They split a last warm forty of beer and watched two people fucking in this park under a picnic table.
Rawle could see the girl’s tits being fondled.
They walked slowly to the beach and then walked along it, west, until they reached a chain link fence, marking the end of the public section and the beginning of people’s beach-front homes.
A white metal sign bolted to the fence said ‘Public beach closed at midnight. Patrolled. Loitering $200 fine.’
“We can’t sleep on the beach I guess.”
“Not the public beach, anyway.”
Kurtis waded into the water, around the outcropped edge of the chain-link fence and crossed over into a private beach instead, and laid himself down in someone’s backyard, using his small blue knapsack for a pillow.
Rawle waded around the fence too and they layed on the sand, side by side.
Kurtis talked about how he was having trouble getting rides, hitchhiking, with such a small little knapsack and a bald head and no beard. “People don’t think I’m a hippy, so I don’t getno rides, man. I used to have hair just like you, and I got all kinds of rides. Now nothing.”
Rawle had long hair by now and a beard, and ripped clothes. He had no trouble hitchhiking. It was clear to everyone on the roads of B.C. that he was roadtripping, Jack Kerouac-style around the province, like so many others.
But seeing Kurtis standing on a highway in the middle of nowhere, shaved head, no facial hair, tanned body, tourist shop clothing, anyone would naturally assume he was a psycho. And they’d be right.
Kurtis was grinding his teeth.
“Why’d you shave your head?”
“I needed a new look.”
“Why’d you leave the Maritimes?” Rawle had to be careful not to probe too deeply. “For work?”
Kurtis laughed. “I guess you could say that. I was selling crack in Halifax, before I came here.”
“Selling crack? Really?” Rawle tried to sound impressed.
“Yeah. They had me making mad money. We had a pumphouse. And before that I went to Trinidad, man! I was working on a fishing boat with a bunch of these crazy fucking guys. We picked up like, bales of Mexican weed and machine guns, and ran it all up the other side to B.C., through the Panama Canal and shit.”
“Holy shit. That’s wicked, man. So you got dropped off out here?” Rawle was trying to think of things someone who didn’t know anything about Kurtis might say.
“No. That was a while ago. I was in back Halifax. Sort of working for the Gypsies, then they selected me for this initiation. Well, it was a cop who selected me, but the cop works for the Gypsies. That’s why I’m out here. I’m on an initiation test.”
Rawle looked over at him, with genuine curiosity. “There’s a test?”
Kurtis smiled. “Of course. The prospect test. It takes a year initiation from hangaround to prospect, into the Gypsies. I gotta do it if I wanna work for them, for real.”
Rawle sat up on his elbow and rolled a smoke, fascinated. “What do you mean initiation? What do you have to do?”
Kurtis was talking matter-of-factly. “Well, you probably know, I mean… Basically, I got to travel all over with no money and no possessions and survive on my skills. Then you got to do a bunch of jobs for full-patch members and stuff like that.”
“What kind of jobs? Do you have to kill anybody?”
Kurtis laughed. “C’mon man. If you didn’t know what I was talking about you wouldn’t ask me.” He wouldn’t elabourate.
Rawle tried again. “C’mon. Have you ever killed anybody?”
Kurtis looked angry at the question. He laid his head down in the sand. “You don’t ask somebody about that. Anyone who’s done that, you don’t ask them to talk about it.”
Rawle didn’t say anything. His heart was pounded in his chest, making a sickening thud.
“You do what you have to do,” Kurtis added, speaking in a low voice. “Everything I did was self-defense.”
Rawle pretended to fall asleep after that. He thought about the arrogance of what Kurtis had said, and struggled to keep a belching fire buried in his chest. He had heartburn, he was so angry.
He couldn’t believe he was this close to Jack and Tee’s killer and doing nothing about it. Lying on the beach. Powerless.
He thought about waiting until Kurtis was asleep, and then bashing his skull in with a rock. He thought about exactly how he would do it, for close to an hour.
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Chapter 133
Cranswick Greeno was in Vernon, a town on Kalamalka Lake, just north of Kelowna, at the mouth of the Okanagan Valley.
Two jobs in a row.
He was staying with HIV Aimee and her friend, at a cheap motel off Highway 97.
The job in Montreal had gone off without a hitch. But this one would be much more complicated. Dee Lee was not even certain his newest asset was homosexual.
Kurtis Missions and the asset, Rawle Powder, were nearby, heading south from Penticton, hitchhiking.
The update from Glenny had come shortly after dinnertime.
Cranswick consulted his laminated map, then jumped into the rental Neon, taking only the clothes on his back, and some Special K and GHB, in the glove box.
He left HIV Aimee and her friend to pack the bags. He wanted to get there first.
Aimee’s friend had a car too, so it would be okay.
Plus, if they split up, they doubled their chances of finding the targets.
Cranwick calculated that if he drove straight out, he would probably overtake them somewhere between Oliver and Osoyoos, the latter of which was a small town right on the U.S. border.
If he missed them there, they would probably head west toward Vancouver.
Kurtis had a criminal record and would not likely risk crossing the border.
Then again, maybe he had really good fake ID.
Finding him in Canada was hard enough. If he managed to get across the border, he might shake his tail and disappear for good.
Cranswick decided the best bet would be to drive straight through to Osoyoos, and wait for them there.
He gave the Neon a little gas, but still kept it at ten above the speed limit.
Just outside Kelowna, he pulled over at a gas station with a Timmy’s and used the family washroom. There was a plastic Koala change table that folded down from the wall. He rummaged through the garbage can underneath the table and found two or three recent diapers. He picked one with a big number two in it and stuffed it into the tight pocket of his jeans.
The smell was overpowering.
Two jobs in a row.
He was staying with HIV Aimee and her friend, at a cheap motel off Highway 97.
The job in Montreal had gone off without a hitch. But this one would be much more complicated. Dee Lee was not even certain his newest asset was homosexual.
Kurtis Missions and the asset, Rawle Powder, were nearby, heading south from Penticton, hitchhiking.
The update from Glenny had come shortly after dinnertime.
Cranswick consulted his laminated map, then jumped into the rental Neon, taking only the clothes on his back, and some Special K and GHB, in the glove box.
He left HIV Aimee and her friend to pack the bags. He wanted to get there first.
Aimee’s friend had a car too, so it would be okay.
Plus, if they split up, they doubled their chances of finding the targets.
Cranwick calculated that if he drove straight out, he would probably overtake them somewhere between Oliver and Osoyoos, the latter of which was a small town right on the U.S. border.
If he missed them there, they would probably head west toward Vancouver.
Kurtis had a criminal record and would not likely risk crossing the border.
Then again, maybe he had really good fake ID.
Finding him in Canada was hard enough. If he managed to get across the border, he might shake his tail and disappear for good.
Cranswick decided the best bet would be to drive straight through to Osoyoos, and wait for them there.
He gave the Neon a little gas, but still kept it at ten above the speed limit.
Just outside Kelowna, he pulled over at a gas station with a Timmy’s and used the family washroom. There was a plastic Koala change table that folded down from the wall. He rummaged through the garbage can underneath the table and found two or three recent diapers. He picked one with a big number two in it and stuffed it into the tight pocket of his jeans.
The smell was overpowering.
Chapter 134
The next morning, Rawle and Kurtis hitchhiked straight to the next town down.
Oliver.
The cherries were ripe. Hundreds of hippy kids, Newfies and Caribbean guys were crowded in the park at the centre of town waiting to get work. Rawle felt like he should pick cherries for a day two, at least, to get some spending money. If they kept doing the dine-n-dash thing they were bound to get arrested. But Kurtis kept up such a pace of meeting people and bumming weed that after a couple hours of waiting for work, Rawle was too high to care anymore.
They hit the highway, again, in the early afternoon and hitchhiked another town down.
Osoyoos.
Osoyoos was the last small town in the valley.
It was a tiny, burning-hot, incredibly desert town, right on the U.S. border with Washington State, which kind of made Rawle nervous, for some reason.
Kurtis wanted to leave right away, and go across the border.
“You can’t go across with a record, man!” Rawle said. “I’m not talking about an open warrant… any criminal record.”
“I know. But that’s only if they check me out, which they won’t. And I got fake ID. C’mon, man. We’ll hitchhike to Mexico!”
Rawle was starting to feel sick from too much exposure to the hot, hammering Valley sun. As a lifelong Maritimer, he was just not used to this much sun.
“But I got a record, too,” Rawle protested, thinking fast. “Drug possession. They won’t let me cross the border. I know it.”
They’d been drinking only beer for several days now, no water, and not eating anything but fruit they stole from the side of the road, and the occasional dine-n-dash meal.
Rawle was feeling very low on energy and his head was sun-baked.
Oliver and Osoyoos were the hottest temperature towns he had ever been in, his entire life.
It was sunny and dry all day long, morning til night, with him hitchhiking and walking mile after mile after mile on the dusty hot black highway, with thumbs out like a couple of Maritime prostitutes.
Rawle was feeling nauseous, almost cold, and sweaty and very dizzy.
“I’m going to stay in Osoyoos for a while, and just chill out,” Rawle complained as they walked slowly down Main Street.
“I feel like I’m getting heat stroke or something. We’ve been on her for days. I can’t drink tonight either.”
Kurtis said he guessed he would stay in town, too.
“I’m just going to sleep under a bridge or something, until I feel better,” Rawle said. “You go ahead. I’ll probably catch up to you anyways. I’m going to Van. What are you gonna do?”
“I don’t know. Either Van or across the border.”
Kurtis had flirted with a fat lady who worked at the liquor store earlier in the day and had her phone number written on a cigarette pack. He pulled the pack out and got out a smoke. “Maybe I’ll go call that bitch from the liquor store and try to get some leather,” he said. “In the morning, we’ll decide.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Rawle said.
Rawle was relieved when they finally went their separate ways. He almost wanted Kurtis to cross the border and disappear.
He was sick of him.
Oliver.
The cherries were ripe. Hundreds of hippy kids, Newfies and Caribbean guys were crowded in the park at the centre of town waiting to get work. Rawle felt like he should pick cherries for a day two, at least, to get some spending money. If they kept doing the dine-n-dash thing they were bound to get arrested. But Kurtis kept up such a pace of meeting people and bumming weed that after a couple hours of waiting for work, Rawle was too high to care anymore.
They hit the highway, again, in the early afternoon and hitchhiked another town down.
Osoyoos.
Osoyoos was the last small town in the valley.
It was a tiny, burning-hot, incredibly desert town, right on the U.S. border with Washington State, which kind of made Rawle nervous, for some reason.
Kurtis wanted to leave right away, and go across the border.
“You can’t go across with a record, man!” Rawle said. “I’m not talking about an open warrant… any criminal record.”
“I know. But that’s only if they check me out, which they won’t. And I got fake ID. C’mon, man. We’ll hitchhike to Mexico!”
Rawle was starting to feel sick from too much exposure to the hot, hammering Valley sun. As a lifelong Maritimer, he was just not used to this much sun.
“But I got a record, too,” Rawle protested, thinking fast. “Drug possession. They won’t let me cross the border. I know it.”
They’d been drinking only beer for several days now, no water, and not eating anything but fruit they stole from the side of the road, and the occasional dine-n-dash meal.
Rawle was feeling very low on energy and his head was sun-baked.
Oliver and Osoyoos were the hottest temperature towns he had ever been in, his entire life.
It was sunny and dry all day long, morning til night, with him hitchhiking and walking mile after mile after mile on the dusty hot black highway, with thumbs out like a couple of Maritime prostitutes.
Rawle was feeling nauseous, almost cold, and sweaty and very dizzy.
“I’m going to stay in Osoyoos for a while, and just chill out,” Rawle complained as they walked slowly down Main Street.
“I feel like I’m getting heat stroke or something. We’ve been on her for days. I can’t drink tonight either.”
Kurtis said he guessed he would stay in town, too.
“I’m just going to sleep under a bridge or something, until I feel better,” Rawle said. “You go ahead. I’ll probably catch up to you anyways. I’m going to Van. What are you gonna do?”
“I don’t know. Either Van or across the border.”
Kurtis had flirted with a fat lady who worked at the liquor store earlier in the day and had her phone number written on a cigarette pack. He pulled the pack out and got out a smoke. “Maybe I’ll go call that bitch from the liquor store and try to get some leather,” he said. “In the morning, we’ll decide.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Rawle said.
Rawle was relieved when they finally went their separate ways. He almost wanted Kurtis to cross the border and disappear.
He was sick of him.
Chapter 135
He found a bridge spanning a thin part of Osoyoos Lake and walked underneath it, immediately starting to feel better as soon as he was free of the stress of being near Kurtis, and now that he was cool under the shade of the concrete structure, near the water.
He stuffed his cumbersome camping backpack into an alcove, under the bridge and went for coffee at a nearby café with air-conditioning.
It felt so good, just to sit down and read the newspaper.
His horoscope in the Osoyoos Leader said he was about to meet the love of his life, and that it would mark the next stage of his life. But he was warned though, to be careful, because this new lover could potentially swallow him up, like that female spider that devours her mate, post-fucking.
After a couple of hours, he went back to the bridge.
His backpack had already been ransacked by vandals. They didn’t even open it up by the zipper, but ripped it open along a seam running all the way down one side, so it could never be used again.
Fucking assholes.
His clothes were scattered all around the rocks, and soaking in the shallow water of Osoyoos Lake, like dead bodies.
He did a quick inventory. Some things were obviously missing, like his electric razor.
But luckily, he still had his small knapsack he kept folded up inside the big one, to use on day trips.
He took the things he most needed, like his thermal blanket, and put them in the little bag, then pitched the rest of his junk into the river.
His new pack felt light and free on the shoulders, and he grew intensely happy at having purged himself of most of his possessions. They belonged to his old life anyway.
He didn’t need them anymore.
A middle-age man was walking down the bank, under the bridge and stood over by the water. He seemed to be looking for something. Suddenly, he turned his head back and saw Rawle.
“Oops, didn’t see you there. I just came down to take a pee.”
“I’m cleaning up my knapsack. I left it here ‘cause I had to get out of the sun for awhile,” Rawle rambled. “I think I have heat stroke, but somebody friggen trashed it.”
The man was a short, plump, ugly man with a moustache and jeans. When he finished pissing, he asked Rawle if he needed a place to get out of the sun for a while, maybe get a shower and have a cold beer.
Rawle was basically delirious. A strange man was asking if he wanted to come back to his place, and Rawle thought nothing of it.
“Sounds like a plan!”
He stuffed his cumbersome camping backpack into an alcove, under the bridge and went for coffee at a nearby café with air-conditioning.
It felt so good, just to sit down and read the newspaper.
His horoscope in the Osoyoos Leader said he was about to meet the love of his life, and that it would mark the next stage of his life. But he was warned though, to be careful, because this new lover could potentially swallow him up, like that female spider that devours her mate, post-fucking.
After a couple of hours, he went back to the bridge.
His backpack had already been ransacked by vandals. They didn’t even open it up by the zipper, but ripped it open along a seam running all the way down one side, so it could never be used again.
Fucking assholes.
His clothes were scattered all around the rocks, and soaking in the shallow water of Osoyoos Lake, like dead bodies.
He did a quick inventory. Some things were obviously missing, like his electric razor.
But luckily, he still had his small knapsack he kept folded up inside the big one, to use on day trips.
He took the things he most needed, like his thermal blanket, and put them in the little bag, then pitched the rest of his junk into the river.
His new pack felt light and free on the shoulders, and he grew intensely happy at having purged himself of most of his possessions. They belonged to his old life anyway.
He didn’t need them anymore.
A middle-age man was walking down the bank, under the bridge and stood over by the water. He seemed to be looking for something. Suddenly, he turned his head back and saw Rawle.
“Oops, didn’t see you there. I just came down to take a pee.”
“I’m cleaning up my knapsack. I left it here ‘cause I had to get out of the sun for awhile,” Rawle rambled. “I think I have heat stroke, but somebody friggen trashed it.”
The man was a short, plump, ugly man with a moustache and jeans. When he finished pissing, he asked Rawle if he needed a place to get out of the sun for a while, maybe get a shower and have a cold beer.
Rawle was basically delirious. A strange man was asking if he wanted to come back to his place, and Rawle thought nothing of it.
“Sounds like a plan!”
Chapter 136
He bounced along beside the furtive man, two blocks, to his pleasant-looking hotel room at the Holiday Inn.
There was a rental Neon in the driveway, outside his suite.
Throughout his manhunt across the Canadian West, Rawle had been continually blown away by the kindness of strangers. Several of the people he hitchhiked with, gave him money, or stopped and bought him meals or cigarettes.
A good-looking chick, all by herself, had driven him from Jasper to Hinton to Jasper one time, even though he looked like a criminal.
She even confessed she’d had a bad experience hitchhiking: When she was fifteen, she hitched a ride with some guy and fell asleep in the passenger seat. When she woke up, the guy had his cock out and was jacking off, with his long cock pointed in her direction. She asked him to “stop it” and he said “no,” and proceeded to squirt on the plastic console in between the seats.
Rawle really didn’t think going to this guy’s hotel room, alone, was weird. In his heat exhausted delirium, he thought it was just another example of a West Coast stranger, being kind.
They walked into a normal looking hotel room. The man got a few cans of Canadian out of the mini-fridge and brought them out to a small apartment-style balcony off the main room, through a set of sliding glass doors.
They sat down at in plastic chairs and talked for a while.
He said his name was ‘Bruce.’
Rawle told him his name was ‘Michael.’
“What are you doing in Osoyoos?”
“Picking fruit, looking for someone I hate. He owes me money. I found him and now I don’t know what to do about it. I’m either going to kick his ass, or just let it go.”
Bruce raised his bushy black eyebrows and wiped a speck of foam from the edge of his lip. “Why don’t you kick his ass?”
“It’s not that simple.” Yes it is. It’s that simple. You’re just too much of a pussy.
“I know some people who can help you, if that’s what you want.” Bruce said, in a quiet voice. “I know some Gypsies, y’know.”
Small world, Rawle thought. “Yeah? Real Gypsies?”
“Yeah. I used to do some gardening work for a Gypsy. New West chapter. He told me, if I ever needed someone to be a heavy, I could call him up. He was a pretty nice man.”
“I wouldn’t want to bother someone like that with my problems,” Rawle said.
Bruce blushed. “I suppose not. I guess, I’m just trying to impress you.”
“What for?” Rawle said, swigging his beer. The cold beer was going down, like water.
“Where is this guy you’re after?” Bruce said. “Is he here in town?”
“He’s here in town. Yeah. We just split up, ‘cause I was feeling sun-stroked. He’s trying to hook up with some fat chick he met at the liquor store.”
“So, you think he’ll be in town, all night tonight?”
“I guess. What do you care?”
“No, I just…. So, do you want to take that shower now?” Bruce said, changing the subject. He got up and fetched a clean towel and wash cloth from a small closet off the bathroom.
Rawle didn’t answer.
“Do you want to take a shower?” he asked again.
“I’m okay, right now,” Rawle said.
“You might as well. Who knows when you’ll have a chance to take a shower again?”
Rawle stared at the man, cautiously. “I guess your right.” He stood up and grabbed the towel and washcloth.
Bruce showed him to the bathroom. “You can use any soap and shampoo you find in there.”
“Thanks.”
Rawle closed the bathroom door and locked it behind him. He wondered absent-mindedly if Bruce might have a camera or something, installed in the shower, to spy on him.
He stripped off all his clothes and climbed in the tub, turning on the water nice and hot.
It felt great. He hadn’t had a shower in weeks.
When he got out of the bathroom, Bruce was sitting on the sofa, waiting.
Rawle was glad because he thought maybe Bruce would’ve tried to come in the bathroom after him. He was getting a slight weird vibe now from Bruce, although he still felt pretty delirious and out of it.
He joined Bruce on the beige tweed couch and they talked a bit more. Rawle thanked him for the beer and the shower. Bruce said something very softly. “It’s okay… I need this. Please, have another beer.”
There was an open can of beer on the coffee table.
“Have another beer,” he said again.
Rawle felt the strange vibe again. The beer was open. Why would he open a can of beer for me?
“I’d better just get going…” He stood up to leave. Bruce looked up at him, almost desperately, and spoke in a quick voice this time: “Do you want your cock sucked?”
Rawle bent down slowly to put on his shoes. He processed what Bruce said and then burst into laughter.
“Do I want my cock sucked?” he repeated back to Bruce, looking him in the face.
Bruce was not smiling. He whispered “Yeah,” in his soft voice again.
To Rawle’s surprise, he suddenly felt a repulsive urge to take this man up on his sickening offer, just because he’d never done it before.
“$60,” he said, surprised at his own words.
Bruce’s black bushy mustache quivered over his mouth. He he took his glasses off, then put them on again. Then he took his wallet out of his back pocket and removed three twenties from a larger bill-fold. He set the money on the dining room table, then kneeled, facing Rawle’s crotch.
“Do you want your beer?”
Rawle shook his head.
Bruce took off his glasses, again, and put them on the table, next to the money.
He made a girlish moaning sound.
Rawle smelled something really bad, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. He thought it must be Bruce’s breath.
“Fuck that.” Rawle changed his mind.
