Omand's Creek: A gripping crime thriller packed with mystery and suspense

by Don Macdonald

  “Moses told us she’d been upset for a while, but she wouldn’t say what was bothering her. Is that what the fight was about?”

  “I don’t know. She hadn’t been herself, that’s for sure. I asked her what was going on, but she wouldn’t tell me. Said it was nothing for me to worry about.”

  “So what about today?”

  Nicki seemed to gather herself. “I’ve been looking for Rory.”

  Shelter put his teacup down. “You’ve been looking for him?”

  “I want to know what that fight was about. What he knows about Crystal.”

  Shelter glanced around the restaurant as he digested this information. In this section, only one other table in a far corner was occupied. An elderly couple were eating their soup. In a little while, the Sunday night crowd would come in, but not many at this time of year. One of the reasons he liked this place was you’d never bump into someone you knew. He brought his eyes back to Nicki and moved forward in his seat. “And at the march?”

  “I asked him what happened to her. He told me to back off, and then there was just so much noise and shit going on.”

  “It looked like you said a lot more than that.”

  “I guess you could say I was accusing him.”

  Shelter was silent for a moment. “Was Rory in the bar the night Crystal was killed?”

  “I’m pretty sure he didn’t come in.”

  “But Crystal was there. It could have been Rory she was texting.”

  Nicki shrugged and then nodded.

  “Where do think he’ll be now?”

  “I have no idea. I went over to his store yesterday. But his crew said they hadn’t seen him.”

  “His store?”

  She rolled her eyes in a silent comment on how clueless the police were. “He runs a little place downtown where they sell hip-hop stuff. T-shirts, baseball caps, shit like that. He runs his record company from upstairs.”

  Shelter made a mental note. “Where else were you looking for him?”

  “Just around. A couple of different bars and the pool hall he likes, the Double Deuce on Sargent.”

  Shelter’s mind went to the cue in Rory’s hands when he first saw him in the bar. He knew the Double Deuce from his time in the robbery squad and before that when he was young and shooting pool himself. It was a hangout for thieves, drug dealers and other assorted hoods.

  “How about Moses in all this?” he asked.

  “Nah, he’s solid.” Nicki pushed her chair back, stood up in one motion and slid her iPhone into a back pocket of her cut-offs.

  “Just stay away from Rory, okay? Put my number in your phone.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Last time I say it. Don’t fucking tell me what to do. Ever.”

  Shelter shook his head and scrawled the number on a napkin.

  She stuffed it into her back pocket and was gone.

  NINE

  The next morning, Shelter arrived at the office to find the team of detectives hunkered down at their desks reading newspaper accounts of the march and the musings of a Free Press columnist. He laid the blame for the shooting of Jason Courchene and the failure to catch a killer stalking the city’s Indigenous women on incompetence and a culture of racism in the police department.

  In the lunchroom, Shelter had just got his coffee from the machine when Jennifer Kane entered the room with her mug. “Hey, how’s it going?”

  Shelter clicked his tongue against his teeth and shook his head. “Kelsey’s driving me nuts.”

  “Okay.” Kane pronounced the word slowly. “What’s going on?”

  “She wants to stay up in Gimli for the school year.”

  Kane nodded as she thought about it. “You were worried about taking care of her in the fall. This could be a solution, no?”

  “I guess, but she doesn’t want anything to do with me. It’s like I’m to blame for Christa.”

  She touched his forearm. “It’s still really soon for both of you. Give it time and see what happens.”

  Shelter’s head was bowed and his lips pursed. “I got to go,” he said, looking up at her.

  They headed for the door together. Kane stopped him just before they entered the squad room. “Let me know if you want to go for a drink and talk about it.”

  “I will. I need to talk to somebody.”

  Shelter and Traverse stood on the sidewalk outside a brick, three-storey walk-up at the south end of downtown. Crystal Rempel’s apartment on the second floor had been thoroughly gone over by the Ident unit, but the detectives wanted a look for themselves. The parking lot beside the building was full of cars belonging to provincial civil servants who worked at the legislature building one street behind. The building had flowers planted in boxes on either side of the entrance. Shelter pushed a button marked Caretaker on the intercom panel.

