Red River Girl

by Joanna Jolly

  “You said that Danielle resembles Tina Fontaine?” asked Mo, encouraging him to keep talking. “You must have loved Tina?”

  Cormier replied that it hadn’t been like that. He had found Tina attractive and wanted to sleep with her, and she had encouraged him back, even though she was only fifteen. But Sarah had told him the truth about her age, and that had made him angry. That was why, the last time he saw Tina, he had thrown his dope at her feet and told her to jump off a bridge.

  “I had enough of her ranting and fucking child shit. Because that’s what it was, it was child shit,” he said, admitting that he now felt bad because he realized that Tina didn’t know how to survive on the streets like he did.

  Becoming calmer, Cormier told Mo he wanted to see a police report to find out why the police had him under investigation for Tina’s murder. He said he suspected a crystal meth dealer had pinned the crime on him. Though, he conceded, the police had probably arrested him because he “may or may not” have been in possession of a stolen truck which might have been the means used to dispose of Tina’s body.

  As he said this, he smiled and winked at Mo.

  “There’s three rules in crime,” he told him. “Deny, deny, deny.” Then he laughed.

  In the monitoring room, O’Donovan willed Cormier to keep talking, sensing he was close to revealing an important detail. But as always, his suspect pulled back at the crucial moment. The detective realised he wasn’t going to get the break he needed.

  During the next few days, O’Donovan waited for Cormier to contact Mo again to continue their discussion. But Cormier remained holed up in his own apartment, sinking into a morass of meth use and self-pity. It was clear from what he was saying to friends that Tina was still very much on his mind.

  “I want to say something to you so bad right now,” Cormier said to a male guest who had come over to see him. “I’m gonna go talk to Tina for a long time today,” he said, referring to his habit of sitting by Tina’s memorial at the Alexander Docks and holding conversations with the dead girl. “She knows I’m angry. You don’t think she knows I’m angry?”

  Cormier’s friend advised him to take time out to think about what was bothering him and whether it had a lesson to teach him.

  “I don’t care about a lesson. I don’t care about nothing. I just gotta get away from what I’m feeling,” Cormier replied.

  A few days later, Danielle returned for an afternoon visit. What started as a casual chat turned nasty after Cormier accused her of posting a naked picture of him on Facebook. She denied doing it, and Cormier started to scream in anger.

  “Unfortunately, there’s a little girl in a fucking grave someplace screaming at the top of her lungs for me to fucking finish the job, and guess what?” he shouted at Danielle.

  “What?”

  “I finished the job.”

  Cormier’s abrupt pivot from the Facebook picture to the girl in the grave was puzzling to O’Donovan. It sounded as if he was threatening Danielle by telling her about how he had killed Tina. But the detective couldn’t be sure, and Cormier quickly changed the subject. All O’Donovan could do was add the conversation to a growing pile of transcripts he hoped to use as evidence.

  A day later, the detective had another transcript to join them. Cormier had been alone in his apartment, singing and mumbling to himself.

  “You think you’ll get the murder out of me?” he suddenly shouted. “Hmm. That’s fucking it, man. Get away from me. Fuck you. Fuck!”

  Knowing Cormier was probably using crystal meth at the time, O’Donovan wasn’t sure whether to interpret the outburst as a true confession or dismiss it as a paranoid hallucination.

  * * *

  —

  It was now almost December, five months since the start of Project Styx, and O’Donovan could see that the operation was approaching a crossroads. It could continue as it had been, in the hope that Cormier would eventually make the unambiguous confession they needed. Or his team could gamble everything on one last play to force Cormier to speak.

