by Anne Emery
For such a hopeless project, he had it well organized. Witness interviews were the first order of business. Ground searches would come afterwards. He had photocopied maps of the village and handed the maps to pairs of volunteers with their own areas marked in red ink. He gave them little hand-stapled notebooks and golf-score pencils. He told the volunteers that they were going to speak to all the people in the village, whether they knew Bonnie or not, whether they were Celtic music fans or not, whether they had been to the parties on July 15 or not. Everything that might be remotely relevant — an unfamiliar face or car, schoolyard gossip, a frown on Bonnie’s face, a smile on Bonnie’s face in the presence of a stranger — was to be noted along with the name and address of the witness, the time and date of the interview, and any observation the volunteer might see fit to make. I scanned the crowd, wondering, as the police would, whether the perp himself had been attracted to the gathering to obtain twisted gratification from being the object of so much effort.
Brennan Burke pulled up in his car and got out. A woman who looked familiar, a second cousin to Maura, I thought, recognized him and said, “Father Burke! Would you bless us before we start out?”
“I’d be happy to.”
“Do you have the Gaelic, Father?” the woman asked with a smile. That brought a little laugh from the crowd.
“I have the Irish version, the authentic version. We had it first, after all.”
“Yeah, before your crowd invaded Scotland.”
“And isn’t it grand that we did? You can thank me later.”
The exchange served to break the tension a bit, and Father Burke walked up the church steps, turned and made the sign of the cross, and gave a blessing in Irish and English.
Maura greeted Brennan and then ran up to Collie and gave him a hug. I started walking from the churchyard with my map and notebook. I looked around at the crowd. Some were people I had never laid eyes on before; others were familiar. I was about to go over and speak to one of the MacDonald boys when I saw a face that was familiar but out of place. Sabrina Fay-Waddams, who so faithfully attended the performances of my Halifax blues band, was hovering near Collie in the queue for supplies. She must have been serious when she said, “If there is anything I can do.” I wanted to bolt before she saw me. But she saw somebody else first. The look she gave my wife made my blood run cold.
Fortunately for everyone, Maura missed it and came through the crowd towards me. I took a surreptitious glance behind, just in time to see Sabrina turn away from a woman who offered her a map. Sabrina manoeuvred her way into the line next to Brennan. They reached Collie together. The unexpected detective had her partner.
Pierre
“So, Dougald, you’re not part of the expedition set up by the father of our victim.” We were sitting in the detachment in Sydney, looking at yesterday’s paper announcing the search.
“No, I decided to leave them to their own devices. It’s not going to do them any good. I only hope it doesn’t do any harm.”
“That makes two of us.”
“What I’d like to think is that Collie’s initiative eliminates him as a suspect.”
“I don’t even want to think of what a twisted psycho he must be if he’s guilty and he’s set all his family, friends, and relatives up for his own entertainment.”
“Collie wouldn’t do that.”
“I don’t think he would. But what I’ve seen of the human race during my twenty years on the force doesn’t rule it out.”
“Will we be seeing competing expeditions put together by, I don’t know, Andy Campbell, by Jeff McCurdy, by some highly esteemed citizen we never looked at till now?”
“Sacrament!”
“How often have you had this experience, Pierre? A handful of suspects walking around while we look on from the sidelines without enough evidence to bring any of them in.”
“My usual experience is that we either know exactly whodunit, or we don’t have a clue. But with this case, one day we think it’s the girl’s father, then the stepfather, then the boyfriend if in fact Jeff was a boyfriend. We don’t know which way to turn.”
“Feels as if there’s somebody out there pulling our strings. I mean, somebody set up that teddy bear display. So are we dealing with a puppet master? An evil genius running the show?”
“Yeah, the old evil genius. Haven’t met too many of those in my career.”
