Steel Town

by Richard Whitten Barnes

  “Who drove you, Joey?” Campbell patted him on the knee.

  Joey shrugged.

  “I don’t think he knows,” Eddie said.

  “How can that be?” Campbell looked from Marly back to Eddie.

  Eddie drew a breath for courage to delve into a recounting of the day his boss commandeered his car. At the last instant he opted not to reveal just who that was.

  Twenty

  Andy struggled that morning to get her head back into the opioid crisis. Last night’s call from Grant still dominated her thoughts. It took Arnold Terry’s news of his and the Sault Police’s latest interrogation of Randy Parsons, the beating victim, to get her back on track.

  “The guy’s into Fentanyl, all right, Terry said.

  “So, he confesses everything?”

  “Yes, but I don’t think he’s going to be much help.”

  “Wait…why not?”

  Terry rested a size-thirteen wing-tip on an opened drawer. “He claims—and I believe him—he’s just a small operation like a few others in town. They all pretty much leave each other alone. Someone had the idea he was getting too ambitious. Remember your telling me about leaching fentanyl from those patches?”

  “Kevin Campbell’s lecture. Yes.”

  “This guy says that’s his only source, and that source is limited. He was happy being small time and under the radar.

  “And you believe him?”

  “I’m reasonably sure. He was scared shitless. Also, the doc says there's complications in his case. He seems to still be going downhill.”

  Andy thought it made sense. “So, we’re back where we started.”

  “We still have a name for the goon who beat him up,” Terry said. “If we find him, he may lead us in the right direction.”

  Andy followed Terry’s eyes to the doorway where their boss, Nolan Roberts, stood leaning against the jamb. “Did I hear ‘back where we started’?” he said.

  Terry answered. “We’re making progress…kind of.”

  “Well, here’s something for what it’s worth.” Roberts handed Andy a note and disappeared down the hall.

  “What?” Terry said, after Andy had read it.

  “Two addresses from those car descriptions we gave to the constables. They did what we asked: no arrests, just follow. You think this is good enough for search warrants?”

  “Let’s write ‘em up and see what happens. You fill out one ITO and I’ll do the other,” he said, referring to the obligatory Information to Obtain form to be presented to a magistrate.

  ~ * ~

  The doorbell sounded, prompting Dale Urban to glance through his home office window. Two Sault Police cars were parked in the driveway. He muttered an expletive, annoyed over yet more fuss over the kid.

  He had other problems. The value of Bitcoin had dropped significantly over the past few days and he needed to cash out what he held in an offshore account before they fell further.

  At the door stood the cop who had led the search on that first night. He had grilled Urban at the time as if he’d been guilty of something. Now he was back.

  “Yeah, Detective…uh—”

  “Riccia,” the plainclothes detective-constable reminded. He was short, maybe 5’6”, but stocky and muscular. Rimless glasses and a trim moustache gave him the appearance of an accountant or possibly a pharmacist.

  “Yeah, I’m kind of busy right now.”

  Riccia handed him a piece of paper. “I’m sure this is just a matter of clearing you completely, so we can better pursue the investigation. Also, there may be other clues in the light of day. We’re now considering the boy’s disappearance as either a kidnapping or other foul play. We need to search the house.”

  Urban read the paper. It was a fucking search warrant! “What the hell!”

  Riccia motioned for three uniformed officers to follow him inside. “This is just a routine precaution, Mr. Urban. We’ll start with the boy’s room and be done in no time.

  ~ * ~

  “We’ve got to call the police,” Dr. Kevin Campbell said as compassionately as possible.

  “Jeez!” Eddie exclaimed.

  “He needs to return home,” Campbell insisted.

  “N-no! I l-ike it here. Eddie and Joey! M-arly, too.” Joey was shaking his head back and forth, flexing his fingers out and returning them to fists.

  Campbell put a calming palm on Joey’s shoulder. “Your father wants you home. He must be worried.”

  “D-on’t want to. B-ad place!”

