Death's Shadow

by Jon Wells

  His new family made the trip in his new stepmother’s car: an orange Buick. Everything had instantly changed. At least the uncertain road ahead would be travelled in a 1967 Skylark.

  At Art’s suggestion his dad applied for a job managing a big hog farm near Winnipeg. In 1974 he landed the position, which came with a large but run-down house on the property, where the family settled. Everyone pitched in to fix up the place. Art worked hard on the farm, loaded feed mixed with water that was piped into a series of pig barns, shovelled manure. He developed an allergic reaction to pig hair; it made his skin flake, and his hands would sometimes crack and bleed. Kids at school teased him. It didn’t help that when you work on a pig farm, the smell stayed with you.

  “I can smell Art coming now,” the kids would say.

  He rolled with it, laughed it off.

  Art had moved a couple of thousand kilometres from home, left his mother and sisters behind in Hamilton, and now worked hard, labouring when not in school — at a job that caused others to mock him. He had plenty of fodder for bitterness, but Art’s genial manner did not change from the carefree days in the Caledonia countryside.

  Art was no saint; he got in hot water with a buddy when they were caught with beer at a sleepover after a high-school dance. He cursed when things went bad, would toss in a four-letter word here and there, especially when he tooled away on a car in the garage. But no one ever saw him get truly angry. Art had more patience than most, and could fit in with most situations, was good at talking to people.

  Cars continued to be his first love through high school. He’d always been creative, and faded muscle cars in need of restoration became his canvas. Shiny new chrome, hot paint job, an engine resurrected to its former growl — cars took Art wherever he needed to go. He socked away cash working on the farm and bought Esther’s 1967 Skylark, fixed it, and painted it a rust colour.

  He worked on other cars with his friends, Paul Willems and Dave Newman. All three lived on farms within a few kilometres of one another, near a town called Dugald. When they went out, Art always drove — to a party, the roller rink, hanging at Juniors Restaurant in downtown Winnipeg. They cruised Portage Avenue on a Sunday summer’s night — a Winnipeg tradition — alongside other souped-up hot rods on display, on occasion opening up the Skylark for an impromptu drag race.

  Art’s new brother, Darren, came to see him as both a father figure and big brother. Darren never did see eye-to-eye with his stepdad, Neil. He came to wonder if he was perhaps baggage in Neil’s life. For Art’s dad there was a right and wrong way to do everything, whether it was table manners or anything else. Art got into arguments with his dad, too, but it never seemed to get too intense. It was different with Darren, who had a more rebellious spirit.

  Art always let Darren hang at the garage at Paul’s place when they worked on a car. He invited Darren and sister, Cheryl, along when he drove into town — not because his parents told him to, but because he wanted to. He took them to see movies — Star Wars, The Jungle Book. In 1978 Art and Paul snuck Darren into American Hot Wax, a 1950s nostalgia flick. He took them to Grand Beach on Lake Winnipeg, 70 kilometres north of the city, billed as one of the best inland beaches in the world. They swam, threw the Frisbee and football around with Art’s buddies. Years later Darren wondered why on earth Art had let his little brother and sister hang with him. But Darren loved every minute of it. Art was cool, smart, and responsible. He was all that.

  Around 1980 the family left the hog farm and moved into Winnipeg; Neil had suffered a heart attack and got a new job at a city feed mill. Art went to high school in the day, worked at night at a fish processing plant, saving his money for a car and a trip east he had long been planning. Art and Darren had their own rooms on the farm, but in the city they now shared bunk beds. That meant Darren grew up listening to Art’s music. His big brother owned a stereo, a lumbering wooden console where the lid opened to reveal the radio and turntable. Art played classic rock: Eagles, Elton John, Triumph. He spun the Boston hit “More Than a Feeling” all the time:

  It’s more than a feeling, when I hear that old song they used to play

  I begin dreaming

  Till I see Marianne walking away

  As soon as Art graduated high school, he said he was heading back east to Ontario. When Darren heard Art was leaving, he was heartbroken; he’d had no inkling that Art wanted to return to Hamilton, or that he was leaving for good. Art hadn’t even finished the 1970 Buick GSX he had been refurbishing at Paul’s garage. He never talked much about his reasons for going. Darren was bitter, but not with his brother. He believed he may have left in part because Art wasn’t getting along with Neil. Art’s stepmother, Esther, believed he just wanted to start fresh, wanted to find a job in southern Ontario. Neil said nothing to try to stop Art from doing what he felt was best, and he was of a generation that did not tend to emote. He loved his son and it hurt to see him go, but he was also not the type to express those feelings. After Art left, Darren’s arguments with his stepfather grew worse. He started to rebel, skipping school. What was going to happen to Darren with Art gone?

