Black Rock
Page 32
Finally Ruth said, “I guess you better be getting back to work.”
Dougherty said, “Yeah, I guess.”
On the sidewalk Ruth said, “Well, goodbye,” and held out her hand. Dougherty shook it and then he watched her climb the hill towards McGill.
James Cross was released by his kidnappers on December 3.
A week earlier the police had finally found the hiding place, a house on Rue des Récollets, in the north end of Montreal. He’d been there the whole sixty days, taken straight there from his home on Redpath Crescent. Never left the island of Montreal.
The house was put under surveillance and after watching it for days and deciding that storming the place would only end with the deaths of Cross and the kidnappers, negotiations began and it was agreed that in return for the safe release of Cross four kidnappers would be given safe passage to Cuba.
Dougherty stood in the parade room of Station Ten and watched it live on TV with a few other cops. Just before two o’clock in the afternoon, a grey Chrysler drove out of the garage and was escorted by dozens of motorcycle cops and police cars across Montreal and onto Île-Ste-Hélène, where Expo 67 had been, and which had been declared temporarily Cuban territory.
Delisle said, “Fucking cunt, I don’t believe it.”
The rest of the cops in the room couldn’t believe it, either.
A little while later, a helicopter took off and flew to Dorval airport.
The cops muttered and grumbled, but by then no one was really surprised, and it played out the way it was supposed to. Four kidnappers were joined by a few others — one man’s wife, another couple and a young boy — and they boarded a Canadian Armed Forces Yukon transport plane.
“There they fucking go.”
The plane took off just before seven and flew directly to Havana.
A couple of days after Christmas, the three men who had kidnapped Pierre Laporte and were still at large were arrested in a farmhouse south of Montreal. The most embarrassing thing about it for the police was that all three men had been hiding behind a false wall in the closet in the apartment on Queen Mary Boulevard back in November when the place was raided and the fourth member of their cell was arrested.
At the end of May, Dougherty was sitting in Station Ten, filling out a report about a traffic accident between a bus and a taxi on Atwater Street when Detective Carpentier walked in.
“Hey Doe-er-tee, how you doing?”
“Good, Detective, you?”
“I thought you would be interested, the vampire killer, the man who bites the women breasts?”
“Yeah.”
“He kill another woman in Calgary, and they got him.”
Dougherty said, “You sure?”
Carpentier was still standing in the doorway. “Not yet, but it look like it. He rape and kill a woman and bite her breast. When they got him they found he lived here before he moved to Calgary, so they called. We’re going out west to talk to him.”
“That’s good.”
“Yeah.”
“How did they catch him in the end?”
Carpentier shrugged a little and said, “His car. Somebody recognize the make.”
Dougherty said, “Shit.”
“Yeah, well, I just want to say, good work.”
Dougherty said, “Thanks.”
“You should take the detective exam as soon as you can.”
After Carpentier left, Dougherty thought about phoning Ruth in Toronto but decided not to. He could understand why she didn’t want to spend her life dealing with murder and death.
He looked around Station Ten and decided that he liked being a cop.
author’s note
Many of the events in Black Rock really happened. Between 1968 and 1970 (the so-called “third wave” of terrorist activity in Quebec) over two hundred bombs were placed in and around Montreal and Robert Côté and his team dismantled almost all of them, including one in Eaton’s (as it was known then) department store and one containing 150 pounds of dynamite in a Volkswagen in Old Montreal. But some bombs exploded. A bomb went off at the Montreal Stock Exchange, five bombs exploded in Westmount in one night, a bomb did destroy part of Mayor Drapeau’s home, bombs went off at McGill University and City Hall and federal government buildings. Jeanne d’Arc Saint-Germain was killed by a bomb that exploded in a Defence Department building in Ottawa. And a man reputed to be a member of organized crime was killed when his car exploded on an expressway (the Metropolitan, not the Bonaventure). Every bomb in Black Rock is based on an actual bomb.
James Cross was kidnapped and Pierre Laporte was kidnapped and murdered. Shirley Audette, Marielle Archambeault and Jean Way were all murdered in Montreal by the same man, Wayne Boden, who was arrested in May 1971 in Calgary after killing another woman, Elizabeth Anne Porteous. It was the first time in Canadian history that forensic odontological evidence was used. Boden was not referred to at the time as a serial killer as that phrase was not then widely used.
