by Chris Ryan
Sharon came back to the gravel pit shortly after I arrived, found a parking spot, and ran over to Joe’s rig.
“Dutch, what the hell is Kevin Plumber talking about?”
I told her exactly what he had told me.
“Sure, Donna is home asleep.”
I said, “Sharon, I’m not arguing with you. I can only relate the story as it was told to me.”
Sharon shook her head. “Plumber screwed up. That was someone who looks like Donna.”
I kind of laughed to myself. “I guess time will tell,” I said.
“I’m not even going to bother going down the harbour to check on her. I guarantee you, Donna is home asleep.”
“Fine,” I said.
Saturday night in Bay Bulls calls for beer. We pooled our money and someone volunteered to make the first trip to Paddy’s for a few boxes. Sure, we weren’t driving, we were parked. If we ended up having too many it was only a matter of calling someone to come and collect us. We knew the cops had more on their minds than some locals having a few bottles of beer in a cold, dark gravel pit on a Saturday night in December. We doubted there would be any tickets written for drinking in public in Bay Bulls that night.
So there we were at 8:00 p.m., more than eight hours into it and no movement. People were slowly starting to call it a night and head home, but we diehards were there for the long haul. My brother Joe was fine as long as he had a few smokes. I was content with my optics and the odd cigar.
Twelve o’clock rolled around and I decided to pack it in. My back was killing me; I have a bulging disc and a wedged disc from a car accident in 2005 on the Goulds Bypass Road. I asked all hands what time they planned on coming back in the morning. Joe said he had no idea but that he was going to stay for a few more hours. He’s a bit of a night owl. I, on the other hand, need my sleep. My good buddy Jeff O’Driscoll said he’d be back in the pit after his Sunday dinner, if the situation was still going on. Jeff has known Leo all his life and was as worried as Joe and I were about Leo and how the situation was going to end.
I said good night and left.
Chapter 2
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Sunday, December 5
I arrived back at the gravel pit at 6:40 a.m. on Sunday. Early morning for me, especially on a Sunday.
Only two vehicles were there. I was surprised, very surprised. Francie Power was sitting in his pickup truck and there was someone in with him. Lo and behold, it was my brother Joe.
Joe jumped out the second I parked my car in front of Francie’s truck, which was almost the exact same spot I had been in last night. Joe jumped in the car and started talking.
“I had him on the phone! I had him on the phone!”
“What?”
“I had him on the phone!”
“Joe, settle down. Who the fuck did you have on the phone?”
“Leo, b’y. Leo.”
Talk about being confused. “How the fuck did you have Leo on the phone?”
“The RCMP called me at three thirty, at home, and asked me if I would go on a PA system that they had thrown into Leo’s house. To see if Leo would speak with me. They asked if I could meet them at the town hall at five a.m. I said sure. If me talking on a PA system was going to get Leo to come out safely, I would surely give it a try. What wouldn’t you do for a buddy in a situation like this?”
“How did they get a PA system into the house?”
“They threw it through the living room window.”
“You mean they smashed the glass out?”
“Yes.”
“Leo liked that, I bet. He wasn’t in a bad enough mood as it was, and now the cops are beating out his windows.”
“Anyway, Dutch, after I was debriefed at the town hall I was directed to drive to Foodland. Harold Mullowney was there. Harold had been on the PA system, but from what I understand he had no luck getting any kind of reply from Leo. They tried Harold because he’s been a friend of Leo’s most of his life, Leo and all the Crockwells.
“I got in the RCMP cruiser. They quickly went over what I was debriefed on at the town hall. We went over it at least three times.
“I listened, but what the officer said went in one ear and out the other. I’ve known Leo all my life. And here is some cop from St. John’s, more specifically probably a farmer’s son from the prairies—how is he going to tell me what to say to my friend Leo? I listened just to be respectful. Actually, it went in through one ear and out the other. No one has to tell me what to say in most situations, especially this one. I know Leo as well as anyone in Bay Bulls. I wanted to get that mike in my hand so bad. I knew—I would have bet my life on it—that I would get Leo to respond to me.