  O’Donovan believed a bold move was needed. It wasn’t that he felt under pressure to wrap up the project. The Styx budget was under control, and his superiors were confident in his leadership. Nor was his thinking affected by the continuing demands from Thelma and the Indigenous community to deliver justice for Tina. He knew the entire team was doing as much as it could and was committed to working on the case until it was solved. It was more that he realised Styx had gone as far as it could. Despite his deepening addiction, Cormier had proved himself too guarded to be persuaded to open up. And it wasn’t just about getting a confession. The detective had become seriously worried about the safety of Cormier’s girlfriends, in particular Danielle. It was chilling how much she resembled Tina. When Cormier first met her she had been wearing a white dress that was similar to the white skirt Tina had been found in. Cormier told a friend it was almost as if he had seen a ghost. Since then he had fawned over Danielle, idolized her, and declared his love to her, then blamed her for everything wrong in his life and assaulted her. O’Donovan didn’t think she was tough enough to withstand his temper and believed that she was in grave danger of being badly hurt.

  The detective arranged a meeting with the senior prosecutors at Manitoba Justice and spent a morning with them detailing his case, reading out intercepts, and talking them through the witness statements. He wanted to know if they felt the evidence already collected was strong enough for an arrest warrant. The lawyers were divided. Some thought the statements and transcripts were compelling but advised him to try to secure a confession to be certain. Others worried that the case was purely circumstantial. After some debate, they agreed that O’Donovan probably had enough to provide a reasonable likelihood of conviction. The detective told them he would do his best to get his confession, but either way he would call them when the project was over for their authorization to charge Cormier with murder.

  * * *

  —

  Later, in the hushed and somewhat rundown surroundings of the Winnipeg Police boardroom, the Project Styx team met to work out their final storyline. Having spent weeks laying the groundwork for Jay’s big deal out west, O’Donovan already knew that the showdown would take place in British Columbia. After some discussion, the team decided against situating it in Vancouver, where they felt it would be too easy for Cormier to slip away. Instead, they chose the ski-resort town of Whistler. It had the glamorous playboy appeal they had worked hard to foster around Jay and his criminal network. They also believed the town was small and isolated enough to control.

  The undercover officers had already planted the idea in Cormier’s mind that Jay was owed nearly $200,000 by an associate in British Columbia. Mo was to tell Cormier that Jay and Chris had flown to Vancouver to get the money and that he and Cormier were to follow as backup. Cormier was told they were going there to scare the associate but not physically harm him unless he put up a fight.

  Mo did not mention the ski resort to Cormier at the outset so as to retain an element of surprise. He gave Cormier a fake ID in the name of Sebastian Roy and told him to head to Winnipeg Airport on December 8. “Don’t bring any metal and don’t bring any drugs,” Mo warned him. Once Cormier was in Whistler, the plan was to let him know that detectives had new evidence that connected him to Tina’s killing. Jay would tell Cormier that the police interest in him was threatening the safety of the entire gang and that way, put pressure on him to confess.

  Cormier arrived at the airport in Winnipeg pumped full of nervous energy. He was anxious during the flight because the attendant omitted to serve water to his row, an oversight he found suspicious. In the baggage claim area in Vancouver, he scanned the crowd and pointed out a real undercover officer, who was there for Mo’s protection, saying that he thought the man had followed them from Winnipeg. Mo brushed him aside, telling him to go out for a cigarette while he waited for their luggage. But Cormier remained on high alert. Outside the terminal, without prompting, he
picked out the Vancouver officer who was playing the part of Mo’s old girlfriend and contact in the city. Later that evening, when the officers left Cormier alone in a hotel near the airport, he walked miles back into the city centre to scout out the yachts and prime real estate and to steal a screwdriver from a Canadian Tire store. He told Mo he needed it for protection.

  The next morning, Mo told Cormier there had been a change of plan and they were now expected in Whistler. Under a crisp, blue December sky, they began their drive into the mountains. Halfway there, Mo stopped the car so they could smoke and take in the breathtaking scenery of evergreen forests and snow-covered peaks. They marvelled at how bright the landscape seemed after the dull greys and browns of the prairies.

  “Look what the cat dragged in,” Jay said when Mo and Cormier finally arrived at his suite in Whistler’s Westin Resort and Spa.

  In a room across the hall, O’Donovan and half a dozen homicide detectives had set up their surveillance operation and were gathered around a monitor, wearing headphones and watching a live feed of pictures from inside Jay’s room.