Bruce tried to hold him by his thighs. “Where are you going?”
Rawle could smell shit now, very strongly. It was definitely a feces smell.
A cross between shit, urine and perfume.
Or baby powder.
Rawle had smelled this exact same smell before.
It was Athan’s Diaper Wizard.
The Diaper Wizard, a sealable plastic garbage can for diapers, with liner bags inside that smelled like baby powder. Whenever you opened it, to change the bag, you smelled that fermented odour combination of shit, urine and baby powder.
Rawle shook himself away, revolted.
“What is that smell?” He stumbled backward and jumped up onto the couch, pressing his back against the wall.
Bruce looked up at him, wide-eyed, then got up off his knees and waddled quickly into the bathroom, shutting the door behind him.
Rawle made for the door and wriggled out, slamming it behind him and running full tilt down the hallway.
He went to sleep early that night on the lawns of a nearby park.
As he fell asleep, he couldn’t help but imagine Bruce coming after him, for refusing that open beer.
He slept with a heavy stick, holding it like a club, under the thermal blanket.
There was a rental Neon in the driveway, outside his suite.
Throughout his manhunt across the Canadian West, Rawle had been continually blown away by the kindness of strangers. Several of the people he hitchhiked with, gave him money, or stopped and bought him meals or cigarettes.
A good-looking chick, all by herself, had driven him from Jasper to Hinton to Jasper one time, even though he looked like a criminal.
She even confessed she’d had a bad experience hitchhiking: When she was fifteen, she hitched a ride with some guy and fell asleep in the passenger seat. When she woke up, the guy had his cock out and was jacking off, with his long cock pointed in her direction. She asked him to “stop it” and he said “no,” and proceeded to squirt on the plastic console in between the seats.
Rawle really didn’t think going to this guy’s hotel room, alone, was weird. In his heat exhausted delirium, he thought it was just another example of a West Coast stranger, being kind.
They walked into a normal looking hotel room. The man got a few cans of Canadian out of the mini-fridge and brought them out to a small apartment-style balcony off the main room, through a set of sliding glass doors.
They sat down at in plastic chairs and talked for a while.
He said his name was ‘Bruce.’
Rawle told him his name was ‘Michael.’
“What are you doing in Osoyoos?”
“Picking fruit, looking for someone I hate. He owes me money. I found him and now I don’t know what to do about it. I’m either going to kick his ass, or just let it go.”
Bruce raised his bushy black eyebrows and wiped a speck of foam from the edge of his lip. “Why don’t you kick his ass?”
“It’s not that simple.” Yes it is. It’s that simple. You’re just too much of a pussy.
“I know some people who can help you, if that’s what you want.” Bruce said, in a quiet voice. “I know some Gypsies, y’know.”
Small world, Rawle thought. “Yeah? Real Gypsies?”
“Yeah. I used to do some gardening work for a Gypsy. New West chapter. He told me, if I ever needed someone to be a heavy, I could call him up. He was a pretty nice man.”
“I wouldn’t want to bother someone like that with my problems,” Rawle said.
Bruce blushed. “I suppose not. I guess, I’m just trying to impress you.”
“What for?” Rawle said, swigging his beer. The cold beer was going down, like water.
“Where is this guy you’re after?” Bruce said. “Is he here in town?”
“He’s here in town. Yeah. We just split up, ‘cause I was feeling sun-stroked. He’s trying to hook up with some fat chick he met at the liquor store.”
“So, you think he’ll be in town, all night tonight?”
“I guess. What do you care?”
“No, I just…. So, do you want to take that shower now?” Bruce said, changing the subject. He got up and fetched a clean towel and wash cloth from a small closet off the bathroom.
Rawle didn’t answer.
“Do you want to take a shower?” he asked again.
“I’m okay, right now,” Rawle said.
“You might as well. Who knows when you’ll have a chance to take a shower again?”
Rawle stared at the man, cautiously. “I guess your right.” He stood up and grabbed the towel and washcloth.
Bruce showed him to the bathroom. “You can use any soap and shampoo you find in there.”
“Thanks.”
Rawle closed the bathroom door and locked it behind him. He wondered absent-mindedly if Bruce might have a camera or something, installed in the shower, to spy on him.
He stripped off all his clothes and climbed in the tub, turning on the water nice and hot.
It felt great. He hadn’t had a shower in weeks.
When he got out of the bathroom, Bruce was sitting on the sofa, waiting.
Rawle was glad because he thought maybe Bruce would’ve tried to come in the bathroom after him. He was getting a slight weird vibe now from Bruce, although he still felt pretty delirious and out of it.
He joined Bruce on the beige tweed couch and they talked a bit more. Rawle thanked him for the beer and the shower. Bruce said something very softly. “It’s okay… I need this. Please, have another beer.”
There was an open can of beer on the coffee table.
“Have another beer,” he said again.
Rawle felt the strange vibe again. The beer was open. Why would he open a can of beer for me?
“I’d better just get going…” He stood up to leave. Bruce looked up at him, almost desperately, and spoke in a quick voice this time: “Do you want your cock sucked?”
Rawle bent down slowly to put on his shoes. He processed what Bruce said and then burst into laughter.
“Do I want my cock sucked?” he repeated back to Bruce, looking him in the face.
Bruce was not smiling. He whispered “Yeah,” in his soft voice again.
To Rawle’s surprise, he suddenly felt a repulsive urge to take this man up on his sickening offer, just because he’d never done it before.
“$60,” he said, surprised at his own words.
Bruce’s black bushy mustache quivered over his mouth. He he took his glasses off, then put them on again. Then he took his wallet out of his back pocket and removed three twenties from a larger bill-fold. He set the money on the dining room table, then kneeled, facing Rawle’s crotch.
“Do you want your beer?”
Rawle shook his head.
Bruce took off his glasses, again, and put them on the table, next to the money.
He made a girlish moaning sound.
Rawle smelled something really bad, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. He thought it must be Bruce’s breath.
“Fuck that.” Rawle changed his mind.
Bruce tried to hold him by his thighs. “Where are you going?”
Rawle could smell shit now, very strongly. It was definitely a feces smell.
A cross between shit, urine and perfume.
Or baby powder.
Rawle had smelled this exact same smell before.
It was Athan’s Diaper Wizard.
The Diaper Wizard, a sealable plastic garbage can for diapers, with liner bags inside that smelled like baby powder. Whenever you opened it, to change the bag, you smelled that fermented odour combination of shit, urine and baby powder.
Rawle shook himself away, revolted.
“What is that smell?” He stumbled backward and jumped up onto the couch, pressing his back against the wall.
Bruce looked up at him, wide-eyed, then got up off his knees and waddled quickly into the bathroom, shutting the door behind him.
Rawle made for the door and wriggled out, slamming it behind him and running full tilt down the hallway.
He went to sleep early that night on the lawns of a nearby park.
As he fell asleep, he couldn’t help but imagine Bruce coming after him, for refusing that open beer.
He slept with a heavy stick, holding it like a club, under the thermal blanket.
Chapter 137
At dawn, the automatic sprinklers in the park came on, suddenly, shooting their cold pelting mechanical rain all over Rawle Powder.
He shot up out of a dead sleep and ran away, soaking wet.
By the time he got to Highway 3, the sun had already dried him out completely.
He ducked into the Husky Truck Stop and ate a big breakfast of fried eggs and pancakes with hot blueberry syrup and coffee.
Afterwards, he got up and went to the bathroom to clean his pecker.
From the restaurant side you were supposed to take your bill up to the counter on the gas station side to pay, but instead he crumpled the bill into his pocket and left without paying.
He shot up out of a dead sleep and ran away, soaking wet.
By the time he got to Highway 3, the sun had already dried him out completely.
He ducked into the Husky Truck Stop and ate a big breakfast of fried eggs and pancakes with hot blueberry syrup and coffee.
Afterwards, he got up and went to the bathroom to clean his pecker.
From the restaurant side you were supposed to take your bill up to the counter on the gas station side to pay, but instead he crumpled the bill into his pocket and left without paying.
Chapter 138
“Sergeant,” Sgt. Digby’s 60-year-old civilian clerk Kimberley Black ducked her head around the cubicle. “I’m going to lunch. You have a call from a Detective McCreath, Montreal city police. Line one.”
Montreal? Digby picked up the phone and cradled it in her ear. It had not stopped ringing all day.
“Go ahead. Sgt. Digby speaking.”
“Hello….” A voice chuckled, warmly. “Ah good, Sergeant….”
“Hello?”
“Yes. I have you listed as presiding a double homicide. Jack Walter Lee, Tamara Rose Lee-Schofield.”
“That’s correct….” Digby leaned forward in her chair, happy to take a break from the reports on her desk.
“My name is Peter McCreath with Montreal homicide squad. I have a homicide which occurred a couple days after your double. Heather Dominie, a first-year student at Concordia.”
“OK,” Digby said, pulling her fingers through her hair, as if subconsciously trying to make it grow in faster.
“We got a link. In ViCLAS.”
Digby dropped the papers on her desk and started listening. She was confused. As far as she knew, she hadn’t filled out her violent crime linkage analysis system paperwork.
She couldn’t imagine she could have linked with a case in Montreal.
“How did we link….?”
Keetch, she thought. Staff Sgt. Keetch was technically the lead investigator. He must have filled out her booklet and dropped it off in Bedford, after the Verryn shooting, to make sure there were no loose ends when Codiac RCMP investigated the circumstances of the shooting.
She was supposed to fill out a ViCLAS booklet for every violent crime she worked, in a timely fashion, but she was always slow with hers, on purpose.
The ViCLAS program required that investigators share highly sensitive details of their cases, with unknown fellow RCMP officers.
The kind of cops who ended up working at the Bedford ViCLAS office were those that had been pulled off active duty, because they were either injured on the job, burned-out mentally, or they screwed up something, bad. Either way, Digby didn’t trust them to make her morning coffee.
As much as she was a loyal Mountie, Digby could acknowledge that the Membership contained its share of permanently corrupted officers, like Cst. Paul Astephen, who had to be recognized for what they were, and boxed-in, so the damage they could do remained minimal.
“Alright,” she said, apprehensively. “You say our cases linked?”
“I just got the results yesterday. I figured we should share information.”
“Okay.”
“Should we get together, in person?”
Digby rubbed her face. “I guess so. Can you tell me a bit more about your case? Do you know why we linked in the first place?”
“Sure.” He cleared his throat. Digby got the sense he was feeling uncomfortable.
“My victim was found in an alley, downtown. Underwear was ripped. We established in the autopsy that a tuft of her pubic hair was cut, above the vagina.”
“Cut?”
“A tuft of her pubic hair, cut off, yes, and her vagina had snow inside it. Uhh-“
McCreath sounded awkward. He was telling Digby his own sensitive case secrets, or maybe all the pussy talk was making him blush.
“Okay,” Digby said, prodding him. “He cut off pubic hair. To keep a memento?”
“Actually, if you can keep this quiet, the theory is, he cut whatever hair may have contained his semen. We recreated that the sex happened in a doggy-style manner….”
Digby pictured Darroll Missions, elbowing his girlfriend in the back while having sex with her doggy-style. She would always picture that now, whenever anyone mentioned the words ‘doggy-style.’
“-As he ejaculated, some semen must have dribbled down onto her pubic hair, above the clitoris area- See what I mean?”
“Yeah, thanks a lot,” Digby joked. “I’m picturing that. So much for my Boston cream donut.”
There was a long pause on the other end of the phone, then McCreath realized it was safe to laugh.
“Hahhaha! Yes.”
“Go on.”
“So, some hair with semen matted in it, was cut off, then he washed her vagina inside with snow.”
“Okay. He tried to remove his jizm from the crime scene…”
“This was a high-profile case, in Quebec,” McCreath said. “The Ops NCO told me not to worry about expenses. Heather was a pretty girl, an Anglophone from Ontario. Her picture was in all the newspapers, all over Quebec, Ontario. We had a shitty case too. No witness, no boyfriend… She was murdered on a rooftop in the middle of the downtown core.”
“A rooftop?” Digby vaguely recalled seeing a story on the murder now, on one of the cable channels. “I think I remember this actually.”
“Yeah. We believe, either she or the killer used the rooftop as a hang-out, previously, or a place to sleep.”
Digby got back to the subject of the semen. “What were you going to say, about the semen? Did you get his DNA?”
“Yes. They flushed her out. We did find some, despite the snow-job. We shared a sample with the RCMP for a check of the national registry. Fifteen days later we got no matches. But then, recently we got matched to another anonymous DNA sample, found at another unsolved case, right here in the city. This one, the sexual assault of a very young child.”
Digby rummaged her drawer and took out a fresh notebook. “Wait…” she said.
Yet again, someone was mentioning child sexual abuse to her, in relation to the Lee case.
What the hell is going on?
“A sexual assault on a child?” Digby’s curiosity was drivingher crazy. “Okay. Let’s go back. Why are you calling me? How did you connect with my murder case?”
McCreath sighed, making a static sound over the phone. “I asked for links from violent crime analysis.”
“Yes?”
“Yes. And your case was one of them. So, I had one case linked by DNA, but with no name. Then yesterday, my ViCLAS links came. Basically, what I want is, a warrant for the DNA of that reporter, Kyle Verryn,” he said, delicately, “to see if his DNA matches my semen.”
There was a long pause.
Digby relived, once again, killing Kyle Verryn.
“He tried to shoot me,” she mumbled, more to herself than McCreath.
“I know,” McCreath said. “I read about it in the Gazette. Reporter shot by cop. I have to know if he was my guy. Did you take a sample from him?”
Digby was fidgeting with her filing cabinet. Ever since the shooting, she had been fidgeting a lot, especially when she had to talk about it.
“I think we can get a sample, yeah.”
It had been her first killing as a police officer. Her first time using her gun, in fact, against a living target.
She kept seeing Verryn’s face standing at her car window in the Student Union Building parking lot.
Are you following me, or am I following you?
Verryn’s words had a whole new meaning now tha he was dead. She’d followed him before she killed him.
Now his ghost was following her.
“Why did our cases link?” she asked, flat out. McCreath had still not given her an answer. “What evidence was it based on, specifically?”
“I think it was because… Did you receive links?”
“No. But I filled out my forms late.”
“Fine. I’ll summarize. There’s three cases that linked, all blunt force trauma, crimes of passion. In all cases, the beatings are savage and the weapon is a random object that seems to have been grabbed up at the scene. A weapon of opportunity. The bodies were all moved from one location to a new location, then covered with something. In my case, she was moved down to the alley from the rooftop, and covered with garbage. In your case, they were covered with heavy rocks and thensnow, and in another case, in New Brunswick, it was a rock, as well.”
“Okay.”
“We have a vague description of a young man who might have been seen with Ms. Dominie at a strip club, the night she was murdered. We want to take Verryn’s DNA, and some photos to the bouncers at the club, to see if they recognize him.”
“What about the girl, who was molested? Did she give a description?”
“She was far too young. They left her alone.”
“How old?” Digby asked, feeling her heart lump up in her throat, like cartilage.
“Four years old. We cut the semen sample from her bangs. She was beat up, as well, and her wrist has a rotational fracture, probably from being grabbed and pulled into a van.”
Digby kicked back in her chair, looking up at the ceiling. She felt streaks of sadness move through her ribcage.
“Okay. I can send you the photos. But, I can tell you right now, I don’t think my guy could have been in Montreal two days after my murders.”
McCreath went silent. “Why not? It’s not that far, is it?”
“I’m pretty sure he was here in Nova Scotia, at that time, because he was writing stories for the newspaper. I was reading stories and his name was on them, like every day.”
McCreath puffed air like he was lighting a cigarette. “You know how it is. If it’s technically possible, at all, I would really like to try. If I can rule him out even, it would be well worth the trouble.”
Montreal? Digby picked up the phone and cradled it in her ear. It had not stopped ringing all day.
“Go ahead. Sgt. Digby speaking.”
“Hello….” A voice chuckled, warmly. “Ah good, Sergeant….”
“Hello?”
“Yes. I have you listed as presiding a double homicide. Jack Walter Lee, Tamara Rose Lee-Schofield.”
“That’s correct….” Digby leaned forward in her chair, happy to take a break from the reports on her desk.
“My name is Peter McCreath with Montreal homicide squad. I have a homicide which occurred a couple days after your double. Heather Dominie, a first-year student at Concordia.”
“OK,” Digby said, pulling her fingers through her hair, as if subconsciously trying to make it grow in faster.
“We got a link. In ViCLAS.”
Digby dropped the papers on her desk and started listening. She was confused. As far as she knew, she hadn’t filled out her violent crime linkage analysis system paperwork.
She couldn’t imagine she could have linked with a case in Montreal.
“How did we link….?”
Keetch, she thought. Staff Sgt. Keetch was technically the lead investigator. He must have filled out her booklet and dropped it off in Bedford, after the Verryn shooting, to make sure there were no loose ends when Codiac RCMP investigated the circumstances of the shooting.
She was supposed to fill out a ViCLAS booklet for every violent crime she worked, in a timely fashion, but she was always slow with hers, on purpose.
The ViCLAS program required that investigators share highly sensitive details of their cases, with unknown fellow RCMP officers.
The kind of cops who ended up working at the Bedford ViCLAS office were those that had been pulled off active duty, because they were either injured on the job, burned-out mentally, or they screwed up something, bad. Either way, Digby didn’t trust them to make her morning coffee.
As much as she was a loyal Mountie, Digby could acknowledge that the Membership contained its share of permanently corrupted officers, like Cst. Paul Astephen, who had to be recognized for what they were, and boxed-in, so the damage they could do remained minimal.
“Alright,” she said, apprehensively. “You say our cases linked?”
“I just got the results yesterday. I figured we should share information.”
“Okay.”
“Should we get together, in person?”
Digby rubbed her face. “I guess so. Can you tell me a bit more about your case? Do you know why we linked in the first place?”
“Sure.” He cleared his throat. Digby got the sense he was feeling uncomfortable.
“My victim was found in an alley, downtown. Underwear was ripped. We established in the autopsy that a tuft of her pubic hair was cut, above the vagina.”
“Cut?”
“A tuft of her pubic hair, cut off, yes, and her vagina had snow inside it. Uhh-“
McCreath sounded awkward. He was telling Digby his own sensitive case secrets, or maybe all the pussy talk was making him blush.
“Okay,” Digby said, prodding him. “He cut off pubic hair. To keep a memento?”
“Actually, if you can keep this quiet, the theory is, he cut whatever hair may have contained his semen. We recreated that the sex happened in a doggy-style manner….”
Digby pictured Darroll Missions, elbowing his girlfriend in the back while having sex with her doggy-style. She would always picture that now, whenever anyone mentioned the words ‘doggy-style.’
“-As he ejaculated, some semen must have dribbled down onto her pubic hair, above the clitoris area- See what I mean?”
“Yeah, thanks a lot,” Digby joked. “I’m picturing that. So much for my Boston cream donut.”
There was a long pause on the other end of the phone, then McCreath realized it was safe to laugh.
“Hahhaha! Yes.”
“Go on.”
“So, some hair with semen matted in it, was cut off, then he washed her vagina inside with snow.”
“Okay. He tried to remove his jizm from the crime scene…”
“This was a high-profile case, in Quebec,” McCreath said. “The Ops NCO told me not to worry about expenses. Heather was a pretty girl, an Anglophone from Ontario. Her picture was in all the newspapers, all over Quebec, Ontario. We had a shitty case too. No witness, no boyfriend… She was murdered on a rooftop in the middle of the downtown core.”
“A rooftop?” Digby vaguely recalled seeing a story on the murder now, on one of the cable channels. “I think I remember this actually.”
“Yeah. We believe, either she or the killer used the rooftop as a hang-out, previously, or a place to sleep.”
Digby got back to the subject of the semen. “What were you going to say, about the semen? Did you get his DNA?”
“Yes. They flushed her out. We did find some, despite the snow-job. We shared a sample with the RCMP for a check of the national registry. Fifteen days later we got no matches. But then, recently we got matched to another anonymous DNA sample, found at another unsolved case, right here in the city. This one, the sexual assault of a very young child.”
Digby rummaged her drawer and took out a fresh notebook. “Wait…” she said.
Yet again, someone was mentioning child sexual abuse to her, in relation to the Lee case.
What the hell is going on?
“A sexual assault on a child?” Digby’s curiosity was drivingher crazy. “Okay. Let’s go back. Why are you calling me? How did you connect with my murder case?”
McCreath sighed, making a static sound over the phone. “I asked for links from violent crime analysis.”
“Yes?”
“Yes. And your case was one of them. So, I had one case linked by DNA, but with no name. Then yesterday, my ViCLAS links came. Basically, what I want is, a warrant for the DNA of that reporter, Kyle Verryn,” he said, delicately, “to see if his DNA matches my semen.”
There was a long pause.
Digby relived, once again, killing Kyle Verryn.
“He tried to shoot me,” she mumbled, more to herself than McCreath.
“I know,” McCreath said. “I read about it in the Gazette. Reporter shot by cop. I have to know if he was my guy. Did you take a sample from him?”
Digby was fidgeting with her filing cabinet. Ever since the shooting, she had been fidgeting a lot, especially when she had to talk about it.
