Three weeks after the murders, Digby’s case was verging on collapse.
There was no physical evidence, and even her speculation about what happened was no longer making sense.
Everything she had convinced her CO about: the involvement of organized crime, the stolen cocaine, the ensuing scuffle between the Missions family and the Lee family, Jack Lee’s story accusing Darroll Missions, Darroll’s suicide. The retaliation against Rawle Powder. Everything had been turned on its ear by the lab report.
The timeline of the homicides would have to be stretched back by two months, to the point where everything blew up in Digby’s face, like a firecracker.
She stayed alone in the detachment, hours after the offices of Major Crime were closed for the day.
The rest of the pared-down investigation team had gone home at 4:55.
At one time, there were 38 officers on the file, now there were four, including Staff Sgt. Keetch, and all except Digby had been assigned other cases to work on, simultaneously.
Cpl. Ross Agarwal had even been taken off the case completely, in order to work two other files, one of which was related to the Lee file, the attempted murder of Rawle Powder.
Tips from the public were all bullcrap. Witnesses saw a CJ’s Taxi drop the Lee’s off at home, Thurday night. And later Thursday, a Chris’ Pizzeria delivery driver delivered a pizza.
That was it.
No bloody clothing. No fingerprints. Dozens of people, who may or may not know anything about the murders, all disappeared from the area without a trace.
Now the poison. Two months of deliberate poisoning.
The toxicology and histopathology reports on Jack Lee, while confusing, left no room in Digby’s mind for doubt.
Jack Lee had suffered repeated, deliberate exposures to a known poison in the two months prior his death. Not only was he murdered February 9, but someone had been trying to kill him since the fall.
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Chapter 114
Early in the investigation, scores of mundane backgrounders and timelines had been compiled by constables on every person remotely connected to the victims.
Digby had hard copies of all the backgrounders piled in a massive stack on her desk. She flipped through the papers, over cold coffee, re-reading every line, hour after hour, alone in the squad room.
She hadn’t heard from Det. Sgt. Smith in weeks.
There were rumours around the Detachment that something had gone very wrong with one of his cases, or something. He was probably just busy putting his finger in the dyke.
“Who, his wife?” she mumbled out loud.
They were getting too close. She’d felt something for him, after visiting Willard Missions Senior’s house that time. He probably felt it too, and was spooked.
Database searches, on every person in the stack, revealed a total of about two dozen friends, relatives, co-workers or acquaintances of the Lee’s, with adult criminal records.
The backgrounders with criminal records were sitting in a separate pile, labeled “Better leads,” with a yellow stick-note.
A few of the convictions were for common assault, and one aggravated: Dee Lee, aggravated, Alan Lee, Dale Pinch, Jonathon Tuby, and Bradley Greenough, the pizza delivery driver, common.
There was a few sex crimes in the pile too, which was interesting: One fondling-an-11-year-old-girl: Dustin Byrom, an ex-boyfriend of Tamara Schofield’s. One conviction for running a common bawdy house: Bill Tiffen, Tamara’s former employer at Gentleman Jim’s.
But she was most interested in the drug beefs, since Jack Lee seemed to be a minor player in the local marijuana trade.
Many of his friends and relatives had records for possession, including: Mike Lee, Scott Lee, Tabitha Boyter, Alan Lee, Dee Lee, Dee Lee’s wife Lindsay Lee, Dee’s mistress Stacey Denton, Bill Tiffen, Edgar Gallibois, Annie Ellis, Kevin Schofield, Willy Schofield, Amanda Schofield, Afternoon Surette, Gordon Fairclough, Terry Fancy, Karen Munn, Julie Bissonette, Jenny Blood, John Leslie, Adrian Palipschuk, Kyle Verryn…
Digby stopped flipping through the pile. She picked up Kyle Verryn’s backgrounder sheet.
Kyle Verryn was the freelance reporter, the “stringer,” who worked with Jack Lee and Rawle Powder in the Gazette’s Valley Bureau.
He was a fill-in reporter, a contractor, not a union member, which meant he probably got crappy wages.
She flipped through the stapled stack of paper, digesting the meaty paragraphs.
Verryn had a criminal record for two counts possession of marijuana. You had to smoke a lot of pot to get busted twice in this day and age.
He was also a co-worker of Jack Lee’s, a fact which these days, unfortunately, figured into his probability of being the killer.
According to his file, Verryn had been observed on video surveillance at the Shell gas station on Gaspereau River Road, Friday morning, at 5:43 A.M., a few kilometres from Sunken Lake.
He was on video paying for gas, buying cigarettes and a carton of chocolate milk.
Jack and Tamara had died sometime between 5 a.m. Friday, when they left to walk the dog, and five p.m. Friday evening.
Thanks to Jack’s death, Mr. Verryn had secured permanent, full-time employment with the newspaper.
She picked up the phone. It was late, but she tried Rawle Powder’s number. It rang five times and then the answering service picked up.
“Hi, Mr. Powder. Biz Digby, RCMP. Please call me at 679-5555. It’s Friday at 11. You’re probably sleeping.” She hung up.
She smiled to herself. She wanted to ask him how tough it was out there to get a full time job with a daily newspaper in Nova Scotia.
She couldn’t imagine it would be that easy.
There were less than a half-dozen daily newspapers in the entire province, and every year, Kings College in Halifax churned out dozens of eager journalism graduates. Where did they all work?
She chuckled out loud and the sound rang softly in the steel rafters of the empty building.
How many Nova Scotians would kill their boss for a full-time job?
Digby had hard copies of all the backgrounders piled in a massive stack on her desk. She flipped through the papers, over cold coffee, re-reading every line, hour after hour, alone in the squad room.
She hadn’t heard from Det. Sgt. Smith in weeks.
There were rumours around the Detachment that something had gone very wrong with one of his cases, or something. He was probably just busy putting his finger in the dyke.
“Who, his wife?” she mumbled out loud.
They were getting too close. She’d felt something for him, after visiting Willard Missions Senior’s house that time. He probably felt it too, and was spooked.
Database searches, on every person in the stack, revealed a total of about two dozen friends, relatives, co-workers or acquaintances of the Lee’s, with adult criminal records.
The backgrounders with criminal records were sitting in a separate pile, labeled “Better leads,” with a yellow stick-note.
A few of the convictions were for common assault, and one aggravated: Dee Lee, aggravated, Alan Lee, Dale Pinch, Jonathon Tuby, and Bradley Greenough, the pizza delivery driver, common.
There was a few sex crimes in the pile too, which was interesting: One fondling-an-11-year-old-girl: Dustin Byrom, an ex-boyfriend of Tamara Schofield’s. One conviction for running a common bawdy house: Bill Tiffen, Tamara’s former employer at Gentleman Jim’s.
But she was most interested in the drug beefs, since Jack Lee seemed to be a minor player in the local marijuana trade.
Many of his friends and relatives had records for possession, including: Mike Lee, Scott Lee, Tabitha Boyter, Alan Lee, Dee Lee, Dee Lee’s wife Lindsay Lee, Dee’s mistress Stacey Denton, Bill Tiffen, Edgar Gallibois, Annie Ellis, Kevin Schofield, Willy Schofield, Amanda Schofield, Afternoon Surette, Gordon Fairclough, Terry Fancy, Karen Munn, Julie Bissonette, Jenny Blood, John Leslie, Adrian Palipschuk, Kyle Verryn…
Digby stopped flipping through the pile. She picked up Kyle Verryn’s backgrounder sheet.
Kyle Verryn was the freelance reporter, the “stringer,” who worked with Jack Lee and Rawle Powder in the Gazette’s Valley Bureau.
He was a fill-in reporter, a contractor, not a union member, which meant he probably got crappy wages.
She flipped through the stapled stack of paper, digesting the meaty paragraphs.
Verryn had a criminal record for two counts possession of marijuana. You had to smoke a lot of pot to get busted twice in this day and age.
He was also a co-worker of Jack Lee’s, a fact which these days, unfortunately, figured into his probability of being the killer.
According to his file, Verryn had been observed on video surveillance at the Shell gas station on Gaspereau River Road, Friday morning, at 5:43 A.M., a few kilometres from Sunken Lake.
He was on video paying for gas, buying cigarettes and a carton of chocolate milk.
Jack and Tamara had died sometime between 5 a.m. Friday, when they left to walk the dog, and five p.m. Friday evening.
Thanks to Jack’s death, Mr. Verryn had secured permanent, full-time employment with the newspaper.
She picked up the phone. It was late, but she tried Rawle Powder’s number. It rang five times and then the answering service picked up.
“Hi, Mr. Powder. Biz Digby, RCMP. Please call me at 679-5555. It’s Friday at 11. You’re probably sleeping.” She hung up.
She smiled to herself. She wanted to ask him how tough it was out there to get a full time job with a daily newspaper in Nova Scotia.
She couldn’t imagine it would be that easy.
There were less than a half-dozen daily newspapers in the entire province, and every year, Kings College in Halifax churned out dozens of eager journalism graduates. Where did they all work?
She chuckled out loud and the sound rang softly in the steel rafters of the empty building.
How many Nova Scotians would kill their boss for a full-time job?
Chapter 115
Kyle Verryn.
Cst. Halfkenney had taken Verryn’s statement, Sunday, February 10, the day after the murders.
Digby remembered she’d shared a few glances with him, at the Lee crime scene. Him and Rawle Powder had snuck through the woods, to take pictures. She remembered Verryn was a tall, slim, awkward-looking person.
Was it possible that he could kill a burly man like Jack Lee?
Digby didn’t think so, although he had seemed a little cold in the eyes.
Maybe he had some martial arts training.
According to his whereabouts timeline, Verryn was on-duty with the newspaper, the Friday the Lee’s disappeared.
Jack Lee was off sick that week, no doubt thanks to the rat poison someone was feeding him.
Verryn’s wife and three girls were also away that week, visiting her parents in Newfoundland.
Verryn was home alone.
He lived in Wolfville and was working from his home office that Friday. So, why was he in Gaspereau getting gas, so early in the morning?
There were many possible explanations, but Digby allowed her train of thought to run its course.
No alibi for much of Friday. In the area at 5:45. Opportunity. Motive. After Jack’s death, he got hired on at the newspaper full-time. He would soon be folded into the union completely. A great job for life.
She thought of something else she’d read in the backgrounder, and used her finger to locate the paragraph again. Page three:
“Verryn works second job. Takes shifts as casual labourer at Valley Fresh Co-op chicken plant in Port Williams, earns $10.71/hr, evening shift.”
He can’t support his family as a fill-in reporter, so he cuts meat at the chicken plant.
Wouldn’t a reporter consider that demeaning?
Someone who regards himself as a professional, forced for economic reasons to cut raw chicken. Wouldn’t he feel resentment?
A thought struck her suddenly. She became excited for the first time, in a long time. Rat poison.
Dr. Jenks had used the words ‘commercial rat poison.’
A food processing facility, like a chicken plant, would stock rat poison by the barrel drum.
Cst. Halfkenney had taken Verryn’s statement, Sunday, February 10, the day after the murders.
Digby remembered she’d shared a few glances with him, at the Lee crime scene. Him and Rawle Powder had snuck through the woods, to take pictures. She remembered Verryn was a tall, slim, awkward-looking person.
Was it possible that he could kill a burly man like Jack Lee?
Digby didn’t think so, although he had seemed a little cold in the eyes.
Maybe he had some martial arts training.
According to his whereabouts timeline, Verryn was on-duty with the newspaper, the Friday the Lee’s disappeared.
Jack Lee was off sick that week, no doubt thanks to the rat poison someone was feeding him.
Verryn’s wife and three girls were also away that week, visiting her parents in Newfoundland.
Verryn was home alone.
He lived in Wolfville and was working from his home office that Friday. So, why was he in Gaspereau getting gas, so early in the morning?
There were many possible explanations, but Digby allowed her train of thought to run its course.
No alibi for much of Friday. In the area at 5:45. Opportunity. Motive. After Jack’s death, he got hired on at the newspaper full-time. He would soon be folded into the union completely. A great job for life.
She thought of something else she’d read in the backgrounder, and used her finger to locate the paragraph again. Page three:
“Verryn works second job. Takes shifts as casual labourer at Valley Fresh Co-op chicken plant in Port Williams, earns $10.71/hr, evening shift.”
He can’t support his family as a fill-in reporter, so he cuts meat at the chicken plant.
Wouldn’t a reporter consider that demeaning?
Someone who regards himself as a professional, forced for economic reasons to cut raw chicken. Wouldn’t he feel resentment?
A thought struck her suddenly. She became excited for the first time, in a long time. Rat poison.
Dr. Jenks had used the words ‘commercial rat poison.’
A food processing facility, like a chicken plant, would stock rat poison by the barrel drum.
Chapter 116
They headed back into the wood barn. This time, there was a whole different vibe.
The black kidnapper, who Dee was calling ‘Glenny,’ had set up another folding metal stool over by the Coke fridge. He gestured at Rawle to sit down. Rawle felt a surge of joy flood his heart. A mixture of power and a sense of belonging. He was being invited to sit down with very powerful men.
Dee Lee rolled the massive elm stump over and sat on it, and the three men each drank a Molson Golden.
It was warm in the barn. Rawle started to feel a buzz. The fear in his belly had turned into a sweet, calm feeling that trickled through his entire body.
Dee Lee and Glenny chatted about the Missions family, but Rawle was barely listening. He laughed whenever they did.
Dee Lee reached into his shirt pocket and pulled up a flat pack of Player’s cigarettes. He opened the pack and took out three white cigarettes, passing one each to Rawle and Glenny. Then he flipped open and lit his Zippo with one motion on his pants and passed the flickering gasoline flame to Rawle.
Rawle put the cigarette to his mouth and lit it in the orange flame. His mouth started watering.
The cigarettes were joints, not tobacco. Potent joints.
Rawle felt a shining light fill his chest.
Dee looked over and smiled, letting a tongue of smoke escape from his open mouth and sliff up his right nostril.
“We helped you out, Raoul, that’s for sure. Let’s talk about how you’re going to return the favour.”
Dee Lee and Glenny both looked over at him. They were dead serious.
“What?” Rawle said. His head felt light and fuzzy, all of a sudden.
“I said. Are you going to help us find Jack and Tee’s killer? Or are you going to do nothing?”
Glenny leaned his elbows onto his thighs and spoke in a deep voice. “We are Jack’s family, Raoul. We’re working with the police, as best we can. We’re being, cordial. But why shouldn’t we try to get answers for ourselves? Raoul, you more than anyone in this room should know the limits of the police in getting justice.”
Dee Lee took a long puff on his joint and picked up where Glenny left off. “When Jack came to me about your little problem there, with that cow…” he tilted his head toward the chicken barn- “he told me that you didn’t have enough evidence or whatever for the cops to do anything. It’s a familiar story to me. This crazy bitch was attacking your family. Your young fella. You had a name and some valid reasoning. What did the police do to help you?”
“Nothing,” Rawle said, his mouth drying out completely the higher he got.
“Nothing. So, what did you do about it?” Glenny said, looking up from the floor and staring directly into Rawle’s eyes. “You did what any man would do. You tried to protect your family. You took the protection of your family, personally, into your own hands. The only way you knew how. Did you not?”
Rawle nodded. “I did.”
“And you didn’t care,” Dee said, “one fucking little bit that you should have, by rights, told the police the name and left it to them. Did you?”
Rawle shook his head.
No.
He took another drag of the joint, holding the smoke in his lungs this time and feeling the THC tingle into the tissue of his chest. It felt so good.
“Well, someone in my family got murdered, Raoul. You think about that. That’s my blood. My Jack was stolen from me, from his mother, forever,” Dee said. “Do you understand that? Jack and Tee won’t recover like your wife did, like you did. They’re gone. You think I should leave justice to the police?”
Rawle shook his head. No. He really didn’t.
“And I want you to know something else, Raoul. I read your story. The story you did before you got popped in the head.” He gestured toward the chicken barn again. “You wrote that Darroll Missions killed himself, after that story about the firebombing.”
Rawle nodded.
“Who do you think told Jack about all that? Okay? It was me. Now, how do you think that makes me feel, now that Jack is dead? That it’s probably all be my fault? That I got the whole ball rolling?”
Rawle looked up. He’d never considered Dee Lee’s feelings. Was it possible, a man like Dee Lee, could feel guilty?
“Why did you tell Jack that? Not that I think it’s your fault, trust me, I don’t. I think it’s my fault for asking him to help me… But you must have already hated Darroll or something.”
Dee settled back on the stump and sat up straight. “That’s another story, Raoul. But you’re right, it did start with something else. I did hate Darroll because he stole something from me. And I did tell Jack his name, to get back at him and to try and flush him out. Did they get wind of that? I don’t know. In many ways maybe, it’s my fault, which is why I’m not going to rest ‘til I catch whoever took him. And which is why I’m working so hard. And which is why I’m not leaving it up to the Pork. And which is why you’re sitting here.”
Dee had fire in his eyes as his spoke, his face was pink. Rawle felt inspired by his words.
It was what he wanted so badly to hear someone say, for so long, ever since the murders.
It’s what he wished he could say himself, with that much conviction. I’ll do whatever it takes, until the cocksucker is hunted down and made to pay.
He finished the joint and let the last of his freezing cold beer spill down his dry throat, then leaned down and stubbed the cigarette out onto the barnboard floor.
“Alright. I want to help. Just tell me what you need me to do.”
The black kidnapper, who Dee was calling ‘Glenny,’ had set up another folding metal stool over by the Coke fridge. He gestured at Rawle to sit down. Rawle felt a surge of joy flood his heart. A mixture of power and a sense of belonging. He was being invited to sit down with very powerful men.
Dee Lee rolled the massive elm stump over and sat on it, and the three men each drank a Molson Golden.
It was warm in the barn. Rawle started to feel a buzz. The fear in his belly had turned into a sweet, calm feeling that trickled through his entire body.
Dee Lee and Glenny chatted about the Missions family, but Rawle was barely listening. He laughed whenever they did.
Dee Lee reached into his shirt pocket and pulled up a flat pack of Player’s cigarettes. He opened the pack and took out three white cigarettes, passing one each to Rawle and Glenny. Then he flipped open and lit his Zippo with one motion on his pants and passed the flickering gasoline flame to Rawle.
Rawle put the cigarette to his mouth and lit it in the orange flame. His mouth started watering.
The cigarettes were joints, not tobacco. Potent joints.
Rawle felt a shining light fill his chest.
Dee looked over and smiled, letting a tongue of smoke escape from his open mouth and sliff up his right nostril.
“We helped you out, Raoul, that’s for sure. Let’s talk about how you’re going to return the favour.”
Dee Lee and Glenny both looked over at him. They were dead serious.
“What?” Rawle said. His head felt light and fuzzy, all of a sudden.
“I said. Are you going to help us find Jack and Tee’s killer? Or are you going to do nothing?”
Glenny leaned his elbows onto his thighs and spoke in a deep voice. “We are Jack’s family, Raoul. We’re working with the police, as best we can. We’re being, cordial. But why shouldn’t we try to get answers for ourselves? Raoul, you more than anyone in this room should know the limits of the police in getting justice.”
Dee Lee took a long puff on his joint and picked up where Glenny left off. “When Jack came to me about your little problem there, with that cow…” he tilted his head toward the chicken barn- “he told me that you didn’t have enough evidence or whatever for the cops to do anything. It’s a familiar story to me. This crazy bitch was attacking your family. Your young fella. You had a name and some valid reasoning. What did the police do to help you?”
“Nothing,” Rawle said, his mouth drying out completely the higher he got.
“Nothing. So, what did you do about it?” Glenny said, looking up from the floor and staring directly into Rawle’s eyes. “You did what any man would do. You tried to protect your family. You took the protection of your family, personally, into your own hands. The only way you knew how. Did you not?”
Rawle nodded. “I did.”
“And you didn’t care,” Dee said, “one fucking little bit that you should have, by rights, told the police the name and left it to them. Did you?”
Rawle shook his head.
No.
He took another drag of the joint, holding the smoke in his lungs this time and feeling the THC tingle into the tissue of his chest. It felt so good.
“Well, someone in my family got murdered, Raoul. You think about that. That’s my blood. My Jack was stolen from me, from his mother, forever,” Dee said. “Do you understand that? Jack and Tee won’t recover like your wife did, like you did. They’re gone. You think I should leave justice to the police?”
Rawle shook his head. No. He really didn’t.
“And I want you to know something else, Raoul. I read your story. The story you did before you got popped in the head.” He gestured toward the chicken barn again. “You wrote that Darroll Missions killed himself, after that story about the firebombing.”
Rawle nodded.
“Who do you think told Jack about all that? Okay? It was me. Now, how do you think that makes me feel, now that Jack is dead? That it’s probably all be my fault? That I got the whole ball rolling?”
Rawle looked up. He’d never considered Dee Lee’s feelings. Was it possible, a man like Dee Lee, could feel guilty?
