Chapter 98

The A.V. Room at New Minas Detachment was a converted darkroom and film storage area, with the wall that once separated the two rooms having long been removed.
The darkroom part hearkened back to the days before digital cameras, when Kings RCMP developed their own crime scene photos and mugshots.
Sgt. Digby brought in a four-cup coffee maker from her desk and brewed a pot of Timmy’s fine grind.
Smith was in the washroom.
Cst. Keith arrived after a couple of minutes, knocking politely before walking in. He was dressed in his RCMP blacks.
He was a large, tall man with grey, short hair and a black mustache. He looked even bigger in his black boots and uniform. “Hi there. At your service,” he said in a high-toned, hoarse, but pleasant-sounding voice.
Digby shook his big hand. She noticed he had a black mole on his forehead that made her worry for him that he might have skin cancer.
“Thanks for coming.”
He shrugged. “You out-rank me.”
“I’m just making coffee. Have a seat.”
She was not totally sure why she had invited Cst. Keith, a Wolfville Member she could not recall ever having spoken to in person before this week.
The video Digby was preparing to show Cst. Keith and Det. Sgt. Smith was almost sacred to her. She considered it to be what investigators call ‘key-fact’ evidence. Evidence so sensitive, that to preserve the strict integrity of her case, she was even withholding it’s existance from Cpl. Agarwal and her own Staff Sergeant. She had also not made note of it’s existence in a single piece of investigation paperwork, not even her personal notes or ViCLAS forms.
“What’s this about? Some video?”
But for whatever reason, she trusted Cst. Keith. She also felt he deserved to see the tape. He had called her and shared personal information from his friend, the reporter, about the firebombing story and how Jack Lee had actually written most of it.
Cst. Keith had shown loyalty to the Membership, above a personal friendship.
Digby appreciated that.
“It is a video, Matt. It potentially involves the Lee case. Have some coffee. Cream and sugar?”
“I’ll take a Coor light.”
Digby smiled. “You might want something stronger.”
“Black with a sugar twin, then, if you have some.”
Cst. Keith was also a personal acquaintance of Jack Lee, although not necessarily a close friend. Digby was very curious to see what his reaction to the material on the video would be. Did he know? How could he?
The projection system was already on. When Smith came back into the room, Digby signaled him to turn the lights off.
A rectangle of white light glowed behind her head. She sat down in a blue office chair and sipped her coffee.
Smith introduced himself to Cst. Keith, in the dark. They shook hands.
Digby pressed play on the DVD projector and swivelled around in her seat. She raised her eyebrows and said a few words quickly before it started.
“This is top secret stuff.” She smiled and then forced her face to be serious. She was nervous for some reason. “I’m serious. This is potential evidence, although it’s something, I really don’t know what to make of, at this point. I think you’ll see for yourselves, it needs to remain secre-”
The movie started, cutting her off. She turned around toward the screen, without saying anything else. All three officers watched intently, and silently, as the image of an indoor house party began to take shape.
There was loud music playing. The Killers.
The shot was of a hallway with beige carpet. The video was jerky and clearly being shot by an amateur with a handheld camera.
Crowds of people were walking through the hallway, past the camera, drunk and having fun. One girl was naked from the waist up, with obvious breast implants. She walked arm-in-arm with another girl, laughing.
“I found this recordable DVD in a firesafe in Jack Lee’s basement,” Digby intoned like a narrator. “Nobody else knows about it, except Ken Elliott, and he has not seen the video or been apprised of it’s contents.”
The camera was on the move. It ducked in and out of various rooms of the house party, including a bathroom. The entire house appeared new and not lived in, and sparsely furnished, like a demo-home in a new subdivision.
The camera found people having sex all over the place, in every room it peeked in. In one large room, crowded with other people, a girl was giving a blowjob to two guys at the same time, while they leaned against a wall.
At the end of the hallway with the carpet, the camara-man entered a room with no lights on through a closed door. The screen went dark, until the camera-man flicked on a small light on top of the camera, then a weak, bluish beam illuminated a twin bed with a pink blanket and a large mound under it.
Two men’s feet were hanging out the bottom of the blanket, face down.
The light shone around the room. The investigators could see the room was largely empty, except for a few girl toys, like an EZ Bake oven and a pink ironing board.
“Uhh,” Cst. Keith said. “What is this?”
Suddenly, a huge, blanched-out face appeared across the screen. It was the camera man turning the lens on himself. “This is so sick, man,” The face whispered, as if answering Cst. Keith. The face smiled crookedly, revealing bad teeth and a wrinkly chin. “Fucking sick bastard.”
The mood in the A.V. room became very intense. Cst. Keith and Det. Sgt. Smith were both sitting forward in their chairs.
The camera shot returned to the small bed. The cameraman advanced and soon appeared to perch right over the bed, so close it seemed he had to have been kneeling on it.
Digby looked over at Cst. Keith. He was squinting to try to see more clearly.
She studied his face and reactions, carefully, as the people in the bed were revealed by the camera. First Jack Lee, asleep on his front, his head turned to the left. His mouth open. Then the little girl. Cst. Keith blinked several times, hard, and scrunched up his forehead when the little girl was revealed. It was a genuine reaction of shock and disbelief. He didn’t know.
The little grl had long blonde hair, spreading across a white pillow. Her eyebrows were furrowed in a frown. Cst. Keith stood up. He walked toward the screen and stood less than a foot away, watching.
The cameraman’s skinny white arm reached across the lens and patted the bed, then pulled back the blanket, slowly, exposing Jack Lee and the girl.
They were both naked.
Cst. Keith put his hand over his mouth.
The shot moved in closer and panned down the bed, slowly, starting at Jack’s face and moving down his naked body. The girl could barely be seen, at the right of the screen. Then the camera went right, revealing the little girl’s hands tied behind her bum, with a black plastic lock-tie.
Cst. Keith switched hands, covering his mustache.
“That’s blood,” the camera-man’s voice said, in a stage-whisper. The shot focused in on a dark stain on the bed sheet, in between Jack and the girl, about the size of a pancake. “Aw, fuck. That’s blood.”
Then just like that, the video was over. The screen went grey like a sparkling fog.
Cst. Keith remained standing, in front of the screen, his bulky sillouette like a black statue against an overcast sky.
The A.V. room was silent for several seconds. The only sound was the occasional steam sound of the cheap coffee pot in the corner.
At last, the monolithic Cst. Keith turned around and faced Digby and Smith, who both were sitting in their chairs still.
The constable looked defeated. He almost looked suicidal.
An awkward atmosphere filled the room like a silent, painful scream.
Smith was the one to finally break the spell:
“What the fuck was that?” he said.