“The officer brought the cruiser around the corner of the supermarket, the northeast corner to be exact. We could see the window on the far right downstairs of the Crockwells’, our right—the one the PA system was thrown into. We could also see the front door and half of the window on the left.
“I repeated what the police had asked me to say. And repeated it a second time, and for the third time. It never worked, as I expected. The officer said, ‘Joe, the ball is in your corner, say what you want.’
“By this time I was in a bad state. Here was my buddy since childhood corralled in a house with armed police officers everywhere. I may have only slept for an hour during the night. I actually didn’t know if I could repeat what was in my heart. If ever I had to keep it together, now was the time. I was fighting to hold back exactly how I was feeling.
“I said, ‘Leo, I’m sick of being nice. Pick up the phone, Leo. Pick up the phone, Leo. Please pick up the phone. Leo, pick up the fucking phone.’ By this time I was a bag of nerves. I was determined to get him to reply to me. How, I had no idea. But if anyone in Bay Bulls was going to get a reaction out of him, it would be me. I started repeating what I had said earlier. ‘Leo, pick up the phone. Leo, pick up the phone. Leo, pick up the FUCKING phone. Pick up the FUCKING phone. Pick the fucking thing up.’ Then it happened . . . the light in the bottom right room flashed on for a split second, the room with the window beat out. I knew it. I knew he would reply to me. Immediately upon seeing the light, the police officer brushed my hand, a signal to stop talking. Then the officer got on his cruiser radio and said, ‘He is okay. He is okay. He just flashed the light on and off in the room on our right.’
“I was relieved, as was the officer. Because, really, up to that time we did not know if Leo was dead or alive. That simple little flash of the light was worth more to me than if someone had given me a million bucks. I knew then that Leo had survived the initial onslaught of cops and that he would be able to hold his own going forward. Deep down inside I knew Leo would not self-destruct. And most people in the harbour would agree with me. He is too determined and intelligent. But I wondered to myself how the hell was he going to get himself out of this mess. A mess on a massive scale. And getting messier by the hour.”
“Joe, how did the cops know that Leo would reply to you?”
“Well, actually I ran into an officer, up to Paddy’s yesterday afternoon, who I’ve gotten to know over the years. Meeting him at sudden deaths and that, where the police would have to be called. Anyway, we had a quick chat about the situation with Leo. I told him that I was good friends with Leo, and if there was anything that I could do to help the situation in any way to call me, anytime, night or day. I gave him my cell number when I was leaving, just to make double sure he had it. I was kind of thinking that they would call me. The officer asked me many, many questions about Leo.”
“Joe, you have to be beat. You’re on the go over twenty-four hours with a little over an hour or so sleep. You should go home and have a nap. If anything happens, I’ll call you immediately.”
“I’m not going anywhere until Leo is safely out of that house.�
�
“Joe, you could be in for a long haul. You know how determined Leo is. I guess Janet is putting on Sunday dinner?” Janet is Joe’s wife, and she usually has Sunday dinner on the table around noon.
“I don’t know, Dutch.”
“If she does, when you go home to eat, lie down for an hour or so.”
The gravel pit started to come alive. I guess the news of the flashing light was getting people on the move. Guaranteed someone had posted it on Facebook.
I guessed that not many of us Micks or Prods were going to be going to church. Not with that kind of excitement in the harbour. Bay Bulls is 90 per cent Catholic, 10 per cent Protestant. Only two communities on the Southern Shore, Bay Bulls and Aquaforte, have residents who are Protestant.
All the new arrivals wanted to know what had happened overnight and that morning.
Joe filled all hands in on his stint on the phone and how Leo had flashed the lights for a split second for him. This was news, big news. It was the most action since the standoff started. Joe must have repeated the story a dozen times before lunch. He was like a snake-oil salesman, going from vehicle to vehicle, adding on a little here and there as he went. His voice was starting to get hoarse from talking, but that was no big deal. Joe loves to talk. It’s part of his job as the local undertaker. He spends hour after hour in his funeral parlour, talking.
