Chapter Six
A horn bleeped in the parking lot…
A horn bleeped in the parking lot, as truck headlights swept across the interior of the doughnut shop. The hunters stood in a disorganized gaggle and shuffled out with the remains of their coffees, McCabe carrying an extra one for their buddy in the truck.
Just then Shirley beckoned to the cops to get their orders, and Gagnon became aware of them. Shoulders slumping perceptibly, he avoided eye contact and tried to ignore the cops as best he could. Removing his coat, he slung it over the back of a chair and was soon gratefully chomping down his cheeseburger. The coffee was good enough to rate a second. Twenty minutes later the cops exited the side door and Shirley came out from behind the counter to mop up their table and remove the plates and cups. Something about the aura emanating from the fellow caused her to avoid conversation. Gagnon was hunched over a day-old newspaper, perusing the want ads and obviously not wanting to talk. People drifted out in ones and twos. Finally he looked up. By this time they were the only ones in the shop.
“Where is King George Street?”
“Half a kilometre that way.” Shirley pointed to her left and down the street in the direction of the nearest intersection.
If you stood in the corner and peered past the next building, you could see the traffic lights. Jean buttoned up his coat carefully and one-handedly carried his pack out the door.
He hadn’t gotten too far, perhaps halfway to the intersection he sought, when he noticed the cop car sitting in a quiet residential side street, just as the headlights came on and the car started up. As he was walking past the end of the street, the shadows indicated the cop car was behind him, but he kept walking without looking around. The cops were behaving true to form for small-town police, familiar enough with local personalities, but curious about strangers, who were often perceived as unknown threats. He was headed north-east, he figured. Downtown was that way.
Sure enough, the car surged up beside him, stopped, and the pair of officers got out.
Jean stopped and waited patiently, wondering what kind of hassle they would give him.
“What brings you to Scudmore?” This was the younger constable.
Neither wore a name-tag, a recent development in Ontario, affected as much as anywhere else by the nine-eleven Al Qaeda attacks and resulting paranoia on the part of officialdom.
“There’s not much work around, locally.” The Sergeant spoke helpfully, but Jean knew he wasn’t trying to be helpful.
That was his assumption.
It was a gentle hint, perhaps even a warning. They asked to see his identification.
“We have a by-law against vagrancy.” The young cop’s pale hazel eyes looked Jean over carefully.
Jean nodded his understanding.
With the resentments he was carrying, it was best to keep conversation short and sweet.
“We don’t make problems unnecessarily.” The sergeant, noted that Gagnon had some money in his wallet, and didn’t really have the look of a totally homeless fellow.
While the constable engaged him in conversation, asking simple questions designed to get some kind of impression, better yet, a reaction, the sergeant went back to the car. The younger constable could endure the minus twenty-five degree temperature while he punched the name into the computer. He read the data quickly. The only thing on his record was an armed robbery, almost eight years ago. No other charges before or since. The sergeant couldn’t think of any recent unsolved crimes involving a person of this description.
“Can you tell me where the post office is?” Jean asked the constable.
“Just keep heading this way, another two or three kilometres. You can’t miss it.”
The sergeant moseyed back, and asked Gagnon to put his backpack on the hood of the vehicle. With a sigh, but with no argument or commentary, the man complied. A thorough pat-down and a search of the bag revealed no weapons or illicit drugs, no alcohol or expensive property that might have been stolen. They had to let the man go about his business.
“Can we call you a cab?” The sergeant asked just to see what he would say.
“Sure.”
“It sure is cold tonight.” The constable tried to take the sting off the treatment they had meted out to a perfect stranger.
Jean nodded, and tried not to let it get to him. If they had any idea of how much he hated them, it would just make it worse, and he didn’t want to give them the satisfaction.
Within two or three minutes a taxi arrived. In winter, on a Tuesday night, there wasn’t much business to be had. Gagnon climbed in and pulled out a ten-dollar bill.
He handed it over to establish trust.
