Punishment

by Linden MacIntyre

  ALSO BY LINDEN MACINTYRE

  The Long Stretch

  Who Killed Ty Conn (with Theresa Burke)

  Causeway: A Passage from Innocence

  The Bishop’s Man

  Why Men Lie

  PUBLISHED BY RANDOM HOUSE CANADA

  Copyright © 2014 Linden MacIntyre

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Published in 2014 by Random House Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, a Penguin Random House Company.

  Distributed in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

  www.penguinrandomhouse.ca

  Knopf Canada and colophon are registered trademarks.

  Excerpts from the poem “And after we damned each other” by Anna Akhmatova, from Three Russian Women Poets: Anna Akhmatova, Marina Tsvetayeva, Bella Akhmadulina, Mary Maddock, editor and translator (Crossing Press, 1983).

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  MacIntyre, Linden, author

  Punishment / Linden MacIntyre.

  ISBN 978-0-345-81390-9

  eBook ISBN 978-0-345-81392-3

  I. Title.

  PS8575.I655P85 2014 C813’.54 C2014-905224-3

  Cover images: (figure by truck) © David et Myrtille / Arcangel Images; (leaves) © Mattwatt / Dreamstime.com

  v3.1

  IN MEMORY OF

  Ernie Hayes,

  AKA TYRONE W. CONN,

  1967–1999

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Kingston Penitentiary, May 2000

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Part Two

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Rat (rat) n. interj., v. rat-ted, ratting 1. Any of several long-tailed rodents of the family Muridae, of the genus Rattus and related genera, distinguished from the mouse by being larger. 2. Slang. a. a person who abandons his party or associates, esp. in a time of trouble. b. an informer.

  Kingston Penitentiary, May 2000

  I REMEMBER IT CLEARLY, all the details except the date, which really doesn’t matter. Before the incident, it was just another day. I know it was mid-afternoon on a Saturday. I remember that because we had a barbecue on Sunday. We were in the bubble, eyes and ears of the institution. I try to avoid calling it “the joint.” I don’t mind “pen.” It is a prison, a place where people are confined, cons and pigs alike. Everybody in it, more or less incarcerated. The bubble is a prison inside a prison, but just for us, a place to hide if necessary.

  From the bubble you should be able to see everything and everybody—when all the systems function properly, which they didn’t on that afternoon. You could imagine Upper G range empty if it wasn’t for the noise. No sign of inmates in the monitors, but you could hear them, the shouts, the cheers, the jeers. The gladiator sounds. Now and then a figure hustled past the camera, face hidden.

  “Jesus, Tommy, I just saw someone hang a blanket.” Smith was pointing urgently at nothing. “Guys in control can’t see out.”

  “Who was it?”

  “Couldn’t tell, he was running with the blanket up in front of his face.”

  We all stared. A phone rang. Tommy Steele said, “Yeah, yeah … we’re lookin’ at it.” Hung up. “Tony, come with me.” Tommy the Keeper, unit super, senior officer that day.

  We clattered up the iron staircase to Upper G, where we found Meredith and Wilson watching monitors that showed an empty range. Large window at the front of control now blocked by the blanket. One monitor showed sturdy tables bolted to the floor. A wall phone. Inoperable washer-dryer at the far end. No human form. But vivid sounds, substantiated by experience and fear, projecting images on the imagination, embedding permanent sensations. Deep trauma for tomorrow.

  “Fuckin animals,” said Meredith, as if to himself.

  “They’re in the blind spot,” Wilson said.

  Now Tommy Steele was leaning toward an empty screen, all quiet, asking, “Whad’ya see, before the blankie?” Shrug. Coffee and a crossword puzzle on the console. “I was out taking a piss and when I came back …” Wilson shrugged again. Meredith displayed his empty hands. “It was quiet, then in a split second …”

  “Where’s the other camera?” asked Steele. Wilson looked at Meredith.

  “Been out for two days. We put in a report …”

  “There you go,” said Steele. “Fuckin bean counters.”

  Then a figure appeared, backing into the shot, now a horrified face turned, looking upward toward the one remaining camera, appealing. Then the camera was dead, blinded, an old eye darkened by a cataract. “What’s that?”

  “Toilet paper,” Wilson laughed. “Cute! Can you believe it? Direct hit.” Soaked in a toilet bowl, wadded and hurled like a snowball from the upper gallery into a camera lens. Now everything gone from all monitors. “What happens when you let them have their own toilets,” said Wilson. Distracted chuckles. “If it was up to me they’d be pissin’ in their …”

  “That was Pittman,” said Meredith.

  “Ah, Pittman,” Tommy said. “Go Pittman.”

  Sound escalates. “I remember Pittman once in Collins Bay …”

  “Jesus Christ someone,” I said.

  “Calm down,” Tommy, laying a reassuring hand on my shoulder. “Just a normal Saturday on Upper G. What were you gonna say about Pittman in Collins Bay?” He was interrupted by a scream.