“Why did you tell Jack that? Not that I think it’s your fault, trust me, I don’t. I think it’s my fault for asking him to help me… But you must have already hated Darroll or something.”
Dee settled back on the stump and sat up straight. “That’s another story, Raoul. But you’re right, it did start with something else. I did hate Darroll because he stole something from me. And I did tell Jack his name, to get back at him and to try and flush him out. Did they get wind of that? I don’t know. In many ways maybe, it’s my fault, which is why I’m not going to rest ‘til I catch whoever took him. And which is why I’m working so hard. And which is why I’m not leaving it up to the Pork. And which is why you’re sitting here.”
Dee had fire in his eyes as his spoke, his face was pink. Rawle felt inspired by his words.
It was what he wanted so badly to hear someone say, for so long, ever since the murders.
It’s what he wished he could say himself, with that much conviction. I’ll do whatever it takes, until the cocksucker is hunted down and made to pay.
He finished the joint and let the last of his freezing cold beer spill down his dry throat, then leaned down and stubbed the cigarette out onto the barnboard floor.
“Alright. I want to help. Just tell me what you need me to do.”
Chapter 117
Sgt. Digby called Valley Fresh Co-op and asked for the plant manager.
Francis Edward was a young import from the States somewhere. He was working late.
Digby knew him vaguely from various community events that Valley Fresh supported financially, like building the indoor soccer arena in Kentville.
He came on the line and seemed cooperative.
He told her the plant indeed stocked commercial-grade rat poison. “We don’t have a problem or anything. It’s just standard. Goes with the territory.”
“Can you tell me what kind it is?”
“I think I can pull it up on the computer,” Edward said. The line went quiet for a minute. “Here we go. It’s called… Havoc.”
“Havoc. That must be the brand name. Is there a way to tell what chemical is in it? What kind of poison?”
“Uhhhh, I think it’s barium or something,” Edward mumbled along for a few seconds, apparently reading some product information. “Okay. Here we go… it’s called brodi-facoum. B-R-O-D-I-F-A-C-O-U-M.”
Digby closed her eyes, thankfully. She started to feel an excited, tingling in her mid-chest. Brodifacoum. The same rodenticide that was in Jack Lee’s tissues.
Edward explained that the chemical was stored at the plant in five-gallon pails, which were housed in a locked chemicals cage in the basement shipping-and-receiving area.
“Do you keep track of how much you have in stock?” Digby asked.
“Yup,” Edward said. Another pause. “It’s a regulated pest control product. We track it pretty good, actually. I can tell you, just from my computer, we received an order of five pails of Havoc, delivered September 7, which made a total of seven in stock and probably one more on the go.”
Digby was still excited. “When you say it’s kept in a locked chemical’s cage, does that mean an average employee would not be able to get their hands on any, hypothetically?”
“I really do not like the sound of this. You know how it is. I mean. I imagine- in fact, I know the cage is left open sometimes- I’ve gone down there before and seen the cage sitting wide open, during the day. But you have to be an employee with an access card to get down to the basement. If an employee was stealing the stuff in dribs and drabs, we’d never know it. As long as they didn’t steal a whole pail at a time.”
“I’m going to need to come down there, Francis. I need to take a sample of the stuff from the open pail. I probably need a whole pail. Is that okay?”
“Will you tell me what it’s for? What do I need to prepare for? Is this like a-”
Digby cut him off. “Do you have any video surveillance at the plant? Do you have any video surveillance?”
The manager sighed. “I wish. We tried to install a couple cameras, but there was a union issue. They don’t want to be spied on while they work, or don’t work, as the case may be. They got a point, I guess. We’re allowed to have a camera on the shipping belt, to track orders going out, but no cameras on any workers.”
“Shit.”
“You’re right.”
“Okay. Hold on a sec, Edward.”
Digby had her cellphone going in her other hand. She was calling Agarwal, who was working his armed robbery and aggravated assault case at the Price Chopper in Berwick. She caught him in the middle of eating lunch.
“Ross Aga-wal,” he said with a full mouth.
“Hey. Any luck down there?”
He blew a blast of staticy air out over the phone. “I’m going to have to follow this idiot around, all night. His girlfriend works here and says he did it, but he had a mask on. He made off with 35 carton of smokes. I got to keep tailing him until he visits his stash.”
“Bummer.”
“What’s up with you?”
Digby could barely suppress her excitement. “I need a hard tail up here, too, I guess, but I’ll do it myself. I may have a suspect. Another suspect.”
“Woah! In the reporter shooting?”
Digby was unofficially working the shooting of Rawle Powder, although Cpl. Agarwal had been assigned the file. Agarwal had not even spoken to the reporter yet, but they both figured the shooting was part and parcel of the Jack and Tee double homicide.
“The Lee case,” Digby said. “Another suspect, besides the M family, I mean.”
“No shit? I didn’t know you were looking for anybody else,” Agarwal said. “Can you say over the cell phone?”
“I’ll tell you later. I don’t wanna say, but his name rhymes with Child Bearin’.” She hung up and continued her phone conversation with Francis Edwards, on the land line. “Francis?”
“I’m still here.”
“Sorry about that. I can’t tell you exactly what’s going on, but I promise that if something happens, you’ll know about it before anyone else does, and your company will be protected.”
“Oh boy. I’m getting really nervous, now.”
“Just trust me. If the public has to hear your name, it will be about how well you cooperated and how diligent and careful you were.”
“Okay. I’m trusting you. I’ll do anything I can to help.”
“I’ll be in touch.”
Digby caught herself almost hanging up. “Wait. One more thing. Hello?”
“Still here,” he said.
“I don’t want you repeating this name to anyone, is that clear? You have no idea why I’m asking…”
“What name?”
“I haven’t told you the name yet. It’s Kyle Verryn. He’s a casual employee of yours, on second shift.”
“Doesn’t ring a bell. He’s probably new, if he’s casual.”
She got up from her desk and got ready to go home, pulling the phone off the desk with her as she grabbed her coat. “I need you to speak with his immediate supervisor. I need to know if he’s had any disciplinary problems, any problems with co-workers. Stuff like that. Can you do that for me?”
“Of course. I’ll do it right now.”
“When you’re done you can reach me on my cell. 670-3443. Okay?”
He said okay.
Francis Edward was a young import from the States somewhere. He was working late.
Digby knew him vaguely from various community events that Valley Fresh supported financially, like building the indoor soccer arena in Kentville.
He came on the line and seemed cooperative.
He told her the plant indeed stocked commercial-grade rat poison. “We don’t have a problem or anything. It’s just standard. Goes with the territory.”
“Can you tell me what kind it is?”
“I think I can pull it up on the computer,” Edward said. The line went quiet for a minute. “Here we go. It’s called… Havoc.”
“Havoc. That must be the brand name. Is there a way to tell what chemical is in it? What kind of poison?”
“Uhhhh, I think it’s barium or something,” Edward mumbled along for a few seconds, apparently reading some product information. “Okay. Here we go… it’s called brodi-facoum. B-R-O-D-I-F-A-C-O-U-M.”
Digby closed her eyes, thankfully. She started to feel an excited, tingling in her mid-chest. Brodifacoum. The same rodenticide that was in Jack Lee’s tissues.
Edward explained that the chemical was stored at the plant in five-gallon pails, which were housed in a locked chemicals cage in the basement shipping-and-receiving area.
“Do you keep track of how much you have in stock?” Digby asked.
“Yup,” Edward said. Another pause. “It’s a regulated pest control product. We track it pretty good, actually. I can tell you, just from my computer, we received an order of five pails of Havoc, delivered September 7, which made a total of seven in stock and probably one more on the go.”
Digby was still excited. “When you say it’s kept in a locked chemical’s cage, does that mean an average employee would not be able to get their hands on any, hypothetically?”
“I really do not like the sound of this. You know how it is. I mean. I imagine- in fact, I know the cage is left open sometimes- I’ve gone down there before and seen the cage sitting wide open, during the day. But you have to be an employee with an access card to get down to the basement. If an employee was stealing the stuff in dribs and drabs, we’d never know it. As long as they didn’t steal a whole pail at a time.”
“I’m going to need to come down there, Francis. I need to take a sample of the stuff from the open pail. I probably need a whole pail. Is that okay?”
“Will you tell me what it’s for? What do I need to prepare for? Is this like a-”
Digby cut him off. “Do you have any video surveillance at the plant? Do you have any video surveillance?”
The manager sighed. “I wish. We tried to install a couple cameras, but there was a union issue. They don’t want to be spied on while they work, or don’t work, as the case may be. They got a point, I guess. We’re allowed to have a camera on the shipping belt, to track orders going out, but no cameras on any workers.”
“Shit.”
“You’re right.”
“Okay. Hold on a sec, Edward.”
Digby had her cellphone going in her other hand. She was calling Agarwal, who was working his armed robbery and aggravated assault case at the Price Chopper in Berwick. She caught him in the middle of eating lunch.
“Ross Aga-wal,” he said with a full mouth.
“Hey. Any luck down there?”
He blew a blast of staticy air out over the phone. “I’m going to have to follow this idiot around, all night. His girlfriend works here and says he did it, but he had a mask on. He made off with 35 carton of smokes. I got to keep tailing him until he visits his stash.”
“Bummer.”
“What’s up with you?”
Digby could barely suppress her excitement. “I need a hard tail up here, too, I guess, but I’ll do it myself. I may have a suspect. Another suspect.”
“Woah! In the reporter shooting?”
Digby was unofficially working the shooting of Rawle Powder, although Cpl. Agarwal had been assigned the file. Agarwal had not even spoken to the reporter yet, but they both figured the shooting was part and parcel of the Jack and Tee double homicide.
“The Lee case,” Digby said. “Another suspect, besides the M family, I mean.”
“No shit? I didn’t know you were looking for anybody else,” Agarwal said. “Can you say over the cell phone?”
“I’ll tell you later. I don’t wanna say, but his name rhymes with Child Bearin’.” She hung up and continued her phone conversation with Francis Edwards, on the land line. “Francis?”
“I’m still here.”
“Sorry about that. I can’t tell you exactly what’s going on, but I promise that if something happens, you’ll know about it before anyone else does, and your company will be protected.”
“Oh boy. I’m getting really nervous, now.”
“Just trust me. If the public has to hear your name, it will be about how well you cooperated and how diligent and careful you were.”
“Okay. I’m trusting you. I’ll do anything I can to help.”
“I’ll be in touch.”
Digby caught herself almost hanging up. “Wait. One more thing. Hello?”
“Still here,” he said.
“I don’t want you repeating this name to anyone, is that clear? You have no idea why I’m asking…”
“What name?”
“I haven’t told you the name yet. It’s Kyle Verryn. He’s a casual employee of yours, on second shift.”
“Doesn’t ring a bell. He’s probably new, if he’s casual.”
She got up from her desk and got ready to go home, pulling the phone off the desk with her as she grabbed her coat. “I need you to speak with his immediate supervisor. I need to know if he’s had any disciplinary problems, any problems with co-workers. Stuff like that. Can you do that for me?”
“Of course. I’ll do it right now.”
“When you’re done you can reach me on my cell. 670-3443. Okay?”
He said okay.
Chapter 118
When Rawle Powder got back to the parking lot to pick up the Golf, it was gone. It must have been towed. He might have left the driver’s door hanging wide open, when he was kidnapped. Maybe it got stolen?
Son-of-a… cocksucker.
He took a cab home, instead.
It took most of the rest of the day to work out a quick arrangement with the Gazette and the union.
They agreed to give him a month stress leave, plus he had another six weeks vacation time saved up, plus four weeks time-owed and sick days.
All told, he could be gone until mid-May, with pay.
His paychecks would continue to be deposited directly into his joint chequing account, but he left his bank card at home, in Wolfville, in a locked filing cabinet.
Kelloway and Athan would get all the money, to use as they saw fit.
He had a few hundred dollars cash.
His destination was the small town of Jasper, Alberta, near Edmonton.
Kurtis Missions, Darlene’s 18-year-old son, was having his employment insurance cheques sent to a post office box there, according to Dee Lee’s intelligence gathering.
They didn’t have a home address, but Jasper was a small enough town that someone could go there and likely track him down quite easily. It had to be an outsider, Dee had said, someone Kurtis would not recognize from any biker parties.
Someone like Rawle Powder.
His job was to locate Kurtis Missions and talk to him, if possible, get to know him and somehow try to get a sense of whether or not he killed Jack and Tee.
If Rawle found himself able to befriend Kurtis, he would then try to learn the location of some cocaine, which had been stolen from Kurtis’ father.
If it turned out that Kurtis did kill Jack and Tee, Dee Lee would have operatives waiting nearby to carry out the swift administration of justice.
Rawle did not call Kelloway at he rparent’s place to tell her he was leaving.
He arranged for Cst. Keith to look after Porkbutt, telling him he was going to see Kelloway and Athan, for a few weeks, and couldn’t bring the dog because her parent’s had allergies.
Cst. Keith bought the story, although he seemed unhappy about something, probably he was still pissed off about Rawle writingthat story and getting shot.
There were several loose ends to tie up in Wolfville, but no time to do it.
All the bloody clothing was still sitting in the trunk of his missing car.
He had also received a phone message from Sgt. Biz Digby, asking him to call her. Did she know about the clothes? Who knows?
There was no time to worry about that now.
He had a bus to catch.
Son-of-a… cocksucker.
He took a cab home, instead.
It took most of the rest of the day to work out a quick arrangement with the Gazette and the union.
They agreed to give him a month stress leave, plus he had another six weeks vacation time saved up, plus four weeks time-owed and sick days.
All told, he could be gone until mid-May, with pay.
His paychecks would continue to be deposited directly into his joint chequing account, but he left his bank card at home, in Wolfville, in a locked filing cabinet.
Kelloway and Athan would get all the money, to use as they saw fit.
He had a few hundred dollars cash.
His destination was the small town of Jasper, Alberta, near Edmonton.
Kurtis Missions, Darlene’s 18-year-old son, was having his employment insurance cheques sent to a post office box there, according to Dee Lee’s intelligence gathering.
They didn’t have a home address, but Jasper was a small enough town that someone could go there and likely track him down quite easily. It had to be an outsider, Dee had said, someone Kurtis would not recognize from any biker parties.
Someone like Rawle Powder.
His job was to locate Kurtis Missions and talk to him, if possible, get to know him and somehow try to get a sense of whether or not he killed Jack and Tee.
If Rawle found himself able to befriend Kurtis, he would then try to learn the location of some cocaine, which had been stolen from Kurtis’ father.
If it turned out that Kurtis did kill Jack and Tee, Dee Lee would have operatives waiting nearby to carry out the swift administration of justice.
Rawle did not call Kelloway at he rparent’s place to tell her he was leaving.
He arranged for Cst. Keith to look after Porkbutt, telling him he was going to see Kelloway and Athan, for a few weeks, and couldn’t bring the dog because her parent’s had allergies.
Cst. Keith bought the story, although he seemed unhappy about something, probably he was still pissed off about Rawle writingthat story and getting shot.
There were several loose ends to tie up in Wolfville, but no time to do it.
All the bloody clothing was still sitting in the trunk of his missing car.
He had also received a phone message from Sgt. Biz Digby, asking him to call her. Did she know about the clothes? Who knows?
There was no time to worry about that now.
He had a bus to catch.
Chapter 119
The following night, Sgt. Digby began a stakeout of Kyle Verryn’s Wolfville apartment building. Verryn and his family lived in a three-bedroom at the Madison, a low-end co-op building in the Wolfville student ghetto, on the corner of Hillside and Pleasant.
Digby knew from police chatter that several ‘mom’ type prostitutes took tricks in the building. University students away from home for the first time, looking to pop a nut in some stretched-out womanhood.
It was a piss-hole.
Veryyn was not home when Digby began watching the apartment, or at least his red Pontiac Sunfire was not in the driveway.
It didn’t pull in until shortly after three a.m.
Verryn had worked four to 12 that day at the chicken plant, after working an eight hour shift for the newspaper. 16 hours and he still looked like he hit the bars.
He crawled out of the driver’s seat, looking like he definitely had a few too many.
Digby thought about the merits of dragging him in on a BAT reading, but she decided against it.
She wanted to watch him for a few days before doing anything. She wanted to understand him as a man. Figure out his habits. Right now he was an enigma.
He stayed inside the rest of the night and then left again the next morning at 9:26.
He was talking on his cell phone as he pushed through the glass front doors of the Madison. He tripped a little down the concrete steps.
He seemed clumsy, awkward. One the one hand, he seemed physically nerdy, not the type capable of violence, but on the other, he did things that seemed to defy his stereotype.
The plant manager had phoned Digby back, the night before, to say Verryn had been disciplined recently for taking a swipe with his meat cutting knife at a federal inspector. The way Francis Edward told the story, it was not that uncommon a thing to happen, but the inspector was standing beside Verryn, as he worked, pointing out imperfections in the meat that had to be trimmed. At one point, Verryn slashed at the inspector’s finger with his knife. The inspector managed to pull her hand away, in time, and Verryn claimed that the inspector was purposely trying to slow down his work.
Digby asked how common it could possibly be that a meat cutter took a swipe at a federal government inspector’s hand, but the plant manager said they get a similar report every couple of months.
Verryn stalked a straight line across the parking lot, to the Pontiac.
Digby started up her unmarked Impala.
She was parked across the building’s front lawn, on Hillside Avenue. Verryn had not once glanced in her direction.
He turned on some bass music and pulled out, taking a right onto Pleasant Street, traveling towards Digby. She immediately crouched down and back, driving her body under the steering wheel as far as she could go. Verryn drove past her.
After a three count, she sat back up and pulled off the side of the street, hanging a right on Pleasant, following well behind him.
His brake lights flared at Highland Avenue and he turned right, going down the hill.
Digby followed, keeping far enough back that she lost him each time there was a bend in the road.
She caught up again at the bottom of the hill.
Verryn was stuck behind a car trying to make a left turn onto Main Street in the busy morning traffic, without a stoplight.
She pulled up right behind him and put on her sunglasses. There was always a chance he would remember her from the Lee crime scene. Some people were very good with remembering faces, especially members of the opposite sex.
His head was in sillouette inside the Pontiac, but Digby could see he was continually looking to the right, at the Wolfville United Church parking lot.
She couldn’t really tell if he was looking at the parking lot, or looking in his rear-view mirror. At her.
Can he see me? Would he recognize me?
Finally, he put the Pontiac in reverse and pulled back, almost to Digby’s bumper, then banged over a curb into the church parking lot. He maneuvered into a space near the side door and killed the engine.
Digby stayed where she was.
Verryn got out and locked the car, then started to walk over the lawn toward Main Street.
When he hit the sidewalk he turned right, toward the downtown strip. His hands were in his pockets.
Digby waited patiently for the car to make the left turn, which took several more minutes. Finally, she turned right aggressively and gave the Impala some gas grumbling toward the first parking lot she could find, the large one at the Subway restaurant.
She parked and got out.
Verryn was moving fast up ahead. She could still see him, thanks to his tall stature and light blonde hair.
He was bobbing up and down in the crowd, his receding blonde hair was blowing up vertically in the cool wind.
He was a rickety, non-animalistic man. Digby once again felt doubts that he could have killed the Lee’s so viciously.
But he definately seemed unsettled.
The cold wind blew her eyes shut.
Verryn reached the jewelry store on the corner and crossed the street. A car honked at him and slammed on the brakes, but he never looked back.
He turned left at the old Acadia Cinema and headed up the street again, opposite Digby.
She stopped and pretended to look in the window of the art supply store.
When she turned back he was gone.
Verryn had disappeared. He must have ducked into one of the stores. There was the stoner clothing store; the giftware store, an outdoor adventure store and Fundy Travel, the travel agency.
Travel Agency?
Digby ran across the street.
She strolled quickly, pulling out her cell and pretending to talk, taking a quick glance in each store window: Library Pub, gift store, travel agency... Verryn was in the travel agency, hunched at a desk under a poster of the Bahamas, across from a female travel agent with curly brown hair.
Digby kept walking. She stopped in front of the Market and took the cell phone away from her head, dialing Halfkenney’s desk back at the detachment.
“Hello?”
“Halfkenney?”
“Yes.”
“I need you to print a photo of Kyle Alexander Verryn, V-E-R-R-Y-N, 29, of Wolfville, from motor vehicles and bring it down to Fundy Travel, Main Street, Wolfville. I need you to go in and talk to the travel agent who has the curly brown hair. I need you to show her the picture of Kyle Verryn and get her to tell you, word for word, why he was in there this morning and everything he said, word for word.”
“Verryn. V-E-R-R-Y-N. Got it. When should I come down?”
“Now, Halfkenney.”
“Okay, okay.”
She hung up.
Digby knew from police chatter that several ‘mom’ type prostitutes took tricks in the building. University students away from home for the first time, looking to pop a nut in some stretched-out womanhood.
It was a piss-hole.
Veryyn was not home when Digby began watching the apartment, or at least his red Pontiac Sunfire was not in the driveway.
