far as I’m concerned, there’s no innocent people in Glen Frederick’s life. I’d cuff his ole grandma.”
A back window of the police car carrying Glen Frederick exploded outward in a loud shower of broken safety glass. The black metal cage in the window remained intact, but it looked like Frederick had dented it outward with a mighty kick.
Digby and Agarwal could not help but be impressed.
Two ERT pulled their Tasers and fired through the steel mesh covering the window. Digby could see sparks dancing.
After that, the ERTs loaded back up in the cube van and the procession of police vehicles began to vacate the street.
A small crowd of civilians from nearby townhouses had gathered on the sidewalks to watch. Some of the young boys banged the cop car hoods with their palms as they went past. One cruiser flared his siren, Boo-up and accelerated, dispersing the crowd.
Then all the cops were gone again and the locals shook their heads and went back inside their homes.
“Time to go.”
Chapter 19
Search warrants had been obtained for the home of Glen Frederick and for his business, GF Autobody & Sales on nearby Mountain Road.
Codiac RCMP Special Investigations had been surveilling the Frederick home by remote camera for a month.
The search warrants were based on video of Frederick coming in and out of the home, on several occasions, carrying a handgun and possibly equipment to make counterfeit license plates.
The video constituted evidence toward a charge of carrying a prohibited weapon and perhaps vehicle registration fraud.
Codiac RCMP was pretty sure Glen Frederick was involved in a local car theft ring that sold stolen cars under VIN numbers copied from cars registered legally in the United States.
It was all pretty weak, but it got Digby inside the door, and that was all she cared about.
The Codiac RCMP surveillance also indicated that Glen Frederick and his teenage son Derek did not come home on the night of the firebombing.
Glen Frederick and Nicole King were placed in separate interrogation rooms at Codiac RCMP headquarters.
Digby had 24 hours to either extract a confession from him or find enough damning evidence at his house and garage to lay an arson or attempted murder charge.
Officers quickly uncovered a number of improperly stored firearms at the Frederick home, which at least gave Digby some leverage.
Frederick kept a Kreighoff big game rifle in a case in his van, laid right beside the driver’s seat. The Kreighoff was a monstrous, ornate hunting gun, undoubtedly used for show more than anything else, but it looked like it could bring down a charging rhino.
They also found two 9mm Smith & Wesson 5946’s upstairs in the master bedroom, and a Glock 9mm in a kitchen cupboard.
Cop guns.
The handguns would be tested through Ibis to see if they were clean of previous crimes.
In the meantime, Sgt. Digby and Glen Frederick sat alone in a three-metre square interrogation room, no bigger than a gas station bathroom. It contained one table and three ugly chairs. The walls were covered with perforated acoustic tile and were completely bare, except for a two-way mirror on one wall and a metal light switch on the other.
A slight humming noise rained down from the trays of flouroscent lights above.
“I understand why you’d drag me in here,” Frederick said in a booming voice, breaking along silence. “’Cause I’m a nigger. Trust me, I get arrested a lot. But what do you need my wife for? What’d she do?”
Digby looked him over with her big curious eyes, keeping a pleasant, open look on her face.
“Mr. Frederick, my name is Sgt. Biz Digby. I’m an investigator from the South Western region of Nova Scotia. The Annapolis Valley. We have some evidence that suggests your wife may have been involved in a serious crime in Nova Scotia.”
She gave a little shrug. “But I know you’re really the one involved, Glenny, not her. Or should I call you Snow?”
He looked monstrous in the weak light of the room, but he spoke politely and kept a calm demenour. He even seemed to have genuine warmth and humour in his voice.
“Call me Snow what?” he joked. “Snow Black?”
Digby kept her face serious and said nothing.
“Are you formally charging me with anything or are we just talking?”
“We’re talking. I was hoping you could help me. But we could charge you with three counts unsafe storage of a firearm. And you are under arrest, for questioning under suspicion of arson. Would you like to talk to an attorney about those potential charges?”
Frederick laughed in a booming voice. His laugh sounded like Count Dracula: “Ah-ah-ah. So what crime could you charge my wife with then? I’m really curious. She’s never not paid a Jesus parking ticket.”
He saw that Digby knew of Nicole’s criminal record and added a disclaimer: “The only thing she ever did was clean her house after I kicked some raghead’s ass. Big deal.”
Digby said nothing and tried to read the man’s responses. Was he saying he was guilty? Did he like her?
Frederick sat across the table, leaning slightly to the side. He had massive, piled-up round shoulders. He definately used steroids.
There were flecks of gray in his short black afro. His skin was a light coffee colour. His bone structure made his face look scary looking, like the ugly people in that Twilight Zone episode where everybody in the world is ugly. But he looked relaxed, like he didn’t give a rat’s ass that he and his wife had been so heavy-handedly arrested.
She watched his hands, they never twitched. She watched his skin colour, it never changed. He never broke a sweat. She watched a shallow vein in his bulging neck as it faintly beat his pulse. His pulse never quickened or skipped a beat.
“Do you know where your wife was on Saturday night, early Sunday morning? Specifically at or about three-thirty a.m. to four a.m.?”
His massive eyebrows flickered as he processed the times.
Digby caught a gleam of warmth in his eyeballs. He was curious, but not necessarily worried yet.
“We were downtown, in Moncton, Mexi’s then the Drome. We went to a boozecan after last call. We didn’t get home ‘til five or so.”
“Did anyone call you? You or your wife while you were there at the Dome or the boozecan?”
“Calls? Like our cell phones?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t remember.”
“Did you have your cell phones with you?”
“Probably. It’s my phone ain’t it?”
“Did your wife have her phone with her?”
“It’s her phone. Why don’t you ask her?”
“Did anyone see her or you at the Drome that night, or at the afterhours club?”
“I can give you five names right now of people who saw me,” he grinned.
“Good. I’ll call them right now.” She looked at him straight-faced. “What are their names?”
He blinked. “I’ll have to think about that for a minute.”
He pulled himself upright and rested his powerful forearms on the table.
He was wearing a white RCMP T-shirt Digby had given him, several sizes too small. “What is it you think she did anyway? My wife? She don’t belong or hang out with nobody in my motorcycle club, which is the whole reason you think I’m guilty. Because I belong to some tiny biker club of me and my buddies from high school. Ah-ah-ah. She’s not the one you’re looking for, Biz. You even said so yourself- except it’s not me neither. You know- you said your name was Biz?”