  Eddie said, “Don’t blame him. His old man’s a real shit.” He’d told Campbell about the father’s behavior on the two occasions he’d been at the house.

  The doctor stood and paced the small room, seemingly at a loss for what to do or say. He turned to gaze out the front window, hands in pockets, before talking.

  “You say you turned around at the boy’s house that night because you were involved in something illegal?”

  Marly answered for Eddie. “He had to! He was being threatened.”

  Campbell waited for someone to explain. Again, it was Marly. “See, he owed this dude money and couldn’t pay it back. So, he had to work it off.”

  Although not without some difficulty, Campbell was able to extract from Eddie the story of his getting hooked on OxyContin and his subsequent acquaintance with a dealer to whom he was currently into for about $5000.

  “And he’s the one who drove your car to Joey’s house that day?”

  “I gotta believe that’s where he went. Joey must have thought I was driving and hid there until I got the car back and drove home.”

  “Christ!” Campbell muttered. “What is this guy doing at Joey’s house? I’ve read about it in the paper. The father is a prominent businessman here in town.”

  “I can only guess,” Eddie said.

  “Then guess!”

  “I was there twice before delivering stuff—may have been money—I don’t know for sure.”

  “So this dealer is delivering money to Joey’s father!”

  Eddie nodded. “Maybe.”

  “Were you dealing drugs, Eddie?” Campbell returned to the sofa.

  “I was delivering packages. I never saw what was inside. Mostly, I was going over into Michigan and returning with sealed envelopes. I thought it was probably money, but never saw it. Anyway, that all stopped. I asked today if I could stay on and work off my debt, but he said for me to get lost.”

  “Eddie, you need to come clean about who this dealer is.”

  “No! I know for sure they’d kill me.”

  After a long silence, Campbell said, “Okay, I’m going to try to make the best of this. You’re going to have to trust me. Can you both watch Joey here for the rest of the day?”

  Eddie looked to Marly, who put an arm around Joey and nodded emphatically.

  Twenty-one

  One of the cops was rummaging through his office closet as Urban looked on, wondering if there might be something in the house he’d missed that could tie him to any of his fentanyl distributors. He’d been careful. His hidden computer was the only connection.

  All the accounts had been assigned coded names of suppliers to his various development projects. The Bitcoin trades were mixed in with other currencies and transactions. Anyone examining his laptop would have to be both very good and looking for something in particular; not the casual observer. Despite that, having four men comb through his house was unsettling, at a minimum.

  He left the office and found Riccia in Joey’s room going through a bookshelf. “Aren’t you about done here? What are you looking for, anyway?”

  Riccia froze; turned his head in Urban’s direction. “Your son is missing, Mr. Urban. You have more important things for us to do? We’ve spent forty-eight hours combing the east end of this city, dragging the riverbank.”

  “Of course. I’m sorry. I’ve got other stuff on my mind. I was thoughtless.”

  “Tell me,” Riccia said. “Have you had any non-routine visitors? Someone
who could have conceivably taken the boy?”

  The question came out of nowhere. Urban calmed himself. He resisted having anyone connect him to Savos, the only one who’d been inside the house besides Mrs. Pearl. He cursed himself for ever having that thug here. “Only my housekeeper, who takes Joey to school and sits with him when necessary.”

  “No one else. You’re sure? You mentioned an auto mechanic.”

  Urban blinked, unnerved by the insistence of the question. “No. None. That guy from the auto shop wasn’t in the house and wasn’t out of my sight. They asked me that stuff on the night he disappeared.”

  “Fine. Just being thorough. We’ll be out of your way shortly.”

  In fact, it was another forty-five minutes before Urban stood in his door watching the two squad cars make the turn out of his driveway toward town.

  ~ * ~

  It was almost 4pm when Terry preceded Andy into the detachment to write up the two searches they’d made. The warrants had restricted the searches to property only, excluding the searches of the occupants’ persons. The intent was to find evidence of drug manufacturing or dispensing equipment as opposed to personal and assumed legal prescription drugs.

