The Bukwas

By Dan Jamieson

Jeff Simms is a cop. He has identified himself with his position so completely that, when age forces his retirement, he decides to kill himself. In his last weeks on the job an entomology professor who claims to have discovered a giant insect is brutally murdered. Simms suspects the professor's graduate student. Brent Harchuck, who agrees that such an animal is impossible. When they confront the bug in flesh they end up joining the forces and set off in search of the reclusive animal. In the course of the hunt Simms realizes that he is more than his job.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jul 30, 2013
• ISBN: 9781483671109

Dan Jamieson

Dan Jamieson has lived in all parts of Canada and has been at various times a Customer Care Agent, an educator, a journalist and lawyer. Through all his moves and occupations he has been writing things down. Essays, short stories, and longer works sometimes emerged from a jumble of diary entries, notes and observations. His other hobby is hiking, which gets him into the countryside wherever he is living. The sights, sound and smells of the outdoors have always been part of his pleasure and part of his writing. He now lives in Edmonton, Alberta.

Book preview

Copyright © 2013 by Dan Jamieson.

Library of Congress Control Number:       2013912965

        Hardcover                               978-1-4836-7109-3

                   Softcover                                 978-1-4836-7108-6

                   Ebook                                      978-1-4836-7110-9

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Author’s photo by Stephen Taylor

Cover art by Denni-Rae Taylor

Rev. date: 07/27/2013

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Contents

Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter III

Chapter IV

Chapter V

Chapter VI

Chapter VII

Chapter VIII

Chapter IX

Chapter X

Chapter XI

Chapter XII

Chapter XIII

Chapter XIV

Chapter XV

Chapter XVI

Chapter XVII

Chapter XVIII

Chapter XIX

Chapter XX

Chapter XXI

Chapter XXII

Chapter XXIII

Chapter XXIV

Chapter XXV

Chapter XXVI

Dedication

To my mother and father, Jack and Lee, with love.

Chapter I

My name is Jeffery Arthur Simms. I am the sergeant in charge of the Campbell River General Investigation Section of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Campbell River Detachment. I love my work. I could even say that I live for it.

My day has a routine, an order to it that I find reassuring. I drag myself out of bed, shower, and shave. Breakfast in the tattered old dressing gown Chris gave me a lifetime ago. I have the first hit of coffee for the day and realize that I can’t remember getting out of bed and showering and shaving. Go back into the bathroom and check in the mirror, just in case.

Then I dress, slowly and meticulously, choosing my shirt and tie with a care usually reserved by men for their wedding day. I polish my shoes to a high gloss. After adjusting my suspenders and combing my hair, I examine myself critically in the mirror. Is there more gray in the hair? Have the creases around the eyes and beside the nose deepened overnight?

Finally, satisfied with progress so far, I pick up the shoulder holster laid neatly on my dresser and slip it on. I check to ensure that the gun slides smoothly from its holster and heft it in my hands.

Three weeks, I tell myself. Everything will change in three weeks.

At this point in my day I lift the revolver to my lips, not quite putting it in my mouth, but bringing it close enough to smell the thin coating of oil that protects it from harm.

I slip on the jacket of my choice and stroll over to my citation wall. It is a four-foot-by-eight-foot piece of corkboard littered haphazardly with newspaper clippings, official letters of commendation, and even a couple of medals awarded for services considered to be beyond the call of duty. There were plenty of pictures of constable, then corporal, then Sergeant Jeffery Simms receiving accolades from Force brass and politicians. They said I had shown coolness under fire, showed intelligence and perseverance and a dedication to my work above and beyond the call of duty. It’s a bit of a confidence builder, and it makes me eager to get on with my day.

Thus cheered, I go out the door and down the three flights of stairs into the waiting day. Rain or shine, I walk the three blocks to work. Rain or shine, I greet passersby with good cheer or quiet reserve, depending on who they are. I extend a good-natured hello to Tommy, the retarded man pushing his bicycle on the sidewalk and picking up litter from the side of the road, and a slightly condescending inquiry after his health and activities. A group of rough-looking miners waiting at the bus stop for the company crummy gets a polite but reserved nod. Mrs. Burke, an elderly woman who putters constantly in her front yard, her husband a prominent local businessman, gets a cheerful hello. Nearer the office, a wave and a distracted smile go out to the day-shift officers arriving, usually by car. It is always the same people, the same distracted smile, the same wave.