  The man who buzzed them in was a senior citizen named Ronnie. He was waiting for them at the door of his basement apartment, still in pyjamas and housecoat, the white fringe of hair around his bald head uncombed. Under one thin arm, he clutched a vicious-looking Pomeranian that kept up an incessant chorus of barks, yips and growls.

  “Stop that, Casey! I said stop it,” Ronnie told the dog after Shelter and Traverse had shown him their identification. “We’ve had so many police in here. It’s terrible for our tenants.”

  “Could you put your dog in the apartment and step out, please?” Traverse said.

  Ronnie retreated into the apartment, and the door swung closed. Casey’s muffled barking was punctuated by a thumping noise. Traverse smiled at Shelter. “He’s head-butting the door. That thing’s scary, man.”

  Shelter was smiling, too. He glanced down the hall. It was gloomy, with no carpeting and only a couple of other doors.

  Ronnie’s door opened a crack, and the old man squeezed out of the apartment sideways. “Stay, Casey. Daddy has to go out now.”

  When the door was closed, Shelter asked, “How was Crystal Rempel as a tenant?”

  “I told the police this already.”

  “Then you won’t mind cooperating again.”

  “She kept to herself. It’s not our business what the tenants do in the privacy of their own suite. But some of them have parties and don’t think about the noise.”

  Ronnie led them upstairs. “We’re not prejudiced here,” he said with a glance over his shoulder as he climbed. “But we are very careful about who we accept as tenants. You have to be these days. But she had nice references.”

  “Did she have many visitors?” Shelter asked when they’d arrived at the door to the apartment.

  “We’re not snooping around the suites. But she did have some Indian visitors, as I told the other officers,” the caretaker said before catching himself. “If you’ll excuse the expression.”

  “Men or women?

  “Both.”

  “Any of them stand out?”

  The caretaker shrugged. “She was a nice girl from what I could see — a lawyer, but you already know that.” The more the caretaker spoke, the more it became clear he was enjoying his five minutes of fame and all the details had been gone over not only with the police but also in multiple gossip sessions. “The other officers said they’d bring pictures for me to look at. To try to identify the visitors.”

  They were standing outside a door sealed with yellow tape. Traverse took out a pen knife, cut the tape and unlocked the door. Ronnie peered into the apartment. “It’s a beautiful suite.” He took a step forward, but Shelter moved to block him.

  “Thanks for your help. Someone will be by to show you those pictures. We’ll take it from here.”

  Before the well-to-do had moved out to the suburbs decades before, this apartment block had been a fashionable address. It had high ceilings, crown moulding and blond hardwood floors. The large living room had a manufactured oriental rug with an intricate pattern in red, gold and black. A flat-screen TV had been set up across from a beige couch between two windows that looked out over the street. A good sound system s
at on a table.

  The Ident team had already gone over the apartment, photographing and fingerprinting. When they were done, they’d carted away Crystal’s clothing, papers and anything else that might produce evidence for analysis. When they were finished, they’d replace the drawers and hangers in the closets. There was no visible evidence of the late-night visit that had left the apartment in a mess.

  “What are we looking for?” Traverse asked.

  “I’m not sure. I wanted to get a better fix on Crystal,” Shelter said, noticing Traverse was studying a framed print over the mantle. It was a large drawing depicting a scene from long ago. In the foreground, a group of Indigenous people wrapped in blankets sat on the ground in a semi-circle. In front of them, three men on hard chairs faced white men, who were standing, two in military uniform and two in suits with hats. Women dressed in the billowing gowns of the era looked on in the background.

  “I’ve seen it before,” Traverse said. “It’s the signing of Treaty One at Lower Fort Garry in 1871 — the Stone Fort Treaty.”

