“Hey, how you doing, Mike?” He nodded to Traverse. “Gabe.”
Boyle was as slender as a teenager, even though he was in his late fifties. His suit was well pressed and his navy-blue tie tightly knotted with a matching handkerchief in the breast pocket. His black, wavy hair was shiny with gel. Shelter suspected the clothes came from the Salvation Army store, but he wore them well.
“You’re not leaving so soon, are you, Fred?” Shelter asked. “How about a game?”
Boyle had been hustling pool around town all his adult life. “A hard way to make an easy living,” he liked to say. These days, it was harder than ever. Instead of going out to the pool hall or the racetrack to bet a couple of hundred, guys sat in their basement playing online poker in their underwear. It didn’t help that Boyle was known by every bar regular in town and was too old now for the barnstorming trips he used to take to the States, hitting joints from Fargo all the way to Chicago.
Still, he was able to eke out a living, taking in a hundred bucks in an evening from tourists or businessmen out on the town. Every once in a while, he’d still hit it big — a thousand or more — if his opponents were drunk, cocky or rich enough to bet some serious coin.
“Sorry. You gentlemen will have to excuse me,” he said with a chuckle after shaking hands with the two detectives. “I’m late for a little appointment.”
Shelter had known Boyle since he was in his late teens and looking for excitement in rough bars downtown and in the North End. One Saturday afternoon, Shelter had lost twenty dollars shooting pool with a guy. Boyle took pity on him and offered to give him lessons for two bucks a game. Shelter got good enough over the next month to briefly consider a career in hustling himself. Now, Boyle was an occasional source of street intelligence.
“You know this guy, Rory Sinclair?” Shelter asked. “Apparently he hangs out here.”
Boyle was leaning against the snooker table with one ankle crossed over the other. On hearing Sinclair’s name, he pushed off the table with his hands. “Can’t help you.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
Boyle sighed. “A guy like that figures out I’m talking to the cops, and I get hurt. I got a family to feed, man.”
“What do you know about him?”
Boyle’s eyes swept the pool hall. “What can I say? He’s a heavy guy, judging by the company he keeps. But you know that already.”
“What kind of company?”
“You know, gangbangers. He’s got a regular crew, and then you see other guys come in to see him. He uses this place like a damn office.”
“Which gang?” Traverse asked.
“How would I know? I’m too old for that shit. I gotta go.”
Shelter reached into the inside breast pocket of his jacket and pulled out pictures of Crystal Rempel and Monica Spence taken from their Facebook pages. He laid them on the dark wood of the snooker table rail. “You ever see him with these girls?”
“No, I have not seen him with those girls. I’ll tell you one thing, and then I’m gone. Rory’s been in here a lot with a new friend. They’re shooting pool and talking a couple times a week.”
“What kinda new friend?”
“Some sort of an Indian politician from a reserve north of the city. He’s always got a big roll on him and a diamond pinkie ring. I won five hundred bucks off him and he just laughed it off.”
“What’s his name?”
“Charlie. That’s all I know.” Boyle unscrewed his pool cue and put the two pieces in a black leather carrying case. He clicked the clasps shut. “Have a great day.” He made his way through the tables to the young woman who was doing double duty at the bar and cash register. After a couple of words, he was out the door.
Shelter was about to ask Traverse what he thought about what Boyle had said when his partner gave a sharp nod in the direction of the entrance. Rory Sinclair was collecting a set of pool balls at the front desk. He was accompanied by two other Indigenous men and an Asian woman in her early twenties. Shelter quickly turned toward Traverse so they were in profile to the group choosing a pool table at the far end of the room.
Sinclair was dressed in a black T-shirt, black jeans and his Winnipeg Jets cap. The second man was well over six feet and heavy-set. Also extensively tattooed, he wore jeans and a leather vest over a white T-shirt. The third man was older, in his mid-forties and obese. He was in casual business attire, a pair of dress slacks with a blue oxford cloth shirt open at the collar to show a gold chain. Sinclair and the taller man wore their hair shaved tight to the scalp, but the businessman’s braided hair reached halfway down his back.