  Chris was already with Jay, lounging on the sofa and boasting about how much he had drunk the night before. For a while, the conversation was light. Cormier joked about his sex life and chatted about hockey. Jay encouraged him to order room service. Outside, the snow reflected the bright sunshine, and the men discussed skiing and how good the girls looked, especially the Australian hotel staff.

  After a while, Chris moved the discussion to the job they were about to do. Cormier said he was amazed that an outfit as sophisticated as Jay’s would be interested in an old-timer like him, obsessed with stealing copper. But Jay reassured him that although he found Cormier unusual for his scrap metal obsession, he had passed their loyalty tests and was good for this job. If he played it right, it would set him up for a long time to come.

  “After today, the world’s a stage,” agreed Cormier.

  Across the hallway, O’Donovan nodded to his team that it was time to set the finale in motion. As the lunch orders arrived at Jay’s suite, Mo received a call from Candace. He made it clear she was in distress.

  “Put her on speaker,” ordered Jay, when Mo asked Candace what was wrong. The men gathered around as Candace described how she had been in the Logan Avenue apartment when the police started banging on her door, saying they were looking for Cormier.

  “They want him for murder,” she said. “And I was like, ‘What do you mean, murder?’ And they just said that Tina broad, you know, that we heard about before.”

  In Jay’s room, the undercover officers started to act as if they were freaking out. Jay told Chris and Mo to leave him and Cormier alone so he could figure out, one on one, what was going on. He phoned Brad, his supposedly dirty cop, to ask why the police had suddenly appeared, suspecting that they had found new evidence. Cormier looked panicked, and Jay reassured him that he would do everything he could to keep him out of jail. All Cormier needed to do was tell him exactly what had happened and he would sort it out.

  “I did not have nothing to do with Tina’s death,” said Cormier, his voice taut with worry.

  Jay told him to stay calm. He was a powerful man who could easily produce a fake ID and get Cormier far away if needed. But first he had to know what he was dealing with.

  Cormier was shaking his head. “There’s some things that don’t add up here,” he said, waving Jay away as if he wanted to be left alone with his thoughts. “How far would the Winnipeg Police Service go? How much money would they invest if they think I did it?”

  Jay called Brad again, who told him the Winnipeg Homicide Unit had found a new witness from the Alexander Docks who had identified Cormier as the driver of a stolen truck that had been parked by the river shortly before Tina’s body was found.

  Cormier said the information didn’t make sense. “I happen to believe that some of the Winnipeg Police Service are involved in Tina’s murder,” he told Jay. He said he needed to return home straight away to sort the situation out.

  “You’re starting to piss me off,” replied Jay. He demanded that Cormier tell him the truth so he could deal with the issue before it escalated and damaged his entire criminal network.

  But Cormier was still working things through in his mind. “Who are you, Jay?” he asked. “And how far will the Winnipeg Police Service go to try to fucking get me to fucking admit something that I didn’t do?”

  Cormier continued to mumble his thoughts out loud. For a while, he said, he felt that something dirty had been going on in Winnipeg. It didn’t make sense that so many Indigenous women were going missing and turning up dead. Now he was questioning how he had met Mo and how easy it had been for their friendship to develop. “Too easy,” he said with suspicion.

  Jay was looking at his laptop, studying the security camera pictures Brad had sent and asking more questions about the truck. Cormier admitted he had spent a lot of time at the docks—he liked to sit alone by Tina’s memorial—but he was furious that Jay could believe he had something to do with her death.

  Jay said he was angry as well. “I feel like this is a fucking slap in the face!” he shouted at Cormier. He didn’t like it when his inner circle kept secrets from him, he said.

  But Cormier was too busy working through his theories to be intimidated. He muttered about the attendant on the plane who had forgotten to serve him water, and the man waiting by the luggage carousel, who he was sure he had seen before. He remembered reading about the two Winnipeg patrol officers who had pulled Tina up on a traffic stop the week before she died but had quickly let her go. There was something not right about all of it.

  Jay had gone back to Brad’s email and was reading that the police had forensic results from the stolen truck and a tent they had found on Alexander Avenue. He listed the details aloud: where the swabs had been taken, how many tests had been done.