  Examining the print, Shelter realized how little he knew about the history it depicted. Eighteen seventy-one was a year after the province of Manitoba was founded and four years after the creation of Canada. Settlers were beginning to pour in from the east. Three decades later, his great-grandfather had arrived from England with his three sisters to start a new life.

  The picture had triggered something in Traverse. “We agreed to share the territory in peace,” he said, nodding toward the image. “We never gave up anything.”

  Glancing over, Shelter could see tension around his partner’s eyes.

  “We never saw ourselves as owners of this land. So how could we give it up, sell it or surrender it?” Traverse looked down, lost in thought. When he spoke again, the words had a harder edge. “Share. Not be controlled, abused and disrespected.”

  Shelter was taken aback. He’d never heard Traverse talk like this, but he couldn’t disagree. Cultures and ways of life thousands of years old had been uprooted by the desire of European migrants to make a new beginning for themselves. Through the Indian Act, every aspect of the Indigenous peoples’ lives had been controlled by the state, including ripping children as young as five and six from their homes and sending them away to residential schools. There the government, and the churches that ran the schools, tried to take the Indian out of the child, assimilate them into the white mainstream. Successive generations were separated from their parents and communities, prevented from speaking their language and often physically and sexually abused. Shelter and Traverse saw the consequences on the streets of Winnipeg every day, but they’d left in silence their feelings about the horrors they witnessed together — the poverty, violence, abuse and suicides.

  Traverse turned to Shelter. “Mike, I’m thinking about leaving the service.”

  Shelter was shocked. “Why?”

  “The job. It doesn’t get any better. I can’t remember why I got into this work.”

  Shelter thought about it. He’d actually been feeling more hopeful than ever, mostly because of people like Traverse and the Indigenous leaders he’d seen emerging. “You got into it because you’re damn good. You’re exactly where you should be. There’s no one who can bring what you do to this job. Take your time and think about it.”

  Traverse flared. “I have thought about it. It’s all I can think about.” After a moment, he calmed down and lowered his voice to almost a whisper. “I feel like I’m getting numb to the suffering. That’s not who I want to be.”

  Shelter had grown close to Traverse over the five years they’d been partners and considered him to be one of the best, most intuitive detectives on the force. But he knew it hadn’t been easy. Shelter had watched him take insensitive comments in the squad room, racist taunts from offenders and gibes from his own people, accusing him of selling out.

  “What is it you want to do?”

  “I’m not sure. Something different. Maybe teaching.”

  Shelter nodded. “When is this going to happen?”

  “I don’t know, but I wanted you to hear it from me first.”

  Shelter also understood Traverse’s fear of losing his humanity in the face of so much violence and abuse. He felt it too and had to constantly guard against being consumed by cynicism and indifference.

  “Is it this case?”

  “It’s been building for a long time.” Traverse paused and looked Shelter in the eyes. “But there’s one thing I’m really going to miss.”

  “What?”

  “I won’t have you to kick around anymore.”

  Shelter laughed. “Something tells me you’ll get over it.”

  He’d come to rely on Traverse as a partner and as a friend. They were good together and he hated the idea of no longer being able to depend on his perspective, instincts and toughness. Instead, he would have to start from scratch with an unknown quantity in a new partner. It was one more blow after the loss of Christa and Kelsey’s desire to stay in Gimli.

  There was nothing to be done but get on with the job. He turned and squatted in front of the fake fireplace, where a square plastic heater had been positioned. Leaning forward, he pulled it out and examined it. Straightening up, he said, “Where would you hide something in here if you wanted to make sure it wouldn’t be found?”

  “I guess that would depend on how big it is,” Traverse said. “You thinking about her cellphone?”

  Shelter shrugged. “If Crystal was as scared as her mother says she was, maybe she hid something in here.”

  “Doesn’t hurt to have a look.”

  They split up to search the apartment. Shelter entered Crystal’s bedroom. He touched a collection of rings, necklaces and a miniature dream catcher in a dish on top of her chest of drawers. He examined her framed law school degree before moving to the wall closest to the windows, where he took out his Swiss army knife and squatted to unscrew the cover of an electrical outlet — nothing. He checked the closet, peering at the ceiling and knocking to try to find hiding places.

