Chapter 17

When Sgt. Digby got back to the office she had to buzz herself in with her ID card.
The front desk clerk was not in the Plexiglas booth.
The entire building seemed empty.
She passed through the booking area to hit the main corridor running the length of New Minas Detachment.
A murmur of activity could be heard as soon as she entered the offices area through another grey fire door.
She couldn’t recall the last time she’d seen everybody pitching in like this on a file. Ten or fifteen cops and civilians were huddled up at the end of the building at the desks of South West Nova Major Crime.
It was like a hornets nest back there. Constables had phones to their ears, sending faxes, and hunching over computer terminals tapping away, or bringing in coffee and donuts.
The media spokesman for Kings County, Cst. Llewellen Moss, was talking on two cellphones over by the coffee maker.
“ATV and Global,” he whispered holding up each phone alternatively as Digby walked by in amazement. It wasn’t often the TV News from Halifax was interested in Valley goings-on.
She pushed her way through everybody and joined Agarwal and Staff Sgt. Keetch in the small glassed-in office that overlooked the unit from one side, like a penalty box.
Kings RCMP Inspector Scott Palipschuk, one of the highest ranked officers in the Valley, sat in the heavy blue ergonomic chair facing Keetch and Agarwal. The inspector was getting his update on last week’s files.
Digby inched her way into the office, a copy of Joe Robichaud Junior’s letter to Perry Spalding was folded neatly end-to-end in her fingertips.
“I’d like to hear this too,” she said, winking to everybody. The fire door clicked shut behind her.
“Biz. Good,” Staff Sgt. Keetch said. “Ross has cell tower receipts for your firebombing. We’re running some names, but he was explaining a graph.”
He handed Digby a sheaf of papers, including one with a printout of a line graph.
“Okay,” Agarwal continued. “There’s only one cell tower, 333857, in range of the Purcell home. What the call centre girl- the call girl- said was that, according to this graph, we can see who approached tower 333857 and who left again, whether or not they made or received calls- as long as they had their phones turned on. There’s four phones in particular that approach the Ellershouse tower at the time of the firebombing, shorty after three-thirty a.m. I’ve highlighted the four phones. All four register with the tower at the same time, to the extent that they probably had to be in the same vehicle. This is a pretty rural area.”
Digby was flipping through the pages, looking for any account names she recognized right off the bat. A constable out in the unit was no doubt running each name through CPIC and the National Database, looking for anyone with a criminal record.
“Holy,” she said. “Look at the second highlighted phone. Page two. There’s a call at 3:43. a.m. from the phone number 902-542-2323, registered to D. Lee. This is Dorchester ‘Dee’ Lee’s home phone number. Alan Lee’s son.”
“Dee Lee?” Insp. Palipschuk said, looking for the entry himself in his copy of the paperwork. “Dee Lee, as in Alan Lee?”
“Yeah. The biker. This is weird. The biker squad boys were just telling me about a phone call from Dee Lee that they picked up on their wires. I thought they said it was Saturday night, the night of the firebombing, at 3:43 a.m.”
“Dee Lee?” Keetch said. “If there’s even the slightest chance he’s involved in this burn-out, I wanna know about it.”
Insp. Palipschuk found the entry in his stack of papers. “It says the cell phone he called is registered to a girl. Amanda Jones. Do we really think she’s one of the firebombers then? Does she have a record?”
“We don’t know,” Agarwal said. “We’re still waiting for Halfkenney.”
“-It’s probably a cloned phone,” Staff Sgt. Keetch added, saying what Digby was thinking. “This Amanda girl is probably nobody.”
“But you never know,” Palipschuk said. “Maybe she was along for the ride, or maybe she gave her phone to her boyfriend. See what I mean? We need to find out everything we can about her and all the others. From a court perspective, all we have is Dee Lee making a phone call to someone in the mile radius- or whatever it is- around the site of the firebombing, at the time of the firebombing. It’s nothing.”