It didn’t pull in until shortly after three a.m.
Verryn had worked four to 12 that day at the chicken plant, after working an eight hour shift for the newspaper. 16 hours and he still looked like he hit the bars.
He crawled out of the driver’s seat, looking like he definitely had a few too many.
Digby thought about the merits of dragging him in on a BAT reading, but she decided against it.
She wanted to watch him for a few days before doing anything. She wanted to understand him as a man. Figure out his habits. Right now he was an enigma.
He stayed inside the rest of the night and then left again the next morning at 9:26.
He was talking on his cell phone as he pushed through the glass front doors of the Madison. He tripped a little down the concrete steps.
He seemed clumsy, awkward. One the one hand, he seemed physically nerdy, not the type capable of violence, but on the other, he did things that seemed to defy his stereotype.
The plant manager had phoned Digby back, the night before, to say Verryn had been disciplined recently for taking a swipe with his meat cutting knife at a federal inspector. The way Francis Edward told the story, it was not that uncommon a thing to happen, but the inspector was standing beside Verryn, as he worked, pointing out imperfections in the meat that had to be trimmed. At one point, Verryn slashed at the inspector’s finger with his knife. The inspector managed to pull her hand away, in time, and Verryn claimed that the inspector was purposely trying to slow down his work.
Digby asked how common it could possibly be that a meat cutter took a swipe at a federal government inspector’s hand, but the plant manager said they get a similar report every couple of months.
Verryn stalked a straight line across the parking lot, to the Pontiac.
Digby started up her unmarked Impala.
She was parked across the building’s front lawn, on Hillside Avenue. Verryn had not once glanced in her direction.
He turned on some bass music and pulled out, taking a right onto Pleasant Street, traveling towards Digby. She immediately crouched down and back, driving her body under the steering wheel as far as she could go. Verryn drove past her.
After a three count, she sat back up and pulled off the side of the street, hanging a right on Pleasant, following well behind him.
His brake lights flared at Highland Avenue and he turned right, going down the hill.
Digby followed, keeping far enough back that she lost him each time there was a bend in the road.
She caught up again at the bottom of the hill.
Verryn was stuck behind a car trying to make a left turn onto Main Street in the busy morning traffic, without a stoplight.
She pulled up right behind him and put on her sunglasses. There was always a chance he would remember her from the Lee crime scene. Some people were very good with remembering faces, especially members of the opposite sex.
His head was in sillouette inside the Pontiac, but Digby could see he was continually looking to the right, at the Wolfville United Church parking lot.
She couldn’t really tell if he was looking at the parking lot, or looking in his rear-view mirror. At her.
Can he see me? Would he recognize me?
Finally, he put the Pontiac in reverse and pulled back, almost to Digby’s bumper, then banged over a curb into the church parking lot. He maneuvered into a space near the side door and killed the engine.
Digby stayed where she was.
Verryn got out and locked the car, then started to walk over the lawn toward Main Street.
When he hit the sidewalk he turned right, toward the downtown strip. His hands were in his pockets.
Digby waited patiently for the car to make the left turn, which took several more minutes. Finally, she turned right aggressively and gave the Impala some gas grumbling toward the first parking lot she could find, the large one at the Subway restaurant.
She parked and got out.
Verryn was moving fast up ahead. She could still see him, thanks to his tall stature and light blonde hair.
He was bobbing up and down in the crowd, his receding blonde hair was blowing up vertically in the cool wind.
He was a rickety, non-animalistic man. Digby once again felt doubts that he could have killed the Lee’s so viciously.
But he definately seemed unsettled.
The cold wind blew her eyes shut.
Verryn reached the jewelry store on the corner and crossed the street. A car honked at him and slammed on the brakes, but he never looked back.
He turned left at the old Acadia Cinema and headed up the street again, opposite Digby.
She stopped and pretended to look in the window of the art supply store.
When she turned back he was gone.
Verryn had disappeared. He must have ducked into one of the stores. There was the stoner clothing store; the giftware store, an outdoor adventure store and Fundy Travel, the travel agency.
Travel Agency?
Digby ran across the street.
She strolled quickly, pulling out her cell and pretending to talk, taking a quick glance in each store window: Library Pub, gift store, travel agency... Verryn was in the travel agency, hunched at a desk under a poster of the Bahamas, across from a female travel agent with curly brown hair.
Digby kept walking. She stopped in front of the Market and took the cell phone away from her head, dialing Halfkenney’s desk back at the detachment.
“Hello?”
“Halfkenney?”
“Yes.”
“I need you to print a photo of Kyle Alexander Verryn, V-E-R-R-Y-N, 29, of Wolfville, from motor vehicles and bring it down to Fundy Travel, Main Street, Wolfville. I need you to go in and talk to the travel agent who has the curly brown hair. I need you to show her the picture of Kyle Verryn and get her to tell you, word for word, why he was in there this morning and everything he said, word for word.”
“Verryn. V-E-R-R-Y-N. Got it. When should I come down?”
“Now, Halfkenney.”
“Okay, okay.”
She hung up.
Chapter 120
Kyle Verryn left the travel agency a few minutes later and headed back toward his car.
Digby followed as far as the Subway parking lot, then veered off to grab her Impala.
She pulled out on Main, hung a left, forcing her way into traffic by flashing the silent blue and reds built into a unit around her rearview mirror.
“Move!” She mouthed at a large black pickup truck, then made the left at Highland Avenue.
Verryn’s car was coming out of the parking lot, but he pulled right across the road into the Acadia Student Centre parking lot.
What the hell is he doing?
Digby made a spilt-second decision and pulled into the parking lot after him. She found a space near the entrance and parked. As soon as she turned her ignition off, she glanced in her side mirror. Verryn was out of the Pontiac and heading towards her.
Shoot.
He crossed the short lot and came up to Digby’s driver side window, standing there for a moment and then tapping on the glass with two fingers.
Unbelievable.
Digby was good at what she did. Verryn was either a better reporter than she thought, or he had reason to suspect he might be under surveillance.
Digby powered down her window, halfway and looked up at Verryn, shades on.
He leaned down toward the window and smiled at her. “Are you following me,” he said, “or am I following you?”
Digby took her shades down. “Uhhh, do I know you? You look familiar.”
“I’m a reporter for the Gazette. Are you a police officer?”
“Actually, I am,” she said. “Why would you assume I’m following you?”
“Why are you following me?”
“Who said I’m following you? What reason would I have to follow you? What’s your name, sir? I really think I recognize you from somewhere…”
Verryn’s face was red with either embarrassment or anger. “Just stop following me or I’ll call the police,” he said. He had a high, girlish voice and he was pointing a long, boney finger at her chest. His finger was trembling.
“I just told you that I am a cop. Were you listening to me?”
Verryn scowled. “If you’re a cop, you won’t mind showing me some ID!” His face was bright pink.
Digby put her shades back on and unclipped her seatbelt. “I don’t have to show you shit,” she said through beautiful white teeth.
She opened the car door, hard, bumping him in the kneecaps. “Step away from the vehicle.”
She climbed out.
Verryn backed away from the Impala, holding his kneecaps and wincing.
“You assaulted me!” he hissed.
Digby pointed her finger at him now, and placed her left hand over her sidearm, just above the holster. “Hold it where you are. I asked you a question. I said ‘what’s your name?’ I asked you a question.”
Verryn turned around on the spot and started running flat out toward the Pontiac. When he got there, he wrenched the door and clambered in, long limbs flying everywhere.
He cranked the engine immediately and locked all the doors behind him.
Digby was smiling, but she forced herself to get serious.
Verryn was, after all, potentially a dangerous killer.
She started walking, carefully, toward the Pontiac. Gun still holstered, for now.
She reached under the back of her jacket and grabbed the clip microphone that was looped over the antennae of her walkie-talkie.
Verryn was revving the engine.
“Detachment. Two-three-seven, requesting a ten-thirty-two. A-“
Verryn squealed out backward, aiming at Digby as he did so, forcing her to trot quickly out of his path. He collided with a parked car, then pulled out of the lot in a two-point turn, bumping wildly over the curb.
He hit the street and gunned it left up Highland, heading for the hills.
Digby ran back to her Impala, speaking quickly into the radio.
“Two-three-seven. Suspect to arrest. Assault PO. Suspect driving a red Pontiac Sunfire, Highland Avenue, south, Wolfville. NSL… uh-” Digby checked her notes for Verryn’s license plate number. “Nova Scotia license plate, Golf, Zulu, Papa, One, Whiskey, Seven. Request units intercept at Pleasant. All streets to Pleasant off Highland, Fairfield and Gaspereau Avenue. Suspect is section 23-and-a-half, because he must be crazy to try to run me over. Over.”
She climbed behind the wheel and screeched out after him, flashers on but no sirens, and punched it hard up the hill, making the engine scream.
The radio started going crazy. A fellow officer had been almost assaulted.
Verryn had a good headstart and was already out of Digby’s visual range on the curvy road, heading uphill.
Her mind traced quickly over all potential hiding places he might find off Highland Avenue.
There were too many. Too many to check them all.
He could have turned left into the student ghetto area just past Wolfville School, although that would mean going the wrong way down a one-way street.
She continued on, hoping that he would obey traffic laws out of reflex.
He could have turned left on Fairfield, too, but if he did, he would eventually be forced onto either Pleasant Street or Gaspereau Avenue, where cruisers from Wolfville Office would intercept him as they roared up Gaspereau Avenue. Digby felt covered in that direction.
When she hit Pleasant, there was still no sign of the Pontiac.
She stopped at the stop sign. He could have pulled into the hidden driveway at the Queens Court apartment complex, to the right. He could be sitting there, hidden behind a row of houses, waiting until Digby passed by.
Damnit.
She went with the assumption that he kept going, straight toward Ridge Road.
If he took the Ridge Road he would eventually get access the highway at Greenwich.
She blew under the overpass, then around the hairpin bend at Stile Park. She wondered again if Verryn had ducked off the road, in the park this time, to hide until she passed him by.
The park was located right on the top of Wolfville Ridge. Everything inside the park, including the parking lot, was obscured from the road by the elevation of the landscape.
If Verryn pulled into the parking lot, he would be invisible. This time, she acted on her instinct.
She slammed the brakes and backed up to the dirt lane that led into the park, turning in.
A wooden sign read “Rotary Stile Park.’ She picked up her radio again.
“Detachment. Two-three-seven. I need another PC at the 101 exit 10, at Greenwich, looking to intercept. Can we do that? If he comes, he’ll be heading down from the Ridge. Over.”
“-Four.”
She eased ahead, crackling slowly over the cold gravel of the path, until the park and the parking lot came into view.
Verryn’s Pontiac was there, parked at the far right side of the large dirt parking lot.
She expected him to immediately start gunning it toward her, as soon as he saw her, but nothing happened.
“Detachment. Cancel that. He’s at Stile Park.”
She couldn’t tell if Verryn was inside the Pontiac. The doors were shut, but the engine appeared to be off. It was cold, but there was no smoke wisping from his tailpipe.
“Ten-thirty-two. Suspect to arrest at Rotary Stile Park, Wolfville. All units suspect to arrest now at Rotary Stile Park. Your thirty-two is en route.”
Digby did not move and left her engine running.
Her cell phone rang. It was Halfkenny.
“What’s happening there now, boss?”
“Meh. He made me and then took a run for it. He almost ran me over.”
“Shesus. What is he doing? You okay?”
“So far, so good.”
“The travel chick said he booked a ticket to the Dominican Republic, leaving Friday morning. A one-way ticket.”
Digby laughed. “Who does this guy think he is?”
“He’s trying to skip the country or something.”
“Okay. I gotta go. Come up to Stile Park. Code 1, if you want. Back me up.”
“I’m coming, I’m coming. Just stay in the PC. He sounds like he’s come fucking unhinged, this guy.”
Digby hung up. She couldn’t shake an uneasy feeling in her chest. Verryn was trying to escape. He was acting like a fugitive. He was acting desperate. He was willing to run over a police officer with his car.
Stile Park had a reputation as a place to commit suicide.
If Verryn’s plan was to hide in the parking lot until Digby passed him by, then why wasn’t he sitting in the car with the engine running?
What if he had a Plan B?
What if he knows he’s busted and plans to do something desperate?
She killed the engine and hooked her radio cord over the antennae of her handset. She removed her Smith & Wesson 9mm Compact 3953 from a fabric holster secured under her jacket.
There was a spare eight-round clip in the glove box. She took it and tucked the cold slab of metal into a jacket pocket.
She climbed out of the Impala, slowly, keeping herself low to the ground and the gun tight at her side, out of sight from a distance.
There was no sign of Verryn.
The park was empty.
The park consisted of a large, flat, green field of mown grass, a tiny green gazebo no bigger than a telephone booth, and beyond the grass, a wooded area that stretched all the way down the side of Wolfville Ridge to the Gaspereau Valley below.
The local Rotary club had built a whole series of trails in the woods beyond the field. Verryn was no doubt running full-tilt down a path, heading for the valley.
If he reached a road and started hitch-hiking, he would disappear. This was rural territory, friendly farmers, vineyard workers, mill workers. Everyone picked up hitchhikers.
She radioed in, yet again, this time asking for a unit to comb Gaspereau River Road, between the White Rock power dam and Gaspereau Vineyards.
Meanwhile, she was side-winding briskly, gun-in-hand, down the middle of the bumpy field, heading toward the treeline, scanning back and forth.
A shape suddenly filled the open space of the gazebo, thirty feet away. There was movement in the gazebo.
Verryn.
She aimed at the small structure on the horizon. The sun was behind her, and Verryn was entirely in shadow thanks to the low roof of the tiny structure.
He had either just hung himself, dropping down from the rafters, or he had been hiding out of sight behind the concrete base and wa snow inside the gazebo.
She dropped down to one knee.
“POLICE. COME DOWN. STEP DOWN AND PLACE YOUR HANDS ON YOUR HEAD.”
Digby’s throat burned from yelling so loud. The wind was howling over the ridge and swallowing up her voice.
She could hear sirens coming. There was no movement from the shape in the gazebo. No answer either.
“I said STEP DOWN!”
The shape moved. An arm or a stick swung upward. Verryn’s head was tilting down to his shoulder.
It’s a gun. Shit!
A rifle.
She still wasn’t a hundred per cent sure. She hesitated to fire, until she heard the gunshot.
It was a loud, ripping sound, possibly a shotgun, maybe a 20 guage. Definitely a shotgun of some kind. Nothing else really made that sound.
Roar!
She flinched and clenched up, but nothing hit her body.
Her body went numb, all over. She flattened herself down on the grass and an icy feeling ran down her legs.
She squeezed the trigger, hoping she was still pointing her 9mm at the gazebo, she couldn’t remember.
Roar.
And squeezed again.
Roar.
The Compact was a small but ferocious gun. She fired, feeling the mild kickback hit her elbows. She had not re-checked her target in between. Was Veryn still there?
The cops were thumping down the field behind her. She could hear their bootsteps pounding on the sod.
Someone was yelling: “GUN. GUN!”
Then the shotgun fired, again, from the gazebo. Digby actually heard grass and frozen soil rip up, all around her head.
Shesus Christ!
She fired again, twice, this time feeling rage stiffen her body.
Roar-roar.
The shape jerked clear of the gazebo. She could see blue sky inside the open structure again.
More shots rang out, behind her, but it was too late, the shadow of Kyle Verryn was already long gone.
She felt a bunch of strong hands grab her, from behind. Then she was being dragged away, back toward the vehicles in the parking lot. Her feet skipping along the ground in front of her.
Verryn came crawling down the gazebo steps, then crawling on the grass.
Even from a distance, she could see blood spilling out of his mouth.
Digby followed as far as the Subway parking lot, then veered off to grab her Impala.
She pulled out on Main, hung a left, forcing her way into traffic by flashing the silent blue and reds built into a unit around her rearview mirror.
“Move!” She mouthed at a large black pickup truck, then made the left at Highland Avenue.
Verryn’s car was coming out of the parking lot, but he pulled right across the road into the Acadia Student Centre parking lot.
What the hell is he doing?
Digby made a spilt-second decision and pulled into the parking lot after him. She found a space near the entrance and parked. As soon as she turned her ignition off, she glanced in her side mirror. Verryn was out of the Pontiac and heading towards her.
Shoot.
He crossed the short lot and came up to Digby’s driver side window, standing there for a moment and then tapping on the glass with two fingers.
Unbelievable.
Digby was good at what she did. Verryn was either a better reporter than she thought, or he had reason to suspect he might be under surveillance.
Digby powered down her window, halfway and looked up at Verryn, shades on.
He leaned down toward the window and smiled at her. “Are you following me,” he said, “or am I following you?”
Digby took her shades down. “Uhhh, do I know you? You look familiar.”
“I’m a reporter for the Gazette. Are you a police officer?”
“Actually, I am,” she said. “Why would you assume I’m following you?”
“Why are you following me?”
“Who said I’m following you? What reason would I have to follow you? What’s your name, sir? I really think I recognize you from somewhere…”
Verryn’s face was red with either embarrassment or anger. “Just stop following me or I’ll call the police,” he said. He had a high, girlish voice and he was pointing a long, boney finger at her chest. His finger was trembling.
“I just told you that I am a cop. Were you listening to me?”
Verryn scowled. “If you’re a cop, you won’t mind showing me some ID!” His face was bright pink.
Digby put her shades back on and unclipped her seatbelt. “I don’t have to show you shit,” she said through beautiful white teeth.
She opened the car door, hard, bumping him in the kneecaps. “Step away from the vehicle.”
She climbed out.
Verryn backed away from the Impala, holding his kneecaps and wincing.
“You assaulted me!” he hissed.
Digby pointed her finger at him now, and placed her left hand over her sidearm, just above the holster. “Hold it where you are. I asked you a question. I said ‘what’s your name?’ I asked you a question.”
Verryn turned around on the spot and started running flat out toward the Pontiac. When he got there, he wrenched the door and clambered in, long limbs flying everywhere.
He cranked the engine immediately and locked all the doors behind him.
Digby was smiling, but she forced herself to get serious.
Verryn was, after all, potentially a dangerous killer.
She started walking, carefully, toward the Pontiac. Gun still holstered, for now.
She reached under the back of her jacket and grabbed the clip microphone that was looped over the antennae of her walkie-talkie.
Verryn was revving the engine.
“Detachment. Two-three-seven, requesting a ten-thirty-two. A-“
Verryn squealed out backward, aiming at Digby as he did so, forcing her to trot quickly out of his path. He collided with a parked car, then pulled out of the lot in a two-point turn, bumping wildly over the curb.
He hit the street and gunned it left up Highland, heading for the hills.
Digby ran back to her Impala, speaking quickly into the radio.
“Two-three-seven. Suspect to arrest. Assault PO. Suspect driving a red Pontiac Sunfire, Highland Avenue, south, Wolfville. NSL… uh-” Digby checked her notes for Verryn’s license plate number. “Nova Scotia license plate, Golf, Zulu, Papa, One, Whiskey, Seven. Request units intercept at Pleasant. All streets to Pleasant off Highland, Fairfield and Gaspereau Avenue. Suspect is section 23-and-a-half, because he must be crazy to try to run me over. Over.”
She climbed behind the wheel and screeched out after him, flashers on but no sirens, and punched it hard up the hill, making the engine scream.
The radio started going crazy. A fellow officer had been almost assaulted.
Verryn had a good headstart and was already out of Digby’s visual range on the curvy road, heading uphill.
Her mind traced quickly over all potential hiding places he might find off Highland Avenue.
There were too many. Too many to check them all.
He could have turned left into the student ghetto area just past Wolfville School, although that would mean going the wrong way down a one-way street.
She continued on, hoping that he would obey traffic laws out of reflex.
He could have turned left on Fairfield, too, but if he did, he would eventually be forced onto either Pleasant Street or Gaspereau Avenue, where cruisers from Wolfville Office would intercept him as they roared up Gaspereau Avenue. Digby felt covered in that direction.
When she hit Pleasant, there was still no sign of the Pontiac.
She stopped at the stop sign. He could have pulled into the hidden driveway at the Queens Court apartment complex, to the right. He could be sitting there, hidden behind a row of houses, waiting until Digby passed by.
Damnit.
She went with the assumption that he kept going, straight toward Ridge Road.
If he took the Ridge Road he would eventually get access the highway at Greenwich.
She blew under the overpass, then around the hairpin bend at Stile Park. She wondered again if Verryn had ducked off the road, in the park this time, to hide until she passed him by.
The park was located right on the top of Wolfville Ridge. Everything inside the park, including the parking lot, was obscured from the road by the elevation of the landscape.
If Verryn pulled into the parking lot, he would be invisible. This time, she acted on her instinct.
She slammed the brakes and backed up to the dirt lane that led into the park, turning in.
A wooden sign read “Rotary Stile Park.’ She picked up her radio again.
