That Lonely Section of Hell

by Lori Shenher

  My anger rises to the surface during my cross-examination by Kevin Woodall’s second chair, Claire Hatcher, who is acting for VPD constables Fisk and Myers. She attempts to defend them as hardworking and earnest investigators, unfairly ostracized from Project Amelia and single-minded in their desire to catch a killer. Each time she tries to steer me toward agreeing that they had been merely misunderstood and their efforts had been laudable, I remind her and the commission of the manner in which they withheld vital information from me and the rest of Project Amelia by failing to report that women on the Downtown Eastside had picked Pickton’s photo from their “lineup.”

  Hatcher attempts to have me say that I documented no tangible evidence that Fisk and Myers kept secrets from Project Amelia. I feel this is a critical issue for the investigation, and I refuse to be caught in her web. It is difficult for me, however. I fear testifying against colleagues, no matter how badly I feel they might have performed. Every evening for months after giving this testimony, I look over my shoulder in the darkness as I walk my dog around my neighborhood for fear—albeit irrational and unsubstantiated—that one of them will confront me. To be clear, neither of them ever threatens me, nor do I believe them to be bad people, but I know a small percentage of VPD members condemn me for speaking out against Fisk and Myers.

  “You haven’t ever documented a secret that you’ve discovered they’ve kept from you?” Hatcher asks.

  “Yes. The fact that they didn’t acknowledge to me that three women, three sex trade workers, had identified Pickton from the photographs that they showed around the Downtown Eastside,” I reply.

  “Regardless of how you feel that came to be or regardless of your beliefs about that, there’s no evidence that they deliberately kept that from you?”

  “All I can tell you is I never saw any notes and they never had any conversation with me coming back to the office saying, ‘Hey, guess what, we think Pickton is in the Downtown Eastside. We found three sex trade workers that know him.’ That was never communicated to me. That’s my evidence.”

  “That’s clear. But as far as, aside from that issue, you haven’t been able to find in all your interviews with LePard and Evans, you haven’t identified any tangible example of a secret that they kept from the team?”

  “I think I’ve testified to what I believe is the secret they kept from the team.”

  I look at her hard, thinking, How many more times do you want me to say it? Is prompting me to repeat this really helping your clients? “Aside from that issue”? That issue is THE issue. No matter how hard Fisk and Myers might have worked or how misunderstood they might have been, I feel they committed an egregious error by keeping this information from the team. I understand that she doesn’t have much to work with, but I just will not agree to something that isn’t the truth.

  Commissioner Oppal would determine the following after hearing all testimony and document it in his report: “In April, several women in the DTES (Downtown Eastside) identify Pickton from a group of photographs shown to them by Det. Cst. Fisk and Det. Cst. Myers. Other members of the MWRT (Project Amelia) are not advised of this information. Shortly after, the two constables go to Lethbridge to arrest the suspect they had been investigating.”

  ON FEBRUARY 2, 2012, a familiar bittersweet sensation comes over me at the completion of my first week of testimony. My friend Tim Timberg, himself a lawyer, waits for me in the gallery as Commissioner Oppal tells me I am free to go. Tim sweeps me up in a big hug, and, as usual, I choke up. He returns with me to the witness room and we close the door and talk for a long while. Once he leaves, I begin collecting my various binders and notes. As I do, there is a knock at the door. I open it, and there stands Commissioner Oppal, no jacket, shirtsleeves rolled up.

  “Can I come in?”

  “Of course.” I motion him in and close the door behind him. “How are you doing?”

  “Okay.” He smiles. “I’m doing okay. How are you?”

  “Pretty glad this week is over,” I say. We both laugh.

  “I wanted to thank you again for your testimony.” He looks at me fixedly. “You brought a high level of integrity to your testimony and your contributions have been very important to this inquiry.” I see his eyes tear up. “I know you’ve had a really tough time of it all these years.”

  I swallow hard. “Thanks, Wally. You’re going to get me crying again.”