“Biz Digby. That’s correct.”
”-Biz, if you tell me what we’re here for, maybe I can help you. I know a lot-a lot of people. I hear a lot. I even thought about turning informer before, you know?”
Digby chuckled at his obvious con. “For me?”
“That’s right, honey, if the money’s right. I got kids to feed you know. I’m a small businessman in troubled times.”
Frederick’s smile dropped from his face slightly. “What about my young fellas?”
Digby feigned sympathy. “Someone from Children’s Aid is with them. They’ll be fine. They’ll be looked after until we get this all cleared up.”
She detected a brilliant flare of rage in Frederick’s eyes at the words: ‘Children’s Aid.’
He, no doubt, had some experience with social services.
She knew the threat of putting Frederick’s kids, the young one especially, Mathias, into the system, even for 24 hours, would be a powerful lever to help pry the biker’s mouth open.
She moved in with a jab. “You and Nicole might get a bail hearing in the morning. Do you have any relatives who could look after Mathias for a while?”
He was still grinning. Digby knew he didn’t have any relatives in the city worth a damn.
“I’ll be out after tonight,” he said, acidly. “You have 24 hours. What happened Saturday night at three? What am I arrested for? What am I going to be charged with? I don’t know. And my lawyer’s name is Brinsmead Jones. 506-388-9991.”
Digby paused and said nothing. It was not an explicit request to contact his lawyer. She stood up and began to slowly walk the tiny room with her hands in her pockets.
They were almost the same height, with him sitting in the chair and her standing up.
She sat down again and gave him her most emotion-filled eyes, face-to-face. Her eyes were watering.
“Glenny, while you say your wife was at the Liquor Drome, Saturday night, her cell phone was travelling to the Annapolis Valley, in Nova Scotia and stopped at the community of Ellershouse, Hants County.”
She stopped talking and stared at Frederick’s impassive eyes, trying to read the subtle changes in his eye area. A slight-slight ashen colour drained into the puffy circles under his eyes, like a fish that had been thrown on land and was starting to get starved of oxygen.
“Yeah,” she continued, again using a sympathetic, emotional voice. “We can prove that. It’s in the cell tower records. How do you explain that? How do you think she’s explaining that in the other interview room? Her phone contacted a cell tower within a kilometre of an arson on a jail guard’s home, within minutes of the incident. Three people, Glenny, including two little girls, children, were injured. I have some photos, I think, of the injuries. They’re sickening. Do you want to see them?” She reached under her chair and picked up a large black purse from which she removed a manila folder. She spread a set of three glossy photos on the tabletop. The images were of a pair of unbandaged arms that looked red, black, crusty and yellow, mangled by burns.
“This woman leaves a ring of mucous and skin behind her in the bathtub,” Digby said. “Do you feel guilty when you see this? This is terrible, Glenny. Can you imagine what it must have felt like? She was sitting in her living room, watching TV. Her husband was at work. Her kids upstairs. And a fireball came through the window and exploded on the table in front of her, causing her arms to catch fire.”
Frederick looked sympathetic. “Jezz, that looks painful,” he said, wincing. He was probably being sarcastic, but he did a good job acting.
“I know you saw this on the news, Glenny. You like to keep up with current events, don’t you? This woman’s husband is a jail guard at Burnside. Who do you think would burn-out a jail guard like that?”
Frederick reclined in the stiff wood and steel tube chair. “I get it. Must be a nigger, right?”
“-You know how mad people are in law enforcement?” Digby continued. “Every day I talk to someone at the Law Courts, from a judge down to a fat Sheriff’s deputy. Every one of them is pissed off, at you. The Crowns, the judges, they all want three counts attempted murder.”
“Ah-ah-ah,” Frederick shook his head in disbelief. “Attempted murder? You’re a strange cop, Biz Digby. And if that’s a threat, this whole thing will get tossed out the window right now. And I hope you’re recording this, Biz. You’re not allowed to threaten me.”
“I’m not threatening you,” Digby said. “I don’t need to. We have your wife’s cell phone. It’s pretty hard to explain, is it not? Especially now that you said you and your wife were at the Drome or an afterhours club. We have lies now, Glenny, do we not? The Crown attorney loves that. Lies are so convincing. When you start lying, you don’t last too long.”
“Another threat. My lawyer will love this. For the record, I’m definitely feeling threatened right now.”
He didn’t change his body position. He was grinning, but nevertheless Digby thought he looked mildly disturbed now. The smirk that protected his emotions from plain view, was forced. Something had drained the smugness from his face.
What?
Digby wondered how she had broken through so quickly. Did he not know about the cellphone? How could he not?
She decided to stick with the cell tower record. It was not conclusive, since it didn’t link him directly with the crime, but at least he lied about it, which was a start.
“We called the number from the receipt, and it rang. It’s definitely the same phone. What was it doing in Ellershouse at three-thirty a.m. last Saturday?”
It took Frederick a long time to concoct a new story, several seconds, but when he did speak, he sounded self-assured and not the slightest bit embarrassed.
“I said ‘I thought’ she had her phone. Why wouldn’t she? But it’s possible her phone was stolen and used by someone else that night. Some little nigger.”
Digby winced her eyebrows slightly.
“Okay… Like who?”
“I don’t know. Some idiot. I can’t tell you, but in the course of your investigation it will come out that it was not my wife who used her phone that night.”
“That doesn’t make sense, Glenny. We seized the phone in your home. It was recovered. We even asked Nicole if she recently lost her cellphone, and she said ‘no.’ She’s being honest, and maybe you should take a lesson. Maybe she doesn’t want to go back to Nova Institution?”
He let out a long sigh. He was not happy. “Maybe I will call my lawyer. If you’ve already got your mind made up. It seems likeyou won’t even listen to reason.”
“He lives right next to the cop shop, doesn’t he? You know you don’t have to answer any questions you don’t want to, Glenny You’re not stupid, but I can still keep you here for 24 hours, and I intend to.”
Digby asked all her questions, even the smart-ass ones, with the same tone of genuine curiosity.
“Just make sure you call him.”
“I almost forgot. We got a description of your company van at the scene of the firebombing. What about that? Did some unidentified little N-word steal your van too?”
