By this time the garden was empty, so I called the RCMP headquarters and got the runaround, nothing could be done until Wednesday at the earliest, I would need to speak to superintendent so-and-so, did I want to leave my name and agency? I did.

Then I went to the RCMP home page and tried to find some other options. The Mounties were organized into four separate districts for the province of Alberta. Calgary had its own city “police service.” It had investigated the killing of the husband and child.

The next call went straight through to the Calgary homicide unit. I gave my name, department, and badge number. Two minutes later, a man picked up and identified himself as Inspector Joe Mapstone.

We spent a few minutes trying to find adjoining branches in our respective family trees. When we discovered no common ancestors, I asked him about the Bridgeland murders.

“They were never officially solved,” he said.

That was a telling word. “Officially?”

“Amy Russell was in the RCMP organized crime task force. Her work sent three members of the Malicious Crew to federal prison, box cars for every one of them.”

I asked about the slang. “Box cars” meant two consecutive life terms.

“The Malicious Crew is one of our worst outlaw motorcycle clubs,” Inspector Mapstone told me. “Our theory was that the homicides were revenge. Amy might have been killed, too. She should have been home but was called to her headquarters that day. Her husband picked up their daughter at school and went home. That’s where the killers were waiting. We never released the details but it was nasty stuff.”

“Which was?”

His tone stiffened. “What exactly is your interest in this case, Deputy?”

There was no reason to soften it. “She’s a suspect in a murder here.”

“Amy?” He almost shouted her name. “That’s preposterous. I worked with her. Everybody loved Amy.”

“That may have been true but there’s no question. The identification is positive. It’s the same woman pictured in the Calgary Herald story about the murders.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Because she pointed a gun at me. She said she would have preferred to ‘suicide’ my wife and me. Then she shot my wife.”

“My God…”

It was a good two minutes before he spoke again. I waited him out in silence. By then he had mastered his emotions.

“Her husband was bound with duct tape,” he said. “He was forced to watch their six-year-old daughter raped, burned with cigarettes, and then slit up the middle from her vagina to her sternum. Six years old. Who would do such a thing? They covered him with her intestines. Then they started on him. It took awhile. A message was being sent.”

“Who found the bodies?”

“Amy did, when she came home that night. We haven’t been able to make the case yet. This is still active and open. Because it involves a police officer, it continues to merit special attention.”

Civilians didn’t realize how often cases were called “open,” but the cops were pretty certain about the suspect. Certainty didn’t always make a case.

There were probably hundreds like that here. Bob Crane of Hogan’s Heroes fame had been killed in Scottsdale in 1978. Add in videotaped sex and it had caused a national frenzy of news coverage. Almost from the start, the detectives had identified a suspect and had begun gathering evidence.

But convincing a prosecutor and a grand jury is another, more difficult matter. They finally had enough evidence to take the suspect to trial in 1994, but the jury acquitted him. The case remains officially open.

I asked, “What kept you from making arrests?”

“The prime suspect killed himself.”

My breath caught in my throat.

He said, “Legal name Aaron Henry Edmonds, street name Chaos. He was the top enforcer of the motorcycle club. We had him in our sights as the prime suspect. But two weeks later, he slit the throats of his two children and his old lady, the common law wife. Then he shot himself in the temple.”

Or he was “suicided,” Amy’s first.

“Is Amy still a Mountie?”

Tags: Jon Talton David Mapstone Mystery Mystery
Source: readsnovelonline.net