Chapter 83

Staff Sgt. Keetch was a fervently church-going father of four young children.
Digby had never seen him in the detachment before 11 a.m. on a Sunday before today, not in six years at New Minas Detachment.
Today, he was in the building by 6:30, same as Digby. The first doorway he darkened was the opening of Digby’s cubicle.
The sun was barely rising on the first day of the Jack and Tamara Lee homicide investigation.
“Where are we on a suspect, Digby?” Keetch demanded, a premature refrain he would repeat at select times, all day, every day for the next three weeks. “Where are we on a suspect?”
The Staff Sergeant was undoubtedly fielding precisely similar inquiries from all the way up the food chain.
“I’m working on it,” she said, grinning mischievously. “Remember when Ross and I looked at Darroll Missions for the jail guard firebombing?”
“No,” he scowled. “I thought you looked at the Moncton biker, Glen Frederick?”
“Him too. I explain it in my reports. We looked at Darroll Missions too, but then he committed suicide. Anyway, the double homicide shares a crime scene feature with another homicide. The killing of Tina-Lynn Papineau, who happens to be Darroll Missions half-sister, in New Brunswick. Her body was dumped in a ditch in the woods and covered with a big rock.”
“Okay. Talk at the briefing this morning. Explain it to me then.”
“Okay.”
He pointed a finger at her. “You’re my man on this, Digby.
By 8 sharp, Keetch had gathered everybody on the investigation team into the briefing room downstairs.
A whopping 38 cops were working the homicides in some capacity. Southwest Nova Major Crime was presiding.
Keetch set out the leads and directions identified by initially responding officers. He spoke in crisp sentences and passed out a known-fact-handout to every cop in the room.
“The scene has been catalogued. Preliminary autopsy results are on the way. Sgt. Digby and Cpl. Agarwal are heading to Halifax this morning to get taken through the forensic autopsies. We’ll get copies of their notes and transcripts, today or tomorrow.”
He turned around and taped up seven crime scene photos on the large white board hanging behind him on the back wall. “The scene has not been released, but investigation so far, tells us the couple was likely first assaulted by the homo near the location where the dog was found-“ He pointed to a paper map hung beside the pictures, marked with small colour tags labeled: Dog, Jimmy, Jack Lee, Tamara Lee, Campfire and Deer Den.
“-From there, the K-9 found a track indicating the bodies were taken- dragged and carried, all the way back to the parking lot, approximately one kilometre through forest. The bodies were then placed in the trunk of the Lee Jimmy, driven up Corkum & Burns Road to a more secluded location. The bodies were then dragged or carried into the woods again, possibly still alive. The homo placed the bodies in a natural ditch beside the road, lowered a very large rock, about 120 pounds, onto each victim’s chest, possibly to hold them down while he buried them in debris.”
Keetch paused again and let the image sink in.
“We have a track, picked up by the dog, leading back to another location where we noted some oddities in the woods, near where the dog was killed. A deer den-style bed made out of pine tree branches, constructed and slept-in recently. Remains of a campfire, rabbit bones in the fire. Boot prints. No fingerprints. Halifax has the Argon Ion Laser thing out and it can pick up a lot. Hopefully, we get a fingerprint on the bodies. Maybe he fondled her tits or something.”
A murmur went through the croud. A few jokes.
“Anyway, that’s neither here nor there. We got work to do. We need a timeline from Thursday. Statements from friends, relatives, co-workers, neighbours, area store workers at the Shell gas station in Gaspereau and Reid’s Meats, and home owners in the area from Gaspereau to Black River to Greenfield to Bishopville.”
Digby smiled to herself. It had been so many years since Kings RCMP had tackled an actual homicide, she felt like she was back at Depot.
The Staff Sgt. continued. “Do we have any suspects? No. However, there are some interesting theories we’ll be exploring with Halifax biker squad and the local office of Criminal Intelligence, that relate to a newspaper story not long ago that may have something to do with it. I’ll ask our Sgt. Digby to come front and centre. Now this goes to motive, maybe. It’s pretty early in the investigation to be thinking about motive. However, it points us at somebody… Biz? I just want you all to keep this in mind.”
Digby stood up from her plastic chair at the back of the room, where she had been hunkered down with Agarwal, and zigzagged her way through the tree-trunk legs of a dozen investigators, mostly imported from Oxford Street in Halifax.
Forensic ID, Observation Unit, General Investigation Section. Dog Unit.
She stood next to Staff Sgt. Keetch in front of the white board and fiddled with the mouse on the laptop. Power Point appeared on the board behind her. She started the presentation. A scanned image of a newspaper clipping came up.
Digby looked back at it for a moment, then turned to face the crowd.
“This is an article, dated December 29, from the Gazette, provincial edition, page A1. Three injured in jail guard firebombing.”
She spoke confidently in front of the crowd of mostly men, some of whom were standing with their arms folded.
“-By Rawle Powder. The story is about a gang-related burn-out which occurred December 27 at the home of a Burnside jail corrections officer, Todd Lewis Purcell. We believe the burn-out was ordered by an inmate under Purcell’s supervision, Perry Paul Cock Spalding.”
There was a loud ruffle of recognition at the sound of the prominent biker’s name.
“There are some interesting parts to the article which were brought to my attention by integrated biker squad in Halifax. Highlighted,” Digby continued, “are the fourth and fifth paragraphs where the story starts speculating on who may have done the firebombing, based on unnamed sources. I’ll quote: ‘Police have begun conducting interviews of inmates at the jail, sources told the Gazette. Investigators suspect the incident may have been in retaliation for alleged poor treatment of inmates during a jailhouse riot in November. Investigators with the RCMP’s South West Nova Major Crime Unit searched the jail cell of Perry Paul Spalding, 38, yesterday in connection with the case according to sources familiar with the incident. Spalding is the well-known former president of the Gypsies Motorcycle Club, Halifax chapter, an inmate at Burnside awaiting trial on charges of ordering the 2007 New Brunswick murders of fitness-club owners Shawn Dearman and Paulette Davis.’ End quote. This is all true, by the way,” Digby said. “We were quite surprised to see this in the newspaper. We racked our brains trying to figure how they got this information-“
“Jesus jail guards,” Cst. Halfkenney blurted in the front row.
“Feel free to shout out your answers, Halfkenney,” Sgt. Digby said. “No. Now think. We know it wasn’t a cop. The story goes on to name Darroll Missions as the legwork. At the time, police had no idea that person might be involved. We looked at the story itself: ‘sources familiar with the incident…’ The incident is the firebombing. We had to ask ourselves, who is familiar with a firebombing incident, but not a cop?”
“A firefighter!” Halfkenney said.
“No!” Digby said, laughing. “A firebomber.”