Diamond Run

by Michael Croucher

  The other soldier snickered. He took his flagon and musket outside.

  A ROOSTER CALLED. THE grey light of morning filtered through the windows. Elizabeth sat with her hands tied behind her back, lashed to the bedpost, the floor was cold against her bare thighs. She hoped the men would leave without further incident, but she had her doubts.

  During the night, they had taken turns keeping watch and sleeping on the bed. When the second man came in from his watch, she’d feared he would attack her. He didn’t, having succumbed to fatigue and the effects of alcohol. He’d staggered into the house and was asleep the moment he hit the bed. Would the men’s desire to escape the area save her further humiliation? Would they do no more harm?

  She looked out the window. A shadow came out of the trees and moved towards the house. It carried a musket. Horrified, she realized it was John. The thought of losing him now was unbearable. No one was with him. She wondered if the British troops were engaged elsewhere, and the men from the village busy sifting through the rubble of their homes, or moving their own loved ones to safety. She prayed for John to stop and run back to the woods. If the men saw him, they would shoot him down easily.

  John was crouched over, his musket at the ready. She knew why he’d come at this time. His father had talked about an enemy always being more vulnerable at dawn. They would be groggy from sleep or lack of it.

  Her eyes welled, this could only end badly. Despite the gag, she wanted to yell out the window, Run John. But that would alert the men, and her boy would likely ignore her plea. Why hadn’t he kept running and made his escape? Perhaps he feared encountering more Americans, not realizing that most of them had retreated towards the border. No. John was looking to rescue her and avenge the loss of his brother.

  She felt it coming. The back door flew open. John hurtled through it, his gun pointed at the man on the bed. Desperately scanning the house for the other man, his eyes locked on to his mother’s terror-stricken face.

  Elizabeth watched helplessly as the men got in position to deal with her son. One man seized her from behind, used her as a shield. She sobbed uncontrollably, struggling to free herself from the man and her restraints.

  The other man came up behind John and slammed him to the floor, kicking and stomping at his face. She looked on, horrified as the musket stock came down on the back of her boy’s head. John’s attacker stood over him. He grinned down, smashing the weapon into the already broken skull once more. Elizabeth’s despair overwhelmed her. Now both of her sons were gone. Her legs and arms went numb, and her vision wavered. Then the room went dark. Her knees buckled and she sagged to the floor beside her bed.

  She came out of the faint moments later, standing slowly. Wanting to get at the men and claw their eyes out, she swung her arms with all the strength she could muster. The heavy bed didn’t budge and the ropes stopped her swing at full arc. One of her wrists snapped, a broken bone pierced the skin. She dropped to her knees and screamed into the gag.

  No sobs now, just the ache of grief. Elizabeth buried her head into the bedding. Knowing what the men would do next, she understood that she was moments away from her own death. The only thing she wanted was to spend her last few moments cradling her sons body. It wasn’t to be. The men tightened her ropes at the wrist and on the bed. They walked to the back entry. One of the men mention shovels.

  Tools were removed from the rack with a series of rattles. She heard digging and scraping along the outside of the back wall. When the noise stopped, the bigger man came inside. He walked to the bed and gazed down at her. Without warning, he raised his musket high above his head, and slammed it down onto Elizabeth’s.

  Darkness. Her awareness shifted.

  She looked down at the bloody heap on her bed. The men dragged her body and John’s through the back door and dropped them into the trench along the wall. They filled the trench with dirt, tamped it down, and covered the grave with sod, field stones and twigs.

  Floating above the trench, she watched the two Americans disappear into the woods, and scamper along the escarpment towards Niagara.

  SUE WAS SHAKEN BY HER dream. Her pajamas, damp from perspiration, clung to her skin. She trembled. The room was darker now. She had no idea how long she’d been asleep, but sensed it was now well after midnight. The dream replayed in her mind. Dreams were elusive and often quickly forgotten, but she knew, because this one had been so vivid, so real and so draining, that she would never forget it. She put her head in her hands and sighed.