Digby nodded.
“Amanda Jones. I’ve never heard of her before,” Keetch said. “We’ll need a warrant for Dee Lee’s phone records.”
“All I’m saying is, it would be highly coincidental if Dee Lee called a cell phone in Ellershouse, minutes after the firebombing of a jail guard there, and it wasn’t related,” Digby said, but she digressed. “It doesn’t prove anything, but it points me in his direction, does it not?”
“Yes,” Palipschuk said, satisfied.
“-What about the other phones?” Keetch said, stating the obvious, which he tended to do in these meetings. “Was it a vanload of thugs sent to do the firebombing? Were they all cloned phones? We really need the other account names run through CPIC. Nicole King, Samantha Bye, Edward Ketchum and Amanda Jones. Have we run these names yet?”
“We’re waiting for Halfkenney,” Digby said.
“Halfkenney’s on the job,” Agarwal said. “He should have it done by next Christmas.”
He picked up the black phone on Keetch’s desk and hit four keys, dialing an internal extension. “… Halfkenny. Have you run my account names yet? Or are you too busy wanking it?” Agarwal smiled and picked up his pen. “Okay. Nicole King, Samantha Bye, Edward Keetch- Ketchum. Keetch has an alibi, I swear, he was with me all night-“ Agarwal winked at Staff Sgt. Keetch. Keetch shook his head, not even smiling. “-Amanda Jones. Okay. No record for Amanda,” Agarwal said to the group in Keetch’s office, keeping the phone pressed to his ear. “And the others? Nicole…? I remember, I think. Alright, pull up everything on them two and fax it to my computer.” He set the phone down.
“We got something. Nicole King. She has a record for obstruction. She was the one that cleaned the blood off the walls after her husband tortured that real estate developer in Halifax, back in the day. Do you guys remember that? Nicole King and his name was Glen Frederick. He’s a biker enforcer from Moncton. There was all that coke in one of the developer’s suites that went missing, so they kidnapped and tortured him. Nicole King is Glen Frederick’s common law wife.”
Staff Sgt. Keetch looked impressed. He had his arms crossed. “A biker? That’s very good. ”
“Did you say Glen Frederick?” Digby said. She pulled out her notebook from her coat pocket. She had neglected to jot down everything Cst. Dawe said in the car, but she was pretty sure he mentioned Glen Frederick because he had a biker nickname that was similar to “Snow,” which Dee Lee had said on the phone tap.
“Glen Frederick it is,” Insp. Palipschuk said. “Dump Dee Lee’s home phone records and let’s get Glen Frederick under surveillance immediately.”
Palipschuk stood up and grabbed his coat, another case solved in his mind, the rest was only going through the motions. “Match up the records. Contact J Division and follow Glen Frederick like a dog, if they’re not doing so already. If you want I can get Gordon to start writing up an information for Frederick’s house. We could search for arson materials, bottles. You guys get down to Moncton and start putting Glen Frederick under the microscope. We’ll see if the phone records are enough for a search warrant and then we can fax it through toyou guys.”
“-It’s not very much,” Digby said. “It’s probably not enough for a warrant, I don’t think. But we can bring Frederick in, right?” She put her copy of Joe Junior’s letter in her back pocket for now, like a good luck charm. It was her habit, honed and developed over years as a Major Crime investigator, to keep all investigative details secret for as long as possible, even from her immediate superior officers. That way, nothing risked compromising the strict integrity of the case. The only person she would possibly show the letter to at this stage was Ross Agarwal.
“Yeah. Bring him in,” Keetch said. “But only if we bring the wife too. She’ll make great leverage. It’s her name on the cell phone.”
Everyone nodded agreement.
First they had to try to get a warrant for Frederick’s home, then they would slap him and his wife in handcuffs and drag them in.
No man, not even Glen Frederick, liked seeing their wife in handcuffs, not unless they were doing you-know-what.