Chapter 26

Digby left New Minas Detachment and walked down Commercial Street in the cold. She did her best thinking this way.
One of Smith’s informants in Halifax had told him that the nickname Pussylips belonged to a Valley man, Willard Missions Junior of 1623 Melanson Road, Melanson. Willard was a suspected drug courier who transported cocaine by the multiple kilo across country from Montreal to the Maritimes.
Pussylips was missing with several dozen kilos, apparently belonging to Dorchester ‘Dee’ Lee.
Pussylips was probably long dead, although it was always possible he took the coke himself and ran. More likely, somebody executed and buried him in the back 40, which meant a potential homicide file to some day land in Digby’s lap.
She decided to keep a close eye on developments.
The prospect of landing a homicide gave Digby a warm adrenaline feeling in her stomach. It was exciting and the feeling combatted the brutally frigid New Minas winter wind that stung her cheeks.
Southwest Nova Major Crime hadn’t handled a homicide in over four years. She could barely believe it had been that long. There had been plenty of rapes, assaults, accidental deaths, even attempted murders, but not a single homicide since 2004.
The last three before that were all down in the Yarmouth area, which meant Digby barely worked them at all.
It was too cold for power-walking.
She stopped after two blocks and got a hot coffee at Timmy’s in the Dooly’s mini-mall.
No one named Missions had been reported missing in Kings County police files in the last two weeks. Digby had double checked the files herself. But why not? She wondered. It had been a few days. His family should have filed a report by now. Without a missing persons report, Digby could not begin a formal investigation.
After getting coffee, she crossed the parking lot and ducked into the Needs corner store. Smith had told her to grab the morning paper. There was a story on the Purcell firebombing. The Gazette had done some investigating it seemed.
She walked up to the creepy guy standing at the cash register and picked up a Tuesday Gazette from the stack.
The story was right there, running in a thin strip down the bottom edge of the front page, under a small-type headline: Three injured in Hants County firebombing.
She paid for the paper and walked over to the window inside the warm convenience store, sipping her coffee and reading the article. There was a lot of interesting stuff there.
The reporter even named Perry Paul Spalding as being suspected of involvement in the case. How the frig did he know that?
The story said a convicted drug dealer was believed to have done the actual leg work. Darroll Missions.
Digby clicked her teeth together. Missions.
She took a pencil from the lottery ticket booth and circled the name on the newsprint, then folded up the paper and stuffed it awkwardly into her jacket pocket, then left the store.
She couldn’t imagine where the reporter had gotten his information. It couldn’t have been a police source, because nobody named Darroll Missions was even on her radar.
The story itself did not cite sources, it just said “according to sources familiar with the incident.”
Someone at the jail? Chega? Digby wondered if Caleb Chega or any of the guards would know the name of the guy who did the firebombing legwork?
It didn’t make much sense.
She’d have to drop in on this Rawle Powder, and put the screws to him.
But first she’d take a look at Darroll Missions.

When she got back to the Detachment, she ran Darroll through CPIC and Vital Stats. Not only was he in the system, but “Willard Missions Junior” was listed as his father.
Digby ran Darroll through the RCMP National Criminal Database, JIS and PIRS, gradually developing a full picture of his recent activities.
She compiled everything into a separate Word file and printed it out.
Darroll had been recently released from Burnside Jail after serving only four-and-a-half months for assault with a weapon, uttering threats and drug possession. He also had an outstanding warrant for breach of probation, failing to be found at the address he provided to corrections services.
Court records in JIS told a disturbing story of how Darroll Missions had dropped an elbow smash onto his girlfriend’s lower back while in the act of sexual intercourse.
Digby pictured how that was possible. Must have been doggy style.
Darroll then held a camping knife to her throat and threatened to kill her and “watch the blood gush out.”
He sounded like a petty tyrant, as Digby’s father would say.
Darroll was probably one of the punks Frederick took with him in the van the night of the firebombing, for whatever reason. Perhaps he was giving arson lessons.
Digby took her RCMP cell out of her puffy black jacket and dialed Agarwal.
“Agarwal?”
“Ross. It’s Boss. Where are you now?”
“At the Big Stop.”
“Hurry up and get in. I got some grunt work for you to do.”
“Sheezus, can’t a guy have breakfast?”
“It’s computer stuff. You know I can’t handle it. I need you to dig up everything you can on Rawley Powder. I want to drop by his place. He’s a reporter for the Gazette. He wrote stuff about the firebombing.”
“God. Please tell me this is not going to be some reporter-source confidentiality bullshit… Don’t we have a shield law, or that the States?”
“I don’t know. If he doesn’t tell me what I want to know, I’ll arrest him and loot his house. You think he’s never looked at anyone under 14 on the Internet?”
“Oof. You’re cruel. You know I never look at porn, right?”
“And give me everything you can on Darroll Jack Missions. And his whole family for that matter.”