Glenny smiled again, showing most of his large, white teeth. “Ah-ah-ah. Was it my van or some other white van, Biz? There’s a lot of white vans in the world.”
“They don’t all have the same license plate.”
Frederick gave a hand-job motion with his right hand. “Oh, you got a plate number? Why didn’t you say so?”
He put his hand back down on the table and turned serious. “What you should do is pull up the registered owner on Motor Vehicles. There’s your man right there.”
“We’re working on it.”
“Ah-ah. I bet you are. You can’t put one past you guys.”
“Maybe your wife is telling us everything we need to know. She already said you weren’t with her on Saturday night. She says you went somewhere with your son, Derek, and didn’t get back ‘til the next day.”
Frederick winked at her. “I won’t confess to a crime I didn’t commit, even if you blackmail me by falsely arresting my wife. I don’t believe in lying.” He pointed a huge finger at her. He was getting mad. His finger looked like a barbeque sausage.
“You guys ginned-up some phone thing on my wife to blackmail me into confessing, I get it. It’s a really shitty thing to do. Leave it to a fuckin’ Iraqi to pull a trick like that. But I won’t confess to a crime I never did. You can hang my wife. So fuck you.”
“Will you take a lie detector test?”
He didn’t answer.
“Will you take a polygraph test?”
“This is Canada, Biz Laden. It’s a free country. No lie detector.”
“Why not take it? If you don’t take it, it makes me assume you’re hiding something. Then I’m gonna spend all my energy on you, just ‘cause you refused it.”
Frederick put two spread fingers up to his mouth and flickered his tongue between them, miming cunnilingus.
It was something a high school student would do.
Digby chuckled, in disbelief. “You’re not even taking this seriously? Are you kidding me? You have to admit, you’re going to have to explain a few things if you want to clear the air.”
He refused to speak or answer questions after that.
He asked flat out to see his lawyer again and Sgt. Digby got up and left the room.
Within a half-hour, local criminal attorney Brinsmead Jones had arrived at the station and demanded to be let in.
They let Frederick confer with his lawyer in privacy, with the video camera and speaker shut off.
Brinsmead left after twenty minutes and advised Sgt. Digby that he’d instructed his client not to answer any more questions, period.
The lawyer left and Digby sat for an hour outside the interrogation room, just watching Frederick through the mirror.
At one point, he stood up and turned over the table, then picked up each wooden chair, one after the other, and splintered them to bits on the concrete floor. His face was purple and contorted with fury.
“He’s in a complete rage,” Digby pointed out to another interrogator, sitting nearby. “Do you guys have a TNT squad?”
TNT was cop lingo for “Tonfa ‘n’ Telephone book,” which was a goon squad that could rush in the room and teach Glen Frederick some manners with a pair of nightsticks or ‘tonfa-sticks’ and a phone book.
The fact that Frederick was trashing the interrogation room meant they could rush the room and ‘subdue’ him.
The Codiac RCMP interrogator stood up. “I’ll see if I can cobble one together.”
A few minutes later, three large enforcer-type constables rushed the room in full body armour.
The constables were former Moncton city police officers, Digby was told, notorious for their tuning abilities.
They took Frederick down to the ground, quickly, after cornering the big man around the remnants of the table and grappling him. Digby made sure the tape was not recording and the camera was off. She watched through the mirror glass as the constables took turns laying the fat Moncton-Dieppe phone book on Frederick’s back, legs, stomach and ribs and beat on it with their tonfa sticks. Whacking him through the phone book would deliver a painful beating without leaving stick marks.
They beat Frederick for ten minutes.
Codiac RCMP Special Investigations had been surveilling the Frederick home by remote camera for a month.
The search warrants were based on video of Frederick coming in and out of the home, on several occasions, carrying a handgun and possibly equipment to make counterfeit license plates.
The video constituted evidence toward a charge of carrying a prohibited weapon and perhaps vehicle registration fraud.
Codiac RCMP was pretty sure Glen Frederick was involved in a local car theft ring that sold stolen cars under VIN numbers copied from cars registered legally in the United States.
It was all pretty weak, but it got Digby inside the door, and that was all she cared about.
The Codiac RCMP surveillance also indicated that Glen Frederick and his teenage son Derek did not come home on the night of the firebombing.
Glen Frederick and Nicole King were placed in separate interrogation rooms at Codiac RCMP headquarters.
Digby had 24 hours to either extract a confession from him or find enough damning evidence at his house and garage to lay an arson or attempted murder charge.
Officers quickly uncovered a number of improperly stored firearms at the Frederick home, which at least gave Digby some leverage.
Frederick kept a Kreighoff big game rifle in a case in his van, laid right beside the driver’s seat. The Kreighoff was a monstrous, ornate hunting gun, undoubtedly used for show more than anything else, but it looked like it could bring down a charging rhino.
They also found two 9mm Smith & Wesson 5946’s upstairs in the master bedroom, and a Glock 9mm in a kitchen cupboard.
Cop guns.
The handguns would be tested through Ibis to see if they were clean of previous crimes.
In the meantime, Sgt. Digby and Glen Frederick sat alone in a three-metre square interrogation room, no bigger than a gas station bathroom. It contained one table and three ugly chairs. The walls were covered with perforated acoustic tile and were completely bare, except for a two-way mirror on one wall and a metal light switch on the other.
A slight humming noise rained down from the trays of flouroscent lights above.
“I understand why you’d drag me in here,” Frederick said in a booming voice, breaking along silence. “’Cause I’m a nigger. Trust me, I get arrested a lot. But what do you need my wife for? What’d she do?”
Digby looked him over with her big curious eyes, keeping a pleasant, open look on her face.
“Mr. Frederick, my name is Sgt. Biz Digby. I’m an investigator from the South Western region of Nova Scotia. The Annapolis Valley. We have some evidence that suggests your wife may have been involved in a serious crime in Nova Scotia.”
She gave a little shrug. “But I know you’re really the one involved, Glenny, not her. Or should I call you Snow?”
He looked monstrous in the weak light of the room, but he spoke politely and kept a calm demenour. He even seemed to have genuine warmth and humour in his voice.
“Call me Snow what?” he joked. “Snow Black?”
Digby kept her face serious and said nothing.