I haven’t told any of them about my plans for the day after my retirement, and no one knew that I was anything but pleased to hand in my badge and gun. A Mountie is entitled to retire with full pension after twenty-five years of service and can go with partial pension after twenty. I had been on the job for thirty-five years and would stay forever if I could.

I don’t want to leave the Force. No one is driving me out or telling me that I have to go. With my service record, I could easily tell personnel that I wanted to withdraw my resignation, and there would be no questions asked. But I can’t do that. It’s time for me to go.

A faint twinge in my right index finger as I open the main door to the detachment offices reminds me why that time has come. For more than a year I have been noticing occasional twinges in my hands and fingers. The doctor who has only seen me once a year for my physical was surprised when I showed up six months ahead of schedule but quickly diagnosed arthritis and prescribed simple aspirin for the pains. They were casual and minor and shouldn’t affect my work, he said. The information never went into my service jacket, and I carried on as I always had.

Most police officers rarely use their guns in the line of duty. I know I’ve never had mine out of its holster in the field. Every second Friday, though, I went to the practice range and fired off enough rounds to convince myself that I had satisfied the Force requirement that I maintain proficiency with my firearm.

It was on April 22 that I went to the range, intent on going through the motions of shooting a pistol to prove that I could still do it. After the first shot, the pain in my right index finger made it impossible for me to pull the trigger a second time.

I tried to rationalize, of course. I had never needed to fire the gun in the field. Firing off my gun to subdue a suspect would be an admission that I couldn’t keep control over a situation, that I had lost whatever contest of wills I was engaged in. Also, I am closer to administration than frontline policing now. I don’t need to fire the gun. I could simply instruct the officer with me to shoot the bastard if it came to that. If I wanted to, I could skip target practice altogether, and no one would say a thing.

There was no need to do anything or tell anyone about this.

That night, I had a dream. I dreamed that Wendell Smith, my first real encounter with evil, a man who had died in prison about fifteen years ago, had returned to life. He was holding the iron bar that he had menaced me with on our first meeting, but he wasn’t threatening me. He was beating on a fresh-faced young constable, one of the new guys in detachment whose name I hadn’t even learned yet. I had my gun out, ready to blow Wendy away, but my hand had seized up, and I couldn’t pull the trigger.

The next morning, I knew what I had to do.

Staff Sergeant Potter was surprised when I told him of my intention to retire. Not that you haven’t earned the right to retire, Jeff, but I had always thought they’d have to carry you out of here in a coffin. He laughed. I suppose he thought it was a joke. You really are getting long in the tooth for frontline policing, though, he said. Have you considered stepping back into administration?

I want to retire, I replied, not die. He laughed. I suppose both of us thought that was a joke.

But the magic moment creeps closer each day; and some time ago, I don’t recall exactly when, I realized that I am a cop. I not only don’t know how to be anything else, I don’t want to be anything else.

I’ve been good at being a cop. I don’t want to be ordinary at being a middle-aged old fart who shows up at the club to drink with the boys and tries to tell them about the policing that I remember. I can hear the sympathetic whispers as they load me into the back of someone’s car to drive me home. Poor old guy. They say he used to have it all, you know. But it’s all gone now.

It’s an odd thing, police work. Intelligence and a ruthless logic applied to small details can lead to a conviction if one just worries them and turns them over and views them from all angles with enough energy and insistence. That is what most people believe. That is the way they tell it on TV and the way every police officer tells it in court. I had reasons for everything I did, Your Honor, suggested by what I knew or was told. I like to think that is all there is to it. No magic. No luck. No intuition. Just plain, footslogging hard work.

But deep down I know there is more to being a good cop than that. There is the thing that comes from nowhere to wake me up and tell me to get a hamburger. Don’t go to the place next door. Go to the place across town that will be robbed five minutes after I get there. There is the hunch that tells me this is my perp, and I just have to gather the evidence to prove it. Exhume a thoroughly autopsied body that has been in the ground for more than a year and find the overlooked clue. Have a subconscious nudge toward a place with no apparent connection to the crime, a person who couldn’t have been there, or an object that wasn’t at the scene of the crime. Find the perpetrator where no one else was looking. Close the file.

Intuition, hunch, feel. These are qualities that don’t get discussed at police academies. They are too difficult to regularize, categorize and order into play when you need them. I try to think of them as little as possible myself, even though I know they are a critical part of the service record I have achieved and the pension to which I am entitled.