“Where is the library?”
“Is that where you want to go?” The cabbie put it in drive. “It’s down across from the Post Office.”
As the car moved off, Gagnon watched the cop car do a U-turn and go the other way.
“Actually, I want to go to twenty-one-forty-eight River Road,” he said. “How far is that?”
With a curious look, the driver turned into a small shopping mall parking lot and went across it, then out the other side.
“It’s kind of out of town, out this way.”
“Oh, my, God. Is it ever cold.”
“You ain’t seen nothing yet,” advised the driver. “And not too much snow so far this year, what with all the global warming, and everything.”
Jean Gagnon tried not to grimace where the driver could see it in the mirror. The last thing he wanted was to talk. The swish of tires on slushy pavement alternated with the quieter sounds of tires on packed snow and the occasional lurch of wheels hitting patches of black ice. Yellow-glaring highlights spilled across the dashboard and interior of the vehicle as the radio nattered softly. That most contradictory of music forms, French Canadian country music was playing. After a half dozen turns, the cabbie turned off a sort-of main road onto another street. This one had no sidewalks. The houses were set well back from the road. Small, working class homes and storefronts had transformed into stately mansions and low, ranch-style houses with large conifers and professional landscaped yards, apparent despite the blotchy snow cover.
Flat, well-plowed driveways curved back to two and three-car garages. Lit windows with curtains open to reveal gleaming dining room chandeliers attested to the fact that the denizens of this place weren’t shy about displaying their prosperity. Socially, it was a study in contrast compared to the tightly-shut curtains of the working class, where more usually a blue glow around the edges was the only clue to occupancy. Nestled in amongst a row of Victorian two and three-story homes, Gagnon saw a small single-story brick house of a similar period, although the technical name of the style eluded him. The cab pulled up a hundred feet further along, as Jean squinted at the house numbers, some of which were not well-lit or non-existent.
“I think you’ve gone past. No big deal.”
The fare of fourteen dollars seemed very high to a man in his position, especially as he had gotten used to walking everywhere he needed to go. A dollar tip would have to suffice.
***
After several calls for assistance, mostly routine, the sergeant had Ricketts drive him back to the station. The rest of the night would be taken up by report-writing and checking on the nightly crop of the usual suspects. It was good to get out on the street once in a while, and taking a few risks made the job of leadership more credible.
The most disturbing incident of the night was an assault on a group-home counselor, who lived in, taking a turn every three nights. The man had been assaulted by an adult with a cognitive disability, and the sergeant had some reservations about the case. With all the reports of child molesters and sexual abuse in the media these days, you couldn’t be too careful. Something else was bugging the sergeant. His subconscious mind kept returning to the non-descript stranger they picked up after their break. The sergeant tapped the name into the desk computer again and scrolled down through everything the system knew about the individual in question. Upon further scrutiny, the sergeant didn’t like what he saw. Apparently Gagnon had been convicted of the armed robbery of a bank, and had refused to rat off his accomplices, who remained unknown and at large. With a large sum of money involved, and no admission of guilt, Gagnon had been handed a stiff sentence. With no statement of remorse, and a denial of mental illness—most perps grabbed onto the mental health tag with hopes of leniency and a reduced sentence, Gagnon didn’t fit the usual profile. While the men and women under his command used their cell phones on duty for most things, this was a long-distance call, and in the middle of the night he might not get the answers he wanted. It couldn’t hurt to try, so he grabbed the desk phone and began dialing. His luck was good. The dispatcher in Ottawa informed him that Griffin was in.
“Hey. You old stick in the mud.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Cournoyer grinned, and the pair exchanged family news for a couple of minutes before getting down to the business at hand.
Cournoyer could imagine his old buddy Sergeant Griffin making a few quick notes as they went.
“Okay. “ Griffin was a good sort. “I’ll make a call over to Corrections, and then get back to you before shift change.”
It was the middle of the night, but law enforcement never slept.
