That Lonely Section of Hell

by Lori Shenher

  One rare Saturday when I wasn’t working, I decided to play my guitar in an attempt to relax. I set it down while I went to the kitchen to brew a cup of tea and when I returned, I found my three-year-old daughter holding the guitar. She turned to me and accidentally banged the neck on the corner of the wall. Nothing was damaged, but I glared at her.

  “Never, EVER bang my guitar like that again,” I growled. For the first time ever, I saw fear in her eyes. My beautiful little girl was afraid of me. I was a monster. I had let a stupid $200 guitar come before my relationship with my child.

  She handed me the guitar and hugged me.

  “I’m sorry, Mommy,” she said. “I didn’t mean to make you mad.” I held her for a few moments and looked into her eyes. I felt like the biggest ass, someone I could barely recognize. This was a rare occasion when I could actually step outside my anger and see it.

  “You haven’t done anything wrong, baby. I’m the one who’s sorry,” I touched her face. “You touch my guitar anytime you want, okay? I want you to play it if you want to.”

  “Okay, Mommy,” she skipped off to find her brothers, leaving me ruminating over whether I’d ruined her forever.

  I rarely sat down at home. I always saw something that needed dusting or cleaning or fixing or moving—it didn’t matter what. Watching an entire movie at home without getting up was unheard of for me in those years. I was overly critical of my partner’s attempts to reassure me that the cleaning and cooking could wait, could be done less perfectly, that I could be less hard on myself.

  “You don’t understand,” I said. “These things need to be maintained, they need to be kept up or they have to be replaced.” I pointed to the furnace or the siding on the house or the bath drain. It didn’t matter what it was; I was crazy with worry.

  “You can leave it,” my partner would say. “It’s okay.”

  “No, it isn’t okay! Don’t you get it? It is not okay!” I can’t count the number of times I’d snapped at my partner and she called me on it, which merely reinforced my self-justification and determination to see myself as a victim. I was abusive and nasty, but I couldn’t see it. Time and time again, I would be convinced she was somehow thwarting me, and I’d speak to her in ways that made her see she lived with a crazy person who spoke to her harshly. I wondered how much longer my family would put up with me. I coped by being home less and less, pouring myself into my intelligence job. My office drawers overflowed with boxes of green tea and dark chocolate. I drank tea all day to soothe myself and ate chocolate and avocados brought from home so that I wouldn’t have to leave my office for lunch. Hardly a balanced diet, but the routine seemed to comfort me on some level.

  In December 2006, my work partner, Malcolm, and I spent a week on a course at the RCMP Pacific Region Training Center. Working among RCMP officers reminded me of my time working on Pickton, and my symptoms intensified. We had little homework on our course, and each evening after a workout and some dinner, Malcolm and I found ourselves in the lounge drinking beer and watching hockey on a big screen. Each night, I pressed him to drink more with me. Malcolm was six feet four and weighed two hundred pounds. I weigh one hundred and thirty. On our third night there, we finished our fourth beer, and he told me he’d had enough.

  “C’mon,” I said, “one more. It’s not like you’re driving anywhere.” I held my credit card out to him enticingly. “I’ll buy.”

  “Okay, but that’s it for me. I am done.” He laughed, hands held up in a gesture of surrender. I made my way to the bar to buy our fifth round. I returned with the beers, splashing them on the table.

  “Oops, sorry.” I laughed.

  “I had no idea you were such a party animal,” he said.

  “Yeah, I really probably shouldn’t drink at all.” We finished our beers and called it a night when he refused to let me buy us another.

  Back in my room, I called my partner on the phone for our nightly chat and to say goodnight.

  “I don’t think drinking’s good for me,” I told her. “For a bit, I feel so great, then I get totally depressed. I feel like crap and tomorrow’s going to suck.” What I didn’t tell her was I felt despondent, worthless, and hopeless, and if Malcolm had joined me, I would have had five more.

  “Well, just don’t drink so much next time,” she told me, ever the cheerful, sensible one. She always spoke to me with patience and reason.

  “No, I think I have an actual problem. I’ve never been able to stop. I’m done with drinking.”

  “Okay, whatever you think, love.” And with that, I never drank again. I vowed to face my problems head on, without self-medicating.

  WHEN THE PICKTON trial finally ended in December 2007, after nearly two years, I felt some relief that maybe this awful chapter in my career was ending. I didn’t feel better about the organization or about policing, but I did about my place and myself as a police officer. I knew I was a good cop. I knew people like me were needed more than ever. I began to hope I could climb back out of the hole I’d be in for almost ten years. It wasn’t a recovery, but I felt I could throw myself back into policing in a meaningful way and perhaps use my bad experiences for good. I thought this would heal my PTSD, and I hoped the symptoms I’d been coping with would magically lessen.

  In 2009, I was given the opportunity to read Deputy Chief Constable Doug LePard’s report on the role of the Vancouver Police in the missing women investigation when it went to print. This was a year before the report’s 2010 release. Each copy was held under tight guard, and I could only view one in Doug’s office, under the watch of Superintendent Andy Hobbs because Doug was out of town. I devoted an entire workday to the four-hundred-page document, and it took me a little over four hours to read it. When Andy poked his head in the door to see how I was making out, I had just finished it.