  — 4 —

  Cut and Run

  Saturday, January 15, 2005

  Central Station Lockup

  1:00 a.m.

  Hamilton forensic detective Annette Huys observed the suspect through the window in the cell door. Kyro Sparks had followed directions to remove his footwear — a pair of Timberland hiking-style boots, she noted — and belt, as well as a hooded sweater. Huys noticed what looked like blood on the Timberlands.

  She confirmed the hunch later, applying a Hemastix strip to the boots to test for blood. The result came up positive — whose blood it was was another question, though. Huys (pronounced Huze) opened the cell door, introduced herself. Kyro Sparks was wearing socks, a shirt, and baggy blue pants. She said they needed him to remove his clothes. He would be issued a jumpsuit to wear.

  “You’re not getting anything,” he said.

  Huys asked again.

  “Fuck you, bitch,” he replied, and moved toward her. She closed the cell door.

  “We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” she said through the door.

  She was tired and didn’t need this. The evening had been a long one for Huys. She had met senior ident man Gary Zwicker at Hamilton General Hospital earlier that evening. After getting called to work the O’Grady’s homicide, they reported to the ER. On a bed in the trauma suite, they had viewed the body and taken photos. Then, they had bagged the victim’s hands to preserve potential forensic evidence — perhaps he scratched one of the killers in the struggle, had skin or blood under his nails — gently tying sterile paper bags around each hand with string to protect them. After returning to Central Station, Huys had stored the victim’s clothes in an evidence locker and headed to the holding cells. There she met with Shane Groombridge and other officers outside Kyro Sparks’s cell.

  She again asked Kyro Sparks for his clothes. He refused again. This was not going to go well. He was over six feet tall, and Huys, who was five foot four, was taken aback by his anger. The metal grills on his teeth added to his intimidating appearance.

  “You can’t do anything to me. Why don’t you Tase me?” Sparks said. “Go ahead, bitch.”

  “I don’t think I’d want to be getting Tasered with all that metal in your mouth,” Huys said through the closed window on the door.

  She’d never met a suspect so combative. There had been a suspect who, just before Huys had photographed his hands, had punched a wall with each fist, as though trying to destroy his knuckles and alter forensic evidence. Crazy. But Sparks was off the charts.

  Huys had started with Hamilton police in 1997. Before that she had worked for the Ontario Provincial Police as a civilian monitor of wire taps in intelligence investigations. Odd hours, shift work, and there were times she had to listen to everything going on in a household. Such an invasion of privacy, hearing them with their partners — everything. She had heard
many things that she never wanted to hear, but that was the job. She started with ident in January 2003, the department’s first female detective. They teased her; she was tagged “forensic Barbie” and given a toy doll. She played right along, kept the Barbie doll in the locker given to her, accessorized with a lab coat and gun belt.

  Kyro Sparks continued shouting through the cell, spitting on the door. Huys told Groombridge she needed help to get the clothes. Groombridge, along with several others, including officer Ben Adams, opened the door and walked in.

  “We need your clothes for evidence,” Groombridge said.

  “Fuck you. Are you going to Tase me? Go ahead. Tase me. I’ve been shot, survived a bullet to the head; I can survive this. You’re going to have to take them from me.”

  They left the cell. Minutes later, an officer arrived with a Taser, a rod that sends a type of electrical shock called a dry stun. Sparks pointed at a line on the floor marking the threshold separating the cell from the hallway.

  “I bet if I cross that line you’ll Tase me.”

  The officer tried to calm him down again. Sparks continued moving toward the line and the open door.

