The Inspector stormed into the room. “You’re relieved, Detective Shepard.” Rya gave me a warning look before disappearing into the hall. Cornish leaned against the two-way mirror and crossed his arms.
“Did you hear what I told Rya about the yaba?” I asked.
“I already heard it all from your little sidekick next door.”
“How is Billy?”
“About ready to turn on your dumb ass.”
I figured Cornish was playing me. But even if he wasn’t, I could hardly blame Billy. First I get him beat up, then I get him arrested. He didn’t owe me squat. “He’s just a kid,” I said. “He had nothing to do with this.”
“Those surgical supplies suggest otherwise.”
“He’s a med student and I borrowed them from him. The kid was just my lookout while I cut up the snake.”
Cornish chuckled and shook his head. “Do you know why I don’t like you, Ounstead?”
“Because I have much better hair than you?”
“It’s because you’re an arrogant son-of-a-bitch. You think that your own personal sense of morality somehow entitles you to ignore proper conduct and act on your impulses. Even if it means leaving a giant fucking mess that other decent people have to clean up.”
Cornish placed his hands on the table and glared down at me. “I guess I shouldn’t be that surprised, though. Your old man was the same way.”
“Are you sure you’re not confusing a righteous sense of morality with having a set of balls, Inspector?”
Cornish slammed a fist down on the table and got in my face. “It’s over, Ounstead. I’ve got you cold on obstruction, not to mention a handful of other charges. And I’m going to make it my personal mission to ensure you’re convicted on each and every one.”
“I don’t give a shit. All I care about is that you follow up on the fact that whoever killed Johnny Mamba is connected to someone dealing a very rare type of narcotic.”
“Oh, we’ll follow up on your lead, Ace. Don’t you worry about that. Unfortunately, the Drug Unit has a six-month backlog of cases. So I doubt they’ll be examining those colourful tablets anytime soon, especially since they’re probably nothing more than a bunch of fucking Skittles that were eaten by your friend’s stupid snake.”
“I identified those pills, Cornish. It’s yaba meth.”
“I’m afraid the VPD relies on actual evidence to build its cases, not the crackpot theories of burnout deadbeat civilians.”
“Are you seriously telling me you’re not going to investigate the yaba angle until six months from now?”
“I’ll tell you what. When we finally do get around to it, I’ll be sure to stop by your prison cell and let you know what we find out.”
Cornish was gloating. I clenched my jaw, trying to summon the will to not do something stupid. I came awfully close to grabbing his tie and smashing his face into the table just as I had done at the strip club with Melvin. The only thing that stopped me was that the door to the interrogation room swung open and a towering figure stepped inside. It was my father.
Frank Ounstead was six-foot-five and had maintained his linebacker’s physique all the way into his early sixties. Although I was a bit shorter than my old man, my build was more symmetrical and lacked some of my pop’s more powerful features, like his barrel chest, Popeye-like forearms, and gorilla mitts. My pop’s mouth was formed in a thin line beneath his salt and pepper mustache and it took him all but two seconds to size up the scenario before him.
“Get up, son. We’re leaving.”
“What do you think you’re doing?” barked Cornish as he whirled around.
“What the hell does it look like, Cornish? I’m taking my boy home.”
“He’s under arrest.”
“Not anymore,” growled my father.
“Excuse me?” snapped Cornish.
“I just cleared it with the Chief Constable.”
Cornish stood toe to toe with my pop, straining his neck as he looked upward. “You got some fucking nerve, old man.”
My pop glowered at Cornish and exhaled through his nostrils like a snorting bull. “I could say the same about you for arresting my boy without my knowledge.” My pop jerked a meaty thumb over shoulder.
“Let’s go, son.” I walked past Cornish and followed my father out of the room.
“I don’t care what kind of pull you still might have with the brass,” Cornish yelled after us. “This is my department, Frank. I’ll run it whatever fucking way I see fit.”
I caught up to my pop in the hallway. “I can’t leave without Billy.”
“Who?”
“The kid who was arrested with me.”
“He’s waiting with Rya.”
I followed my father as he led the way out of the precinct, watching as the passing detectives and officers each acknowledged my old man with polite greetings or nods of respect. Billy hustled over to me when we reached the bullpen while my father went to Rya’s desk to confer with his protégé.
“You okay, Jed?”
“I’m fine. You?”
“I’m all right. What’s happening? Did your dad pay our bail or something?”
“They’re dropping the charges.”
“Thank God,” exclaimed Billy. “I was already starting to worry about getting shanked if we got sent to the clink.”
“Shanked in the clink?” I asked.
“Yeah, man.”
I shook my head. “You watch way too much HBO, kid.”
My pop shot me a look and nodded toward the exit. I caught Rya’s eye as Billy and I followed my father out the door. She stared at me a moment, then looked away.
After dropping off Billy at his apartment I reminded my old man that my truck was still at Vancouver General. He grumbled something about not being a goddamn taxi service before turning up the country music in his Dodge Durango and driving toward the hospital. I knew better than to try and elicit a conversation from my father while he was humming along to Hank Williams Jr., so I spent the ride thinking over the potential ramifications of Ginger’s cause of death.
