by Ron Corbett
There was what looked like a pulpit set up in front of twenty wooden chairs, fanned out like the pews of a church. There was a gold cross behind the pulpit and several smaller crosses scattered around the room. Old photos were on the walls, showing gypsy caravans in the foothills of some distant mountain range — Poland perhaps — and by the shores of an ocean that might have been the Atlantic, on either coast. A couple of the photos looked like they could have been taken in bush camps somewhere in the Springfield Valley. On the wall behind the pulpit was a black flag with a red rose and a five-turret castle. The oddest thing about the room, though, were the blood stains.
The High River cops found them everywhere. On the cedar-planked walls. The pulpit. Several of the gold crosses. It was not until the next week, though, when the preliminary forensics report came back, that the true horror of the room became known. According to the report, the bloodstains came from seventeen different people. Given the spray patterns, it was certain all seventeen had been killed or suffered a catastrophic injury in that room.
Some of the stains were more than a century old.
“Everyone had a shit fit when the forensics came back,” said George Yakabuski, forcing himself to take another sip of tea. “I worked that case and pretty much nothing but that case for the rest of the year. Land registry records had the brothel being owned by a numbered company here in Springfield. Most of the investigation ended up over on the North Shore.”
“What did you learn?”
“I learned that they’re real, Frank, that’s what I learned. The North Shore Travellers. The Ghost Gypsies. The Rose and Castle Gang. Whatever you want to call them. They came over here centuries ago, and they’re still here. Most of the gang is spread out along the old fur trading routes. There’s a weird religious part to all of it too. The Travellers consider themselves guardians of the nomadic life, but they’re criminals all the same. They make their money smuggling, running a few brothels way up north, and collecting money from families that have been giving them money for centuries.”
“Who’s their leader?”
“Man by the name of Gabriel. He owned that brothel in High River. The numbered company traced right back to him.”
“Gabriel? Like the angel?”
“You’d think that, but no. His name is Gabriel Dumont. That’s the same name as Louis Riel’s military commander during the North-West Rebellion, the buffalo hunter who took down ten cops at the Battle of Fish Creek. People who have seen him say he looks like the first Dumont. I have to take their word for it. I never saw him.”
“You didn’t interview him?”
“Interview him? Fuck, I couldn’t even find him. He had a lawyer from Montreal who answered all our questions about the building. Without any known victims, we sort of had our hands tied.”
“What beef do you think the Travellers could have had with Augustus?”
“Could be anything, Frank. The Shiners and the Travellers have been here forever. Lots of shared history. Remember it was the Shiners who evicted everyone on the North Shore. That’s where most of the Travellers would have been living.”
He took another sip of his tea, looked at the teapot as though he wanted to pitch it through the kitchen window, then he looked at his son and said, “This is a strange case you have, Frank. Augustus Morrissey being dead is a good thing. Anyone would tell you that. And the Travellers, they don’t cause a lot of visible trouble. Why don’t you hold your cards for a day or two and see how this one plays out.”
“You don’t think it will escalate?”
“It might not.”
“A one-time settling of accounts between the Travellers and Augustus because of some old beef no one can remember? He’s not a working Shiner, which makes a big difference to those guys, so maybe Sean doesn’t have to start a war. Is that how you see it?”
“It’s real easy to see it that way, Frank. How was Sean when you saw him?”
“I couldn’t get a read on him.”
“That sounds about right. You’ll know Sean Morrissey is pissed when something blows up.”
“He asked about the eyes, though. He’s thinking the same thing we are.”
“So let him think. You look tired, Frank. Why don’t you call it a day?”
“I need a name, Dad. Who should I talk to on the North Shore?”
“What are you going to do with a name at this time of the night? Go home and get some sleep, Frank.”
Chapter Eleven
Yakabuski couldn’t sleep.
He sat on his living room couch and stared out at the Springfield River. His apartment was in the Queen Elizabeth Tower, one of the oldest high-rises in Springfield. Most of the tenants in the Queen Elizabeth were seniors, the lobby often filled with women using walkers and men wearing pyjamas. Most people found it an odd place for Yakabuski to live, but he loved the view from his living room.
He knew much would be made the next day about Augustus hanging on that fence until mid-morning and no one on the North Shore calling it in. He had listened to a call-in show on the way home, and people were already talking about it: What was wrong with people over there? Can you imagine? I don’t know why we spent taxpayers’ dollars building those apartment buildings. Have you seen it over there?
Funny thing about the North Shore was it didn’t get as much police activity as you might suspect, nothing like Albert Street, or Cork’s Town, or some parts of the French Quarter, which had a lot of abandoned buildings these days and so had a lot of crack houses and pop-up meth labs and squatters so scary you felt sorry for the cockroaches. Maybe it had something to do with the Travellers being there. More likely it had more to do with the North Shore being home mostly to people with lousy jobs and no luck to speak of.
It didn’t surprise Yakabuski that no one had called 911. If you weren’t from here, you could misunderstand what it could do to you, living someplace so indifferent to your welfare it could kill you any day of the year. Not because of anything out of the ordinary either. Just because it was February. Or just because a windstorm came up suddenly when you were fishing in the middle of a lake. Or just because a spring flood came in and you were caught standing in the wrong spot.
