Chapter 64

Sgt. Digby was not on duty until 4. She was working the 4-12 shift as detachment supervisor this weekend, but it was never-the-less no surprise when her pager went off at 8 a.m. Saturday morning.
She was just sitting down to breakfast at the Big Stop in New Minas with her friends Tanya and Robert Reissner.
“Sgt. supervisor request, 679-5555,” she read from her pager screen. “Looks like I’m not going to be a third wheel at all. Sorry. I gotta go.” She stood up and grabbed a triangle of brown toast off her plate and took one sip of hot coffee.
“Can’t you just call in?” Tanya said, frowning. Tanya was always concerned that Digby worked too much and didn’t have enough time to socialize.
“They need a sergeant in the building.”
When Digby got out to her car in the gas station parking lot, she radiod in to see what was going on.
“Detachment. Two-three-seven.”
“Two-three. Go ahead.”
“Amanda. What’s going on?”
“Uh, two-three, we have a double missing. Could be two down.”
“Okay. I’m coming in.”
“-Four.”
A dozen people were already at New Minas Detachment when Digby arrived, many of them on call, like her, who had been told to get their butts in the building.
As soon as she pushed through the steel back entrance, the rumours came fast and furious, like handfuls of feces flung from a gang of caged monkeys.
“Digby. Gazette. Reporter. Wife! Murder.”
Digby heard a version of the story from a victim services counselor, a traffic services cop, a community policing constable and a civilian clerk in a matter of minutes. They sounded like a gaggle of reporters themselves.
The immediate assumption in the rumour mill was murder-suicide.
The reporter, snapped, the story went, killed his cheating whore and then popped himself out of hopelessness and guilt.
Whenever a middle-age couple went missing, cop-types usually assumed it was murder-suicide, and they were usually right. Why else would a middle-age couple be missing?
But in this case, Digby had other thoughts. “Why weren’t they found in their home then?” She said to one gossiper.
Jack Lee. Last name Lee. Dee Lee, Alan Lee. This is biker-related.
She went in to check her emails and the landline at her desk. Jack Lee!
One of the drug squad guys on night shift, Cst. Paul Astephen, was waiting outside her cubicle, holding two extra-large double-doubles from Timmies
As always, there was a handwritten sign taped to one of Digby’s three beige partitions that someone had written as a joke long ago and Digby had never taken down. It said: “Welcome to Digby’s office. Drinks served between 11-2 pm daily.”
She was not a strict Muslim, by any means, but she didn’t drink alcohol.
She sat at her desk, ignoring Cst. Astephen for the time being.
Why would he kill his wife?
She held the landline to her cheek and at the same time shook her computer awake with the mouse to check her email.
There was a bulliten from Wolfville Office, with pictures of the Lee couple and a flag out for their vehicle. A 1989 tan-and-white GMC Jimmy. NSL GEH 130.
She clicked the CPIC icon on her desktop and typed the names in the query field: Jack Walter Lee. Tamara Rose Lee, and also her maiden name: Tamara Rose Schofield.
It didn’t take long for the records to come forth, from the ether.
Tamara had a public lewdness conviction. Six years ago. Probation. That was it. Jack had no adult criminal convictions.
Cst. Astephen was still standing patiently across the desk, waiting to be acknowledged. He wore a shit-eating grin on his pudgy face.
“Can I help you?” Digby said, finally, picking up the coffee he’d bought her.
“Thanks for the coffee, Paul. Oh, you’re welcome, Digby.”
“Who’s on the case?”
Digby was not a crabby person. She treated Astephen like shit, because if she didn’t, he’d treat her like a hitch-hiking junky hooker, which was the only kind of women he knew how to deal with.
He took his seat fatly in the chair opposite her.
“Cst. Keith. Unless they wind up dead, then it’s you and Agarwal. But you better believe Keetch will insert himself into it if it goes that way. A reporter dead? Oh, you better believe it. And Palipschuk.”
“You think they’re dead?”
“Something bad happened, I know that. The ground search is not just a formality, that’s what I hear.”
Astephen took a thick swig of his creamy coffee. There was a masturbatory gleam in his eyes, like he had something good to squirt.
“You think it’s murder-suicide?”
“No. Hell no. Jack would never do that. I knew the guy. Trust me. There’s no more decent a guy around.”
“What then? What about the fact that his last name’s Lee, as in Dee Lee, Alan Lee?”
Cst. Astephen lit up in the eyeballs. “I don’t think there‘s much there, Digby. No. To be honest, I mean, the Valley Lee’s are an enormous family. I don’t think one has to do with the other.”
She flicked a loose curl of bang away from her eye. “So, do you know anything or not, Paul? You’re stinking up my cubicle.”
“I guess I can tell you something, man-to-man, if you’re interested. But only ‘cause Jack’s my friend and I want to see him protected. Everything I happen to know about this particular reporter.”
“Fine,” she said, rolling her eyes. “What about him?”
“He grows.” Cst. Astephen paused for effect, his legs twitching, but Digby didn’t get him at first.
“He grows what?”
“He grows weed. Annapolis Royal, Northern Lights. He probably makes about twenty grand a year, which is a lot for a small grower, on top of whatever union salary they pay now, down at the newspaper.”
“Annapolis Royal?” Annapolis Royal was the name of a historic small town in the Valley.
“Yeah. It’s a variety of weed, they grow around here, for obvious reasons. I think it was created in the Valley.”
“Okay. Jack Lee grows weed, but you say he has nothing to do with Dee Lee?”
“I think they’re cousins. He might sell his crop to Dee, I don’t know, but mainly he grows to keep himself stocked with a supply. Jack’s a good man. He just grew up in the 60’s, know what I mean?”
“Yeah.” Digby disbelieved the untrustworthy rural drug cop. She was unsure why he would seek her out to tell her all this if Jack Lee was a friend.
“Why are you telling me all this?”
“I just want you to know the facts, going in. I don’t think it has anything to do with him missing, but you never know. At least this way, you know before the uniforms start pulling trees out of his backyard.”
“Did you ever buy or sell to him?”
Cst. Astephen reclined in his chair, folding one fat leg over the other.
“What I’m telling you is true. Let’s put it that way.”
“Are you trying to insert yourself into my investigation? Is that why your telling me all this, so I’ll keep you in the loop if they turn up dead?”
“Jaysus,” Astephen said. “That’s got nothing to do with it. This’s got no connection to me. End of story. I can’t even do nobody a favour anymore!”
“Are you involved in this, in any way?”
He got up stiffly, without answering, and sauntered out of the cubicle, feigning hurt feelings.
When he was gone, Digby smiled and called up Det. Sgt. Bob Smith on his Blackberry.
“Bob. We might have some of those bodies in the harbour you were talking about.”