“Are you formally charging me with anything or are we just talking?”
“We’re talking. I was hoping you could help me. But we could charge you with three counts unsafe storage of a firearm. And you are under arrest, for questioning under suspicion of arson. Would you like to talk to an attorney about those potential charges?”
Frederick laughed in a booming voice. His laugh sounded like Count Dracula: “Ah-ah-ah. So what crime could you charge my wife with then? I’m really curious. She’s never not paid a Jesus parking ticket.”
He saw that Digby knew of Nicole’s criminal record and added a disclaimer: “The only thing she ever did was clean her house after I kicked some raghead’s ass. Big deal.”
Digby said nothing and tried to read the man’s responses. Was he saying he was guilty? Did he like her?
Frederick sat across the table, leaning slightly to the side. He had massive, piled-up round shoulders. He definately used steroids.
There were flecks of gray in his short black afro. His skin was a light coffee colour. His bone structure made his face look scary looking, like the ugly people in that Twilight Zone episode where everybody in the world is ugly. But he looked relaxed, like he didn’t give a rat’s ass that he and his wife had been so heavy-handedly arrested.
She watched his hands, they never twitched. She watched his skin colour, it never changed. He never broke a sweat. She watched a shallow vein in his bulging neck as it faintly beat his pulse. His pulse never quickened or skipped a beat.
“Do you know where your wife was on Saturday night, early Sunday morning? Specifically at or about three-thirty a.m. to four a.m.?”
His massive eyebrows flickered as he processed the times.
Digby caught a gleam of warmth in his eyeballs. He was curious, but not necessarily worried yet.
“We were downtown, in Moncton, Mexi’s then the Drome. We went to a boozecan after last call. We didn’t get home ‘til five or so.”
“Did anyone call you? You or your wife while you were there at the Dome or the boozecan?”
“Calls? Like our cell phones?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t remember.”
“Did you have your cell phones with you?”
“Probably. It’s my phone ain’t it?”
“Did your wife have her phone with her?”
“It’s her phone. Why don’t you ask her?”
“Did anyone see her or you at the Drome that night, or at the afterhours club?”
“I can give you five names right now of people who saw me,” he grinned.
“Good. I’ll call them right now.” She looked at him straight-faced. “What are their names?”
He blinked. “I’ll have to think about that for a minute.”
He pulled himself upright and rested his powerful forearms on the table.
He was wearing a white RCMP T-shirt Digby had given him, several sizes too small. “What is it you think she did anyway? My wife? She don’t belong or hang out with nobody in my motorcycle club, which is the whole reason you think I’m guilty. Because I belong to some tiny biker club of me and my buddies from high school. Ah-ah-ah. She’s not the one you’re looking for, Biz. You even said so yourself- except it’s not me neither. You know- you said your name was Biz?”
“Biz Digby. That’s correct.”
”-Biz, if you tell me what we’re here for, maybe I can help you. I know a lot-a lot of people. I hear a lot. I even thought about turning informer before, you know?”
Digby chuckled at his obvious con. “For me?”
“That’s right, honey, if the money’s right. I got kids to feed you know. I’m a small businessman in troubled times.”
Frederick’s smile dropped from his face slightly. “What about my young fellas?”
Digby feigned sympathy. “Someone from Children’s Aid is with them. They’ll be fine. They’ll be looked after until we get this all cleared up.”
She detected a brilliant flare of rage in Frederick’s eyes at the words: ‘Children’s Aid.’
He, no doubt, had some experience with social services.
She knew the threat of putting Frederick’s kids, the young one especially, Mathias, into the system, even for 24 hours, would be a powerful lever to help pry the biker’s mouth open.
She moved in with a jab. “You and Nicole might get a bail hearing in the morning. Do you have any relatives who could look after Mathias for a while?”
He was still grinning. Digby knew he didn’t have any relatives in the city worth a damn.
“I’ll be out after tonight,” he said, acidly. “You have 24 hours. What happened Saturday night at three? What am I arrested for? What am I going to be charged with? I don’t know. And my lawyer’s name is Brinsmead Jones. 506-388-9991.”
Digby paused and said nothing. It was not an explicit request to contact his lawyer. She stood up and began to slowly walk the tiny room with her hands in her pockets.
They were almost the same height, with him sitting in the chair and her standing up.
She sat down again and gave him her most emotion-filled eyes, face-to-face. Her eyes were watering.
“Glenny, while you say your wife was at the Liquor Drome, Saturday night, her cell phone was travelling to the Annapolis Valley, in Nova Scotia and stopped at the community of Ellershouse, Hants County.”
She stopped talking and stared at Frederick’s impassive eyes, trying to read the subtle changes in his eye area. A slight-slight ashen colour drained into the puffy circles under his eyes, like a fish that had been thrown on land and was starting to get starved of oxygen.
“Yeah,” she continued, again using a sympathetic, emotional voice. “We can prove that. It’s in the cell tower records. How do you explain that? How do you think she’s explaining that in the other interview room? Her phone contacted a cell tower within a kilometre of an arson on a jail guard’s home, within minutes of the incident. Three people, Glenny, including two little girls, children, were injured. I have some photos, I think, of the injuries. They’re sickening. Do you want to see them?” She reached under her chair and picked up a large black purse from which she removed a manila folder. She spread a set of three glossy photos on the tabletop. The images were of a pair of unbandaged arms that looked red, black, crusty and yellow, mangled by burns.
“This woman leaves a ring of mucous and skin behind her in the bathtub,” Digby said. “Do you feel guilty when you see this? This is terrible, Glenny. Can you imagine what it must have felt like? She was sitting in her living room, watching TV. Her husband was at work. Her kids upstairs. And a fireball came through the window and exploded on the table in front of her, causing her arms to catch fire.”
Frederick looked sympathetic. “Jezz, that looks painful,” he said, wincing. He was probably being sarcastic, but he did a good job acting.
“I know you saw this on the news, Glenny. You like to keep up with current events, don’t you? This woman’s husband is a jail guard at Burnside. Who do you think would burn-out a jail guard like that?”
Frederick reclined in the stiff wood and steel tube chair. “I get it. Must be a nigger, right?”
“-You know how mad people are in law enforcement?” Digby continued. “Every day I talk to someone at the Law Courts, from a judge down to a fat Sheriff’s deputy. Every one of them is pissed off, at you. The Crowns, the judges, they all want three counts attempted murder.”