“Detachment. Two-three-seven. I need another PC at the 101 exit 10, at Greenwich, looking to intercept. Can we do that? If he comes, he’ll be heading down from the Ridge. Over.”
“-Four.”
She eased ahead, crackling slowly over the cold gravel of the path, until the park and the parking lot came into view.
Verryn’s Pontiac was there, parked at the far right side of the large dirt parking lot.
She expected him to immediately start gunning it toward her, as soon as he saw her, but nothing happened.
“Detachment. Cancel that. He’s at Stile Park.”
She couldn’t tell if Verryn was inside the Pontiac. The doors were shut, but the engine appeared to be off. It was cold, but there was no smoke wisping from his tailpipe.
“Ten-thirty-two. Suspect to arrest at Rotary Stile Park, Wolfville. All units suspect to arrest now at Rotary Stile Park. Your thirty-two is en route.”
Digby did not move and left her engine running.
Her cell phone rang. It was Halfkenny.
“What’s happening there now, boss?”
“Meh. He made me and then took a run for it. He almost ran me over.”
“Shesus. What is he doing? You okay?”
“So far, so good.”
“The travel chick said he booked a ticket to the Dominican Republic, leaving Friday morning. A one-way ticket.”
Digby laughed. “Who does this guy think he is?”
“He’s trying to skip the country or something.”
“Okay. I gotta go. Come up to Stile Park. Code 1, if you want. Back me up.”
“I’m coming, I’m coming. Just stay in the PC. He sounds like he’s come fucking unhinged, this guy.”
Digby hung up. She couldn’t shake an uneasy feeling in her chest. Verryn was trying to escape. He was acting like a fugitive. He was acting desperate. He was willing to run over a police officer with his car.
Stile Park had a reputation as a place to commit suicide.
If Verryn’s plan was to hide in the parking lot until Digby passed him by, then why wasn’t he sitting in the car with the engine running?
What if he had a Plan B?
What if he knows he’s busted and plans to do something desperate?
She killed the engine and hooked her radio cord over the antennae of her handset. She removed her Smith & Wesson 9mm Compact 3953 from a fabric holster secured under her jacket.
There was a spare eight-round clip in the glove box. She took it and tucked the cold slab of metal into a jacket pocket.
She climbed out of the Impala, slowly, keeping herself low to the ground and the gun tight at her side, out of sight from a distance.
There was no sign of Verryn.
The park was empty.
The park consisted of a large, flat, green field of mown grass, a tiny green gazebo no bigger than a telephone booth, and beyond the grass, a wooded area that stretched all the way down the side of Wolfville Ridge to the Gaspereau Valley below.
The local Rotary club had built a whole series of trails in the woods beyond the field. Verryn was no doubt running full-tilt down a path, heading for the valley.
If he reached a road and started hitch-hiking, he would disappear. This was rural territory, friendly farmers, vineyard workers, mill workers. Everyone picked up hitchhikers.
She radioed in, yet again, this time asking for a unit to comb Gaspereau River Road, between the White Rock power dam and Gaspereau Vineyards.
Meanwhile, she was side-winding briskly, gun-in-hand, down the middle of the bumpy field, heading toward the treeline, scanning back and forth.
A shape suddenly filled the open space of the gazebo, thirty feet away. There was movement in the gazebo.
Verryn.
She aimed at the small structure on the horizon. The sun was behind her, and Verryn was entirely in shadow thanks to the low roof of the tiny structure.
He had either just hung himself, dropping down from the rafters, or he had been hiding out of sight behind the concrete base and wa snow inside the gazebo.
She dropped down to one knee.
“POLICE. COME DOWN. STEP DOWN AND PLACE YOUR HANDS ON YOUR HEAD.”
Digby’s throat burned from yelling so loud. The wind was howling over the ridge and swallowing up her voice.
She could hear sirens coming. There was no movement from the shape in the gazebo. No answer either.
“I said STEP DOWN!”
The shape moved. An arm or a stick swung upward. Verryn’s head was tilting down to his shoulder.
It’s a gun. Shit!
A rifle.
She still wasn’t a hundred per cent sure. She hesitated to fire, until she heard the gunshot.
It was a loud, ripping sound, possibly a shotgun, maybe a 20 guage. Definitely a shotgun of some kind. Nothing else really made that sound.
Roar!
She flinched and clenched up, but nothing hit her body.
Her body went numb, all over. She flattened herself down on the grass and an icy feeling ran down her legs.
She squeezed the trigger, hoping she was still pointing her 9mm at the gazebo, she couldn’t remember.
Roar.
And squeezed again.
Roar.
The Compact was a small but ferocious gun. She fired, feeling the mild kickback hit her elbows. She had not re-checked her target in between. Was Veryn still there?
The cops were thumping down the field behind her. She could hear their bootsteps pounding on the sod.
Someone was yelling: “GUN. GUN!”
Then the shotgun fired, again, from the gazebo. Digby actually heard grass and frozen soil rip up, all around her head.
Shesus Christ!
She fired again, twice, this time feeling rage stiffen her body.
Roar-roar.
The shape jerked clear of the gazebo. She could see blue sky inside the open structure again.
More shots rang out, behind her, but it was too late, the shadow of Kyle Verryn was already long gone.
She felt a bunch of strong hands grab her, from behind. Then she was being dragged away, back toward the vehicles in the parking lot. Her feet skipping along the ground in front of her.
Verryn came crawling down the gazebo steps, then crawling on the grass.
Even from a distance, she could see blood spilling out of his mouth.
Chapter 121
Cst. Keith and Cst. Halfkenney piled Sgt. Digby forcefully into the back of a waiting cruiser. She sat still for several minutes, then she unloaded her gun and reholstered it, empty.
The sound of Verryn’s anguished yells filled the air, over and over. She couldn’t listen to it. She hated to hear someone suffering.
After a few long minutes, the relieving sound of an ambulance came screaming up the hillside.
Digby watched out the window. Two EMT’s ran full tilt down the grass lawn with a thin red stretcher on wheels bouncing in between them.
They took Verryn’s body and set it on the stretcher. Their hands working fast. They were placing white packs down on his blood-drenched head.
In seconds, they had Verryn back in the bus and were gone.
Cst. Halfkenny and Wolfville Cst. Matt Keith got into the front seats of the cruiser.
“Are you injured?” Halfkenney said. “Fuckers didn’t even check you out.”
“I’m fine,” Digby said. “Nothing hit me.”
Halfkenney pulled away.
“Don’t I have to stay at the scene?” Digby said, not wanting to, but wanting to behave by the book.
“Fuck that,” Cst. Keith said. “We’re getting you out of here.”
Halfkenney drove straight to New Minas Detachment. When they arrived they all went and hid in the back by the Major Crime desk for a few hours. Digby had received no injuries but her arms felt light and she felt light-headed.
Verryn had apparently survived the immediate shooting, but Digby had hit him in the lung and head. He was rushed to the Kentville hospital in life-threatening condition.
As soon as he was stable, he would probably get airlifted to Halifax.
The shooting was going to make big waves in the Nova Scotia press, once word got out. A member of the press shot by a cop, probably fatally.
The media was going to go nuts.
Digby and all the other officers involved had to get their stories straight, fast. They sat at the detective’s table in the Southwest Nova Major Crime Unit area at the end of the back hallway and hashed it out.
Cst. Keith set up the coffee maker and brewed a pot.
Everything had happened so fast.
“Did anyone get his gun? Was it a real gun?” Digby said.
“What do you mean was it a real gun? Of course it was. It was a Jesus 20 guage.”
“I don’t know. I just need to make sure.”
Staff Sgt. Keetch arrived in the building before they could make much more progress than that.
He looked furious. His face was beet red as he lumbered into the back section, making a lot of noise, slamming doors. He walked straight back to the end desks of Major Crime.
“What in the fuck happened?” He was yelling.
Digby felt a sudden surge of anger from his tone of voice. She yelled back. “I was fired on. Thanks for asking, James.”
“-Uh. You don’t talk to me LIKE THAT!” Keetch boomed, pointing a finger and his face was blood red and sweaty, almost purple looking.
“-Hey, c’mon. Please, can we calm down?” Halfkenney stood up and blocked the path between Digby, at the detective’s table and Keetch, plowing down the hallway.
“Halfkenney. What happened?” Keetch demanded, stopping inches from the young officer’s chin.
“It was a good shooting, sir. Two or three of us witnessed it. I’m serious. Digby was tailing Kyle Verryn-“
“Kye Verryn.” Keetch put his hands on his hips and turned sideways, scanning the cubicles. “Can anybody tell me why? Can anybody tell me why Sgt. Digby was tailing Kyle Verryn? Did she receive an order to do so?”
“Fuck off, James.” Digby said.
“You are not in charge of the investigation, Digby!” Keetch yelled and pointed at her again.
“Just settle down.” Digby said. She was totally calm now.
“From what I understand,” Halfkenney said, “she had good reason to be interested in what he was doing. Time was also sensitive. It turns out that he was buying a ticket to leave the country.”
Keetch continued to pivot back and forth with his hands on his hips. He looked at Halfkenney, but said nothing to address his comments. He was still too angry to listen.
“When I left the investigation, yesterday, we had a list of persons-of-interest. We had Kurtis Missions, Jack Missions, Popular Missions, Darlene Missions, the pizza delivery guy and the taxi driver. Nowhere on that list was Kyle Verryn. Am I right or am I wrong?”
The entire detachment remained silent.
“When I return to the investigation today, I find that a co-worker of the murder victim, a journalist, has been gunned down in a park by the lead investigator-”
Digby chuckled. “I thought you said I was not in charge of the investigation?”
Keetch glared at her. “Don’t be a SMART-ASS!”
Digby stood up. “I intend to file a report on the shooting. But I’ll tell you this: I took the Lee killer down today. That’s the bottom. And right before he took me. So you tell that to whoever asks. Today, you’re team closed the top priority case of this detachment, and to top it all off you don’t have to explain why a cop got killed. Today was the best day of your life, you cocksucker.”
She got up and walked into the penalty box, the only room nearby with a door. She reefed on the door behind her as hard as she could, making a boom sound that echoed off the rafters.
The sound of Verryn’s anguished yells filled the air, over and over. She couldn’t listen to it. She hated to hear someone suffering.
After a few long minutes, the relieving sound of an ambulance came screaming up the hillside.
Digby watched out the window. Two EMT’s ran full tilt down the grass lawn with a thin red stretcher on wheels bouncing in between them.
They took Verryn’s body and set it on the stretcher. Their hands working fast. They were placing white packs down on his blood-drenched head.
In seconds, they had Verryn back in the bus and were gone.
Cst. Halfkenny and Wolfville Cst. Matt Keith got into the front seats of the cruiser.
“Are you injured?” Halfkenney said. “Fuckers didn’t even check you out.”
“I’m fine,” Digby said. “Nothing hit me.”
Halfkenney pulled away.
“Don’t I have to stay at the scene?” Digby said, not wanting to, but wanting to behave by the book.
“Fuck that,” Cst. Keith said. “We’re getting you out of here.”
Halfkenney drove straight to New Minas Detachment. When they arrived they all went and hid in the back by the Major Crime desk for a few hours. Digby had received no injuries but her arms felt light and she felt light-headed.
Verryn had apparently survived the immediate shooting, but Digby had hit him in the lung and head. He was rushed to the Kentville hospital in life-threatening condition.
As soon as he was stable, he would probably get airlifted to Halifax.
The shooting was going to make big waves in the Nova Scotia press, once word got out. A member of the press shot by a cop, probably fatally.
The media was going to go nuts.
Digby and all the other officers involved had to get their stories straight, fast. They sat at the detective’s table in the Southwest Nova Major Crime Unit area at the end of the back hallway and hashed it out.
Cst. Keith set up the coffee maker and brewed a pot.
Everything had happened so fast.
“Did anyone get his gun? Was it a real gun?” Digby said.
“What do you mean was it a real gun? Of course it was. It was a Jesus 20 guage.”
“I don’t know. I just need to make sure.”
Staff Sgt. Keetch arrived in the building before they could make much more progress than that.
He looked furious. His face was beet red as he lumbered into the back section, making a lot of noise, slamming doors. He walked straight back to the end desks of Major Crime.
“What in the fuck happened?” He was yelling.
Digby felt a sudden surge of anger from his tone of voice. She yelled back. “I was fired on. Thanks for asking, James.”
“-Uh. You don’t talk to me LIKE THAT!” Keetch boomed, pointing a finger and his face was blood red and sweaty, almost purple looking.
“-Hey, c’mon. Please, can we calm down?” Halfkenney stood up and blocked the path between Digby, at the detective’s table and Keetch, plowing down the hallway.
“Halfkenney. What happened?” Keetch demanded, stopping inches from the young officer’s chin.
“It was a good shooting, sir. Two or three of us witnessed it. I’m serious. Digby was tailing Kyle Verryn-“
“Kye Verryn.” Keetch put his hands on his hips and turned sideways, scanning the cubicles. “Can anybody tell me why? Can anybody tell me why Sgt. Digby was tailing Kyle Verryn? Did she receive an order to do so?”
“Fuck off, James.” Digby said.
“You are not in charge of the investigation, Digby!” Keetch yelled and pointed at her again.
“Just settle down.” Digby said. She was totally calm now.
“From what I understand,” Halfkenney said, “she had good reason to be interested in what he was doing. Time was also sensitive. It turns out that he was buying a ticket to leave the country.”
Keetch continued to pivot back and forth with his hands on his hips. He looked at Halfkenney, but said nothing to address his comments. He was still too angry to listen.
“When I left the investigation, yesterday, we had a list of persons-of-interest. We had Kurtis Missions, Jack Missions, Popular Missions, Darlene Missions, the pizza delivery guy and the taxi driver. Nowhere on that list was Kyle Verryn. Am I right or am I wrong?”
The entire detachment remained silent.
“When I return to the investigation today, I find that a co-worker of the murder victim, a journalist, has been gunned down in a park by the lead investigator-”
Digby chuckled. “I thought you said I was not in charge of the investigation?”
Keetch glared at her. “Don’t be a SMART-ASS!”
Digby stood up. “I intend to file a report on the shooting. But I’ll tell you this: I took the Lee killer down today. That’s the bottom. And right before he took me. So you tell that to whoever asks. Today, you’re team closed the top priority case of this detachment, and to top it all off you don’t have to explain why a cop got killed. Today was the best day of your life, you cocksucker.”
She got up and walked into the penalty box, the only room nearby with a door. She reefed on the door behind her as hard as she could, making a boom sound that echoed off the rafters.
Chapter 122
Rawle Powder flew that night to Edmonton, which took about three hours, and from there took a five-hour bus to Jasper.
When he arrived, it was midnight.
He was forced to sleep on a bench in the bus station until someone came around at 3 a.m. and told him to leave.
It was early spring almost, and it was warm in Jasper. He spent the rest of the night just walking around.
The town was located inside a National Park, which meant homeless people could be arrested and ticketed for ‘illegal camping.’
It was literally illegal to be homeless in Jasper.
On his first full day in town, Rawle hung out in a small park across the street from the train station, which locals called the Patch, since basically it was just a patch of grass in the centre of town.
It was a warm, sunny day for March and the park was full of hippy-types, all sitting around smoking joints and hanging out before work.
Rawle introduced himself to some of the kids that were smoking weed. He was hoping to track Kurtis through the marijuana trade. According to Dee Lee, Kurtis was not only a drug dealer, but a chronic pot smoker. If Rawle could find the right trade routes of marijuana and hash and possibly coke, in time, he would be led unerringly toward Kurtis Missions.
A young construction guy named Michael told him that, as far as he knew, a lot of the weed and coke in town was sold by a cabal of laundry workers at a nearby resort hotel called the Gonquin Inn, one of several hotels on the east end of town.
Rawle stashed his bag in a locker at the bus station and walked to the east side, which took about an hour.
It was early yet, but already the famous Jasper elk were coming down from the forest and wandering through the streets. Rawle had never seen anything like it. They looked like a cross between deer and moose, with gorgeous mahogany red fur. Only the doe’s were in town. The stags would come down later for mating season.
Rawle visited the front office at the Gonquin Inn and tried to get a job in the laundry department. After a quick interview, the laundry manager, a short, dyke-like woman said that the laudry was one of the first places to fill up. “I’m also the head of Housekeeping,” she said. “There’s a job there, if you’re interested.”
Rawle looked at her and blushed. “Are you serious?”
She was dead serious.
He accepted the job as a housekeeper, immediately.
It sounded like a terrible job, but it paid a whopping $12 an hour, which was big money to a Nova Scotian, plus it came with a room, a bed in the “staff-accom” in the basement of the hotel for $190 a month. A row of suites had been set aside in the hotel for staff, since apartments were so scarse.
Rawle went and got his bag from the bus station and moved into a small, grungy hotel room, filled with seven horny male and female teenagers from all across the Commonwealth, who had flocked to Jasper to live for the summer in the Rocky Mountains, sniff coke and jerk eachother off in hotel hot tubs.
The staff-accom was much like the dorms at Dalhousie where Rawle went to university.
Dirt and underwear grew like puffball mushrooms in the corners of the common room and kitchenette. Beer, hot-rock burns, cigarette ashes and the brie-cheese smell of male ejaculate drizzled the carpet and the atmosphere.
All the other “bed-bitches,” as the housekeepers called themselves, had been living together in the cramped staff-accom for a week already. From what Rawle could tell, they interchangeably porked eachother.
When he arrived, it was midnight.
He was forced to sleep on a bench in the bus station until someone came around at 3 a.m. and told him to leave.
It was early spring almost, and it was warm in Jasper. He spent the rest of the night just walking around.
The town was located inside a National Park, which meant homeless people could be arrested and ticketed for ‘illegal camping.’
It was literally illegal to be homeless in Jasper.
On his first full day in town, Rawle hung out in a small park across the street from the train station, which locals called the Patch, since basically it was just a patch of grass in the centre of town.
It was a warm, sunny day for March and the park was full of hippy-types, all sitting around smoking joints and hanging out before work.
Rawle introduced himself to some of the kids that were smoking weed. He was hoping to track Kurtis through the marijuana trade. According to Dee Lee, Kurtis was not only a drug dealer, but a chronic pot smoker. If Rawle could find the right trade routes of marijuana and hash and possibly coke, in time, he would be led unerringly toward Kurtis Missions.
A young construction guy named Michael told him that, as far as he knew, a lot of the weed and coke in town was sold by a cabal of laundry workers at a nearby resort hotel called the Gonquin Inn, one of several hotels on the east end of town.
Rawle stashed his bag in a locker at the bus station and walked to the east side, which took about an hour.
It was early yet, but already the famous Jasper elk were coming down from the forest and wandering through the streets. Rawle had never seen anything like it. They looked like a cross between deer and moose, with gorgeous mahogany red fur. Only the doe’s were in town. The stags would come down later for mating season.
Rawle visited the front office at the Gonquin Inn and tried to get a job in the laundry department. After a quick interview, the laundry manager, a short, dyke-like woman said that the laudry was one of the first places to fill up. “I’m also the head of Housekeeping,” she said. “There’s a job there, if you’re interested.”
Rawle looked at her and blushed. “Are you serious?”
She was dead serious.
He accepted the job as a housekeeper, immediately.
It sounded like a terrible job, but it paid a whopping $12 an hour, which was big money to a Nova Scotian, plus it came with a room, a bed in the “staff-accom” in the basement of the hotel for $190 a month. A row of suites had been set aside in the hotel for staff, since apartments were so scarse.
Rawle went and got his bag from the bus station and moved into a small, grungy hotel room, filled with seven horny male and female teenagers from all across the Commonwealth, who had flocked to Jasper to live for the summer in the Rocky Mountains, sniff coke and jerk eachother off in hotel hot tubs.
The staff-accom was much like the dorms at Dalhousie where Rawle went to university.
Dirt and underwear grew like puffball mushrooms in the corners of the common room and kitchenette. Beer, hot-rock burns, cigarette ashes and the brie-cheese smell of male ejaculate drizzled the carpet and the atmosphere.
All the other “bed-bitches,” as the housekeepers called themselves, had been living together in the cramped staff-accom for a week already. From what Rawle could tell, they interchangeably porked eachother.
Chapter 123
The next morning at work, Rawle Powder used the internet in one of the hotel suites to check his email. There was an email from Cst. Keith, sent two days ago:
“Rawle, I don’t know where you’re going, but Kelloway says you’re not going down to her place, you lying cocksucker. I called her because I picked up your car, stupid. Whatever. Your dog’s fine. The car got towed. I paid your fine (yeah right), in case you’re wondering where your car is. It’s at my place. Hope your ok, bud. Send me an email when you touch ground. Matt.”
Rawle smiled and deleted the email. His luck seemed to be holding out.
The bloody clothes were safe, unless Cst. Keith rummaged the spare tire well of the Golf, for some reason.
He pulled up the Gazette website to read the online edition of the paper.
There was a huge photo of Kyle Verryn right on the front page.
