by Ron Corbett
The Ident inspector looked at him in surprise. “Cause of death. Time of death. Model, make, and name for the tire the killer probably had on his truck. You want more than that?”
“I don’t want more, Newt. I know there is more.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because you’ve got a big fat file there you haven’t opened yet. And as interesting as all this is, it doesn’t explain why you had someone stand in a parking lot for more than an hour just to make sure I came and saw you right away.”
Newton looked annoyed. Then he started to laugh. “I had this big climax all worked out. I was going to wait until you were both at the door and then I was going to say, ‘Oh, there’s one last thing.’ Like Colombo used to do. Remember that show?”
“Newt, it’s an early start to what’s going to be a long day. What else did you find?” said O’Toole.
Smiling, the inspector opened his last file and shuffled through some photos until he found the one he was looking for. He placed it on the table and slid it across for Yakabuski to see. “We found this in Augustus’s mouth,” he said. “Would have been put there post-mortem.”
Yakabuski and O’ Toole looked at the photograph. Eventually Yakabuski said, “Is that a diamond?”
“It is indeed. Uncut, unpolished, right out of the ground I’m told, but it is indeed a diamond. Do you see this line running right down the centre of it?”
Yakabuski and O’Toole looked to where the flawlessly sharpened 2B pencil was pointing. There was what looked like a suture mark down the middle of the rock.
“That’s another lucky break for you gentleman. With almost all diamonds, you can’t tell where they’re from. The internal heat and pressure needed to form a diamond wipes away all traces of any other mineral. That’s why blood diamonds are such a problem. There’s no way of telling if they came from some slave mine in Sierra Leone, or some legitimate mine in South Africa.
“This diamond is different, though,” the inspector continued. “That line you’re looking at is actually a vein of red quartz. It’s beyond rare, I’m told, to see this in a diamond, but it happens from time to time, and only with red quartz because it’s one tough little mineral. Know where the world’s largest deposits of red quartz might be, Yak?”
“Canadian Shield.”
“That’s right. This diamond is from the De Kirk mine at Cape Diamond. It’s all in this report.” Newton took a sheaf of papers from the file and slid it across the table.
“The gemologist is Joshua Edelson, from the Anthony’s store in Centretown. He was down here most of the night. We probably owe him a dinner or something. He has physically inspected the diamond and sent photographs to the head gemologist at Anthony’s in Montreal. Both men agree the diamond is from the De Kirk mine at Cape Diamond.”
O’Toole was starting to flip through the pages of the report. Yakabuski had yet to bother, was still looking at the photograph of a grey stone with a ragged red line running down the middle of it. It wasn’t attractive. Didn’t look like it held the light of the inner earth. It was just big and odd.
“What else did you find?” he asked.
Newton didn’t bother feigning surprise this time. He sighed and said, “Last page. Bottom line.”
O’Toole flipped to the page. The caption at the bottom read Estimated Auction Value. He looked up from the paper and said, “One-point-two million dollars?”
“The conservative estimate. Could be more. Depends how good the person is that’s doing the cutting. Not sure if that one is such a lucky break for you gentlemen.”
Chapter Thirteen
The Arkansas state trooper was in his mid-forties, had mirrored sunglasses, a slight paunch over his belt, hair cut so short it resembled the hard fuzz you find sometimes on kiwis or deep-rooted turnips. He was what central casting would have sent if you requested an Arkansas state trooper. Still had the rank of patrol officer, first class, after twenty years working I-55.
He saw the campervan twenty miles south of Memphis. He watched from a vantage point atop a small mound of earth next to a service ramp to the Interstate. The spot gave the trooper a long view of northbound traffic. He ate the tuna sandwich he had brought for lunch and watched the camper as it approached. The sun refracting hard and white from a raised metallic box that had been added to the roof. Driving a perfect speed limit.
When the camper passed, he saw the Texas plates. The tinted windows. He watched it travel down the highway. Start to shake and waver in the heat waves, the sun refracting off the roof, a shimmering white light that seemed to have landed there.
He put the car in gear and drove off the mound of earth. He stayed in the right-hand lane, moving in and out of traffic, vehicles slowing to the speed limit, and was behind the camper within a minute. He ran the licence plates and quickly got a report back that told him the vehicle was properly registered and licenced to a numbered company out of Brownsville, Texas. No tickets. No moving vehicle violations.
A perfectly clean vehicle. Driving a perfect speed limit. The state trooper kept following, curious now to see what the driver might do, because everyone did something eventually. Some motorists slowed to below the speed limit. Or watched out their rear-view mirrors until they started to drive erratically, crossing lanes and kicking up gravel. Some were so unnerved they pulled over and stopped. But the driver of this campervan did nothing. Cruised along as though the cop car was not sitting ten feet off his rear bumper. The state trooper pushed a button on his console and his sirens sounded.
It was a hot day. The trooper could hear crickets and tree frogs when he opened the door of his patrol car, so many it sounded like a choir. The heat hung on the horizon like sauna clouds. He walked up to the camper on the driver’s side. Stopped when he was even with the rear bumper, and standing five feet out, shouted, “Open your window please. Then keep your hands on your steering wheel, where I can see them.”