  He was almost out the door when five officers wrestled him to the ground. He kept struggling; his strength was impressive. The Taser was applied, and with the electricity rippling through his nervous system, the silver grills popped out of his mouth and clinked onto the jail floor. Blood became visible in his mouth; perhaps it had been cut by the mouthpiece.

  Tasering is painful; it is used to temporarily immobilize the muscles of someone. It worked on Sparks, or so it seemed. Thinking that Sparks had been immobilized, the officers started removing his clothes. Remarkably, he resumed the fight. It is rare for a suspect to continue to fight after being Tasered. He was shocked again, and his body went limp. The clothes were finally removed, revealing the fact that Kyro Sparks wore long underwear from the waist down.

  At 3:30 a.m. Detective Mike Maloney finished his first interview with Brenda Rozendal. It had lasted an hour. He asked her about Art, his personality, and whether anyone would want to hurt him. There was another person sitting in on the interview as well. He was required to be there, because, in fact, he had been at O’Grady’s Roadhouse, too. It was Art’s eldest son, Neil. Maloney asked him about what he had seen at O’Grady’s.

  Maloney left the quiet room to meet with Kyro Sparks downstairs. He had news for his suspect. The initial charge had been assault. Maloney now wanted to tell him that he might well be charged with murder. But before he made it down to the cells, Maloney received an update: Kyro Sparks had been combative in his cell. He had been Tasered. Maloney’s mouth dropped. Tasered? Now I’ll never get a statement from the guy, he thought. And even if Sparks did talk, how would it ever stand up in court? Maloney headed for the lockup, fuming. He knew the uniform guys had a job to do, and that Sparks had been out of control, but in a homicide investigation it was crucial to always be mindful that anything said or done might be used in court. He could all but hear the judge now: “Yes, Mr. Sparks, did the officers treat you properly, fairly in custody? And you gave this statement of your own free will?”

  At the cell an officer checked on Sparks.

  “What, punk-ass?” Sparks barked at the uniform, and spat at the door. He had managed to move his cuffed hands from behind his back to his front by stepping through the loop. He was doing push-ups on the floor.

  Maloney arrived outside the closed cell door along with Detective Peter Abi-Rashed. Maloney was the lead investigator in the case; Abi-Rashed, the case manager.

  “Do you want to talk?” Abi-Rashed said through the closed window of the cell.

  “About what?” Kyro Sparks replied.

  Maloney opened the cell door and entered. “My name is Detective Mike Maloney. I need to tell you about your change in jeopardy. You were brought in for assault. It is now murder.”

  “What murder?”

  “The guy you assaulted.”

  “What guy, what murder — this is bullshit.”

  “The guy you assaulted died.”

  “What guy? I don’t know about no guy and no murder.”

  Maloney left and retrieved a phone for Kyro Sparks to speak to a legal aid lawyer in private. He returned at 5:00 a.m.

  “My lawyer told me not to say anything,” Sparks said.

  “You don’t have to say anything,” Maloney replied.

  “I’ve been treated like an animal here.”

  “I’ve been told that apparently you acted inappropriately earlier. What were you doing in the neighbourhood where you were arrested?”

  “Give me a cigarette and I’ll tell you where I was from morning ’til night.”

  “We don’t have any cigarettes. Where did the blood on your shoes come from?”

  “It’s my blood. From two or three months ago. Can’t get it out.”

  Maloney asked if he would come to a room to talk on video. “Or would you rather go back to the cells?”

  “What do you think?”

  “Do you want to speak on video?”

  “No way.”

  At 8:00 a.m. Maloney drove home. His wife and kids were still asleep. With some cases Maloney would crack a lite beer after a long shift, sit back, and unwind before turning in. But with this one, he knew, as the primary investigator, he’d be going right back to the office, so it was straight to bed. Four hours later he was back on the case, organizing a photo lineup with Kyro Sparks in it.

