Читать книгу Death Dealer - Kate Clark Flora - Страница 16

Chapter 6

The Focus

With a suspect, the investigation into Maria’s disappearance and likely murder could get fully under way. At the center of the investigation would be the supervising officer in the criminal investigations division, Detective Sergeant Paul Fiander. Originally from Cape Breton, Paul Fiander was a tall, handsome man with that quiet air of confidence and authority that the police call “command presence.” Colleagues described him as a natural leader and a man who was fundamentally fair. They respected his dedication to the job and his ability to put mission before ego, which led him, when the Miramichi police department was formed, to leave his job as chief in the nearby town of Blackville and begin again as a constable in the newly formed department.

It would be Fiander’s job to listen to each member of the team, assess their suggestions and direct the investigative strategy. It was also his job, with Greg Scott’s assistance, to keep the files in the case. “Keeping the files” is one of those phrases that sounds so mundane and unimportant it makes a person’s eyes glaze over, but it is in fact at the critical heart of any criminal case. Police personnel may come and go—they leave, retire, move away. Their memories fade. They die. Cases may take years to come to a final resolution. In the end, it is the quality of the work as reflected in the case files—that dated, signed, detailed and carefully reviewed compilation of interviews, photographs, videos, evidence, evidence lists and lab reports—that ultimately results in a successful resolution of a criminal case.

Brian Cummings might be a brilliant interviewer with superb people skills, but if he didn’t document the interviews, create a legal paper trail for essential documents and get properly obtained statements from important witnesses, what he’s done may not be available for the crown prosecutor’s case months or years down the road or critical statements may not be admissible. Dewey Gillespie may know everyone in the province of New Brunswick by face, name and personal history (or so it sometimes seems), but if his endearing, easy ways get them to confide in him and then he doesn’t record it and it doesn’t go into the right box, all that talent and those long hours spent won’t make any difference to the final resolution of the case. And if Greg Scott, that insightful document analyst and superb writer of warrants, doesn’t find the necessary information in the files to persuade a judge to issue the warrant, his talents are wasted because he has nothing to work with.

Detective Brian Cummings was the lead investigator. Cummings was a tall man with shoulders so broad that if he bought an off-the-rack jacket to fit them, it swam on the rest of a body he kept lean through running and working with weights. He had a perpetual kinetic energy that suggested he was about to jump even when he was seated at his desk, and even when he was on the computer, he was usually also on the phone. A relentless practical joker and a chronic tease, he was also a superb interviewer, a keen observer and a natural leader. He was easy to talk to and easy to trust, a man who made witnesses feel safe talking to him and the bad guys think he understood them. He was a master at subtly weaving essential questions into a dialogue with a suspect so effectively that his subject didn’t know what was happening. An instructor in interview and interrogation technique at the provincial police academy, Cummings could watch the video of an interview and pinpoint the moment when a subject decided to lie.

Working with him were Dewey Gillespie and Greg Scott. Gillespie was a large man with graying hair and deep blue eyes. He liked to present as an ‘awe, shucks’ kind of guy, not too smart, just one of the lads who wanted to help out and do whatever someone else needed done. It was a great act and many a bad guy fell for it. In truth, Gillespie was a walking encyclopedia. If he didn’t know everyone in the province, he certainly knew many of them—their family stories, their history, their traumas and their damage. Cross the border two hundred miles away and they’d ask after Dewey.

He hated his cell phone and his gun. He frequently managed to leave them in the pocket of his jacket at the office when he was out in his car, or somewhere in his car when he was at his desk. Gillespie’s lumbering gait belied a keen eye and fast reflexes: he was a crack shot and scored a perfect 300 at annual range qualifications on more than one occasion.

Gillespie had an immense well of concern and compassion, which made him the department’s go-to guy for the delivery of difficult news. He was also the sex crimes investigator—a great choice because of his kindness and caring. He could make a traumatized person feel safe and comforted and willing to confide, but it was a job that left him with a lot of bad memories. He didn’t like to go out in public, he said, because there were always people there who had been victims or perpetrators in cases he investigated.

Gillespie grew up on the river in a large family, his father one of the legendary Miramichi fishing guides, and when he talked about being on the river, he visibly transformed from cautious cop to ecstatic dreamer. He loved fly tying and wrote a book about famous fly tyers of the Miramichi. He and a friend wrote a series of children’s stories about Gusbur Glaspie, a lad who grew up on the Miramichi.

Quiet, handsome Greg Scott was the least outgoing of the group. A thoughtful, insightful family man with a deep-seated passion for justice, he hated interviewing but loved working behind the scenes. His compulsive nature was helpful for keeping orderly files. He was the go-to guy for analyzing documents, especially financial documents, for surveillance and undercover work, and for writing persuasive affidavits and watertight warrants that conformed to the law and covered all the bases. Again, it’s a job that might sound boring but is essential to the successful progress of investigations and to preserving the integrity of evidence at trial. Scott was described by the other members of the section as humble to a fault. They would also be the first to say that the section would be hard-pressed to function without him.

Once they focused on Maria’s disappearance as suspicious and David as a suspect, the investigators acted quickly to draft a warrant, not wanting to let any more time pass during which he might clean up a crime scene or destroy evidence, aware that police were now focused on the situation.

Shortly after midnight on February 1, two days after David’s interview at the police station, Constable Dewey Gillespie, accompanied by several patrol officers, knocked on the door of the Tanasichuk apartment. The outside temperature that night hovered around -13 degrees Celsius (9 degrees Fahrenheit). Police had been conducting surveillance on the residence so they knew that David Tanasichuk was home.

When David answered, they presented him with a warrant to search the premises and arrested him for the culpable homicide of his wife, Maria.