Advance Praise for Disposable Souls
“Move over, Harry Bosch. Like Michael Connelly’s hero, Jessome’s detective and patch-wearing biker Cam Neville views the world like a guy who’s been to hell and back, and still carries the scorch marks. Written in a drop-dead style, Disposable Souls is hardboiled crime writing at its best and grittiest. Welcome to Halifax Noir.”
–Anne Emery, author of Children in the Morning, winner of the 2011 Dartmouth Book Award for Fiction
“A compulsively engaging tale featuring a bruised and brooding Halifax—a place, not unlike Detective Constable Cam Neville, with a mysterious and murderous past forever shaping its tortured and troubled present. Certainly, I like my hard-boiled mysteries with kinetic energy, colourful characters, and compelling atmosphere. In Disposable Souls, I have it all and more.”
–Steven Laffoley, author of The Blue Tattoo and Hunting Halifax
“A riveting tale, skillfully told. Phonse Jessome has crafted true-to-life characters evocative of Elmore Leonard as they rise and fall from the mean streets of Halifax.”
–Rick Mofina, international bestselling author of Free Fall
“Only a writer who has been inside the yellow tape knows the scene well enough to tell a story like this. Gritty and authentic writing.”
–Matt Johnson, Detective Inspector (rtd.), Scotland Yard Murder Squad, and author of Wicked Game
“For most crime writers, the scene of the crime is that awful spot where he spilled bloody red wine on a spotless white carpet. Phonse Jessome is not one of those writers. In his long career as a journalist and author, Jessome has been at the scene of many real and horrible events…. His long history covering crime resonates on every page of Disposable Souls.”
–Don Connolly, co-host, CBC Information Morning
Praise for Phonse Jessome
“Phonse is known to be a fair and accurate journalist who researches his Outlaw Motorcycle Gang [OMG] stories for the interesting details that catch the reader's attention…. Understanding the biker subculture is a lot of work for an outsider. Developing valuable sources in these gangs is even harder. Phonse did both.”
–Bruce MacDonald, Sgt. (rtd) OMG investigator, Nova Scotia
“As a homicide investigator within Halifax Regional Municipality for fifteen years, when I arrived on a scene I knew I was going to deal with two certainties: at least one deceased and Phonse Jessome. He was at so many murder scenes before me that, over the years, he became one of my main resources for factual information.”
–Tom Martin, former Halifax Regional Police homicide investigator, now private investigator at Martin Investigations
“When the cops called the Darksiders a criminal gang, they were wrong. We're a club, nothing more. Phonse Jessome came to our house and asked for our side of the story. He stayed until he understood it. If anyone is going to write fiction about outlaw clubs, it shouldn't be the cops writing phoney releases, it should be Phonse writing an entertaining story like this one.”
–Lester Johnston, president, Darksiders MC, Dartmouth
“Police tape divided our work space as both Phonse Jessome and I attended a variety of calls over the years. From motor vehicle accidents to homicides, day or night and in all kinds of weather, I have seen Phonse doing his job while he watched me do mine. I look forward to reading his new novel.”
–Sergeant Sandy Johnston, Halifax Regional Police, former forensic identification officer
Copyright © 2016, Pier Boy Books Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission from the publisher, or, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, permission from Access Copyright, 1 Yonge Street, Suite 1900, Toronto, Ontario M5E 1E5.
Nimbus Publishing Limited
3731 Mackintosh St, Halifax, NS B3K 5A5
(902) 455-4286 nimbus.ca
Printed and bound in Canada
NB1255
Cover: image copyright © Allen Crooks
Cover and interior design: Jenn Embree
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, incidents, and places, including organizations and institutions, are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Jessome, Phonse, author
Disposable souls / Phonse Jessome.