  All four of us crowded toward the empty monitors. Toilet paper suddenly dropped off the lens leaving a smeared image, vague figures roiling in a group. Wilson, Meredith and I watching Tommy Steele, corrections manager, waiting for the cue.

  “Somebody’s getting killed in there,” I said.

  “Nah. Let them work it out.”

  “We gotta go in.”

  “Hey. You want to go in there, Tony?”

  Then more screaming, a hard man screaming like a child.

  “Aw fuck,” sighed Meredith, picking up the phone.

  “Just another minute,” said Tommy, stopping him. “Give them another minute. Let them have their fun.”

  The shouting died and in the silence, whimpering. Blurred figures on the monitor, shrinking back. A dark mass squirming on the floor.

  Finally the banging, heavy boots and plastic shields, men in black, helmeted and visored shouting, hammering the shields. Loud-spoken, metallic urgent voices. “Clear the range … clear the range.” Inmates back in cells, shouting loud abuse. Whirring sound, then clank of cell doors locking shut. Pittman, face down on the floor, life pumping out of him, his blood, so like my vital blood, running free, a wasted viscous puddle spreading. Tommy, face bloodless white, staring not at Pittman, but at me, seeing through me, penetrating all my screens, into the depths of my fear and nausea.

  “You there, Breau?”

  “I’m here.”

  “Solid?”

  “Solid, Tom.”
/>
  “I didn’t hear you, Tony!”

  “I said I’m solid.”

  “Stay solid, man.”

  “They lost Pittman,” said Meredith.

  “Big loss.”

  “He was a human being, Tommy.”

  “We’re all human beings, Tony. Everybody has to go sometime. And Pittman was about to go to Joyceville. You know what that means—he was slithering back toward the street.”

  “That’s the system. They come, they go back out.”

  “And if one of them doesn’t make it back out, what the fuck, one less problem for society … you gonna lose sleep over this, Tony?”

  “Not likely.”

  “Got any plans for tomorrow?”

  “Nothing in particular.”

  “You and Anna come by. We’ll have a barbecue. Sally found this new butcher …”

  “Sounds good, Tommy.”

  “Everybody take it easy. Book off a couple of days for stress. I’ll write it up. Everybody good?”

  Everybody good.

  Then Tommy called me back. Draped an arm across my shoulder. “We’ve known each other longer than I care to think, Tony. I didn’t want to get into this in front of the others. But I know you, Tony. I can read you like a book. And I always respected you, man. You got goodness and that ain’t easy after all the years in this racket. And I know—hang on, hear me out—goodness means marchin’ to your own drummer sometimes. Just listen, Tony. Don’t say nothin’.”

  Now he was in front of me, hand raised, voice low and urgent, close to my face. “There’s an old saying, Tony. Hang together or hang separate. I’m just sayin’. We survive this place by sticking together, staying on the same page of the same hymn book. It’s a rough world we’re living in. I’m not suggesting anything here, Tony, but … wait … you want to go it alone? Great. But there’ll be consequences. For all of us. Including you.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “But are you hearing, Tony?”

  “I’m hearing.”

  “Okay. Tomorrow then. Say after three. And there’ll be no talk a’ this tomorrow, okay? Tomorrow or ever.”

  “I hear you, Tommy.”

  one

  And after we damned each other,

  whitely passionate,

  We still didn’t understand

  how the earth can be small for two people,

  how, strong as we are,

  memory punishes us, is our disease.

  ANNA AKHMATOVA

  1.

  St. Ninian, September 2002

  The scuffle at the courthouse made the metro papers and I should have known from past experience how the validation of a headline can unleash the hounds of vengeance in all their myopic savagery. Angry Relatives of Dead Teen Confront Accused Killer. There were obviously other factors driving what unfolded in the months that followed but as I look back I see that headline as a catalyst for passions that inflamed the public mind, causing reason to evaporate. But let me start at the beginning.

  It was a balmy late summer day in 2002 and I’d gone to the county courthouse to pay my taxes. The business finished, I was walking to my car when the sheriff’s van arrived accompanied by two RCMP vehicles. They drove around behind the old brick building and I decided to follow. I suppose I’m like an old soldier—at the sound of a parade I stop, I listen, I remember. I had a hunch that I already knew what this parade was all about.

  When I rounded the corner I noticed a small group waiting near the back entrance to what once had been the county jail but now was just holding cells for people awaiting court appearances for more serious offences. The new regional facility for longer-term incarceration is hours away.

  There were four burly men, a grand-uncle and three older cousins of the victim. They were of a more recent generation than mine but I knew them all, their names and genealogy and status. They were all solid, decent citizens. I could feel the tension, the potentially explosive mix of grief and anger. But there was also the awkwardness of normal people in the presence of the law.

  They were silent as the vehicles pulled up. Three were tradesmen who mostly worked in distant places. The grand-uncle was a seasonal fisherman. There were two women, one of them the dead girl’s grandmother. I knew her well from long ago and felt a sudden rush of recollection. She looked startled and distracted when she noticed me.