“Valley man shot dead.”
Kyle Verryn had been shot dead.
Technically, the story said he had been shot two days earlier, during a shootout with a police officer, then was airlifted to Halifax and listed in critical condition at Victoria General. Shot in the neck and lung. Then he died yesterday at two in the afternoon.
Rawle was just dumfounded. He read the story over again three times. It had Elnora Redden’s byline on it.
What the hell?
There was no explanation for the shooting, only that police had recovered an unidentified firearm from Verryn’s body. No other details.
Jesus Christ.
Rawle Googled the name ‘Kyle Verryn’ in Google News and read every news story he could find. There was no more real information, only the promise of a police investigation into the shooting, which would be conducted by an outside police force.
“Rawle, I don’t know where you’re going, but Kelloway says you’re not going down to her place, you lying cocksucker. I called her because I picked up your car, stupid. Whatever. Your dog’s fine. The car got towed. I paid your fine (yeah right), in case you’re wondering where your car is. It’s at my place. Hope your ok, bud. Send me an email when you touch ground. Matt.”
Rawle smiled and deleted the email. His luck seemed to be holding out.
The bloody clothes were safe, unless Cst. Keith rummaged the spare tire well of the Golf, for some reason.
He pulled up the Gazette website to read the online edition of the paper.
There was a huge photo of Kyle Verryn right on the front page.
“Valley man shot dead.”
Kyle Verryn had been shot dead.
Technically, the story said he had been shot two days earlier, during a shootout with a police officer, then was airlifted to Halifax and listed in critical condition at Victoria General. Shot in the neck and lung. Then he died yesterday at two in the afternoon.
Rawle was just dumfounded. He read the story over again three times. It had Elnora Redden’s byline on it.
What the hell?
There was no explanation for the shooting, only that police had recovered an unidentified firearm from Verryn’s body. No other details.
Jesus Christ.
Rawle Googled the name ‘Kyle Verryn’ in Google News and read every news story he could find. There was no more real information, only the promise of a police investigation into the shooting, which would be conducted by an outside police force.
Chapter 124
Rawle Powder bought small amounts of weed and hash almost every day and shared his joints with anyone he came across in the Patch. He mainly bought his dope from the huge hippy kid population.
Each time he bought a ten-piece or a gram off someone, he asked them if they knew anyone in town who fit the description he had been given of Kurtis Missions.
It didn’t take long for a couple people to tell him about a guy who’d come to town a few weeks ago and hung out a lot in the Patch a lot.
People said his name was ‘John Dee,’ and he worked at the condo construction site downtown, sleeping on site with special permission of the foreman.
They described him as athletic, thin, with a shaved head, freckles, muscular neck, several missing teeth and one eye lighter than the other.
It was a near-perfect description of Kurtis, except Kurtis had a beard and long hair.
Rawle went to check the story out and quickly learned the John guy quit the construction job a week or two ago after getting his first paycheck.
Rawle talked for a long time with a thick-armed construction guy at the site named Michael who said he’d worked with ‘John.’
“He kind of freaked me out,” Michael said. “He talked about sex a lot. How he’s this big player and made all these chicks cry when he fucked them.”
Michael didn’t know where John had gone, but confirmed his general description and that he had one eye brighter than the other, kind of a whiter blue, making his face look like a husky, which is what Kurtis had. Plus four missing teeth between his two top incisors.
It was a near perfect ID, as far as Rawle could tell, besides the beard and the haircut.
Very exciting.
He couldn’t believe it, but it seemed that he was actually on track. He was actually good at this.
He made friends with Michael and told him to watch out if he ever saw ‘John’ again.
“He’s just this guy. He owes me money. Don’t tell nobody I’m looking for him. He’s liable to run off.”
Each time he bought a ten-piece or a gram off someone, he asked them if they knew anyone in town who fit the description he had been given of Kurtis Missions.
It didn’t take long for a couple people to tell him about a guy who’d come to town a few weeks ago and hung out a lot in the Patch a lot.
People said his name was ‘John Dee,’ and he worked at the condo construction site downtown, sleeping on site with special permission of the foreman.
They described him as athletic, thin, with a shaved head, freckles, muscular neck, several missing teeth and one eye lighter than the other.
It was a near-perfect description of Kurtis, except Kurtis had a beard and long hair.
Rawle went to check the story out and quickly learned the John guy quit the construction job a week or two ago after getting his first paycheck.
Rawle talked for a long time with a thick-armed construction guy at the site named Michael who said he’d worked with ‘John.’
“He kind of freaked me out,” Michael said. “He talked about sex a lot. How he’s this big player and made all these chicks cry when he fucked them.”
Michael didn’t know where John had gone, but confirmed his general description and that he had one eye brighter than the other, kind of a whiter blue, making his face look like a husky, which is what Kurtis had. Plus four missing teeth between his two top incisors.
It was a near perfect ID, as far as Rawle could tell, besides the beard and the haircut.
Very exciting.
He couldn’t believe it, but it seemed that he was actually on track. He was actually good at this.
He made friends with Michael and told him to watch out if he ever saw ‘John’ again.
“He’s just this guy. He owes me money. Don’t tell nobody I’m looking for him. He’s liable to run off.”
Chapter 125
Weeks passed.
There was still almost nothing on the Kyle Verryn shooting in the Nova Scotia newspapers, except that a probe of the shooting was being conducted by Codiac Region RCMP in New Brunswick.
Elnora Redden had filed a few stories, but the wall of silence from police seemed pretty thick. She had a few anonymous quotes from police sources, but they were staying pretty tight lipped, it seemed. There was some vague speculation that police may have been pursuing Verryn as a potential suspect in the Lee double homicide, but Rawle brushed that aside. He was pretty sure, he knew who the killer was: Kurtis Missions.
Elnora had wrote in one story that Verryn had apparently been under police surveillance at the time of the shooting, and in another story, she broke the news that he apparently fired a licensed shotgun at a police officer, who in turn shot and killed him.
There was nothing else, by way of motive to explain what had happened and why. Nothing that could help Rawle understand it.
Why would Kyle Verryn get into a shootout with a cop?
It just made no sense.
Every day he went to work at his housekeeping job and kept up appearances and maintained his place to live.
It was a strange thing for him to be doing. He was supposed to be tracking a killer, not cleaning toilets in Jasper, Alberta.
Every morning, he woke up with a taste of strange metal in his mouth, from constant unrest and the pull to move on.
If Kurtis had been here at some point, he was gone now, Rawle thought, and his trail was just growing colder and colder.
His instinct was that Kurtis was long gone.
Moved on down the province, probably to B.C. or one of the big Alberta cities, Calgary or Edmonton.
Why would he stay here?
He stood out too much. Everybody in town knows everyone else. Too dangerous for a man trying to hide and be anonymous.
The way people described the ‘John Dee’ guy was like they hated him.
Why would he stay in a place where no one liked him?
There was still almost nothing on the Kyle Verryn shooting in the Nova Scotia newspapers, except that a probe of the shooting was being conducted by Codiac Region RCMP in New Brunswick.
Elnora Redden had filed a few stories, but the wall of silence from police seemed pretty thick. She had a few anonymous quotes from police sources, but they were staying pretty tight lipped, it seemed. There was some vague speculation that police may have been pursuing Verryn as a potential suspect in the Lee double homicide, but Rawle brushed that aside. He was pretty sure, he knew who the killer was: Kurtis Missions.
Elnora had wrote in one story that Verryn had apparently been under police surveillance at the time of the shooting, and in another story, she broke the news that he apparently fired a licensed shotgun at a police officer, who in turn shot and killed him.
There was nothing else, by way of motive to explain what had happened and why. Nothing that could help Rawle understand it.
Why would Kyle Verryn get into a shootout with a cop?
It just made no sense.
Every day he went to work at his housekeeping job and kept up appearances and maintained his place to live.
It was a strange thing for him to be doing. He was supposed to be tracking a killer, not cleaning toilets in Jasper, Alberta.
Every morning, he woke up with a taste of strange metal in his mouth, from constant unrest and the pull to move on.
If Kurtis had been here at some point, he was gone now, Rawle thought, and his trail was just growing colder and colder.
His instinct was that Kurtis was long gone.
Moved on down the province, probably to B.C. or one of the big Alberta cities, Calgary or Edmonton.
Why would he stay here?
He stood out too much. Everybody in town knows everyone else. Too dangerous for a man trying to hide and be anonymous.
The way people described the ‘John Dee’ guy was like they hated him.
Why would he stay in a place where no one liked him?
Chapter 126
The hot weather was coming fast.
Codiac RCMP had finished their investigation into the shooting of Kyle Verryn and determined that the unidentified senior police officer who gunned him down had no choice but to kill him. The officer had followed all proper procedure to the letter.
Rawle Powder read about it on the internet.
He didn’t feel quite right in Jasper anymore, for some reason.
He felt backed into a corner somehow, by events and by the fortress of the Rocky Mountains that surrounded him on all sides, and seemed to trap him here.
He wanted to leave, but was afraid he was missing something, some clue, that would lead him to Kurtis Missions.
Housekeeping, the cover job, was really starting to wear on his nerves.
He nearly puked every morning as he sprayed and scooped the phlegm, matted hair, shit, blood and discharge out of hotel room toilets and bathtubs.
He caught himself missing urine stains on dirty toilet seats and hallucinating them on clean ones.
His friend Michael told Rawle that he knew a good guy to talk to, to get information on the local drug trade from.
Olivier Something, a Montreal kid who slept at the Jasper train station off Connaught Drive. He slept in the side part, behind a set of luggage lockers, just out of the line of sight of the ticket window.
At night, the Tim Horton’s-sized train station would be dead. If anybody needed a locker they probably wouldn’t bother using the ones in the back corner, but still, Rawle had to admire the guy’s balls.
Olivier was the quiet type, but not quiet-shy, quiet-at-peace with himself.
He was matured well beyond his 17 years, by a lifetime of street travel and poverty.
He had absolutely no money, food or tobacco in the world, just a small pack of clothes worn so thin they were nearly a part of his flesh.
Had he done something? Was he running from something?
As far as Michael knew, he’d just been unhappy and treated badly at home, like so many others, so he left the house at 14, like scores of others.
He was so exposed to the elements by now that his skin made him look Arabic.
He spoke very broken English and fine Montreal French.
He had nothing and didn’t seem worried.
When Michael pointed him out, the first time, he was quietly stealing meat-sticks in the Wink’s convenience store downtown.
By way of assistant head housekeeper Kale, Michael and Rawle were able to get him a housekeeping job at the Gonquin, after convincing him it was an easy gig and a safer place than the train station.
Olivier agreed.
It turned out that all the staff-accoms were full by now, so they moved Olivier into a housekeeping closet on the first floor. He lived in the closet full of cleaning chemicals for several days and came over to Rawle’s staff-accom every day after work, for dinner.
Rawle would cook beans, fry-steak and black hotel coffee for Michael and Olivier, every night.
Olivier accepted charity graciously, but never asked for anything. He either starved in silence or had already stolen what he wanted hours earlier.
He reminded Rawle of a strip of dark, sizzled meat on a long, hard bone. There was not an ounce of fat on him, not on his flesh and not on his personality, either.
After work one day, Olivier and Rawle tucked in to one the Gonquin Inn’s outdoor hot tubs to smoke a J.
It was a warm day and Rawle felt like he was melting in the burning frothy water.
Olivier rolled a big joint on the edge of the tub, without getting it wet.
His lips were big and angular and whenever he took a drag from the joint he touched the smoky butt to his forehead, where the Eye of Shiva was.
“Why do you do that?” Rawle said.
“Res-pect.”
Olivier told Rawle about the time he stumbled on a football field-size outdoor grow-op in back of some woods on Salt Spring Island.
He had found it just around sunrise during his meanderings. Noone was around so he quickly started picking buds as if they were ripe blackberries and began filling his knapsack, trying to be so quiet. But then, just like that, the old hippy came, clang! stamping out the front door of the metal Airstream trailer with his rifle aimed and firing: Smack! Smack! Smack!
Olivier was hit. Shot in the leg with a salt bullet.
He turned and floundered intot he bushes but he had to run-run-run with the bullet burning and flaming in his thigh. And waiting out long days of pain alone in the woods until the bullet dissolved, hurting more and more the more it melted.
He showed Rawle a dark scar that looked like a melanoma on his thin upper thigh, up near the crotch.
Rawle asked him if he knew ‘John Dee.’
“I need badly to find the man.”
“John Dee? I knew him.”
“Do you know where he is?”
“Now? No. How important is it?”
“It’s everything. It’s life and death.”
“Then someone you should talk about it with is my friend,” he said, in his troubled English.
“Who? What do you mean?”
“My friend was John Dee’s boyfriend.”
Codiac RCMP had finished their investigation into the shooting of Kyle Verryn and determined that the unidentified senior police officer who gunned him down had no choice but to kill him. The officer had followed all proper procedure to the letter.
Rawle Powder read about it on the internet.
He didn’t feel quite right in Jasper anymore, for some reason.
He felt backed into a corner somehow, by events and by the fortress of the Rocky Mountains that surrounded him on all sides, and seemed to trap him here.
He wanted to leave, but was afraid he was missing something, some clue, that would lead him to Kurtis Missions.
Housekeeping, the cover job, was really starting to wear on his nerves.
He nearly puked every morning as he sprayed and scooped the phlegm, matted hair, shit, blood and discharge out of hotel room toilets and bathtubs.
He caught himself missing urine stains on dirty toilet seats and hallucinating them on clean ones.
His friend Michael told Rawle that he knew a good guy to talk to, to get information on the local drug trade from.
Olivier Something, a Montreal kid who slept at the Jasper train station off Connaught Drive. He slept in the side part, behind a set of luggage lockers, just out of the line of sight of the ticket window.
At night, the Tim Horton’s-sized train station would be dead. If anybody needed a locker they probably wouldn’t bother using the ones in the back corner, but still, Rawle had to admire the guy’s balls.
Olivier was the quiet type, but not quiet-shy, quiet-at-peace with himself.
He was matured well beyond his 17 years, by a lifetime of street travel and poverty.
He had absolutely no money, food or tobacco in the world, just a small pack of clothes worn so thin they were nearly a part of his flesh.
Had he done something? Was he running from something?
As far as Michael knew, he’d just been unhappy and treated badly at home, like so many others, so he left the house at 14, like scores of others.
He was so exposed to the elements by now that his skin made him look Arabic.
He spoke very broken English and fine Montreal French.
He had nothing and didn’t seem worried.
When Michael pointed him out, the first time, he was quietly stealing meat-sticks in the Wink’s convenience store downtown.
By way of assistant head housekeeper Kale, Michael and Rawle were able to get him a housekeeping job at the Gonquin, after convincing him it was an easy gig and a safer place than the train station.
Olivier agreed.
It turned out that all the staff-accoms were full by now, so they moved Olivier into a housekeeping closet on the first floor. He lived in the closet full of cleaning chemicals for several days and came over to Rawle’s staff-accom every day after work, for dinner.
Rawle would cook beans, fry-steak and black hotel coffee for Michael and Olivier, every night.
Olivier accepted charity graciously, but never asked for anything. He either starved in silence or had already stolen what he wanted hours earlier.
He reminded Rawle of a strip of dark, sizzled meat on a long, hard bone. There was not an ounce of fat on him, not on his flesh and not on his personality, either.
After work one day, Olivier and Rawle tucked in to one the Gonquin Inn’s outdoor hot tubs to smoke a J.
It was a warm day and Rawle felt like he was melting in the burning frothy water.
Olivier rolled a big joint on the edge of the tub, without getting it wet.
His lips were big and angular and whenever he took a drag from the joint he touched the smoky butt to his forehead, where the Eye of Shiva was.
“Why do you do that?” Rawle said.
“Res-pect.”
Olivier told Rawle about the time he stumbled on a football field-size outdoor grow-op in back of some woods on Salt Spring Island.
He had found it just around sunrise during his meanderings. Noone was around so he quickly started picking buds as if they were ripe blackberries and began filling his knapsack, trying to be so quiet. But then, just like that, the old hippy came, clang! stamping out the front door of the metal Airstream trailer with his rifle aimed and firing: Smack! Smack! Smack!
Olivier was hit. Shot in the leg with a salt bullet.
He turned and floundered intot he bushes but he had to run-run-run with the bullet burning and flaming in his thigh. And waiting out long days of pain alone in the woods until the bullet dissolved, hurting more and more the more it melted.
He showed Rawle a dark scar that looked like a melanoma on his thin upper thigh, up near the crotch.
Rawle asked him if he knew ‘John Dee.’
“I need badly to find the man.”
“John Dee? I knew him.”
“Do you know where he is?”
“Now? No. How important is it?”
“It’s everything. It’s life and death.”
“Then someone you should talk about it with is my friend,” he said, in his troubled English.
“Who? What do you mean?”
“My friend was John Dee’s boyfriend.”
Chapter 127
Rawle told his roommate Kale to tell the head housekeeper he was quitting his job as a bed-bitch the next morning, and he moved out of the staff-accom that night.
Olivier moved out of his storage closet, and together they joined up with some other Montreal kids living beneath the Second River Bridge, a small concrete span over a thin tributary of the Athabasca River, on the outskirts of town, towards Old Fort Point.
They were trying to find Olivier’s friend, Gillespe, but he was notoriously difficult to track. He slept in a new place every night and often picked up and left Jasper on a whim or when he felt the heat was getting too hot. Gillespe dealt coke and hash, Olivier said, which almost guaranteed that he had a connection to bikers.
It was just about mating season and the bull elks were starting to come down from the forest into town to find mates.
The angry, horny bulls would charge Rawle from time to time, if he got in their way: Tall, galloping brown giants with their huge racks down, but all he had to do was step out of the way and they would trundle by like a stagecoach.
Hippies and Montrealers hanging around the Patch were starting to swarm. Everyone was talking and getting angry about the rising arrests for pot possession and illegal camping, both of which the hippies considered to be discriminatory against their way of life.
A lot of the Montreal kids had warrants and pasts and were afraid to get arrested.
There was talk of a “crackdown.”
Were the rangers getting picky?
It was starting to be a concern, for Rawle too. The last thing he wanted police to take a look at him. They could call his family and everything back home, and tell Kelloway he’d been arrested as a homeless person. He didn’t want to worry Kellwoay with that, she was already worried enough. She was faring better not knowing the specifics of what he was doing. Plus, there was the bloody clothing in his trunk.
Game over.
Olivier moved out of his storage closet, and together they joined up with some other Montreal kids living beneath the Second River Bridge, a small concrete span over a thin tributary of the Athabasca River, on the outskirts of town, towards Old Fort Point.
They were trying to find Olivier’s friend, Gillespe, but he was notoriously difficult to track. He slept in a new place every night and often picked up and left Jasper on a whim or when he felt the heat was getting too hot. Gillespe dealt coke and hash, Olivier said, which almost guaranteed that he had a connection to bikers.
It was just about mating season and the bull elks were starting to come down from the forest into town to find mates.
The angry, horny bulls would charge Rawle from time to time, if he got in their way: Tall, galloping brown giants with their huge racks down, but all he had to do was step out of the way and they would trundle by like a stagecoach.
Hippies and Montrealers hanging around the Patch were starting to swarm. Everyone was talking and getting angry about the rising arrests for pot possession and illegal camping, both of which the hippies considered to be discriminatory against their way of life.
A lot of the Montreal kids had warrants and pasts and were afraid to get arrested.
There was talk of a “crackdown.”
Were the rangers getting picky?
It was starting to be a concern, for Rawle too. The last thing he wanted police to take a look at him. They could call his family and everything back home, and tell Kelloway he’d been arrested as a homeless person. He didn’t want to worry Kellwoay with that, she was already worried enough. She was faring better not knowing the specifics of what he was doing. Plus, there was the bloody clothing in his trunk.
Game over.
Chapter 128
Being a part of normal society, at least, gave a certain feeling of vague courage; just by having membership in the biggest gang.
In Rawle’s life now, though, that basic, underlying feeling of security normal people have, was gone.
He felt a continuous, gnawing, raw, low-level fear, like he was naked in the woods, all alone and exposed to the elements.
It was exciting.
He was spending so much time alone, hour after hour. It was jarring. Freedom!
He had no family or job now to take up his time, although he missed Athan’s white-toothed grin so badly it made tears squirt into his eyelids, from time to time.
But the rest of the time, he felt exhilarated.
After a few nights, he stopped staying under the bridge, feeling that it was getting too crowded down there. One of the young girls kept blabbing all night long in French, in a disrupting voice, always wanting someone to smoke one more bowl with her before bed, or take one more drink of whiskey. Are you still a-wake? Esqe tu a le Pot?
Someone in the dark would keep whispering and shouting at her to shut up and go to sleep: “Danielle!” over and over, “Dan-yell!”
Rawle started sleeping on the rooftop of the Gonquin Inn, instead, in a little spot he found tucked up against a low wall, with a tin overhang to keep the rain off his sleeping bag.
