PREVIOUSLY IN KILLER ON THE KAME
(Stop! If you are new to the story, the best way to catch up is to read previous episodes here. Spoilers below!)
Out walking her beagle Milo, Emma Brennan comes across a crime scene—a dead body at a construction site in East Lofthill. At home, she tells her husband Matt that it’s the same man who came to their house the day before, selling insulation. Matt remembers the man acting oddly in their basement with a metal detector. On a hunch, Matt takes a sledgehammer to the basement floor and discovers a buried toolbox filled with slender gold bars worth about a million dollars. Detective Sergeant Janice Cleary and Detective Constable Trent Frayne, of the Niagara Constabulary Service, are assigned to investigate the homicide. They determine the victim’s identity: Leonard Bouchard, an ex-con with a history of thefts from construction sites. Cleary and Frayne soon determine that Bouchard had targeted only certain new homes in East Lofthill. They head out to interview Emma and Matt’s next door neighbour, Kim Stephenson, a realtor, who seems to know more than she’s saying. Likewise, when the detectives speak to Emma and Matt, they too appear to be hiding something. On a hunch, Cleary and Frayne drive west into the country to speak with another ex-con, who reveals that shortly before a planned construction site heist a few years back, one of the thieves—Carmine Rizzolo—went missing and hasn’t been seen since. Cleary and Frayne talk to detective who remembers Rizzolo going missing, a presumed suicide. But oddly, his abandoned car was found near where he worked at the time—at an East Lofthill construction site, pouring concrete foundations. Meanwhile, bored at home, realtor Kim Stephenson goes out for a drive and ends up parked near the lake in Port Robinson. On the radio she hears the new hit song by a singer that she used to date. Then her phone dings with a message from the singer—the one-time Queen of Country, Belinda Boone—urgently asking if they could meet that evening. They do, and Belinda says she’s ready to go public with their relationship. Across the border, Emma and Matt take a chance on selling some of their gold at a Buffalo pawn shop—but Matt angrily balks at being lowballed just $200 when the bars are worth closer to $2000 each. Back in Niagara, Detectives Cleary and Frayne go speak to an inmate and longtime friend of the missing Carmine Rizzolo, and learn that shortly before he disappeared he seemed to have come by quite a bit of money. Cleary and Frayne increasingly suspect that Rizzolo’s body may have been dumped in the foundation of an East Fonthill home as it was being built, where he worked. Then another former associate of Rizzolo’s comes to their attention—Steven Rossi, also a construction worker. Rossi has a lot of attitude but not much to say. Matt and Emma, meanwhile, are still looking to sell the gold they found, and decide to take a chance on a local buyer they find on the dark web. They meet Bao “Five” Nguyen in a Niagara Falls parking lot, where he agrees to buy one gold bar and says he’ll buy as many as they want to sell him. After Matt and Emma drive off, Five calls an associate to tell him that their old gang pal Carmine Rizzolo maybe really did find gold bars before he disappeared. Five tells his associate that Matt and Emma won’t be hard to rob, and asks for their home address based on their license plate number.
EPISODE 8 ROTISSERIE CHICKEN
Detective-Sergeant Janice Cleary watched the skeletal giants pass in the distance, barren branches of so many maples and locusts, interrupted occasionally by dark green Norway spruces, big and bushy against the cold, seeming to call out for some of the shiny ornaments that were being hung in living rooms all over the peninsula, Christmas now on the near horizon. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d specifically gone Christmas shopping—for real, not just for the department’s Secret Santa, which obligation she usually fulfilled at the closest Avondale.
“Even dead for the winter those trees are beautiful,” she said. “How can anyone not want to live in Niagara once they’ve seen this.”
Detective-Constable Trent Frayne pushed the visor down against the morning sun. “It’s a little early for my beauty appreciation to kick-in.” He flicked the turn signal and eased into the left lane.
