Chapter 31

The next morning, it was not Wid Missions Junior’s body that was found in a local park, but that of his eldest son, Darroll Missions.
The body was stumbled on by a local Ridge man out for an early jaunt on the Rotary trails in behind Stile Park in Wolfville. The man was apparently trying to get a little exercise after a recent heart attack. He told the EMT he was suffering another one.
Stile Park, at the top of Wolfville Ridge, was a well-known spot for locals to commit suicide.
People seemed to appreciate the final vista of the bucolic Gaspereau Valley down below as they hung themselves by the neck from the rafters of the park’s tiny green gazebo, or blew their brains out with a hunting rifle.
The Gaspereau Valley was like a miniature twin sister of the main Annapolis Valley laying between Wolfville Ridge and South Mountain. It had its own apple orchards and chicken farms, forest and vineyard, just like the main valley, except smaller.
Sometimes bald eagles could be seen soaring overhead, fishing the Avon River or feeding on carrion the local poultry farmers cull overnight from their barns and put out for them.

By late afternoon, the cops had still not faxed out a news release on Darroll Missions death to the media, which probably meant they were treating it as a suicide.
The RCMP usually informed the press about any death they were called to investigate, including anything suspicious, unusual, accidental, public or homicidal, all except suicide. The fear was that publicity of suicides would inspire others to take the plunge. Although wouldn’t the same be true for murder? Rawle wondered.
Perhaps with murder, the trade-off was too important. Police needed murder publicized in order to generate tips. Once a murder was in the papers, people called the cops to share even a most tenuous knowledge of the incident, information used to put together the puzzle.

Rawle heard about Darroll’s death from Tamara Lee, Jack’s wife.
If you knew a few of the right people in Wolfville, nobody could blow a gasser in town without someone getting wind of it.
Tamara had come up to see him for a cigarette on her lunch break from the Library Pub, as she sometimes’ did. .
Athan was playing outside in the snow and Rawle was on the porch.
Tamara said high to the baby first, then came up the stairs and kissed him on the cheek. “Hi, babe.”
He sprouted an involuntary half-boner in his underwear. Tee never seemed to understand her own terrible powers as a seductress. Or more likely she did.
At the Library Pub, she received all items of town gossip long before Jack or Rawle did, despite their reporterly resources, including digital police radio scanners.
She had a quick cigarette, spouting all the ramifications of someone like Darroll Missions being dead and how the discovery had traumatized the poor sap who stumbled on it.
Rawle sipped his burned-tasting coffee and craved a cigarette more than anything else in the world.
When Tamara left, he took Athan inside and placed a call to his buddy in the RCMP.