Since yaba was such an unusual drug in Vancouver, trying to pinpoint its source was the logical next step. Whoever took Ginger had to be either a major customer or dealer due to the sheer volume of pills inside the snake. Obviously the VPD’S Drug Unit had more resources than I did when it came to tracking down narcotics, but after the way Cornish scoffed at the validity of my discovery, I wasn’t about to hold my breath that the police would make headway anytime soon. Which left me with two options: investigate the city’s yaba distribution directly by attempting to scare up leads wherever I could find them, which seemed both unlikely and ineffective, or return to the root of the crime that had been committed and try and connect it to the yaba itself.
I looked at the facts. Someone associated with XCCW had kidnapped Johnny’s snake. The snake was then held in a location where there were ample quantities of yaba. It then consumed the drugs and overdosed, causing the kidnapper to adjust the timeline and rush the ransom exchange. While I wasn’t ready just yet to speculate on what went wrong at the exchange or why Johnny was murdered, I did have good reason to investigate a potential link between XCCW and yaba. And while I was certain that if meth was being distributed at XCCW then Bert Grasby would know about it, I doubted he would be very forthcoming with that information given our newly developed acrimony. But that didn’t necessarily mean that no one from XCCW would talk to me.
My thoughts were interrupted when Hank Williams Jr. finished crooning about all the different ways in which a country boy can survive and my pop clicked off the Durango’s CD player. I realized that we had left downtown behind us and were now cruising along Main Street. Once we passed through the intersection at Broadway I knew exactly where we were going.
“
I don’t know about you,” he said, “but I sure as hell could go for a milkshake.”
“You and me both, Pop.”
“And you’re buying, goddamn it.”
The Dairy Queen on Main Street was perhaps my old man’s favourite, but not because it necessarily served up better frosty treats. No, my father preferred this location due to the fact that it was small and quaint, perched on an unassuming street corner and surrounded by fewer commercial establishments and more heritage homes than your typical DQ. It also featured retro-style booths and a classic Dairy Queen red-bubble roof, which meant if there were no cars parked on the street then the malt shop pretty much looked like it had been undisturbed since the seventies.
We ordered two large milkshakes and took a seat in a brightly coloured booth. By the time we had nearly finished our drinks I had brought my pop up to speed on Johnny’s case. He had spoken to Declan earlier that morning after his flight landed, and my cousin had done his best to summarize what had happened while he was at his security conference.
My pop took a sip of his shake and smacked his lips. “This is more like it. Can you believe that I couldn’t find one Dairy Queen the entire time I was in LA? All they had down there were these Carl’s Jr. places. Their shakes tasted like frosted piss.” He took another sip of his root beer milkshake. My pop had always been one to like variety when it came to his shakes. But not me. I was a banana man through and through.
“Thanks for bailing my ass out,” I said finally.
“Imagine my surprise,” he chortled. “My son, the private detective.”
Ever since I left pro wrestling my father had been on my case to go for my private investigator’s licence and officially join the family business. I had never had much interest. It was the second time in my life that I had greatly disappointed my old man. The first was when I chose not to follow in his footsteps as a cop.
“This is kind of a one-time thing,” I said.
“Maybe it shouldn’t be.”
“Come on, Pop. We’ve been over this.”
“That was before you twice dug up evidence ahead of the police.”
“The only reason I was able to do that was because I understand the wrestling world better than they do.”
“Bullshit. You sniffed out those pictures Melvin took and were the first one to figure out that the ex-girlfriend wasn’t a suspect. You also knew to examine the snake’s guts for evidence. That didn’t happen because you used to wrestle. It happened because you followed your instincts. Like it or not, you got a nose for this stuff, son. It’s in your blood.”
“Well maybe I don’t want it to be,” I snapped.
“So what then? You’re just going to keep on wasting your life bouncing at clubs and living off what’s left of your wrestling money? What the hell kind of life is that?”
“It’s the one that I want right now.”
“Goddamn it, John!” barked my father.
I had had enough. I was sick of having the same fight with my father over and over again. I also hated being called John, even though my full legal name was actually John Edward Ounstead. My old man stubbornly insisted upon calling me by my given name, despite the fact I’d gone by Jed ever since my mother gave me the nickname as a boy.
“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but maybe stopping for a milkshake was a mistake. Thanks again, Pop. I’ll find my way from here.”
Heads turned in the Dairy Queen as a low guttural growl escaped my old man’s throat. I had made it only a few steps from the table before I heard him grumble. “Get back here,” he commanded.
“What?” I said, returning to his table.
“Sit.” I did as I was told.
“You got your fancy i-gizmo with you?”
“You mean my iPhone?”
“Yeah.”
“Right here,” I said, withdrawing the device from my pocket.
“You get emails on that?”
“Yes.”
“Check for a new one.”
I activated my phone and opened the mail application. After a few seconds the phone chimed, indicating new mail. There was one unread message in my inbox from [email protected]. “Who’s K. Tucker?” I asked.
