Grave Situation (25 page)

“No, I don’t think you’re a bad
parent,” he said. “Don’t blame yourself. We all want what’s best
for our children. To keep them safe. We can only teach them
positive habits and help them towards a better life. When they
reach adulthood it’s up to them to heed all we’ve tried to do for
them.

“I think you did the best you
could with the hand you’d been dealt. And I believe Cathy felt that
way too.”

Philip looked at him for a moment,
then without another word, he turned to the window again. Allan
rose to his feet. When he moved to Philip’s side, he saw the film
in the father’s eyes, the grave expression on his face.

Allan drew a breath. “We’ll need
you to come down to the medical examiner’s office at some point for
a positive identification.”

Philip, he saw, wouldn’t or
couldn’t look at him now. Only the faint nod of his head said that
he had heard him.

After a moment, Philip whispered,
“Later.” His voice choked. “I’ll do it later.”

“I’ll be in touch.” Allan put a
hand on his shoulder. “Again, I’m sorry for your loss.”

Philip Ambré didn’t see him out.
Allan stepped outside and shut the door softly behind him. As he
walked back to his car, he saw Philip where he had left him, still
standing in front of the living room windows, staring down at a
handkerchief now in his hands.

Allan slipped into his car and
realized there were tears in his eyes. Though he didn’t know for
whom.

28

Halifax, May 16

2:50 a.m.

Print match.

The ERT van was black and
nondescript. It coasted slowly down Walnut Avenue. Behind it two
radio cars parked diagonally across the south entrance to the
street, closing it off. At the north entrance, two other police
cars did the same. No residents would be going home just yet. More
importantly, none would be leaving without being
identified.

Beneath a disconnected streetlight,
the van pulled to the curb and stopped. Its male driver
extinguished the headlights.

There was no one around. The
neighborhood was quiet, asleep.

The man checked his watch: 3:00
a.m. His name was Sam Keating, commander of the Regional Police’s
Emergency Response Team. He wore a SWAT uniform. A black balaclava
covered his face, but for a strip across his alert green eyes and
beneath it a small earpiece was connected to a mike attached to the
front of his Kevlar vest. On the passenger seat sat his ballistics
helmet, complete with a mounted night-vision monocular.

The neighborhood surrounding him
was segregated only by its high income. The street was tree-lined,
the houses elegant with sloping lawns and manicured
hedgerows.

From the dash Keating picked up a
pair of night-vision binoculars and pressed them to his face. Up
ahead, around the bend in the road, loomed the green-hued
silhouette of the target house—a brick colonial with white
pilasters and a peaked pediment. The stand of trees behind it was
dark against the lighter shade of sky.

Adjusting the center dial, Keating
brought the home into sharper focus. All the lights were out, he
saw. The BMW belonging to the occupant was parked in the
drive.

Disgusted, Keating shook his
head.

“Who says crime doesn’t pay?” he
whispered to himself.

On Wednesday afternoon the forensic
lab had lifted four useable latents from the heroin packet
retrieved in Cathy Ambré’s bedroom. All but one thumbprint was
identified as hers. That one was entered into AFIS. A short time
later, the identification system returned a match—Bernard Potter.
He was a twenty-nine year old former resident of Vancouver, who had
amassed a long list of priors that were mostly drug related. It was
anyone’s guess as to how he had slipped through the cracks in
Canada’s justice system and ended up in Halifax to set up shop with
anonymity.

With a little
extra legwork, Allan discovered Cathy Ambré had used
Call a Cab
the night of
her suicide. The taxi company’s logbook revealed that she had been
picked up at her apartment building, driven to Potter’s home, and
then returned again.

Armed with this evidence, a judge
issued a search and seizure warrant. It was the job of the
Emergency Response Team to carry it out.

Once more Keating moved the
binoculars over the property, considering the point of entry. There
would be no dynamic breach. No shot-gunning the door locks or
hinges. No use of explosives or battering ram. At the briefing
earlier, the team decided a stealthy entry would be more
appropriate. The battering ram would be used as the backup if the
initial plan failed. Potter was considered a high risk, dangerous
offender. His whereabouts in the home were unknown. Surveillance
had also revealed there was a young woman in there with
him.

Keating put down the
binoculars.

Keying his radio, he spoke into the
mike on his vest, “Check. Check. Radio check.”

The response was instantaneous,
“All clear.”

With a sigh he picked up his
helmet, opened the door, and stepped out. His nerves were tingling.
This happened whenever he went out on these operations. One mistake
could be disastrous.

Keating put on the helmet, secured
it by the chinstrap. He circled the van and opened the rear doors.
Five team members were waiting patiently inside. The man closest to
him held out a Heckler & Koch MP5. Keating checked it over and
then slung it over his shoulder.

“Are we ready?” he asked the
team.

In unison they replied, “Yes,
sir.”

“Let’s move.”

The weather was perfect for the
operation—dark, overcast and a wind stirring enough sound in the
trees to conceal someone’s approaching footsteps.

Without hurry, the team moved
through one yard, then another. Out of the reach of streetlights,
the darkness seemed to absorb them. Within minutes they reached the
target’s property. Crouched low, the team used the concealment of a
hedge to move into the backyard. Once there, they stopped. Keating
directed two men to oversee the front door. The remainder would go
with him.

Approaching the house again, their
feet were but whispers in the grass. Rifles at the low ready, the
team single-stacked the back door. Keating’s hand closed over the
brass knob, expecting it to be locked. It was. The deadbolt was
also engaged.