“The big guy is Darren Thompson, Rory’s bodyguard,” Traverse said. The detectives had first seen Thompson during the bar brawl at the City Hotel. The intelligence file on Sinclair identified Thompson as an associate with a lengthy record of weapons and assault convictions. He’d done a couple of stints in Headingly jail and broke into the big leagues when an attempted murder rap landed him in Stony Mountain for four years.
“And the other guy?” Shelter said as he and Traverse took seats on a bench running along the wall. “Maybe it’s the new friend Freddy was telling us about.”
Sinclair broke the pool balls with a crack, all the while chatting and laughing with the older man. The Asian woman wasn’t interested in the game. In her cream-coloured miniskirt, white halter top and high heels, she sat cross-legged at a high cocktail table and texted.
Thompson bent over the pool table to line up a shot that brought Shelter and Traverse into his field of vision. He stood up and spoke to Sinclair, whose head snapped in their direction.
“Let’s go,” Shelter said.
Without taking his eyes off the approaching detectives, Sinclair said something to the older man. He slid his cue onto the pool table and retreated to the cocktail table. Thompson took a couple of steps forward, like a tank moving to protect Sinclair’s right flank.
“Hey, Rory,” Shelter said with a relaxed smile. “We met the other night. Detective Sergeant Michael Shelter, and this is Detective Sergeant Gabriel Traverse.”
Sinclair glowered at them. Traverse swivelled slightly so he was angled to face Thompson. “We haven’t been introduced. It’s Darren, right?” Shelter said. The man’s eyes flickered with doubt.
“Don’t answer that,” Sinclair cut in. His eyes were almost hidden by the long brim of his baseball cap. “What you guys want?”
“Darren, we want a few words with your boss,” Shelter said to the bodyguard. “You can join your friends.”
“Damn! An Indian can’t get no respect in this town,” Sinclair barked, sounding as if he was straight out of Compton. “Where you get off giving a brother orders?”
Traverse smiled at Shelter and nodded his head toward Sinclair as if to say, Can you believe the gangsta act? Traverse turned back to Thompson. “Fuck off.” Shelter kept his eyes on Rory, still smiling and waited.
Sinclair glanced at his buddy and gave an almost imperceptible nod. Thompson lumbered to the cocktail table.
“You’re not an easy guy to get a hold of,” Shelter said. “Where you been?”
“Been around. Come on, man. We’re trying to enjoy a game here.”
“How about you come downtown and answer a few questions about Crystal Rempel,” Traverse said.
Sinclair dipped his head so his face disappeared behind the brim of his cap. When he raised his chin, he was smiling, the gold incisor glinting. “Am I under arrest here?”
“No. But we’d like your cooperation.”
“No warrant. No dice.” He turned slightly to face Shelter. “How you feeling there? I laid you out pretty good the other night, eh?”
Shelter nodded. “Hope that wasn’t your best shot.” Then, a little louder for the benefit of the three people watching from the cocktail table, “We know you and Crystal were involved in a pretty serious argument the night before she was killed. What was that about?”
There was a flash of anger in Rory’s eyes. Aft
er a beat, he said, “I don’t know who you been talking to, but there was no argument.”
“Where were you on Thursday night.”
“Home. With my girl.”
“How about Monica Spence? Did you know her?”
“I seen her name in the paper.”
Shelter was ready with another question when Sinclair piped up again.
“Shelter, right? Seen your name in the paper too. That’s an unusual one you got there, dude.” He added, “Was that your daughter I found on Facebook the other night? Nice-looking girl.”
“What did you just say?”
Shelter closed the gap to Sinclair with a quick stride. He grabbed him by the neck and tilted his head back with a thumb under the chin. Nose to nose, he spoke in a low, angry hiss. “That’s a dangerous game, buddy. I’m not sure you’ll like where it takes you.”
Sinclair jerked his head and pushed Shelter hard in the chest. “Get the fuck off me.”
Thompson jumped off his stool and took two quick steps forward before Traverse brushed past Sinclair and stopped him with a fist in his chest. “Sit down, now!”