Not that I’ll ever collect that pension. After the divorce, I got some papers to assign a new beneficiary, but I never bothered to sign them, so I suppose Chris will get it. She’s always been money hungry, demanding support from me even now that the kids have grown up.

But what could you expect? Chris was just a bimbo who thought it would be cool to be married to a cop. She thought she would be privy to all the inside dope on what was going on in town. Of course I could never talk about my work with her. It was none of her business. When the marriage ended she said she felt like I had shut her out my life. I went undercover a few times and she seemed surprised that she wasn’t told where I was. It was a bit much that she said she never knew if I was dead or alive. The Force would have told her if I was dead.

I know that wasn’t it, though. She just found that being married to a cop wasn’t cool anymore. No staying power.

The marriage lasted just over six years, if you count the last two when we communicated mainly through the lawyers, those bottom-feeding scum. When the divorce was done she and the two children she had borne me slowly disappeared from my life. I tried to visit with the children as the court said I could, but things kept coming up, getting in the way. After a few years, the kids didn’t much care for me. Chris spoiled them and I didn’t, and the visits dwindled down over time. I got transferred to a different town and started seeing them only during my long leave time. Then I got transferred to a different province, and the visits became less and less frequent. I doubt if I would even recognize either of the kids if I saw them now. Jeff Jr. would be in his mid-twenties, and Tanya is twenty-three. Chris has gone to court to get their child support extended because Jeff Jr. has turned into some kind of egghead and was taking a postgraduate degree at a university in the States, and Tanya was mentally retarded and still living at home. I know that word—retarded—is no longer viewed as acceptable by many, but for reasons of my own, I have retained it from the days of my youth, when it was considered to be the polite replacement for imbecile or idiot.

I didn’t like spending money so my son could become an academic snot. Tanya was a different matter. I could see that she would never go out on her own, but I know that Chris relies a lot on social service agencies for her care. I have no doubt that the kids never see a dime of the money the court makes me pay her. Chris probably spends it all on her fancy clothes and new boyfriends. She’s a real estate agent. She makes plenty of money, a lot more than I do, but she just has to get her pound of flesh from me.

I’ve dated from time to time since Chris and I split up, but none of these women have gotten real close, nothing has become really serious. It isn’t because I don’t want a close relationship. I just never have the time. Too busy protecting the community, chasing the bad guys, saving the world.

So maybe the shrinks are right. I had to talk to them every time I went into and came out of undercover operations, and they always provided this gratuitous little bit of information, Jeff, you are a failure at the relationship game. They offered advice on how to improve the situation, but I never really saw the need and never took it. I’ve never let people get too close to me. It spoils the professional stature. I was a distant son to my now-deceased parents, was an uncommunicative sibling to my brothers and sister and am now more distant from my own wife and kids than even the word estranged can express.

This line of thinking can really spoil my mood, but when I arrive at the detachment and pop a couple of aspirins my reverie ends and the daily routine rises up to comfort me. I review the overnight file with Larry Beaman, my number 2 and the guy who runs the night shift, and Lorn Phillips, the forensics guy.

A small police force or detachment can’t set up a separate investigative unit for each type of crime. Where urban forces will have separate sections for homicides, burglaries, robberies and the like, rural detachments throw everything that may require a plainclothes detective approach into a unified general investigations section. The constable who was working a minor burglary last week may be asked to track down a sexual predator this week and break up a group trafficking in stolen goods next week. We try to allow each individual to develop some expertise in a single area, but we don’t get many rapes, murders, or major stolen goods rings in our thinly populated area. When we get one some member of my unit, usually me, has to develop a lot of expertise quickly.

The first order of business is to make up a list of places where the forensics section should put in an appearance. Phillips believes this is done because it is the priority his section deserves, but I always do it first simply to get rid of him. I really can’t stand him. A dapper little man, he is always dressed to the nines and reminding people of his collection of degrees and training certificates. Good detective work is done on the ground. It doesn’t come out of books. I like to get him on his way early so that he can collect the evidence that allows the real policemen to solve the cases.

Lately I’ve been looking for something on the reserve next. There’s always something. The Indians are always beating on each other or stealing from each other. The Force has been on a kick to hire Indians lately, be an equal-opportunity employer. One of them, Lenny Davis, got equal-opportunitied into my squad, and I have to give him something to do, so I send him out to conduct investigations on the reserve. I usually team him with a white man just to keep him honest.