“It’s almost seven,” Cleary said, “the morning’s practically gone.” She looked back out the window, enjoying being chauffeured around. Frayne had picked her up at her house and she’d apologized for the uneven pavers that made up her front walk, before catching herself and saying, “Concentrate on keeping your balance. It’s character-building.” Now she was sipping the coffee they’d stopped for and thinking about taking another look at the former paper mill being turned into “luxury condos,” near the old canal. Both her kids were out of school and working, so it was unlikely either one would be moving back, but these days no one could ever be sure. There were no guarantees of anything anymore.
She said, “Did you read the report from Dr. Geffen?”
“The one he emailed at eleven last night? The man works some hours. Yeah, I did.”
“What did you think?”
“It’s what we expected, isn’t it?”
Cleary raised an eyebrow. “Pretty much. Except for Bouchard’s broken neck. Why break his neck and then smash in his head?”
“Could the neck have been broken at the same time?”
“Did you read that separate section, about the blood flow in the brain?”
“It went into a lot of detail,” Frayne said, “but I couldn’t really tell where he was going with it.”
“Neither could I, so I called him.”
“You called the coroner at eleven at night?”
Cleary laughed a little. “Might have been midnight. And then it took me a while to get it out of him because he can’t be completely certain—but he thinks the neck was broken before the skull was smashed in. Maybe by a couple of hours.”
“But he didn’t put that in the report?”
“He says it’s his interpretation of the data and others may not agree.”
Frayne nodded. “So he’s saying we can’t use it in court, it could get challenged.”
“That’s right,” Cleary said. “But I believe him. He’s been doing this forever. The neck was broken first, so why the blunt force trauma after?”
Frayne turned off Highway 20 and headed south on Royce Road, then took a right into a residential area. “It’s right up here.”
“Tell me again why we didn’t find this when we did the initial canvas?”
Frayne shrugged. “I think we’re going to have to put it down to human error and how common the Civic is.”
At the end of the road it was as if civilization ended. On one side of the street ran a line of houses heavily decorated for the season, cars parked out front. On the other side, nothing, a vast, muddy flatness, the once-heavy bush stripped clear for yet another East Lofthill housing development. The obligatory planning department billboard presented a dense map of orange, red, and blue lots, each their own housing type, all of them more nails in rural Niagara’s coffin.
A police flatbed and two NCS cruisers bookended a white Honda Civic.
Frayne pulled to the side and parked. “It looks like whoever ran the plate entered a wrong digit—they thought the car was registered to a company in the Falls, so it didn’t seem odd for it to be parked out here.”
“Still, should have followed up,” Cleary said.
“When the constable asked about it, a couple of neighbours said they saw it here a lot.” Frayne tapped the steering wheel. “Turns out they see different Civics, not this one.”
Cleary sighed. “And when they finally ran the right plate number it turned up stolen.”
“Right.”
She shook her head. She wasn’t upset, people make mistakes, that happens. She made her share when she was in uniform and she was sure she was making her share now, but it felt sloppy, the kind of sloppiness that’s hard to excuse.
As she was getting out of the car a young cop, a woman Cleary would have guessed was still in high school and called a girl if she weren’t in uniform, rushed up, saying, “I’m really sorry, Detective. I made a mistake, I was careless.”
Cleary finished off her coffee and held on to the empty cup. “It happens, Constable,” she squinted at her jacket, “Evans.”
“I should have noticed right away that the plate I ran was for a 2017 Civic and this is a 2012.”
“Don’t beat yourself up over it,” Cleary said. “We got it now.”
Evans gestured at the car. “Civics are the most stolen car in Ontario.”
“Even so, there was no reason to think this car was stolen.”
Cleary gazed at Evans for a moment until the young cop looked like she grudgingly accepted the possibility her mistake wasn’t the worst in NCS investigative history, then nodded sharply and continued towards the car they were talking about.
Frayne had the trunk open and was holding something up. “Look at this.”
“Which is?”
“A metal detector.”
“You don’t need a metal detector to find a bulldozer.”