  I never seem to know when I might break into tears. He gives me a hug, and I remember that despite all my criticisms of the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry and the choice of him as commissioner, I’ve always felt that he cared about the women. I feel he is a good person, trying to do his best, like all of us. He steps out and leaves me alone.

  So many times over these nearly fourteen years I have hoped the case might finally be over, but I fear and sense another step remains for me. The topic of my manuscript arises several times in my first week of testimony, and Dave Crossin advises me to prepare so that I can return to testify to its contents. Once again, I am done but not finished. From 1998 until mid-2012, this case continues to hold me in its grasp.

  I sleep almost the entire next day, my younger son’s ninth birthday. Never have I felt such complete and total exhaustion, not even after running marathons and triathlons. I want to take the following week off and recharge, but I don’t want to hide from my workplace. In some way, I feel if I don’t go back on Monday, I will never go back. I can’t let this case and this career beat me. I reason I can take some time off in the next few weeks, once I have shown my face around the office enough for everyone to know that testifying against colleagues and sharing my innermost emotions about the last fourteen years is not going to force me into a closet. I’ve been hiding for so long, and I’ve had enough. I return to work February 6.

  But, still, I do hide. I hole up in my secure office for a few hours that first Monday back, catching up on email and taking care of what I can manage. I fight to drag myself out of bed at 5:00 AM, still exhausted. I leave later in the morning, driving my work van around the city aimlessly, BlackBerry by my side in case the office needs me. I hope if I push myself through the extreme dread and anxiety I feel at work, it will make things easier for me in time. I receive a text from my sister, Jocelyn, in Calgary and pull over to read it. She asks whether I am free for a phone call. I text back, “Who died? I’m just out driving around.” She replies, “Melanie*.”

  I call Jocelyn, who has been closer to Melanie throughout the years than I have, though Melanie had been my very first friend. Our years growing up together flash through my mind.

  She lived two doors down, and we had been in the same kindergarten class. After that, she attended French immersion while I went to Catholic school, so summers were the only time we could do much together. One day, her head popped up from behind our back fence, which was slightly unusual because we rarely used the alley to get around.

  “Wanna see some clowns?” she asked, breathless, eyes alight with excitement.

  “Not really,” I said, displeasure etched across my face. I hated clowns and was one of the few kids in elementary school who gave away their free Shrine Circus tickets every year. “Where are they?”

  “Down there.” She pointed down the alley away from the more familiar homes and people we knew. “That house on the bend,” she clarified.

  My frown deepened. I suspected which house she meant and felt immediately sceptical. “The Parkers*?” I asked.

  She nodded. “Let’s go. It’ll be neat.” Her eyes pleaded with me. “They invited me.”

  “I dunno.” I paused, worried that she would go alone but not wanting to go with her.

  “I’m going either way,” she announced with a touch of false bravado, as though sensing my indecision. “I love clowns!”

  “You know I hate them,” I reminded her. “Didja ask your mom?”

  “Of course not. She’d say no,” she said.

  “Maybe she’d be right to.”

  “Aw, come o
n. Don’t be such a goody-goody. How bad could it be?” Ironically, I would turn out to be the rebellious teen and Melanie the model student and daughter, but when we were preteens, she was the wild one.

  I shook my head at her in silent defeat and slunk toward the back gate into the alley after a quick glance toward our kitchen window; my mom wasn’t standing over the sink, and I hurriedly left the yard.

  The Parkers’ two daughters were mean. The younger one, Sally*, played on my hockey team, and I steered clear of her. She and the other mean girl on the team were always teasing the weaker players and playing pranks that revolved around leaving various disgusting items in their gear while they were changing. They’d never bothered me, but they were bullies. Sally’s older sister, Mia*, was cut from the same cloth and ran with a tough bunch in the neighborhood. I couldn’t remember ever seeing either of them with a parent.