The equal opportunity stuff also means I’ve got a bunch of women in my squad. Three out of the nine day-shift members on most days.

I know that women are moving out of the kitchen and into the wider world. I appreciate that, and I think it’s a good thing. But I do think there are some places women can’t take the place of man, on-site police investigations among them. They haven’t the strength, the stamina or the instinct for the work. The next part of the routine involves pairing each female with a male cop and giving them a list of things from the overnight file to check out. This procedure leaves me short of manpower. Usually, only one officer attends at routine break-ins and the like.

So I take my own list, send Beaman home to bed, and go out to check on some of the routine stuff myself.

Now Davis, my native cop, is a good guy. He goes out to the reserve, does his work as well as can be expected, and never complains about anything.

Most of the women do the same, but every now and then one of them complains that they aren’t getting the major cases or being allowed to work independently.

I am a professional at my work. That means that I consider the facts dispassionately and do what I think is right under the circumstances. I could have the women doing more dangerous and complex assignments but I know it would only result in botched investigations, or worse, someone getting hurt or killed. To allow that would be unprofessional, and I am a professional.

The rest of my day is the routine investigation of routine crimes. Not much of significance happens in a small town like Campbell River. The criminals are pretty well all known and the solution of most crimes is a matter of figuring out who isn’t in jail these days and bringing them in for questioning.

When everyone is assigned and I am ready to leave the office, I look around for a uniform to provide me with wheels. This particular night had been a slow one so I detailed myself to check out the town pawnshops and secondhand stores, anywhere stolen goods might put in an appearance. This was simple, routine police work. My brain hadn’t been taxed by a serious case for more than a year.

I drew Todd Barker from the pool of constables working over files in the bull-pen office and preparing for their respective days. Barker was a twenty-five-year man, set to retire in a few months. Unlike me he was a typical cop, counting the days until he could pick up his pension, with a plan to spend the rest of his life at his lake cottage, living on fresh trout.

Barker was a good cop. He was methodical and precise, but not blessed with an overabundance of intelligence or imagination. He had spent twenty-five years as a constable and never once complained about his lack of promotion. I suppose that if I were still working a beat, I’d be looking forward to retirement myself. Humorless and dull, Barker matched my mood to perfection.

You gonna be able to fit your dress reds on Saturday? he asked me as we pulled into a small coffee shop for lunch. The Force was having a retirement party on Saturday for those who would be leaving during the summer. There were four of us. The other three had already put in to finish their term of service by using up all their accumulated leave time between the party and their official retirement dates. Even at that, most of them would be owed a few weeks pay after they left. I was the only one who planned to return to work and stay on the job until the bitter end two weeks after the party. The traditional scarlet uniform was mandatory for the retirees at these functions, which were used as fundraisers for the charity of our choice. I had talked everyone into donating their share to the Association for Community Living, an outfit that helps mentally challenged people like Tanya.

I’m going to have to have mine let out, he added ruefully, patting a belly that had seen too many doughnuts in its time.

Don’t know, I told him. I really didn’t want to discuss the subject. I haven’t tried them on for years. I was pretty sure they’d fit. My body hadn’t changed that much over the years. I had worked hard every other day at the gym to keep it in shape.

Barker either couldn’t read my feelings on the subject or he couldn’t set aside his own enthusiasm for retirement. He had never been noted for his sensitivity.

Inside the restaurant, we ordered a meal to eat in. We had both been around long enough to know that eating on the fly didn’t get you citations. All it got you was indigestion.

I got to tell you, Jeff, Barker said around a mouthful of bread and beef, I’m real proud to be sharing the same do with you. He took my silence as encouragement and went on. I mean, you’re a legend in the Force. You got the smarts, the… the… what do you call it? The analytical ability. Stuff that’s been in the files here for years you come along and clean up in a few months. I silently wished he would just shut up and not say any more. I couldn’t say it aloud. If I started now, I would tell him that I was so hung up about retiring that I planned to off myself the day after it happened. That would never do.

You got more than that, though, Jeff, he said, giving me that look that said he was about to say something straight from the heart. You got soul, man, he said. Then he stopped as if he was a little surprised to have been so candid about his feelings, looked thoughtful for a moment and applied himself again to his hamburger.

Thanks, I said, my voice quiet and suitably awed. I felt like snorting at him but realized that wouldn’t do either. I dug into my salad and remained silent.

Everyone loves Jeff Simms, I thought. No one knows that he’s lost it. Better to go before they find out.

