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.