  We reached the small garage at the rear of the Parker property. The big back door was shut. I turned to Melanie, hoping she’d be satisfied.

  “See? It’s a hoax. They aren’t even here.” I turned to walk back up the lane.

  Melanie would not give up so easily. “Don’t be silly,” she said. “They’re probably in there.” Powered by the heady fuel of clown-love, she marched up alongside the garage toward the small door, which was also closed. I reluctantly followed her, hoping the closed door would satisfy her no one was offering clown entertainment.

  I jumped a little when Mia opened the small door and stepped out, holding the handle close to her so that we couldn’t see inside. “Glad you came, kids,” she said with a sickly sweet, superior air I found annoying given she was only two years older than us. Both she and Sally always pretended not to know me and forgot my name, and today was no different. “Come inside.” Before I could say anything to Melanie, she stepped in with enthusiasm and I resignedly followed her, cursing under my breath.

  The garage was dark. The windows were blacked out with blankets or towels, and for a few seconds, I couldn’t see at all. As my eyes adjusted, I made out a large clown. It made no attempt to act like a clown, and its painted-on mouth looked sinister and angry, like a psychotic Ronald McDonald. I felt Melanie press against my side, and I knew she was now as scared as I was. I searched for the door and saw Sally and Mia standing in front of it, arms folded like bouncers. As I was trying to determine how many other kids were in there, the clown began lunging at all of us, swinging something and entreating the kids to run in a circle.

  “Run! Run! I AM the dark clown and you WILL do as I say!” I felt something strike me hard across the legs like a whip. I grabbed Melanie’s hand and began to run to keep the maniacal clown at bay. I realized he was swinging a hard rubber skipping rope, the pastel type with those dense rubber ends. As I tugged Melanie around in a serpentine direction to avoid another whipping, I heard screams as the rope struck the others. I couldn’t tell how many there were. I just knew I didn’t want to be hit with that hard rubber again.

  Everything in my brain screamed Escape! I dragged Melanie, aiming us in the general direction of the door. Hurling myself at them, I body checked the startled Sally and Mia aside with a power I didn’t know my skinny seventy-pound frame possessed. I grabbed the doorknob, turned, and pushed hard. We tumbled out and ran without looking back.

  We sprinted about sixty yards, slowing down only when we reached my back fence. As we bent over, hands on knees, panting, it seemed hard to imagine we had only been here a few short minutes earlier. The lane was empty. They obviously hadn’t chased us. When I caught my breath, I glanced down at Melanie.

  “Still like clowns?” I asked.

  She smiled sheepishly. “I still like some clowns,” she allowed. “You?”

  “I still hate them.” She watched me to see whether I was angry. I smiled a little and bent to examine the large throbbing welt on my left calf.

  “Oh, they hurt you.” She peered closely at the raised red bruise. “Thanks for coming with me,” she said quietly. “I don’t know what would’ve happened, you know, if you weren’t there.”

  “Are you gonna tell your mom?” I asked her. She shook her head hard.

  “No way. She’d just worry. Are you?”

  “Uh-uh. She’d just tell me how dumb it was to go there, especially without asking.”

  “Yeah.”

  Somehow, we’d managed to avoid being seriously hurt in our youth.

  Jocelyn tells me how on the Saturday after I completed my first four days of testimony at the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry, Melanie took her own life at the age of forty-seven. She remained on life support until she died, just before Jocelyn calls me. That same exuberant girl who wanted to see clowns had been unable to cope with an emotional pain I’m ashamed to admit I have no idea she suffered from for much of her adult life. Her family and mine lived as neighbors and friends for forty-eight years, but Melanie and I drifted apart after junior high school.

  She left behind an exceptionally close and loving family. Her inability to escape her pain presents yet another reminder of how fortunate I am. I wish she could’ve seen herself the way all of us who loved her saw her.