The big man backed off, and Shelter, his heart pounding, approached the cocktail table. Sinclair circled to stand behind the other three in his party. Shelter glanced at the Asian woman and then focused on the third, older man. He saw he was wearing a diamond ring on his right pinkie finger and a gold Rolex on his left wrist. He was massive. His pectoral muscles sagged like a woman’s breasts. His protruding belly lay on his lap. Only the toes of his cowboy boots touched the floor, and he struggled to keep his balance on the bar stool.
“What’s your name?”
The corners of the man’s mouth turned up in an awkward closed-mouth smile, but he didn’t answer.
“Detective Sergeant Michael Shelter of the Winnipeg Police Service. Now it’s your turn.”
“Charlie Osborne.”
“Okay, Mr. Osborne. Can I see some identification?”
Sinclair placed an arm on his shoulder. “You don’t need to show no ID.”
Osborne’s eyes bounced from Shelter to Sinclair and back. He remained silent. His brow was wrinkled with tension, his lips pursed. A sheen of sweat made his fleshy face look like he’d been sitting in a steam bath.
“Where do you work, Mr. Osborne?”
“I’m a councillor for the Lone Pine First Nation.”
“What brings you to Winnipeg?”
“We have an office in Winnipeg. I’m down on business.”
“What kind of business?”
“Lone Pine First Nation business.”
Sinclair interrupted the exchange. “Okay. That’s it. Let’s get out of here.”
Shelter got up close to him so he was looking down into his black eyes again. In a low voice, he said, “Go near my daughter and I’ll make you sorry.”
ELEVEN
The car was an oven when Shelter and Traverse climbed in, and they waited in silence for the air-conditioning to kick in. In the passenger seat, Shelter closed his eyes, took a deep breath and let it out in a slow stream. He was still turning Sinclair’s threat to Kelsey over in his mind.
Shelter opened his eyes and banged his fist on the dashboard. “Little fucker!”
Traverse threw the car into gear and pulled onto Sargent Avenue. Shelter leaned back in his seat and struggled to calm down. He scowled at Traverse. “The guy’s looking me up online? He’s worried.”
“Yup.”
“Crystal had something on him. Those days when she disappeared, stopped using her phone and credit cards all of the sudden, it had to be him scaring her. He knew Crystal well. It wouldn’t have been hard to get her out of the bar and into a car.”
Shelter was interrupted by the sound of his phone buzzing on his belt. It was Moses Kent. “There’s something I want to discuss,” Kent said.
“What is it?”
“I’ll let you know when I see you. Can you come now?”
Traverse steered the car down Main Street with his wrist over the wheel. Shelter slouched in the passenger seat, his elbow propped on the door and his chin resting in his hand. He closed his eyes, listening to Neil Young belt out “Cinnamon Girl” on the radio.
“How you sleeping?” Traverse asked.
“You know. It’s always the same. I wake up in the middle of the night and then can’t get back to sleep. A ten-pound cat on my chest doesn’t help, of course.”
Traverse smiled. “That’s the love you’re feeling.”
“Right. He loves what my hands can do with a can opener. Why?”
“You’re not looking so hot. Get some rest.” After a beat, he added, “You’re not getting any younger.”
Shelter looked over at his partner and rolled his eyes. But he was bone-tired, and his prospects for a good night’s sleep weren’t good.
At the Anishinaabe Awakening office, a young woman was working on a computer near the front door. She looked up when the detectives entered but apparently wasn’t there to play receptionist. At his desk in the back of the building, Moses Kent watched them approach with his fingers steepled to his chin.
“Gentlemen.” Kent spread his hands, indicating the two seats in front of his battered grey metal desk.
“What can we do for you?” Traverse asked.
Kent leaned back in his chair and looked from one officer to the other. “It’s about Crystal and Monica Spence. I found out this morning they knew each other pretty well, and I wasn’t sure you were aware of that.” Shelter fought the urge to look over at Traverse and check his reaction. Instead, he fixed his gaze on Kent.