Keating dipped a hand into a pocket
and produced a leather pouch. Opening it, he ran his finger over an
assortment of metal instruments. He chose a tension wrench and a
pick, not unlike one found in a dentist’s office.

Carefully, he slid the pick into
the top of the keyhole of the doorknob. When he felt the hooked tip
reach the rear pin, he gently lifted it. Next, he inserted the
tension wrench into the bottom of the keyhole and applied a slight
clockwise pressure to it. Breath held, he pressed his ear to the
door, listening for the telltale click as he let the rear tumbler
fall against the shear line.

Five remained.

One by one, he skillfully repeated
the same procedure as the first, working his way from back to
front. With each tumbler he felt more anxious. Beneath his
balaclava he could already feel the sweat beginning to collect. As
the final tumbler fell into place, the plug turned freely. Only the
deadbolt remained. In less than a minute he defeated it.

Keating inhaled. He moved a hand up
to his helmet and flipped down the monocular, adjusting it over his
right eye.

Voice low, he talked into his mike,
“Door has been unlocked. Team, switch to night vision. Going
in.”

Gently, he pushed on the knob. In
slow motion the door swung inwards. Holding up one hand, he gave
the signal to enter. The first man in was the second in line. He
headed to the left. Crisscrossing, the next man went to the right.
Keating was the third one in, followed by the final man.

Behind them the night wind slipped
in. The rear guard closed the door. Its click was quiet.

* * *

Down the street, Allan sat in a
patrol car with Lieutenant Darryl White, who worked in the
Integrated Drug Unit. Both men had binoculars trained on Potter’s
house.

White was forty-two, tall, gangly
and ruddy-faced. His hair was black with a smattering of white
where it touched his ears.

In terse sentences Keating’s hushed
voice would come over the radio, relaying the team’s progress
through the home. “Kitchen, clear. Moving onto the next room.
Dining room, clear.”

All at once, a light turned on in
an upstairs window. Moments later, a shadow passed over the
curtains.

Allan keyed the radio. “Someone’s
up.”

Keating’s answer came back as a
whisper. “Roger that. We hear movement above us. Advancing to the
staircase. Standby.”

Seconds passed.

A tense minute.

Then another.

Mouth pressed tight, White began
drumming the steering wheel, his tension palpable.

Suddenly, there was an
instantaneous flash of light throughout the second floor windows
and Allan knew the team had deployed a stun grenade. Even from this
distance away, he could hear the percussive pop.

For minutes the airwaves were
silent. White moved his hand to the ignition and held it
there.

“C’mon,” he muttered,
“C’mon.”

Suddenly, the radio squawked to
life. “Primary is in custody.”

Hitting the button, Allan asked,
“Roger that, Commander. Anyone else?”

“Affirmative,” Keating replied.
“One female.”

White started the engine and
stomped on the gas. The car peeled off, pushing Allan back in the
seat. The sensation of acceleration, the flashing lights took him
back to his days in patrol.

With a trace of a smile, White gave
him a sideways glance. “Hang on there, Al.”

Allan flashed a grin.

Far up the street the neighborhood
pulsed with blue and red strobe as the other radio cars raced for
the house.

White pulled up to the front of the
house and had one foot out the door before he had even shifted into
park.

The front door opened and Keating
appeared with Bernard Potter. Head down, the dealer’s hands were
cuffed behind his back. His blond hair was mussed, his eyes puffy.
He wore a bulky gray sweatshirt and sweatpants that were bunched up
at the ankles.

Like him, the young woman escorted
out also had blonde hair, long and braided in the back. She was
blue-eyed, slim and startlingly attractive. To Allan, she looked to
be in her early twenties.

Across the lawn, Keating and his
men shepherded the pair to the driveway and put them into separate
radio cars. As they were driven away, a thorough search of the
house began.

In the basement, the find was
substantial—packets of heroin and cocaine, two brick-shaped bars of
hashish, MDMA tablets with various logos and colors, bottles of
Ritalin, weighing scales and loose cash amounting to over
twenty-six thousand dollars and change. The combined street value
of the drugs was estimated at over three hundred
thousand.

Upstairs in the bedroom where
Potter had been arrested, a loaded .45 caliber handgun was found
tucked away in a night table drawer. Either the man had no time to
go for it, or had decided not to risk an attempt.

Everything in the home of
evidentiary value was bagged and tagged.

Allan and Darryl White returned to
the department to interview the suspect. The time was 8:15
a.m.

After booking, Potter was taken to
one of the department’s interrogation rooms, a windowless,
soundproof cubicle with a wooden table and four chairs. A camera
angled down from one corner, recording everything that went
on.

Allan and White were already
waiting inside. When a uniformed officer brought in Potter, White
extended his hand to the dealer, introducing himself; Allan
remained seated.

Potter sat down opposite the two
men. He slouched back, clasping his shackled hands behind his head.
His face showed no emotion.

“Please state your full name and
date of birth.”

“Bernard Damien Potter. April
twelfth, nineteen eighty-one.”

“Do you have anything to say at
this time, Mister Potter?”

“No.” His lips seemed to barley
move.

White opened a folder on the table.
“In two thousand three, you were arrested for importing cocaine.
Authorities intercepted twelve kilos of the drug on a container
ship in Vancouver. You were subsequently found guilty and served
your sentence at Matsqui Institution. After which, you moved down
to this coast.”

White hesitated a moment, folding
his hands in front of him. When he continued, he kept his voice a
monotone. “Didn’t like the weather out there? I hear it’s nice. At
least the winters are mild. Better than here. Gotta get used to the
rain though.”