“Ah-ah-ah,” Frederick shook his head in disbelief. “Attempted murder? You’re a strange cop, Biz Digby. And if that’s a threat, this whole thing will get tossed out the window right now. And I hope you’re recording this, Biz. You’re not allowed to threaten me.”
“I’m not threatening you,” Digby said. “I don’t need to. We have your wife’s cell phone. It’s pretty hard to explain, is it not? Especially now that you said you and your wife were at the Drome or an afterhours club. We have lies now, Glenny, do we not? The Crown attorney loves that. Lies are so convincing. When you start lying, you don’t last too long.”
“Another threat. My lawyer will love this. For the record, I’m definitely feeling threatened right now.”
He didn’t change his body position. He was grinning, but nevertheless Digby thought he looked mildly disturbed now. The smirk that protected his emotions from plain view, was forced. Something had drained the smugness from his face.
What?
Digby wondered how she had broken through so quickly. Did he not know about the cellphone? How could he not?
She decided to stick with the cell tower record. It was not conclusive, since it didn’t link him directly with the crime, but at least he lied about it, which was a start.
“We called the number from the receipt, and it rang. It’s definitely the same phone. What was it doing in Ellershouse at three-thirty a.m. last Saturday?”
It took Frederick a long time to concoct a new story, several seconds, but when he did speak, he sounded self-assured and not the slightest bit embarrassed.
“I said ‘I thought’ she had her phone. Why wouldn’t she? But it’s possible her phone was stolen and used by someone else that night. Some little nigger.”
Digby winced her eyebrows slightly.
“Okay… Like who?”
“I don’t know. Some idiot. I can’t tell you, but in the course of your investigation it will come out that it was not my wife who used her phone that night.”
“That doesn’t make sense, Glenny. We seized the phone in your home. It was recovered. We even asked Nicole if she recently lost her cellphone, and she said ‘no.’ She’s being honest, and maybe you should take a lesson. Maybe she doesn’t want to go back to Nova Institution?”
He let out a long sigh. He was not happy. “Maybe I will call my lawyer. If you’ve already got your mind made up. It seems likeyou won’t even listen to reason.”
“He lives right next to the cop shop, doesn’t he? You know you don’t have to answer any questions you don’t want to, Glenny You’re not stupid, but I can still keep you here for 24 hours, and I intend to.”
Digby asked all her questions, even the smart-ass ones, with the same tone of genuine curiosity.
“Just make sure you call him.”
“I almost forgot. We got a description of your company van at the scene of the firebombing. What about that? Did some unidentified little N-word steal your van too?”
Glenny smiled again, showing most of his large, white teeth. “Ah-ah-ah. Was it my van or some other white van, Biz? There’s a lot of white vans in the world.”
“They don’t all have the same license plate.”
Frederick gave a hand-job motion with his right hand. “Oh, you got a plate number? Why didn’t you say so?”
He put his hand back down on the table and turned serious. “What you should do is pull up the registered owner on Motor Vehicles. There’s your man right there.”
“We’re working on it.”
“Ah-ah. I bet you are. You can’t put one past you guys.”
“Maybe your wife is telling us everything we need to know. She already said you weren’t with her on Saturday night. She says you went somewhere with your son, Derek, and didn’t get back ‘til the next day.”
Frederick winked at her. “I won’t confess to a crime I didn’t commit, even if you blackmail me by falsely arresting my wife. I don’t believe in lying.” He pointed a huge finger at her. He was getting mad. His finger looked like a barbeque sausage.
“You guys ginned-up some phone thing on my wife to blackmail me into confessing, I get it. It’s a really shitty thing to do. Leave it to a fuckin’ Iraqi to pull a trick like that. But I won’t confess to a crime I never did. You can hang my wife. So fuck you.”
“Will you take a lie detector test?”
He didn’t answer.
“Will you take a polygraph test?”
“This is Canada, Biz Laden. It’s a free country. No lie detector.”
“Why not take it? If you don’t take it, it makes me assume you’re hiding something. Then I’m gonna spend all my energy on you, just ‘cause you refused it.”
Frederick put two spread fingers up to his mouth and flickered his tongue between them, miming cunnilingus.
It was something a high school student would do.
Digby chuckled, in disbelief. “You’re not even taking this seriously? Are you kidding me? You have to admit, you’re going to have to explain a few things if you want to clear the air.”
He refused to speak or answer questions after that.
He asked flat out to see his lawyer again and Sgt. Digby got up and left the room.
Within a half-hour, local criminal attorney Brinsmead Jones had arrived at the station and demanded to be let in.
They let Frederick confer with his lawyer in privacy, with the video camera and speaker shut off.
Brinsmead left after twenty minutes and advised Sgt. Digby that he’d instructed his client not to answer any more questions, period.
The lawyer left and Digby sat for an hour outside the interrogation room, just watching Frederick through the mirror.
At one point, he stood up and turned over the table, then picked up each wooden chair, one after the other, and splintered them to bits on the concrete floor. His face was purple and contorted with fury.
“He’s in a complete rage,” Digby pointed out to another interrogator, sitting nearby. “Do you guys have a TNT squad?”
TNT was cop lingo for “Tonfa ‘n’ Telephone book,” which was a goon squad that could rush in the room and teach Glen Frederick some manners with a pair of nightsticks or ‘tonfa-sticks’ and a phone book.
The fact that Frederick was trashing the interrogation room meant they could rush the room and ‘subdue’ him.
The Codiac RCMP interrogator stood up. “I’ll see if I can cobble one together.”
A few minutes later, three large enforcer-type constables rushed the room in full body armour.
The constables were former Moncton city police officers, Digby was told, notorious for their tuning abilities.
They took Frederick down to the ground, quickly, after cornering the big man around the remnants of the table and grappling him. Digby made sure the tape was not recording and the camera was off. She watched through the mirror glass as the constables took turns laying the fat Moncton-Dieppe phone book on Frederick’s back, legs, stomach and ribs and beat on it with their tonfa sticks. Whacking him through the phone book would deliver a painful beating without leaving stick marks.
They beat Frederick for ten minutes.
Chapter 20
The search warrants would expire Wednesday morning.
