At about noon Corporal Randy Cohen from Halifax IDENT arrived. Sterling Corporal François Jacques, the NCO IC, introduced us. “Linda, can you take Randy to the scene?” François squeezed my arm in a friendly gesture. “Then I’d like you to accompany the body to the morgue in Sterling. The coroner says we need an autopsy. Plan on taking the body down to Halifax on Monday.”
“Thanks.” I was relieved to be back in the game. So far, in my two weeks on the job, François was the only male at the detachment who was friendly without sexual overtones. Maybe he was more sensitive to the discrimination I faced because his family originally came from Haiti. He was the only “visible minority” in the detachment and Karen and I were the only women, except for two civilians.
I guided Randy through the woods to Rex’s corpse. Randy set down his suitcase and shook Will’s hand. They obviously knew each other. When they made no effort to include me in the conversation I debated whether to barge in.
Finally, Randy turned to me. “We’ll need about an hour. Then have the body removal people come in.”
Randy took a little voice recorder out of his vest. He recorded his observations about the stiffness of the body, the wound, and the state of the congealed blood. He put on protective gloves and nudged the body in several places. Then he brushed some of the snow aside to examine the blood splatter patterns. Will took photographs. The two men worked closely, almost wordlessly. With a pair of tweezers Randy picked up a cigarette butt, slipped it into a plastic envelope, and handed it to Will.
After a few more minutes Randy stood up and pointed through a grove of alders.
“I’d say the shot came from that direction. Came in at this angle, from fairly close range.” Using his own body as an example he gestured to where the slug had hit Rex’s torso.
“Not a hunting accident,” I said.
“No. Whoever shot him had a pretty clear line of sight from over there.” Randy pointed in the direction he thought the bullet had come from, took a roll of yellow tape out of his briefcase, and asked me to tape off the area where the shooter had supposedly aimed at Rex.
I cut through the brush and found a parallel path less than twenty feet away. I taped off the area, being careful to stay off the path in case there were footprints or other evidence under the snow. After a few minutes of tough slogging through the bush I came to a clearing where Bob was keeping a dozen or so people from tromping on either path.
Behind police tape stood a shack the size of a garden shed, its door gaping open. I poked my head inside and saw a rusted wood stove, a mattress covered with dingy sheets and ratty-looking blankets, stacks of clothes and a metal pail. Clothes hung from several spikes jutting from the wall. Some of the clothes would fit a girl about six or seven.
I glanced at Bob who was unwrapping a peppermint LifeSaver.
“Who lives here?” I asked.
“Cindy Dare. Don’t touch anything.”
I squirmed through the brush back to Will and Randy who told me to tell the body removal people to come in. I jogged to the church where I met two attendants from a local funeral home. They followed me to the crime scene with a stretcher. As Randy zipped Rex’s corpse into a body bag I wrote my observations in my notebook.
The crowd at the church became increasingly agitated as the blue body bag strapped to the stretcher came into view. Using my shoulders and my baton to keep people away I made room for the attendants to load Rex’s corpse into the van. Inside, one of the attendants unzipped the bag. In my notebook I recorded the date, time, my name, and that the body was indeed Reginald “Rex” Dare. His gaping mouth, bloodstained yellow teeth, and dull half-closed eyes left a mental image long after the zipper closed over his face. I rode with the body to the morgue in the basement of Sterling Hospital.
Under the dim fluorescent lights of the small refrigerated room the attendants slid Rex’s body bag into one of the few metal drawers along the inside wall, locked him in, and gave me the only key. The room seemed to get darker. I shook off a sense of dread.
After leaving the hospital I stopped by the detachment, showered and changed, then filled out the paperwork. At the copier I made extra copies of my notebook pages and left them on Will’s desk for the Rex Dare file.
My trip to Halifax with the body would also include several interviews with people who could tell me more about David Jordan. I made several long distance calls to line things up.
Then I asked Debbie and Maureen, the civilians who handled the clerical work, to give me the number for Rex Dare’s sex abuse file. I found a box of files in the file room and signed it out for the weekend.
With the box on the front seat I drove down the hill toward Sterling’s waterfront commercial area and headed for the Crown prosecutor’s office. I left the blight of the strip malls surrounding the detachment for the white, yellow, and grey clapboard houses studding the hillside overlooking the harbour.
Old wooden buildings with grey weathered shingles lined the downtown business district along the waterfront. On the harbour side they sat on pilings over the water. Though some owners had renovated with vinyl siding or fake bricks, most of the street retained its historic charm. Bright green, red, and blue fishing boats bobbed along the public wharf, riding the high tide.
I parked in front of an office on the harbour side, walked in, and asked a chubby girl in her early twenties, who appeared to be the receptionist, for the Crown prosecutor, Michael Ross. A handsome large-headed man about my height came out to meet me. So this is Catherine’s ex-husband and Grace’s dad. I could see where Grace got her periwinkle blue eyes. I extended my hand and introduced myself.
He clasped my hand with both of his. “My daughter is quite smitten with you. The Mountie next door.”
I withdrew my hand. “I need to borrow the transcripts and files from the Rex Dare case.”
“You’re not trying to resurrect that mess, are you?”
“No. The mess is past resurrecting. Rex is dead.”
“I heard.” Michael shook his big head in mock seriousness. “The king is dead,” he smirked as if enjoying some secret irony. “Murder?”
“Looks like it. Someone shot him.”
“And I’ll no doubt have to prosecute the hero who did us the grand deed.” He smiled again, his blue eyes crinkling. “Just kidding. You didn’t hear me say that.”
While the receptionist gathered two generous cardboard boxes full of papers and a few videos I used her phone to call David Jordan. No answer at the church, so I tried Anne at the Cornwallis Cove parsonage. She told me David had left the previous afternoon to visit his children at his ex-wife’s. She gave me Barbara Jordan’s number in Halifax, and I asked her to have David call me at the detachment.
Arriving at my farmhouse with the boxes of evidence I retrieved the mail from the mailbox at the end of the laneway. When I got out of my Jeep by the back door the wind felt mild and damp and smelled of rotting leaves. Water dripped from the eavestroughs and the moon shone between patches of cloud. I glanced next door, but the lights were off at Catherine’s house.
Once inside my kitchen I leafed through the mail. Flyers. A few bills. A coral-coloured envelope addressed in familiar artsy handwriting. Veronica. The sight of my stepmother’s letter annoyed me. What could she possibly want now? I threw the mail unopened on the kitchen table. Dad had died a year ago. I no longer had to pretend to like her.
Because I’d missed my morning routine again, I changed into sweats and headed for the living room where the freshly sanded floors made an ideal workout surface. The room still had no furniture except for a reclining chair, a TV, and a set of free weights. I turned on the TV and began to stretch. My father had had a similar ritual. He used to work out early in the morning or before supper in our spare bedroom back in Boston.
Afterward I took a hot shower. Thanks to the new pump I’d installed the water beat against