“Tell me about it. A lot of fellows in our line of work subscribe to the theory that lack of intelligence is the main factor that accounts for criminal behaviour. We get their faces on camera at the bank, and they deny being there. They stalk and threaten their ex-girlfriends for months, then when a girlfriend gets attacked, they claim they had nothing against her. They’ve got the vic’s wallet in their pocket and say they don’t know how it got there. They take photos of each other with the stolen camera.”
“We had a guy in Montreal with a bunch of charges related to drugs. Did I ever tell you about Bad Luck Babineau?”
Dougald shook his head.
“Long story. But anyway, this guy had to take a urine test. But he was no fool, not Babineau. He knew his piss was so much of a chemical brew that they’d have to add a new wing to the lab to analyze it. So what does the guy do? Gets his girlfriend to piss in a bottle for him, and he sneaks that in for the test. When we see the results, I’ve got the guy in front of me and I say, ‘Congratulations, Babineau.’ And the smirk of triumph comes over his face, and he’s ready to turn his back on me and walk out. Then I say, ‘You’re pregnant! Who’s the happy father?’ You should have seen the look on his face then. So, it was bad news for Babineau. His girlfriend was knocked up, and he went down for the charges.”
“But you worked with organized crime in Montreal. Must have been some sharp operators up there.”
“Oh, yeah, there were guys who could keep rackets going for years, for generations. Bikers. And the Italian mob, the Irish mob, the French connection. There’s some organizational ability there. But they fuck up, too. Fly into a rage over something and attack the guy across the room when they’re supposed to keep their heads down and remain under the radar. Or go in and shoot up a restaurant or a bar, have someone whacked because of a grudge instead of for business reasons. Putting the whole enterprise at risk.”
“It’s hard to picture a criminal mastermind behind the Bonnie MacDonald abduction, but somebody is staging scenes for us to look at. So, who? This isn’t the sort of crime orchestrated from afar. This is up close and personal. Unless it’s one member of the family who hopes to pin something on another person in the family. There’s been some conflict in the MacDonald clan in the last few years, so it’s a possibility. But more likely, as you know, this is the work of a lone sicko whether he’s a family member or somebody else who knew Bonnie.”
“Or an obsessed fan. Somebody who’s been following the band and has developed a thing for little Bonnie.”
“We’ve been over that. The only guy Sharon knew to be a bit of a groupie around here was Johnny Module MacLaren, but he wasn’t even in town at the time. And anyway, there’s no harm in poor old Module.”
“It could have been some mope who didn’t get close enough for Sharon and them to notice. I’m going to put some guys on that angle again, just in case. And if the band goes ahead and takes part in the big concert in Glace Bay, we’ll be on hand to check out the audience. But whoever did this, he either planned a kidnapping or abduction of the young girl for his own pleasure or to satisfy his obsession or to extort money . . .”
“But no demand.”
“Oui, exactement.”
“Or, back to the obsessed fan. Somebody takes her and then plans to ‘find’ her and be the hero! Be a saint in the eyes of Sharon and the band and the family till the Second Coming of Christ.”
“But why keep her this long? And where?”
“Yeah, that’s a long shot
, for sure. It’s more likely a sex crime that turned into, well, you know what it probably turned into.” Dougald looked at me. He looked like a guy that had just lost his religion.
“I know,” I said to him. I waited for a moment and then continued with the conversation neither of us wanted to have. “Back to our suspects. We shouldn’t have so many of them. As I said, we should have one or none. But we’ve got Andy, the stepfather. That fact alone, sad to say, makes him a suspect or at least means we have to look at him. Even if we didn’t have that dirty note Bonnie passed to her friend about Andy and the dress.”
“Yeah. And we’ve got Jeff McCurdy sneaking around with our victim and having her stuff in the basement of that closed-up shop. That basement and the teddy bear picnic aren’t crime scenes, or at least they aren’t places where any violence occurred, but they certainly contain loud screaming hints about the crime that was committed.”