They say he talks more than our father, who started the business way back in 1965. He also loved to talk, in between smoking three to four packs of cigarettes a day, plus chewing a plug of tobacco. He lived to the ripe old age of seventy-seven and could most likely have hit 100 only for the smoking. The doctors said his body was worn out from it. He once told me that he was smoking a pipe at ten and on the cigs full-time by the age of eleven.
David “Lou” Williams from Bread and Cheese arrived. Bread and Cheese is the most easterly area of Bay Bulls, on the north side of the harbour. It’s where the Protestants live. The Protestant Williamses on that side of the harbour are called Lou, an old family nickname. David Lou had his younger brother, Scottie Lou, with him. The late Mike Williams, known as Mickey Dave, one of the Catholic Williamses on the north side, owned the stage where the Smith murder weapon, a sawed-off shotgun, was found in 1984.
David Lou said he couldn’t believe how many police vehicles he’d seen at the town hall on his way to the pit. He also said he saw two police dogs, each in a separate SUV, at the town hall.
Joe said that, during the night, from around 11:30 p.m. onward until he left the pit, he saw many first-response vehicles coming into the community from the direction of St. John’s. They had been riding in like the cavalry, he said. Most stopped at Foodland to have a quick chat with the officers on guard there, mostly officers from Ferryland and Holyrood. Joe figured they were getting directions, since they continued down Cemetery Lane East to the command post at the town hall.
I started scoping the area from the Catholic church to the town hall. It was eleven forty-five and people were leaving the church after Mass. As they passed the town hall, they slowed down to have a look at all the police vehicles in the town hall parking lot. No one had ever seen that many cop cars at the one time in Bay Bulls.
By the time noon rolled around, I realized that there would be many more cars in the pit today than yesterday. Joe and I had the best spots, me in my car, Joe in his SUV. I wasn’t about to lose my spot for the sake of food, so I decided to give my better half a call to ask her to put sandwiches together for Joe and myself and have her ask our sweet daughter, Stacie, to dart them over to us.
Tina said no problem, and she didn’t think Stacie would mind bringing us sandwiches. She said, “I’ll mix two Thermoses of coffee for both of you. Hot coffee may warm you up.” I said thanks, much appreciated.
About twenty minutes after I’d called Tina, she called me back.
“Chris,” she said, “you’re not going to believe this.”
I could hardly understand what she was saying, she was laughing so hard.
She said, “Were you talking to Sharon yet?”
“No. Why?”
“She called, looking for you.”
“Well, what did she want?”
“I can’t tell you. If I tell you, I’ll spoil it. She’ll call you in the next few minutes.”
“Okay, I’ll hang up and wait for her call.”
Tina was right. My phone rang less than a minute after speaking to her. It was Sharon. “Dutch, you’re not going to believe this.”
“Believe what?”
“Kevin Plumber was right.”
“Right about what?” There were so many things going around in my head that the name wasn’t registering.
“Donna’s not home, and her mother said she hasn’t seen her since yesterday. We can’t find her anywhere. So the only place she can be is either in Ferryland or in Holyrood, locked up.”
What a hearty laugh I let out! “Sharon, I told you that she was seen walking up Irish Town Road. I knew Kevin wouldn’t bullshit me over something like that, something so serious. So are you going to call and ask if they have her?”
“We don’t know what to do. I guess we’ll wait for another hour or two and see if they bring her home.”
“I don’t think the police bring you back home after detaining you. I believe you need to be picked up. And I believe someone needs to sign a release.”
“If we don’t hear anything by one o’clock I’ll get on the horn and try to find her.”
“Sharon, I don’t know if they’re allowed to tell anyone if they have someone in custody. Something to do with the new privacy laws.”
“Well, it will be worth a try.”
