Death's Shadow (15 page)

A Silver Flash

“Suspects are two black males. One: six foot, slim build, silver braces in mouth, bandana. Two: black jean jacket with a photo on the bottom right portion of the jacket.”

It was 11:24 p.m. In his unmarked car, plainclothes constable Shane Groombridge held the wheel with his left hand and with his right scribbled the information relayed by dispatch in his notebook on the seat as he drove along Concession Street. Details of the suspects pretty vague, he thought — except for the silver braces. He had listened to the initial radio chatter about an assault at O’Grady’s Roadhouse. He heard urgency in the voice of the officer on scene.
Speed up the ambulance
.

“Hotel three-five-two responding,” Groombridge said into his radio. “Heading to the area to look for suspects.”

That night Groombridge was working a night shift with the HEAT unit. High Enforcement Action Team officers investigate property crimes, stolen cars, gangs — whatever might be plaguing the community. Before heading out he reported to the station, attached the loaded Glock to his belt holster, put on a winter jacket, and checked out a Grand Am.

He parked his car on the police perimeter at the northeast corner of Brantdale Avenue, where it comes to a T-intersection at West 5th, and turned off the engine. He reclined in his seat to make himself even less visible through the tinted windows. About an hour had elapsed since the initial assault call. Too much time had passed, he thought. No way would the suspects still be hanging around in plain view inside the perimeter.

That’s when he saw somebody emerge from the shadows, walking south across West 5th not far from his car, toward a house on the corner — male, at least six feet tall, dark clothing. Just before the man got to the door, he turned and walked west, across the lawn, back across West 5th. Made no sense. Why turn back? He walked toward the Hamilton Psychiatric Hospital grounds, across the parking lot and onto the snow-covered property. Groombridge started the car, eased it forward, and glided into the parking lot. The man was still walking with his back to him.

“Hotel three-five-two. Possible person of interest,” he said into his radio. “Can you send some backup to give me a hand?”

According to the book, an officer does not approach a potentially violent suspect alone. You wait for backup. You never knew if the suspect had a weapon, or what his fighting skills might be, or if he was hopped up on something. But the man was getting closer to the rear of the HPH property. In seconds he would exit into the darkness, perhaps head down the Mountain.

Groombridge did not hesitate. He turned the ignition off, got out of the car, and moved across the lawn, snow crunching under his feet. He carried his radio and a notebook in his hand. The Glock sat ready in the belt holster. The firearm did not have a safety clip; it allowed for immediate firing.

“Hey, come here,” Groombridge called. The man turned and faced him, saying nothing. Groombridge slipped his radio into his back pocket, unclipped his badge from his belt to show the suspect.

“What the fuck do you want?” the man demanded.

A silver flash. Didn’t look like braces though, more like some kind of metallic mouthpiece.
This is the guy
, Groombridge thought. And the suspect was clearly agitated. Groombridge had to try to stall him until backup arrived.

“What’s your name?” Groombridge asked.

“I don’t have to fucking talk to you.”

“There’s been an assault at O’Grady’s. You match the description of one of the suspects. Where are you coming from?”

The man swore again. “Am I under arrest? Am I under arrest?”

This was it. Groombridge knew from experience that when someone said words like that they were poised to bolt. And this guy’s body language resembled a loaded spring. In a blur the cop’s right hand grabbed the ball of the man’s left shoulder.

“You’re under arrest for assault.”

Groombridge was not big for a police officer. At five foot ten, he was shorter than the suspect. But he had thick forearms and strong hands, and the swiftness of the move would have caught anyone by surprise, the hand digging into tissue and muscle like a vice. For someone who has never been in a fight, Groombridge’s grip would have been the hardest hold he would have ever experienced. But the guy Groombridge grabbed was not going to submit. He pushed back and they locked arms. It was on.

They grappled for several metres. Groombridge had to stop the suspect from hitting him or fleeing, or, worst of all, grabbing his gun. He took him down, hard, pinning him to the ground, but the guy was strong; with adrenalin firing, he was still trying to kick and punch. Groombridge’s bare hands pressed into the ice and snow, holding the arms with all his might. He heard a cruiser pull into the parking lot. Backup. It was a uniform, Ben Adams. Adams ran to the fight and pinned one of the arms. The suspect continued yelling, swearing, struggling. They cuffed him.

“Thanks, Ben,” Groombridge said, breathing hard.

He read the man his rights, from memory, since the printout had flown with his notepad into the snow during the fight. He radioed dispatch. “Hotel three-five-two. Suspect under arrest.” They searched him; placed the items in a bag: seventy dollars in cash, cigarettes, toothbrush, pick comb. Health card. His name was Kyro Sparks.

