Chapter 16

“Rawle. How’s it going down there?”
It was lunchtime and Jack Lee, Halifax Gazette Annapolis Valley bureau chief was checking up on his reporter.
Rawle felt pretty good about the progress of the firebombing story, so far. He still had half the day left to shape his paragraphs and throw in some standard quotes from the police spokesman.
“Pretty good,” he told Jack. “The guy was a jail guard, eh? Somebody threw two Molotov cocktails through a jail guard’s window. Maybe it has something to do with an inmate? Anyway, his daughters are in hospital in Halifax with smoke inhalation. That shit can kill you, you know. And the wife got burned bad, on her arms.”
“OK, good. I heard it was three cocktails. You heard two coctails?”
“Yeah. From the Fire Marshall.”
“Okay. Whatever the Fire Marshall said, print that.”
“Yeah.” Jack’s off-duty and he knows more than I do, Rawle thought. “Who told you it was three?”
Jack didn’t answer but broke instead into a fit of gut-wrenching coughs, muffled on his end of the phone, by his hand perhaps.
“Geez,” Rawle said. “Would you hurry up and die?”
The coughs sounded cruel and full of liquid, like Jack should be lying in a hospital bed somewhere, breathing into a chest tube.
“Arggh….” He croaked, trying to force composure into himself by willpower alone. “Listen… I want you to send me what you got so far. I’ve got some stuff to add to your story. You confirmed he’s a jail guard?”
“Just with the neighbours.”
“Confirm with the cops if you can. And ask if the investigation is being treated as a major crime case because the guy’s in law enforcement. And ask if they’ve conducted interviews at Burnside Jail. And if they say ‘yes,’ find out if they think Purcell’s job was a factor. Just yes or no, ‘was his job a factor.’”
“You know the guy’s name?”
“I told you,” Jack said in the clipped voice of a man who’s trying not to cough. “I told you, I have some stuff to add to your story.”