The tinted window swooshed down, and the trooper saw the side profile of a man, ball cap on his head, hands gripping the steering wheel at ten and two. He didn’t look that big. The trooper started walking, making a wide circle so he approached the driver from the front of the camper.
“I’m going to need to see your licence and registration. Do you have any firearms in the vehicle?”
“What am I being pulled over for, Officer?”
“Keep your hands on the steering wheel. I repeat — do you have any firearms in the vehicle?”
“No.”
“None in the glove compartment? None in the cab?”
“No.”
“All right. Licence and registration, please.”
The driver pulled a wallet from his back pocket. Handed over a Texas driver’s licence and a registration card. The trooper looked at them and said, “Where are you coming from?”
“Brownsville,” said the driver. Despite the heat of the day he was wearing a white, long-sleeved shirt, buttoned to his Adam’s apple. He looks Mexican, thought the trooper.
“Where are you off to?”
“Chicago.”
“That’s a long trip. Your reason for going to Chicago?”
“Work.”
“What do you do, Mr. Michaels?” the trooper said, looking again at the driver’s licence in his hand.
“I’m a facilitator.”
“What does that mean?”
“I solve conflicts. Labour disputes. Corporate reorganizations. Those sorts of things. I was going with the flow of the traffic, Officer. Is there a reason I was pulled over, but no one else?”
“A campervan matching this description was picked up on our traffic plane going eighty-five. Just ten miles back,” the trooper lied. “I’ll need to see inside the camper. Can you step out of the vehicle, please?”
The man sat still for a minute, as though considering it. The cop unhooked the lapse on his holste
r. The driver opened his door and stepped out.
“I doubt very much if that was my camper your traffic plane saw. They would have photos, yes?”
“Yes, they would. I still need to see inside the camper.”
“Of course. You are just doing your job.” The driver walked to the sliding side door of the camper. He unlocked it with a fob on his key chain, pulled back the door, and stepped aside so the trooper could look in.
It was dark. The tinted side windows let in little light, and the camper was cut off from the cab by a partition of some sort, something the trooper did not think came standard on a Falcon campervan.
“You can inspect the camper if you like,” said the driver, his voice soft and pitched low, oddly pleasing. “It’s all right with me.”
“Don’t think I need your permission, Mr. Michaels,” said the trooper, and he peered more closely inside the camper. His eyes had adjusted somewhat to the darkness, and he saw a sink and chrome items of some sort hanging from the wall. Cooking utensils?
“You didn’t do any hunting in Ouachita, did you, sir?”
“No.”
“Because that’s a national park, and you’d be in a heap of trouble if you did that. Even if you’re Mexican, you’d still be in a heap of trouble. Can’t say you didn’t know about the hunting laws.”
“I know that.”
“Step back a little further, please.”
The driver did as he was told. Then watched the state trooper step carefully onto the drop-down step that led into the camper, watched him rise and enter, turn on his flashlight, and then gasp. It was the gasp that was his undoing. The time it took to inhale breath and collect his thoughts, as he looked at the array of rifles and steel knives, reciprocal saws and metal restraints — no more than four seconds — but that was too much time. The side door was already sliding shut as he turned.
For another four seconds, the state trooper stood there, not comprehending what had just happened. Then he rushed the door and shook the handle. Banged furiously on the window.
“What the fuck are you doing out there? If you don’t open this door right fuckin’ now, you fuckin’ wetback, I swear to God I am going to stomp your fuckin’ . . .”
And then he stopped yelling. Saw the driver come into view. The back of him, as he walked casually toward the patrol car, lifting the ball cap off his head and running his fingers through his short black hair. When the man reached the car, he leaned his upper body through the open window and ripped out the dashboard camera. Took the keys from the ignition. After that, he leaned further through the window and took the half-eaten tuna sandwich sitting on the passenger seat.
The trooper stood back from the camper window, shielded his eyes in the crook of his arm, and fired his service revolver: Three times, point-blank, at the tinted window.
When he opened his eyes, his body gave a jolt. It was a reflexive thing, something that happened without thought or awareness, as he stared at the window and saw the three slugs imbedded in the glass, not so much as a crack in the pane. After that, his body started shaking. Although the trooper did not know it at the time, his life of planned movement and rational thought, purpose and determination, had ended. It would all be reflexive after this.
Cambino stood on the other side of the unbroken window, eating the tuna sandwich. When he finished, he licked his fingers, one by one, and then he went back to his seat and continued driving. It remained a beautiful day, with high cirrus clouds and crickets singing from the scrubland. The banging on the metal plate that separated the camper from the cab stopped after a few minutes, and Cambino turned on the radio. He looked at the fuel gauge and calculated how much time he had. Then he began looking for a good secondary road where he could turn off and begin his work.
Chapter Fourteen
Yakabuski and O’Toole stood in the basement hallway outside the Ident Department. O’Toole carried the gemology report rolled up like a tube. He hit his knees with it while talking. A hard swat every once in a while.