The baby was born on July 30, 1982, in Scarborough, a suburb of Toronto. The mother named her boy after Cairo, the Egyptian capital, which in Arabic means
victorious
.

Kyro Sparks had one memory of his biological father. He was maybe five or six. Kyro was with his mom, leaving a corner store. It was sunny. He felt really happy that day. Mom stopped to talk to some guy. Kyro looked up at this man he had never seen before.

“Say hi to your dad,” Mom said. “That’s your father.”

And that was it. Not a sad memory or a happy one. Just … something, Kyro reflected. It was okay. Never bothered him or anything like that. Funny the things you remember. As for his stepfather, he wasn’t abusive or anything. Kyro thought he was an asshole. It was kind of complicated.

As far as growing up, Kyro preferred to remember that he was the kid who always had the latest brand of Reebok, the new BMX bike, the white jumpsuit. Mom, she was like this angel, this glowing light that floated down upon him, put a toy in his hand, a Transformer, whatever, then hugs and kisses, and she was off to work. Mom and the stepfather worked for the post office. His stepfather gave him 50 bucks allowance. Let him hang at the park, too. On Sundays he could either go to church with his mom, or just hang at the park; his stepfather insisted on giving him the choice. Kyro got in some fights. Yeah, he got jumped a couple of times. Because he was a loudmouth. Sticking up for his brother, friends. Boys will be boys, he figured.

They lived near Markham Road and Lawrence Avenue. Kyro lived in the hood, yes, but it wasn’t all that. That is, looking back, yes, it was the projects, but he was more like a hood star. What was a hood star? That’s when things are bad but you act and talk like it’s not bad.
A hood star
.

Kyro thought his first contact with police was kind of funny. He was making crank phone calls all the time, and one day the police come to the house.

“You Kyro Sparks? You making crank calls? You could go to jail for that.”

His mom had put the cops up to it, he found out, trying to teach him a lesson. When he was about nine, his mom left the stepfather and they moved to Montreal. His mom then worked two or three jobs. She seemed sad all the time. Kyro was sleeping on the floor instead of in a bunk bed like he had in Toronto. They lived in a rough area of Montreal’s South Shore, but this time Kyro didn’t feel like a hood star. He didn’t know why things weren’t like they used to be. He wasn’t getting the shoes and bikes anymore. Still wanted them, though.

It started small: the crime. Go to a variety store with a group of guys. Couple of them felt like a bag of chips, so they took the chips. They didn’t have weapons, not all the time, although weapons were always around. What was one variety store guy going to do? You just ate the chips, looked right at the guy behind the counter. Said nothing; dared him to risk it over a bag of chips. There was beer sold in those variety stores, too. Cracked a few.

It didn’t take long for Kyro to start wondering how much money the customer coming in the store had in his wallet. Understand? It wasn’t as though, as a kid, Kyro said, “I want to be a felon.” No, it was more like, “I want to get some money; in order to get it, I can do this.” Funny, he never really planned on becoming what he did. Just kind of happened.

More Than a Feeling

Saturday, January 15, 2005

Central Station, Major Crime Section

Hamilton, Ontario

1:30 a.m.

At his desk Detective Mike Maloney wrote the first bits of detail in a fresh white homicide notebook.Victim: Rozendal, Arthur 61/02/25. Suspect: Sparks, Kyro Jarreau James 82/07/30.

He noted the killing had occurred at O’Grady’s Roadhouse. Small world. Back in 1977, when he was finishing high school at St. Thomas More, the bar was called Italian Village. It was just a few blocks from his school; the boys managed to get served there on occasion. Some of Art Rozendal’s friends, he would learn, were people he had gone to school with.

Maloney grew up in the Mohawk Road and Garth Street area. His dad had worked at Dofasco; his mom stayed at home, but later worked at a fashion shop in Jackson Square. Maloney played Junior B hockey; some of his teammates were police officers. After graduating he figured it was either the fire department, the police, or teaching. He wrote the test to join the police service and started on May 14, 1977, in the cadet program. Over the years Maloney had worked a variety of posts, including the emergency response unit in the 1980s, where he did his share of busting through doors and windows. Good times, but he transferred out of ERU when it started to seem like every situation he entered involved a gun — including a close encounter with a round from a .357 Magnum.

Maloney had a suspect in the Rozendal case downstairs in lock-up, but first he left his desk and headed to the department’s quiet room to meet the widow. He had been told Brenda Rozendal had seen her husband die at O’Grady’s. He need to go slow, develop a rapport, he reminded himself.

