Chapter 34

“It’s odd. It’s interesting,” she said.
Agarwal pulled out of the parking lot, behind the hospital shipping and receiving area, where the morgue was located.
“What?” Agarwal said, driving out and down the Belcher Street hill, not paying attention.
Digby was thinking out loud and didn’t care if he was listening or not.
“Darroll might be involved with his father’s disappearance. He probably took his license to make fake ID. Or maybe he found the license at home. But why would he take it with him to commit suicide?”
Either way, she thought, her prime witness or prime suspect in the firebombing file and possibly an upcoming homicide file, was deceased, which most likely meant the effective closure of the firebombing case, at least.
Resolved, if not solved. There would be no arrest. No perp walk. Pinning it back to Glen Frederick now was a distant dream. He seemed to be easily withstanding the pressure applied on him by the arrest of his wife.
“Well?” She said to Agarwal.
“Well what? What do I think what?” Agarwal answered, distractedly. He was trying to pass the impatient commuter traffic on Commercial Street by cutting up Route 12 toward the highway.
Digby was on Agarwal’s cellphone now with the Jimmy’s laptop console flipped open.
She pulled up phone listings and began calling everyone with the last name Missions in the Valley area.
“B. Missions…. Answering machine.… I said ‘What do you think? Do you think Darroll Missions was murdered or did he kill himself? Or was it an accident?’”
Agarwal put the cherries on in the front grill, to force his way past somebody on the winding two-lane road. “Hold on… Okay. Suicide makes sense, Dig,” he said, once he’d safely screamed passed the old woman. “Think about it. How could they force coke in his mouth with no bruising or nothing? It’s not unheard of to give a man a forced overdose, but they still have to subdue the man first, which always leaves a mark. You heard Dr. George. The guy had not so much as a stray pube.”
“I know,” Digby said, calling another number in the phone listings. “…Answering machine… I know. I sensed your disappointment about that, that there were no pubes. Maybe they held a gun to his head and said ‘swallow this coke or we’ll put a tunnel in your forehead?’ What’s so hard about that?”
Agarwal accelerated, knowing perhaps that he was wrong.
They turned left onto the ramp and got on the 101 travelling east toward New Minas and Wolfville.
“That’s two members of the Missions clan this week, missing or dead,” Digby added, signaling her partner to get off at the New Minas exit by the Irving Big Stop, then hang a right toward Gaspereau. “-In the past week. Another aswering machine. That’s three answering machines, already… We need to hear what the other Missions family members say about this. They’re all South Mountain folk, are they not?”
“That’s what we’re doing out here.”
“I want to find out what happened to Willard Missions Junior.” She called two numbers listed to a W. Missions. No one picked up at either number.
She started pulling up addresses on the laptop now, using provincial and federal government records and CPIC.
“There’s a Willard Senior too… Willard Clarence is Pussylips.... Jack Henry Missions… Popular Missions... Darroll, Darlene. Kurtis… Kurtis Missions. He has a record too,” she said, reading CPIC.
“Who’s Kurtis?”
“Darroll’s brother. Darlene and Willard’s second son. He would be… he was born 1990… He’d be 18 now.”
“Oooh, fresh meat,” Agarwal lisped. “What’s his record for?”
“23 break, enter and theft, one obstruction, two counts drug possession. All stemming from the same night, October 26, 2008 in South Alton and New Ross.”
“Two months ago. Didn’t he get any jail time?”
“I can’t imagine, if he’s out already.” She pulled up the provincial Justice Information System and brought up all court records with the name Kurtis Missions in the title. It took her a few minutes to sift the court decision mumbo-jumbo.
“Okay… Kurtis was sent off on a Form 11,” Digby said, “a 30 day psych assessment. When he came back, they just gave him probation.”
“Why? What’s it say?” Agarwal asked, interested in the discussion finally. “What was he diagnosed with?”
“I don’t know. It doesn’t go into that. There was no trial. We can’t see the psych assessment in JIS.”
“But they kicked him loose?”
Digby read some more. “Probation. They wouldn’t kick him loose without conditions, even for a first offense. Looks like he got 18 months probation. Restitution of $500. Victim surcharge, $100.”
“How can we find out, whether he broke any terms yet?”
“Probation services would call. His probation officer would call Kings probably.”
“I thought it was Kentville police.”
“No, the offense was in South Alton. That would be Kings RCMP, Berwick Office, and New Ross, which might be Queens County.”
Agarwal thought for a minute in silence. “What was the obstruction charge for?”
Digby went back through the court record for a better description of the offenses. “Ha,” she grinned at the screen. “He gave the cops a fake name. They picked him up hitchhiking and liked him for the b and e’s, but he had no ID. He gave the name Marshall Mathers.”
“Mathers…? Wh does that sound familiar?”