  Her tragic death leaves me numb and hollow, as though I have absolutely nothing left to feel anymore. Suicide has played a large role in my adult life. Melanie is the fifth close friend I’ve lost since the early ’90s, and I will lose yet another in the fall of 2013. Back in patrol, nothing bothered me more than the suicides I had investigated, and there were many. The sadness, the waste, the blood, the violence against the self, the utter senselessness of the act. The helplessness I feel seems unbearable.

  I want so desperately to go back to Calgary for her funeral—I know her entire family and her elderly mother so well—but I just can’t do it. I want to be a support to them, but I can’t even support myself emotionally. Images of going there and breaking down the way I had on the witness stand during the inquiry are enough for me to know I just can’t go. Instead, I write her mother and brothers long notes explaining how sorry I am that I can’t be there for them, hoping they’ll understand. It is all I am capable of, but still, I feel guilty and angry for everything this file has taken from me.

  I saved her once, but that was from an angry clown. I am not a superhero; I am barely even a cop anymore. All I see around me are people dying, and I can’t save any of them.

  24

  Defending My Writing

  • • •

  “As Hemingway is reported to have said, ‘It is easy to write. Just sit in front of your typewriter and bleed.’”

  WILLIAM C. KNOTT, THE CRAFT OF FICTION

  IT IS APRIL 4, 2012. I am once again sitting in the witness box of the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry.

  I have returned to the federal court to testify today and tomorrow, answering lawyers’ questions about the contents of the first draft of a book manuscript I wrote after the search of the Pickton farm began in 2002. A manifesto of bitterness and regret, a venting of the spleen that never would have seen the light of day had my fear, anxiety, and compulsion not spurred me to try to publish it. I feel sick. How many times have I written these three words?

  Sick that I have somehow become the focus of this inquiry, which has morphed into a parody of itself. Sick that this nightmare is never really over. Sick that my manuscript joins the many other red herrings, which, like the investigation itself, have distracted attention from finding these women and learning why we didn’t find them sooner. Sick that my attempts to survive this tragedy have now taken valuable time and attention away from the real issues that few other than the lawyers for the families seem interested in exploring. Sick of the ass-covering, including my own. Sick that my candid comments about some of my coworkers now form the basis for cross-examination. Sick that my analysis of the events that led to this tragedy remain much the same today. Sick of reliving this entire tragedy over and over for years and years.

  Shortly after the Pickton farm search began in February 2002, I sat down at my com
puter when I awoke from nightmares and couldn’t get back to sleep and began maniacally hammering out the details of the investigation. The shock of the investigation shook me to the core. I felt no confidence in the police investigation that was taking place as I furiously typed out my part from the early days. I was seized by the terror that somehow Pickton would walk free and I would be made a scapegoat for this epic failure, and I feverishly tried to explain all I had done and all I had yet to learn and understand. I worried that the failure to pursue Pickton in 1999 would be covered up, and I refused to let that to happen.

  In some ways, writing my story felt therapeutic, but it also reinforced how messed up the entire debacle was. Mercifully, my manuscript was not mentioned during Pickton’s criminal trial, and I escaped having to testify there because my work as a detective on the missing persons cases was admitted into evidence in his trial.

  However, the lawyers at the inquiry were aware of the manuscript and pressed Commissioner Oppal to include it as an exhibit. In legal terms, the manuscript constituted just another form of my notes on the case. Many of my writer friends were shocked to learn that had I written about the case in a private journal, they would be considered my notes and part of my documents from the case. A police officer’s written thoughts about the details of a case are not private. Eventually, the commissioner agreed to a compromise and allowed the lawyers and their clients to read a redacted version of the manuscript and then question me on the contents. I was permitted to redact my “private thoughts,” which I found quite funny, given that the entire thing contained my private thoughts. I blacked out very little; my lawyers went through it and removed a little more. Commissioner Oppal continued to appear disinclined to admit the document into evidence for anyone to read, despite pressure from the lawyers. Ultimately, he did not allow the manuscript entered as an exhibit.