Mobile 9 by Bill Haugland

Author:Bill Haugland [Haugland, Bill]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC022000
Publisher: Véhicule Press
Published: 2009-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

The wind was out of the east on the first day of November 1969, drawing with it the noxious odors of Montreal’s east-end oil refineries, launching transparent waves of stench as far west as Ville St. Laurent. Shortly after his phone call to Peter Loughlin, Jason picked something up on the police radio that piqued his curiosity. A body was found on BP Canada property. Ty Davis was already en route.

BP’s downstream refining operations went hand in hand with its upstream oil and gas exploration in Canada’s Arctic Islands region. The Montreal-based holding company distributed its refined product to consumers through a vast network of nearly two thousand gas stations in Quebec and Ontario. In an era of growing government interest in oil industry affairs, BP made sure security was tight and the Montreal refinery was fully prepared for sometimes frequent visits from bureaucratic officials. No one, least of all security chief Ron Irvin, was sure how the BMW came to be parked in the shadows of the holding tanks.

“Everything coming in and going out overnight is checked and cleared,” he told the television camera.

Ty held the microphone midway between himself and Irvin in an effort to keep their voices at the same level. Two Quebec Provincial Police cruisers flanked the BMW parked in the background. The auto manufacturer’s first fuel-injected vehicle was capable of doing 130 miles an hour. It hadn’t been fast enough for the car’s lone occupant.

“So how do you explain an unauthorized vehicle on company property?” Ty asked.

Irvin frowned.

“I don’t. Not until I’ve had the chance to debrief my graveyard crew. Obviously one of them opened the gates.”

“When do the overnight guys go home?”

“Eight o’clock. I got in shortly after nine. The BMW was discovered by one of the dayside guards when he made his rounds at eight-fifteen.”

“You called the QPP?”

“I did.”

“And what happened next?”

“They jimmied the trunk and found the body.”

Ty thanked the security chief. He’d ask the cameraman to shoot some silent footage of the car, wait for the morgue truck to arrive and do an on-camera standup. In the meantime, he decided to ask the cops to pop the trunk.

“Any objections if we take a few shots?”

They didn’t have any. Ty wished, in retrospect, that they had.

“Small space,” one of the officers said as he raised the trunk cover. “Big body.”

Ty nearly lost his breakfast when he saw what was inside. The torso was big-bellied and generally huge—impossible to stuff into the BMW in one piece. The legs had been severed and lay neatly beside the torso on a blood-covered tarpaulin. Frozen in horror were the dead eyes of Mafia capo Massimo Gianfranco.

Victor Gordon seldom paid a visit to the newsroom. When he did, it was usually late afternoon after Maggie Price came in. Gordon believed he possessed the ability to charm all women. Maggie was a challenge. She criticized his cigar smoking and objected strenuously when he hung over her workstation. Today, however, Gordon pushed through the newsroom door at 10:28 a.

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