  A tap on the door.

  Gloria walked in. She was carrying an uncorked bottle of red wine and two glasses; she believed in the importance of buffering the emotions with a taste of the present after a heavy session. Wine was the taste she preferred. She placed everything on the small table and sat in one of the chairs.

  “Something to settle our nerves, Sue.”

  Sue grabbed her housecoat off the back of the door, put it on and took the other chair. She managed a smile, but her voice was thin and shaky.

  “I guess there are advantages to having a psychic wine hound as a girl friend.”

  “True,” said Gloria. “You were under for quite a time. Do we have anything to talk about or do we just toast a valiant effort?”

  “Oh, we have plenty to talk about...I had the most terrible dream of my life. It was horrible...that poor, poor woman.”

  Chapter 47

  We’d questioned Jasper for nearly five hours, and had over forty pages of foolscap notes. They detailed every location, contact, and conversation that Jasper could recall from his time with Marco. There was plenty to work with. We picked up sandwiches and coffees at a nearby restaurant and headed for Hamilton. It was well after midnight, but we had our second wind. We’d need it to figure out what Marco was up to. Was he hanging around, or already putting a lot of ground between himself and Hamilton?

  Ernie drove with his foot down. By the time I’d reviewed all the notes and prioritized what to follow up on, and in which order, we’d already crossed the Burlington Skyway and found our way up onto Barton Street. I flipped to some point-form notes I’d made during the drive. I wanted to bounce some thoughts off Ernie.

  “Marco probably waited until he’d figured out his moves on Gus’s crew and Sue’s place before planning his getaway. I’m guessing he started on it in the last few days.”

  “You never know with him, Phil, but that’s as good a guess as any,” Ernie said.

  “According to our notes, Jasper took him back to that rub and tug garage behind the pizza place for another quickie. He said that was on Wednesday morning, right? Then he drove him to two more places that were just a few blocks apart. So, keep going until we hit James Street North, then hang a right.

  “We’re looking for a six-or-seven floor commercial building, almost at the end of James Street. He said some guy came out of the building’s back door and met Marco. They took a walk. Jasper stayed in the vehicle at first, but eventually got out. That’s when he got a closer look at the guy. Let’s find that building and check it out.”

  Ernie pulled to the curb. “That must be it on the left,” he said.

  The building was nicely situated. It overlooked the harbor, and was the only structure on a rise off the street. Steps to the main entrance ran up both sides of a distinctive Indian head sculpture. Carved out of a huge block of stone, the sculpture served as an attractive base for the building’s flagpole.

  Even at this late hour, people were working in the building. There were some cars parked in the rear lot. We climbed two flights of steps and approached the front doors. The glass panels in the doors were both marked: Port Administration.

  The doors were unlocked so we walked in. I looked over the directory. The main tenant of the building was the Port Administration and they occupied the entire sixth floor, but there were a dozen or so other business listings there. Most of the companies were connected to shipping. The lobby was empty. Ernie wrote down the names of all the businesses on the directory. We
went back to our car.

  Ernie tapped a finger on the steering wheel. “What else do the notes say about this place?”

  I looked at that section of notes. “Jasper said Marco had been gone for about fifteen minutes when he needed to take a leak. He got out of the truck and walked to the Guise Street side of the building.”

  I pointed to another sloped area off Guise Street, “He climbed that slope, went into the trees and took his piss, saw Marco and the other guy across the road looking towards the harbor. He says he got a good look at the guy because he was only about a hundred feet away. The trees would have blocked anyone in the building from watching the meet. Jasper figured that’s why Marco and the guy went there.

  “Rather than let Marco see him, Jasper continued through the trees to the parking lot and walked back to the truck on James Street. He said that when they came back to the building, Marco stayed in the shadows, the guy went to his car, got in and fumbled for something in the glove box. He got out and handed it to Marco. The guy went back inside and Marco came back to the truck.”

  “We’d better get our hands on this guy, Phil.”