For most people, living on the Northern Divide meant you kept your head down and didn’t go looking for trouble, knowing there was enough coming down the road you didn’t need to bring in the extra work. You kept your own counsel. Made your own decisions. There was a lot to be said for an attitude like that. Until an entire community could walk by a dead man hanging from the fence in a children’s sports field and do nothing about it.
Yakabuski knew that wasn’t being cowardly. That wasn’t being mean-spirited. That was just being beat up for so long you’d lost sight of the right reference points.
He kept staring at the river, thinking of the murder of Augustus Morrissey, surprised to see the green-and-red navigation lights of a pleasure craft far out in the main channel. The middle of December and there was a boat on the river. He watched the lights go under the North Shore Bridge and disappear. He kept sitting on his couch, scanning the river for more lights, but no other boat appeared. “So there’s only one lunatic in the city tonight,” he muttered. That didn’t seem at all right to him, but eventually he got tired of waiting and went to bed.
. . .
The sun appeared at 6:45 a.m. the next day, and by then Yakabuski was already in his kitchen, feeling more alert than he had the right to feel after only four hours of sleep. He had showered and shaved and was staring at liquid bubbling in the glass bead of a percolator. He waited until the liquid was a dark peat colour and turned off the gas. Took one of the two cups stored in the cupboard beside the stove and poured himself a coffee. Added milk and sugar. Took a sip. Closed his eyes, and, as he did many days, wondered if this might be the highlight.
Any visitor to Yakabuski’s apartment could have easily guessed he was ex-m
ilitary. Excluding the furnishings, everything in his apartment looked like it could fit into a kit bag. It was little more than books and toiletries, two drawers of T-shirts and underwear, a closet with one suit, half-a-dozen shirts, and some winter gear. The furnishings consisted of a double bed with one nightstand holding one metal alarm clock and one lamp, a kitchen table and two chairs, his living room couch and a coffee table. His television was a Sony Trinitron with an antenna and converter box that brought in three channels. He had Wi-Fi and a laptop, but only used them for work. The camp percolator he used to make coffee every morning he had owned since he was a teenager.
He finished his coffee and checked his email before leaving the apartment. He opened two that had come in overnight. One was from his sister, asking him to call her. Another was from Newton, the Ident inspector, asking Yakabuski to see him as soon as he got to work.
. . .
He phoned his sister from his Jeep. It was early in the day and he wasn’t expecting her to answer, but she picked up on the first ring.
“Frankie. There you are. I’ve been trying to reach you. Didn’t you see I called you a bunch of times yesterday?”
“Sorry, Trish, it was a busy day. But I’m phoning you as I’m driving into work. That should count for something.”
“It does. So tell me everything you know about what happened on the North Shore yesterday.”
“Trish, you know I can’t do that.”
“Are you kidding me? Augustus Morrissey is murdered and you can’t tell your kid sister anything? You know Tyler was up most of the night taking phone calls. He won’t tell me anything either.”
Trish was Yakabuski’s only sibling. Their mother had died when Trish was a baby, and they were about as close as siblings could be, although right then Yakabuski was wishing he had followed his first instinct to keep ducking her calls. He had known what she was phoning about, and if he hadn’t been curious to know what her husband had been doing yesterday, he probably would have kept ducking. In one of those quirks of fate God comes up with sometimes to keep families interesting, Yakabuski’s sister had married Tyler Lawson, one of Springfield’s top criminal defence lawyers. His biggest client was Sean Morrissey.
Like the adults they wanted to be, Yakabuski and Lawson had agreed to live with this strange set of facts, if not as friends, at least as respected adversaries, the way Crown attorneys and defence lawyers in Springfield had agreed to get bombed every Friday afternoon at Kelsey’s Roadhouse.
“I think Tyler would be a better source for you, Trish. Who was he taking phone calls from, by the way?”
“Frankie! You know my husband can’t talk. Attorney–client privilege and all that boring stuff. But you’re free to talk! So is it true? Did the old bastard have his eyes cut out?”
“Trish, come on . . .”
“Just say yes. It was practically in the newspaper. They just didn’t come right out and say it. So you wouldn’t be telling me all that much, and you know you’re going to tell me something eventually — you know you will — so if you’re in such a big hurry, you should just tell me now.”
And then she broke into laughter. The over-the-top sales pitch had become too much even for Patricia Lawson, a former real estate agent so successful she had brokered out the business years ago. Now she collected commission from people she didn’t even know, as she drunkenly, and happily, told her brother during Christmas dinner last year. And she was right, as she usually was. She would get something from Yakabuski if he didn’t end the conversation soon. He had never met a person quite as relentless as his sister.
“I still think your husband is the best one to help you, Trish.”
“Christ, Frankie, why don’t you think about your kid sister for once? What is even the point in being Frank Yakabuski’s kid sister if I can’t get better information than the freakin’ newspaper? You’re embarrassing me. Do you know how many times I’m going to be asked about this today?”