  Five officers assembled near the back door of the van. One unlocked and opened it to reveal young Strickland, shackled, pale and blinking in the sudden flood of daylight, hunched over, staring out. A reporter started the disturbance by shouting at him as he walked, handcuffed, amidst the little scrum of lawmen toward the entrance to the cells. “Do you have anything to say to Mary’s family?”

  Strickland lifted his face and stared at the reporter with an expression that was both defiant and contemptuous. He smiled briefly and seemed to wink at her.

  That was when one of the cousins, a tall man about forty years of age, stepped forward, face furious, and reached into the moving knot around the accused only to be quickly seized and wrestled down by the two RCMP. Two other men then raised their voices in protest and moved toward what was now a squirming struggle on the ground. A sheriff’s deputy blocked them, a cautionary hand raised.

  “Come on now, boys,” he said.

  The younger of the two women then shouted “Bastard!” and spit at Strickland. He saw it coming and ducked as the sheriff hurried him toward the door. The Mounties were by then on their feet, still restraining the angry cousin. It was while the sheriff fumbled with a clump of keys that Strickland noticed me and raised his eyebrows in surprise just before the sheriff grabbed his elbow and half-shoved him through the doorway. He stumbled on the threshold, and was gone.

  I knew a little bit about the victim from the papers and the talk. She was seventeen years old, an athlete (distance runner, soccer player), a dancer and a prodigious student. She’d been missing for five days before they found her body at Dwayne Strickland’s place. The early speculation was about hard drugs and rape, so it was probably for the best that he had been nowhere to be found at first.

  There were conflicting reports about what happened but the one consistent factor was Strickland. I had avoided the community formalities, the wake especially, which would have been abuzz with speculation and inflamed emotion. Three days before the courthouse incident I’d almost blundered into the funeral, which I’d been determined to avoid, too, given what I knew about the man everyone was blaming for the tragedy. I was probably the only person in the village who didn’t go—the other absentee was Collie Rankin who ran the local store. He saved a daily paper for me and I was on my way to get it when I saw the cars and trucks lining both sides of the road that runs past the ancient sandstone church. The large back door of the hearse was open wide, the undertaker and his helper hovering.

  Collie looked up from a newspaper as I entered. Just inside, on a corkboard festooned with notices of sales and schedules of social functions, there was a photo of the dead girl, Mary Alice Stewart, and a request for contributions to a memorial scholarship fund. She had a smile that revealed both shyness and a sense of mischief.

  “I hear they got young Strickland,” Collie said. “He was at the airport. Making a run for it by the look of things.”

  “I see.”

  “You must remember Strickland.”

  “I was gone from here by his time.”

  “You knew he was adopted …” It must have been the expression on my face—he stopped, then added quickly, “Not that that means anything, Strickland is in a class all by himself.”

  “The papers are in?” I asked.

  “Yes.” He carefully folded the newspaper he’d been reading before handing it to me. “Awful about young Mary Alice.”

  I nodded, paid and left. I could see people trickling out of the church and as I turned my car onto the highway, six men of varying ages, faces all deformed by sorrow and exertion, were carrying the coffin to the hearse.

 
The Mounties, back in their cars, sat for a few moments eyeing the group still standing just outside the lockup door. The men seemed angrier now with the crisis passed. I could hear their voices raised, loudly venting afterthoughts, regrets about what seemed now to have been a moment lost—words unsaid, deeds undone. I turned to leave. Then the grandmother was at my side. Years ago we called her Caddy. She still retained the basics of her youthful prettiness, clear blue eyes, strong cheekbones, but she seemed haggard now, face grim. “I saw the look he gave you,” she said. “How do you know that piece of garbage?”

  “It’s a very long story,” I said.

  I wanted to say more but felt the weight of strangeness. She said: “You haven’t changed much, Tony.”

  “I was devastated when I heard …” I said, embarrassed by the banality but at a loss for anything more meaningful. She didn’t seem to notice. She was looking toward her relatives who were now walking away slowly, still muttering. Then she met my eyes, searching. “We’ll never get over it, you know, something like that. People like that Strickland are ruining the place.”

  “What’s happening here today?”

  “The arraignment,” she said. “I had to get a look at him. Don’t ask me why.”

  “I’ll come and visit,” I said. “When things settle down.”

  “Please do,” she said, touched my hand briefly. She walked away, then stopped as if remembering, turned and smiled. She waved again and disappeared around the corner of the courthouse.

  In those early days of my retirement I found a disproportionate sense of satisfaction in completing little obligations, even paying taxes. Former colleagues who had retired were always telling me how much they had to do. Never been so busy. Not enough hours in the day. A load of crap, as I had learned in the first five months I’d been back here. Days spread out in front of me as vast uncultivated plains. So my expedition to the courthouse had been something to look forward to. The unexpected drama was a bonus.