Read Online Sundowner Ubunta by Anthony Bidulka - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Anthony Bidulka
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for my taste, but we’ve learned to work around that.
He’s broodingly, darkly handsome, sturdy as a pine tree and, on a few rare occasions, manages to remove the stick from his butt long enough to have a sense of humour (I take full credit for that).
“Quant, I can’t believe you’re asking me to open a young offender’s sealed file and spill the beans to you about what’s in it, like some high school Chatty Patty. Fer crissake, man, that’s stupid, even for you.
Didn’t you learn anything when you were on the force? Jeeeeeeeee-zzzus!”
I was quiet for a moment, wounded by the realization that he was right and I was wrong. I would get nothing out of Darren Kirsch about Matthew Ridge’s adolescent scrapes with the law. But I felt a little more gleeful when I realized this just might work to my advantage when I asked him for favour number two: to trace the plate number I’d gotten off the Lincoln Navigator that carried off Balaclava Guy. He quickly agreed, I think more to get rid of me than anything else, but he wasn’t done with me yet.
“How’d you like it if somebody started opening files and telling the world about all the nelly ass things you did when you were a teenager with all your b....”
35 of 170
3/15/2011 11:02 PM
The time had come, as it does in all my telephone communications with Constable Kirsch, to hang up the phone and move on. And just as I did, it rang. He couldn’t be that fast. Could he? “Hello?”
“Is this Mr. Quant?” A voice which, thankfully, didn’t sound to me like it was about to continue disparaging my youthful activities.
“Yes it is. Who am I speaking to?”
“Kimberly Enns. I’m a nurse at St. Paul’s. We met yesterday?”
Cha-ching. “Yes, of course, Ms. Enns. How are you?”
“I’m fine, thanks. Listen, I did some more thinking about what we were discussing yesterday, about Matthew, and I remembered one more thing.”
Angels singing. “Tell me about it. Or would you rather I meet you somewhere to talk about it?”
“No, this is okay. It’s nothing big, really, maybe it won’t help you at all, but, well, I remembered I did see Matthew one more time after we broke up, after I returned to Saskatoon from living in Regina.”
Yes! My investigation had stalled at high school and the summer after grade ten when he’d gotten into trouble with the police.
I needed something to move me further down the timeline. This could be it.
“After he got out of reform school?” I asked, beginning to jot down the particulars of her call on the top page of a blank pad.
“I wouldn’t know about that…I guess so…it was a few years after I graduated from high school myself.”
Without Kirsch’s help I wasn’t sure I’d ever know the real details of Matthew’s incarceration. I had to pick up his scent after he was freed. “Tell me what happened. Where and when did you see him?”
“Like I said, it was a few years after graduation. I was living in Saskatoon again and taking my nursing training at SIAST, so I guess this was maybe fourteen, fifteen years ago. I was downtown shopping with a girlfriend and we’d gone into a submarine shop to grab something for lunch. And there he was, behind the counter.”
“He was working there?”
“Yeah, he had the apron and everything, and he was making subs. It was busy so he didn’t look up much except to take orders, so I don’t think he saw me. He looked different, grown up from when I’d last seen him. He would have been twenty-one or so by then.”
“Did you talk to him?”
“No. I was-gosh it sounds so silly now-but I got flustered at seeing him and I just pulled my girlfriend out of there and we went somewhere else for lunch.”
I got the details about the exact location of the sub shop and asked if there was anything else she could remember.
“Just one thing,” she said. “Thank you.”
“Oh?” My cheeks reddened. “What for?”
36 of 170
3/15/2011 11:02 PM
“The roses, Mr.
He’s broodingly, darkly handsome, sturdy as a pine tree and, on a few rare occasions, manages to remove the stick from his butt long enough to have a sense of humour (I take full credit for that).
“Quant, I can’t believe you’re asking me to open a young offender’s sealed file and spill the beans to you about what’s in it, like some high school Chatty Patty. Fer crissake, man, that’s stupid, even for you.
Didn’t you learn anything when you were on the force? Jeeeeeeeee-zzzus!”
I was quiet for a moment, wounded by the realization that he was right and I was wrong. I would get nothing out of Darren Kirsch about Matthew Ridge’s adolescent scrapes with the law. But I felt a little more gleeful when I realized this just might work to my advantage when I asked him for favour number two: to trace the plate number I’d gotten off the Lincoln Navigator that carried off Balaclava Guy. He quickly agreed, I think more to get rid of me than anything else, but he wasn’t done with me yet.
“How’d you like it if somebody started opening files and telling the world about all the nelly ass things you did when you were a teenager with all your b....”
35 of 170
3/15/2011 11:02 PM
The time had come, as it does in all my telephone communications with Constable Kirsch, to hang up the phone and move on. And just as I did, it rang. He couldn’t be that fast. Could he? “Hello?”
“Is this Mr. Quant?” A voice which, thankfully, didn’t sound to me like it was about to continue disparaging my youthful activities.
“Yes it is. Who am I speaking to?”
“Kimberly Enns. I’m a nurse at St. Paul’s. We met yesterday?”
Cha-ching. “Yes, of course, Ms. Enns. How are you?”
“I’m fine, thanks. Listen, I did some more thinking about what we were discussing yesterday, about Matthew, and I remembered one more thing.”
Angels singing. “Tell me about it. Or would you rather I meet you somewhere to talk about it?”
“No, this is okay. It’s nothing big, really, maybe it won’t help you at all, but, well, I remembered I did see Matthew one more time after we broke up, after I returned to Saskatoon from living in Regina.”
Yes! My investigation had stalled at high school and the summer after grade ten when he’d gotten into trouble with the police.
I needed something to move me further down the timeline. This could be it.
“After he got out of reform school?” I asked, beginning to jot down the particulars of her call on the top page of a blank pad.
“I wouldn’t know about that…I guess so…it was a few years after I graduated from high school myself.”
Without Kirsch’s help I wasn’t sure I’d ever know the real details of Matthew’s incarceration. I had to pick up his scent after he was freed. “Tell me what happened. Where and when did you see him?”
“Like I said, it was a few years after graduation. I was living in Saskatoon again and taking my nursing training at SIAST, so I guess this was maybe fourteen, fifteen years ago. I was downtown shopping with a girlfriend and we’d gone into a submarine shop to grab something for lunch. And there he was, behind the counter.”
“He was working there?”
“Yeah, he had the apron and everything, and he was making subs. It was busy so he didn’t look up much except to take orders, so I don’t think he saw me. He looked different, grown up from when I’d last seen him. He would have been twenty-one or so by then.”
“Did you talk to him?”
“No. I was-gosh it sounds so silly now-but I got flustered at seeing him and I just pulled my girlfriend out of there and we went somewhere else for lunch.”
I got the details about the exact location of the sub shop and asked if there was anything else she could remember.
“Just one thing,” she said. “Thank you.”
“Oh?” My cheeks reddened. “What for?”
36 of 170
3/15/2011 11:02 PM
“The roses, Mr.
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