It turned out to be a good decision.
A few days later, Olivier and the other bridge hippies were all caught by a ranger and arrested.
The person Olivier wanted Rawle to talk to, Kurtis’ former boyfriend, Gillespe finally showed up, after nearly a week.
When Olivier introduced him to Rawle, they seemed to quickly fall “in like” with eachother.
He had long, soft brown cuffs of hair, like a prince in a Knights of the Round Table fairy tale. Creamy skin, high cheekbones, a tender voice and a strangely tall and solid, muscular frame.
It was getting close to 10 in the morning when they met and Gillespe stood up suddenly from the grass and said he had to go to work at his legitimate job as a dish-pig in the Cantonese restaurant downtown. He got up to leave, then asked Rawle if he wanted to come with him.
“They need another dishwasher today. My friend Chris’s away.”
Rawle agreed, although he didn’t understand why Gillespe was washing dishes in a Chinese restaurant.
They walked to work in two minutes. The owner of the restaurant met them in the front. She was a tall, thin Chinese woman. She seemed not to care who Rawle was, just as long as he, or somebody the work.
The restarant was empty but by 10:45 the lunch crowd started pouring in.
Rawle was shuffled into the back kitchen quickly and put to work, spraying syrupy blood and fat out of large plastic tubs and pushing piles of dirty porcelain and utensils through the steel dish machine, and prying the gunk out of a black tar-filled grease-trap.
Buckets of congealed blood and fat waited for some purpose in several corners of the kitchen. “Was that MSG?” Rawle asked Gillespe of one drum of fluid, but he got ignored.
Rawle also saw two enormous steel pots, in a huge metal sink, that were filled with 12-inch, cream yellow, flabby sea-worms of some kind. They smelled like saline and had a rubbery, fatty texture.
“What the fuck are those?” He demanded of Gillespe.
“Just don’t worry about it. It’s food,” Gillespe said. “Get back to work.”
Rawle tried all day to find out what the worms were, but none of the cooks spoke enough English to adequately explain it. They looked like old, pickled pig dicks.
One of the cooks chopped them up into rubbery cubes to be added into God-knew-what.
Gillespe, meanwhile, kept his head down and toiled away hard, all day, as if washing dishes was his actual bread-and-butter job, not dealing.
He was a bizarre person. His wallet was full of cash and yet he rolled cigarettes out of the stained tobacco he crushed from crusty old butts in the restaurant ashtrays, and he ate scraps of food out of dirty bowls, like a street kid.
That was the way these Montreal kids were. They were street kids at heart, whether they had money or not. They could have a thousand dollars in their pocket and they would still pick up a butt from the gutter and smoke it.
The kitchen grew busier and busier, filling with the smell of spice and fats, tinkling porcelain, bowls of warm water, sizzles, and the hot revolting smells of cooking seafood and pork.
Gillespe and Rawle whirred side-by-side around the dish machine, rubbing elbows, sweating through their white t-shirts and wiping slime off on their aprons.
The musical gibbering of the Cantonese cooks went on loudly in the background.
The gay maitre-d touched his finger to Rawle’s asshole, one time, when he walked by as Rawle was bent over the sink, then giggled and gave him a handful of tailor-made cigarettes when Rawle exploded.
“-What the fuck are we doing here?” He asked Gillespe over and over, but got no answer. Not until they finally took a lunch break at close to five o’clock in the afternoon.
They ate a plate of food each from the buffet and went out back behind the restaurant for a cigarette.
“I’ve got tailor-mades,” Rawle said, protesting, but Gillespe lit up one of his ashtray butts.
“No,” he insisted, “This one. This one...”
Some cooks came out briefly to smoke too and eventually a manager of some sort came out, wearing a dark, almost black charcoal business suit. He looked really well put together.
Rawle had seen him in the kitchen, he was the only guy with a suit, and he treated everyone like they were a piece of shit.
He sat down on the curb, but not before locking the door to the kitchen behind him.
“Hello,” he said to Gillespe.
“John Hon. This is a nice friend of mine, name Rawle. He’s from Nova Scotia.”
“Oh, you play the fiddle?” the Chinese man said, smiling.
“Yeah,” Rawle said. “I fiddle with it between my legs.”
The man Gillespe called ‘Hon’ offered Rawle a cigarette of a brand he didn’t recognize. The tobacco inside was a very dark, almost black.
“Thanks, Mr. Hon,” Gillespe said, politely. “My friend needs a job for a couple days.”
“Yeah,” Hon said. “I told you. I don’t care who you bring, just bring somebody, every day.”
Were they talking about dishes or something else? Rawle had no idea.
“And one other thing,” Gillespe continued. “He has a person from back in his home that he heard was here in town. He’s trying to find him. It turns out it’s John Dee. Except his name is really…. What is it?”
Gillespe looked over at Rawle.
“Kurtis Missions.”
“Mission? That a funny name,” Mr. Hon said, giggling almost. He had bright black eyes. “He a spy or something?”
“No. He just owes me some money,” Rawle said, although he knew Mr. Hon was trying to make a joke. “I want to talk to him, real bad. Do you know where he is?”
Hon stopped smiling and bent his long cigarette out on the back-alley pavement.
“I know this man, okay, he work for me, with Gillespie. But other time maybe the people I work with, not know him. He maybe fool me a bit. But what you doing here in the West Cose, I understand. I surprised no one come before. He seem like somebody after him. He seem very nervous.”
“Do you know where I can find him? Who he might be staying with? He’s got to have some friends. It’s important.”
“He gone. John Dee, he drive a van between Jasper and Kooteney. He disappear, after I find out he lie.”
Gillespe looked over at Rawle and gave a grim smile.
“I knew he was trou-ble. The first time I got with him,” Gillespe said in his soft French accent. “I warned all my friends to stay away. Before long, he did not have any friends in Jasp-er. I thought he was a dangerous man.”
“He is,” Rawle said, nodding his head. “He is. I appreciate you telling me this. But what was he doing, for you, if you don’t mind me asking? Was he driving a truck you said?”
Hon seemed upset at the question. “I don’t talk about that. You should know, someone who do that, you should know don’t talk about that. I don’t know you.”
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to give offense…”
Hon said nothing.
“I just need to speculate on where he might have gone,” Rawle continued, treading softly. “Was he driving and ended up somewhere? It sounds like he was run out of Dodge. You think he had friends anywhere? Would he go to Calgary?”
“You probably know more than me,” Hon muttered. “I look in Calgary if I were you. That only other place he would know people from me. Or Kootenay. He did have some connection there, and had our van, but he left the van in Calgary. The van was towed back to me, from Calgary.”
There it was.
Calgary.
Kurtis had been driving a van and it was abandoned in Calgary.
There was proof.
Kurtis was definitely gone from the Jasper, and his last known location was Calgary, probably heading west into B.C..
“His goodwill is gone in Alberta,” Gillespe said, confirming what Rawle was thinking. “He burned bridges here. If he went, he would probab-ly try B.C.”
Rawle nodded. “Kootenay? Where’s that?”
“The Interior.” Gillespe said. “You go to Calgary and turn left. I don’t think he would go there, though. The Kootenay’s is a mountain range. It’s a valley. He might think we would look for him there.”
A valley? Would Kurtis unconsciously seek out a valley, like home?
“So…,” Hon said, curiously. “John Dee. He was a biker? He say he was, but I catch him in lie.”
“Uh…” Rawle said. “I thought he was a hangaround. As far as I know.”
“With Gypsy?”
“Yeah. With the Gypsies. But I don’t know, he’s just a local dealer. Maybe he has no connections out here. That’s the problem. Back home he does, but maybe not out here, I don’t know. I don’t know what he’s doing out here.”
“-He said he knew some man in Calgary I work with. Turn out my guy not know him,” Hon said, crossly. He really had been fooled by Kurtis.
“I shit my pants, for a week. I think he’s definitely 6-Up.”
“No.” Rawle assured Mr. Hon of one thing. “He’s not police. That’s all I know. If there’s one thing I know, it’s that.”
In Rawle’s life now, though, that basic, underlying feeling of security normal people have, was gone.
He felt a continuous, gnawing, raw, low-level fear, like he was naked in the woods, all alone and exposed to the elements.
It was exciting.
He was spending so much time alone, hour after hour. It was jarring. Freedom!
He had no family or job now to take up his time, although he missed Athan’s white-toothed grin so badly it made tears squirt into his eyelids, from time to time.
But the rest of the time, he felt exhilarated.
After a few nights, he stopped staying under the bridge, feeling that it was getting too crowded down there. One of the young girls kept blabbing all night long in French, in a disrupting voice, always wanting someone to smoke one more bowl with her before bed, or take one more drink of whiskey. Are you still a-wake? Esqe tu a le Pot?
Someone in the dark would keep whispering and shouting at her to shut up and go to sleep: “Danielle!” over and over, “Dan-yell!”
Rawle started sleeping on the rooftop of the Gonquin Inn, instead, in a little spot he found tucked up against a low wall, with a tin overhang to keep the rain off his sleeping bag.
It turned out to be a good decision.
A few days later, Olivier and the other bridge hippies were all caught by a ranger and arrested.
The person Olivier wanted Rawle to talk to, Kurtis’ former boyfriend, Gillespe finally showed up, after nearly a week.
When Olivier introduced him to Rawle, they seemed to quickly fall “in like” with eachother.
He had long, soft brown cuffs of hair, like a prince in a Knights of the Round Table fairy tale. Creamy skin, high cheekbones, a tender voice and a strangely tall and solid, muscular frame.
It was getting close to 10 in the morning when they met and Gillespe stood up suddenly from the grass and said he had to go to work at his legitimate job as a dish-pig in the Cantonese restaurant downtown. He got up to leave, then asked Rawle if he wanted to come with him.
“They need another dishwasher today. My friend Chris’s away.”
Rawle agreed, although he didn’t understand why Gillespe was washing dishes in a Chinese restaurant.
They walked to work in two minutes. The owner of the restaurant met them in the front. She was a tall, thin Chinese woman. She seemed not to care who Rawle was, just as long as he, or somebody the work.
The restarant was empty but by 10:45 the lunch crowd started pouring in.
Rawle was shuffled into the back kitchen quickly and put to work, spraying syrupy blood and fat out of large plastic tubs and pushing piles of dirty porcelain and utensils through the steel dish machine, and prying the gunk out of a black tar-filled grease-trap.
Buckets of congealed blood and fat waited for some purpose in several corners of the kitchen. “Was that MSG?” Rawle asked Gillespe of one drum of fluid, but he got ignored.
Rawle also saw two enormous steel pots, in a huge metal sink, that were filled with 12-inch, cream yellow, flabby sea-worms of some kind. They smelled like saline and had a rubbery, fatty texture.
“What the fuck are those?” He demanded of Gillespe.
“Just don’t worry about it. It’s food,” Gillespe said. “Get back to work.”
Rawle tried all day to find out what the worms were, but none of the cooks spoke enough English to adequately explain it. They looked like old, pickled pig dicks.
One of the cooks chopped them up into rubbery cubes to be added into God-knew-what.
Gillespe, meanwhile, kept his head down and toiled away hard, all day, as if washing dishes was his actual bread-and-butter job, not dealing.
He was a bizarre person. His wallet was full of cash and yet he rolled cigarettes out of the stained tobacco he crushed from crusty old butts in the restaurant ashtrays, and he ate scraps of food out of dirty bowls, like a street kid.
That was the way these Montreal kids were. They were street kids at heart, whether they had money or not. They could have a thousand dollars in their pocket and they would still pick up a butt from the gutter and smoke it.
The kitchen grew busier and busier, filling with the smell of spice and fats, tinkling porcelain, bowls of warm water, sizzles, and the hot revolting smells of cooking seafood and pork.
Gillespe and Rawle whirred side-by-side around the dish machine, rubbing elbows, sweating through their white t-shirts and wiping slime off on their aprons.
The musical gibbering of the Cantonese cooks went on loudly in the background.
The gay maitre-d touched his finger to Rawle’s asshole, one time, when he walked by as Rawle was bent over the sink, then giggled and gave him a handful of tailor-made cigarettes when Rawle exploded.
“-What the fuck are we doing here?” He asked Gillespe over and over, but got no answer. Not until they finally took a lunch break at close to five o’clock in the afternoon.
They ate a plate of food each from the buffet and went out back behind the restaurant for a cigarette.
“I’ve got tailor-mades,” Rawle said, protesting, but Gillespe lit up one of his ashtray butts.
“No,” he insisted, “This one. This one...”
Some cooks came out briefly to smoke too and eventually a manager of some sort came out, wearing a dark, almost black charcoal business suit. He looked really well put together.
Rawle had seen him in the kitchen, he was the only guy with a suit, and he treated everyone like they were a piece of shit.
He sat down on the curb, but not before locking the door to the kitchen behind him.
“Hello,” he said to Gillespe.
“John Hon. This is a nice friend of mine, name Rawle. He’s from Nova Scotia.”
“Oh, you play the fiddle?” the Chinese man said, smiling.
“Yeah,” Rawle said. “I fiddle with it between my legs.”
The man Gillespe called ‘Hon’ offered Rawle a cigarette of a brand he didn’t recognize. The tobacco inside was a very dark, almost black.
“Thanks, Mr. Hon,” Gillespe said, politely. “My friend needs a job for a couple days.”
“Yeah,” Hon said. “I told you. I don’t care who you bring, just bring somebody, every day.”
Were they talking about dishes or something else? Rawle had no idea.
“And one other thing,” Gillespe continued. “He has a person from back in his home that he heard was here in town. He’s trying to find him. It turns out it’s John Dee. Except his name is really…. What is it?”
Gillespe looked over at Rawle.
“Kurtis Missions.”
“Mission? That a funny name,” Mr. Hon said, giggling almost. He had bright black eyes. “He a spy or something?”
“No. He just owes me some money,” Rawle said, although he knew Mr. Hon was trying to make a joke. “I want to talk to him, real bad. Do you know where he is?”
Hon stopped smiling and bent his long cigarette out on the back-alley pavement.
“I know this man, okay, he work for me, with Gillespie. But other time maybe the people I work with, not know him. He maybe fool me a bit. But what you doing here in the West Cose, I understand. I surprised no one come before. He seem like somebody after him. He seem very nervous.”
“Do you know where I can find him? Who he might be staying with? He’s got to have some friends. It’s important.”
“He gone. John Dee, he drive a van between Jasper and Kooteney. He disappear, after I find out he lie.”
Gillespe looked over at Rawle and gave a grim smile.
“I knew he was trou-ble. The first time I got with him,” Gillespe said in his soft French accent. “I warned all my friends to stay away. Before long, he did not have any friends in Jasp-er. I thought he was a dangerous man.”
“He is,” Rawle said, nodding his head. “He is. I appreciate you telling me this. But what was he doing, for you, if you don’t mind me asking? Was he driving a truck you said?”
Hon seemed upset at the question. “I don’t talk about that. You should know, someone who do that, you should know don’t talk about that. I don’t know you.”
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to give offense…”
Hon said nothing.
“I just need to speculate on where he might have gone,” Rawle continued, treading softly. “Was he driving and ended up somewhere? It sounds like he was run out of Dodge. You think he had friends anywhere? Would he go to Calgary?”
“You probably know more than me,” Hon muttered. “I look in Calgary if I were you. That only other place he would know people from me. Or Kootenay. He did have some connection there, and had our van, but he left the van in Calgary. The van was towed back to me, from Calgary.”
There it was.
Calgary.
Kurtis had been driving a van and it was abandoned in Calgary.
There was proof.
Kurtis was definitely gone from the Jasper, and his last known location was Calgary, probably heading west into B.C..
“His goodwill is gone in Alberta,” Gillespe said, confirming what Rawle was thinking. “He burned bridges here. If he went, he would probab-ly try B.C.”
Rawle nodded. “Kootenay? Where’s that?”
“The Interior.” Gillespe said. “You go to Calgary and turn left. I don’t think he would go there, though. The Kootenay’s is a mountain range. It’s a valley. He might think we would look for him there.”
A valley? Would Kurtis unconsciously seek out a valley, like home?
“So…,” Hon said, curiously. “John Dee. He was a biker? He say he was, but I catch him in lie.”
“Uh…” Rawle said. “I thought he was a hangaround. As far as I know.”
“With Gypsy?”
“Yeah. With the Gypsies. But I don’t know, he’s just a local dealer. Maybe he has no connections out here. That’s the problem. Back home he does, but maybe not out here, I don’t know. I don’t know what he’s doing out here.”
“-He said he knew some man in Calgary I work with. Turn out my guy not know him,” Hon said, crossly. He really had been fooled by Kurtis.
“I shit my pants, for a week. I think he’s definitely 6-Up.”
“No.” Rawle assured Mr. Hon of one thing. “He’s not police. That’s all I know. If there’s one thing I know, it’s that.”
Chapter 129
He found Michael in the Patch, after work, riding around on a tiny, low-rider style bicycle.
Rawle looked at him and cursed aloud: “Fuck!”
“What are you doing?”
“I have to get to the Kootenays! Fast.”
Michael raised his eyebrows. “Ready to go? I need to get some pot, then let’s go. You put gas in the van, I’ll drive ‘er. I’ll drive her as far as Calgary and back.”
“Oh my God, you’re a life-saver.”
They got into the Econoline and broke out for Calgary, without saying goodbye to anybody.
Olivier and Gillespe watched them go from the patch and waved.
Michael tried to smoke a cigarette but winced at the taste. “It tastes like shit.”
They only smoked marijuana, the whole way to Calgary.
Michael drove Rawle out to the highway, heading toward Banff, and they said a quick goodbye, hugging eachother.
“Thanks, man.”
“Thank you. I would have been bored, otherwise.”
Then Michael drove away, back to Jasper.
Back to work.
On more than one occasion, in the last few weeks, Rawle had found himself alone, looking down a vacant road, wondering where to Christ Kurtis Missions was.
But, this was not one of those times.
He gazed down the empty highway and saw nothing. Flat wasteland, road, no cars, nothing. Just at the horizon was a tiny wall of mountains in the distance, like a row of teeth. The Rocky Mountains.
He knew it was the right way to go.
In about 15 minutes, he got picked up by a Pakistani man in the dry-walling business. An exceptional mood infected the vehicle and Rawle laughed in the man’s face for a long time. The man was only going a few minutes down the road.
He worked for his brother, he said, who was much richer than him. His brother had seduced his wife away a month ago. And yet he still worked for him, as if for the ultimate insult.
“I’ll quit pretty soon,” the man said, near the end of the ride, “or maybe I’ll kill him.”
Rawle got dropped off at a gas station and went straight for the pay phone, to make his calling-card call to Dee Lee.
Glen Frederick answered, his deep voice unmistakable. There was a party in the background. Glenny seemed drunk and started giving Rawle shit for not being in more regular contact.
“Calgary! Fuck. You idiot, we had a sighting. He’s in B.C. He’s in the Okanagan Valley, as we speak.”
Valley, Rawle thought. A valley, west of Banff, but not the Kootenays. The Okanagan. It made sense. “Don’t worry, I’m heading that way. I’ll find him. Where’d you get that from?”
“What do you care, man? You know, Raoul, it used to be when people questioned me, I slit their throat.”
Rawle grumbled under his breath. “For fuck’s sake. You’re a real tough guy, aren’t ya, Glenny? Are you always on?”
“Ah-ah-ah. See, I knew we’d get you comin’ out of your shell, Raoul… Our friend Jackie Atwell’s sister lives out there. She seen him. Except, he has a buzzcut and no beard no more.”
“That’s true. I’ve been told the same thing.”
“Good. She said he’s picking fruit, like a bum, down there. There’s a lot of bums there, picking fruit. What’s, uhh, the name of Kurtis’ town again?” Glenny called out to someone on his end. “Hold on a sec…”
He came back after a moment. “-Kelowna. He’s living in Kelowna, picking fruit. The pickers down there follow the crop, so… Head to Kelowna first, but assume he could be anywhere’s in the valley. When the crop’s over- cherries- he might move on. He might try to cross the border. The Pork would have issued an alert to Border Security when they made Kurtis a person-of-interest. If he tries to cross the border now, the cops will get him, unless he has really good fake ID. Either way, if he tries to cross, we’ll lose him for good. So, don’t let him.”
“Okay,” Rawle said. “Anything else? What’s everyone up to back home?”
“Your wife says she loves you, and to come home soon.”
Rawle looked at him and cursed aloud: “Fuck!”
“What are you doing?”
“I have to get to the Kootenays! Fast.”
Michael raised his eyebrows. “Ready to go? I need to get some pot, then let’s go. You put gas in the van, I’ll drive ‘er. I’ll drive her as far as Calgary and back.”
“Oh my God, you’re a life-saver.”
They got into the Econoline and broke out for Calgary, without saying goodbye to anybody.
Olivier and Gillespe watched them go from the patch and waved.
Michael tried to smoke a cigarette but winced at the taste. “It tastes like shit.”