“I think we can get a sample, yeah.”
It had been her first killing as a police officer. Her first time using her gun, in fact, against a living target.
She kept seeing Verryn’s face standing at her car window in the Student Union Building parking lot.
Are you following me, or am I following you?
Verryn’s words had a whole new meaning now tha he was dead. She’d followed him before she killed him.
Now his ghost was following her.
“Why did our cases link?” she asked, flat out. McCreath had still not given her an answer. “What evidence was it based on, specifically?”
“I think it was because… Did you receive links?”
“No. But I filled out my forms late.”
“Fine. I’ll summarize. There’s three cases that linked, all blunt force trauma, crimes of passion. In all cases, the beatings are savage and the weapon is a random object that seems to have been grabbed up at the scene. A weapon of opportunity. The bodies were all moved from one location to a new location, then covered with something. In my case, she was moved down to the alley from the rooftop, and covered with garbage. In your case, they were covered with heavy rocks and thensnow, and in another case, in New Brunswick, it was a rock, as well.”
“Okay.”
“We have a vague description of a young man who might have been seen with Ms. Dominie at a strip club, the night she was murdered. We want to take Verryn’s DNA, and some photos to the bouncers at the club, to see if they recognize him.”
“What about the girl, who was molested? Did she give a description?”
“She was far too young. They left her alone.”
“How old?” Digby asked, feeling her heart lump up in her throat, like cartilage.
“Four years old. We cut the semen sample from her bangs. She was beat up, as well, and her wrist has a rotational fracture, probably from being grabbed and pulled into a van.”
Digby kicked back in her chair, looking up at the ceiling. She felt streaks of sadness move through her ribcage.
“Okay. I can send you the photos. But, I can tell you right now, I don’t think my guy could have been in Montreal two days after my murders.”
McCreath went silent. “Why not? It’s not that far, is it?”
“I’m pretty sure he was here in Nova Scotia, at that time, because he was writing stories for the newspaper. I was reading stories and his name was on them, like every day.”
McCreath puffed air like he was lighting a cigarette. “You know how it is. If it’s technically possible, at all, I would really like to try. If I can rule him out even, it would be well worth the trouble.”
Chapter 139
Sgt. Digby rummaged her filing cabinet and gathered copies of Verryn’s paperwork, his backgrounder, her reports, his criminal record and all the pictures of him she had gathered for his file.
She called the clerk desk.
“Kim?”
“Yes, Biz?”
“Can you get me a plane ticket for Montreal Airport? I need to leave, tonight. And the address of Montreal city police headquarters, directions how to get there on the subway...”
She gathered the file up and placed it inside a thick leather carrying case, then zippered it shut.
She was about to leave her desk, but instead she shook her computer back awake and printed out a copy of another file.
Kurtis Dale Raymond Missions, 18.
She stuffed Kurtis’ file into the zipper case as well, on top of Verryn’s.
Staff Sgt. James Keetch was sitting at his desk in the penalty box, talking on the phone. Keetch had a shaved grey head and a goatee. His eyes were bright green and always seemed to carry a fearful, worried expression.
She knocked the Plexiglas wall, startling him.
He held up one finger and wrapped up his phonecall, then waved her inside a moment later.
“James?”
“Digby?”
“I need to go to Montreal.”
“Montreal? What for? For how long?”
“A day or two.”
“What for? A concert?”
“A case.”
“What case? Your not on any cases. I need you here, while we clean up the Verryn stuff. You need to be in the building. The J Division boys are still investigating.”
“I thought they were finished?”
“What case is it?” Keetch asked, ignoring her question.
“What case do you think? The Lee case.”
Keetch stood up from his chair and started unbuckling his belt, theatrically, like he was going to whip out his penis. “Okay. You know what to do…”
She ignored his joke. “I need you to authorize my expenses.”
Keetch grinned and sat back down, rebuckling his belt. “The Lee case is over, Digby, for all intents and purposes. Kyle Verryn is dead. He did it. They found rat poison in his apartment. He was spotte don video near the scene. The end.”
“They found rat poison?”
“Yeah. He had it in a hairspray bottle, the little cocksucker. They think he sprayed it on Jack’s food or on his marijuana, maybe. Verryn apparently helped Jack trim his marijuana, at harvest time. He couldhave sprayed the rat poison on, while he was trimming”
“Huh. Good.”
“Yes,” Keetch said. “It is good. And the shooting has cleared.”
Digby couldn’t help but feel relieved. Her conscience felt relieved. “Okay. But what about the Missions family?”
“The Who family?”
“James, if you’re worried about everything lining up, then just let me go to Montreal. It’s that simple.”
“Why?”
“I got a call from a Montreal city detective, working a homicide of a girl that died two days after the Lee’s were killed. He got a link to my case through ViCLAS. Did you fill out my ViCLAS booklet?”
“You’re welcome. And if you fail to fill out one more booklet, one more time, I’ll going to write you up. I mean it this time.”
“Go ahead. That’s three murders, possibly four, all potentially by our killer.”
Staff Sgt. Keetch jerked forward slightly and stood up again. “Kyle Verryn?”
“It’s not Kyle Verryn.”
“Why not?”
“Well, maybe it is. If it is, don’t you want to know it? I still have to investigate the links, don’t I?”
“Why do I get the feeling this is a wild cooze-chase, Digby? Four murders, two that we’re not investigating, one halfway across the country. A ViCLAS computer link which could easily be based on a series of coincidences… We already have a perfect suspect in Kyle Verryn. He knew the Lee’s. He had motive. He had opportunity. He tried to flee the country. He tried to kill you when you tried to stop him. You’re still under inquiry for his death, for Christ sake!”
“I need to go to Montreal,” Digby said, staring at the wall now. “Don’t be a cheap prick.”
“’Don’t be cheap,’” Keetch repeated in a mocking voice. “If it was my money, I gladly give it. What am I supposed to do? Every file we have would run over bugdet if I wasn’t a prick. And then what? Are you willing to give up your vacation this year?”
“This is not every file,” Digby said. “I’ll just leave it at that. This is national embarrassment, if we let a multiple killer slip away. This is my next promotion. Your next promotion. It’s not over, James. Or maybe it is. That’s the problem: I don’t know. All I know is a lead is now leading me to Montreal. Who knows where it will lead after that. Hopefully someplace warm. Are you going to let me go, or not?”
Keetch looked her in the eyes for a long moment, then gave his answer: “You sleep at the cop shop, and fly standby-”
Digby stood up, smiling and made a b-line for the door.
“-and close this off,” he called out, after her. “Close this off for good. No closure, no vacation this year. I mean it.”
She closed the door gently behind her. If he’d said no, she would have slammed it.
She called the clerk desk.
“Kim?”
“Yes, Biz?”
“Can you get me a plane ticket for Montreal Airport? I need to leave, tonight. And the address of Montreal city police headquarters, directions how to get there on the subway...”
She gathered the file up and placed it inside a thick leather carrying case, then zippered it shut.
She was about to leave her desk, but instead she shook her computer back awake and printed out a copy of another file.
Kurtis Dale Raymond Missions, 18.
She stuffed Kurtis’ file into the zipper case as well, on top of Verryn’s.
Staff Sgt. James Keetch was sitting at his desk in the penalty box, talking on the phone. Keetch had a shaved grey head and a goatee. His eyes were bright green and always seemed to carry a fearful, worried expression.
She knocked the Plexiglas wall, startling him.
He held up one finger and wrapped up his phonecall, then waved her inside a moment later.
“James?”
“Digby?”
“I need to go to Montreal.”
“Montreal? What for? For how long?”
“A day or two.”
“What for? A concert?”
“A case.”
“What case? Your not on any cases. I need you here, while we clean up the Verryn stuff. You need to be in the building. The J Division boys are still investigating.”
“I thought they were finished?”
“What case is it?” Keetch asked, ignoring her question.
“What case do you think? The Lee case.”
Keetch stood up from his chair and started unbuckling his belt, theatrically, like he was going to whip out his penis. “Okay. You know what to do…”
She ignored his joke. “I need you to authorize my expenses.”
Keetch grinned and sat back down, rebuckling his belt. “The Lee case is over, Digby, for all intents and purposes. Kyle Verryn is dead. He did it. They found rat poison in his apartment. He was spotte don video near the scene. The end.”
“They found rat poison?”
“Yeah. He had it in a hairspray bottle, the little cocksucker. They think he sprayed it on Jack’s food or on his marijuana, maybe. Verryn apparently helped Jack trim his marijuana, at harvest time. He couldhave sprayed the rat poison on, while he was trimming”
“Huh. Good.”
“Yes,” Keetch said. “It is good. And the shooting has cleared.”
Digby couldn’t help but feel relieved. Her conscience felt relieved. “Okay. But what about the Missions family?”
“The Who family?”
“James, if you’re worried about everything lining up, then just let me go to Montreal. It’s that simple.”
“Why?”
“I got a call from a Montreal city detective, working a homicide of a girl that died two days after the Lee’s were killed. He got a link to my case through ViCLAS. Did you fill out my ViCLAS booklet?”
“You’re welcome. And if you fail to fill out one more booklet, one more time, I’ll going to write you up. I mean it this time.”
“Go ahead. That’s three murders, possibly four, all potentially by our killer.”
Staff Sgt. Keetch jerked forward slightly and stood up again. “Kyle Verryn?”
“It’s not Kyle Verryn.”
“Why not?”
“Well, maybe it is. If it is, don’t you want to know it? I still have to investigate the links, don’t I?”
“Why do I get the feeling this is a wild cooze-chase, Digby? Four murders, two that we’re not investigating, one halfway across the country. A ViCLAS computer link which could easily be based on a series of coincidences… We already have a perfect suspect in Kyle Verryn. He knew the Lee’s. He had motive. He had opportunity. He tried to flee the country. He tried to kill you when you tried to stop him. You’re still under inquiry for his death, for Christ sake!”
“I need to go to Montreal,” Digby said, staring at the wall now. “Don’t be a cheap prick.”
“’Don’t be cheap,’” Keetch repeated in a mocking voice. “If it was my money, I gladly give it. What am I supposed to do? Every file we have would run over bugdet if I wasn’t a prick. And then what? Are you willing to give up your vacation this year?”
“This is not every file,” Digby said. “I’ll just leave it at that. This is national embarrassment, if we let a multiple killer slip away. This is my next promotion. Your next promotion. It’s not over, James. Or maybe it is. That’s the problem: I don’t know. All I know is a lead is now leading me to Montreal. Who knows where it will lead after that. Hopefully someplace warm. Are you going to let me go, or not?”
Keetch looked her in the eyes for a long moment, then gave his answer: “You sleep at the cop shop, and fly standby-”
Digby stood up, smiling and made a b-line for the door.
“-and close this off,” he called out, after her. “Close this off for good. No closure, no vacation this year. I mean it.”
She closed the door gently behind her. If he’d said no, she would have slammed it.
Chapter 140
Montreal
McCreath and Digby met downtown that night at Nefertiti’s, a Middle Eastern coffee house on St. Catherine Street, not far from where Heather Dominie was raped and murdered.
They ordered two Turkish coffees and sat in the dim back corner, furthest from the window. The place was empty. There was an ornate brass hooka sitting on the table, which partly obscured Digby’s view of the Montreal detective. He was a short man with a brown buzzcut and an upturned nose. It looked like someone whacked him in the nose with a cricket bat. But despite his nose, his face was quite handsome.
He picked up a fabric-covered hose on the hooka and examined it. There were various flavoured tobaccos for sale at the café counter.
“Do you guys have a smoking ban?” Digby asked.
“I don’t think you can smoke in malls, like you used to. But, I don’t know, I never go to malls.”
“Me neither,” Digby said.
“So, you’re flight was okay?”
“No. I’m terrified to fly.” She unzipped the case at her feet and drew out the files she had prepared, plopping them on the table and sliding the stack around to McCreath, around the brass base of the water pipe.
“I get it. Enough chit-chat.” He opened the top file. The first page was a profile of Kurtis Missions. His mugshot was on the right. Name, address, employment status, known associates, gang affiliation, description, tattoos, vehicles.
“Who is this? I thought his name was Kyle Verryn?”
“This is somebody else. Kurtis Missions. He’s a possibility, too, based on an ongoing saga out in Nova Scotia, I’m still trying to make sense of. We haven’t cleared him. I thought I would bring the file.”
“What do you have on him?” McCreath sounded optimistic.
Digby did her best to give him a reality check.
“Kurtis comes from a troubled home. His father has a link to the Gypsies. He was abused as a child. He loves the woods and the outdoors. My killer camped on Crown land for a few days. And he may have snared a rabbit for food, using copper wire stripped from a local cabin. Kurtis has ties to the Gypsies as well, beyond his father. He worked on a fishing boat owned by a full-patcher named Bill Tiffen. Kurtis has a record for break enter and theft, drug possession, but nothing violent. He did no jail time. He didn’t have to submit DNA. He has minor mental health issues: Paranoia, mild symptoms of schizophrenia. He’s trained at something called Filipino Martial Arts or ‘Weapons,’ where they use canes and nunchucks. The killer in my case used ordinary sticks with extremely deadly effect.” She paused to take a breath. “It’s all in the file. The theory I was working with is that Jack Lee wrote a story that caused Kurtis’ older brother to commit suicide, or at least cast aspersions on him. Kurtis got angry. He hid in the woods where he grew up, decided to camp near where the Lee family home is, maybe he’s plotting something vaguely. Then he gets lucky. Jackand his wife come along, walking the dog. He picks up a stick and goes to work.”
“Makes sense....”
“How did your girl die?”
“Trauma. She was beaten to death with a Jack Daniel’s bottle…”
Digby nodded and continued. “So, it’s at least true that Kurtis Missions had the physical ability. It would be difficult to kill people with sticks and a bottle unless you knew what you were doing. We also haven’t been able to locate him, but according to everyone I talk to, no one has seen him since the Lee murders.”
“It’s all pretty much good theory. It needs, I guess, us finding him and testing it out,” McCreath said, sounding a little deflated. “What made you move from Kurtis to Kyle Verryn?”
“Kyle Verryn was- please don’t repeat this to anyone- he was poisoning Jack Lee. That’s a fact. Verryn was a freelancer, a stringer, at the newspaper. He desperately wanted a full-time job. I believe, he was trying to make Jack sick, so he could move in on his full-time job.” She sighed. “When I first started to think Verryn had poisoned Jack, I made the assumption he was trying to kill him. And it’s still possible, but I’m starting to think now that Verryn poisoned Jack, yes, but Kurtis Missions was the one who actually killed him.”
McCreath looked down at the file and studied it, thoughtfully.
“Kurtis is 18?”
“Yes.”
“One of my linked murders was in 2002. That means, if he did that one too, he would have been 12 at the time.”
Digby took a sip of her coffee. “What murder is that one?”
“Tina-Lynn Papineau. She was a young girl, in New Brunwick.”
Digby almost dropped her coffee cup, clattering it down on the porcelain saucer.
“Tina-Lynn Papineau? That’s Kurtis’ half-sister. It’s one of the cases we looked at already. They suspected his mother…” Digby calmed down some. “I guess it makes sense. ViCLAS would see a link. It was almost identical to theLee homicides. That was one of the reasons we suspected Kurtis. It’s possible that he witnessed or even participated in the Tina-Lynn Papineau murder. Then when he killed the Lee’s, he repeated some of the patterns, like putting the rock on them, to hold them down.”
McCreath and Digby stayed at the table for several minutes more, in silence, reading eachothers paperwork, each lost in their own investigation minutia.
“Huh. Look at this,” McCreath spoke up, finally. “Listen… ‘Description: Teeth: Four teeth missing between top two incisors.’ That’s Kurtis Missions. A young man was seen with Heather inside a strip club just down the street from us, the night she was killed. The bouncers at Pleasure-Sex say the man was being belligerent with one of the girls, so they threw him out. They described him as having two front teeth missing. But when you think about it, it was inside a dim club. Four teeth missing could have seemed like two. Then there’s this: The bouncer describes the man’s eyes as ‘very light blue.’ Your description of Kurtis says ‘Baby blue, left eye lighter than the right.’ And both descriptions say 6 foot tall, 180 to 200 pounds. And my bouncer’s age estimate matches. 18 to 25.”
“Everything else is different though,” Digby said, holding up McCreath’s notes. “The boucer says the guy had a buzzcut and was clean shaven. Kurtis has long hair and a beard.” But she digressed. “I guess he would shave that off if he was on the run.”
“Of course.”
“It could be the same guy.”
McCreath stood up. He was so short he barely reached the hoses of the hooka. “C’mon. Plesaure-Sex is just down the street. If D’entremont is working, we can show him Kurtis’ photograph.”
McCreath and Digby met downtown that night at Nefertiti’s, a Middle Eastern coffee house on St. Catherine Street, not far from where Heather Dominie was raped and murdered.
They ordered two Turkish coffees and sat in the dim back corner, furthest from the window. The place was empty. There was an ornate brass hooka sitting on the table, which partly obscured Digby’s view of the Montreal detective. He was a short man with a brown buzzcut and an upturned nose. It looked like someone whacked him in the nose with a cricket bat. But despite his nose, his face was quite handsome.
He picked up a fabric-covered hose on the hooka and examined it. There were various flavoured tobaccos for sale at the café counter.
“Do you guys have a smoking ban?” Digby asked.
“I don’t think you can smoke in malls, like you used to. But, I don’t know, I never go to malls.”
“Me neither,” Digby said.
“So, you’re flight was okay?”
“No. I’m terrified to fly.” She unzipped the case at her feet and drew out the files she had prepared, plopping them on the table and sliding the stack around to McCreath, around the brass base of the water pipe.
“I get it. Enough chit-chat.” He opened the top file. The first page was a profile of Kurtis Missions. His mugshot was on the right. Name, address, employment status, known associates, gang affiliation, description, tattoos, vehicles.
“Who is this? I thought his name was Kyle Verryn?”
“This is somebody else. Kurtis Missions. He’s a possibility, too, based on an ongoing saga out in Nova Scotia, I’m still trying to make sense of. We haven’t cleared him. I thought I would bring the file.”
“What do you have on him?” McCreath sounded optimistic.
Digby did her best to give him a reality check.
“Kurtis comes from a troubled home. His father has a link to the Gypsies. He was abused as a child. He loves the woods and the outdoors. My killer camped on Crown land for a few days. And he may have snared a rabbit for food, using copper wire stripped from a local cabin. Kurtis has ties to the Gypsies as well, beyond his father. He worked on a fishing boat owned by a full-patcher named Bill Tiffen. Kurtis has a record for break enter and theft, drug possession, but nothing violent. He did no jail time. He didn’t have to submit DNA. He has minor mental health issues: Paranoia, mild symptoms of schizophrenia. He’s trained at something called Filipino Martial Arts or ‘Weapons,’ where they use canes and nunchucks. The killer in my case used ordinary sticks with extremely deadly effect.” She paused to take a breath. “It’s all in the file. The theory I was working with is that Jack Lee wrote a story that caused Kurtis’ older brother to commit suicide, or at least cast aspersions on him. Kurtis got angry. He hid in the woods where he grew up, decided to camp near where the Lee family home is, maybe he’s plotting something vaguely. Then he gets lucky. Jackand his wife come along, walking the dog. He picks up a stick and goes to work.”
“Makes sense....”
“How did your girl die?”
“Trauma. She was beaten to death with a Jack Daniel’s bottle…”
Digby nodded and continued. “So, it’s at least true that Kurtis Missions had the physical ability. It would be difficult to kill people with sticks and a bottle unless you knew what you were doing. We also haven’t been able to locate him, but according to everyone I talk to, no one has seen him since the Lee murders.”
“It’s all pretty much good theory. It needs, I guess, us finding him and testing it out,” McCreath said, sounding a little deflated. “What made you move from Kurtis to Kyle Verryn?”
“Kyle Verryn was- please don’t repeat this to anyone- he was poisoning Jack Lee. That’s a fact. Verryn was a freelancer, a stringer, at the newspaper. He desperately wanted a full-time job. I believe, he was trying to make Jack sick, so he could move in on his full-time job.” She sighed. “When I first started to think Verryn had poisoned Jack, I made the assumption he was trying to kill him. And it’s still possible, but I’m starting to think now that Verryn poisoned Jack, yes, but Kurtis Missions was the one who actually killed him.”
McCreath looked down at the file and studied it, thoughtfully.
“Kurtis is 18?”
“Yes.”
“One of my linked murders was in 2002. That means, if he did that one too, he would have been 12 at the time.”
Digby took a sip of her coffee. “What murder is that one?”
“Tina-Lynn Papineau. She was a young girl, in New Brunwick.”
Digby almost dropped her coffee cup, clattering it down on the porcelain saucer.
“Tina-Lynn Papineau? That’s Kurtis’ half-sister. It’s one of the cases we looked at already. They suspected his mother…” Digby calmed down some. “I guess it makes sense. ViCLAS would see a link. It was almost identical to theLee homicides. That was one of the reasons we suspected Kurtis. It’s possible that he witnessed or even participated in the Tina-Lynn Papineau murder. Then when he killed the Lee’s, he repeated some of the patterns, like putting the rock on them, to hold them down.”