  That evening Maloney drove up the Mountain for his first look at the crime scene. Annette Huys and Gary Zwicker were processing the area inside O’Grady’s. They gave Maloney a walk-through of where Art Rozendal had died. Maloney had no idea that, just a couple of blocks away, the second of the killers was making a run for it

  On Saturday afternoon Kyro Sparks was still sitting in his cell downtown; at the same time, Cory McLeod was in an apartment just a couple of blocks up the street from O’Grady’s Roadhouse. All day Cory had tried to track down Kyro. No answer on his cell phone. Didn’t make sense. Where could he be? They were both from out of town: Kitchener. Kyro had a cousin in Hamilton, but the cousin hadn’t seen him. Kyro’s girlfriend, Katrina McLennan, a student at Mohawk College in Hamilton, didn’t know where he was, either.

  Cory sat in Katrina’s apartment. Her friend, Sherri Foreman, was Cory’s girlfriend, and often stayed in the same apartment. Nobody had seen Kyro since the night before, Friday, when all four of them had been in the apartment moments after the incident at O’Grady’s. Cory had urged Kyro not to leave the apartment. Cops would be looking for them everywhere. Kyro was angry, though. He and Cory had been arguing over stuff all night, so he took off.

  Saturday afternoon the local dinner hour news came on TV. The lead story was about a murder. It showed a picture of O’Grady’s. Cory’s attention perked up. A mug shot photo flashed on the screen. It was Kyro. Cory felt his mind spin. The TV reporter said Hamilton police had one man in custody: Kyro Jarreau Sparks, 23, of Kitchener. Police were looking for at least one other man in connection with the murder.

  The victim’s name was Arthur Rozendal. Cory watched the video cut to the home of the victim; a teenage boy crying. It was one of Arthur Rozendal’s sons: Jordan, 15. The boy was on TV, in tears, asking why someone would do this to his dad.

  Cory stared at the screen. Someone? Him. It was him. Kyro and Cory had beaten on that guy in the bar. The guy had never even got a punch in, Cory reflected.

  Cory decided that he wasn’t sticking around any longer. He was on his feet, out the door, and entered a convenience store close by, one he’d often used while staying at the apartment. He picked up the payphone and called a cab. He’d just got off the phone when someone walked in, a man dressed in business clothes. Looked like an official visit. A cop? The guy started putting questions to the guy behind the counter. He had to be a plainclothes cop.

  So, Cory was thinking: okay, he’s asking about us. Cory had been in the store many times, for food,
or picking up Century Sams — a type of cigar he used to roll joints. Now, here was this cop asking this Chinaman behind the counter if he’d seen any black faces in there. And I’m right here, Cory thought. His mind raced. He was getting ready to cut and run. No, he thought. Stay put. Wait. The cop finished talking to the guy behind the counter and left. Too close. Minutes later, the cab pulled out front, took Cory downtown to the bus station.

  On the Greyhound back to Kitchener, Cory McLeod kept replaying the night. Okay. They’d had some drinks. Played some pool. Then the fight. What did the cops have? What had he left behind? His drinking glass on the table? He felt for his neck chain, the one that had dog tags attached. They have my fucking chain. At least his name wasn’t on the dog tags, or even his initials. The inscription was just his nickname: Daymein P. Even if they found something, DNA somewhere, he figured that it would take a long time to come up with his name, find him, and arrest him. The plan: Take care of business in Kitchener and leave the country. By the time they came looking for him, he would be gone.

  — 5 —

  Intersection

  Cory McLeod’s relatives were originally from Jamaica, a place where, Cory had heard, several members of his extended family did time in jail — for what, he wasn’t sure. He was born in 1985, and knew his biological father, although he didn’t remember him being around much. As Cory reached his teens, they had built more of a rapport. His father worked as a Waterloo police officer, and later was a school board trustee in Kitchener. He lived at his grandmother’s; in fact a lot of his family stayed in the house.

  His mother, Kathy, wanted to make a better life for her kids. She joined the Canadian military and moved the family to Halifax when he was nine, after she had separated from Cory’s stepfather. In Halifax Cory got into drug dealing and stealing with his friends. One day he robbed an older man, who was a dealer. The guy was well respected —feared, really — in the community. After the robbery the guy sent a pack of guys after Cory; they messed him up pretty good, beat on him with steel pipes. He ended up in the hospital for a week.