“Old friend of mine who works in Criminal Records and Fingerprinting. After talking to your cousin I had Tuck run Bert Grasby’s name and send you the results.” I opened up the PDF attachment and saw the complete criminal records check on Grasby. I glanced up at my father, surprised. “Just be careful with this joker,” he cautioned. “Declan told me how his boys jumped you the other night and Tuck mentioned that his rap sheet suggests he may be into some shady shit.”
“Okay, Pop.”
“And one more thing.” He tossed me his badge, which had been confiscated by the cops upon my arrest.
“You might be needing that,” he said with a wink. I pocketed the badge and we both took sips of our milkshakes.
“So what’s your next move, detective?” he asked.
I proceeded to tell him about my intention to find the link between XCCW and the yaba. We each ordered another milkshake and continued to discuss potential leads and avenues of investigation that I could follow to find Johnny’s killer. It was the happiest I had seen my old man in a long time.
TWENTY-ONE
I spent the next morning carefully going over Bert Grasby’s criminal record. I scrambled some eggs and poured a glass of grapefruit juice, then spread out a printed copy of the PDF file I had received from my old man’s police contact across my kitchen table. I opened the blinds and let a sudden burst of autumn sunshine light up my living room. Boats set sail in the Coal Harbour marina, and I could see the heated patio of the nearby posh restaurant Cardero’s filling up with customers for brunch. Despite the action outside my front window, the only time I looked up from Grasby’s file was when an attractive, blonde, female jogger who stepped in dog crap on the sidewalk proceeded to loudly berate an elderly man walking a terrier for not cleaning up after his pet.
Grasby’s criminal career started off simply enough when he was arrested at age nineteen in his hometown of Hamilton for possession of marijuana. He followed up that charge with numerous minor summary offences. By the time he had reached his mid-twenties Grasby had graduated to more serious crimes, including theft and fraud. At thirty-one he was convicted of sexually molesting a teenage boy and sentenced to five years in prison, although he ended up only serving three years before being released on mandatory supervision.
Grasby’s most noteworthy offense occurred in the late nineties while he was living in Montreal. He was arrested and charged for owning and operating a chain of massage parlours, which he was using as fronts for brothels. The case had garnered a lot of interest in the media because Grasby’s businesses were part of a larger prostitution ring in the Greater Montreal area that was broken up by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. More than fifty people were taken into custody during the sting, which was a multiple effort between the RCMP, the Canadian Border Services Agency, and the Integrated Border Enforcement Team, a joint task force comprised of both Canadian and US law enforcement agencies. The reason for the feds’ involvement was that dozens of the people arrested were women and teenage boys whom the police believed could have been victims of human trafficking. Ultimately there was difficulty in making the human trafficking charges stick and they were dropped, but not before Grasby had traded intel on other Montreal brothels in exchange for a plea bargain. As a result, Grasby served six months in a minimum-security prison for procurement and keeping a common bawdy house before being released on parole.
I cross-referenced the criminal record with what I remembered from Grasby’s background check and worked out that after serving time for his role in the Montreal prostitution ring he had made his way west, living for brief periods in Calgary and Edmonton before eventually arriving in Van
couver eight years ago. He kept his nose clean for a while until he was arrested again, this time on suspicion of aggravated assault.
The victim was Trevor Benton, a twenty-six-year-old gay male escort who had been known to advertise his services on Craigslist and other erotic websites. Benton was brutally beaten in his basement suite, which was then set ablaze in an arson attack. Benton managed to escape his burning home but wound up being hospitalized for nearly a month. It turned out that Grasby was a regular client of Benton’s, but after being brought in for questioning, the charges were dropped. Benton claimed to have no memory of his attacker and even though the cops liked Grasby for the crime there was a substantial lack of evidence.
A little red flag sprung up in the back of my brain. There was some previous connection between Grasby and arson. It took me a minute to connect the dots, and then I remembered what Stormy Daze had said about her fellow wrestler Chet Wilson while she was in police custody. Wilson had angered Grasby by attempting to leave XCCW for Edmonton’s Monster Pro Wrestling, which resulted in his apartment suddenly going up in flames.
I put down Grasby’s criminal record and went to my office. I did a web search for “Chet Wilson Vancouver fire” and found a story in The Vancouver Sun online archives. I skimmed the text until I found the detail that had made the story so newsworthy. Apparently the fire had started near several leaky propane cylinders stored inside the apartment. The resulting explosions caused tremendous damage to the small residence. A little jolt of electricity shot through my body.
I did a new web search for “Trevor Benton Vancouver arson assault” and came across numerous archived stories. Halfway through the second story I found the method by which Benton’s basement suite was set on fire — several propane cylinders.
I leaned back in my chair and considered the facts. There was no doubt in my mind that Grasby was responsible. The coincidence of propane cylinders being the cause of both fires at Chet Wilson’s apartment and Trevor Benton’s basement suite was too unlikely. It also made me realize that Grasby was far more dangerous than I originally thought. I decided that if I was going to keep my plans for that evening, it might be a good idea to bring a little backup.
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