McCreath and Digby stayed at the table for several minutes more, in silence, reading eachothers paperwork, each lost in their own investigation minutia.
“Huh. Look at this,” McCreath spoke up, finally. “Listen… ‘Description: Teeth: Four teeth missing between top two incisors.’ That’s Kurtis Missions. A young man was seen with Heather inside a strip club just down the street from us, the night she was killed. The bouncers at Pleasure-Sex say the man was being belligerent with one of the girls, so they threw him out. They described him as having two front teeth missing. But when you think about it, it was inside a dim club. Four teeth missing could have seemed like two. Then there’s this: The bouncer describes the man’s eyes as ‘very light blue.’ Your description of Kurtis says ‘Baby blue, left eye lighter than the right.’ And both descriptions say 6 foot tall, 180 to 200 pounds. And my bouncer’s age estimate matches. 18 to 25.”
“Everything else is different though,” Digby said, holding up McCreath’s notes. “The boucer says the guy had a buzzcut and was clean shaven. Kurtis has long hair and a beard.” But she digressed. “I guess he would shave that off if he was on the run.”
“Of course.”
“It could be the same guy.”
McCreath stood up. He was so short he barely reached the hoses of the hooka. “C’mon. Plesaure-Sex is just down the street. If D’entremont is working, we can show him Kurtis’ photograph.”
Chapter 141
“Wow!” Digby walked briskly up the stairs and into the main hall of the huge peeler bar.
She had never been inside a Montreal strip club before. It was ten times bigger and ten times classier than anything she’d seen in Nova Scotia. The décor was warm, sensual and even Victorian.
There was a king-size bed in the far right corner, with American flag sheets and a topless blonde girl on her knees, knee-dancing.
The place was packed.
Seven or eight midgets with bra-less black lingerie were weaving through the crowd, serving drinks on huge round platters. Maybe not so classy after all.
McCreath led the way.
They didn’t get more than ten feet through the door when four large men in dark charcoal suits surrounded them, in a semi-circle, hands crossed in front of their crotches.
Security.
“Good eye for cops,” Digby yelled to McCreath over the loud music.
McCreath nodded. “Shall I ask for the Champagne room?”
Digby laughed. The lead bouncer, an incredibly tall, built man with grey hair and glasses, stepped forward and gestured outward with his monkey arm, directing the officers to a private room off the main corridor.
“This way please,” he said, in a loud voice.
She had never been inside a Montreal strip club before. It was ten times bigger and ten times classier than anything she’d seen in Nova Scotia. The décor was warm, sensual and even Victorian.
There was a king-size bed in the far right corner, with American flag sheets and a topless blonde girl on her knees, knee-dancing.
The place was packed.
Seven or eight midgets with bra-less black lingerie were weaving through the crowd, serving drinks on huge round platters. Maybe not so classy after all.
McCreath led the way.
They didn’t get more than ten feet through the door when four large men in dark charcoal suits surrounded them, in a semi-circle, hands crossed in front of their crotches.
Security.
“Good eye for cops,” Digby yelled to McCreath over the loud music.
McCreath nodded. “Shall I ask for the Champagne room?”
Digby laughed. The lead bouncer, an incredibly tall, built man with grey hair and glasses, stepped forward and gestured outward with his monkey arm, directing the officers to a private room off the main corridor.
“This way please,” he said, in a loud voice.
Chapter 142
“Thank you, God. Praise God. A name! I’m actually getting somewhere.” Det. Sgt. McCreath could barely contain his glee as they left the strip club and walked together down St. Catherine Street, like two drunken lovers.
Me too, Digby thought, for the first time on this case, she felt like she was getting somewhere.
Two out of three bouncers agreed: The last person seen with Heather Dominie while she was still alive was Kurtis Dale Raymond Missions.
You couldn’t get much better than that.
The third bouncer, the one who didn’t pick Kurtis out of the photo array, would simply be left off the paperwork. He did not exist.
She ran her fingers throught the sides of her hair. It was getting longer again, finally.
“We got to find this guy, McCreath,” she said, climbing into his unmarked Explorer. “This kid is a nut. How much you wanna bet he’s not in Montreal anymore?”
McCreath cleared his throat. They were sitting in his car, parked on the street outside the strip club. “Travelling… He could be anywhere.”
“We need a Canada-wide warrant. We need his picture up in every police station in the country. And U.S. customs. He’s young, on the move, violent, capable of deception. Plus the connection to Gypsies, which probably means fake ID and even safe houses. He’s had an open warrant now for a long time. It’s possible he’s been stopped already somewhere but some cop let him go after he showed good fake ID.”.
Still, she felt relief in her heart, finally, like dipping into a warm bath after a long day. They had the right person. Finally. She was no longer chasing a ghost.
A Trickster. A Devil maybe, but not a ghost.
Me too, Digby thought, for the first time on this case, she felt like she was getting somewhere.
Two out of three bouncers agreed: The last person seen with Heather Dominie while she was still alive was Kurtis Dale Raymond Missions.
You couldn’t get much better than that.
The third bouncer, the one who didn’t pick Kurtis out of the photo array, would simply be left off the paperwork. He did not exist.
She ran her fingers throught the sides of her hair. It was getting longer again, finally.
“We got to find this guy, McCreath,” she said, climbing into his unmarked Explorer. “This kid is a nut. How much you wanna bet he’s not in Montreal anymore?”
McCreath cleared his throat. They were sitting in his car, parked on the street outside the strip club. “Travelling… He could be anywhere.”
“We need a Canada-wide warrant. We need his picture up in every police station in the country. And U.S. customs. He’s young, on the move, violent, capable of deception. Plus the connection to Gypsies, which probably means fake ID and even safe houses. He’s had an open warrant now for a long time. It’s possible he’s been stopped already somewhere but some cop let him go after he showed good fake ID.”.
Still, she felt relief in her heart, finally, like dipping into a warm bath after a long day. They had the right person. Finally. She was no longer chasing a ghost.
A Trickster. A Devil maybe, but not a ghost.
Chapter 143
When Sgt. Digby arrived home she drove straight from the airport to New Minas detachment.
The first person she called was Det. Sgt. Smith.
He answered at his desk, at Oxford Street.
He sounded depressed. Talking to him was awkward in a way it had never been before.
“We’re bringing in Kurtis Missions,” she said. “We have a positive ID. He was the last person seen with a homicide victim, in Montreal.”
“Montreal? I don’t understand. Who?”
“Her name’s Heather Dominie. We’re going to bring him in and question him. Montreal is going to let me sit in.”
“Heather Dominie?”
“Everything okay?” she asked.
He didn’t say anything. There was a long, awkward pause.
“What’s going on?” Digby asked.
“Ffffff,” he sighed, but it was almost as if he wanted to say ‘Fuck off.’
“What’s wrong? What is it?”
“Kurtis Missions… My source,” he said. “My responsibility.”
Digby felt a quiver of sickness pass through her gut. “What did you say?”
“My source, my responsibility.”
“He’s an informant? He’s a fucking informant?”
“A little bit.”
“A little bit? How many people know he’s a source? How long has he been one?” Her first instinct was to protect Smith, but then anger overpowered her. “I can’t believe this shit.”
Smith blew out more air, over the phone. He seemed to be fighting back tears. “It doesn’t surprise me, I guess. I knew he had mental issues. I knew he was up to something. For a while there, he’s been skirting calls. Using drugs.”
Digby couldn’t shake a feeling of deep dread. “Bob, I need you to tell me everything, right now. How much of an informant was he?”
Smith chuckled, as if darkly relishing the chance to explain his burdens to a fresh pair of ears. “Did you look up his criminal record?”
“Of course. One hit for some b and e’s. No jail time.”
“We’ve been trying to get his dad, for a while. Wid Missions Junior. God, we wanted his dad, real bad. Once we had his dad, we could turn him on Dee Lee. Can you imagine? When they picked up Kurtis for the b and e’s, we swooped in. He had a bunch of coke with him, too. We turned him, in exchange for no jail time, some spending money. He’s supposed to be gathering information on his father. We were testing him. Testing his loyalty. He’s not a police agent yet, just a source, a coded source, with me as handler. When his dad disappeared, we threw him into witness protection, with new ID and everything.”
“You did what?” Digby’s voice raised in volume.
Smith laughed. “He told me that Dee Lee had found out he was ratting and was going to start killing everybody with the last name Missions in the Nova Scotia phonebook. He came to me in honest-to-God tears, Digby. Then Wid Missions Junior disappeared, and I figured it was Dee Lee, so we put him in the program. We put him in a safe house, but he took off.”
Digby sat, speechless.
All this time.
She couldn’t even think, off-hand, how many times Smith must have lied to her face.
So swallowed. “You’re saying, Kurtis Missions, right now, is technically, in witness protection?”
“Except we don’t know where he is. He went AWOL, and we stopped paying his living allowance payments.”
“Does he have any money? Have you paid him any lump sums?”
“No. Nothing. He didn’t deliver anything, Digby. He’s was basically in the testing stage.”
“What about Darroll Missions?” Digby thought about the fake ID Darroll Missions had in his possession when he died. “Was Darroll Missions a coded source?”
“They were working together.”
“Holy Fuck. What about Kurtis’ FPS sheet?” She was asking if his fingerprint-based records had been changed in police databases, if so, it meant a scan of his fingerprints would bring up his new ID in the system, not his old ID, which had an open arrest warrant attached to it.
“All changed,” Smith said. “Sorry.”
“You’re really making my job easy, aren’t you Bob? You couldn’t tell me this a little sooner?”
“It’s confidential.”
“Actually, it’s not confidential, Bob. Not if he broke his informant contract by committing murder. Three murders.”
“His status as a source is not really the issue. If he committed murder, he’s subject to prosecution, like anybody else. And I didn’t really keep any pertinent information from you, because I honestly didn’t know where he was.”
“Except you’ve been trying to shy me away from looking at him, as a suspect, all this time, Bob. You’ve basically been obstructing my investigation. I should fucking file a complaint.”
“I haven’t been obstructing you, Digby. Not consciously. I’m sorry.”
“Every time I brought up the name Kurtis Missions, you changed the goddamn subject!”
“No-“
“Just tell me his new name. And quit wasting my fucking time.”
“What are you going to do with it?”
“Tell me his name!”
“John Dee.”
“J-O-H-N, D-E-E?”
“Yes.”
“Will you show me all his notes and his complete source file?”
There was a long pause. “I’m not sure I can do that. No.”
“Are you going to fire him immediately, as a paid source?”
Another pause. “That’s not up to me. That’s up to the superintendent.”
“Where was his safe house? Where was he last located?”
Another pause. “You have every right to be mad.”
“Tell ME!” she hollered.
“I just need to know what you’re going to do.”
Digby scoffed. “What do we usually do when a police source goes on a killing spree and rapes a four-year-old? Give him a pay raise?”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“Where was the safe house?”
“Christ. He raped a four-year-old?” Smith’s usually bold voice sounded very quiet.
“He did. That’s a real star informer there, Bob. A murdering pedophile.”
Digby frowned, unable to express her anger and disappointment. “I’m so fucking speechless...”
Smith began to softly cry over the phone. “I’m thinking about the big picture, Digby. This is going to embarrass us all. Deal or no deal. This is it for me. They’re going to bury me for this… A kid diddler. Hahahaha… That’s it, it’s all over. They’re going to put me on the fucking Musical Ride, for life.”
“Well…?” Digby was too angry to muster a shred of sympathy. “Are you going to tell me where he was last located, or not?”
“I can’t do that. But I can give you some advice.”
“What?”
“Look for his old name, Kurtis Missions, in his federal government records, in the database.”
“I did already.”
“Do it again. I’ve been doing database searches every day or two, trying to find him. He recently updated his address, with Service Canada, under his old name.”
“Why would he do that?”
“Cause he’s an idiot. He’s trying to get pogey. He updated his address with Service Canada, so they’d send his pogey checks to him. That’s his last known location.”
“Well, thank you for that, I guess.” Digby said, frantically pulling up Query on her computer. It would only take a matter of minutes to search for the new address. “Well, I should go. I have to catch a triple murdering child molestor, who’s halfway in witness protection. So, is anyone else looking for him?”
Smith ruffled around on his end of the phone. “… No. Not as far as I know. I gotta go too. Sorry for everything. I mean it.… I wanna try to get out of here early. I’ve had a shitty day.”
He hung up.
Digby buried her face in her hands, but only for a second.
She searched Service Canada files for Kurtis Dale Raymond Missions, 18, then called Cst. Keith, someone she felt she had formed a kind of trust relationship with on the Lee case. He picked up at his cell phone number.
“Yello?”
“I need to vent.”
“Sgt. Digby. Good. Maybe I do too.”
She told him everything Smith had told her. How he had kept secret the fact that Kurtis Missions was a paid police source with an RCMP witness protection program ID.
“Next time I see that Smith, I’m going to fuckin’ kill him,” Cst. Keith said.
“Thank you. That’s all I needed to hear. Is that too much to ask?”
He laughed. “Unbelievable, the balls on some people.”
She felt better. “Anyway, you can tell your reporter buddy, if you want, about the arrest warrant. It should be out to the press by tomorrow sometime anyway. But not about Kurtis being a coded source, obviously. We’re keeping that bit of info to ourselves for now. We want his picture in the paper, though, absolutely.”
“Yeah… Rawle Powder,” Cst. Keith sounded antsy suddenly. “I- sort of- don’t know where he is anymore, to tell you the truth. He’s disappeared or something. He might be up to something weird, I don’t know.”
“Like what?”
“Ah… He dropped his dog off at my place, a while ago. He was supposed to go down to see his wife and kid on the South Shore, but then I called his wife and she said he wasn’t there. She wouldn’t tell me where he was, and it sounded like she didn’t know.”
Digby thought for a moment. “The last reporter in the valley bureau of the Gazette has disappeared. Two reporters are dead and the last one fled the province?”
Her results in Query came up.
Kurtis Missions’ Employment Insurance file was on her computer screen. His mailing address was listed as a post office box, in Jasper, Alberta.
“I found Rawle’s car at an impound lot,” Cst. Keith said. “I paid his ticket, but why would he leave his car where it would be towed? And I found a bunch of bloody clothes hidden in his trunk. Like he was hunting or something.”
“Bloody clothes?”
“Yeah. Like he gutted a deer in the woods and never even got around to washing his clothes. I don’t know. Maybe I’ll do a bank account check. See if I can locate him.”
“Hmmm…” Digby was barely listening. She was getting more and more pumped up about the Kurtis Missions warrant. She wanted to bring him down, so badly.
She got off the phone and called Staff Sgt. Keetch at home, begging him to come into the office, right away.
When he got there, they worked together on drafting the warrant affidavits, sending a memorandum to the local Crown prosecutor’s office, and extending Kurtis Mission’s outstanding arrest warrant to a Canada-wide warrant, including the added counts of murder and child sexual assault.
When they were done, they read over the paperwork carefully, several times to make sure every ‘t’ was crossed.
Keetch got up to leave. “It’s going to make a splash.”
The next day, Digby organized a conference call with McCreath, his Ops NCO, plus Staff Sgt. Keetch and Inspector Palipschuk.
No mention would be made to the press about the fact that Kurtis Missions a.ka. John Dee was as a paid police source at the time of the offenses. No mention would be made of the fact that Jack Lee had been poisoned, in the weeks prior to his murder.
The poisoning would eventually be written off as an entirely separate crime, believed to have been committed by Kyle Verryn, deceased. Case closed.
When the warrant was signed, Keetch sent it out, along with an offender profile, fingerprints and mug-shot poster, as a bulliten to every law enforcement agency in the country, RCMP, municipal, provincial police force, customs and border security, who would now have the duty to spot, detain and arrest John Dee, a.k.a. Kurtis Missions, last known address Jasper, Alberta.
A short time after the bulliten was released, a press release was sent to a press liaison officer at Oxford Street, where it would be screened for the names of policitians and their children.
The screened press release would then be put out on a national media fax and email list.
The net would soon be cast.
It would only be a matter of time.
The first person she called was Det. Sgt. Smith.
He answered at his desk, at Oxford Street.
He sounded depressed. Talking to him was awkward in a way it had never been before.
“We’re bringing in Kurtis Missions,” she said. “We have a positive ID. He was the last person seen with a homicide victim, in Montreal.”
“Montreal? I don’t understand. Who?”
“Her name’s Heather Dominie. We’re going to bring him in and question him. Montreal is going to let me sit in.”
“Heather Dominie?”
“Everything okay?” she asked.
He didn’t say anything. There was a long, awkward pause.
“What’s going on?” Digby asked.
“Ffffff,” he sighed, but it was almost as if he wanted to say ‘Fuck off.’
“What’s wrong? What is it?”
“Kurtis Missions… My source,” he said. “My responsibility.”
Digby felt a quiver of sickness pass through her gut. “What did you say?”
“My source, my responsibility.”
“He’s an informant? He’s a fucking informant?”
“A little bit.”
“A little bit? How many people know he’s a source? How long has he been one?” Her first instinct was to protect Smith, but then anger overpowered her. “I can’t believe this shit.”
Smith blew out more air, over the phone. He seemed to be fighting back tears. “It doesn’t surprise me, I guess. I knew he had mental issues. I knew he was up to something. For a while there, he’s been skirting calls. Using drugs.”
Digby couldn’t shake a feeling of deep dread. “Bob, I need you to tell me everything, right now. How much of an informant was he?”
Smith chuckled, as if darkly relishing the chance to explain his burdens to a fresh pair of ears. “Did you look up his criminal record?”
“Of course. One hit for some b and e’s. No jail time.”
“We’ve been trying to get his dad, for a while. Wid Missions Junior. God, we wanted his dad, real bad. Once we had his dad, we could turn him on Dee Lee. Can you imagine? When they picked up Kurtis for the b and e’s, we swooped in. He had a bunch of coke with him, too. We turned him, in exchange for no jail time, some spending money. He’s supposed to be gathering information on his father. We were testing him. Testing his loyalty. He’s not a police agent yet, just a source, a coded source, with me as handler. When his dad disappeared, we threw him into witness protection, with new ID and everything.”
“You did what?” Digby’s voice raised in volume.
Smith laughed. “He told me that Dee Lee had found out he was ratting and was going to start killing everybody with the last name Missions in the Nova Scotia phonebook. He came to me in honest-to-God tears, Digby. Then Wid Missions Junior disappeared, and I figured it was Dee Lee, so we put him in the program. We put him in a safe house, but he took off.”
Digby sat, speechless.
All this time.
She couldn’t even think, off-hand, how many times Smith must have lied to her face.
So swallowed. “You’re saying, Kurtis Missions, right now, is technically, in witness protection?”
“Except we don’t know where he is. He went AWOL, and we stopped paying his living allowance payments.”
“Does he have any money? Have you paid him any lump sums?”
“No. Nothing. He didn’t deliver anything, Digby. He’s was basically in the testing stage.”
“What about Darroll Missions?” Digby thought about the fake ID Darroll Missions had in his possession when he died. “Was Darroll Missions a coded source?”
“They were working together.”
“Holy Fuck. What about Kurtis’ FPS sheet?” She was asking if his fingerprint-based records had been changed in police databases, if so, it meant a scan of his fingerprints would bring up his new ID in the system, not his old ID, which had an open arrest warrant attached to it.
“All changed,” Smith said. “Sorry.”
“You’re really making my job easy, aren’t you Bob? You couldn’t tell me this a little sooner?”
“It’s confidential.”
“Actually, it’s not confidential, Bob. Not if he broke his informant contract by committing murder. Three murders.”
“His status as a source is not really the issue. If he committed murder, he’s subject to prosecution, like anybody else. And I didn’t really keep any pertinent information from you, because I honestly didn’t know where he was.”
“Except you’ve been trying to shy me away from looking at him, as a suspect, all this time, Bob. You’ve basically been obstructing my investigation. I should fucking file a complaint.”
“I haven’t been obstructing you, Digby. Not consciously. I’m sorry.”
“Every time I brought up the name Kurtis Missions, you changed the goddamn subject!”
“No-“
“Just tell me his new name. And quit wasting my fucking time.”
“What are you going to do with it?”
“Tell me his name!”
“John Dee.”
“J-O-H-N, D-E-E?”
“Yes.”
“Will you show me all his notes and his complete source file?”
There was a long pause. “I’m not sure I can do that. No.”
“Are you going to fire him immediately, as a paid source?”
Another pause. “That’s not up to me. That’s up to the superintendent.”
“Where was his safe house? Where was he last located?”
Another pause. “You have every right to be mad.”
“Tell ME!” she hollered.
“I just need to know what you’re going to do.”
Digby scoffed. “What do we usually do when a police source goes on a killing spree and rapes a four-year-old? Give him a pay raise?”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“Where was the safe house?”
“Christ. He raped a four-year-old?” Smith’s usually bold voice sounded very quiet.
“He did. That’s a real star informer there, Bob. A murdering pedophile.”
Digby frowned, unable to express her anger and disappointment. “I’m so fucking speechless...”
Smith began to softly cry over the phone. “I’m thinking about the big picture, Digby. This is going to embarrass us all. Deal or no deal. This is it for me. They’re going to bury me for this… A kid diddler. Hahahaha… That’s it, it’s all over. They’re going to put me on the fucking Musical Ride, for life.”