Digby continued: “They released him on a promise-to-appear signed under the alias and he never showed for court. It took a months to grab him again.”
“Jesus sake.”
“Now that I think of it,” Digby said, “that probation officer, What’s-her-name, who’s a friend of yours. She could tell us exactly who got his file maybe and whether or not he’s liable to breach again, if he dissappeared.”
“Kelly Nowles. I think she covers all Kentville or something. Maybe not every case though.”
“Can you call her, or would that be weird?”
“No, it’s alright,” Agarwal said, blushing a little. “What should I ask her?”
Digby picked up the car phone and dialed direct to her clerk at New Minas Detachment. “Kim, can you find Kelly Nowles for me? She’s a probation officer in Kentville. Find her cell.” After a minute she handed the ear piece over to Agarwal as the phone rang. ‘Ask her if Kurtis Missions has broken his terms in the last few days.”
Somebody picked up. “Kelly Nowles?”
“Kelly? It’s Ross Agarwal, Kings RCMP. How’s it going?”
“Uh oh. Trouble.”
Digby had the volume turned way up so she could hear the conversation over the ear piece. She snickered.
“I thought trouble would be me not calling,” Agarwal said. “Listen. Can you help us with something small, but important?”
“I told you it’s not small, Ross, it’s average.”
All three of them laughed, Digby with her hand clasped over her mouth.
“Thank you very much, but no, I’m calling for something serious. Do you have a Kurtis, uh, Dale Missions in your files there? He’s on 18 months. We need to know what the story is with him. Like, who’s his probation officer? We’re hearing some stuff that maybe he needs to be picked up.”
“Kurtis Dale, Kurtis, Kurtis, Kurtis…. I know the whole Missions family, better than my own family. They’ve all crossed my desk at one point or another. What you need?”
“He may be a witness to something his brother did, Darroll Missions. If we can find him we’d like to know what makes him tick. Maybe how we can get him to cooperate, know what I mean?”
Nowles shuffled some things around on her end it sounded like, brushing the phone receiver with her clothing and making ruffling sounds.
After a long silence, she came back on the line. Digby and Agarwal were driving up South Mountain.
“Kurtis Missions. He’s one of my guys. He committed some b and e’s-”
“We know that stuff already. We need to know where he’s at. And two, whether we can take him in for anything.” Agarwal was asking for a favour. Can you gin up a probation breach?
“Gotcha,” she said. “He got no jail time, which seems awful lenient. He was fit to face criminal charges, but I guess he was deemed under the influence of drugs that night, so much so, that he suffered a sort of drug-induced psychosis. Mild schizophrenia symptoms ever since, a mitigating factor in sentencing, I assume. It must run in the family, cause his dad’s a weird cat. He used to make Kurtis carry around a water bottle full of iodine, I remember, to clean the germs off his hands. Anyway’s, Kurtis showed symptoms of paranoid disorder. Muddled thinking. But no prior occurance of severe symptoms, in brackets, psychosis…” She paused to read ahead a little in her paperwork, it sounded like.
Agarwal thought about the rubbery curves of her pale rear-end, her flaring hips. He pictured holding her ass up to his face and kissing it.
“-Here we go,” Nowles said. “Kurtis is required to adhere to psych treatment and med regime. He’s on low-level antipsychiotic. Low dose of Lithium and Haldol. He must keep the peace and be of good behaviour. He must abstain from alcohol and non-prescribed drugs. No guns. Submit to monitoring from a psych nurse, and me, during appointments. NA, AA. Restitution of 500 bucks, which he paid immediately.”
“-Okay,” Agarwal said. “Has he gone to all his appointments?”
“He missed one Friday afternoon, actually. You’re not supposed to miss that. We could breach him for that, if you want.”
Agarwal looked over at Digby and winked. “They all breach, eh Digby? No matter what, as long as we’re picky enough.”
Digby smiled. “I’m sure he never drank a beer either.”
“Did you breach him?” Agarwal asked Nowles. “How come you never called police to bring him in, if he was violating probation.”
“Not right-right away,” Nowles said. “I was going to try to reach him and see what’ he’s been doing. Haven’t had any luck. I usually wait for a good one. If you don’t wait the judge doesn’t do nothing anyway. They just give him another chance and you wasted all that time.”
“Whatever,” Agarwal said, joking around. “What’s the name of your supervisor?”
“Fuck you.”
“Haha! But, he missed that thing? So, can I arrest him?” He looked at Digby and gave her a thumbs-up.
“Not a problem.”
“I owe you one.”
“Problem solved?”
“The little problem anyway,” Agarwal said, smiling at Digby. “I still got that big one to take care of.”
Digby rolled her eyes. Nowles laughed over the earpiece and made an “ooooh” sound.