Chapter 8

After interviewing the neighbours for most of the morning, Det. Sgt. Smith, Digby and Cst. Charlie Dawe, an RCMP LIO for Criminal Intelligence Service Nova Scotia, piled into Digby’s unmarked Impala and headed out to Burnside Jail, after a brief stop at Robin’s for coffee.
Digby paid.
Todd Purcell, the jail guard, was fellow law enforcement, albeit on the lowest possible rung beyond sheriff’s deputy.
They targeted his family.
The community of law enforcement in Nova Scotia, as a whole, was furious. There was a large amount of unspoken pressure that would be applied on Digby, to make an arrest.
Cst. Dawe was one of 10 liaisons in the province between the Mounties and CISNS.
His presence on a routine trip to Burnside was a pressure tactic. Digby could feel it hanging around her collar like a ten-pound freeweight.
The arson was being handled as a Major Crime file, presided by Digby and Southwest Nova Major Crime Unit, which also included Staff Sgt. James Keetch, her boss, Cpl. Ross Agarwal and Cst. Adam Halfkenny.
Keetch and Halfkenney were manning the fort at New Minas Detachment. Agarwal was pushing paperwork at the Cornwallis Street Justice Centre, getting court orders for cellphone tower records from the area of the firebombing.
The Combined Forces Intelligence Unit, CFIU biker squad, was assisting, mainly so Det. Sgt. Smith could share files and insights.
Todd Purcell was too grief stricken, or too scared, to speak to the police. He was refusing to allow Sgt. Digby to visit him at the hospital, where his wife was laid up in an isolation room.
The only promising lead so far had come from Smith, who was contacted by a friend of his, a Bunside guard and chief steward in the jail guard union.
The factory-size provincial jail was located in Burnside Industrial Park in Halifax’s sister city, Dartmouth, just across the harbour.
Traffic over the bridge was heavy and Cst. Charlie Dawe and Det. Sgt. Smith killed time by talking about biker stuff while Sgt. Digby sat patiently in the driver’s seat inching toward the toll booth on the Dartmouth side of the MacKay Bridge.
“Special Investigations picked up something good from Dee Lee’s phone,” Dawe was saying.
“Are you serious?” Smith said. “I’m skeptical that he’d be caught on that. What was he saying?”
“Hold that thought. I made notes. I’ve got them here somewhere.” Cst. Dawe searched the zippered pockets of his Creamsicle-orange Adidas tracksuit. “He sounded pretty freaked out, like something big went down last night.”
RCMP Special Investigations had taps on all Dee Lee’s home and business phones, same as most bikers and top prospects under investigation in the province, all depending on how much business they did.
SI also had a surveillance camera hidden outside the back entrance of Alan Lee’s fitness club, Black Dog Fitness on Dutch Village Road, and they were starting to put GPS trackers on all vehicles owned by Gypsy members, and search their safety deposit boxes at local banks.
Dee Lee was aware of most police efforts to spy on him and he certainly would never speak freely on a normal telephone.
He was known to use a staggering array of stolen and cloned DSL cellphones, which were almost impossible to intercept with a scanner, satellite phones, walkie-talkies and hotmail and gmail accounts.
At the same time, everyone had to use a landline sometime, or a shitty cellphone, whether to mutter a few things in code, or out of occasional human laziness.
The set of daily transcripts made interesting reading. It was like trying to make sense out of whack-job writers like James Joyce and Willam S. Burroughs. The code often made no literal sense, but you just had to try and keep your mind open and pick up on the vibe.
“OK,” Cst. Dawe said, opening a little black notepad. “This was Saturday night. 3:43 a.m. Dee Lee phoned someone he calls ‘Snow.’ We don’t have a name for that yet, although there is a biker in Moncton with the nickname ‘Snowball.’ ‘Snowball’ Glen Frederick. He’s a member of the Butcher Kiddos Motorcycle Club, in Moncton, which is a puppet club of the Gypsies. I think he’s their sergeant-at-arms. He’s black, so he’ll never be allowed to become a Gypsy.” Dawe raised his eyebrows. “Glen Frederick also had dealings with the Lee family previously. He tortured that real estate developer in Halifax back in the 90’s. Remember that? Anyways, Dee Lee is speaking first. He says: ‘…Snow. We have a big problem. I need you. Fuck Tin-Tin. I need you, tonight… Somebody’s missing. My fucking white boy disappeared.’ And you have to imagine, there’s a lot of emotion in his voice. He’s really pissed off”
Dawe looked up at Smith, then across the car to meet Digby’s eyes in the rearview mirror.
“Then Snow asks him for some particulars on who is missing. Dee Lee says: “Pussylips.”
Dawe closed the notebook and looked up. “That’s it. End communication.”
Sgt. Digby knew white was common phone code for cocaine. Drug dealers not being reknowned for their excessive creativity.
“So, white boy a coke shipment of some kind? A boat maybe?”
“Something to do with coke,” Cst. Dawe said, nodding. “White boy means mule, I think, And Pussylips is the specific mule in question. Probably, we’re talking about a coke mule that has physically gone missing, as in somebody killed him and stole the coke shipment. It’s probably someone driving in a car, or riding the bus or the train. Something like that.”
Dawe and Digby seemed to be hitting it off, Det. Sgt. Smith thought.
Say something you idiot.
“Well,” Smith said taking a big gulp of his boiling hot tea with cream and sugar, “if a body pops up in the harbour over the next few days, we’ll have a good idea what it’s there for.”