“Well…?” Digby was too angry to muster a shred of sympathy. “Are you going to tell me where he was last located, or not?”
“I can’t do that. But I can give you some advice.”
“What?”
“Look for his old name, Kurtis Missions, in his federal government records, in the database.”
“I did already.”
“Do it again. I’ve been doing database searches every day or two, trying to find him. He recently updated his address, with Service Canada, under his old name.”
“Why would he do that?”
“Cause he’s an idiot. He’s trying to get pogey. He updated his address with Service Canada, so they’d send his pogey checks to him. That’s his last known location.”
“Well, thank you for that, I guess.” Digby said, frantically pulling up Query on her computer. It would only take a matter of minutes to search for the new address. “Well, I should go. I have to catch a triple murdering child molestor, who’s halfway in witness protection. So, is anyone else looking for him?”
Smith ruffled around on his end of the phone. “… No. Not as far as I know. I gotta go too. Sorry for everything. I mean it.… I wanna try to get out of here early. I’ve had a shitty day.”
He hung up.
Digby buried her face in her hands, but only for a second.
She searched Service Canada files for Kurtis Dale Raymond Missions, 18, then called Cst. Keith, someone she felt she had formed a kind of trust relationship with on the Lee case. He picked up at his cell phone number.
“Yello?”
“I need to vent.”
“Sgt. Digby. Good. Maybe I do too.”
She told him everything Smith had told her. How he had kept secret the fact that Kurtis Missions was a paid police source with an RCMP witness protection program ID.
“Next time I see that Smith, I’m going to fuckin’ kill him,” Cst. Keith said.
“Thank you. That’s all I needed to hear. Is that too much to ask?”
He laughed. “Unbelievable, the balls on some people.”
She felt better. “Anyway, you can tell your reporter buddy, if you want, about the arrest warrant. It should be out to the press by tomorrow sometime anyway. But not about Kurtis being a coded source, obviously. We’re keeping that bit of info to ourselves for now. We want his picture in the paper, though, absolutely.”
“Yeah… Rawle Powder,” Cst. Keith sounded antsy suddenly. “I- sort of- don’t know where he is anymore, to tell you the truth. He’s disappeared or something. He might be up to something weird, I don’t know.”
“Like what?”
“Ah… He dropped his dog off at my place, a while ago. He was supposed to go down to see his wife and kid on the South Shore, but then I called his wife and she said he wasn’t there. She wouldn’t tell me where he was, and it sounded like she didn’t know.”
Digby thought for a moment. “The last reporter in the valley bureau of the Gazette has disappeared. Two reporters are dead and the last one fled the province?”
Her results in Query came up.
Kurtis Missions’ Employment Insurance file was on her computer screen. His mailing address was listed as a post office box, in Jasper, Alberta.
“I found Rawle’s car at an impound lot,” Cst. Keith said. “I paid his ticket, but why would he leave his car where it would be towed? And I found a bunch of bloody clothes hidden in his trunk. Like he was hunting or something.”
“Bloody clothes?”
“Yeah. Like he gutted a deer in the woods and never even got around to washing his clothes. I don’t know. Maybe I’ll do a bank account check. See if I can locate him.”
“Hmmm…” Digby was barely listening. She was getting more and more pumped up about the Kurtis Missions warrant. She wanted to bring him down, so badly.
She got off the phone and called Staff Sgt. Keetch at home, begging him to come into the office, right away.
When he got there, they worked together on drafting the warrant affidavits, sending a memorandum to the local Crown prosecutor’s office, and extending Kurtis Mission’s outstanding arrest warrant to a Canada-wide warrant, including the added counts of murder and child sexual assault.
When they were done, they read over the paperwork carefully, several times to make sure every ‘t’ was crossed.
Keetch got up to leave. “It’s going to make a splash.”
The next day, Digby organized a conference call with McCreath, his Ops NCO, plus Staff Sgt. Keetch and Inspector Palipschuk.
No mention would be made to the press about the fact that Kurtis Missions a.ka. John Dee was as a paid police source at the time of the offenses. No mention would be made of the fact that Jack Lee had been poisoned, in the weeks prior to his murder.
The poisoning would eventually be written off as an entirely separate crime, believed to have been committed by Kyle Verryn, deceased. Case closed.
When the warrant was signed, Keetch sent it out, along with an offender profile, fingerprints and mug-shot poster, as a bulliten to every law enforcement agency in the country, RCMP, municipal, provincial police force, customs and border security, who would now have the duty to spot, detain and arrest John Dee, a.k.a. Kurtis Missions, last known address Jasper, Alberta.
A short time after the bulliten was released, a press release was sent to a press liaison officer at Oxford Street, where it would be screened for the names of policitians and their children.
The screened press release would then be put out on a national media fax and email list.
The net would soon be cast.
It would only be a matter of time.
Chapter 144
Up the road about a half-mile, sitting on the dusty shoulder of the highway, Rawle Powder saw a shape, crouching, with his arm and thumb stuck out.
The shape waved.
It was Kurtis Missions.
“Thank God.”
Rawle walked up the highway quickly until he caught up with him.
They said hello and chit-chatted, then waited on the highway for cars to come.
Rawle refused to talk about what he had done the night before.
“I just want to get the fuck out of here!” he squawked, impatiently. “I pulled a dine-n-dash at the gas station. Someone’s going to come after me.”
“Someone will come. They always do.”
“So, how was that chick last night? Did you find her?”
“Fuck yeah. I rolled her back to her place.”
“You slept with her?”
“Of course, man. There was another guy there, too. We pounded her guts out, all night.”
“Oh Christ, please, spare me the gory details. I just had breakfast.”
“I told you, man, I ain’t fussy. She even threw up, at one point, right on the bed, but I still rode her anyway.”
Rawle cringed. “Fucking disgusting, man.”
“It was like chopping onions. I’m going to have that smell on my fingers now for three days.”
Rawle shook his head, but couldn’t stop himself from giggling. He started rolling a cigarette. “She was just absolutely hideous, man. I’m sorry.”
Kurtis made a flipping motion with his arms, like turning a surfboard upside down. “They all look the same, when you turn ‘em upside down, Michael.”
Michael was the fake name Rawle had given Kurtis.
“No. They don’t, John.”
John was the fake name Kurtis had given Rawle.
A few cars came by, but no one stopped. Each one that passed without stopping depressed Rawle a little more. It was still well before 10 a.m. but already the highway was steaming hot under the big Okanagan Valley sun.
“You should have come too, man,” Kurtis said. “Roll me one of those, would ya? You could have come. She asked about you. You could have slept in that instead of some ditch. All you had to do was make eyes at her and she was yours.”
“Fock you. I was better off in the ditch,” Rawle laughed. “Jeez! She had more wrinkles in her face than Nick Nolte… She looked like an 80-year-old woman.”
Kurtis grinned. “Did you see her tits? Her tits were big but right perky-” He held up his palms to his chest, miming a pair of breasts.
Rawle shook his head. “I don’t want to picture it.”
“-Her tits were right high up, but as soon as I unbuckled them in back, they sagged down to her stomach, and all the wrinkles came out of her face.”
Rawle began to choke on a bit of saliva. His face went beet red.
They both began to bust a gut laughing. Kurtis spun onto his stomach, slapping the pavement with his hand. They barely noticed the car up ahead, a white Volkswagen Rabbit that blew past them but pulled off to the shoulder about a half-kilometre up.
The stop was some distance away, but still within range.
“Hey,” Kurtis said when he saw it finally. “They stopped!”
“Are they stopped for us?” Rawle said, tears oozing down his cheeks.
Kurtis didn’t say anything but stood up and made a run for it.
When he got to the car window, he took a look inside. “C’mon!”
Rawle ran dizzily up to the car. Kurtis waited til he got there before climbing in.
“It’s two chicks!” he said at the window, grinning with the big gap in his front teeth.
Rawle got in the back.
The driver was an incredibly attractive blonde girl with dreadlock hair.
“Welcome aboard,” she said, with a big smile, pullingback out onto the highway.
Rawle immediatelly felt his heart start to flutter.
The driver introduced herself as Aimee. The passenger’s name was Alex, a girl, but Rawle barely noticed her.
Aimee had reddish white skin and very rosy cheeks, bright green eyes. Rawle and Aimee gabbed happily at eachother for about fiften minutes straight, right off the bat.
Kurtis sat in the back and watched them, uncharacteristically quiet.
The other girl stared at Rawle, grinning ear to ear.
Aimee told the story of how she and her friend, Alex, were driving to Vancouver for the summer from Toronto, where they were both studying graphic design.
They drove through the States instead and recrossed at the Washington-Osoyoos border.
“We’re goingto Vancouver too,” Rawle said, unable to take his eyes of Aimee’s full lips in the rear-view mirror.
He felt his heart already wobbling under the weight of an instant crush, mixed with weird elements of fear, purpose, hatred of Kurtis and the physical effects of the desert-like heat of the Okanagan area.
In the context of normal people, Kurtis really seemed to be nothing more than a simple nutcase. Not so much a fearsome, evil criminal at all. More like an annoying freak.
Kurtis was acting very paranoid, for some reason, around the girls.
He sat in the back seat, fidgeted, and was quiet and snappy whenever anyone tried to talk to him. He had lost all the fearlessness and obnoxious charm he’d displayed in the Okanagan.
Aimee and her friend Alex were perfect slices of the sane world that Rawle had temporarily abandoned and forgot existed as he hitchhiked around like a homeless man.
He had forgotten that he could feel something besides the siege mentality of living like an animal, hunting another human being. Chasing a killer.
“What have you been doing out West?” Aimee asked Rawle in a bubbly, very conversational voice.
Rawle thought carefully about his answer. “Hitchhiking,” he said. “Living in the great outdoors. We met hitchhiking.” He swung his thumb toward Kurtis. “I’m seeing the sights of the world, while I’m still young.”
“Well, you guys look great.” But Aimee was only looking at Rawle when she said that. “You must be having fun. Living on the streets must suit you.”
“I live out here,” Kurtis said, suspiciously, his acid tone making everyone in the car feel awkward. “You asked what we are doing out West, like you think I’m from somewhere else. What if I’m not? What if I’m from here?”
“Okay,” Aimee said, diplomatically.
“I really think it does suit me, as a matter of fact,” Rawle said, bringing the conversation back to a happy place. “I think I’m pretty good at living the hippy life.”
He was thinking a lot about himself and how good he felt, lately. Sleeping outdoors and walking as much as he did, every day, was having a huge effect on him, physically. He never felt sore. He never got headaches anymore. His puffy, cheeseball gut; his dry, pale skin and his terrible computer-desk posture, had all been corrected somehow by life in the great outdoors, no bed, no pillow, no TV, no computer to mollycoddle his body.
Not only that, his heart felt stronger, his beard and hair was long and shiny; his arms and shoulders were straight up and down, strong, loose, bronze.
He had not worn deodorant in weeks and yet somehow his armpits smelled utterly odorless. Normally, he not only needed deodorant, but he needed the gel kind, the penetrating stuff, or his odor was horrifying.
It was as if living like a gypsy had corrected some kind of bad PH balance in the skin of his armpits.
The Rabbit pulled into Vancouver, in bright, sunny afternoon traffic.
Kurtis grew more and more hostile as the vehicle sank deeper into the suburbs of Vancouver, and eventually the spidery heart of the city itself.
At one point, Rawle felt an almost uncontrollable urge to open the door and push Kurtis out onto the speeding highway.
He was sulking and acting antsy.
The girls were talking about their plans. They were organized and had a strict itinerary for their time in Vancouver, people to call on.
Aimee’s sister was an actor working on a local Chris Haddock TV show, living in Port Coquitlam. The girls would be staying with her.
They parked downtown on Hastings Street and everyone said goodbye.
Aimee hugged Rawle close for several moments, glancing over at Kurtis as she did. She gestured at him with her chin and whispered, “Be careful” in Rawle’s ear.
Rawle said he would. They promised to meet up again later. Aimee gave Rawle her sister’s phone number, but said not to give it to “your friend.”
“He’s not my friend,” Rawle said, as he waved goodbye.
The shape waved.
It was Kurtis Missions.
“Thank God.”
Rawle walked up the highway quickly until he caught up with him.
They said hello and chit-chatted, then waited on the highway for cars to come.
Rawle refused to talk about what he had done the night before.
“I just want to get the fuck out of here!” he squawked, impatiently. “I pulled a dine-n-dash at the gas station. Someone’s going to come after me.”
“Someone will come. They always do.”
“So, how was that chick last night? Did you find her?”
“Fuck yeah. I rolled her back to her place.”
“You slept with her?”
“Of course, man. There was another guy there, too. We pounded her guts out, all night.”
“Oh Christ, please, spare me the gory details. I just had breakfast.”
“I told you, man, I ain’t fussy. She even threw up, at one point, right on the bed, but I still rode her anyway.”
Rawle cringed. “Fucking disgusting, man.”
“It was like chopping onions. I’m going to have that smell on my fingers now for three days.”
Rawle shook his head, but couldn’t stop himself from giggling. He started rolling a cigarette. “She was just absolutely hideous, man. I’m sorry.”
Kurtis made a flipping motion with his arms, like turning a surfboard upside down. “They all look the same, when you turn ‘em upside down, Michael.”
Michael was the fake name Rawle had given Kurtis.
“No. They don’t, John.”
John was the fake name Kurtis had given Rawle.
A few cars came by, but no one stopped. Each one that passed without stopping depressed Rawle a little more. It was still well before 10 a.m. but already the highway was steaming hot under the big Okanagan Valley sun.
“You should have come too, man,” Kurtis said. “Roll me one of those, would ya? You could have come. She asked about you. You could have slept in that instead of some ditch. All you had to do was make eyes at her and she was yours.”
“Fock you. I was better off in the ditch,” Rawle laughed. “Jeez! She had more wrinkles in her face than Nick Nolte… She looked like an 80-year-old woman.”
Kurtis grinned. “Did you see her tits? Her tits were big but right perky-” He held up his palms to his chest, miming a pair of breasts.
Rawle shook his head. “I don’t want to picture it.”
“-Her tits were right high up, but as soon as I unbuckled them in back, they sagged down to her stomach, and all the wrinkles came out of her face.”
Rawle began to choke on a bit of saliva. His face went beet red.
They both began to bust a gut laughing. Kurtis spun onto his stomach, slapping the pavement with his hand. They barely noticed the car up ahead, a white Volkswagen Rabbit that blew past them but pulled off to the shoulder about a half-kilometre up.
The stop was some distance away, but still within range.
“Hey,” Kurtis said when he saw it finally. “They stopped!”
“Are they stopped for us?” Rawle said, tears oozing down his cheeks.
Kurtis didn’t say anything but stood up and made a run for it.
When he got to the car window, he took a look inside. “C’mon!”
Rawle ran dizzily up to the car. Kurtis waited til he got there before climbing in.
“It’s two chicks!” he said at the window, grinning with the big gap in his front teeth.
Rawle got in the back.
The driver was an incredibly attractive blonde girl with dreadlock hair.
“Welcome aboard,” she said, with a big smile, pullingback out onto the highway.
Rawle immediatelly felt his heart start to flutter.
The driver introduced herself as Aimee. The passenger’s name was Alex, a girl, but Rawle barely noticed her.
Aimee had reddish white skin and very rosy cheeks, bright green eyes. Rawle and Aimee gabbed happily at eachother for about fiften minutes straight, right off the bat.
Kurtis sat in the back and watched them, uncharacteristically quiet.
The other girl stared at Rawle, grinning ear to ear.
Aimee told the story of how she and her friend, Alex, were driving to Vancouver for the summer from Toronto, where they were both studying graphic design.
They drove through the States instead and recrossed at the Washington-Osoyoos border.
“We’re goingto Vancouver too,” Rawle said, unable to take his eyes of Aimee’s full lips in the rear-view mirror.
He felt his heart already wobbling under the weight of an instant crush, mixed with weird elements of fear, purpose, hatred of Kurtis and the physical effects of the desert-like heat of the Okanagan area.
In the context of normal people, Kurtis really seemed to be nothing more than a simple nutcase. Not so much a fearsome, evil criminal at all. More like an annoying freak.
Kurtis was acting very paranoid, for some reason, around the girls.
He sat in the back seat, fidgeted, and was quiet and snappy whenever anyone tried to talk to him. He had lost all the fearlessness and obnoxious charm he’d displayed in the Okanagan.
Aimee and her friend Alex were perfect slices of the sane world that Rawle had temporarily abandoned and forgot existed as he hitchhiked around like a homeless man.
He had forgotten that he could feel something besides the siege mentality of living like an animal, hunting another human being. Chasing a killer.
“What have you been doing out West?” Aimee asked Rawle in a bubbly, very conversational voice.
Rawle thought carefully about his answer. “Hitchhiking,” he said. “Living in the great outdoors. We met hitchhiking.” He swung his thumb toward Kurtis. “I’m seeing the sights of the world, while I’m still young.”
“Well, you guys look great.” But Aimee was only looking at Rawle when she said that. “You must be having fun. Living on the streets must suit you.”
“I live out here,” Kurtis said, suspiciously, his acid tone making everyone in the car feel awkward. “You asked what we are doing out West, like you think I’m from somewhere else. What if I’m not? What if I’m from here?”
“Okay,” Aimee said, diplomatically.
“I really think it does suit me, as a matter of fact,” Rawle said, bringing the conversation back to a happy place. “I think I’m pretty good at living the hippy life.”
He was thinking a lot about himself and how good he felt, lately. Sleeping outdoors and walking as much as he did, every day, was having a huge effect on him, physically. He never felt sore. He never got headaches anymore. His puffy, cheeseball gut; his dry, pale skin and his terrible computer-desk posture, had all been corrected somehow by life in the great outdoors, no bed, no pillow, no TV, no computer to mollycoddle his body.
Not only that, his heart felt stronger, his beard and hair was long and shiny; his arms and shoulders were straight up and down, strong, loose, bronze.
He had not worn deodorant in weeks and yet somehow his armpits smelled utterly odorless. Normally, he not only needed deodorant, but he needed the gel kind, the penetrating stuff, or his odor was horrifying.
It was as if living like a gypsy had corrected some kind of bad PH balance in the skin of his armpits.
The Rabbit pulled into Vancouver, in bright, sunny afternoon traffic.
Kurtis grew more and more hostile as the vehicle sank deeper into the suburbs of Vancouver, and eventually the spidery heart of the city itself.
At one point, Rawle felt an almost uncontrollable urge to open the door and push Kurtis out onto the speeding highway.
He was sulking and acting antsy.
The girls were talking about their plans. They were organized and had a strict itinerary for their time in Vancouver, people to call on.
Aimee’s sister was an actor working on a local Chris Haddock TV show, living in Port Coquitlam. The girls would be staying with her.
They parked downtown on Hastings Street and everyone said goodbye.
Aimee hugged Rawle close for several moments, glancing over at Kurtis as she did. She gestured at him with her chin and whispered, “Be careful” in Rawle’s ear.
Rawle said he would. They promised to meet up again later. Aimee gave Rawle her sister’s phone number, but said not to give it to “your friend.”
“He’s not my friend,” Rawle said, as he waved goodbye.
Chapter 145
They slept on the rooftop of a pizza restaurant on Granville Street, that night. One of Kurtis Missions’ few good ideas. Camping, in a sense, in the heart of Downtown Vancouver, above the streets of the downtown eastside, where they didn’t have to worry once about getting robbed, or hassled by the Pork.
The next morning was sunny and warm. Rawle had yet to experience the famous B.C. rain.
Rawle woke up first, feeling like a hot grub under his thermal blanket. The sun was hammering down on the black roofing shingles. He scanned the back alley, behind the pizza restaurant. The coast was clear so he snuck down, climbing down onto a Dumpster. Once he was in the alley, he hung a left onto nearby Robson Street and then stopped at the first coffee shop he found. Trees Cafe.
At the counter, he ordered a long espresso with cream.
He also picked up a copy of the Vancouver Sun.
There was a prominant item in the bottom right corner of page one, with a Montreal placeline.
‘Cops seek fugitive in murders, child rape.’
He flipped to A2 to read the bulk of the story and look at the photos. As soon as he turned the page, there was a mugshot of Kurtis Missions, with long hair and a beard, staringhim in the face. His name was listed in the cutline as Kurtis Missions, a.k.a. John Dee.
Rawle felt weak in the arms. The thin newspaper started to tremble in his hands.
There was also another photo. A pretty, but plain-looking brown-haired girl, with lots of freckles and hound-dog eyes. It was a high school graduation photo.
Heather Dominie.
Adrenaline rocketed up Rawle’s head and made his mind swim. “…the body of Heather Dominie was found by a group of teenagers…
…
... also seeking Missions for allegedly killing Nova Scotia reporter Jack lee and his wife Tamara, and allegedly molesting a unnamed four-year-old Montreal girl in Mount Royal… ”
Rawle read the story over and over, in disbelief.
Molesting a four-year-old…?
He drained his coffee and left the cafe, taking the page of the newspaper with him, folded neatly into his pocket.