  The first search had been a bust. A woman Terry was sure was dealing in the large shopping mall nearby on the north side had been seen making repeated trips to a house off Second Line Road.

  The door was answered by a middle-aged man who admitted knowing the woman as merely a friend. He claimed to know nothing of her involvement with illicit drugs. A search of the house turned up no more than a small vial of prescribed, codeine-containing Tylanol#3. If the man was dealing drugs, this search would never prove it.

  The second search proved to be better. A constable had spotted the green Kia SUV Andy had identified that first night of staking out the Hub. The car was followed to a house in town where a youngish man entered. The car’s license was noted as belonging to a Gerald Fournier, 52, of Sault Ste. Marie. The house was a rental occupied by Charles Bell, 37.

  The team of two OPP constables and the detectives arrived to find the SUV parked on the street nearby in this densely populated part of the city.

  “Bonus!” Terry said. “We should get your man plus whoever else is in there.”

  A man with a full ginger-colored beard answered their knock and was obviously shocked to see Terry, Andy, and two uniformed constables standing there. He stared at the warrant, unable to move.

  “Who is it, Charlie?” a voice from inside called.

  Andy answered for him “Mr. Fournier?” She pushed past Charles Bell and entered the front hall. The young man she’d seen that night stepped out of a bathroom, drying his hands on a towel. It was obviously not the 52 year-old Gerald Fournier. He was wearing the same leather jacket, undone, with the silver buckle dangling. He looked past Andy to the front door where Terry was pushing past the slack-jawed Charles Bell.

  “And your name?” Andy asked the younger man.

  “Walter. Walter Fournier.”

  It took no time to locate the encapsulating and weighing paraphernalia in an upstairs bedroom. Boxes of cornstarch and other diluents were found on a work table. A single plastic bag of a half-dozen off-white tablets was found resting under a dishtowel.

  Andy said, “They look like those Phantom-one hundred pills they showed us photos of.”

  Fifteen minutes later, Bell and Fournier (who, incidentally, was the twenty-year-old son of the SUV’s owner, Gerald) were in separate patrol cars, handcuffed and on their way the short distance to the temporary OPP lockup.

  ~ * ~

  In less than a half hour, the Phantom 100 tablets that were found in Bell’s apartment were rushed to the Canadian Government lab on Bay street. They were confirmed as pure fentanyl. New spectrographic analytical methods perfected by the US Customs & Border Protection had made identification fast and accurate.

  “The lab says this is better stuff than they’ve ever seen in the area,” Terry said, handing Andy the fax he’d just received.

  “No doubt in my mind we’re on the right track,” she said. Terry’s head bobbed in agreement. “Pure fentanyl tablets are going to bring the Mounties in on this. Let’s see what we can get from these two birds before they’re carted off somewhere.”

  ~ * ~

  The two suspects were held in separate lockups. Terry flipped a Toonie, incorrectly calling “tails,” affording Andy first choice of whom to interview. She chose Bell, the owner of the house.

  Charles Bell was led into the interview room by a constable where Andy had set up a recording device as a backup for the CCTV. Bell had called a lawyer whom Andy recognized from past arrests and trials. He took his seat opposite Andy and a constable, seemingly scared to death. His eyes darted from one ceiling camera to the next.

  “Mr. Bell,” Andy said, after making preliminary remarks for the record. She waited for his attention to settle on her. “You are in a heap of trouble.” She let that sink in. “It might be mitigated with a lot of cooperation on your part.”

  He glanced at his lawyer who said, “Let's see what the detective has in mind.”

  Andy continued to speak directly to Bell. “We’ve tested that fentanyl you’re using as an active ingredient in the tablets you’re producing. We need you to tell us your source.”

  “I…I’ve no idea!”

  “Certainly you do!”

  “No, really! There’s this guy I used to meet in Station Mall. He’d sell me stuff to cut and resell. I did this maybe a couple of years. Musta done okay, ‘cause a few months ago last summer he tells me can set me up making oxy. Said it was a bigger market than…well, heroin. All I had to do was pay off a tablet press he’d provide. I didn’t even have to pay for the first amount of the Phantom. It sounded safer than boosting ‘Horse’.”