Sergeant Cournoyer got busy with paper work, one ear tuned to the incessant buzz and murmur of officers coming and going, and the other ear turned to the quiet, professional voice of his dispatcher. The time passed well enough, and then his phone lit up again. He reached for it and cradled it between head and shoulder as he finished up a sentence or two on the document. At this time of night, dull, drab routine rendered you only half alert.
“Yes?”
“Well. You’ve got yourself a real winner this time.” His one-time partner said this with a trace of humour. “Mister Jean Gagnon graduated from a local high school. He enlisted in the Canadian Forces, and was trained as a sniper. He won several competitions, and spent some time in the Arctic training the Canadian Rangers, that’s like an Eskimo militia. Gagnon was decorated for courage under fire in Afghanistan. No priors and no real history of mental illness, in spite of the usual bullshit at the trial. I’ve often wondered what’s with these Crown Attorneys.”
Sergeant Cournoyer nodded as he jotted notes. He’d asked the same question once or twice himself. The snot-nosed kids who took those jobs were looking for easy convictions and not worrying too much about the soft sentences handed out. Deals, deals and more deals, a quid pro quo and a tit for a tat. One for me and two for you. Golf next Wednesday?
“What else?”
“Money never recovered, jailhouse informants didn’t get a damned thing out of him.” Griffin snorted. “It wasn’t my case, but I get the impression that Gagnon is one tough cookie.”
“Okay.”
“I’m serious.” Griffin was insistent. “Usually the amateurs are only too anxious to brag about their exploits. This guy just kept his mouth shut and didn’t open up to anyone.”
“Anything else?”
“Accomplices, he might have had more than one, were never caught. No names came up. We have no suspects. No known associations. Sooner or later he has to try and recover the money. Other than that, this guy is a thoroughly dangerous man, trained in small arms and unarmed physical combat. There may have been a third party, a driver.”
“Okay.”
“Let me know if you get anything. And if there’s anything else you need.”
“What about the psychological angle?” Cournoyer’s pen scratched away…
“Oh, it’s just the usual bullshit, the shrinks trying to earn their pay. They can’t admit that not everyone presented to them has a problem. It’s the old we are all a product of our environment bullshit. I figure he’s not mal-adjusted, he’s a fuckin’ professional.”
“What’s your opinion?”
“If he really did it, he’s one tough son of a bitch. If not, he’s got one hell of a grudge.”
With a half a million at stake, Cournoyer didn’t like it, and his instincts were usually pretty good.
Griffin read off a few more details while his own mind wandered a bit. Something he had read in the paper the other day came to mind. He had looked up post-traumatic stress disorder and didn’t like what he saw. Visions of Sylvester Stallone in the movie First Blood occupied him for a moment. If Gagnon was guilty, then he should be watched very carefully. If he was innocent, which bleeding hearts calculated at about a ten percent probability, it would be unwise to push him too hard. With no parole, no probation, no known bad habits, there wasn’t much pressure they could bring to bear without entailing undue risks.
“Sergeant?” A very patient Griffin.
“I’ll get back to you.”
“We’re going ice fishing on the weekend.”
“Yeah, yeah. I’ll get back to you.” Cournoyer thought about ice-fishing, but he hadn’t been in years.
That would have to do for now. He got a thick pad and began making other notes, listing other questions. The other shifts would have to know about this, and you wanted to be careful about what you said. First things first. Mister Gagnon was one hundred ninety centimetres, and about ninety kilograms, with brown hair and brown eyes. He was thirty-four years old, and wore a moustache. The gentleman had no visible scars, no known tattoos, no known criminal or gang affiliations. Other than the one conviction for armed robbery, a CIBC branch in Ottawa, flush with cash on a Thursday night, he had no criminal history. He had done his time and paid his debt to society, whatever that meant these days. It occurred to the Sergeant that they had forgotten to ask what he was doing in town.
They just assumed the man was a drifter. Assumptions, they had a way of coming back to bite you right in the ass.
END
Images. Louis.
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