He walked down Granville a ways andended up at the Liquor Store on Hastings. He used his last twenty bucks to buy a 12 pack of Kokane. His brain was seething and he needed cold beers to calm down with. He could barely think. It was all there, in black and white. Kurtis Missions was a killer. And worse, he’d sexually assaulted a little child.
Kurtis was walking toward him, on the sunny sidewalk.
He was right out in the open, right on the street, with his mugshot in the morning newspaper, for three murders.
He stopped right in front of Rawle.
“What’s up?” Kurtis said.
Rawle was at a loss for words. He didn’t answer, but turned his face away. He felt a surging defiance and anger building up inside.
“Let’s go to the park, man,” Kurtis said, diplomatically. “Stanley Park, for a couple hours. Have a few beers. We need to unwind.”
Rawle shrugged. “Fine.”
They walked to the park, in silence.
It took about twenty minutes to get there. Stanley Park was a lot like Point Pleasant Park in Halifax, except more open, and with fatter trees.
They found a place with lots of sunlight, in a section of quiet forest near the aquarium, and drank their beers, watching the little red squirrels nitter around for nuts.
Rawle just wanted to get wide and forget his troubles for a minute. He wanted to drown the anger and loathing he was feeling, just a little.
They both put down three beers each in a matter of ten minutes.
Rawle wasn’t talking, so Kurtis started to talk and talk and talk, to fill up the dead air.
He told Rawle about how all his food and money had been stolen while he was napping on a park bench in Kelowna, the night before they met up.
“It happened on purpose. I know that. My handler is trying to push me. He’s trying to remind me that only my Brothers will look after me, in this world. See, after my money got stolen, I was just about to go over the edge, then he sent me the squaw, with dope and spending money and some leather, to cheer me up. Then you came along, right after her, to help me. To buy booze and food, and travel with me to Vancouver. You’re like a guide. It’s spiritual training. Push me to the breaking point, then just when I’m about to go over the edge, send me someone else, to pull me back on the good side again.”
Rawle shook his head. Kurtis’ words were so bizarre-sounding, he couldn’t help but smile.
“You still think I’m working for the Gypsies, or something. I told you, I don’t know how many fucking times. I don’t work for anybody. I’m just an ordinary dude. Look at me! Do I look like a biker?”
“Looks don’t mean shit, but whatever. You don’t have to tell me, man. I know.” Kurtis put his hands on his knees. He was sitting under the tree, like a Buddist with his bald head.
Kurtis also believed that a Gypsy operative of some kind had paid for the pizza and beer after they dashed on the bill at Boston Pizza in Penticton.
“I saw someone there I recognized. That’s how it is. I probably met them before, somewhere’s. You meet a lot of people. I probably met you somewhere’s before too, Michael. I’m meant to fend for myself, but you can still set up a quick operation, to pay a bar tab or whatever, to prevent me from getting arrested. Cause if I get arrested, maybe the Pork will put two and two together and make me name names. Am I right?”
Rawle laughed up at the sky, with a booming voice. “Where do you come up with this shit, man? You’re fishing on some thin ice there, brother.”
He wanted to bring up the topic of the Lee killings, but didn’t know quite how to do it. Luckily, Kurtis seemed in the mood to talk, about anything and everything, especially as he got a few beers down his throat.
“Did they find the cocaine?” he asked, right out of the blue. “You’d think I‘d get some kind of acknowledgement for that.”
Rawle felt nervous. This was it. He knew he had to say something.
“What cocaine?”
Kurtis grinned, his missing teeth prominent on his angular face. “That’s right. ‘What cocaine?’ You’re not a Gypsy, I forgot. Okay, just tell me if they know where it is. Nod yes, or shake your head for no.”
Rawle shook his head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, man. Seriously.”
“Haha!” Kurtis chuckled. “You shook your head. Okay, he don’t know where it is. Tell him it’s at the bus station. Wid dropped it off at the bus station, in Halifax. He got spooked at the last minute, somehow. He suspected something was gonna happen, or he sensed it, or somebody tipped him off. I don’t know what happened. He left his duffel bag at the bus station in Halifax, at the Lost Luggage counter. Darroll went to go pick it up, with Wid’s ID, but he got killed on the way. That’s why I took off into the woods. I figured the Lee’s were watching the duffel bag. That’s the God’s honest truth. If I were you, I’d tell Bob to stake out the terminal, before he goes in, to make sure it’s safe. That’s all I know. I swear. I never even seen the duffel bag.”
Rawle lit a cigarette, cautiously. He didn’t know what to say. He wanted Kurtis to keep talking. He tried to memorize, word for word, everything Kurtis had said. “You tell interesting stories, for sure, man. First you tell me you’re a drug dealer on a quest for the Gypsy Motorcycle Gang, now you’re saying you lost a bunch of cocaine. Wouldn’t that get you dead?”
Kurtis picked up Rawle’s bag of tobacco and rolled a cigarette. His fingers were shaking and the smoke was turning out very messy and flat.
“It depends on how everything works out, don’t it? If the Lee’s win, I’ll be on the run for losing cocaine, and probably wind up in prison for crimes I didn’t commit. If the Sgt. Bob wins, I’m on the prospect test, and it’s all good.”
Sgt. Bob?
Kurtis had mentioned a name. He’d said it twice: Bob. Sgt. Bob.
Lost luggage counter. Sgt. Bob. Rawle committed the quotes to memory.
Kurtis had a very scared look on his face. He put the messy cigarette up to his lips and lit the end, as if he knew he’d said too much.
Rawle felt his heart beat begin to trickle like ice water down his chest.
He was getting information, most of the information Dee Lee wanted.
Where the coke was, who Kurtis was working for. Somebody named Bob. Sgt. Bob.
Rawle grabbed the tobacco and rolled his own cigarette. “What crimes that you didn’t commit? You said you’d wind up in prison for crimes you didn’t commit? Did you kill somebody?”
Kurtis smoked for a few seconds more and tried to relax. He was sitting hunched over, cross-legged in the grass, his back leaned up against a huge white pine.
“You just better hope you can get me back in.” Kurtis looked at Rawle with a suspicious grin, squinting in the sunlight. “Are you a cop or a police agent?”
Staring at him, straight in the eyes. He had never asked that question before.
“Answer truthfully.”
Rawle grinned. “I wish. I’d make a wicked cop. I’d be dirty as fuck.”
Kurtis picked up his can of beer and drained the contents through his missing front teeth, keeping his eyes fixed hard on Rawle, as he drank.
“Are you a Gypsy or a Gypsy asset?”
“I’m not a Gypsy or a Gypsy asset. No. I wish, I’d make a wicked Gypsy.”
Kurtis shrugged. “Whatever, man. Either you know this, or you’ll find out soon enough. I’m going to tell you something now. And it’s the God’s honest truth. All I did was defend myself against hitmen coming to kill me. That’s a legal thing to do. The girl and the Lee man. And then the girl in Montreal. They were all trying to kill me, for the Lee family. What was I supposed to do? Just let them kill me?”
Rawle sat back, in shock. He couldn’t think of what to say off the top of his head. “Yeah?”
The Lee guy. Kurtis had all but flat-out admitted to killing Jack and Tee.
He said they were ‘hitmen.’
“When you become a hangaround,” Kurtis kept talking, “the Lee’s take your DNA. There’s no way around it, man. So… They collect your sperm sample from you and they freeze it or whatever. Then if you cross them later, they frame you for something really bad, like raping a kid. That’s my problem. I don’t know what to do, man. I feel like any moment, they’re going to spring something on me.”
Rawle looked at Kurtis, trying to find some logic in his words. Trying to follow what he was saying. “Raping a kid?”
“Molesting a kid. Yeah. ‘Cause they know that’s the worst thing a biker wannabe could ever be guilty of. A diddler is the lowest piece of shit on earth, man. So they frame you for that, then they have you intheir power. They have insurance that you’ll never be a rat. That’s why I feel so fucked. They killed Darroll, so they must know I’m involved now. See what I mean? I’m fucked. You got to help me.”
Rawle felt a dark patch falling over him, slowly, as if a cloud was blocking out the sun.
It was a feeling he’d been feeling a lot lately in Kurtis’ prescence. He was really started to believe Kurtis was mentally unwell. Delusional.
“They probably set me up for a crime like that, just like that, man. They prepared for it in advance, so far in advance, so’s if I ever turned informer, they’d have something over my head. See what I’m so worried about? That’s a fate worse than death. They eat you alive for that, man. You’d get beat every hour, every day. Haha! Man, in jail, they put the diddlers in segregation, but first they throw them in with the serious offenders to make sure they get beat. For real. Every jail does that. And if the Crown thinks I’m a diddler, they won’t ever go through with a deal. Would they? No fuckin’ way. They’d never go through with a deal with a diddler. That’s why… See, the Lee’s know the Crown will make a deal with a murderer, no problem, but not a diddler. The public would have a huge outcry, man. So, if the Pork wants to bring down somebody, like Alan Lee, they’re gonna have to make a deal with someone who’s been set-up as a child molester…”
Kurtis trailed off.
Rawle was zoning out, staring off into the Georgia Strait. His mind was racing. He couldn’t get past the newspaper story. It was true. Kurtis had molested a four-year old Montreal girl… All he could think about was Athan, somebody hurting him like that.
“You molested a little girl?”
“No! Aren’t you listening to me? Jesus! Why would I do that?”
“How old was she?”
“Fuck!” Kurtis said. “You’re not listening. I thinkthey willframe me for that. You never heard of them doing that? You think they just keep letting their people turn informer on them? You keep acting like I’m speaking Greek to you, dude? Enough of the game. I know who you are. I know those girls that drove us here were with you. Is that coincidence? Of course they would come for us, in Osoyoos. The smallest fucking place in the world. And I know you met a Gypsy associate in Osoyoos. And of course those girls were from Nova Scotia, just like you. What another great coincidence. That’s why I knew we’d be coming to Van, instead of the States. So what do we now? Now that I figured it out? Are you going to bring me back in, or not? What’s the plan? Because I’m sketching out.”
Rawle felt his cheeks and forehead blush. Kurtis was confusing him. “I’m not even following you anymore,” he said, honestly. “Now you’re saying the Gypsies Motorcycle Club has set you up for a molesting a little girl? That is fucked….. Is that even possible?” Rawle’s tone was revolted and impatient. He was getting frustrated by Kurtis and his rambling answers.
Kurtis puffed his cigarette. “How do you think they do it? Yes, they set me up. Of course. We partied for days and days, day and night, non-stop when I first got with them. I was so high I was off my head. I met all kinds of people, took all kinds of dope. Smoking crack in the back of a Cadillac. I don’t even know what I was doing. That’s how they did it. They made all these women want to come fuck me. Then they kept all the dirty condoms. I know they did. I figured it out. Then when I passed out, they took me and put me in a van somewhere, and made a video with a little girl, a sex video. Then they freezed my jizz. They sent me a copy of the video, man, as a way to tell me what’s what. I never told nobody this. Only Bob. Because I need help. No one talks about it. But is it only me? I don’t think so.”
Rawle didn’t say anything. He was struck dumb. Kurtis’ eyes were wide and glassy.
Rawle couldn’t believe the story he was being told. It was so insane, and yet Kurtis truly believed what he was saying, as if the delusion had overtaken reality completely.
Rawle realized he had never actually spoken to a truly delusional person before today, just ordinary liars. It was frightening. Kurtis lived in an altered reality.
He molested a little girl. Holy fuck.
“How they could do that? How could the Gypsies have your jism? Sitting in a freezer somewhere?”
“-Then they kept coming in the room, while I’m sleeping and reciting things in my ear about how I molest kids. They plant memories in my head. You really going to pretend you think they don’t do this? Of course they do. And maybe it’s different for everybody. Maybe there’s a tape of you somewhere’s too, man. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? Puttin’ up with me? Hahaha! You’re pathetic, dude. Your act is getting really weak.”
“Jesus!” Rawle put both hand sup into the air, appealing to the trees and squirrels. “I’m not who you think I am!”
“Yeah, you keep pretending that you don’t know what I’m talking about,” Kurtis pressed. “But I know you do. I know who you are. I know the Gypsies sent you to help me. The Spalding side. You just can’t talk about it. You got to pretend you’re just some guy, hitchhiking.”
Rawle couldn’t help but smile. Kurtis was actually half-right about things, half of the time. But everytime he said something, it was so interwoven with delusions, it was very confusing to listen to.
“I give up, man. You figured it out,” Rawle joked. “You’re right, I’m a secret agent. Shit! My cover’s blown!”
The next morning was sunny and warm. Rawle had yet to experience the famous B.C. rain.
Rawle woke up first, feeling like a hot grub under his thermal blanket. The sun was hammering down on the black roofing shingles. He scanned the back alley, behind the pizza restaurant. The coast was clear so he snuck down, climbing down onto a Dumpster. Once he was in the alley, he hung a left onto nearby Robson Street and then stopped at the first coffee shop he found. Trees Cafe.
At the counter, he ordered a long espresso with cream.
He also picked up a copy of the Vancouver Sun.
There was a prominant item in the bottom right corner of page one, with a Montreal placeline.
‘Cops seek fugitive in murders, child rape.’
He flipped to A2 to read the bulk of the story and look at the photos. As soon as he turned the page, there was a mugshot of Kurtis Missions, with long hair and a beard, staringhim in the face. His name was listed in the cutline as Kurtis Missions, a.k.a. John Dee.
Rawle felt weak in the arms. The thin newspaper started to tremble in his hands.
There was also another photo. A pretty, but plain-looking brown-haired girl, with lots of freckles and hound-dog eyes. It was a high school graduation photo.
Heather Dominie.
Adrenaline rocketed up Rawle’s head and made his mind swim. “…the body of Heather Dominie was found by a group of teenagers…
…
... also seeking Missions for allegedly killing Nova Scotia reporter Jack lee and his wife Tamara, and allegedly molesting a unnamed four-year-old Montreal girl in Mount Royal… ”
Rawle read the story over and over, in disbelief.
Molesting a four-year-old…?
He drained his coffee and left the cafe, taking the page of the newspaper with him, folded neatly into his pocket.
He walked down Granville a ways andended up at the Liquor Store on Hastings. He used his last twenty bucks to buy a 12 pack of Kokane. His brain was seething and he needed cold beers to calm down with. He could barely think. It was all there, in black and white. Kurtis Missions was a killer. And worse, he’d sexually assaulted a little child.
Kurtis was walking toward him, on the sunny sidewalk.
He was right out in the open, right on the street, with his mugshot in the morning newspaper, for three murders.
He stopped right in front of Rawle.
“What’s up?” Kurtis said.
Rawle was at a loss for words. He didn’t answer, but turned his face away. He felt a surging defiance and anger building up inside.
“Let’s go to the park, man,” Kurtis said, diplomatically. “Stanley Park, for a couple hours. Have a few beers. We need to unwind.”
Rawle shrugged. “Fine.”
They walked to the park, in silence.
It took about twenty minutes to get there. Stanley Park was a lot like Point Pleasant Park in Halifax, except more open, and with fatter trees.
They found a place with lots of sunlight, in a section of quiet forest near the aquarium, and drank their beers, watching the little red squirrels nitter around for nuts.
Rawle just wanted to get wide and forget his troubles for a minute. He wanted to drown the anger and loathing he was feeling, just a little.
They both put down three beers each in a matter of ten minutes.
Rawle wasn’t talking, so Kurtis started to talk and talk and talk, to fill up the dead air.
He told Rawle about how all his food and money had been stolen while he was napping on a park bench in Kelowna, the night before they met up.
“It happened on purpose. I know that. My handler is trying to push me. He’s trying to remind me that only my Brothers will look after me, in this world. See, after my money got stolen, I was just about to go over the edge, then he sent me the squaw, with dope and spending money and some leather, to cheer me up. Then you came along, right after her, to help me. To buy booze and food, and travel with me to Vancouver. You’re like a guide. It’s spiritual training. Push me to the breaking point, then just when I’m about to go over the edge, send me someone else, to pull me back on the good side again.”
Rawle shook his head. Kurtis’ words were so bizarre-sounding, he couldn’t help but smile.
“You still think I’m working for the Gypsies, or something. I told you, I don’t know how many fucking times. I don’t work for anybody. I’m just an ordinary dude. Look at me! Do I look like a biker?”
“Looks don’t mean shit, but whatever. You don’t have to tell me, man. I know.” Kurtis put his hands on his knees. He was sitting under the tree, like a Buddist with his bald head.
Kurtis also believed that a Gypsy operative of some kind had paid for the pizza and beer after they dashed on the bill at Boston Pizza in Penticton.
“I saw someone there I recognized. That’s how it is. I probably met them before, somewhere’s. You meet a lot of people. I probably met you somewhere’s before too, Michael. I’m meant to fend for myself, but you can still set up a quick operation, to pay a bar tab or whatever, to prevent me from getting arrested. Cause if I get arrested, maybe the Pork will put two and two together and make me name names. Am I right?”
Rawle laughed up at the sky, with a booming voice. “Where do you come up with this shit, man? You’re fishing on some thin ice there, brother.”
He wanted to bring up the topic of the Lee killings, but didn’t know quite how to do it. Luckily, Kurtis seemed in the mood to talk, about anything and everything, especially as he got a few beers down his throat.
“Did they find the cocaine?” he asked, right out of the blue. “You’d think I‘d get some kind of acknowledgement for that.”
Rawle felt nervous. This was it. He knew he had to say something.
“What cocaine?”
Kurtis grinned, his missing teeth prominent on his angular face. “That’s right. ‘What cocaine?’ You’re not a Gypsy, I forgot. Okay, just tell me if they know where it is. Nod yes, or shake your head for no.”
Rawle shook his head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, man. Seriously.”
“Haha!” Kurtis chuckled. “You shook your head. Okay, he don’t know where it is. Tell him it’s at the bus station. Wid dropped it off at the bus station, in Halifax. He got spooked at the last minute, somehow. He suspected something was gonna happen, or he sensed it, or somebody tipped him off. I don’t know what happened. He left his duffel bag at the bus station in Halifax, at the Lost Luggage counter. Darroll went to go pick it up, with Wid’s ID, but he got killed on the way. That’s why I took off into the woods. I figured the Lee’s were watching the duffel bag. That’s the God’s honest truth. If I were you, I’d tell Bob to stake out the terminal, before he goes in, to make sure it’s safe. That’s all I know. I swear. I never even seen the duffel bag.”
Rawle lit a cigarette, cautiously. He didn’t know what to say. He wanted Kurtis to keep talking. He tried to memorize, word for word, everything Kurtis had said. “You tell interesting stories, for sure, man. First you tell me you’re a drug dealer on a quest for the Gypsy Motorcycle Gang, now you’re saying you lost a bunch of cocaine. Wouldn’t that get you dead?”
Kurtis picked up Rawle’s bag of tobacco and rolled a cigarette. His fingers were shaking and the smoke was turning out very messy and flat.
“It depends on how everything works out, don’t it? If the Lee’s win, I’ll be on the run for losing cocaine, and probably wind up in prison for crimes I didn’t commit. If the Sgt. Bob wins, I’m on the prospect test, and it’s all good.”
Sgt. Bob?
Kurtis had mentioned a name. He’d said it twice: Bob. Sgt. Bob.
Lost luggage counter. Sgt. Bob. Rawle committed the quotes to memory.
Kurtis had a very scared look on his face. He put the messy cigarette up to his lips and lit the end, as if he knew he’d said too much.
Rawle felt his heart beat begin to trickle like ice water down his chest.
He was getting information, most of the information Dee Lee wanted.
Where the coke was, who Kurtis was working for. Somebody named Bob. Sgt. Bob.
Rawle grabbed the tobacco and rolled his own cigarette. “What crimes that you didn’t commit? You said you’d wind up in prison for crimes you didn’t commit? Did you kill somebody?”
Kurtis smoked for a few seconds more and tried to relax. He was sitting hunched over, cross-legged in the grass, his back leaned up against a huge white pine.
“You just better hope you can get me back in.” Kurtis looked at Rawle with a suspicious grin, squinting in the sunlight. “Are you a cop or a police agent?”
Staring at him, straight in the eyes. He had never asked that question before.
“Answer truthfully.”
Rawle grinned. “I wish. I’d make a wicked cop. I’d be dirty as fuck.”
Kurtis picked up his can of beer and drained the contents through his missing front teeth, keeping his eyes fixed hard on Rawle, as he drank.
“Are you a Gypsy or a Gypsy asset?”
“I’m not a Gypsy or a Gypsy asset. No. I wish, I’d make a wicked Gypsy.”
Kurtis shrugged. “Whatever, man. Either you know this, or you’ll find out soon enough. I’m going to tell you something now. And it’s the God’s honest truth. All I did was defend myself against hitmen coming to kill me. That’s a legal thing to do. The girl and the Lee man. And then the girl in Montreal. They were all trying to kill me, for the Lee family. What was I supposed to do? Just let them kill me?”
Rawle sat back, in shock. He couldn’t think of what to say off the top of his head. “Yeah?”
The Lee guy. Kurtis had all but flat-out admitted to killing Jack and Tee.
He said they were ‘hitmen.’