“Especially the teddy bear scene. Too bad our perp never went back to have tea with his bears again. But that was a long shot. Nobody showed up there but a couple of kids whose curiosity got the better of them. And we know them, and they’re not under suspicion!”
“What I can’t get over is that the violence, or the grab, took place somewhere right here, and we haven’t been able to find it. There is not a trace of Bonnie anywhere after that CCTV footage at eleven thirty-eight p.m.”
“What’s your gut feeling about Collie?”
“We’ve got nothing on Collie, Pierre.”
“No alibi. And a huge big grudge against Sharon and Andy for breaking up the family.”
“So why take it out on his own wee girl? Why not against Sharon or Andy? Though I can’t see Collie getting physical with Sharon; he’s not that kind of guy.”
“He drinks like a school of cod, Dougald. Imagine him in that ratty house, getting all tanked up and stewing about what Sharon and Andy did to him. Maybe he took Bonnie to use against them in some way, and then things went south, and now he can’t do anything about it except cover up.”
“No evidence against him.”
“Young McCurdy thinks there is. That’s my theory of why he broke into Collie’s house. If McCurdy didn’t do it himself, and of course we don’t know that, he thinks Collie did.”
Normie
Just when it was my turn at home plate, the ambulance pulled up. A bunch of us were playing baseball in Nancy Campbell’s backyard, which is really a big field with the grass cut short. It was a beautiful warm day with a few fluffy clouds and a cool breeze. Perfect for baseball. Perfect for taking my mind off the spooky scene that happened in the dark of night at Morag’s house. I made up my mind not to think about it all day. This was a big day we had planned with our cousins and aunts and uncles and my great-aunt, Ginny, even though she didn’t play. She brought a folding chair and watched. She was in charge of the lemonade that somebody made and put in a cooler. I don’t think Ginny was all that interested in the game, because she kept looking off into the distance and had to snap back to attention when kids asked her for a glass of lemonade. But I know she was being a good sport. The two teams were made up of me, John Rory, Louise, a bunch of other cousins, and Robbie and Andy Campbell. Sharon’s kids, Bonnie’s little sister and brother, were supposed to come over to take their minds off the “situation.” But they were with their other dad, Collie, and they hadn’t arrived yet.
So I was up and I had just picked up the bat when the ambulance pulled into Nancy’s driveway. Everybody ran over to it. Nancy’s boyfriend, Lee, was driving it, and he got out, and he looked pissed off. Nancy was with him, and he was arguing with her.
“Nancy, this is my job, okay? When somebody is injured, I take them to the hospital. And this guy should be in the hospital.”
She answered him in kind of a whisper, but I could hear it. “He doesn’t want to go, Lee. You heard him.”
“He doesn’t know what he’s talking about. A lot of patients are like that. He’s in shock probably, not in his right mind. That means it’s all the more important that I make the right decision for him. And this isn’t it.”
Robbie and Andy went up to them and asked what was going on.
Lee said, “Young guy got beat up and doesn’t want to go to the hospital.”
Robbie walked around to the back of the ambulance and opened the door. I could hear him talking, and then he stepped back and helped a guy out. His eyes were all puffed up, and his mouth was cut. He limped when he walked, while being held up by Robbie.
“Oh my God!” That was one of the girls.
Somebody whispered behind me, “It’s Jeff McCurdy!”
It took me a bit of time to remember that name, but then I got it. That was the guy they said Bonnie was sneaking out with at night, the guy who broke into Bonnie’s father’s house. Now he was here, all beaten up. I couldn’t help feeling sorry for him even though I knew who he was and what he had done. It must have been so painful to be hit like that. But everybody said he was bad, so maybe he started it. Maybe the other guy was hurt even worse.
“Who did this to you, Jeff?” Andy asked.
“You’re wasting your time, Andy,” said Lee. “He won’t say.”
“Did you call the Mounties?”