Frayne turned it over, the handle cold under his nitrile gloves. “You were right, there’s something in one of these houses. Something Leonard Bouchard was looking for.”
Cleary crumpled her coffee cup. “I was starting to like the idea his partner killed him and left him here, drove back to Toronto. Then it could’ve been their problem and we wouldn’t be out here freezing our asses.”
“Were you really?” Frayne put the detector back in the trunk and squeezed his hands together for the warmth, emitting little plastic squeaks.
Cleary looked across at the row of almost identical townhouses, some with virtually the same Christmas decorations out front, and said, “No, not really.”
Emma opened the door and Milo jumped from the Mini and ran straight to the gate in the chain link fence. He knew his way around the dog park. Once he suspected that’s where they were headed, he hadn’t stopped whining since they passed the high school on 20.
There were about a dozen dogs romping in the snow and Milo ran and joined them, giving a few sniffs of a few butts and settling in with the familiar scents.
Emma walked toward the half dozen owners standing in a group near one of the benches that no one was using. The Breakfast Club. A pretty good turnout considering the early hour and frigid conditions. The last time she’d been here seemed so long ago but it was really only a few days. Still, she didn’t usually stay away this long. The dog park was one of her favourite places in Lofthill, even if, as the old-timers never tired of telling her, it wasn’t really Lofthill but Ledgeville. Whatever. It was on the edge of the escarpment, ringed with trees, and had a beautiful view all the way to Lake Ontario if you walked to the top of the slope, which meant navigating a minefield of poop.
Emma walked over to a familiar face. The woman’s mittened hands were pushed into in a huge puffer jacket, accentuating how frail she seemed. Caroline-the-Labradoodle’s owner nodded out at the field.
“Milo is so funny. He thinks he’s a big dog.”
Emma said, “He is a big dog,” and a couple of people chuckled. They had really big dogs. Emma swore one of them was the size of a Shetland pony.
The Labradoodle’s owner said to Emma, “So, have you got your metal detector yet?”
“What?”
“Why, everyone’s searching under their cellar floors—aren’t you?”
“Why would I do that?” The Labradoodle lady’s name was similar to her dog’s name, thought Emma. Catherine, maybe.
“That dead man was looking for something, you can be sure of it. Maybe some sort of buried treasure.”
Emma said, “In a basement?”
It could be Caitlin, she thought, the name. But that’s a younger name, not someone who’s at least 70.
“I know, it sounds barmy. But he had a metal detector.”
One of the other dog owners, a man a little older than Emma, used his Chuck-it to throw a ball then turned and said, “Probably lost his wedding ring when he was working construction on the houses and he couldn’t remember which one. It’s not like there were street names back when it was just a field with foundations.”
“Well, goodness, it doesn’t seem like a reason to kill the poor dear.”
Emma suddenly remembered: Claire. Claire?
Another owner, an older man wearing a Leafs scarf wrapped tight under his chin, stepped closer to them and said, “Did anyone actually see a metal detector, Cathy? Anyone who knows what one actually looks like?”
Emma was thinking she would never have remembered that the Labradoodle lady’s name was Cathy, not in the Labradoodle’s lifetime anyway.
“Surely someone must have,” said Cathy.
Chuck-it guy said, “I heard he was involved in stealing construction equipment.”
Cathy frowned. “You mean, like bulldozers and such?”
Chuck-it guy nodded. “Happens all the time. They get loaded on ships and sent overseas, it’s big business. My brother-in-law’s in insurance.”
A couple of dogs began barking and running in a circle and the man in the scarf started toward them. “What is it Barclay, you see a thief? Go catch the thief!”
Emma watched him move into the pack and the dogs jumping and barking, hoping he would throw a ball even though he didn’t have one. She was thinking she really liked it here.
Cathy said, “Milo looks like he’s having a good time.”