They only smoked marijuana, the whole way to Calgary.
Michael drove Rawle out to the highway, heading toward Banff, and they said a quick goodbye, hugging eachother.
“Thanks, man.”
“Thank you. I would have been bored, otherwise.”
Then Michael drove away, back to Jasper.
Back to work.
On more than one occasion, in the last few weeks, Rawle had found himself alone, looking down a vacant road, wondering where to Christ Kurtis Missions was.
But, this was not one of those times.
He gazed down the empty highway and saw nothing. Flat wasteland, road, no cars, nothing. Just at the horizon was a tiny wall of mountains in the distance, like a row of teeth. The Rocky Mountains.
He knew it was the right way to go.
In about 15 minutes, he got picked up by a Pakistani man in the dry-walling business. An exceptional mood infected the vehicle and Rawle laughed in the man’s face for a long time. The man was only going a few minutes down the road.
He worked for his brother, he said, who was much richer than him. His brother had seduced his wife away a month ago. And yet he still worked for him, as if for the ultimate insult.
“I’ll quit pretty soon,” the man said, near the end of the ride, “or maybe I’ll kill him.”
Rawle got dropped off at a gas station and went straight for the pay phone, to make his calling-card call to Dee Lee.
Glen Frederick answered, his deep voice unmistakable. There was a party in the background. Glenny seemed drunk and started giving Rawle shit for not being in more regular contact.
“Calgary! Fuck. You idiot, we had a sighting. He’s in B.C. He’s in the Okanagan Valley, as we speak.”
Valley, Rawle thought. A valley, west of Banff, but not the Kootenays. The Okanagan. It made sense. “Don’t worry, I’m heading that way. I’ll find him. Where’d you get that from?”
“What do you care, man? You know, Raoul, it used to be when people questioned me, I slit their throat.”
Rawle grumbled under his breath. “For fuck’s sake. You’re a real tough guy, aren’t ya, Glenny? Are you always on?”
“Ah-ah-ah. See, I knew we’d get you comin’ out of your shell, Raoul… Our friend Jackie Atwell’s sister lives out there. She seen him. Except, he has a buzzcut and no beard no more.”
“That’s true. I’ve been told the same thing.”
“Good. She said he’s picking fruit, like a bum, down there. There’s a lot of bums there, picking fruit. What’s, uhh, the name of Kurtis’ town again?” Glenny called out to someone on his end. “Hold on a sec…”
He came back after a moment. “-Kelowna. He’s living in Kelowna, picking fruit. The pickers down there follow the crop, so… Head to Kelowna first, but assume he could be anywhere’s in the valley. When the crop’s over- cherries- he might move on. He might try to cross the border. The Pork would have issued an alert to Border Security when they made Kurtis a person-of-interest. If he tries to cross the border now, the cops will get him, unless he has really good fake ID. Either way, if he tries to cross, we’ll lose him for good. So, don’t let him.”
“Okay,” Rawle said. “Anything else? What’s everyone up to back home?”
“Your wife says she loves you, and to come home soon.”
Chapter 130
Cocksucker.
Rawle felt tears well up into his eyes as he hung up the phone.
If they do anything to Kelloway, I’ll kill them and watch the blood gush out...
He never realized he loved his wife this much. He was finding out just how much he still loved her.
He’d kill for her.
From the gas station, he continued west, hitching a ride with a cool middle-aged guy, a recovered drug addict who was now a Christian minister who preached the word to offenders in federal prisons out here, like Drumheller. He also set up a food bank and toy drive for the children of long-term offenders.
They talked about Rawle’s problems, vaguely, using no names.
The man said he’d been in Drumheller Penitentiary as both an inmate and as a prison chaplain. He had dealt, often, with the gang members there, Gypsy and otherwise.
“I’ve learned that men really aren’t powerful, Mr. Rawle, like you think. It’s the forces that control them that are strong. None of those guys in Drumheller were worth shit compared to God,” the man said. “That is what kept me protected. I’m not afraid of any man on this earth,” he added, dead serious and with complete conviction. It made Rawle feel good to hear somebody say that. It was how he was starting to feel lately. Fearless.
“I’ll tell you something right now. I’m scared of two things, God and the Devil. That’s all. And grizzly bears.”
In Banff, Rawle walked straight through the bright lights of downtown until he reached a bridge at the top of the main drag, across a medium-sized river.
It was very late at night, almost morning and Rawle was feeling exhausted. He walked across the bridge and then ducked down a clammy bank and explored beneath the structure carefully, looking for a dry place to sleep, out of sight from the Banff park wardens.
The muddy bank was very narrow ansd sloped and the stone foundation of the bridge dug straight up into the girder underbelly. Rawle could not see anyplace he would want to sleep. On a hunch, he jumped up and grabbed the top of the stone foundation and pulled himself up into the girders. At the top of the foundation, he could see, there was actually a little stone compartment there. It was a space big enough for a human body, all walled up out of the wind and light. The compartment seemed almost to have been designed for homeless people. Indeed, it was carpeted with dirty cardboard and garbage, indicating that dozens if not hundreds of street people had slept in this very spot before Rawle. Maybe even Kurtis Missions.
It was pitch dark and smelly inside the tiny stone cave as Rawle crawled in. Rawle sat there crouched over. It smelled like rotten milk or jism inside, but he was too tired to care.
The rectangular cave was just long enough for him to lie down in, but was very cramped. He knew that if he sat up suddenly in the night he would clang his forehead on the massive stone ceiling.
None of the trash seemed to belong to anybody or be recent. He spent a few minutes throwing out the most putrid and organic of the garbage down into the river below, and then laid out his tinfoil thermal blanket and put his sleeping bag down on top of that. At least if there were maggots or anything they would be trapped under the thermal tinfoil.
He used his backpack for a pillow, propping his ears and noseholes high above the cardboard, the garbage and the maggots.
Rawle proceeded to feel very much at home and warm, wrapped in filth and insulating stone, high up out of the howling wind and rain. He watched the rain sprinkle and gush into the river water below. He was even aroused by it all, somehow, something about the dirtiness of his new home. He masturbated thickly and productively into someone’s discarded cotton sock and then threw the drenched article down into the river. The bridge seemed to appreciate how low and bestial Rawle’s grunting sounded. It echoed him, like a responding lover.
Rawle watched the river gliding by, wrinkled by the cold rain and began to sink off into sleep, his cock still hanging out, tingling and drooping in the crisp night air… He fell asleep.
“Hey!”
A snorting man was hunched on top of Rawle’s chest in the opening of the cave.
“…Eh!” Rawle yelled again, struggling for breath. A strong foreign hand groped across his belly.
Rawle snapped up and bashed his head on the stone ceiling. The shape grunted something and climbed in further, but with supernatural speed, in a blur, scampered up and out over the water now across the iron rafters that stitched the bridge together underneath.
Rawle leaned up on his elbow and watched as best he could in the dark. The tall, tight gangly human shape zigzagged out across the water, fifty feet up. It stopped in the middle of the bridge on one of the stone pillars that held up the bridge in the middle, and then flipped out a sleeping bag.
Rawle smiled.
A few minutes later, he heard someone else climbing around in the girders, this time in another alcove on Rawle’s side of the bridge. There must have been two alcoves on each pillar. He could see a shape moving around through a square hole in the stone just past his feet. “Jesus.”
He could hear more murmured voices and coughing too, warped and echoed by the stone and the fatigue of his ears. He was partly asleep still. “A city down here,” he whispered.
Judging by the sounds, there were at least ten people moving into assorted crannies in the bridge. “Rat people,” he dreamed.
People nibbled at the trash. One found the cotton sock somehow and was sucking on it with a hungry rat mouth….
The next morning, the bridge skeleton was quiet.
Rawle felt the warm ashes of fear and mystery left over from the night before in his chest. He felt good.
Who in Banff would be living under a bridge? Where to find them in the daytime?
He got up fairly early and lowered himself down the foundation and walked back toward the busy downtown area.
The surrounding scenery in Bannf was incredible, just like Jasper. Sulphur Mountain looked like some kind of weathered Star Destroyer that had crashed into the earth.
He looked around at people on the street, trying to picture who could possibly be living under the bridge. He wanted to talk to them.
But it seemed inconceivable that any of the touristy people he saw could be bridge people.
Rawle began to feel out of place in Banff, right away, worse than Jasper. He knew immediately that Kurtis Misisons would take one look at this town and move on.
Sometime in the early afternoon, he met a group of three girls outside a cafe where he bought a stale muffin and expensive coffee for lunch.
They were stocking up on coffee and were about to leave town for Kamloops for the weekend.
They offered to take Rawle to the Okanagan Valley where he said he was going to pick fruit. All three of the girls were luscious fruit and they could’ve driven him up the ass for all he cared.
In the back seat, the slender one with the brown buzzcut made amused eyes at Rawle as he climbed into the tiny Civic. Her soapy, gold legs were hanging out everywhere and her cute little high-up jean cutoffs were bursting to be shimmied down.
They sped away from town. Rawle almost made an instant move, feeling the incredible urge to touching the slender one’s lusty legs, but the girls in the front seat were asking him all kinds of questions and he had to concentrate. The girl in the front passenger seat was turned around. He almost got a raging hard-on with all the close up conversation and attention from so many beautiful girls. Rawle hadn’t spoken to a girl in days and hadn’t slept with one since before Kelloway was poisoned.
He’d never been in this part of the country before either. Jasper was one thing, but this was just mind boggling. The Rocky Mountains loafed incredibly on the roadside no matter where the little vehicle went. It was like they were on a raft in the middle of an endless ocean. The mountains looked like some kind of colossal, prehistoric mammals crusted over by seas of renewing trees. This was Rawle’s real entrance into British Columbia and the Rockies. Even the highway could not escape them. It scurried up the sides of them and chewed little tunnels in their toes.
This was truly ancient, broken turmoil of the earth itself, all washed into being beautiful and clean by time, vegetation, water, wind and gravity.
In time, he thought to himself, his own remains would be gazed over like this by some serene beings of the future: His ashes and bones would be the calm, white leavings of a once-tormented life at last at peace.
The foul rot of all his effort and life long blown away.
The girls dropped him off at noon, in a place where the massive orgasm of the mountain had become an after-shudder of hills and valleys, the Okanagan Valley, Kelowna.
The scenery was like big bowls of golden cake and blue ice-cream.
Rawle stood alone at the north end of town, feeling something start to pull at his breath a little.
Kelowna was tucked in at each side by big rolling hills, bright yellow in colour with sun-burnt grass, just drizzled here and there with dark pine trees.
He started to get nervous.
Kurtis Missions was here.
Panic.
His mind began to race. His hands, teeth and throat started to become dry.
His long dry hair blew around his dry eyeballs. He was having a panic attack.
He felt like he was made out of spazzy, whipping-around dry breath, nothing inside him solid…
His throat began to swallow, spasmodically and his eyes blurred and lost focus, rusty gas began rapidly inflating inside his gut...
Then just like that, the panic vanished, and the world came lethally into focus again. He was the same age as Kurtis Missions.
They both were born at the beginning of time itself.
For some reason that made him laugh and laugh, by the side of the road.
Rawle felt tears well up into his eyes as he hung up the phone.
If they do anything to Kelloway, I’ll kill them and watch the blood gush out...
He never realized he loved his wife this much. He was finding out just how much he still loved her.
He’d kill for her.
From the gas station, he continued west, hitching a ride with a cool middle-aged guy, a recovered drug addict who was now a Christian minister who preached the word to offenders in federal prisons out here, like Drumheller. He also set up a food bank and toy drive for the children of long-term offenders.
They talked about Rawle’s problems, vaguely, using no names.
The man said he’d been in Drumheller Penitentiary as both an inmate and as a prison chaplain. He had dealt, often, with the gang members there, Gypsy and otherwise.
“I’ve learned that men really aren’t powerful, Mr. Rawle, like you think. It’s the forces that control them that are strong. None of those guys in Drumheller were worth shit compared to God,” the man said. “That is what kept me protected. I’m not afraid of any man on this earth,” he added, dead serious and with complete conviction. It made Rawle feel good to hear somebody say that. It was how he was starting to feel lately. Fearless.
“I’ll tell you something right now. I’m scared of two things, God and the Devil. That’s all. And grizzly bears.”
In Banff, Rawle walked straight through the bright lights of downtown until he reached a bridge at the top of the main drag, across a medium-sized river.
It was very late at night, almost morning and Rawle was feeling exhausted. He walked across the bridge and then ducked down a clammy bank and explored beneath the structure carefully, looking for a dry place to sleep, out of sight from the Banff park wardens.
The muddy bank was very narrow ansd sloped and the stone foundation of the bridge dug straight up into the girder underbelly. Rawle could not see anyplace he would want to sleep. On a hunch, he jumped up and grabbed the top of the stone foundation and pulled himself up into the girders. At the top of the foundation, he could see, there was actually a little stone compartment there. It was a space big enough for a human body, all walled up out of the wind and light. The compartment seemed almost to have been designed for homeless people. Indeed, it was carpeted with dirty cardboard and garbage, indicating that dozens if not hundreds of street people had slept in this very spot before Rawle. Maybe even Kurtis Missions.
It was pitch dark and smelly inside the tiny stone cave as Rawle crawled in. Rawle sat there crouched over. It smelled like rotten milk or jism inside, but he was too tired to care.
The rectangular cave was just long enough for him to lie down in, but was very cramped. He knew that if he sat up suddenly in the night he would clang his forehead on the massive stone ceiling.
None of the trash seemed to belong to anybody or be recent. He spent a few minutes throwing out the most putrid and organic of the garbage down into the river below, and then laid out his tinfoil thermal blanket and put his sleeping bag down on top of that. At least if there were maggots or anything they would be trapped under the thermal tinfoil.
He used his backpack for a pillow, propping his ears and noseholes high above the cardboard, the garbage and the maggots.
Rawle proceeded to feel very much at home and warm, wrapped in filth and insulating stone, high up out of the howling wind and rain. He watched the rain sprinkle and gush into the river water below. He was even aroused by it all, somehow, something about the dirtiness of his new home. He masturbated thickly and productively into someone’s discarded cotton sock and then threw the drenched article down into the river. The bridge seemed to appreciate how low and bestial Rawle’s grunting sounded. It echoed him, like a responding lover.
Rawle watched the river gliding by, wrinkled by the cold rain and began to sink off into sleep, his cock still hanging out, tingling and drooping in the crisp night air… He fell asleep.
“Hey!”
A snorting man was hunched on top of Rawle’s chest in the opening of the cave.
“…Eh!” Rawle yelled again, struggling for breath. A strong foreign hand groped across his belly.
Rawle snapped up and bashed his head on the stone ceiling. The shape grunted something and climbed in further, but with supernatural speed, in a blur, scampered up and out over the water now across the iron rafters that stitched the bridge together underneath.
Rawle leaned up on his elbow and watched as best he could in the dark. The tall, tight gangly human shape zigzagged out across the water, fifty feet up. It stopped in the middle of the bridge on one of the stone pillars that held up the bridge in the middle, and then flipped out a sleeping bag.
Rawle smiled.
A few minutes later, he heard someone else climbing around in the girders, this time in another alcove on Rawle’s side of the bridge. There must have been two alcoves on each pillar. He could see a shape moving around through a square hole in the stone just past his feet. “Jesus.”
He could hear more murmured voices and coughing too, warped and echoed by the stone and the fatigue of his ears. He was partly asleep still. “A city down here,” he whispered.
Judging by the sounds, there were at least ten people moving into assorted crannies in the bridge. “Rat people,” he dreamed.
People nibbled at the trash. One found the cotton sock somehow and was sucking on it with a hungry rat mouth….
The next morning, the bridge skeleton was quiet.
Rawle felt the warm ashes of fear and mystery left over from the night before in his chest. He felt good.
Who in Banff would be living under a bridge? Where to find them in the daytime?
He got up fairly early and lowered himself down the foundation and walked back toward the busy downtown area.
The surrounding scenery in Bannf was incredible, just like Jasper. Sulphur Mountain looked like some kind of weathered Star Destroyer that had crashed into the earth.
He looked around at people on the street, trying to picture who could possibly be living under the bridge. He wanted to talk to them.
But it seemed inconceivable that any of the touristy people he saw could be bridge people.
Rawle began to feel out of place in Banff, right away, worse than Jasper. He knew immediately that Kurtis Misisons would take one look at this town and move on.
Sometime in the early afternoon, he met a group of three girls outside a cafe where he bought a stale muffin and expensive coffee for lunch.
They were stocking up on coffee and were about to leave town for Kamloops for the weekend.
They offered to take Rawle to the Okanagan Valley where he said he was going to pick fruit. All three of the girls were luscious fruit and they could’ve driven him up the ass for all he cared.
In the back seat, the slender one with the brown buzzcut made amused eyes at Rawle as he climbed into the tiny Civic. Her soapy, gold legs were hanging out everywhere and her cute little high-up jean cutoffs were bursting to be shimmied down.
They sped away from town. Rawle almost made an instant move, feeling the incredible urge to touching the slender one’s lusty legs, but the girls in the front seat were asking him all kinds of questions and he had to concentrate. The girl in the front passenger seat was turned around. He almost got a raging hard-on with all the close up conversation and attention from so many beautiful girls. Rawle hadn’t spoken to a girl in days and hadn’t slept with one since before Kelloway was poisoned.
He’d never been in this part of the country before either. Jasper was one thing, but this was just mind boggling. The Rocky Mountains loafed incredibly on the roadside no matter where the little vehicle went. It was like they were on a raft in the middle of an endless ocean. The mountains looked like some kind of colossal, prehistoric mammals crusted over by seas of renewing trees. This was Rawle’s real entrance into British Columbia and the Rockies. Even the highway could not escape them. It scurried up the sides of them and chewed little tunnels in their toes.
This was truly ancient, broken turmoil of the earth itself, all washed into being beautiful and clean by time, vegetation, water, wind and gravity.
In time, he thought to himself, his own remains would be gazed over like this by some serene beings of the future: His ashes and bones would be the calm, white leavings of a once-tormented life at last at peace.
The foul rot of all his effort and life long blown away.
The girls dropped him off at noon, in a place where the massive orgasm of the mountain had become an after-shudder of hills and valleys, the Okanagan Valley, Kelowna.
The scenery was like big bowls of golden cake and blue ice-cream.
Rawle stood alone at the north end of town, feeling something start to pull at his breath a little.
Kelowna was tucked in at each side by big rolling hills, bright yellow in colour with sun-burnt grass, just drizzled here and there with dark pine trees.
He started to get nervous.
Kurtis Missions was here.
Panic.
His mind began to race. His hands, teeth and throat started to become dry.
His long dry hair blew around his dry eyeballs. He was having a panic attack.
He felt like he was made out of spazzy, whipping-around dry breath, nothing inside him solid…
His throat began to swallow, spasmodically and his eyes blurred and lost focus, rusty gas began rapidly inflating inside his gut...
Then just like that, the panic vanished, and the world came lethally into focus again. He was the same age as Kurtis Missions.
They both were born at the beginning of time itself.
For some reason that made him laugh and laugh, by the side of the road.
Chapter 131
He began to make inquiries in the tiny population of street people living in, or passing through, Kelowna.
He met a guy on the sidewalk who was selling hand-carved wooden marijuana pipes.
Rawle actually recognized him from high school. It was a guy who had been a year or two above him in highs school. He didn’t recognize Rawle, in the slightest, which either meant he had developed a convincing cover identity, or he was just a forgettable person in high school.
Either way, it was probably a good thing.
The guy’s name was Derek Baker. He had been traveling through the Okanagan to pick cherries, but then met a girl instead and moved in with her.
“She was my cherry, right? Hahahaha. It’s okay, her family hates me. They hate me so much, we fight all the time, me and her. I’m probably just going to take off. I’ve almost had enough of this bull-shit. Everyone in town hates the fact that I sell pipes, bud. This is not like the rest of B.C. here. You got to be careful in the valley, ‘cause it’s very tight-ass. They work together to squeeze out pieces of shit like you and me, especially if you are really homeless.”
Rawle asked if he knew anything about a guy with missing teeth named either ‘John Dee’ or Kurtis Missions. “Maybe he tried to buy dope from you?”
“Actually, there was a guy travelling through yesterday. He had a buzzcut. He was hanging around with a fat squaw, and they were on ‘er pretty hard. Drinking a quart of R and R’s between them. And she had a big stash. But fuck she was ugly. I remember ‘cause he was just a young fella. A good looking fella, but she looked to be about 50. She was a hard-looking ticket too. Anyways, he was hanging out at the waterfront. If he’s still there, I’d be surprised. He was making a lot of noise and people like him usually spend the night in the drunk tank and are disappeared in the morning. Know what I mean?”
After that, Rawle walked downtown in the direction of the waterfront.
Lake Okanagan was the largest of several beautiful blue lakes that ran down the valley like a necklace of blue glass beads.