“When you become a hangaround,” Kurtis kept talking, “the Lee’s take your DNA. There’s no way around it, man. So… They collect your sperm sample from you and they freeze it or whatever. Then if you cross them later, they frame you for something really bad, like raping a kid. That’s my problem. I don’t know what to do, man. I feel like any moment, they’re going to spring something on me.”
Rawle looked at Kurtis, trying to find some logic in his words. Trying to follow what he was saying. “Raping a kid?”
“Molesting a kid. Yeah. ‘Cause they know that’s the worst thing a biker wannabe could ever be guilty of. A diddler is the lowest piece of shit on earth, man. So they frame you for that, then they have you intheir power. They have insurance that you’ll never be a rat. That’s why I feel so fucked. They killed Darroll, so they must know I’m involved now. See what I mean? I’m fucked. You got to help me.”
Rawle felt a dark patch falling over him, slowly, as if a cloud was blocking out the sun.
It was a feeling he’d been feeling a lot lately in Kurtis’ prescence. He was really started to believe Kurtis was mentally unwell. Delusional.
“They probably set me up for a crime like that, just like that, man. They prepared for it in advance, so far in advance, so’s if I ever turned informer, they’d have something over my head. See what I’m so worried about? That’s a fate worse than death. They eat you alive for that, man. You’d get beat every hour, every day. Haha! Man, in jail, they put the diddlers in segregation, but first they throw them in with the serious offenders to make sure they get beat. For real. Every jail does that. And if the Crown thinks I’m a diddler, they won’t ever go through with a deal. Would they? No fuckin’ way. They’d never go through with a deal with a diddler. That’s why… See, the Lee’s know the Crown will make a deal with a murderer, no problem, but not a diddler. The public would have a huge outcry, man. So, if the Pork wants to bring down somebody, like Alan Lee, they’re gonna have to make a deal with someone who’s been set-up as a child molester…”
Kurtis trailed off.
Rawle was zoning out, staring off into the Georgia Strait. His mind was racing. He couldn’t get past the newspaper story. It was true. Kurtis had molested a four-year old Montreal girl… All he could think about was Athan, somebody hurting him like that.
“You molested a little girl?”
“No! Aren’t you listening to me? Jesus! Why would I do that?”
“How old was she?”
“Fuck!” Kurtis said. “You’re not listening. I thinkthey willframe me for that. You never heard of them doing that? You think they just keep letting their people turn informer on them? You keep acting like I’m speaking Greek to you, dude? Enough of the game. I know who you are. I know those girls that drove us here were with you. Is that coincidence? Of course they would come for us, in Osoyoos. The smallest fucking place in the world. And I know you met a Gypsy associate in Osoyoos. And of course those girls were from Nova Scotia, just like you. What another great coincidence. That’s why I knew we’d be coming to Van, instead of the States. So what do we now? Now that I figured it out? Are you going to bring me back in, or not? What’s the plan? Because I’m sketching out.”
Rawle felt his cheeks and forehead blush. Kurtis was confusing him. “I’m not even following you anymore,” he said, honestly. “Now you’re saying the Gypsies Motorcycle Club has set you up for a molesting a little girl? That is fucked….. Is that even possible?” Rawle’s tone was revolted and impatient. He was getting frustrated by Kurtis and his rambling answers.
Kurtis puffed his cigarette. “How do you think they do it? Yes, they set me up. Of course. We partied for days and days, day and night, non-stop when I first got with them. I was so high I was off my head. I met all kinds of people, took all kinds of dope. Smoking crack in the back of a Cadillac. I don’t even know what I was doing. That’s how they did it. They made all these women want to come fuck me. Then they kept all the dirty condoms. I know they did. I figured it out. Then when I passed out, they took me and put me in a van somewhere, and made a video with a little girl, a sex video. Then they freezed my jizz. They sent me a copy of the video, man, as a way to tell me what’s what. I never told nobody this. Only Bob. Because I need help. No one talks about it. But is it only me? I don’t think so.”
Rawle didn’t say anything. He was struck dumb. Kurtis’ eyes were wide and glassy.
Rawle couldn’t believe the story he was being told. It was so insane, and yet Kurtis truly believed what he was saying, as if the delusion had overtaken reality completely.
Rawle realized he had never actually spoken to a truly delusional person before today, just ordinary liars. It was frightening. Kurtis lived in an altered reality.
He molested a little girl. Holy fuck.
“How they could do that? How could the Gypsies have your jism? Sitting in a freezer somewhere?”
“-Then they kept coming in the room, while I’m sleeping and reciting things in my ear about how I molest kids. They plant memories in my head. You really going to pretend you think they don’t do this? Of course they do. And maybe it’s different for everybody. Maybe there’s a tape of you somewhere’s too, man. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? Puttin’ up with me? Hahaha! You’re pathetic, dude. Your act is getting really weak.”
“Jesus!” Rawle put both hand sup into the air, appealing to the trees and squirrels. “I’m not who you think I am!”
“Yeah, you keep pretending that you don’t know what I’m talking about,” Kurtis pressed. “But I know you do. I know who you are. I know the Gypsies sent you to help me. The Spalding side. You just can’t talk about it. You got to pretend you’re just some guy, hitchhiking.”
Rawle couldn’t help but smile. Kurtis was actually half-right about things, half of the time. But everytime he said something, it was so interwoven with delusions, it was very confusing to listen to.
“I give up, man. You figured it out,” Rawle joked. “You’re right, I’m a secret agent. Shit! My cover’s blown!”
Chapter 146
They finished their beers and headed slowly back downtown.
Rawle Powder tried to think of how he could best turn Kurtis Missions in to the police, and quickly. He couldn’t believe no one was doing anything. They even passed a police cruiser driving down Hastings Street. Nothing happened.
Kurtis’ picture was in the morning newspaper, for three murders and child rape, yet here he was walking down the street in downtown Vancouver, like everybody else.
“I’m hungry,” Kurtis said, turning around. “We gotta eat. I’ll put up with a lot, but I won’t starve.”
They ducked into a large, family pizza restaurant on the better end of Hastings, not far from the park.
They walked up a large, winding staircase to an open balcony section, with about eight tables.
As the food and drinks were being served, then eaten, then taken away, Kurtis unfolded his obnoxious personality, in full, like a giant tablecloth. He was extremely drunk now.
Everything he said was rude and spoken in a loud voice, carrying like cigar smoke far across the dining area.
He was angering and embarrassing the wait staff and ordinary eaters in earshot.
Kurtis ate pizza and started talking again about how he wasn't picky when it came to bedding women.
He started talking about the fat chick he met at the Osoyoos liquor store again.
“I told you, I’ll fuck anything you can squeeze through the door.”
He gestured over at the next table to an obese woman in a wheelchair, eating dinner with what looked to be her mother. “-Or wheel her in, if you have to,” Kurtis said, grinning devilishly and booming in a loud voice. “Wheel her on in, I don't give a fuck.”
Rawle felt his stomach drop down to his knees like a floppy bladder.
The obese woman in the wheelchair had her back to Kurtis, but she must have heard what he said. There was a sickening tension in the air, but neither the woman nor her mother said anything or appeared to react. They seemed to be pretending not to have heard.
It was excruciating.
Rawle felt acid bubbling up inside him. A murdering pedophile.
He had never felt hate so strongly, not even in childhood.
He knew he was sitting with an unhinged, evil man. A sick man. A man without any shame. The boy did not care.
But the worst of it was, no matter how much hate he felt, a small part of him still wanted to bust a gut laughing.
Rawle was not sure the waitress had heard the comment, but she had definitely had her fill of Kurtis. The food was only half done and there were still two plastic pitchers half-full of beer on the table when she brought the bill.
“Will that be everything?” She said, in a scorching voice.
“Yes. Thank you,” Rawle said.
It came to $89. Kurtis picked up the bill and examined it, carefully, then leaned across the table. His breath smelled like booze.
“You see that guy up there on the balcony? He’s one of us. We can walk out of here, casually this time, I’m sure of it. I’ve never been more sure of anything in my Jesus life. He’s going to pay the bill for us, dude. Don’t worry about it.”
Rawle looked up at the balcony. It was just some guy with long hair.
“Okay,” Rawle said. “But, we should duck into the bathroom by the staircase, then sneak out after a minute or two.”
“No!” Kurtis insisted. “We don’t need to do that. I told you. I’m walking the fuck out of here, like a normal man. I’m telling you, that guy has the bill covered. That’s why we’re here. Walk out with me. C’mon!” He got up calmly and nonchalantly began to walk down the large winding staircase in the middle of the restaurant. He reached the bottom, and continued out through the crowded main dining room. Nobody stopped him.
Rawle was up from the table, following, but at the last minute, he saw the waitress coming around a corner. He ducked into the washroom.
He knew he had to separate himself from Kurtis, at some point, or it was going to turn ugly. He felt in his bones. Kurtis was about to go down, hard, one way or another, very soon. Eventually someone would recognize him. He was beginning to think it was probably best if the police took him down.
After five minutes, Rawle left the bathroom. He saw that the coast was clear and started to walk down the winding staircase. As he rounded the curve in the middle, he saw the waitress right there, halfway up the stairs.
“Where are you going?” she said. She looked really, really pissed.
Rawle sighed and shrugged his shoulders.
“I assume this means my friend stuck me with the bill?” Rawle said. “That asshole.”
The waitress frowned at him. “You don’t have any money?”
“No, I got money,” Rawle said. “But now I have to use Debit, but your guys Debit is down, right?” There had been a big sign up in the waiting area of the restaurant saying the Debit system was not working.
“It’s not, right now,” she said.
“I’ll have to use the bank machine, then. There’s one across the street.”
She looked him up and down, still frowning.
“Seriously, it’s not my fault you guys don’t have Debit.”
“There’s a big sign at the front door.”
“I know, but my friend said he would pay, cash. Now he’s playing a trick on me. He took off. Here, you can hold onto my wallet, it’s got my ID and everything. You hold onto it, I’ll take my bank card across the street and I’ll be right back with the money.”
She relaxed a little and agreed to the plan, taking Rawle’s worn leather wallet and stuffing it into the red kangaroo pouch of her waitress belt.
Rawle left the restaurant, extremely pissed off.
Kurtis was waiting right outside the door, around the corner of the building: “What happened?” he said as Rawle came out.
Rawle walked by without speaking and ran across the street. He swipe dhi sbank card in the door of a nearby bank machine booth and ducked inside, letting the door lock shut behind him.
Kurtis crossed the road, after him and waited anxiously outside the booth. Rawle prayed he still had a hundred dollars left in his old college savings account. He typed in 100.00 and waited. The machine amazingly agreed to his request and rumbled out five crispy twenties. Flip-flip-flip. He snatched up the receipt. It said “Balance not available.”
“Thak you, God.”
He exited the bank machine booth and Kurtis demanded, again, to know “what happened in the restaurant?”
Rawle pushed past him. “I’m going back in there, to pay the bill. They made me leave my wallet and my driver’s license. I’m going to get them back.”
Kurtis looked shocked.
He grabbed Rawle by the arm hard and yanked him back until he was facing him. Kurtis was kind of smiling, but also looking deadly serious. His insane man strength was incredible. Rawle could feel it, like a magnetic force. Kurtis was like an orangutan. Thin, but almost supernaturally strong.
“Do not go back in there,” he said, in a slow voice. “Do not worry about it. A Gypsy was in there, in the restaurant. On our side. I seen him. He has our bill covered. It doesn’t make sense, actually, that they would hold your wallet and make you pay the bill, again. Why are you making up a lie? What’s your real reason for wanting to go back inside the restaurant? Is something going to happen out here? I don’t like being fucked with,” Kurtis said, deadly serious. “You don’t need to go back in there.”
“Yeah, I do,” Rawle said.
“No, you don’t. You didn’t leave your wallet in there, there’s no reason for you to go back in there.”
Rawle sighed, loudly at him. “I told you, for the last time. They are holding my wallet, and my ID until I go back and give them this money. I’m going back in there. Now let go.”
Kurtis didn’t let go.
Rawle briefly considered letting his wallet and ID go the way of his family and career. What would be the difference? It’s not like he needed a driver’s license anymore. But the truth was, he was just pissed off and feeling rebellious.
This shit with Kurtis had gone on long enough. He had to make a stand, on some principle, at some point. He had to stand up to Kurtis, over something, anything. It might as well be over reality itself.
“Listen to me, carefully, Kurtis,” Rawle said, using Kurtis’ real name and looking directly into his mud brown eyes. “You think whatever you want. I’m not a Gypsy or a cop. I told you, again and again, I’ve never even cocksucking seen a Gypsy as far as I know, in my entire life! Now, I’m going to go back and get my goddamn wallet, and I’m going back in there!” With that, he pulled his wrist hard out of Kurtis’s monkey-strong grip.
“You never said you never knew one, man. You said right in the park there, that I was getting close. That I was on the right track, now you lie to my face? You told me, if we went into the restaurant, we’d be taken care of. I told you, I can put up with a lot but that I won’t sit back and starve to death, man, no way. I don’t care how long this takes or how you test me, but I won’t go hungry.”
Rawle turned to him and was calm. “Now you’re changing things I said two hours ago. Jesus! You’re confused, Kurtis. Let’s just leave it at that, okay?”
Kurtis had said a lot of weird things in the last few days, but nothing that was so glaringly false based on Rawle’s most recent recollections. He had never said what Kurtis was accusinghim of saying.
Rawle ran across the street, weaving in and out of traffic, and ducked back into the restaurant. He paid the bill and left the girl nearly an eleven dollar tip. It was all the money he had left in the world.
Back on the street, Kurtis was sitting crouched up against the wall, grinning horribly and rubbing his bald red skull. “I put up and put up and put up…” he said. “I know you met with them, up there. I know you met with them… I know who you are, otherwise you wouldn’t have called me that name. I don’t like being lied to… I’m actually getting’ pretty angry here, you know what I mean?”
“I don’t lie,” Rawle said.
“I-don’t-lie?” Kurtis mimicked, bobbing his head up and down, in frustration. “You’re pushin’ me, is what you’re doing. On purpose. You’re testing me and I don’t appreciate it anymore. Enough is enough. You better get straight with me, pretty soon, or I’m gonna lose it. I can’t be held responsible... I don’t wanna make you pay for their bullshit, because you helped me, you’re a nice guy, and I appreciate that. But I can only take so much. I’m gonna have to do something if you don’t get straight with me, just about right now. Or somebody’s going to get hurt.”
Rawle could see no wavering in Kurtis’ eyes. Someone was going to get hurt. Rawle believed that, more than he’d ever believed anything in his whole life.
“I don’t know what to tell you anymore. I know nothing about any of the stuff you’re talking about. Anything about what your talking about.,” Rawle said, lamely. It was difficult to breathe.
“I don’t think you know, man, I know you know. I don’t know why you keep trying to fuck with me? That’s not smart. One of us is going to end up in jail tonight, and the other in the hospital… That’s just my prediction.”
Kurtis looked up at Rawle as he said that. Rawle looked down at him, with a mixture of animal fear and also curiosity, at what he was really gonna do.
This was the man who beat Jack and Tee to death.
Will I die too?
“I wish you luck, man- I wish you luck,” Rawle said, stern voiced. He turned his back and tried to walk away as bravely as possible.
“-Can’t hack it, can you?” Kurtis yelled, behind him.
Rawle glanced over his shoulder, but Kurtis had not moved. He was still crouched, with his back against the dirty wall, making no move to follow.
Rawle kept walking, expecting any second to feel the bite of strong fists digging into his back and head.
But nothing happened. Before long, he turned the corner onto Granville Street, which was full of people and noise and cars, and it was like plunging into a river after being in the desert.
He immediately felt safe and free.
Rawle Powder tried to think of how he could best turn Kurtis Missions in to the police, and quickly. He couldn’t believe no one was doing anything. They even passed a police cruiser driving down Hastings Street. Nothing happened.
Kurtis’ picture was in the morning newspaper, for three murders and child rape, yet here he was walking down the street in downtown Vancouver, like everybody else.
“I’m hungry,” Kurtis said, turning around. “We gotta eat. I’ll put up with a lot, but I won’t starve.”
They ducked into a large, family pizza restaurant on the better end of Hastings, not far from the park.
They walked up a large, winding staircase to an open balcony section, with about eight tables.
As the food and drinks were being served, then eaten, then taken away, Kurtis unfolded his obnoxious personality, in full, like a giant tablecloth. He was extremely drunk now.
Everything he said was rude and spoken in a loud voice, carrying like cigar smoke far across the dining area.
He was angering and embarrassing the wait staff and ordinary eaters in earshot.
Kurtis ate pizza and started talking again about how he wasn't picky when it came to bedding women.
He started talking about the fat chick he met at the Osoyoos liquor store again.
“I told you, I’ll fuck anything you can squeeze through the door.”
He gestured over at the next table to an obese woman in a wheelchair, eating dinner with what looked to be her mother. “-Or wheel her in, if you have to,” Kurtis said, grinning devilishly and booming in a loud voice. “Wheel her on in, I don't give a fuck.”
Rawle felt his stomach drop down to his knees like a floppy bladder.
The obese woman in the wheelchair had her back to Kurtis, but she must have heard what he said. There was a sickening tension in the air, but neither the woman nor her mother said anything or appeared to react. They seemed to be pretending not to have heard.
It was excruciating.
Rawle felt acid bubbling up inside him. A murdering pedophile.
He had never felt hate so strongly, not even in childhood.
He knew he was sitting with an unhinged, evil man. A sick man. A man without any shame. The boy did not care.
But the worst of it was, no matter how much hate he felt, a small part of him still wanted to bust a gut laughing.
Rawle was not sure the waitress had heard the comment, but she had definitely had her fill of Kurtis. The food was only half done and there were still two plastic pitchers half-full of beer on the table when she brought the bill.
“Will that be everything?” She said, in a scorching voice.
“Yes. Thank you,” Rawle said.
It came to $89. Kurtis picked up the bill and examined it, carefully, then leaned across the table. His breath smelled like booze.
“You see that guy up there on the balcony? He’s one of us. We can walk out of here, casually this time, I’m sure of it. I’ve never been more sure of anything in my Jesus life. He’s going to pay the bill for us, dude. Don’t worry about it.”
Rawle looked up at the balcony. It was just some guy with long hair.
“Okay,” Rawle said. “But, we should duck into the bathroom by the staircase, then sneak out after a minute or two.”
“No!” Kurtis insisted. “We don’t need to do that. I told you. I’m walking the fuck out of here, like a normal man. I’m telling you, that guy has the bill covered. That’s why we’re here. Walk out with me. C’mon!” He got up calmly and nonchalantly began to walk down the large winding staircase in the middle of the restaurant. He reached the bottom, and continued out through the crowded main dining room. Nobody stopped him.
Rawle was up from the table, following, but at the last minute, he saw the waitress coming around a corner. He ducked into the washroom.
He knew he had to separate himself from Kurtis, at some point, or it was going to turn ugly. He felt in his bones. Kurtis was about to go down, hard, one way or another, very soon. Eventually someone would recognize him. He was beginning to think it was probably best if the police took him down.
After five minutes, Rawle left the bathroom. He saw that the coast was clear and started to walk down the winding staircase. As he rounded the curve in the middle, he saw the waitress right there, halfway up the stairs.
“Where are you going?” she said. She looked really, really pissed.
Rawle sighed and shrugged his shoulders.
“I assume this means my friend stuck me with the bill?” Rawle said. “That asshole.”
The waitress frowned at him. “You don’t have any money?”
“No, I got money,” Rawle said. “But now I have to use Debit, but your guys Debit is down, right?” There had been a big sign up in the waiting area of the restaurant saying the Debit system was not working.
“It’s not, right now,” she said.
“I’ll have to use the bank machine, then. There’s one across the street.”
She looked him up and down, still frowning.
“Seriously, it’s not my fault you guys don’t have Debit.”
“There’s a big sign at the front door.”
“I know, but my friend said he would pay, cash. Now he’s playing a trick on me. He took off. Here, you can hold onto my wallet, it’s got my ID and everything. You hold onto it, I’ll take my bank card across the street and I’ll be right back with the money.”
She relaxed a little and agreed to the plan, taking Rawle’s worn leather wallet and stuffing it into the red kangaroo pouch of her waitress belt.
Rawle left the restaurant, extremely pissed off.
Kurtis was waiting right outside the door, around the corner of the building: “What happened?” he said as Rawle came out.
Rawle walked by without speaking and ran across the street. He swipe dhi sbank card in the door of a nearby bank machine booth and ducked inside, letting the door lock shut behind him.
Kurtis crossed the road, after him and waited anxiously outside the booth. Rawle prayed he still had a hundred dollars left in his old college savings account. He typed in 100.00 and waited. The machine amazingly agreed to his request and rumbled out five crispy twenties. Flip-flip-flip. He snatched up the receipt. It said “Balance not available.”
“Thak you, God.”
He exited the bank machine booth and Kurtis demanded, again, to know “what happened in the restaurant?”
Rawle pushed past him. “I’m going back in there, to pay the bill. They made me leave my wallet and my driver’s license. I’m going to get them back.”
Kurtis looked shocked.
He grabbed Rawle by the arm hard and yanked him back until he was facing him. Kurtis was kind of smiling, but also looking deadly serious. His insane man strength was incredible. Rawle could feel it, like a magnetic force. Kurtis was like an orangutan. Thin, but almost supernaturally strong.