“Then try acting coy, Trish.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean smile and act as if you know something but don’t actually speak.”
“Are you serious? That’s what you’re giving me? Freakin’ coy?”
“I’m at the detachment, Trish. Got to let you go.”
. . .
Yakabuski used his access card to open the parking lot gates. He was not even out of his Jeep when a man started walking toward him. He was standing behind the vehicle when Yakabuski closed the driver’s door.
“Detective Yakabuski?”
“Yes.”
“It’s a real honour to meet you, sir.”
The man extended his hand. Yakabuski gave the hand a quick shake, and the man started walking with him.
“My name is Mike Gardner. I work in Ident, with Inspector Newton. He sent me down to get you when you arrived.”
“He already sent me an email.”
“I know. The inspector wanted to make sure you came and saw him as soon as you arrived.”
“How long have you been waiting?”
“Little over an hour.”
Which meant it would have been dark when Gardner started waiting. Yakabuski flashed the young cop a quizzical look. What in the world had Newton found?
Chapter Twelve
The Forensic Identification Department was in the basement of the main detachment in Centretown. It looked like an Apple store, if Apple ever built a store in a windowless basement. A large white room with white desks and white chairs, steel accents coming from the microscopes and the lasers and the display terminals. Yakabuski was surprised to see the chief of the Springfield Regional Police Force sitting in a chair, drinking coffee from a travel mug and looking impatient.
“This must be important,” said Yakabuski.
“Not sure yet what it is,” said Bernard O’Toole. “I was cc’d on the email. You should reply to those, you know, Yak.”
“He asked me to come. Here I am.”
Yakabuski took off his coat and placed it on a desk next to O’Toole’s winter parka, which looked brand new. The chief was nearly the same size as his senior detective, and the parka took up the entire surface of the desk.
O’Toole saw him looking at the parka and said, “I keep checking the calendar and it keeps telling me it’s winter. So I keep bringing the coat. Fuck, I bought it more’n a month ago.”
“Can’t be too prepared, I suppose.”
“Yeah, well, winter is going to come in an afternoon, and you’re going to look like an idiot in that leather coat of yours.”
The two men raised their travel mugs and took a sip of coffee. It seemed almost a toast.
Just then, Inspector Fraser Newton came into the room. Unlike the senior detective and the chief of the force, Newton was a small man, with thick glasses and hair that had been receding since birth. He was dressed in a white lab coat and carrying an armful of files.
“Ahh, you’re both here, good.” He put the files on a table, waved at them to join him. “Anyone care for a cup of coffee?”
O’Toole and Yakabuski held up their travel mugs.
“Very good, then, we’ll get right to it. It’s been a late night down here. Let’s start with cause of death for Mr. Morrissey — internal bleeding due to a laceration of the heart. It would have been a bit of a race to claim that title. Every internal organ was perforated. We have at least five potentially fatal stab wounds. Swelling on his brain would have killed him within a day or two. Depends how long the Morrissey family would have wanted to leave Augustus hooked up to life support. He took a vicious beating.”
Newton opened one of the file folders and spread out some 8 x 10 photos of the body. With a flawlessly sharpened 2B pencil, he pointed out some of the wounds. There were two head-on mug shots with the recesses of Morrissey’s eye sockets circled. There were question marks next to the circles.
&nb
sp; “Time of death was late Sunday night, probably around 11 p.m.,” he continued. “He wasn’t killed at Filion’s Field, as I told Detective Yakabuski yesterday. Body would have been transported there between 3 a.m. and 4 a.m. Monday morning, I would estimate. You’re not going to move a body that size in any vehicle smaller than a good-sized sedan. I would suspect a truck or an SUV. There was a bit of pooling beneath the body, so it probably wasn’t transported that far. It’s quite possible the vehicle came from one of the high-rises.”
“So we’ll start looking for trucks or shitty old SUVs registered on the North Shore,” said O’Toole. “My money is on a pickup.”
“We can do better than that,” said Newton. “There were tire impressions on the other side of the fence from where Augustus was hung. Detective Yakabuski is probably correct that a vehicle with a winch was used to get him up on that fence. Preliminary analysis of the treads would indicate it’s a Bridgestone Dueler H/L 400 tire. That’s a common tire for light SUVs and some pickups. Dakotas use that tire as stock.”
“That’s good work, Newt. Thanks for working so late.”
“You’re welcome. Out of curiosity, do you think everyone on the North Shore registers their vehicles?”
O’Toole laughed. His travel mug was nearly empty, and he was coming to life.
“Fuck, you’re funny, Newt. You give people good news, then you try to take it right back from them.”
“Exactly. How do you think I’ve survived down here for thirty-five years? ‘The answer to your question is maybe yes, maybe no. You’ll need to check back with me later.’”
They all laughed, and O’Toole reached for his parka. He stood up and started walking toward the door, stopped after a few steps, and looked back, wondering why Yakabuski wasn’t following. His senior detective was still staring at the photo of Augustus with the circles around what should have been his eyes. Yakabuski looked up and said, “What else did you find, Newt?”