“Well, if we didn’t already know this was going to be a rat fuck, I’d say that rather confirmed it,” he said. “What are we looking at here, Yak? Some sort of robbery gone bad?”
“Strangest robbery I’ve ever seen. Someone kills Augustus and leaves behind a million-dollar diamond?”
“Million-point-two,” corrected O’Toole. “Conservative fuckin’ estimate.”
He kept swatting his knee with the gemology report, looking at the paper with disgust. People were starting to arrive for their 8 a.m. shifts and trying not to stare at the chief of the force and his senior detective whispering in a hallway. O’Toole held his unused parka under his other arm and looked at the coat with the same disgust he looked at the gemology report. He tried to take a sip from his travel mug, then shook the mug and smacked his dry lips. He looked at the mug with disgust too. There was nothing O’Toole was carrying or thinking right then that pleased him.
“I had a dream last night about Augustus getting his eyes cut out,” he said. “He was a sorry excuse for a man, but I would not wish that dream on my worst enemy. I couldn’t sleep afterward, so I turned on the computer and started going through Intel reports on the North Shore Travellers.”
“Find anything interesting?”
“It was all interesting. You know there’s never been a conviction of a Traveller in court? Some of them have been convicted, and done time, but never as a member of a gang called the Travellers. A lot of prosecutors won’t even use the word, in case a jury thinks they believe in Big Foot and boogeymen as well. It’s just like the Mafia was fifty years ago.”
“Was there anything in there on Gabriel Dumont?”
“He was all over the place. The most visible member of the gang. He was raised on the North Shore and he’s never done time. There’s a youth record with two convictions for assault, and two charges as an adult, both for assault as well. One was a bar fight in Sault Ste. Marie that was ruled self-defence, and the other was an odd one from the States. Dumont was arrested at a protest in Fargo, North Dakota, a demonstration outside a National Park Service office. He hit a police officer. The Americans deported him instead of going through the bother of a trial.”
“He’s an activist?”
“Don’t really know what the fuck he is. Here’s the mug shot from Fargo.” O’Toole reached into the inside pocket of his parka, took out a sheet of computer paper, and handed it to Yakabuski. “It’s fifteen years old, but it’s the most recent photo we have of the guy.”
The man in the photo, with booking numbers beneath his chin, had a full black beard and long black hair to match, hair so long it fanned out over his shoulders, which ran from edge to edge of the photo. The skin that was showing consisted of little more than red scars on both cheeks, protruding from the top of the beard. He seemed to have a smirk on his face, but there was so much hair it was difficult to be sure.
“Quite the photo. How was that cop in Fargo?”
“He was all right,” said O’Toole. “Although I gather the Americans were quite glad to dump Mr. Dumont the other side of the border.”
“Do we have intel on where he’s living now?”
“Nothing solid. He hasn’t been on the North Shore for years. He was picked up on some wiretaps in Edmonton two years ago. Some bikers out there were looking for a pilot. Travellers are some of the best smugglers in the world. Did you know that? They’ve been doing it for thousands of years, and they hire out.”
O’Toole stared at his travel mug and gave it a vicious shaking, as though there might be enough coffee stuck to the sides to free up one last sip. After a few seconds of shaking he tipped it upside down and tried. After trying, he looked at the mug as though he wanted to punch it.
“We need to find him,” said Yakabuski. “I’d like to bring in someone from another department to help with research.”
“Is there no one
in Major Crimes you can use?”
“We’re swamped right now. And this would be straight computer research.”
“Who did you have in mind?”
“The patrol officer who found Augustus’s body. Donna Griffin.”
O’Toole looked surprised. He looked at Yakabuski, turning his gaze away from the useless parka and the useless travel mug and said, “Why her?”
“Couple of reasons. Did you know she graduated top of her class at George Brown? She got damn near one hundred percent in every computer course she took.”
“You’ve read her file?”
“You know what she found yesterday. A lot of cops never see anything like that in a thirty-year career. I wanted to make sure we weren’t looking at any potential problems.”
“You were looking to see if she could handle it. Whether she might go off the deep end.”
“Danger to herself or others is the phrase.”
“But you didn’t find any red flags?”
“None. Although parts of her file were odd. Her family is rich, did you know that? Her grandfather was some sort of shipping tycoon. I can’t imagine anyone in her family thinking she’s making smart life decisions right now, working as a cop delivering family court warrants in the North Shore Projects.”
O’Toole laughed and shifted the parka to his other arm. “If I had a family like that, I’d listen to them. I’ll clear her from the sked down in patrol. When do you need her?”
“Now.”
. . .
Donna Griffin was already in the detachment, getting ready to start a twelve-hour patrol shift, when the day-duty sergeant found her and told her she was off the schedule. Senior Detective Frank Yakabuski wanted to see her, and he hoped Griffin hadn’t done anything to piss that guy off. When Griffin arrived at Yakabuski’s office door, he waved her in.
“I’ve asked for your help in the Augustus Morrissey murder investigation. Are you okay with that?” he said.