While several possible exhibits were removed for forensic testing, including liquor bottles, work gloves, gas cans and automotive towels, the house and Frederick’s garage seemed pretty clean of evidence.
The handguns were all legally registered and passed Ibis with flying colours.
Nicole King was being cooperative with her interviewer, but she appeared to know nothing about the firebombing.
Her interview had been conducted simultaneously by Sgt. Law Zweibeck of J Division General Investigation Section.
Sgt. Zweibeck specialized in interrogation, and administering the polygraph test.
He was a short, squat cop that more resembled a werewolf than a man. He had dark curly hair all over his head and neck and fierce hazel eyes. He was meticulous in his questioning, and relentless. Nicole didn’t stand a chance.
She told him the same vague story as Glenny Frederick, about going to the Drome that Saturday night.
Zweibeck asked her to take him through her night, minute by minute. What traffic route she took from Eighth Street to the Drome? She fumbled the answer. He told her why and how her route made no sense. Who drove? She said Glen Frederick drove. Where did he park? She said in a spot on the side of Main Street. He told her there was no parking on Main Street that night because of the Ice Cube concert at the Convention Centre. What happened during the drive? What was said along the way? What was said when they arrived? Who did they speak to, what songs played at the bar that night?
He grilled her for four hours. In the end, she admitted owning the Glock 9mm that was found in the kitchen cupboard. She also admitted Glen Frederick had not been with her Saturday night. She’d stayed home all night
It was a nice admission. It proved Glen Frederick was lying, but it didn’t give Sgt. Digby near enough to charge him with arson, or anything for that matter.
Digby went to he rMoncton motel room at about four a.m. to catch some ill-deserved sleep.
Nicole King, thanks to her confession, would be charged in Provincial Court in the morning with one count unsafe storage of a firearm.
Glen Frederick would be kicked at 6, twenty-four hours after he was arrested.
While several possible exhibits were removed for forensic testing, including liquor bottles, work gloves, gas cans and automotive towels, the house and Frederick’s garage seemed pretty clean of evidence.
The handguns were all legally registered and passed Ibis with flying colours.
Nicole King was being cooperative with her interviewer, but she appeared to know nothing about the firebombing.
Her interview had been conducted simultaneously by Sgt. Law Zweibeck of J Division General Investigation Section.
Sgt. Zweibeck specialized in interrogation, and administering the polygraph test.
He was a short, squat cop that more resembled a werewolf than a man. He had dark curly hair all over his head and neck and fierce hazel eyes. He was meticulous in his questioning, and relentless. Nicole didn’t stand a chance.
She told him the same vague story as Glenny Frederick, about going to the Drome that Saturday night.
Zweibeck asked her to take him through her night, minute by minute. What traffic route she took from Eighth Street to the Drome? She fumbled the answer. He told her why and how her route made no sense. Who drove? She said Glen Frederick drove. Where did he park? She said in a spot on the side of Main Street. He told her there was no parking on Main Street that night because of the Ice Cube concert at the Convention Centre. What happened during the drive? What was said along the way? What was said when they arrived? Who did they speak to, what songs played at the bar that night?
He grilled her for four hours. In the end, she admitted owning the Glock 9mm that was found in the kitchen cupboard. She also admitted Glen Frederick had not been with her Saturday night. She’d stayed home all night
It was a nice admission. It proved Glen Frederick was lying, but it didn’t give Sgt. Digby near enough to charge him with arson, or anything for that matter.
Digby went to he rMoncton motel room at about four a.m. to catch some ill-deserved sleep.
Nicole King, thanks to her confession, would be charged in Provincial Court in the morning with one count unsafe storage of a firearm.
Glen Frederick would be kicked at 6, twenty-four hours after he was arrested.
Chapter 21
A 16-inch story on the firebombing of jail-guard Todd Purcell’s home, appeared under the fold of the front page of the provincial edition of the Gazette Monday morning, and on page B1 in Metro.
Rawle barely recognized the story as the one he’d written the day before.
Jack Lee had completely butchered his paragraphs, changed the lede, and mixed in all kinds of crazy stuff about bikers.
But the weird thing was despite all the changes Jack had made, his byline was not on the story. It just said: By Rawle Powder, that was it. He checked at the end of the story too, but Jack’s name wasn’t there either. Jack should have been given a shared byline based on the amount he put in the story. Or at least a With Jack Lee, Valley Bureau, or With files from Jack Lee at the end of the story, especially cause Jack had seniority.
They must have made an editing mistake in Halifax.
Rawle barely recognized the story as the one he’d written the day before.
Jack Lee had completely butchered his paragraphs, changed the lede, and mixed in all kinds of crazy stuff about bikers.
But the weird thing was despite all the changes Jack had made, his byline was not on the story. It just said: By Rawle Powder, that was it. He checked at the end of the story too, but Jack’s name wasn’t there either. Jack should have been given a shared byline based on the amount he put in the story. Or at least a With Jack Lee, Valley Bureau, or With files from Jack Lee at the end of the story, especially cause Jack had seniority.
They must have made an editing mistake in Halifax.
Chapter 22
Glen Frederick went straight to the provincial courthouse after being released from custody.
Brinsmead Jones, the lawyer, was there already, working on Nicole’s remand.
Her bail hearing was delayed until the end of the day, somehow getting stuck behind a robbery trial on the court docket.
Normally, regardless of docket, the judge would organize the day’s cases so the quick appearances, remands, election-and-pleas, were dispensed with first, before the more lengthy matters. In this case, it was clear the clerks and the judge were in some sort of collusion to make Frederick’s wife wait in lockup for as long as possible.
Dee Lee was waiting across the street as Frederick pushed his way through the heavy oak doors of the courthouse at about 10:30.
Dee was standing in front of a small parkette filled with bums and pigeons, both too stupid or fat to fly south for the winter.
Frederick was wearing the same white RCMP Auxillary T-Shirt he wore in the interview room, and grey jogging pants with no underwear and no socks or shoes. He was walking barefoot on the snow-packed asphalt.
Dee wore sunglasses, works pants, a red Mackinaw and a green Cavendish ballcap.
Dee handed him an order of hot homemade fries served in a cut-off brown paper bag from a chip wagon parked in the street. They smelled like vinegar and ketchup.
“Thanks brother,” Glenny said.