“Don’t worry too much about her. She’ll surface. She’s tough as nails. But in the meantime, good luck with it. That’s what Donna gets for not doing what the cops told her. I’m sure they lectured her yesterday when they nabbed her by Leo’s house the first time.”
“Dutch, you know what Donna is like. No one is telling her what to do.”
“Well, look what she got for not doing what she was told.”
“Dutch, she’ll only laugh that off. That won’t bother her a bit.”
“Anyway, Sharon, call me the second you find her, will you? I’m kind of hoping that she is locked up. At least then we’ll know she’s safe.”
“Will do. Dutch—sorry, for not believing you yesterday evening.”
“No problem, hon.”
Joe had gotten the gist of my conversation with Sharon. “Too bad we never got to her before the cops nabbed her. I knew she was locked up last night. Sure, she wouldn’t have slept all day and all evening. If she was home she would have been up here with us. You know what, Dutch? If this goes on much longer they’ll have to lock Donna up. You and I know how determined she is.”
“Yes, much like her cousin.”
Stacie arrived at around 1:00 p.m. Ham and turkey breast with lettuce and tomatoes, and baby tomatoes on the side. I love tomatoes. And the coffee, as promised. The boys hanging around the SUV said, “Dutch, she got you spoiled rotten.”
“You’ll have to get a woman from Witless Bay,” I told them. “The best women on the Shore.”
There were two-thirds more police cars than the day before, and an ambulance on standby. Not your typical ambulance, but a big cube-van type like the fire departments use. Ambulances, which belong to Eastern Health, run around $175 an hour. I started to realize that this standoff could get very expensive.
They put two police vehicles on O’Driscoll Place, on the northeast side of Leo’s, close to Sharon O’Driscoll’s house. One was a grey Chevrolet car, the other was a dark blue Chevrolet Suburban. Each vehicle had two officers in it.
At around eight o’clock, Joe told me to put my scope on the Pinch. The Pinch is the big hill you see coming into Bay Bu
lls from Goulds. It’s roughly 115 metres above sea level.
“Why do you want me to scope it?” I asked.
“There’s a very large truck coming down the Pinch,” Joe said.
The vehicle that Joe told me to scope was indeed large, with a lot of lights on it. I said, “Joe, that looks like one of those police trucks that they use as a command post in situations like this. I’ve never seen one in operation in real life, but I’ve seen them used many times on CSI.”
I kept my scope on it. Joe used the binoculars. The vehicle slowed down and went into Foodland’s parking lot.
“Joe,” I said, “this is heavy duty. They don’t take vehicles like that to police or crime scenes unless they expect the situation to last for an extended length of time.”
“What do you think they’ll do with it?” Joe asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Where do you expect them to set it up?”
“Good question. I don’t know. I’m thinking at Foodland or at the town hall.”
We kept focused on it, watching its every move. As soon as it stopped at Foodland, police officers entered for a short time. The rumour in the pit was that there were between thirty-five and forty cops on duty in Bay Bulls. That was a large number, considering that the RCMP detachment for all of Ferryland district, which stretches approximately 100 kilometres, from Bay Bulls in the north to Cappahayden in the south, covering roughly fourteen communities, has only six officers.
We continued to think aloud about where they would set the vehicle up. I said that I thought the town hall was the best place to park it, since that seemed to be the place with the most action. Joe disagreed with me; he thought Foodland was the best spot since it was closest to the Crockwell house. I said, “Joe, it’s a communication centre, not a tank.”
Within twenty minutes the huge truck started rolling again. It turned left when it exited Foodland, crossed the bridge, and hung a left, heading for the town hall. When it arrived, it backed into the northeast corner of the parking lot. It sprouted more lights, and we could see two men crawling on the ground, setting up jacks on each of its four corners. Two other men climbed on top of the truck. One was working on what looked like an old 1970s TV antenna. The other was setting up one of two dishes, much like the ones used for satellite TV. The second piece of equipment looked modern compared to the first one. One of the men got off the top of the truck and started to unroll what looked like a heavy-duty extension cord from the truck to the town hall.