Emma smiled and was about to say something when she saw Milo humping a smaller dog. “Milo, stop that.” As she started towards the dogs she looked back and saw Cathy smiling a little but not maliciously. Could it be...friendly? Was Emma finally breaking through what she had learned belatedly was Lofthill’s notorious cliquishness?
That might be a stretch, but she thought it was a step in the right direction, a little bonding over dogs humping on a winter’s morning.
***
As she drove home she was thinking that she and Matt should go out for dinner, use some of the crisp hundred dollar bills they’d gotten from the Asian guy in Niagara Falls, now sitting in an envelope in Matt’s nightstand. That was how she imagined using the cash they’d get—a little here and there for extras.
She parked in the driveway, let Milo out of the car, walked in the front door and was surprised to hear Matt talking with someone down the hall. Milo trotted ahead.
Emma walked into the kitchen to find Matt sitting at the table talking to Kim, the realtor from next door, and now infamous as the apparent girlfriend of Belinda Boone. The pictures of them smooching in front the Indian restaurant a couple of weeks ago had predictably lit up social media. NSFW memes on “Experience counts” trended.
“Hi Emma,” said Kim.
Emma nodded. “What’s going on?”
Kim looked surprised for a second but she was a pro and after a beat said, “Just chatting.”
Matt smiled. “Talking real estate.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Seeing how much we could get for the house.”
Emma said, “For our house?”
“Looks like it’s not as bad as we thought,” Matt said. “Prices aren’t going up but for these new houses they’re not coming down much, either.”
There were two almost-empty mugs on the table and Emma saw Matt had ground beans and made coffee in his French press as if it were Sunday morning and not a work day. She said, “That’s good, I guess.”
“Yeah, and it turns out putting a house on the market just before Christmas isn’t a bad time.” Matt looked at Kim. “Right?”
Kim nodded slowly and glanced at Emma. “That’s right, it’s actually a good time to sell.”
Emma took off her toque, then pulled off her gloves. “I didn’t realize we were selling.”
“Come on, we’ve been talking about it.”
“Seriously?”
Kim stood up. “I should go.”
“No, it’s fine,” Matt said. “Finish your coffee.” He turned to look at Emma. “Come on, we know we’re going to get out of this hick town, what are we waiting for?”
“The right time, and it’s not a hick town.”
“Now is the right time. Houses in this neighbourhood are still selling for at least a hundred grand more than we paid.” He turned to Kim. “Tell her.”
Kim smiled. “Selling your house is a big decision, there’s really no reason to rush into it. This is a great neighbourhood in a great area, it’s going to remain strong for a long time. The most important thing is to talk about it together.” She looked at Emma.
Matt tapped at the table. “We’ve talked about it since the day we moved in, we knew it was a mistake then. We want to get out.”
Emma was looking back at Kim, nodding slowly.
As Kim walked out of the kitchen Matt got up and followed her down the hall.
Milo rubbed up against Emma’s leg and she said, “Oh right, you want a cookie because you were outside and you came back inside. Such a smarty.” She went to the pantry cupboard and got out the bag of dog treats. Milo sat down. “Good boy.”
Matt came back into the kitchen looking pissed. “What the hell was that?”
“Did she just come over here all by herself and ask you if we wanted to sell?”
“No, I asked her. I was getting the mail and she pulled up and we started talking and I told her we were ready to sell.”
“But we’re not ready to sell.”
“We’re ready. I wasn’t going to tell her we just need to do one last thing before we go—meet a guy in a parking lot first, get three quarters of a million in cash.”
Emma shrugged out of her coat. “Oh come on, do you really think he’s just going to hand you that kind of money?”
“He wants the gold.”
“Do you trust him?”
“Of course not, we have to plan it.”
“I don’t know,” Emma said, “I got a bad feeling from him.”
Matt barked a humourless laugh. “What? You were flirting with him. I saw that smile.”
“Shut up!”
“No, you shut up, I’ve had it with you. You are such a pain in the ass, you know that?”
She walked out of the kitchen and Matt followed.
“Don’t walk away, do not walk away, I’m so tired of you just doing whatever you want.”