He talked to anybody along the way who would listen.
“Have you seen a man with four front teeth missing?”
An old homeless guy with a white beard like Santa Claus gave him an earful of gibberish in front of the movie threatre, except Rawle was finding lately that he could understand the gibberish of homeless people, which meant either he was going crazy, or he was becoming more in tune with his fellow man.
There really was no such thing as gibberish, he knew now. People heard gibberish perhaps, but no one ever spoke it. Ever.
He sat on a concrete flower box with the homeless guy and just listened to him babble on, like Athan. Rawle didn’t even try to make sense out of what he said. He just listened to the sounds and the tones. It was like listening to poetry.
Rawle started chuckling, and said things back. They had a freestyle conversation, until they were both just smiling and chuckling at eachother like two-year-olds. Rawle felt like they could talk all night.
The old man was saying something about giving him his bicycle, which he said was stashed in a back alley. He didn’t want it anymore because the colour red was a jinx for him, he said. But, Rawle could see someone approaching from behind the old man. Creeping up, staggering drunk.
He walked around the old man and stopped in front of the movie theatre. Then turned around.
“You got a smoke, bud?”
It was Kurtis Missions.
Holy-
Rawle knew right away, it was him.
He had the same hallucinating brown eyes, as his mother in the old Gerry Godsoe photo. And in a weird way, he looked like Darlene, except skinnier, and with a shaved head, and four front teeth missing between his top two incisors.
Rawle had always been the type to never forget a face.
He felt like he predicted this would happen.
This meeting.
Like he was fated by God to find Kurtis Missions, and to set things right.
Rawle looked the young man up and down, slowly, just to make sure he wasn’t hallucinating himself, then took out his pack of loose tobacco and his rolling papers.
“Here. You can roll one, if you want.”
Kurtis sat down next to the old man on a concrete flower bed and began blaring in Rawle’s ear, talking about what a night he’s had, even as the old man continued trying to talk to Rawle in his tiny, poet whisper.
“Shit! So, what’re you guys -alking about?”
Kurtis was loud and obnoxious. Rawle almost wanted to tell him to fuck off and keep moving.
But there was a shift in the air. Rawle and Kurtis would be spending their time together from now on, Kurtis and Rawle. He felt it in his bones. Their paths had crossed for good.
After they were done their cigarettes, Rawle got up and moved along down the street with Kurtis, saying goodbye forever to the nice old man.
It was Cherryfest in the Valley and all kinds of people were milling around in the parks and at the beach at night. Two young people were screwing quietly in the grass square.
Rawle and Kurtis walked by and stared at the girl’s smooth white ass shining in the moonlight.
They slept in the park that night, overlooking Lake Okanagan.
In the morning, they got up early and headed for the highway, heading south down the valley.
Kurtis had no shirt on and his tiny blue knapsack bounced as he walked.
They talked about where they were from.
“Where you from?”
“Nova Scotia.”
“Me too,” Kurtis said, grinning ear to ear, his missing teeth were like a gaping hole inhis face. “Now, isn’t that a coincidence?”
They weren’t on the highway very long.
A big yellow Jeep hopped over onto the shoulder, with a muscular, tanned blonde guy behind the wheel. He said he could take them as far as Penticton, a few towns down.
Rawle sat up front and Kurtis climbed in the back.
The blonde guy pule dout into traffic and told Rawle to reach into the glove box and grab the bag of seed-encrusted buds sitting inside. “I’ll drive. You roll up a cannon, would ya? You got any papers?”
Rawle nodded, rummaging into his pocket.
“And keep on rolling til I ell you to stop. It’s kinda shite weed, so we’ll have to have lotsa cannons. Okay?”
“Look at all the seeds on this,” Rawle said, holdingup a large bud. It looked like a small bright green clump of grapes.
“I’m a grower, man. I got about 500 plants in a forest piece of land, in the Kootenays, but it’s not ready yet. I haven’t harvested yet, so all I got is this crap.”
Kurtis perked up in the back seat.
“Who do you grow for?”
The guy laughed. “Never mind that. But I sell it all in one shot, to one guy, then I don’t do any work the rest of the year. I make 60 grand a year. Just surf Tofino, travel, camp, mountain bike. Rock climb. All that shit. And I’ll never get caught unless my guy gets caught,” the guy said, looking at Rawle. “They’ll probably get me for my taxes though, eh? I know it’s stupid. I know I got to work. I should work, just for show, anything. Fuck, MacDonald’s. I just can’t ever get around to it.”
He dropped them off in Penticton, crackling high and incredibly thirsty.
It was only May, but the valley was going through a heat wave. It was getting hotter and hotter, the further down they went.
Kurtis and Rawle wandered along the beach at the north end of town, which ran along the underside of Okanagan Lake.
Penticton had a pure blue lake at each end of town, and was surrounded by golden hills covered with vineyards on the left and right.
It seemed like paradise.
And incredibly, Kurtis and Rawle were actually getting along fairly well, and were having a good time together.
Rawle had somehow willfully suspended his rage and memories and everything he’d come here to do, and everything Kurtis stood for. He’d detached himself. He gave himself over, temporarily, to his cover story.
He was a traveling street kid. He didn’t care who Kurtis was, or what he’d done. He just wanted to hang out, drink, cause shit and smoke dope.
The beaches of Penticton were burning hot, and laden with ripe, brown beautiful women in bikinis.
Rawle and Kurtis walked around chatting up girls all day, then ate some sandwiches from a Sub shop and bought a few forties of beer at the liquor store.
Fat blackberries grew wild along almost every sidewalk they walked down.
Everywhere Rawle looked was clay cliffs and cottagy houses tucked into them, and fat sun-washed clouds in the sky.
He felt alive.
When the day was over, they sat on the sand and watched the sun sink back behind the hills and turn the clouds from cartoon pink to deep purple gray.
For dinner that night, they went to Boston Pizza.
Kurtis told Rawle that he would get this one, since Rawle had bought the sandwiches and beer at lunchtime.
Rawle was glad because he had no money left, except for a small emergency funding source. He had left his main bank card at home in Wolfville, but he did have an emergency fund. An old savings account he’d gotten along with a student loan he got in university. He still had the old bank card in his wallet, and he was pretty sure there was around a hundred bucks there. But he was nervous to touch it. Once that was gone, he’d be left with not a cent to his name.
He also knew there was a slim chance police were monitoring that account’s activities.
It was possible that the RCMP in Nova Scotia had discovered the bloody clothing in his car and were either actively trying to find him, or already had him under surveillance.
He was so close. He couldn’t risk doing anything to get caught now, not until Kurtis confessed about the murders and the cocaine.
Not until he accomplished his mission.
They sat down at a booth with red cushioning, in the restaurant.
A cute waitress with black hair and white skin came by.
Kurtis ordered a large pizza, half all-meat and half with peppers and mushrooms, and a pitcher of beer with two plastic glasses.
“And what time do you get on?”
She gave him a bored look. “Get ‘off?’”
Kurtis gestured down to his lap. “No, I mean what time do you ‘get on.’ -Hahhhaaaa!”
She walked away.
The two men talked and laughed, for hours, over food and more pitchers. When they were finally done, the waitress brought the bill.
Rawle got up to use the bathroom and saw a set of pay-phones in the back hall. He picked one up and dialed Dee Lee’s calling card number.
“DF.” A gruff voice answered.
“Hi. It’s me.”
“Who the fuck is ‘me’?”
“It’s Raoul. Out west.”
“Raoul. What’s happening, brother?”
“Is this Dee?”
“Yeah.”
“How do I know it’s really you?”
“Darlene Missions is a fat pigfucker.”
Rawle covered the receiver with his hand and looked down the hall to see if Kurtis was coming. “Okay. I found the moose.”
“WOAH!!!” Dee yelled over his end of the reciever. “Already?”
“Yeah. But I can’t talk right now, I gotta go. He’s here with me. What should I do?”
“What do you mean? Keep it up. Keep doing what yer doing. Where are you?”
“Penticton.”
“Okay. Are you staying there?”
“No. We seem to be thinking about hitchhiking, further down the valley, maybe picking cherries to make some money.”
“Perfect. I’ve got people there already. They’ll find you. You’re hitchhiking? Try to stick near the highway, so we can find you. But stay with him, no matter what. And get him to talk about Jacky. But don’t push too hard. You’re a friend of his now. Remember that. Everybody needs a friend, Raoul. Even him. Everyone needs someone to bitch to.”
”Okay. I gotta go.” Rawle hung up. His pulse was racing and his breathe felt sharp in his lungs, like broken glass.
When he got back to the table, Kurtis was leaned across it, stealing a glass of beer out of his pitcher.
Rawle sat down.
“Let’s dine ‘n’ dash.”
“What?” Rawle said, grinning.
“I don’t got no money, dude. We gotta make a run for it.”
Rawle was reluctant to do anything that might get him arrested, but he also was feeling so buzzed he didn’t care. “Alright,” Rawle said. “Let’s do it. How do you want to do it?”
The waitress passed by, to check on another nearby table.
Rawle got up and followed Kurtis straight out the front door.
They dashed across two perpendicular streets and all the way down another heading south towards the south end. No one yelled at them to stop or said anything.
Rawle never looked back.
They walked swiftly, crossing several dark streets. After about 40 minutes of straight walking, they reached a park and stopped to rest and roll cigarettes on the cool grass.
Rawle could see Penticton’s other beach just ahead this time on Skaha Lake at the south end of town..
“She’ll have to pay for that out of her paycheck, you know,” Kurtis said, almost sounding guilty. “That cute little waitress…. Unless somebody inside pays the bill for us.”
He winked at Rawle.
“What do you mean?”
Kurtis chuckled. “Don’t worry man,” he said. “I know exactly who you are.”
He met a guy on the sidewalk who was selling hand-carved wooden marijuana pipes.
Rawle actually recognized him from high school. It was a guy who had been a year or two above him in highs school. He didn’t recognize Rawle, in the slightest, which either meant he had developed a convincing cover identity, or he was just a forgettable person in high school.
Either way, it was probably a good thing.
The guy’s name was Derek Baker. He had been traveling through the Okanagan to pick cherries, but then met a girl instead and moved in with her.
“She was my cherry, right? Hahahaha. It’s okay, her family hates me. They hate me so much, we fight all the time, me and her. I’m probably just going to take off. I’ve almost had enough of this bull-shit. Everyone in town hates the fact that I sell pipes, bud. This is not like the rest of B.C. here. You got to be careful in the valley, ‘cause it’s very tight-ass. They work together to squeeze out pieces of shit like you and me, especially if you are really homeless.”
Rawle asked if he knew anything about a guy with missing teeth named either ‘John Dee’ or Kurtis Missions. “Maybe he tried to buy dope from you?”
“Actually, there was a guy travelling through yesterday. He had a buzzcut. He was hanging around with a fat squaw, and they were on ‘er pretty hard. Drinking a quart of R and R’s between them. And she had a big stash. But fuck she was ugly. I remember ‘cause he was just a young fella. A good looking fella, but she looked to be about 50. She was a hard-looking ticket too. Anyways, he was hanging out at the waterfront. If he’s still there, I’d be surprised. He was making a lot of noise and people like him usually spend the night in the drunk tank and are disappeared in the morning. Know what I mean?”
After that, Rawle walked downtown in the direction of the waterfront.
Lake Okanagan was the largest of several beautiful blue lakes that ran down the valley like a necklace of blue glass beads.
He talked to anybody along the way who would listen.
“Have you seen a man with four front teeth missing?”
An old homeless guy with a white beard like Santa Claus gave him an earful of gibberish in front of the movie threatre, except Rawle was finding lately that he could understand the gibberish of homeless people, which meant either he was going crazy, or he was becoming more in tune with his fellow man.
There really was no such thing as gibberish, he knew now. People heard gibberish perhaps, but no one ever spoke it. Ever.
He sat on a concrete flower box with the homeless guy and just listened to him babble on, like Athan. Rawle didn’t even try to make sense out of what he said. He just listened to the sounds and the tones. It was like listening to poetry.
Rawle started chuckling, and said things back. They had a freestyle conversation, until they were both just smiling and chuckling at eachother like two-year-olds. Rawle felt like they could talk all night.
The old man was saying something about giving him his bicycle, which he said was stashed in a back alley. He didn’t want it anymore because the colour red was a jinx for him, he said. But, Rawle could see someone approaching from behind the old man. Creeping up, staggering drunk.
He walked around the old man and stopped in front of the movie theatre. Then turned around.
“You got a smoke, bud?”
It was Kurtis Missions.
Holy-
Rawle knew right away, it was him.
He had the same hallucinating brown eyes, as his mother in the old Gerry Godsoe photo. And in a weird way, he looked like Darlene, except skinnier, and with a shaved head, and four front teeth missing between his top two incisors.
Rawle had always been the type to never forget a face.
He felt like he predicted this would happen.
This meeting.
Like he was fated by God to find Kurtis Missions, and to set things right.
Rawle looked the young man up and down, slowly, just to make sure he wasn’t hallucinating himself, then took out his pack of loose tobacco and his rolling papers.
“Here. You can roll one, if you want.”
Kurtis sat down next to the old man on a concrete flower bed and began blaring in Rawle’s ear, talking about what a night he’s had, even as the old man continued trying to talk to Rawle in his tiny, poet whisper.
“Shit! So, what’re you guys -alking about?”
Kurtis was loud and obnoxious. Rawle almost wanted to tell him to fuck off and keep moving.
But there was a shift in the air. Rawle and Kurtis would be spending their time together from now on, Kurtis and Rawle. He felt it in his bones. Their paths had crossed for good.
After they were done their cigarettes, Rawle got up and moved along down the street with Kurtis, saying goodbye forever to the nice old man.
It was Cherryfest in the Valley and all kinds of people were milling around in the parks and at the beach at night. Two young people were screwing quietly in the grass square.
Rawle and Kurtis walked by and stared at the girl’s smooth white ass shining in the moonlight.
They slept in the park that night, overlooking Lake Okanagan.
In the morning, they got up early and headed for the highway, heading south down the valley.
Kurtis had no shirt on and his tiny blue knapsack bounced as he walked.
They talked about where they were from.
“Where you from?”
“Nova Scotia.”
“Me too,” Kurtis said, grinning ear to ear, his missing teeth were like a gaping hole inhis face. “Now, isn’t that a coincidence?”
They weren’t on the highway very long.
A big yellow Jeep hopped over onto the shoulder, with a muscular, tanned blonde guy behind the wheel. He said he could take them as far as Penticton, a few towns down.
Rawle sat up front and Kurtis climbed in the back.
The blonde guy pule dout into traffic and told Rawle to reach into the glove box and grab the bag of seed-encrusted buds sitting inside. “I’ll drive. You roll up a cannon, would ya? You got any papers?”
Rawle nodded, rummaging into his pocket.
“And keep on rolling til I ell you to stop. It’s kinda shite weed, so we’ll have to have lotsa cannons. Okay?”
“Look at all the seeds on this,” Rawle said, holdingup a large bud. It looked like a small bright green clump of grapes.
“I’m a grower, man. I got about 500 plants in a forest piece of land, in the Kootenays, but it’s not ready yet. I haven’t harvested yet, so all I got is this crap.”
Kurtis perked up in the back seat.
“Who do you grow for?”
The guy laughed. “Never mind that. But I sell it all in one shot, to one guy, then I don’t do any work the rest of the year. I make 60 grand a year. Just surf Tofino, travel, camp, mountain bike. Rock climb. All that shit. And I’ll never get caught unless my guy gets caught,” the guy said, looking at Rawle. “They’ll probably get me for my taxes though, eh? I know it’s stupid. I know I got to work. I should work, just for show, anything. Fuck, MacDonald’s. I just can’t ever get around to it.”
He dropped them off in Penticton, crackling high and incredibly thirsty.
It was only May, but the valley was going through a heat wave. It was getting hotter and hotter, the further down they went.
Kurtis and Rawle wandered along the beach at the north end of town, which ran along the underside of Okanagan Lake.
Penticton had a pure blue lake at each end of town, and was surrounded by golden hills covered with vineyards on the left and right.
It seemed like paradise.
And incredibly, Kurtis and Rawle were actually getting along fairly well, and were having a good time together.
Rawle had somehow willfully suspended his rage and memories and everything he’d come here to do, and everything Kurtis stood for. He’d detached himself. He gave himself over, temporarily, to his cover story.
He was a traveling street kid. He didn’t care who Kurtis was, or what he’d done. He just wanted to hang out, drink, cause shit and smoke dope.
The beaches of Penticton were burning hot, and laden with ripe, brown beautiful women in bikinis.
Rawle and Kurtis walked around chatting up girls all day, then ate some sandwiches from a Sub shop and bought a few forties of beer at the liquor store.
Fat blackberries grew wild along almost every sidewalk they walked down.
Everywhere Rawle looked was clay cliffs and cottagy houses tucked into them, and fat sun-washed clouds in the sky.
He felt alive.
When the day was over, they sat on the sand and watched the sun sink back behind the hills and turn the clouds from cartoon pink to deep purple gray.
For dinner that night, they went to Boston Pizza.
Kurtis told Rawle that he would get this one, since Rawle had bought the sandwiches and beer at lunchtime.
Rawle was glad because he had no money left, except for a small emergency funding source. He had left his main bank card at home in Wolfville, but he did have an emergency fund. An old savings account he’d gotten along with a student loan he got in university. He still had the old bank card in his wallet, and he was pretty sure there was around a hundred bucks there. But he was nervous to touch it. Once that was gone, he’d be left with not a cent to his name.
He also knew there was a slim chance police were monitoring that account’s activities.
It was possible that the RCMP in Nova Scotia had discovered the bloody clothing in his car and were either actively trying to find him, or already had him under surveillance.
He was so close. He couldn’t risk doing anything to get caught now, not until Kurtis confessed about the murders and the cocaine.
Not until he accomplished his mission.
They sat down at a booth with red cushioning, in the restaurant.
A cute waitress with black hair and white skin came by.
Kurtis ordered a large pizza, half all-meat and half with peppers and mushrooms, and a pitcher of beer with two plastic glasses.
“And what time do you get on?”
She gave him a bored look. “Get ‘off?’”
Kurtis gestured down to his lap. “No, I mean what time do you ‘get on.’ -Hahhhaaaa!”
She walked away.
The two men talked and laughed, for hours, over food and more pitchers. When they were finally done, the waitress brought the bill.
Rawle got up to use the bathroom and saw a set of pay-phones in the back hall. He picked one up and dialed Dee Lee’s calling card number.
“DF.” A gruff voice answered.
“Hi. It’s me.”
“Who the fuck is ‘me’?”
“It’s Raoul. Out west.”
“Raoul. What’s happening, brother?”
“Is this Dee?”
“Yeah.”
“How do I know it’s really you?”
“Darlene Missions is a fat pigfucker.”
Rawle covered the receiver with his hand and looked down the hall to see if Kurtis was coming. “Okay. I found the moose.”
“WOAH!!!” Dee yelled over his end of the reciever. “Already?”
“Yeah. But I can’t talk right now, I gotta go. He’s here with me. What should I do?”
“What do you mean? Keep it up. Keep doing what yer doing. Where are you?”
“Penticton.”
“Okay. Are you staying there?”
“No. We seem to be thinking about hitchhiking, further down the valley, maybe picking cherries to make some money.”
“Perfect. I’ve got people there already. They’ll find you. You’re hitchhiking? Try to stick near the highway, so we can find you. But stay with him, no matter what. And get him to talk about Jacky. But don’t push too hard. You’re a friend of his now. Remember that. Everybody needs a friend, Raoul. Even him. Everyone needs someone to bitch to.”
”Okay. I gotta go.” Rawle hung up. His pulse was racing and his breathe felt sharp in his lungs, like broken glass.
When he got back to the table, Kurtis was leaned across it, stealing a glass of beer out of his pitcher.
Rawle sat down.
“Let’s dine ‘n’ dash.”
“What?” Rawle said, grinning.
“I don’t got no money, dude. We gotta make a run for it.”
Rawle was reluctant to do anything that might get him arrested, but he also was feeling so buzzed he didn’t care. “Alright,” Rawle said. “Let’s do it. How do you want to do it?”
The waitress passed by, to check on another nearby table.
Rawle got up and followed Kurtis straight out the front door.
They dashed across two perpendicular streets and all the way down another heading south towards the south end. No one yelled at them to stop or said anything.
Rawle never looked back.
They walked swiftly, crossing several dark streets. After about 40 minutes of straight walking, they reached a park and stopped to rest and roll cigarettes on the cool grass.
Rawle could see Penticton’s other beach just ahead this time on Skaha Lake at the south end of town..
“She’ll have to pay for that out of her paycheck, you know,” Kurtis said, almost sounding guilty. “That cute little waitress…. Unless somebody inside pays the bill for us.”
He winked at Rawle.
“What do you mean?”
Kurtis chuckled. “Don’t worry man,” he said. “I know exactly who you are.”
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