“No problem, Glenny. Where’s Niggole?” Dee said.
Glenny winced. “I told you never to call her that!”
Then he decided a verbal reprimand was not enough. He set his fries down on a park bench and punched Dee hard on the shoulder with his enormous right fist.
“-Hey!” Dee faltered under the powerful hit and reflexively grabbed his colostomy bag to prevent it detaching from his stomach. He almost dropped his French fries and raised his other arm up in a defensive posture. “Woah! I’m eating here, man. Take it easy!”
“Don’t call her that!” Frederick growled. “It ain’t funny.”
“What?” Dee said in mock innocence.
“I don’t wanna hear that shit.”
Dee stood up, wearing a large grin and giggling. “Okay. Geez. Where’s Nicole?”
Glenny kissed his teeth. “They’re trying to rattle me. They’re using her as blackmail. They charged her with unsafe storage of a firearm and they arrested us naked, basically while I had my dick in.”
Dee sniffed in suppressed laughter. “Aww-haha. You’re bad. I knew that big dick of yours would get you in trouble. They knew what they were doing too. -Where are your shoes, man?” He pointed at Glenny’s big feet curling on the cold ground.
“No shoes. Nothing but a T-shirt. I said, ‘hey? Don’t I get a blanket?’ They didn’t even give me a blanket. And check this out-” Glenny pulled down the collar of his T-shirt and displayed the dark red vampire-bite burns of the Taser shocks he’d received.
“They Tasered me twice and then gave me an old-fashioned beating anyway.”
“They can’t be charging you then, man. If they were charging you, it would all be by the book. They’re just messing with you.”
“They gave me a nice licking. Three cops.”
“Yeah, you’re definitely in the clear, man. That’s good. That’s actually good news.”
“I thought for sure they were going to stick me with resisting arrest, cause I kicked the window out of a cop car.”
The two men sat down on the bench and ate their fries in silence for a moment, savouring the salty food while it was still hot.
“Jeez, its cold,” Frederick said. “You should see this cop though. My Gawd.” He rapped his knuckles excitedly on the park bench. “She was tempting. She’s H Division. She walked in. Our eyes clicked, just like that.”
He pointed at his eyes and then at Dee’s eyes. “Oh man. I know I am going to bed her someday.”
“What’s her name? Is she a nicor?”
The smile dropped from Glenny’s face. “Watch it. She’s Arabic or Lebanese or something. Greek maybe. Her name’s Biz Digby.”
Dee took out his cellphone and programmed the name Biz Digby into his address book. “What kind of a name is ‘Biz Digby’? I’ll check around, see if anyone knows her.”
“She’s cold-hearted, man. She arrested my wife just so the kids would get taken by Children’s Services. And she says they have Nicole’s cell phone traced to Ellershouse at the time of the Purcell thing.”
Dee looked surprised at that. “What cell phone?”
“Her cell phone. Nicole’s actual cell phone.”
Dee turned his face away and stuffed the last ketchup-soaked mouthful of fries over his beard on the end of a white plastic fork.
“How did her cell phone get there? What are you a moron?”
“It wasn’t me, Dee. Think about it for a minute. Who else was with me that night?”
“Oh shit….” Dee groaned. “Derek, that Jesusing idiot.”
“Derek.”
“I forgot about him.”
“Yeah. I wish I could. And if I ever get clear of this, I’m gonna frigging kill him. I’m serious. I want a Shitty done on him. A bad one. Something to make him wake the fuck up. I want that chick with AIDS to bang him or something, except he’s probably too stupid to care.”
“Why would he take Nicole’s cell phone?” Dee said. “Didn’t you tell him ‘no phones?’”
“Of course I did. I don’t ever allow him to carry a cell phone, Dee, ever. He’s not allowed any phone, any phone, any time, precisely for this reason. He must have stole Nicole’s phone or something. What do I know? He’s an idiot. He probably steals it all the time, and she’s too stupid to notice.”
“Cripes sake,” Dee chuckled. “He’s so stupid that kid, he’s almost crafty.”
“I got to think of Nicole now. If I plead guilty to all the guns, they might still go after her for obstruction. They want me to cop to attempted murder for burning out that dumb scalliwag.”
“Attempted murder? No way. You don’t plead to nothing. No guns, no nothing. All the guns belonged to your wife for all I care. End of story.”
Glen Frederick set the bag of fries down on his lap. “That’s my wife your talking about, not some mush. I can’t just leave her there to rot.”
Dee stood up and stretched his thick back. “Well, I need you out of jail right now. I need your help to get my cocksucking coke back. So, do whatever the fuck you gotta do. I don’t care how you do it. Tell them they’re Derek’s guns.”
“Ah-Ah. I would, but they wouldn’t believe me. They don’t want a young offender.”
“Anyway, let’s get out of here,” Dee stood up and adjusted himself under his pants. “We got work to do. Brinsmead’s got your little woman and the kids in good hands. Okay? C’mon, we’ll get the newspaper. I put a story in there about the firebombing.”
Glen Frederick stood up, haltingly on his freezing feet. “You did what?”
“Yeah. Jack did a story about the firebombing. I worked it so that it names Darroll Missions as the legs. That way the cops will have to look at him for it too. Maybe they’ll put you on the back burner for awhile.”
“Huh,” Frederick thought about it. “But what if they go looking for Darroll, and they find him first?”
“I want them to,” Dee said. “If they catch him while he’s in Nova Scotia, they’ll put him straight into Burnside. Once I get him there, the boys’ll henpeck him to death until he squeals. This way, the Pork will flush out my coke for me, like a pigeon in the bush.” Dee raised his thick arms up and made like he was holding a shotgun up to his sights.
“Flap-flap-flap. Buck-a-boom!”
Brinsmead Jones, the lawyer, was there already, working on Nicole’s remand.
Her bail hearing was delayed until the end of the day, somehow getting stuck behind a robbery trial on the court docket.
Normally, regardless of docket, the judge would organize the day’s cases so the quick appearances, remands, election-and-pleas, were dispensed with first, before the more lengthy matters. In this case, it was clear the clerks and the judge were in some sort of collusion to make Frederick’s wife wait in lockup for as long as possible.
Dee Lee was waiting across the street as Frederick pushed his way through the heavy oak doors of the courthouse at about 10:30.