  I recorded the street address beside our notes. “Let’s get someone to run a background check on all the smaller businesses right away. We can have the feds check in on the Port Administration in the morning. We’ll get Mobile Support to set up a photo shoot of every male that goes in or comes out of that building. Then we’ll run the images past Jasper until we get a hit.”

  Mobile Support would assign an observation vehicle to the location before daylight. It would be an ordinary-looking commercial van with bogus signage and viewing ports that were not visible from outside. Two surveillance officers would spend their day in that truck. They’d be kitted out with cameras, powerful lenses, and a large, screened-off chemical toilet. They wouldn’t need to leave their post and would have boxed meals. Arriving first thing, they would find the best location, and have a good view of anyone going in or leaving the building by the front or parking lot doors.

  Next on our list was an address on Catherine Street North. Jasper didn’t know the number, but said the house was on the corner of McCauley. It had a busted porch swing, and an old white stove on what was left of the lawn. Even though it was dark, from what we could see as we drove along the street, what used to be lawns on some houses were just worn-out patches of dirt. A few houses had old appliances at the side or back. A shame because most of the houses on the street showed some pride of ownership. We found the house easily enough, it was number 476 Catherine Street. It had a porch on the McCauley side, with the busted swing and the old stove jammed against the wall.

  I referred to the foolscap notes. Apparently, before they went to the Port Administration building, Marco told Jasper to drop by this place. He’d used a key, went inside for a few minutes and came out tucking something into his pocket. Jasper said he wasn’t sure if that was where Marco stayed or not.

  It seemed a safe bet to us that he had stayed there at some point. There was no way Marco would still be there, but we wanted to get inside and see what we could find. We decided to use standard protocols and a bit of creativity. We parked the car, approached the house, and called for a two-man Hamilton uniform car. I told the uniform guys when they got there, that we’d chased a suspect on one of our cases into the backyard, and figured he’d gone inside. Bullshit, of course, but a fresh-pursuit cover story would justify a quick peak. It would also help get a search warrant to legitimize any evidence we found. Ass backwards to the procedure manuals-—the warrant should come first-—but with no time to screw around, we were going in.

  We had the uniforms watch the front and back doors with their weapons drawn. Ernie and I banged like hell on the front. Of course, there was no answer. We kept a twelve-pound-key -—a sledge hammer-—in the back of every car we used. The door opened with one solid swing at the handle. A quick look around confirmed that the house hadn’t been used much in the past few days. The search that followed turned up little in the way of evidence as to Marco’s travel plans. But we did find four boxes of .38 calibre ammunition. Three of the boxes were full and one had a dozen rounds left in it. No gun was found, but the ammo alone made it a productive look.

  The uniforms covered the place until someone from Jacob’s crew could bring a warrant. I got hold of Jacobs on the handset and gave him the details. He worked up an application for the search. It would state that we had reliable information that Marco Ranez stayed there frequently, and had been seen going in an out recently. Of course, there would also be mention of fresh pursuit. That house would be give a thorough search over the next couple of hours.

  Ernie lit up a smoke as we pulled away. “What a job we’ve got partner. Bloody amazing how every now and then, we have to use a little bit of hyperbole to speed things up?”

  I laughed. Sometimes, the little add-ons we used bothered me. I never let it show, and I’d convinced myself it was alright in extreme circumstances, circumstances like this one, where we knew our suspect represented a huge danger to the public. Ernie was right. We didn’t use the tactic often. But when we did, there was always an element of risk: to our careers, and possibly our freedom.

  I looked over at him. “I don’t know what hyperbole is...but I’m not surprised that you do, Ernie, all those Queen’s English drills as a kid, right?

  He grinned and gave me the finger.

  “By the way,” I said, “our little photo shoot at the Port Admin building is good to go. They’re on the scene already.”

  My handset rang about an hour later. It was Roy Jacobs to give us the rundown for the rest of the search. Background noise indicated that he was shuffling through his notes.

  “Tell you what, Phil, it’s an interesting place.”

  “Fill me in.”