“Whatever I want? I can’t even. What are you talking about?”
Milo followed them into the living room, whining.
“This whole move was your idea, Emma. You’re the one who wanted to get out of Toronto.”
“We both wanted to get out.”
“No, just you, I went along with it, like I always do.”
“You sure fooled me.”
“No, you fooled me.” Matt was glaring at her, red in the face, swallowing. “I do everything for you and you do nothing. I work, I make the money, I’m stuck out here in the middle of nowhere.”
“You like it here. You like the house.”
“I don’t, I never did—that was you.” He paced a few steps, almost stomping his feet, his hands were balled into fists. “Now we’ve got some money, we can sell this dump and get out of this shithole and get back to where we want to be.”
“We don’t have the money yet.”
He took a step and Emma didn’t budge. Milo howled.
“Do not do anything to screw this up.”
“Me? What about you, you’re the one losing it.”
He yelled inches from her face, “I am not losing it!”
“Stop it!”
Milo barked sharply and started growling.
Emma moved quickly down the hall, jamming her hat back on. She grabbed Milo’s leash from the hook and opened the door. “I’m going.”
“Good, take him for a walk,” Matt said. “Calm down, you’ll see I’m right.”
Emma walked out and didn’t close the door. She was halfway across the street when she heard it slam.
Good, she thought, be mad. Be as mad as you want. Milo yelped and she realized she was pulling the leash too hard and let it slack.
She could feel herself calming down, the tension easing. It was the street, the neighbourhood. She always felt better when she walked here. And now, with the holiday lights on so many houses, the big inflated Santa Clauses and snowmen, the crisp air, it all felt right.
Milo stopped and raised his leg on the stop sign post and Emma smiled. Better than on one of the tiny trees on the tiny front lawns. Someday those trees would be taller than the houses.
Dammit, Emma liked the neighbourhood.
Most of the houses had kids in them. This will be the neighbourhood they grow up in, they’ll be attached to it for the rest of their lives. It’ll be home forever.
It could be her home, too.
But maybe not Matt’s. He wants to go back to Toronto so bad maybe let him.
She didn’t think she was flirting with the Asian guy. But she could if she wanted to.
FOUR YEARS EARLIER
Leonard Bouchard stomped on the gas and fishtailed out of the parking lot, screaming curses.
He dropped his phone on the passenger seat of his BMW and swerved into oncoming traffic then back into his lane.
He spotted it. The Audi was a dozen cars up, stuck behind a slow municipal bus.
Bouchard was pissed. How could he let this guy get away. Such an easy job.
The whole construction site gig was going great. From the GTA they’d already sold almost two million dollars-worth of heavy equipment to a Chinese middleman who shipped it all to Africa. “Ports, highways, whole cities they’re building,” he’d said. Always wanting more—even the old stuff, bulldozers that belched blue and leaked any fluid put in them. Everyone getting rich.
But this guy, Carmine Rizzolo. He’s suddenly way too rich. Wads of cash on him, buying rounds at every dive in Scarborough. Then the OPP pulls a sting on a site where Rizzolo worked a few months back, multiple arrests. The bosses put two and two together and come up with informer. Only cops have that kind of money to throw around these days. The midget was squealing on them. They sent Rizzolo out to a big development going up in Niagara, place called East Lofthill, until they decided what to do.
The bus turned off and the Audi shot past it to a red light. Cross traffic stopped him from running it.
All Bouchard had to do was come down to Niagara and get rid of the guy, get rid of the body. Should have been easy. Back home for the Raptors-Pacers game, the end of it, anyway.
He set a meeting at a motel on Lundy’s Lane, texted Rizzolo that the bosses had a special thing going—something only Rizzolo could handle. So the guy shows up, straight from the job site, knocks on the door. Bouchard opens it and the guy’s face goes white. He knows. Somehow he knows.
He twists and shoots his foot up, bashing a steel-toed boot straight into Bouchard’s groin.
