Fall from Grace

by Wayne Arthurson

  “But since I was not an official member of Internal Affairs and therefore not officially sanctioned or approved to conduct such an investigation, and since I didn’t go through official police channels, the Crown said they couldn’t file charges. The defense, they said, could get it all thrown out of court, but I knew that was a load of bull. They were just afraid; no doubt somebody in their office was involved in some way or had attended one of those special parties and they would look bad.”

  “So why give this to me?”

  His eyes took on a faraway look and it was several seconds before he answered. “You know, there are three basic rules of being a good cop,” he said, technically to me but the distant tone in his voice told me that someone else was supposed to be the recipient, a younger cop, his dead son, himself, his God, I didn’t know. “Rule Number One is that bad things happen.”

  I nodded ’cause I had heard that before. Journalism has a similar rule: Bad things happen and that makes good news.

  “Rule Number Two,” Gardiner continued, “is that you can’t change Rule Number One.”

  He drifted away again and after a few more seconds, I nudged him with a clearing of my throat. He came back, as if his soul had visited faraway friends and then transported back into his body. “Huh? Yeah, right, Rule Number Three is that you still gotta try. Even though bad things happen and you can’t change that, you still gotta try. Every cop knows that, every good cop, I mean, with all the shit they see every day, with all the anger, violence, stupidity, and senseless waste of human life, you still gotta try.”

  “What about bad cops?” I asked.

  “Bad cops,” he said, tapping his finger against the file, “always forget about Rule Number Three. They forget they gotta keep trying.”

  Reluctantly, I tucked the file under my arm, wondering if I should just toss the fucker the first chance I got. Gardiner seemed lighter as he stood up, his back a bit straighter as he saw me to the door. We shook hands at the front door, me trying my best to ignore the file in my hand. “Uh, thanks for your help,” I said, but I was lying.

  Gardiner knew it. “Yeah, and fuck you, too,” he said with a laugh. “Don’t worry about it too much, Leo. I also gave this to you because I liked how you said, Fuck you, to the department when you wrote the story on whether there might be a serial killer. I liked the way you showed them that they weren’t doing their job, that a cheap-ass reporter could do a better job than them. And even though I was a cop, I liked that. You weren’t afraid to step into the shit and I hope you aren’t afraid to step in this shit. But I won’t be bothered if you don’t. You look like you got enough baggage already, so like I said downstairs, you can do what you want with the file, toss it, burn it, whatever. I don’t really care.”

  He was telling the truth but only part of it. There was a part of him that wanted me to do something, to take over his case and ensure that justice was done, whatever justice a “cheap-ass reporter” could deliver. But I couldn’t help but wonder if it was worth it for me to try. Sure, it would make a fantastic story, but would it do me any good?

  29

  I had never seen Larry look so shocked and scared at the same time.

  “Where the fuck did you get this?” he asked, seconds after reading Gardiner’s file. He stared at the folder with disgusted fascination and terror, as if it held information telling him exactly where, when, and how he would die.

  “Do you really want to know?” I replied. We were sitting in his office with the door closed. No doubt this fact was creating much speculation in the newsroom since Larry never closed his door, even if he was firing someone.

  “Not really, ’cause I don’t want my ass dragged to a courthouse and then tossed into jail for contempt of court, but since I’m in charge and I’m the one who made the crazy fucking decision of hiring you, I have no choice.”

  I didn’t insult Larry with any sort of “this is only between us” or “you can’t reveal this source to anyone” comments before I started. We were both longtime professionals so I told Larry about Gardiner, who he was and how he got hold of me.

  “I don’t like this,” Larry said with a shake of his head. “I don’t trust this fucker.”

  I shrugged. What could I say? That I didn’t trust Gardiner, that I didn’t trust his true reasons behind giving me the file? Of course I didn’t trust him, despite the fact that I may have respected him in the short time that I had spent with him.

  No doubt he liked the fact that I made the EPS look bad in the serial killer story and he wanted me to help them look even worse. It was obvious that he, even so many years after his retirement, was still nursing a grudge against some members of the EPS brass and wanted to use me to issue another “Fuck you, sirs” to his old superiors. Some of them, of course, did deserve it, based on the file sitting on Larry’s desk, but I wasn’t ignorant of the fact that he was using me, for whatever reason.

  Despite all that, it was still a hell of a story. Any questions in the newsroom about my capability as a journalist would be immediately dismissed. My reputation would be renewed with a vengeance and Larry would look like a genius for hiring me. Both Larry and I knew that, but we had to find a way to get the story out without crossing any legal or ethical lines that would get us in serious trouble.

  “Okay, first things first,” Larry started. “Does anyone else know about this? Has this fucker given this story to anyone else?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You don’t think so? Or you don’t know? You gotta be fucking clear on this one, Leo, because how we play this story depends on whether we have time on it or not. If we have time, we can hold off on it for a little bit and make sure we do this right. But if we don’t, if someone else has the information, then we have to run it tomorrow. Understand?”