  Andy watched him relax a bit, probably relieved it was all over, now that he was caught. “Who was this man?”

  “Never knew, except just once he didn’t come alone, and the other guy called him ‘Ray.’ I don’t think they knew I heard.”

  Somehow that name rang a bell. “Describe him.”

  “Big guy. Mean sonofabitch. Tattoos…lots of them. Wouldn’t want to piss him off.”

  Andy opened a file. She fished out the computer rendering of a face. “Look like this?”

  Bell glanced at it. “Maybe. Not sure.”

  “Look at it some more.”

  He studied it. “Yeah, maybe. That could be Ray.”

  Andy returned the picture to the file. “How did you get your deliveries?”

  “As soon as he switched me over to the Phantoms, he’d meet me in a different place every time. I’d get a call to be in a parking lot somewhere in town. He’d show up in a different car every time—it’s only been since last summer…maybe three times. Anyway, he pulls up next to me and we make the exchange through the window. It took seconds, just a few pills. What you saw was what I got yesterday and cost me a bundle.”

  “Did you have a number to call?”

  “Hell no. I don’t order the stuff. They call the shots. They give me what they want me to move. How I do it is up to me. If I was out of supply, I just had to wait for the call. It was always from a different number…maybe a payphone, I don’t know.”

  “Always the same man?” Andy inquired.

  “Until the last time. Some guy in a sport car. Might have been the same guy that called the tattooed guy ‘Ray.’ I didn’t get a good look at him.”

  “Sport car?”

  He described it. “Yeah. I had to reach down to give him the money, take the dope.” Bell leaned in. “You gonna help me out here? I’m cooperating.”

  Andy closed the file and sat back in her chair. “I said we would. That doesn’t mean you’re not the scum of the earth for spreading this poison around our city. If this leads us anywhere good, we’ll tell it to the judge. Then it’s his call what becomes of you.”

  After a few more questions she ended the interview.

  Twenty-t
wo

  Nolan Roberts expertly twirled spaghetti around his fork and lifted it into his mouth. He’d offered to buy a round of beers after the shift and the three, Roberts, Andy and Terry, decided to stay for dinner. “So, you think this might be our guy,” he said with a mouthful.

  The question was directed at Andy. Terry had already told him about questioning Walter Fournier. The young man had a one-time rap of selling stolen goods. Jail time had been waived, as it was a first offense. This time, it would not go down so easily.

  Fournier’s testimony was valuable only in that he was able to tell Terry some of the latest places where drug exchanges were happening. Other than that, his involvement was limited to helping Charles Bell tableting and pushing fake OxyContin. He insisted on having no knowledge of the tablets’ ingredients, nor did he know what “Phantom 100” was. Terry assumed those were flat-out lies.

  “No, not the main man,” Andy answered Roberts’ question, “but I’ll bet he knows who he is.”

  “Why not?” Roberts attacked a meatball.

  “Pure fentanyl. It has to be imported here. Someone with those connections isn’t going to be trading in the trenches. He’ll have one…maybe two levels of separation.”

  “Still, this guy, Ray, sounds like he’s in the know,” Roberts persisted.

  Andy had to agree.

  Terry said, “If it’s the same man we’ve been looking for, we know where he hangs out. We need to get lucky and nab him there.”

  “What are the chances?” Roberts asked.

  “That we find him?”

  “No, that he’s the man you think he is.”

  Andy answered. “The coincidence that Bell’s supplier was named ‘Ray’ and our guy has an alias of Raymond Hobbs is too good to take lightly.”

  “Lots of ‘Rays’ out there,” Roberts said, always the pessimist.

  ~ * ~

  Marly watched as Dr. Campbell interacted with Joey on the carpet in the small parlor. It had been two days since the man had asked for some time to assimilate what she and Eddie had told him about Joey showing up at their back door. Joey’s usual terse responses to questions became more engaging as the two got increasingly acquainted.