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-77108-417-8 (paperback).—ISBN 978-1-77108-418-5 (html)
I. Title.
PS8619.E794D58 2016C813'.6C2016-903734-7
C2016-903735-5
Nimbus Publishing acknowledges the financial support for its publishing activities from the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund (CBF) and the Canada Council for the Arts, and from the Province of Nova Scotia. We are pleased to work in partnership with the Province of Nova Scotia to develop and promote our creative industries for the benefit of all Nova Scotians.
For Barb
Then. Now. Always.
Prologue
The front door was open about an inch. I moved up the steps and pushed it in with the barrel of the shotgun. I should be waiting. I should have MacLean and Dill stacked up behind me. There is a right way to do it, a safe way. First officer in breaks right, second breaks left. You chase your gun along the wall looking for targets, knowing the middle of the room is covered by the third member of the team. I wasn’t waiting for backup. I didn’t want witnesses. I knew the house well enough to play the odds. If she was inside, the girl would likely be all the way in the kitchen or down the hall hiding, not lying in wait inside the small foyer. I rushed in and dashed across the floor, slamming my back against the knee wall that jutted into the kitchen entrance. Nothing. I dropped to my stomach and eased my face around the wall. She’d be looking higher if she was waiting. The kitchen was clear, boiling water spilling out of a pot popping and hissing on the stovetop. I saw the pot before I heard the hiss. That was a problem. My pulse pounding in my ears blocked everything else. I had to take a deep breath and gather my senses. Not hearing is as bad as not seeing; it could be fatal.
The sound of the gunshot was unmistakable, and I probably would have heard it even with my pulse pounding in my eardrums. I rolled back behind the knee wall and pulled my legs under me. The shot came from the hallway beyond the kitchen. I was calm. Being under fire is easier than thinking you might come under fire. When it’s real, you can fight back. I dumped a round high into the open doorway to keep the shooter down as I ran past to take a position in the kitchen. I leaned out and took a quick glimpse into the hallway.
The girl was sitting on the floor, staring at the gun in her lap. She was small, looked to be maybe thirteen. The front of her dress was covered in blood. I thought maybe I’d hit her, but she raised her head and looked at me. She lifted the gun, and I dove to the right. I slid into the patio door in a shower of broken glass as I heard her second shot.
“Get out. Get out,” she yelled. “I won’t go back. No more. You don’t own me. You bastards can’t make me. Fuck the Stallion.”
I could hear the sobbing from the hallway, a tiny, broken girl with a gun in her lap. I couldn’t kill her. I had to disarm her before she shot anyone else. I moved to the wall and inched my way past the kitchen table to crouch next to the opening to the hallway.
“Hey, are you still there?”
She answered with another shot. The pot jumped from the top of the stove, spraying water over the floor. She wasn’t aiming, just shooting. I wanted to rush
her, but it would be suicide.
“Hey, let’s talk. Just you and me. Okay?”
“Fuck you. Fuck every Stallion. I know why you’re here. You wanna kill me.”
“Hey, come on now. Why would I want to do that? Just calm down, okay?”
“I didn’t do anything. Just leave me alone. Fuck that midget. He shouldn’a told me he killed that cop. You can’t blame me. I won’t tell anyone.”
I waited, didn’t know what to say as her sobs grew louder. I looked around the kitchen for a way to distract her so I could disarm her.
“You don’t want to do this. Please, there has been enough killing.”
“Just leave me alone.” She punctuated it with another blind shot into the kitchen. The sobs stopped; she was angry again. Good, angry is easier to deal with.
“Look, I am not going to hurt you. No one is. We can sort this out.”
“No, you’re going to kill me because of that dead cop. I know it.”
She wasn’t making sense, but she wasn’t in shock. She knew I was wearing the colours. She did not see my back. She had to know the club well to call it from the few badges on the front of my cut. She had to be the dancer Blair had gone to see. He said she looked like a kid.
“Hey, come on, kid. You work with us, right? I just want to get you out of here. The cops are coming. You hear that?” The sirens outside seemed constant as more and more officers arrived.
“I’ll kill them all. I’ll kill you.”