Mike Maloney seemed to have the perfect personality to work homicide. Easygoing, nothing rattled him. What most didn’t see was what brewed inside. When he met with the family of a murder victim, it got to him. How could he not feel their pain? Sometimes he wondered if he was more sensitive to these people than his own family. He tried to flip the switch, let it slide off him, but it never completely did.

He sat down with Brenda.

“I am so sorry for your loss,” Maloney said. “I know there are places you’d rather be; people you’d rather be with.”

He explained it was part of the process; he had to ask her what happened. It’s one of the toughest parts of the job, asking a loved one to relive the experience. He listened to her account. The big question was: What had happened between Mr. Rozendal and his attackers at O’Grady’s? Had there been some kind of provocation? Was Art capable of it? Maloney needed to learn more about Arthur Rozendal.

The boy crossed the street carrying his clothes in a garbage bag slung over his shoulder like a hobo. It was 1973 and Art was 12 years old. He walked toward the waiting car from the townhouse on Wendover Drive, just off Mohawk Road on the west Mountain in Hamilton. Art was about to meet his new family for the first time.

Arthur was born in Hagersville, south of Hamilton, on Saturday, February 25, 1961, the first child, and only son, of Cornelius (Neil) and Frances Rozendal. Neil and Frances would eventually also have two daughters: Debbie and Sandra. Art grew up in a rented house off Highway 6, beside Sumdrim Golf Club, just outside Caledonia. He attended nearby Oneida Public, a country school surrounded by farmers’ fields.

In Grade 1 he met a boy named Bill Murray. They both played baseball; it was big in Oneida Township. Art played catcher; Bill pitched a bit, played a little first base. Their real connection, though, was cars — toy cars at first, but before long, real ones. Art was always drawing pictures of them, caricatures. He loved to draw, was good at it, too — a creative boy. He developed a love for a certain kind of car — 1960s and early 1970s Buicks, the Skylark and Gran Sport — perhaps drawn to the power and escapism the muscle car styling seemed to represent.

Art and Bill hung out a lot at the Murray farm, nestled among expansive rolling hills and pastures. The boys tooled away on an old beater that sat in a field. Probably seemed to their parents like they were just fooling around, but they were actually teaching themselves about how cars worked. One day, they were maybe nine or 10, they spent endless hours tooling around with an old dark blue 1962 Valiant wagon. It was an ugly car — all glass, a real fishbowl of a car. It had belonged to Bill’s mom, but it had quit on her, and now it just sat in the field.

They actually got the engine to turn over. Art’s eyes lit up.

“Let’s do it.”

Art jumped behind the wheel. Bill rode shotgun. There they were, booting around the field, laughing, triumphant, having brought the beast to life. The joyride didn’t last long, mind you. Mrs. Murray was out the door, hollering at them to stop, thinking they’d kill themselves.

Fast-forward a couple of years; the Rozendals had moved from the country into Hamilton. But Art’s family was breaking up. Neil worked as a long-haul truck driver, made runs up to Algoma Steel in Sault Ste. Marie. He had met a woman named Esther up there. They wanted to get married. Art’s two sisters stayed behind with their mother in Hamilton, but Art decided to go with his dad, start a new life out west, in Winnipeg. It was difficult for Art to leave. But he had an adventurous spirit and loved his dad, though he was not always an easy man — old-school guy, taciturn, a disciplinarian.

And so Art carried his garbage bag of clothes to the car that day. Inside, waiting in the back seat, was a five-year-old boy named Darren and his baby sister, Cheryl. In the front was their mother, Esther, and the man who was about to become Esther’s children’s new stepdad, Neil Rozendal.

Neil had driven Esther and her children seven hours to Hamilton from Iron Bridge, a town up near Sudbury. Darren didn’t understand everything that was going on, but knew he was in for a long ride, and it was just beginning. His parents had broken up; his mom was now with Neil, who was taking the newly blended family out to Winnipeg. And he knew he was getting a new brother.

Art loaded his clothes in the trunk of the car, and Neil drove the family up north for a stop in Iron Bridge, then on to Winnipeg. Darren slept nestled in the footwell of the car like a kitten. Art Rozendal now had a stepbrother and stepsister — although he would never use those words. From the start Darren and Cheryl were simply his brother and sister. Period. Art’s heart was too big to ever allow him to feel they were anything but part of him.

His new family made the trip in his new stepmother’s car: an orange Buick. Everything had instantly changed. At least the uncertain road ahead would be travelled in a 1967 Skylark.