Rizzolo is back in his Audi and burning rubber before Bouchard can stumble up from the floor, slipping on his own vomit.
Light goes green. The Audi guns it.
Bouchard manages to pass two cars, then another. Now he’s only a few cars back.
No idea where they are. Bouchard barely ever gets down to Hamilton let alone Niagara. Only time he was in the Falls was on a Grade 8 field trip.
A long straight stretch. He knows they’re headed west, the sky already gone crimson to indigo. It’s March, still cold. He careens around a pickup, the last vehicle between him and Rizzolo, but he can barely see the Audi’s taillights now. Around another curve. Through another light. There’s a bright intersection in the far distance, a bigger road. Bouchard floors it, hits 140 as he catches a glimpse of the Audi just making it through the yellow. Bouchard closes fast then slams the brakes at the red for a crossing semi, anti-locks chattering, the scene lit crazy bright by the gas station on the corner. The tractor-trailer past, Bouchard guns it into the intersection and gets slammed by a motorcycle hidden by the truck. Glass explodes into the car from the passenger door, smashed inward by the collision, the rider propelled over the car’s roof to a thudding roll twenty feet down the road.
Bouchard shakes off the shards and stomps on the gas. Ten seconds later the banked left curve takes him by surprise and he almost loses it into the shoulder, screeching a recovery into the opposite lane—then sees the traffic cones, still rolling, and the Audi already across some sort of steel bridge. He doesn’t see the LIFT BRIDGE CLOSED FOR ROUTINE MAINTENANCE sign, and he barely sees the smashed boom gates on both sides. Hitting the bridge deck is like jumping a concrete curb, and by the time he’s halfway across he realizes the bridge is lifting—slowly, but lifting. Screw it. The Audi’s taillights are gone again and Bouchard smashes the accelerator. The deck has lifted only two feet but it’s still high enough to max out the Beemer’s suspension when the car flies onto the pavement again. About five warnings flash on the instrument panel but the only lights Bouchard cares about are just visible again.
Railroad tracks. Signs, highway signs and on-ramps.
He figures Rizzolo will take one but he doesn’t.
A strip mall, traffic picks up. The Audi weaves in and out. An intersection with two gas stations opposite. Another straight stretch and Bouchard has almost caught up. At the next light Rizzolo slams the brakes and turns left. To the right sits an enormous building, maybe an arena, darker than the sky. And then it clicks, Bouchard realizes Rizzolo’s taken them back to his job site, back to East Lofthill.
A few seconds later the Audi brakes hard and makes a right. Is that even a road? No streetlights. It’s a vacant field. Not entirely vacant. Surveyor’s sticks glow in the Beemer’s headlights. Some foundations, a lot of dirt piles. He squints into the dark. Where did the damned Audi go?
There. Other side of that pile.
He guns it and pulls up to see Rizzolo bolting from the car. This still might be easy after all. Avoiding an open foundation but taking out several surveyor’s sticks, he slams into Rizzolo who goes up onto the hood.
Bouchard is out of the BMW and throwing the tiny bastard to the dirt, punching him a couple of times, drawing blood of his own from glass fragments embedded in his hands.
He stood back and pulled his .38, pointing it at Rizzolo.
“Okay, okay,” said Rizzolo, trying to get to his feet.
“Stay down.”
“Fine, all right. Don’t kill me.”
“It’s why I’m here.”
“Whatever they told you, it isn’t true.”
“I don’t care,” Bouchard said. “It's orders.”
“They said I was talking to cops, said the cops were paying me right? That what they told you?”
“No one tells me anything.”
“Come on, please.” Rizzolo was sitting up, getting up on one knee.
Bouchard shook his head. “Don’t move.” He looked around. They might be in the middle of a construction site, but he could see the lights of older houses not that far away. He didn’t think he could kill the guy here, not by shooting him anyway.
“I didn’t,” Rizzolo said. “I didn’t talk to any cops, that’s not where I got the money.”