Her voice sounded different, calmer. Not a good sign. I heard movement. She was standing. I pressed my back into the wall and pulled the shotgun tight to my chest, tilting it slightly toward the doorway. She walked out and swung the gun my way. She wanted out, and I was her ticket. I hesitated and felt the burn as she took a shot.
The kick of the shotgun hurt more as the butt punched the inside of my left thigh. She fell back into the hallway; her gun dropped beside me. I kicked it away and rolled into the doorway.
She looked like a broken doll on the floor in front of me. Blood poured from a hole just below her throat. She looked so young. I’d seen dead kids who were a lot younger. You could never unsee them. This one was mine, and there was nothing I could do to change it. Her head was tilted to the side, facing the open door to Sandy Gardner’s bedroom. I wanted to turn it away from that place. I picked up her left wrist to check, but I knew I’d find nothing.
Chapter 1
Thursday morning, near dawn
I jammed the shifter into park and knew it was murder before I killed the engine. One glance told me that. Every cop had the vibe, the extra energy that only comes with the big show. No one takes the oath to hand out parking tickets or lock up drunks. Catching killers, that’s what the badge is really about. I grabbed my questionable cop credentials and stepped out to the rhythmic snap of yellow crime-scene tape fighting an ocean breeze. Home.
I stood beside the car, tasting the salt brine in the pre-dawn air, pulling it into my lungs, savouring it. It tasted good. I felt good. Don’t get me wrong. Death isn’t my feel-good thing, but murder, well, I wanted a good murder. My badge felt heavy and dull when I clipped it to my belt. It needed something to give it back that sheen. People die every day, every second. We all come with an expiry date. Why shouldn’t one man’s death be another man’s break?
Two cruisers sat nose-deep in the ditches at either side of a gravel road. Gatekeepers protecting the dead. Red-and-blue lights cut into a heavy fog. The tape making the racket strained away in a wide arc, anchored to the roof racks beneath the spinning lights. More tape stretched from the cars to nearby telephone poles. Beyond the thin plastic barricade, the road twisted its way up the blackened hills of the old city dump. The sky beyond was shedding the deep dark of night. Sunrise was still twenty minutes away, but a soft blue was already bleeding into the dark. I couldn’t see the water beyond, but I could feel its chill, hear the waves slamming the rocks along the shoreline. I glanced left into purgatory.
The cranes in the Fairview Cove Container Terminal rose into the fog. Beneath them was the construction-trailer-turned-cop-shop where I’d shuffled paper for the past two years, waiting for something, anything, to happen. This felt like something. When he stuck me behind that desk, the chief told me the waterfront anti-terror squad was a glamour gig. He lied.
Halifax is the off-load port for millions of tonnes of cargo piled onto container ships too big to fit into New York’s piers fully loaded. Crews here peel the top few rows of containers off the ships. Those boxes hit the rails while the ships, sitting higher in the water, head to the Big Apple. That means nasty guys with bad intentions might just try to slip a surprise through the container terminal. Thus, the anti-terror squad. Two years, no dirty bombs, no terror plots, and, until today, no yellow tape snapping in the breeze. I knew the chief stuck me on the squad because he was tired of getting complaints about the biker with the badge. Well, he was the one who pinned it on my chest.
I pulled the badge and handed it to a rookie standing between the cruisers. He slid into one of the cars and punched the number into the remote terminal. Everyone entering or exiting an active crime scene is logged.
“Here you are, Detective Constable Neville,” he said.
We didn’t know each other, so I figured the terminal gave him my name when he entered the badge number. Guess it hadn’t expired. I ducked under the yellow line and back in time. Couldn’t help smiling. Walking into a real crime scene again, owning it.
Halfway up the hill there was a dead guy face down in the dirt. He was naked; plasti-cuffs locked his hands behind his back. Like I said, murder. My detecting skills were still sound. I grabbed my left wrist as I looked at the tight cuffs holding his hands together. I massaged the scars, felt a distant pain. I released my grip, massaged the scars on my right. Permanent reminders of rusty shackles, thick chain, and no hope. Both wrists ache when it’s damp; so do my ankles. In Halifax, it’s always damp.