The young man smoothed his hair and sat up straight. “Maybe it was because Crystal was separated from her own mother and sister as a baby, but she wasn’t going to turn a blind eye when kids were being hurt. We worked on it together, but really it was her fight. She found girls who were being trafficked and got them help, usually starting with a place to live and help with substance abuse. Monica was one of those girls.”
Shelter remembered what Nicki had told him about Crystal working with girls to get them out of the sex trade. His mind raced over the implications.
Kent anticipated his next question. “Like I said, I just found out about it myself.”
“Where did Crystal meet Monica?”
Kent hesitated and then rose from his chair. “I want you to meet someone. Let me make a call.” He walked to the outer office and punched in a number on his phone. After speaking to someone briefly, he returned and stood in the doorway.
“Let’s take a drive.”
Shelter looked at Traverse and then glanced at his watch. It was almost 4:00 p.m.
“Where?” he asked.
“Not far. I’m driving a red Honda Civic. I’ll meet you out front.”
Traverse gunned the Crown Vic’s engine a couple of times and pulled into traffic behind Kent’s beat-up Honda. Selkirk Avenue was the North End’s main commercial artery. There was a day when it was lined with delis, small department stores and an old-time movie palace. They were the businesses of Jews, Ukrainians, Poles, Germans, who landed there at the turn of the last century.
These days, it was surrounded by a huge Indigenous population, and he knew people in more prosperous parts of the city looked upon it as a dangerous stretch of urban decay. But amid the rundown houses, vacant lots and boarded-up stores, Shelter had begun to notice shoots of revitalization, and it gave him hope. There were clusters of businesses: a bakery, low-end restaurants, convenience and discount stores, and social development agencies. Despite the crime and poverty, Shelter chose to focus on the people on nearby streets who were just trying to get up every day, get their kids to school, go to work and make a better life for themselves.
He and Traverse had worked dozens of murders in the North End and downtown over the last five years, mostly drug dealer score-settling and petty domestic beefs that spiralled into violence. Almost all were cleared or well on their way to being cleared in the first forty-eight hours. Shelter co
uld keep a cool, detached attitude to the mayhem, except when it came to the kids. He had that in common with Crystal and a lot of people working down here, including Traverse.
He glanced to his right, down McKenzie Street, and remembered a case he and Traverse had worked a year earlier. It was the dead of winter, and they’d been called out to a clapboard house with boarded-up windows. An eighteen-year-old Indigenous man had his throat slashed with a broken beer bottle as the sun came up on an all-night party in a crack shack. When Shelter and Traverse arrived at the scene, they’d found three kids, all under eight years old, sitting side by side in the back of a cruiser.
They were dressed in filthy, ripped parkas, pyjama bottoms and running shoes, despite a temperature of twenty below zero. One little boy of about four sat closest to the car window that Shelter peered through. He had a grimy face, an angry bruise on his cheek and big, dark, pleading eyes. Shelter remembered smiling and giving a little wave, but there’d been no reaction. Taking a step back from the car, he’d thought of Kelsey at that age — warm, loved, protected. What was in store for these kids? Future customers for the police? That little boy’s eyes had brought Shelter out of his sleep with a jerk every night for a week. He knew a lot of people were working to make it better, but the problems ran deep. The gangs and drug trade weren’t going away and neither was the poverty that fed them. He understood why Traverse was feeling beaten down. But he wouldn’t give in to despair. This was the job he’d chosen, and he was hoping Traverse would come to the same conclusion.
Shelter hit the accelerator to keep up with Kent, who’d turned onto McPhillips Street, heading north. The broad avenue was packed with rush-hour traffic. Shelter went over what it meant that Crystal and Spence knew each other. As if reading his mind, Traverse said, “Wouldn’t the connection with Crystal have come up in the Spence investigation if they knew each other well enough to make a difference?”
“Not necessarily,” Shelter said. “They were from different worlds. If Crystal didn’t want to approach us after Monica was killed, probably no one else thought much about it until Crystal got killed too.”
Omand's Creek: A gripping crime thriller packed with mystery and suspense Page 8