“Do not go back in there,” he said, in a slow voice. “Do not worry about it. A Gypsy was in there, in the restaurant. On our side. I seen him. He has our bill covered. It doesn’t make sense, actually, that they would hold your wallet and make you pay the bill, again. Why are you making up a lie? What’s your real reason for wanting to go back inside the restaurant? Is something going to happen out here? I don’t like being fucked with,” Kurtis said, deadly serious. “You don’t need to go back in there.”
“Yeah, I do,” Rawle said.
“No, you don’t. You didn’t leave your wallet in there, there’s no reason for you to go back in there.”
Rawle sighed, loudly at him. “I told you, for the last time. They are holding my wallet, and my ID until I go back and give them this money. I’m going back in there. Now let go.”
Kurtis didn’t let go.
Rawle briefly considered letting his wallet and ID go the way of his family and career. What would be the difference? It’s not like he needed a driver’s license anymore. But the truth was, he was just pissed off and feeling rebellious.
This shit with Kurtis had gone on long enough. He had to make a stand, on some principle, at some point. He had to stand up to Kurtis, over something, anything. It might as well be over reality itself.
“Listen to me, carefully, Kurtis,” Rawle said, using Kurtis’ real name and looking directly into his mud brown eyes. “You think whatever you want. I’m not a Gypsy or a cop. I told you, again and again, I’ve never even cocksucking seen a Gypsy as far as I know, in my entire life! Now, I’m going to go back and get my goddamn wallet, and I’m going back in there!” With that, he pulled his wrist hard out of Kurtis’s monkey-strong grip.
“You never said you never knew one, man. You said right in the park there, that I was getting close. That I was on the right track, now you lie to my face? You told me, if we went into the restaurant, we’d be taken care of. I told you, I can put up with a lot but that I won’t sit back and starve to death, man, no way. I don’t care how long this takes or how you test me, but I won’t go hungry.”
Rawle turned to him and was calm. “Now you’re changing things I said two hours ago. Jesus! You’re confused, Kurtis. Let’s just leave it at that, okay?”
Kurtis had said a lot of weird things in the last few days, but nothing that was so glaringly false based on Rawle’s most recent recollections. He had never said what Kurtis was accusinghim of saying.
Rawle ran across the street, weaving in and out of traffic, and ducked back into the restaurant. He paid the bill and left the girl nearly an eleven dollar tip. It was all the money he had left in the world.
Back on the street, Kurtis was sitting crouched up against the wall, grinning horribly and rubbing his bald red skull. “I put up and put up and put up…” he said. “I know you met with them, up there. I know you met with them… I know who you are, otherwise you wouldn’t have called me that name. I don’t like being lied to… I’m actually getting’ pretty angry here, you know what I mean?”
“I don’t lie,” Rawle said.
“I-don’t-lie?” Kurtis mimicked, bobbing his head up and down, in frustration. “You’re pushin’ me, is what you’re doing. On purpose. You’re testing me and I don’t appreciate it anymore. Enough is enough. You better get straight with me, pretty soon, or I’m gonna lose it. I can’t be held responsible... I don’t wanna make you pay for their bullshit, because you helped me, you’re a nice guy, and I appreciate that. But I can only take so much. I’m gonna have to do something if you don’t get straight with me, just about right now. Or somebody’s going to get hurt.”
Rawle could see no wavering in Kurtis’ eyes. Someone was going to get hurt. Rawle believed that, more than he’d ever believed anything in his whole life.
“I don’t know what to tell you anymore. I know nothing about any of the stuff you’re talking about. Anything about what your talking about.,” Rawle said, lamely. It was difficult to breathe.
“I don’t think you know, man, I know you know. I don’t know why you keep trying to fuck with me? That’s not smart. One of us is going to end up in jail tonight, and the other in the hospital… That’s just my prediction.”
Kurtis looked up at Rawle as he said that. Rawle looked down at him, with a mixture of animal fear and also curiosity, at what he was really gonna do.
This was the man who beat Jack and Tee to death.
Will I die too?
“I wish you luck, man- I wish you luck,” Rawle said, stern voiced. He turned his back and tried to walk away as bravely as possible.
“-Can’t hack it, can you?” Kurtis yelled, behind him.
Rawle glanced over his shoulder, but Kurtis had not moved. He was still crouched, with his back against the dirty wall, making no move to follow.
Rawle kept walking, expecting any second to feel the bite of strong fists digging into his back and head.
But nothing happened. Before long, he turned the corner onto Granville Street, which was full of people and noise and cars, and it was like plunging into a river after being in the desert.
He immediately felt safe and free.
Chapter 147
He walked a few blocks, with his heart racing. He checked out the neon lights and the scattered street goings-on of Granville Street, the drug dealers and high school girls flirting, and the gangs of boys trying to get with them.
Nothing jumped out or attacked Rawle, and he felt a great sense of amazement at that. To be immersed in such close quarters with so many people, and yet no one wanted to kill him. It was a nice feeling.
He ducked up an alleyway to check out the rooftop access on one of the only single-story buildings on the street. He needed a place to hide for the night. To sleep in safety. A rooftop.
There was a blue dumpster at the back of the building. He climbed up with a clang sound, and the pebble roof of Willy’s XXX Book and Video came into view. It was perfect.
He grasped the tin edging of the rooftop and pulled himself up.
The roof was tar and pebble. He found a spot near the front of the building and laid out his metallic thermal blanket, then got down on his knees and looked over onto Granville Street below.
He wondered if Kurtis would come lurching along, like a killer in a horror movie.
Except Kurtis was the real deal.
Rawle realized that now.
Kurtis was mentally ill, past the point of no return.
He was a sick, incurable, creature.
He had molested a little girl, but he was too fucked-up to even admit it to himself. Kurtis had molested a girl and then created an elabourate shell, a delusion that the Gypsies Motorcycle Gang had done it and framed him for the crime to insure he would never turn informer.
Rawle, for the first time, wanted to kill Kurtis Missions.
He desired it.
Kurtis deserved to be murdered, one animal to another. To be put down, and to have his murder disappear into the scores of other violent nights in the Downtown Eastside. To become just another angry ghost down here, in the shitty buildings.
Rawle was not afraid to end this man’s life.
And Kurtis had killed Jack and Tee, not because he wanted revenge for the Darroll Missions story, but because he’s nuts. Because in his deluded mind, he thought Jack and Tee were hitmen, coming to kill him.
Rawle’s friends had died for nothing, for bullshit reasons.
Rawle wanted to take back what Kurtis had stolen.
He wanted to break Kurtis’ head open and steal his spirit. And free the spirits of the people he’d murdered and violated.
That was justice.
There was garbage scattered all around on the rooftop, but nothing Rawle saw that he could use as a weapon.
He looked down the alleyway. There was a painter’s scaffolding set up against one of the buildings, and below it a plank of wood, held up by two concrete cinder blocks. He stepped down onto the trash bin and ran to the scaffold. He hoisted one of the heavy gray cinder blocks up onto his hip and climbed with it back onto the rooftop.
He took it over to the front edge, resting the weight on his hip.
He was looking down at the neon-lit street. If Kurtis comes, I will defend myself. I will drop this fucking boulder…
Then suddenly, there he was.
It was as if God wanted to test Rawle on his thought.
The square face and bald skull of Kurtis Missions appeared in the crowd, walking strong on his tall, teenager’s body.
Rawle blinked, to make sure it was really him.
It was.
He looked less cocky, slightly alone-looking, wary of his surroundings. He moved different than everyone else on the street. Everyone else was walking down a city sidewalk. Kurtis Missions was walking a stretch of earth, a wilderness. He moved like a panther.
Rawle crouched at the edge.
Kurtis was hugging tightly to the stone building and front window, inching along.
Watching out for me. Hunting me.
Rawle felt a prickling, peeling feeling in his chest. His mind cleared of thoughts. He felt like an animal, crouching in the silent jungle.
He was alone in the world.
He raised the cinder block, high overhead. It felt as light as a basketball. Kurtis passed right underneath him, 15 feet below. His bald head had a sickly yellow tint from the light above Willy’s XXX Book and Video.
In one fluid motion, Rawle hurled the cinder block straight down at Kurtis’ forehead. He felt like a god, or an ogre, hurling a boulder at his tormentors.
The concrete block shot down like a meteorite, striking Kurtis directly on the right-side top of his head.
Wunk!
Rawle felt an explosion of excitement drill up into in his belly, the moment the block connected.
Oh!
Kurtis collapsed onto the back of his knees and his head lolled forward, then backward on a rubbery neck.
Holy shit…Oh my God!
The cinder block rolled, end over end, out into the middle of the street. A couple of cars screeched to a stop, and one hit the block with a bang sound and ran over it.
Kurtis collapsed onto his back, splashing into a slick of blood or rain water.
People on the street became instantly hushed. They froze in place and began to say “Oh God” to eachother, over and over.
Some people kept right on walking, turning back and stopping and holding their hands over their mouths, unsure of what to do.
A few women looked up and buried their heads in their fingers and screamed. They looked right at Rawle and pointed at him.
Others turned away from the disgusting sight of Kurtis’ exposed brain. His brain was glinting wet and red in the harsh light of traffic and store windows. It looked like a slippery, light red jellyfish.
Some guy finally rushed over to the body, but he did not know what to do with it. There was so much blood everywhere. Kurtis’ body had begun to shudder. The street was virtually silent. The person tried to pick up Kurtis’ head and look him in the eyes.
The street seemed to have fallen deathly quiet. Rawle crouched on the rooftop, watching. His mind was blank, and he felt calm all over.
The people down below were all babbling, crying and trembling and deciding what to do next.
Rawle felt great pleasure, there was no denying that. His muscles, every muscle, all over his body, was rigid with pleasure, and adrenaline, shooting through his tissues and sinews, like heroin.
He felt a warm, drunken, adrenaline feeling in his heart, like he had a buzz from the neck down, but his mind was crystal clear.
Get away.
He stood up, slowly and hopped off the back side of the porn store roof, down onto the dumpster, then the pavement.
As soon as his feet hit the pavement, he ran balls-out down the alleyway.
No one tried to stop him.
Nothing jumped out or attacked Rawle, and he felt a great sense of amazement at that. To be immersed in such close quarters with so many people, and yet no one wanted to kill him. It was a nice feeling.
He ducked up an alleyway to check out the rooftop access on one of the only single-story buildings on the street. He needed a place to hide for the night. To sleep in safety. A rooftop.
There was a blue dumpster at the back of the building. He climbed up with a clang sound, and the pebble roof of Willy’s XXX Book and Video came into view. It was perfect.
He grasped the tin edging of the rooftop and pulled himself up.
The roof was tar and pebble. He found a spot near the front of the building and laid out his metallic thermal blanket, then got down on his knees and looked over onto Granville Street below.
He wondered if Kurtis would come lurching along, like a killer in a horror movie.
Except Kurtis was the real deal.
Rawle realized that now.
Kurtis was mentally ill, past the point of no return.
He was a sick, incurable, creature.
He had molested a little girl, but he was too fucked-up to even admit it to himself. Kurtis had molested a girl and then created an elabourate shell, a delusion that the Gypsies Motorcycle Gang had done it and framed him for the crime to insure he would never turn informer.
Rawle, for the first time, wanted to kill Kurtis Missions.
He desired it.
Kurtis deserved to be murdered, one animal to another. To be put down, and to have his murder disappear into the scores of other violent nights in the Downtown Eastside. To become just another angry ghost down here, in the shitty buildings.
Rawle was not afraid to end this man’s life.
And Kurtis had killed Jack and Tee, not because he wanted revenge for the Darroll Missions story, but because he’s nuts. Because in his deluded mind, he thought Jack and Tee were hitmen, coming to kill him.
Rawle’s friends had died for nothing, for bullshit reasons.
Rawle wanted to take back what Kurtis had stolen.
He wanted to break Kurtis’ head open and steal his spirit. And free the spirits of the people he’d murdered and violated.
That was justice.
There was garbage scattered all around on the rooftop, but nothing Rawle saw that he could use as a weapon.
He looked down the alleyway. There was a painter’s scaffolding set up against one of the buildings, and below it a plank of wood, held up by two concrete cinder blocks. He stepped down onto the trash bin and ran to the scaffold. He hoisted one of the heavy gray cinder blocks up onto his hip and climbed with it back onto the rooftop.
He took it over to the front edge, resting the weight on his hip.
He was looking down at the neon-lit street. If Kurtis comes, I will defend myself. I will drop this fucking boulder…
Then suddenly, there he was.
It was as if God wanted to test Rawle on his thought.
The square face and bald skull of Kurtis Missions appeared in the crowd, walking strong on his tall, teenager’s body.
Rawle blinked, to make sure it was really him.
It was.
He looked less cocky, slightly alone-looking, wary of his surroundings. He moved different than everyone else on the street. Everyone else was walking down a city sidewalk. Kurtis Missions was walking a stretch of earth, a wilderness. He moved like a panther.
Rawle crouched at the edge.
Kurtis was hugging tightly to the stone building and front window, inching along.
Watching out for me. Hunting me.
Rawle felt a prickling, peeling feeling in his chest. His mind cleared of thoughts. He felt like an animal, crouching in the silent jungle.
He was alone in the world.
He raised the cinder block, high overhead. It felt as light as a basketball. Kurtis passed right underneath him, 15 feet below. His bald head had a sickly yellow tint from the light above Willy’s XXX Book and Video.
In one fluid motion, Rawle hurled the cinder block straight down at Kurtis’ forehead. He felt like a god, or an ogre, hurling a boulder at his tormentors.
The concrete block shot down like a meteorite, striking Kurtis directly on the right-side top of his head.
Wunk!
Rawle felt an explosion of excitement drill up into in his belly, the moment the block connected.
Oh!
Kurtis collapsed onto the back of his knees and his head lolled forward, then backward on a rubbery neck.
Holy shit…Oh my God!
The cinder block rolled, end over end, out into the middle of the street. A couple of cars screeched to a stop, and one hit the block with a bang sound and ran over it.
Kurtis collapsed onto his back, splashing into a slick of blood or rain water.
People on the street became instantly hushed. They froze in place and began to say “Oh God” to eachother, over and over.
Some people kept right on walking, turning back and stopping and holding their hands over their mouths, unsure of what to do.
A few women looked up and buried their heads in their fingers and screamed. They looked right at Rawle and pointed at him.
Others turned away from the disgusting sight of Kurtis’ exposed brain. His brain was glinting wet and red in the harsh light of traffic and store windows. It looked like a slippery, light red jellyfish.
Some guy finally rushed over to the body, but he did not know what to do with it. There was so much blood everywhere. Kurtis’ body had begun to shudder. The street was virtually silent. The person tried to pick up Kurtis’ head and look him in the eyes.
The street seemed to have fallen deathly quiet. Rawle crouched on the rooftop, watching. His mind was blank, and he felt calm all over.
The people down below were all babbling, crying and trembling and deciding what to do next.
Rawle felt great pleasure, there was no denying that. His muscles, every muscle, all over his body, was rigid with pleasure, and adrenaline, shooting through his tissues and sinews, like heroin.
He felt a warm, drunken, adrenaline feeling in his heart, like he had a buzz from the neck down, but his mind was crystal clear.
Get away.
He stood up, slowly and hopped off the back side of the porn store roof, down onto the dumpster, then the pavement.
As soon as his feet hit the pavement, he ran balls-out down the alleyway.
No one tried to stop him.
Chapter 148
The next morning, he woke on another rooftop, in another alleyway, feeling achey all over his body.
He walked to the edge and looked down the alley to see anyone was around, then climbed down.
He was near Gastown. He walked carefully to the nearest street and felt safe as soon as he mingled in with the morning pedestrians.
He walked a few blocks, and then stopped and had coffee at the Starbucks across from the Gastown steam clock, then slowly walked up to Hastings and across to Granville Street.
He walked up a little bit at a time, looking for any sign of the murder he’d committed. He expected to see police lights and news vans…. There was nothing.
There was nothing.
When he reached the exact spot of pavement in front of Willy’s where Kurtis had been struck by the cinder block, there was police tape.
Rawle was relieved. For a moment, he questioned his own sanity. The tape was blocking off a small square of beige sidewalk. A Vancouver Police constable was chatting with a worker in one of the 99 cent pizza slice shop windows.
A faint blood stain was still there, surrounded by pink spraypaint markings on the concrete of the sidewalk.
Rawle passed by, just like everybody else.
Now he could see a few news trucks, and a Vancouver Sun car parked along the street, but there were no reporters around, that he could see.
He turned left on Robson. After a few minutes walking, he ran right into Olivier, from Jasper, walking down the street with some other longhaired Montreal kids.
“It’s Pow-der!” Olivier said, in his stilted English.
“How are you, man?”
Olivier introduced Rawle to his friends and they all went together to Crosstown Traffic, a café on the marijuana side of Hastings, just before the Main Street intersection. It was one of three or four cafés in downtown Vancouver where marijuana smoking was encouraged, although pot is still illegal inVancouver.
They found a dark table at the back and smoked a few joints over potent organic coffee.
Olivier said he had just arrived in the city the night before.
Him and his friends were heading to Salt Spring Island, an island just off Vancouver Island. He was going to something called a ‘Rainbow Gathering,’ where all kinds of hippies came together from all over the country and camped for a few months together on Crown land, and partied.
“Where did you sleep, last night?” Olivier said.
“On a rooftop,” Rawle said. “Right downtown.”
“Oh. We slept on Wreck Beach.”
“Where?”
“It’s a nude beach, at UBC. We all got caught and got ticketed, so early in the morning. Not very smart. I’m so tired now.”
Rawle laughed. “I’m telling you, man, rooftops is where it’s at.”
“So, you want to come with us, to the Island?”
“No thanks, man. I need to make some money.”
“Didn’t you make any money in Jasp-er?”
“No. It’s all gone. Didn’t take me long to spend that.”
“There’s a temp agency on Commercial Street, where you work for the day and they print you out a check the same day,” one of Olivier’s friends said. “You just hop the Skytrain, two stops. You can ride the Skytrain without a ticket, but there’s a slim chance you might get busted. The guys come around and check tickets like, one in ten times. But what are they gonna do, arrest you?”
Rawle touched a napkin to his left eye, which was watering for some reason. “I said I wanted to make some money, not work for it.”
Everybody chuckled.
He walked to the edge and looked down the alley to see anyone was around, then climbed down.
He was near Gastown. He walked carefully to the nearest street and felt safe as soon as he mingled in with the morning pedestrians.
He walked a few blocks, and then stopped and had coffee at the Starbucks across from the Gastown steam clock, then slowly walked up to Hastings and across to Granville Street.
He walked up a little bit at a time, looking for any sign of the murder he’d committed. He expected to see police lights and news vans…. There was nothing.
There was nothing.
When he reached the exact spot of pavement in front of Willy’s where Kurtis had been struck by the cinder block, there was police tape.
Rawle was relieved. For a moment, he questioned his own sanity. The tape was blocking off a small square of beige sidewalk. A Vancouver Police constable was chatting with a worker in one of the 99 cent pizza slice shop windows.
A faint blood stain was still there, surrounded by pink spraypaint markings on the concrete of the sidewalk.
Rawle passed by, just like everybody else.
Now he could see a few news trucks, and a Vancouver Sun car parked along the street, but there were no reporters around, that he could see.
He turned left on Robson. After a few minutes walking, he ran right into Olivier, from Jasper, walking down the street with some other longhaired Montreal kids.
“It’s Pow-der!” Olivier said, in his stilted English.
“How are you, man?”
Olivier introduced Rawle to his friends and they all went together to Crosstown Traffic, a café on the marijuana side of Hastings, just before the Main Street intersection. It was one of three or four cafés in downtown Vancouver where marijuana smoking was encouraged, although pot is still illegal inVancouver.
They found a dark table at the back and smoked a few joints over potent organic coffee.
Olivier said he had just arrived in the city the night before.
Him and his friends were heading to Salt Spring Island, an island just off Vancouver Island. He was going to something called a ‘Rainbow Gathering,’ where all kinds of hippies came together from all over the country and camped for a few months together on Crown land, and partied.
“Where did you sleep, last night?” Olivier said.
“On a rooftop,” Rawle said. “Right downtown.”
“Oh. We slept on Wreck Beach.”
“Where?”
“It’s a nude beach, at UBC. We all got caught and got ticketed, so early in the morning. Not very smart. I’m so tired now.”
Rawle laughed. “I’m telling you, man, rooftops is where it’s at.”
“So, you want to come with us, to the Island?”
“No thanks, man. I need to make some money.”
“Didn’t you make any money in Jasp-er?”
“No. It’s all gone. Didn’t take me long to spend that.”
“There’s a temp agency on Commercial Street, where you work for the day and they print you out a check the same day,” one of Olivier’s friends said. “You just hop the Skytrain, two stops. You can ride the Skytrain without a ticket, but there’s a slim chance you might get busted. The guys come around and check tickets like, one in ten times. But what are they gonna do, arrest you?”
Rawle touched a napkin to his left eye, which was watering for some reason. “I said I wanted to make some money, not work for it.”
Everybody chuckled.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)