  “And what was the result?” asked Cormier.

  “Nothing,” admitted Jay.

  “Exactly, ‘cause it’s a fucking smokescreen,” Cormier said triumphantly. He asked if he could leave.

  But Jay wasn’t satisfied. It wasn’t just about Cormier, he said; it was about the whole gang. They had all been put at risk because of this investigation.

  “Did you wipe down the truck?” he asked.

  “What truck?” said Cormier, refusing to be drawn in.

  “I’m not a fucking miracle worker. I can fucking pull things, but I’m not fucking God. We need to work at this together,” Jay said, looking away from Cormier as he spoke.

  It was Jay’s refusal to meet his gaze that clinched something in Cormier’s mind.

  “I didn’t do it. How many times have I got to tell you that?” he said. He stood up and asked Jay to call Mo so he could retrieve his jacket from his car.

  “Ray, you can’t fucking just walk out!” Jay shouted.

  “I just did,” said Cormier, picking up his cigarettes, striding out of the room, and slamming the door behind him.

  In the corridor he bumped into Mo, who asked where he was going.

  “Never mind,” said Cormier.

  Picking up speed, Cormier made his way out of the hotel and onto a patio, where tourists were enjoying the sun. He casually picked up a backpack belonging to a couple having coffee and slipped it onto his shoulders. Now he was moving fast, heading out of the hotel grounds and onto the street beyond. He passed a bicycle chained to some railings and tried to pull it free. But the lock was too sturdy, so he let it go and kept going, trying to lose himself in the crowd.

  Mo managed to stay behind him, keeping him in sight as Cormier hurried away from the hotel. Conscious that Cormier was armed with a screwdriver and that he was on his own, unarmed and without a radio, the undercover officer maintained some distance. He phoned O’Donovan to give his location. Meanwhile, the head of the Homicide Unit had dispatched all his detectives and half a dozen patrol officers to bring Cormier in. His team was working alone, without the help of the local RCM
P division, and the officers were unfamiliar with the geography of the town. Because of this, it took at least ten minutes to find Mo. After several more minutes spent combing Whistler’s main streets, two detectives finally caught sight of Cormier heading into the ground floor of a parking garage. Inside, they saw Cormier walk from car to car, trying the doors to see if any would open. Hearing people behind him, Cormier turned. When he saw the detectives, he stood with his shoulders hunched as if about to fight. Unable to see if he was holding a weapon, the officers pulled their guns, shouted that they were from the Winnipeg Police, and ordered Cormier to lie down. For a few seconds Cormier did nothing, as if considering his options. Finally, he slumped to his knees and lay face down on the ground, stretching his arms and legs out in a gesture of surrender.

  “Raymond Joseph Cormier, you are under arrest for the murder of Tina Fontaine,” said a detective, cuffing Cormier’s hands behind his back and advising him of his rights.

  By then, the entire Winnipeg police team had screeched into the parking garage in their fleet of rented SUVs. Cormier was bundled into the back of one while O’Donovan and his detectives prepared to follow behind in convoy. As he was driven to Vancouver, Cormier sat in silence, staring out of the window. When offered a phone to call a lawyer, he shook his head, saying he wanted to return to Winnipeg. He was told he would be taken to the Vancouver Police Homicide Unit, where he would be interviewed by the same team that had captured him in Whistler.

  * * *

  —

  O’Donovan knew he had only twenty-four hours to secure a confession and charge Cormier before he would be legally required to release him. When his suspect had been placed in an interview room, he chose the same detectives who had first questioned him in Winnipeg to interrogate him now. Detective Sergeants Wade McDonald and Scott Taylor were familiar to Cormier, and O’Donovan sensed they intimidated him enough to lay on the pressure. But it would be a difficult task. Cormier was saying nothing. As before, he curled up in the fetal position under the table and refused offers of food and water. He said yes to a blanket but was using it to shield his face from the detectives. As they asked him questions, his only reply was “Fuck off,” which he repeated so often that O’Donovan started to call him “the crow.” After two hours, the detective had to concede that McDonald and Taylor were getting nowhere.