Dee was standing in front of a small parkette filled with bums and pigeons, both too stupid or fat to fly south for the winter.
Frederick was wearing the same white RCMP Auxillary T-Shirt he wore in the interview room, and grey jogging pants with no underwear and no socks or shoes. He was walking barefoot on the snow-packed asphalt.
Dee wore sunglasses, works pants, a red Mackinaw and a green Cavendish ballcap.
Dee handed him an order of hot homemade fries served in a cut-off brown paper bag from a chip wagon parked in the street. They smelled like vinegar and ketchup.
“Thanks brother,” Glenny said.
“No problem, Glenny. Where’s Niggole?” Dee said.
Glenny winced. “I told you never to call her that!”
Then he decided a verbal reprimand was not enough. He set his fries down on a park bench and punched Dee hard on the shoulder with his enormous right fist.
“-Hey!” Dee faltered under the powerful hit and reflexively grabbed his colostomy bag to prevent it detaching from his stomach. He almost dropped his French fries and raised his other arm up in a defensive posture. “Woah! I’m eating here, man. Take it easy!”
“Don’t call her that!” Frederick growled. “It ain’t funny.”
“What?” Dee said in mock innocence.
“I don’t wanna hear that shit.”
Dee stood up, wearing a large grin and giggling. “Okay. Geez. Where’s Nicole?”
Glenny kissed his teeth. “They’re trying to rattle me. They’re using her as blackmail. They charged her with unsafe storage of a firearm and they arrested us naked, basically while I had my dick in.”
Dee sniffed in suppressed laughter. “Aww-haha. You’re bad. I knew that big dick of yours would get you in trouble. They knew what they were doing too. -Where are your shoes, man?” He pointed at Glenny’s big feet curling on the cold ground.
“No shoes. Nothing but a T-shirt. I said, ‘hey? Don’t I get a blanket?’ They didn’t even give me a blanket. And check this out-” Glenny pulled down the collar of his T-shirt and displayed the dark red vampire-bite burns of the Taser shocks he’d received.
“They Tasered me twice and then gave me an old-fashioned beating anyway.”
“They can’t be charging you then, man. If they were charging you, it would all be by the book. They’re just messing with you.”
“They gave me a nice licking. Three cops.”
“Yeah, you’re definitely in the clear, man. That’s good. That’s actually good news.”
“I thought for sure they were going to stick me with resisting arrest, cause I kicked the window out of a cop car.”
The two men sat down on the bench and ate their fries in silence for a moment, savouring the salty food while it was still hot.
“Jeez, its cold,” Frederick said. “You should see this cop though. My Gawd.” He rapped his knuckles excitedly on the park bench. “She was tempting. She’s H Division. She walked in. Our eyes clicked, just like that.”
He pointed at his eyes and then at Dee’s eyes. “Oh man. I know I am going to bed her someday.”
“What’s her name? Is she a nicor?”
The smile dropped from Glenny’s face. “Watch it. She’s Arabic or Lebanese or something. Greek maybe. Her name’s Biz Digby.”
Dee took out his cellphone and programmed the name Biz Digby into his address book. “What kind of a name is ‘Biz Digby’? I’ll check around, see if anyone knows her.”
“She’s cold-hearted, man. She arrested my wife just so the kids would get taken by Children’s Services. And she says they have Nicole’s cell phone traced to Ellershouse at the time of the Purcell thing.”
Dee looked surprised at that. “What cell phone?”
“Her cell phone. Nicole’s actual cell phone.”
Dee turned his face away and stuffed the last ketchup-soaked mouthful of fries over his beard on the end of a white plastic fork.
“How did her cell phone get there? What are you a moron?”
“It wasn’t me, Dee. Think about it for a minute. Who else was with me that night?”
“Oh shit….” Dee groaned. “Derek, that Jesusing idiot.”
“Derek.”
“I forgot about him.”
“Yeah. I wish I could. And if I ever get clear of this, I’m gonna frigging kill him. I’m serious. I want a Shitty done on him. A bad one. Something to make him wake the fuck up. I want that chick with AIDS to bang him or something, except he’s probably too stupid to care.”
“Why would he take Nicole’s cell phone?” Dee said. “Didn’t you tell him ‘no phones?’”
“Of course I did. I don’t ever allow him to carry a cell phone, Dee, ever. He’s not allowed any phone, any phone, any time, precisely for this reason. He must have stole Nicole’s phone or something. What do I know? He’s an idiot. He probably steals it all the time, and she’s too stupid to notice.”
“Cripes sake,” Dee chuckled. “He’s so stupid that kid, he’s almost crafty.”
“I got to think of Nicole now. If I plead guilty to all the guns, they might still go after her for obstruction. They want me to cop to attempted murder for burning out that dumb scalliwag.”
“Attempted murder? No way. You don’t plead to nothing. No guns, no nothing. All the guns belonged to your wife for all I care. End of story.”
Glen Frederick set the bag of fries down on his lap. “That’s my wife your talking about, not some mush. I can’t just leave her there to rot.”
Dee stood up and stretched his thick back. “Well, I need you out of jail right now. I need your help to get my cocksucking coke back. So, do whatever the fuck you gotta do. I don’t care how you do it. Tell them they’re Derek’s guns.”
“Ah-Ah. I would, but they wouldn’t believe me. They don’t want a young offender.”
“Anyway, let’s get out of here,” Dee stood up and adjusted himself under his pants. “We got work to do. Brinsmead’s got your little woman and the kids in good hands. Okay? C’mon, we’ll get the newspaper. I put a story in there about the firebombing.”
Glen Frederick stood up, haltingly on his freezing feet. “You did what?”
“Yeah. Jack did a story about the firebombing. I worked it so that it names Darroll Missions as the legs. That way the cops will have to look at him for it too. Maybe they’ll put you on the back burner for awhile.”
“Huh,” Frederick thought about it. “But what if they go looking for Darroll, and they find him first?”
“I want them to,” Dee said. “If they catch him while he’s in Nova Scotia, they’ll put him straight into Burnside. Once I get him there, the boys’ll henpeck him to death until he squeals. This way, the Pork will flush out my coke for me, like a pigeon in the bush.” Dee raised his thick arms up and made like he was holding a shotgun up to his sights.
“Flap-flap-flap. Buck-a-boom!”
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