  “This isn’t some copy of the file, Larry, it’s the fucking original that he kept in the back of a locked filing cabinet in a locked room in his basement,” I said, tapping my finger on the file.

  “So while he never actually told me I was the only one who got this, I’m pretty sure I’m the only one. And even though we both know that gambling’s really bad for me, I’m willing to bet my job that no one else in the media has seen this file. In fact, I’m pretty sure that you, me, and that old cop are the only ones that have seen this file in a long time. Some folks may have seen it years ago, but I’ll bet you that they’ve done their best to try and forget about it. This is going to fuck them up.”

  “No shit, Sherlock. Tell me something I don’t know,” Larry said, taking a deep breath. “Okay, I agree with you on the fact that none of our competitors know about this, so please no gambling, Leo. You’ve been on the right track for the past few months and I’d really hate to see you fall off it.

  “But first things first. As you said, this is an original document that we have in our hands. I have no idea what the legal status is for original police documents. Is this stolen property? Are we criminally liable now that we have it in our possession? Or will we be okay if we give it back? And since no one was really charged, how do we write this so we don’t get sued for libel?”

  Larry grabbed his phone, punched in a number. “This is Larry Maurizo, I need someone from Legal and I need them now,” he shouted into the phone. “And don’t send me some assistant or a flunky, send me Weinel, the head of the department. Yeah, now! I need her in my office in the next ten minutes. If she gives you any shit, tell her the next person I’m calling is Bill King, and I’m also going to demand that he be here in the next five minutes.”

  He slammed down the phone. “Fucking lawyers. They always think that their job is the most important.” Of course, the same could be said about journalists, but in a company like this, we were. Without reporters, there would be no newspaper. I also had no doubt that the ad sales guy felt the same way.

  “Is it really necessary to call in the publisher?” I asked.

  Larry already had the phone in his hand and the look on his face asked if I w
as an idiot.

  * * *

  The publisher of our paper was a relatively young guy named Bill King. His full name was William Lyon MacKenzie King. No fucking joke, the same name as Canada’s tenth prime minister, the guy who was not only prime minister during the Second World War and Canada’s longest-serving prime minister, but an eccentric, unmarried loon who owned a crystal ball, a Ouija board, and took political and spiritual advice from the spirits of his dead mother, FDR, Leonardo da Vinci, and several of his dead Irish terriers, all of them named Pat.

  He was considered one of the great political leaders in Canadian history. Despite the lunacy of his namesake, publisher Bill King was down-to-earth, a former journalist turned lawyer turned publisher. Unlike previous publishers, King liked to hang out in the newsroom talking to reporters, especially those in the sports and entertainment sections, departments he never worked in during his writing career, but probably always wished he did.

  It was typical; almost all people coming out of journalism school hope to work in the sports and entertainment sections. And when I said King was relatively young, I meant he was a few years younger than me, relatively young to be a publisher of a major metro paper. He came into Larry’s office, sans suit jacket, tie askew and sleeves rolled up—his normal look—and when he saw me, he smiled.

  “Hey, Leo. How you doing? Nice work on the serial killer story. Got me a bunch of nasty calls from the mayor, the head of the Police Commission and the police chief, but heck, that means we’re doing our jobs, doesn’t it?”

  There was no sarcasm in his tone; he was offering a true compliment. He turned to Larry and asked him what the big deal was. Larry handed the file to Bill, but said nothing. Bill shrugged, picked up the file, and began flipping through the pages. The jocular look on his face quickly disappeared and he looked at me.

  “Jesus, Leo, what the fuck did you dig up now?”

  “Keep reading,” Larry said. “It gets worse.”

  King’s face went through a series of changes, reflecting shock, anger, dismay, and then finally it melted into one of resigned sadness as he slumped against the wall of Larry’s office. “Holy shit. What the fuck are you guys trying to do to me? If you think the mayor and the police chief are mad at me now, this is going to fucking kill them.”

  “What’s the problem, Bill?” Larry asked, leaning back in his chair, arms behind his head. “I thought you said if we pissed off the mayor and the police chief, we were doing a good job?”

  “Do you have any fucking idea who these people are on this list? Do you?”

  “Well, there’s the present chief of police and the recently retired one, but they were only listed as people who were associated with some of these cops so they shouldn’t be too upset. No doubt almost every single young cop at the time associated with some of these guys, so he should have no problem with this because he’s done nothing wrong. At least not officially.”

  King shook his head and rubbed his eyes with his fists. “You have no idea what you really have here, do you? You think this is just some old investigation into wrongdoing by some young cops twenty years ago, but the truth is that, like reporters, cops also get old and they move up in the structure of their organization and get into positions of power. Just like you and me, Larry. We were young journalists once, journalists like Leo here, but now, because of education, ambition, and political gamesmanship, we’re part of the command structure.” He waved the file in front of Larry’s face. “This is exactly the same.”

  “So some of these guys got promoted,” Larry said. “That’s to be expected.”