  Crystal’s photos had been taken away by the Ident team, and Shelter had already looked them over at the office. They’d helped him trace the arc of her life, from her childhood and adolescence with her white family and friends to later snapshots taken on various occasions with university friends, Nicki, Moses and an older woman Shelter assumed to be Crystal and Nicki’s birth mother, Anne Alexander. He’d closely examined one photo, a badly lit shot of Crystal sitting beside a very old woman on an ancient couch in what looked to be a cabin. She held the old woman’s hand, and Shelter assumed this was her grandmother on the Lone Pine reserve.

  When he emerged from the bedroom, Shelter found Traverse on his knees in the bathroom, where he’d unscrewed a trap door hiding the bath plumbing. After another fifteen minutes searching the kitchen and a screened-in back porch, they gave up.

  “I’m just going to give a card to Ronnie,” Shelter said as he resealed the apartment with police department tape.

  In the basement, the caretaker’s dog went crazy again when he knocked. The caretaker opened the door a crack, allowing him to thread his card through the gap. “By the way, did Crystal have a locker or a storage cage down here?”

  “We don’t have lockers for the tenants.”

  “Where do these doors lead?” Shelter asked, pointing down the hall.

  “One is the laundry room, and the other is for the hot water tank and electrical panels.”

  “The laundry room,” Traverse said.

  Shelter realized there were no washer and dryer in Crystal’s apartment. “Can we have a look?”

  The laundry room had a bare cement floor. A folding table was built into a wall, and a coin-operated washing machine and dryer were wedged into a corner. Shelter squatted to check under the table while Traverse examined the machines. He edged the washing machine away from the wall before giving a hard jerk to turn it around.

  The Ziploc bag was taped into a space between the drum
and the steel side of the washing machine. Traverse put on a pair of gloves and gingerly removed it.

  Inside was an iPhone wrapped in a sheet of paper, held in place by a rubber band. He pulled off the rubber band and placed the phone and paper on the top of the washing machine. The sheet had been torn from a notebook. A few words and numbers were scrawled on it. Agassiz Holdings was underlined. Below were the digits 01-06933 and on a third line 1.5M.

  “Agassiz Holdings — so, a company?” Shelter asked. “The only Agassiz I know is the ski hill.”

  “The numbers aren’t right for a bank account. Maybe it’s in the States.”

  Shelter picked up the bag and turned it over, examining the cellphone and piece of paper. “This is what our guy was looking for upstairs.”

  Traverse nodded. “What he killed Crystal for.”

  TEN

  Shelter and Traverse set out to find Rory Sinclair. They got no answer at his apartment in a swanky high-rise near Osborne Village, and the door was locked at the tiny store just off Portage Avenue where Sinclair sold hip-hop clothing and accessories. The words Urban Impressions had been painted on the glass door, and underneath in smaller lettering, A Division of Chief Records.

  The Double Deuce was the next stop. The detectives descended a flight of stairs and entered the sprawling pool hall. The ceiling was low, and most of the illumination came from the lights suspended over a half dozen snooker tables on one side of the room and twice as many smaller pool tables on the other. The place was nearly empty.

  On a flat-screen TV affixed to a wall in the snack bar area, Mayor Sam Klein and police Chief Gordy Taylor were on the muted screen, holding a press conference on the Jason Courchene shooting and the protest march.

  “There’s Freddy,” Traverse said.

  Shelter followed his gaze to the far corner of the pool hall, where a man with his back to them was pulling on a cream-coloured suit jacket. “Freddy!” Shelter called. Fast Freddy Boyle flinched at the sound of Shelter’s voice but recovered quickly. Looking over his shoulder, he greeted them with a broad smile. Shelter could tell from his reaction that Boyle had spied them coming into the pool hall and had hoped to make a discreet exit.