Sergeant Carla Cage was crouched beside the body. She was the best in the forensics game. A third-generation cop. Her grandfather was chief of the old Dartmouth police force, and her father still ran our patrol division. She was raised to be a cop. Having her here was a break.
“Hey, Sergeant.”
“Cam Neville, in the flesh. Are you lost, Detective?” She glanced my way and then turned back to the vic.
“Took the call, just like you.” I pulled out a notebook and jotted down a few first impressions. Show the good sergeant I was in the game. She looked over again.
“Really? Guess the horseshoe finally fell. Give me a minute, and this one is all yours.” She lingered on the “all.” I didn’t like that. Didn’t much like the horseshoe shot either. Cops call the anti-terror task force the golden horseshoe squad. They also claim our horseshoes are lodged in a very uncomfortable place. Lucky us.
“Sure, Sarge, take what you need. I’ll look for that horseshoe.” I knew Cage was a good cop, and she didn’t carry any of that holier-than-the-biker bullshit, so I didn’t mind the remark coming from her as much as I did some of the assholes in uniform who think the chief gave me an easy ride.
I pushed two tiny plastic buds into my ears and ran my finger over the menu on my iPhone. Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Vicious Cycle” seemed appropriate. The music started as I walked up a steep mound of hard-packed clay. Murder investigations are about the kind of truth that changes you. You can’t avoid it. There is a purity of purpose that can make you stronger, but there is also a darkness that can eat you whole. Music grounds me. It can get me to that purity and help me fight the darkness. Skynyrd is as good a shield as I’ve found. I turned when I reached the top of the hill and looked around.
The body sat at the end of a perfectly maintained access road that led to a place no one needed access to. Government property. Thirty years ago, the city closed the dump. Somebody realized the harbourfront probably wasn’t the place to b
ury garbage. They covered everything in clay and hoped for the best.
From the top of the hill, I watched Sergeant Cage work the body for a few seconds before turning away. I’d carry the dead guy with me for the rest of my life and wasn’t ready to pick him up just yet. I’ve killed people and I’ve solved a few murders. The people I kill and the people I set out to avenge belong to the same club. Their dead eyes are as much a part of me as my scars.
Flashbacks are nothing like you see in the movies. Sometimes they are about a smell, taste, or sound. Sometimes it’s a visual image but nothing really clear. It’s not what you see, hear, taste, or smell, though. It’s where those things take you. It’s a full-on fight-or-flight feeling, with no one to fight and nowhere to run. They set off the adrenaline, the panic, and pin the anxiety meter in the red. You can drink or drug them away for a while, but they come back. PTSD is a motherfucker, plain and simple. A cold-hearted bitch. No cure and no point dwelling on it. After all, I’m still alive; the guy face down on the hill is not.
To the left I could see a dark shadow in the fog. The spire of a small wooden church, a testament to the racism most people in Halifax will tell you never existed here. For 125 years, the descendants of African slaves lived along the shoreline here. They built a tight-knit and proud community in isolation and poverty. Africville was part of Halifax, but the city didn’t want it, wouldn’t provide sewer, water, or even police protection. As far as the good people of Halifax were concerned, Africville was a shantytown to be ignored. The city put the open-pit dump beside it and set up sewage lagoons nearby to drive home the point.
Then, one day, Africville mattered more than it wanted to. The people were evicted, and late one cold night in 1969 heavy equipment swept in and demolished the church. The last house was flattened within a month. The city called it urban renewal. Halifax needed a new bridge, and Africville was in the way. The suddenly homeless people were jammed into inner-city slums and ignored for decades. Some of the toughest gangs in the city came out of those inner-city kitchens where bitterness and frustration still simmer.
Disposable Souls Page 1