Lee answered again, “No, he didn’t. Somebody saw him walking around like this and then falling on the ground, and she called us directly. Nancy was in seeing me, so I responded. She got into the ambulance with me, and I figured I’d call the RCMP when I got to the scene. But he made a big fuss about not calling them. His medical condition is priority one, so I got him into the ambulance and started for the hospital, but he kicked up a big stink about it, and Nancy went along with him and said to bring him here. I’m not going to be held responsible for this if anything happens to him.”
“Why don’t you want the police, Jeff?” Robbie asked him.
“Because I was in a fight, and the cops are gonna say I started it. They’ve got it in for me.”
“Maybe because you broke into Collie’s house!” That was one of my cousins yelling from the back of the crowd.
Robbie didn’t say anything about that but asked Jeff, “So, who started it?”
“None of your fuckin’ business. It’s my business and I’ll sort it out.”
“But you’re hurt. You have to be checked out by a doctor. There may be internal injuries.”
“There aren’t. I’m sore. I’ll get over it. End of story.”
The same cousin who shouted out before did it again. “When was the last time you saw Bonnie? What have you got to say about that?”
“Hey!” Robbie turned to face the kid. “This is not the time and place for that, okay?”
But Jeff answered anyway. “I didn’t do anything to Bonnie! I’m not a pervert or a child stealer!”
Everybody stayed quiet then, probably trying to decide whether this Jeff person was lying.
Nancy is a nurse, and, even though she must have wondered if he did something to Bonnie and then hid her somewhere, she talked to him in a really nice voice. “Jeff, come on in the house. I’ll clean up those cuts and put some ice packs on that swelling. You can lie down and rest.”
Andy was Bonnie’s stepfather but he didn’t say anything to Jeff, even though Jeff was a rough character and he was a suspect in some people’s minds. Andy just followed the guy and Nancy into the house.
Lee was muttering about “amateur hour” and shaking his head.
John Rory came up to Lee and asked him what he thought about Jeff. “You had him in the ambulance. You talked to him. Do you think he’s the type who would do something to Bonnie? The cops know he was with her sometimes.”
Lee said, “You see a lot in my line of work. I’m out there on the front lines attending accident scenes, crime scenes, and all that. I think I have a pretty good feel for who’s good and who’s bad.” John Rory and I both nodded our heads. “And
the way I see this guy is he’s just a little small-time punk. I don’t think he could have snatched Bonnie MacDonald. It’s no easy thing to kidnap somebody and keep her hidden so nobody, not even the RCMP, can find any clues about where she is. And if he did something to her, if, say, I’m sorry, if he went nuts and killed her, whether he meant to or not, he’d have blood or fibres or other evidence all over him. Or in his house, or in that crappy little hideout he goes to. The Mounties would have found something by now. Or McCurdy himself would have fallen apart and blabbed it to somebody, even the police themselves. Though they had him in for questioning on the Collie MacDonald B&E job, and he denied that, from what I hear.”
“Do you think he did the break-in?” John Rory asked.
“Oh yeah, for sure. They found him with cuts on himself and his clothes that matched the broken window he went in and out of. The guy didn’t have enough of a clue to get rid of the clothes.”
“He wouldn’t be able to hide the cuts on himself, though,” said John Rory. “Band-Aids would look a little too suspicious!”
“What would you do if you had cuts from a job you pulled?”
John Rory just shrugged. I didn’t think he would ever “pull a job” the way Lee meant, like a “bank job” or something.
“Well, you’d think a guy who did that would stage an ‘accident’ somewhere else and leave a bit of torn clothing and a bit of blood, and then he’d tell someone about it. Gives the perp deniability when the cops come sniffing around and see his face and hands all cut to shit.”
“Why do you think he broke into Collie’s? They say there was nothing taken.”
Lee crossed his arms over his chest and put his eyebrows up and didn’t say a word.
“What?” asked John Rory.
“Think about it. What I think is that ol’ Jeff McCurdy has a suspect in mind, and he was looking for evidence!”
