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.
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