  I realized he was not there to ensure that I wouldn’t run away with the copy but rather to safeguard me from whatever emotional reaction they feared I might have. I’m not sure what they expected, but I felt mainly vindication at Doug’s treatment of me and the hard work and passion I’d devoted to the file for more than two years. I found his analysis and conclusions accurate and fair, and I was pleased to see the VPD fall on its sword in admitting the organization’s shortcomings. There were a few small points here and there where I held differing views, but I felt on the whole the report echoed my experience and most of my sense of what went wrong on our end. Having the story on paper—much of it my story—filled me with relief and comforted me.

  When I finished reading, I sat alone in Doug’s office, overcome with equal parts grief and relief. By then, I’d relied heavily on my various coping mechanisms—all based on strict routines—and I avoided everyone aside from my immediate coworkers and functioned at a high level of anxiety that allowed me to keep myself wound tight and pushing forward. Every time I read about this investigation, I was struck anew by how those long depressing days in that windowless Project Amelia room held me in their grip, continually ripping the scar wide open again, pressing my coping mechanisms into service. I fought back tears of relief that I’d been spared any undue criticism. I had been sensitive to any possible criticism for years. It wasn’t my fault, but I share blame with everyone who touched this disastrous investigation.

  I stared at an entry discussing the photo identification Fisk and Myers hadn’t shared with the team: “April 5 and 12, 2000—Myers and Fisk showed several suspect photos—including Pickton’s—to several sex trade workers and their notes indicate three different sex trade workers selected Pickton’s photo. Myers and Fisk did not report on this information to Shenher or anyone else in the MWRT.”

  My anger was as raw as the first time I’d discovered this, eight years earlier.

  “How’re you doing?” Andy asked, sitting down beside me at the table where I’d been reading.

  “Good,” I lied. “I’m good.”

  ON SEPTEMBER 27, 2010, the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry was formally announced, and the y
ear that followed proved challenging. Even after the many years of investigation, the painstaking search of the farm, the intermittent discovery of new victim DNA over months and months, and the long Pickton trial and appeal process—it still wasn’t over. When would it ever truly be over?

  I hoped I could survive the inquiry and triumph over this nightmare, but my doubts remained. In 2010, I’d eagerly awaited the release of Doug LePard’s report—released to coincide with the government’s expected announcement of an inquiry—hoping that finally people would begin to see what a serious tragedy this investigation had been and to understand why a public inquiry was so sorely needed. As it was, the report was leaked mere weeks before the announcement of the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry, but it didn’t matter. At least it was out, and the inquiry would finally take place.

  My anxiety level reached new heights as I anticipated the announcement of the inquiry, and when I learned that former B.C. attorney general Wally Oppal would be the commissioner, I was overwhelmed by mixed feelings. That evening, I sat at my computer and composed a letter to Fazil Milhar, editorial page editor of the Vancouver Sun. I detailed my concerns about Mr. Oppal as commissioner, given his past roles as the provincial attorney general who once announced there would be no public inquiry into the missing women and as previous head of the B.C. Criminal Justice Branch when the 1997 charges against Pickton in the Anderson matter were stayed. I explained that I felt no animosity toward Mr. Oppal; on the contrary, I knew him a little from playing basketball at the police station and liked him personally and professionally. I merely felt he was the wrong choice, encumbered by too many conflicting roles in this case over the years.

  I copied the email containing the letter to Deputy Chief Constable LePard and Paul Patterson of the VPD Public Affairs Section, because I didn’t want them completely blindsided in the morning press briefing. I hit Send and then went straight to bed. I fell straight to sleep for the first time in years.

  My partner roused me from a rare deep sleep, holding the telephone out to me. My mind was blissfully blank for several seconds. Then I remembered.

  “It’s Doug LePard,” she whispered. I took the phone.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi, Lori, it’s Doug LePard.” I cringed as I noted the gentle tone of his voice, as though he were talking an unstable person off a ledge. “I got your email.”

  “Uh-huh,” I answered. “I thought you might be calling. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay. Listen, I can understand why you feel the way you do and why you wrote it, but would there be any way for you to ask them to pull it?” He paused. “Have they said it’s going in?”

  “I dunno. No one has answered, but I haven’t checked my email since I wrote it.” I began to feel pinpricks of regret.

  “Okay. I’m not ordering you to pull it, but if there was any way you could, I would appreciate it. The chief and I are meeting with people from the provincial government about this tomorrow, and this would put us in a difficult position and set a bad tone going forward.” His patience, kindness, and lack of insistence made me feel even worse. Was I just paranoid? Were my feelings and this letter unwarranted? Would everything ever really be fine? Was I losing it?

  “I can try. I’ll ask them to pull it,” I said, suddenly understanding how little I wanted to bring this attention to myself both within the VPD and across the province. What was happening to me?