At Art’s suggestion his dad applied for a job managing a big hog farm near Winnipeg. In 1974 he landed the position, which came with a large but run-down house on the property, where the family settled. Everyone pitched in to fix up the place. Art worked hard on the farm, loaded feed mixed with water that was piped into a series of pig barns, shovelled manure. He developed an allergic reaction to pig hair; it made his skin flake, and his hands would sometimes crack and bleed. Kids at school teased him. It didn’t help that when you work on a pig farm, the smell stayed with you.

“I can smell Art coming now,” the kids would say.

He rolled with it, laughed it off.

Art had moved a couple of thousand kilometres from home, left his mother and sisters behind in Hamilton, and now worked hard, labouring when not in school — at a job that caused others to mock him. He had plenty of fodder for bitterness, but Art’s genial manner did not change from the carefree days in the Caledonia countryside.

Art was no saint; he got in hot water with a buddy when they were caught with beer at a sleepover after a high-school dance. He cursed when things went bad, would toss in a four-letter word here and there, especially when he tooled away on a car in the garage. But no one ever saw him get truly angry. Art had more patience than most, and could fit in with most situations, was good at talking to people.

Cars continued to be his first love through high school. He’d always been creative, and faded muscle cars in need of restoration became his canvas. Shiny new chrome, hot paint job, an engine resurrected to its former growl — cars took Art wherever he needed to go. He socked away cash working on the farm and bought Esther’s 1967 Skylark, fixed it, and painted it a rust colour.

He worked on other cars with his friends, Paul Willems and Dave Newman. All three lived on farms within a few kilometres of one another, near a town called Dugald. When they went out, Art always drove — to a party, the roller rink, hanging at Juniors Restaurant in downtown Winnipeg. They cruised Portage Avenue on a Sunday summer’s night — a Winnipeg tradition — alongside other souped-up hot rods on display, on occasion opening up the Skylark for an impromptu drag race.

Art’s new brother, Darren, came to see him as both a father figure and big brother. Darren never did see eye-to-eye with his stepdad, Neil. He came to wonder if he was perhaps baggage in Neil’s life. For Art’s dad there was a right and wrong way to do everything, whether it was table manners or anything else. Art got into arguments with his dad, too, but it never seemed to get too intense. It was different with Darren, who had a more rebellious spirit.

Art always let Darren hang at the garage at Paul’s place when they worked on a car. He invited Darren and sister, Cheryl, along when he drove into town — not because his parents told him to, but because he wanted to. He took them to see movies —
Star Wars
,
The Jungle Book
. In 1978 Art and Paul snuck Darren into
American Hot Wa
x, a 1950s nostalgia flick. He took them to Grand Beach on Lake Winnipeg, 70 kilometres north of the city, billed as one of the best inland beaches in the world. They swam, threw the Frisbee and football around with Art’s buddies. Years later Darren wondered why on earth Art had let his little brother and sister hang with him. But Darren loved every minute of it. Art was cool, smart, and responsible. He was all that.

Around 1980 the family left the hog farm and moved into Winnipeg; Neil had suffered a heart attack and got a new job at a city feed mill. Art went to high school in the day, worked at night at a fish processing plant, saving his money for a car and a trip east he had long been planning. Art and Darren had their own rooms on the farm, but in the city they now shared bunk beds. That meant Darren grew up listening to Art’s music. His big brother owned a stereo, a lumbering wooden console where the lid opened to reveal the radio and turntable. Art played classic rock: Eagles, Elton John, Triumph. He spun the Boston hit “More Than a Feeling” all the time:

It’s more than a feeling, when I hear that old song they used to play

I begin dreaming

Till I see Marianne walking away

As soon as Art graduated high school, he said he was heading back east to Ontario. When Darren heard Art was leaving, he was heartbroken; he’d had no inkling that Art wanted to return to Hamilton, or that he was leaving for good. Art hadn’t even finished the 1970 Buick GSX he had been refurbishing at Paul’s garage. He never talked much about his reasons for going. Darren was bitter, but not with his brother. He believed he may have left in part because Art wasn’t getting along with Neil. Art’s stepmother, Esther, believed he just wanted to start fresh, wanted to find a job in southern Ontario. Neil said nothing to try to stop Art from doing what he felt was best, and he was of a generation that did not tend to emote. He loved his son and it hurt to see him go, but he was also not the type to express those feelings. After Art left, Darren’s arguments with his stepfather grew worse. He started to rebel, skipping school. What was going to happen to Darren with Art gone?