  “It’s nothing like that,” King said, slapping down the file and turning to the page where the names of constables that had been investigated were listed. He pointed at one. “That name. Do you know who that person is now?”

  We both shook our heads. I knew only a few cops, like Whitford, a constable or two, the chief, the reps to the Police Commission, and a couple of folks from Public Affairs, but that was about it.

  “That is the deputy supervisor of Operational Support Division.” He pointed at another name. “That is a supervisor of the West Division.” And another. “That is the head of the Property Crimes Division.” And another. “That is the Assistant Deputy of Administrative Services.”

  And he went on and matched a bunch more titles to names. “I’ll bet that if you continue down the list, you’ll find sergeants, lieutenants, deputy supervisors, and the like. You think this is just a story into an old investigation of some young constables, but in reality what you have here is an indictment of the entire command structure of the city police department.”

  About twenty-five years ago, a tornado about a mile wide tore through the east end of the city, killing twenty-nine people, injuring over two hundred, and causing almost a billion dollars in damage. I didn’t live in Edmonton at the time but news of the tornado played everywhere.

  One of the most common comments about the tornado was that most people in Edmonton had no idea that such a thing could happen. Tornados killing people and destroying property happened only in Midwestern states like Oklahoma, Kansas, or Nebraska, and in small towns and farming areas, never in a northern Canadian city with a population approaching a million people.

  But everyone was wrong. While tornadoes were more common in the U.S. Tornado Alley states, the prairie provinces of Canada were also susceptible, and in Edmonton, one of the major cities in the Prairies, we should not have been surprised. Bad things do happen.

  That July tornado was the biggest natural disaster ever to hit the city. And probably the biggest news story of the last half of the twentieth century for Edmonton, probably tied for first with the trade of Wayne Gretzky to the L.A. Kings, which by odd coincidence occurred almost a year to the day after the tornado.

  This story, while not on the caliber of the those two, would be in the top ten. That was, if it ran.

  * * *

  The head of the paper’s legal department arrived a few minutes later. She was a no-nonsense woman named Karen Weinel, dressed in a blue business skirt and jacket that seemed to be the dress code for female politicians across the country. “The first thing we have to do,” she said, after I filled her in on the situation and showed her the file,” is return this file to the police department.”

  “Return it? You’ve got to be kidding,” Larry almost shouted. “This is the biggest story this paper has seen in years and now you want us to return the file?”

  “This is an original Edmonton Police Service file that I have been told was taken without permission from the files of the Edmonton Police Service. In short, it was stolen. And so if you do not return this file in a reasonable amount of time, then we run the risk of both Leo and yourself being charged with possession of stolen property,” Weinel said matter-of-factly. “And because Bill has been made aware of this file’s existence, then there is a good chance that he would be charged as an accessory to the fact.”

  “What!” King barked, his voice breaking in surprise. “They would never charge me.”

  “If we run a story on the contents of this file, it will almost certainly damage the reputation of the Edmonton Police Service. They will not be happy, and that is an understatement. Someone, somewhere in the system, will find a way to get back at us. You can bet on it.”

  “This is the Edmonton Police Service, not some small-town sheriff’s department from a bad movie,” King said, indignant.

  Weinel and Larry both shook their heads at the same time. “Obviously the Overtime debacle taught you nothing,” Weinel said.

  Damn, I really felt like a dunce—everyone in Edmonton news over the past decades knew about that. Everyone except King, that is. So Weinel, who had less to lose, filled him in.

  The Overtime was the name of a sports bar in the south area of the city, but in the early part of the century, it became the center of a police case that showed how far the local police department had fallen.

  It all began with a columnist from the ot
her daily in town writing an article critical of the police’s photo radar system. A sergeant in charge of this section was so pissed off by the piece that he accessed the police database to get info on the columnist’s vehicle and then told officers in his section to keep an eye out for it during an overall drunk driving investigation.

  In November of 2005, said vehicle was seen outside the Overtime bar while there was a media event of some type occurring. Undercover cops, who were supposed to be watching drivers who were known by their record to be dangerous drivers and at risk for driving drunk, were pulled away from that and sent to the Overtime to watch this columnist. And while they were doing that, they also happened to notice that in attendance was another person they didn’t like, a member of the Police Commission who was critical of the police from time to time.

  The plan was that the undercover cops would watch to see how much these guys drank and then report back to other uniformed cops who were outside, hoping that at least one of their targets would climb into his car and then, boom, a reputation would be tarred with a drunk-driving conviction.

  Unfortunately, the radio chatter between the two groups of police was picked up by another reporter from our paper who was back at the office, trolling for stories by listening to the police scanner. When he heard what was going and the names of the targets being bandied about, he called the cell of his fellow journalist at the Overtime and let him know what was going on.

  The columnist made the commission member aware of what was happening, and although witnesses said that both men were not drunk, both took cabs home. The police even followed the columnist to his home to confirm that he actually got there. If there were any plans for the police to continue to target both of these individuals, they were immediately halted when both papers ran a story about the situation the next day.