  “Tell them you’re under a doctor’s care and you’ve reconsidered.” He hesitated. “That’s true, isn’t it?” This suggestion opened up a whole new field of embarrassment and shame. My attendance at therapy was sporadic at best, though I needed it badly.

  “Yeah, unfortunately.” I said, laughing for the first time in the conversation. He joined me. “Doug, I’m really sorry to cause you grief. This thing is really getting to me.”

  “I know. Hang in there. You will get your chance to speak, and it’ll mean so much more in the inquiry than in the newspaper. You want your opinions to count, trust me. Just hang in there and it’ll happen.”

  “Okay. I know you’re right. At times I just lose it.”

  “I know. Let me know how you make out with Fazil, okay?”

  “Okay. Thanks, and I am really sorry for causing you so much grief.”

  I managed to get the Sun to pull the piece, but not before the editorial staff had read my little manifesto. I worried whether I could hold it together and keep my mouth shut throughout the inquiry. I told the story to my friend Lindsay Kines, now a reporter for the Victoria Times Colonist, who made me promise to duct-tape oven mitts to my hands whenever I was at the computer and wanted to send something like that again. Or if I was determined to hit Send, he suggested I address the email to him and he promised to put it straight into his trash. I felt better knowing that others were able to laugh my behavior off, but it continued to worry me because I knew it was serious.

  I decided then to compete again for promotion to sergeant. I hoped my career could survive.

  As I began the preparation for the inquiry in the summer of 2011, my old doubts about whether I could become part of the policing world again returned, but I pushed them aside, determined that I would find a way to feel better as time went on. My lengthy interview with Peel Regional Police Deputy Chief Constable Jennifer Evans—engaged by the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry to chronicle and prepare an independent report on the entire police investigation—reopened many of my old wounds and brought me back to those long days I wanted so much to forget. I’d set my manuscript aside over all those years; it was simply too upsetting for me to revisit, so this return to the investigation hit me hard.

  I appreciated Evans’s sensitivity and obvious investigative knowledge, and she clearly had worked extremely hard to grasp the nuances of this very complex file in short order. Retelling my story brought me to tears, and I hated myself for my weakness in front of a successful police officer who had risen through the ranks and knew the game.

  I retook the sergeant promotional assessment a few months later and scored a very high mark. I remained committed to forging on with plans for my promotion, despite my growing doubts that I could handle it emotionally. I believed the way to triumph was to remain in the policing world and make a difference.

  In September 2011, I returned to the Downtown Eastside to fulfill a uniformed patrol requirement for the promotional competition. Returning to the heart of skid row was the oddest sort of homecoming. Nearly nineteen years to the day since I’d last been there, in that place, in my uniform—now wearing the current VPD black uniform and not my old pale-blue one from a bygone era—I stood among the people, doing this bizarrely janitorial work cleaning up after the city’s most needy people. As with most homecomings, much had changed, but so much had also stayed the same. Hurting, hungry, toothless, drunken, disheveled, disabled, discarded, dispossessed human beings staggered from bar to bar along East Hastings Street, which was littered with garbage and items stolen from Vancouver’s more fortunate inhabitants. I suspect that I was not alone in imagining that I would never end up back down here after so much time. Yet here I was again, back where it all began.

  When I said I never imagined being back there, I wasn’t being overly dramatic. The doctor who performs the health assessments of police officers every five years had advised the VPD Human Resources Section that moving me from my current intelligence job in Threat Assessment—a position I’d held since 2005—was not in my best interests or the VPD’s. I was in no emotional shape to take on a more visible role in the VPD. I drifted in and out of therapy but had no real idea how to get better and received no guidance from anyone in the VPD. All I knew was that I had to try to make this horrible experience count for something, and I believed promotion was the way to do that.

  My short time back in uniform on the Downtown Eastside proved unsettling. Accompanied by Toby Hinton, a very capable sergeant, I moved from call to call supervising the Beat Enforcement Team officers, ensuring that procedures were fo
llowed and that the team members had sufficient backup and support to do their jobs. I was stunned by my inability to focus. In my past assignments as a patrol officer, I was highly competent and my senses were attuned to my surroundings and the potential danger of each situation. I noticed everything and easily remembered license plate numbers, names, dates of birth, and wanted persons.

  Now I felt numb and struggled to make sense of events happening around us. We attended several violent scenes: bar fights, people savagely slashed by broken beer bottles or knives, noses and skulls crushed by lengths of rebar, domestic violence cases in which women and men nursed a range of wounds as well as shattered expectations and dreams. The smell of blood had never bothered me in the past, but now it hung thick and metallic in the air all around me, reminding me of all matters Pickton. I found entering the meat sections of large grocery stores more and more disturbing and began avoiding them.

  I worried about everything all the time. I felt less “safe” as a police officer on the street—too empathetic to both criminals and victims, too aware of the gray area in between the necessary black and white that serves police so well in helping them assign blame and meaning when doing their work. My boundaries—in place to keep me safe to some extent—were gone. I stood out there hugging people, kissing babies, and high-fiving old acquaintances. I hoped I could survive these three weeks in uniform and do what I needed to in order to get promoted and go to a plainclothes supervisory job.