A few days earlier, an inspector from division headquarters had been out, talking to Staff Potter and a female corporal, and I happened to overhear their conversation. All right, I didn’t just overhear it. I eavesdropped on the conversation, standing at the filing cabinet just outside the staff sergeant’s door and just out of sight of the people talking.

His record shows him to be a fine officer, the inspector was saying. Diligent, dedicated, hardworking.

And he’ll be gone in just over a month, Lou, Potter reminded everyone. Why clutter up his record with something petty like this?

He’s a Neanderthal, said a woman’s voice. I recognized it as the voice of Louise Kaufman, also known as the Ice Maiden and one of the few women in the Force to rise to the rank of corporal. She had come into the RCMP determined to prove to everyone that her balls were bigger than those of any man and bucked the traditional way of doing things from day one. He simply doesn’t understand modern times, Ron. This was addressed to the inspector. I was appalled. Corporals don’t address inspectors by their first names, unless the inspector’s first name is Sir. I don’t have anything personal against him, but he’s still living in an age where women don’t work alone or with other women. He’s a misogynist who’s getting in the way of the Force’s efforts to bring women and visible minorities into the Force on equal terms with the traditional white male.

That isn’t the point, Lou, Potter said. The point is that Jeff Simms has a name to conjure with around here. He’s been cited for every positive quality a cop can have. The younger guys look up to him. They think he’s the reincarnation of Sam Steele, for Christ’s sake. I don’t want to blot his record with a picayune complaint about assignment of personnel when the guy will leave with his record still shining in just a few weeks. Why open a sore like this now, when it can only be hurtful? It won’t achieve anything.

Recruiting likes the look of Simms, the inspector interjected. They think they might be able to use his reputation and record and maybe even him after his retirement. You know, to build the image of the Force and attract more young people in. He has the kind of image the Force wants to project. I agree with Staff Potter, blemishing his record at this late date would achieve nothing.

I don’t think it will achieve nothing, Lou said, using her cold bitch voice. "It will send a message to all the other Neanderthal men in the department that no matter how many years of service they have or how brilliant a record they have, they can’t hang onto their old prejudices.

As for the younger guys looking up to him, don’t you see that they look at his example in its entirety? They don’t just see the guy with courage, brains, and moxie, and I agree that he’s got all those things. They see the guy who won’t put an Indian detective onto a case in a white community and won’t allow women to live up to their full potential.

The conversation carried on in this manner for a few more minutes. Then I heard sounds like a bitch session breaking up, nothing resolved, and gathered my files together and left. I had spent most of the remainder of that day cursing Corporal Louise Kaufman and wondering what I might do to even the score with her. When I finally looked up misogynist in the dictionary, I was doubly steamed.

I finally calmed down enough to realize that Lou was probably just campaigning for an extra stripe. She would bring in a more modern attitude that was more in line with what the commissioners were saying. She didn’t seem to realize that what they were saying was a response to media pressures and was quite different from what they were doing. If they were consistent with past performance, she wasn’t going to get another stripe. At least not mine. The people at division who wear the brass hats would know better than to think that a woman could do my job.

The day Barker asked me if I could still fit my dress reds, we returned from pawnshop patrol in midafternoon. I told Barker I wouldn’t need him for the rest of the day.

I guess this will be the last time I drive for you, Jeff, he replied. I’m off for a couple of days. Then I go on nights for the rest of my term. Hell of a way to end a career, he added with a grin, doing night shift, but at least there’s only one more to go, then freedom.

He smiled at me as if he expected me to join in his gloat over pending retirement and gave me a thumbs-up sign as I got out of the car and walked toward the detachment building.

The afternoon was spent reviewing the reports of officers from the field. If they had made a pinch, I questioned them to be sure the pinch was tight and that any charges arising would stick to the accused. If there was no pinch, I questioned them about what they had done and what they had left undone, the things that they might look for, the clues that might lead them to a suspect.

Some people complained that I was too picky, particularly the women, but detail is all a part of the game. A perfectly good bust can go west because of some missed detail. Lawyers can make mountains out of misspellings and create chaos with minor grammatical errors. These days, they have a right to see every document created in the course of an investigation, even the policeman’s notes, so the details have to be clearly expressed. It doesn’t hurt if they are also accurate. Some people said I rode Lenny Davis too hard and that it was because he was a native. It wasn’t my fault he couldn’t spell.

Possibly the hardest part of the routine