“Don’t care, nothing to do with me.”
“I can just disappear,” Rizzolo said, pleading now, holding up his hands. “You can tell them you killed me, no one has to know.”
“They’ll know.”
“I’m telling you, I didn’t rat nobody out.”
“I don’t care.”
“But I got money, lots of it. I can get it, you can have some, no one’s got to know.”
“You have money?”
“I can get it. I stole gold.” Rizzolo had his hands in front of his face like he thought they’d stop a bullet. “Not money, I didn’t steal money, I stole gold.”
“Gold?”
“A lot. I didn’t even know it was there. I was looking for jewelry.”
“You got gold chains? Big deal.”
“Not chains,” Rizzolo said. “Bars. I got gold bars, lots of them, hundreds. Filled a whole tool chest. They're buried.”
“Bullshit.”
“No lie, man. I didn’t tell anybody because it was so much. But take them. Let me go.”
“If they were real I’d just take them from you anyway. But no one’s going to believe any bullshit story about buried gold bars.”
Rizzolo inched forward. “I broke into a house. I’ve been doing it since I was a kid. This place, it’s big, in town here. The guy’s some tech millionaire or something. His wife’s jewelry, that’s what I was going for but I found the gold. That’s where I got the money, I sold a couple.”
Bouchard shook his head. “The cops paid you. That’s where you got the cash.”
“It’s not, I swear.”
Bouchard thought the guy was going to start crying, his face was twisted and his eyes were closing, but then he jumped, clawing for the gun. He had a grip on it as Bouchard pulled the trigger, sending a round into the BMW. This time it was Bouchard who did the kicking. Rizzolo hit the dirt again.
Two rounds. He didn’t get back up.
Bouchard looked at the houses on the other side of the site. There’s no way they didn’t hear those three gunshots, weren’t on the phone right now calling the cops.
Bouchard looked at Rizzolo in the dirt and realized his own blood was there too. He might as well sign his autograph on the body.
Lucky the bastard was so short. Bouchard popped the trunk and dropped him in.
He drove slow and steady, through the maze of foundations, finally to pavement, and then toward a shopping plaza. He fought the urge to really take off. Sure, the passenger side was damaged, but it was just another BMW in a neighbourhood full of them. Plus it was stolen. Go ahead. Write down the plate. Won’t matter in an hour.
Like a good citizen he waited at the light as traffic passed, then turned right, headed east on the same roadway—the sign said Regional Road 20—back toward those highway on-ramps. He passed a big real estate sign with big letters. Yeah, he didn’t care what was coming soon to East Lofthill. He’d never be back.
Merging onto the 406, Bouchard shook his head. What a lame-ass move, claiming to find gold bars. Was this 1885 or something?
A month later the OPP came down hard—the entire operation, eighteen arrests. And yeah, there was a rat, but it wasn’t Rizzolo. It was the bosses’ accountant. Most of them took plea deals. But not Bouchard.
He didn’t say a word, didn’t testify, didn’t cooperate.
He spent four years in Joyceville with nothing to do but think, and run through memories on a loop, parsing every detail. Like that night in East Lofthill, in the dirt.
Bouchard’s memory wasn’t photographic, but it was good, real good. He remembered that big arena building to the north, and the distance from the paved road to the east, and how far away those older houses were to the west. A little basic triangulation.
Every few months he paid a visit to the prison library, to the computer stations. He browsed Google Maps, checked every Street View update. He watched East Lofthill being built, foundations become houses, streets get paved.
What if Rizzolo really had been headed for his gold bars that night. What if they weren’t far from where he tried to run for it.
The day Bouchard was paroled he walked into Kingston’s biggest Walmart and bought a metal detector. Then he walked to the terminal, bought a ticket, and enjoyed a piece of rotisserie chicken while he waited for his Megabus direct to Toronto. He’d find a ride from there.
Ten-year-old Civics were the easiest.
Episode 8 of 10. Continued next week.