  “The homeowner is away. There were a few days worth of letters in the mailbox, and a hell of a lot more in the house. Unopened. The owner is a guy named Ivan Grzbovski. We ran him. He’s got an old sheet in Quebec: armed robbery and assault. He’s also had a few minor run-ins with our department.

  “Usually lives in the house by himself. He crews on Great Lakes freighters and occasionally does European runs. We’ll find out more about that side of things as we dig into his work history.

  “The Identification Unit gave the place a thorough dusting. They picked lots of prints. A good number from our boy, Marco. No doubt he’d been there at some time.”

  “Great, Roy. Thanks.”

  I gave the details to Ernie. He nodded.

  Even though we had Marco’s scent, we were a long way from getting our mitts on him. Worse yet, we had no idea what he would try next. All we could do as a team was keep grinding. I kept hoping the son of a bitch had given up on Stoney Creek.

  Chapter 48

  Other than taking the occasional catnap while the other drove, Ernie and I hadn’t had much rest since Sue’s kidnapping. There wasn’t a lot we could do on the case until we got back to Jasper with some pictures, and we’d reached a point where we had to get some sleep. We headed back to the motel and grabbed a couple of hours.

  At three fifteen that afternoon, I heard from Roy again. He’d found out that Gryzbovski was serving ninety days in Thunder Bay for busting someone up in a bar fight. The car dealer that Marco was in cahoots with was holding Gryzbovski’s house key and had turned it over to Marco. Roy wasn’t sure if Gryzbovski ever knew he had a houseguest.

  Roy also said that they had a batch of photos developed from the James Street surveillance. We met him in a parking lot near the Woodward Street exit to The Queen Elizabeth Highway, got the pictures, and headed back to the Metro West Detention Centre.

  The team had taken over sixty photographs of forty-three subjects. Roy had discarded any duplicates, and assigned each subject a number from one to forty-three. He made an identical set for himself with the same numbers, and forwarded sets to the RCMP, the Ontario Provincial Police, and the Hamilton and Toronto Police Departments.

 
A guard showed up with Jasper. We told him to wait as we would only need the prisoner for a few minutes.

  Ernie conducted the photo line-up.

  “All right, lad,” he said to Jasper. “We need you to look at each photograph on the table first. Even if you see the guy Marco met, don’t indicate him to us yet. Once you’ve looked at all the pictures, point out the ones who aren’t a match, one at a time. I’ll pull them all aside until thee are only eight on the table. You understand that, Jasper?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then go to it.”

  Jasper must have seen the guy quickly, because with out much delay, we were down to the eight. When Ernie told him to point out the guy Marco had met, there was no hesitation. Ernie slid the picture out of the pile and cleared away the others.

  “Okay, Jasper, there’s one photo left,” said Ernie. “What can you tell us about this man?”

  “He’s the guy.”

  “Which guy?”

  “The guy Marco met at that building. That’s the guy, man.”

  Ernie turned the picture face down. The number was on the back: twenty-three.

  “Okay, so this is picture you identified. It’s number twenty-three. You agree, that’s him?”

  “Yep, it’s him.”

  Ernie initialled the back of the photo. “So, to keep everything in line, Jasper, we need you to initial the back, and then Sergeant Mahood.” Ernie slid the picture in front of Jasper. He hesitated for a moment, shrugged, and placed his initials next to Ernie’s. I added mine, and we were out of there. Grabbing the guy in the picture was now job one.

  We left the Detention Centre and headed back towards the motel. On the way, there was a be on the lookout call on the police band radio. They broadcast a description of a car wanted in connection with the kidnapping and forcible confinement incident in Stoney Creek. It was described as a late-model silver Pontiac, four-door sedan, in fair condition. They put out the plate number and said it was registered to Jiffy Used car sales. The bulletin said it was a vehicle used by Marco Ranez on the night of the occurrence. It was news to me and Ernie, it sure hadn’t been parked near Lemon’s property when I ‘d been scouting around for Sue. Our handset was out of range. We stopped at a phone booth and I called Jacobs for clarification.