At the time, the Montreal police also believed that Boden was guilty of murdering Norma Vaillancourt but he denied it, and in 1994 another man was convicted of that murder. Many Montreal police officers were assigned to the Combined Anti-Terrorist Squad along with officers from the Quebec Provincial Police and the RCMP during 1970.
In 1975 a teenager, Sharon Prior, was abducted in Point St. Charles and murdered. This case remains unsolved.
Two FLQ cells were arrested in 1970 in possession of dynamite, guns and press releases stating that they had kidnapped Moshe Golan, the Israeli Commercial Consul, and Harrison Burgess, the U.S. Consul General. The CN rail yards were robbed and nightclubs were raided during the October Crisis. Medicare was introduced in Quebec and the doctors threatened to strike and the specialists did withhold their services. Many hospitals were only able to offer emergency care.
The topless rock band Eight of a Kind performed at the Hawaiian Lounge, and the Playboy Club in Montreal held its “Bunny of the Year” contest in October 1970. Police were called to the Women in Business Conference at Man and His World.
With more than a dozen abductions, 1970 was the “Year of the Kidnapping” around the world. In many cases prisoners were released and the kidnappers were allowed to go to Algeria or Cuba. In Uruguay, an American, Daniel Mitrione (who was working for the American “Agency for International Development,” advising the Uruguayan government on police and internal security) was kidnapped and murdered.
The Black Rock is a real monument and the story it tells of the six thousand Irish immigrants who died on the ships, or in the sheds in Montreal, is true. My parents bought a red brick duplex in Greenfield Park and I read the Montreal Gazette after I delivered the papers. I also delivered the Sunday Express, including the edition with the picture of Pierre Laporte’s body in the trunk of the car on the front page. I was eleven years old.
Of course, Black Rock is a novel and many of the events and characters in the book are entirely fictional. Any mistakes in the research are entirely mine. I’d like to thank everyone who helped in the writing of this book.
My sister Susan Bentley, my cousin Linda McFetridge, my brother Robert McFetridge (who joined the police in 1968, but the RCMP rather than the Montreal police), Robert Côté, Harold Rosenberg (and the Montreal Police Museum), Barbara McIlwaine (who didn’t frequent every bar in the Point, but knew most of their names), Randy McIlwaine, Roy Berger, Michel Basilières, Jacques Filippi, Peter Rozovsky, Keith Logan, Kristian Gravenor (his Coolopolis website is a great resource on Montreal), Kevin Burton Smith and everyone at ECW Press: Jack David, Kevin Connolly, Michael Holmes, Jen Knoch, Crissy Calhoun, Erin Creasey, David Caron and Jenna Illies.
And, of course, my wife, Laurie Reid.
About the Author
John McFetridge, author of the Toronto Series, has also co-written a short story collection, Below the Line, and wrote for the
CTV series The Bridge. He was born in Montreal and now lives in Toronto with his family.
The Toronto Series by John McFetridge
Copyright © John McFetridge, 2014
Published by ECW Press
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION
McFetridge, John, 1959-, author
Black rock : an Eddie Dougherty mystery / John McFetridge.
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-77090-489-7 (ePUB)
ISBN 978-1-55022-975-2 (PBK)
ISBN 978-1-77090-299-2 (PDF)
I. Title.
PS8575.F48B53 2014 C813’.6 C2013-907773-1
C2013-907774-X
Cover design: Cyanotype
Cover images: two armed soldiers, Dec 3, 1970 © Montreal Gazette/CP Images; Dead girl on floor © Stokkete/Shutterstock. Back cover image: Gangster in car © sint/Shutterstock
Type: Rachel Ironstone
The publication of Black Rock has been generously supported by the Canada Council for the Arts which last year invested $157 million to bring the arts to Canadians throughout the country, and by the Ontario Arts Council (OAC), an agency of the Government of Ontario, which last year funded 1,681 individual artists and 1,125 organizations in 216 communities across Ontario for a total of $52.8 million. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for our publishing activities, and the contribution of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit and the Ontario Media Development Corporation.