The Monster of Twenty Mile Pond Read online

  That buoyed me. Perhaps there would be progress on this yet, but what it might be, I had no idea. Over the next week, nothing happened. If there was in fact some advancement, it was taking an unconscionably long time showing itself. Now I had to decide if I should follow through on my “threat to go public with my outlandish fantasies,” as Derek Smythe, the prosecutor, just yesterday had described it to Morley Sheppard, and if so, when.

  I let it ride for a few more days, no doubt giving the prosecution the satisfactory impression that they had called my bluff and I had lost my nerve. Perhaps I had. Molly kept asking me, “Dad, but like when?” I started to psych myself up for the promised performance. But before I could act, if, in fact, I was ever going to, Danny Power contrived a criminal undertaking of revenge against the girls.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Morley Sheppard agreed with Derek Smythe that Esme’s preliminary inquiry would be held in mid-May. There was nothing to be gained, he told us, by delaying it any longer. April had become so mild a month that the thick ice on the ponds from the deep-freeze winter had thawed, and nearly every evening was pleasant to be out in. Therefore, one fine Friday evening toward the end of the month, Molly and Esme decided they’d have dinner downtown, probably their “last supper,” they tried to joke, before the Crown lowered the boom on them.

  Craig was finishing his winter semester exams around the same time, and he insisted that they celebrate that rather than engage in the bleak joke the girls had in mind. Besides, he had a friend at the university who, having met Esme at a party that winter, couldn’t take his mind off her, he told Molly, and they should ask him to join them, too.

  “Todd?” said Esme. “Yeah, sure. He seems to be a nice guy.”

  Esme had no regular boyfriend. She wanted to get the trial behind her, she told us, to see whether her love life would involve someone studying political science and playing soccer at the university or someone with tattoos in an orange skirt at the women’s correctional centre. We tried not to laugh but, as Jennifer said, you always had to laugh at what Esme came out with, in spite of the seriousness of her predicament. And the irony, Esme continued, was that ever since she’d been charged, the invitations to go out on dates were showering down on her like manna from heaven, or locusts, she wasn’t sure which.

  “Uncle Bill,” she said. “You’re a man, right? Is there something about a girl being a murderer that turns guys on?”

  Before the boys came to our place to pick them up, I cautioned the girls against alcohol. They were still more than a year short of legal drinking age, although they both looked mature enough to get into any club or bar down on George Street, and I assumed they possessed fake IDs. Their release on bail, I reminded them, was conditional on not being involved in any illegal activity whatsoever.

  Craig and Esme’s date, Todd, were nineteen and legally allowed to drink alcohol, but when they arrived I drew them aside and said that I trusted them not to have anything whatever to drink if they were driving and not to offer the girls any alcohol. The boys assured me on both counts. Then Jennifer and I gave Molly and Esme money to help pay for dinner if they wanted to, and for taxis if necessary.

  * * * * *

  The police pieced together an account of the fatal events of that evening from various sources—observers, participants, forensic evidence, and Danny Power.

  After their dinner, the foursome went to a crowded establishment, the very kind of place that I, the old fogey, had warned them against. There, Craig ran into his former girlfriend, the one he had been going out with just before he and Molly had come together. Craig and the former girlfriend spent a lot of time talking off in a corner alone together. This merely irritated Molly at first, but as it went on, she became coldly resentful in spite of assurances from Esme’s date, Todd, that there was absolutely nothing to it. Craig was just tying up some loose ends, he said.

  Molly, though, with Esme’s encouragement—“You don’t have to put up with that crap from him, Molly.”—started talking, perhaps in a flirtatious way, with other young men in the place, in order to spite him.

  When Craig came back to reclaim his territory, Molly gave him the cold shoulder, and continued to talk and laugh, as if she was having a good time, with a couple of guys hanging around.

  Craig said, “Come on, Molly, do whatever you want, but that dude there is a lowlife.”

  Molly replied, “At least he’s not so full of himself he’s trying to have two or three girlfriends on the go at the same time.”

  “There were a few things I had to straighten out with her, that’s all. I didn’t know she was even going to be here. But it’s all done now.”

  “You took long enough. What were you trying to straighten out—her place or yours after you dropped me off?”

  The conversation deteriorated into a tiff and Molly told him she was going to get a taxi home. Craig said, “Whatever,” and walked off with an even more pronounced swagger than usual into the crowd.

  His devil-may-care body language further exasperated Molly, and she told Esme and Todd she was going home. Esme, rather than have Molly leave and walk over to the taxi stand by herself, told Todd she had to go with her.

  Todd didn’t like that at all. He said, “I thought you and me were getting along great, Esme. Don’t go spoiling our whole night just because those two big babies are gone into a sook.”

  “Sorry, Todd, I’ve got to go with her.”

  “Aw, goddammit. I suppose I’ll have to walk you over to the taxis.”

  “No, you stay here and try to make Don Juan, a.k.a. God’s gift to womankind, over there come to his senses.”

  Outside, Molly and Esme were joined by two young men from the group with whom Molly had been talking and laughing. They were both cold sober. Molly had joked with them that they must be the only other people in the place besides her and Esme drinking Coke and ginger ale. The boys said they never drank and drove.

  As the four of them walked toward the taxi stand, one of the guys said, “You don’t have to get a taxi. We can drop you off at your house.” The girls said thanks, but no thanks.

  At the stand, there was a lineup and a fair amount of boisterousness and queue-jumping. One young fellow was being sick up against a wall. The lads with Molly and Esme said, “Come on, we’ll drop you off. You don’t want to stay here.” This time, the girls agreed, and followed them to their car, parked at a distance on a deserted street. “Hard to find anywhere to park down here in the nights,” one of them said. “This was the only place we could spot.”

  When the girls started to get in the back seat together, the two young men didn’t even try to press them into splitting up between the front and the back so that they could have the privilege of a man each. The girls looked at each other in surprise. “These guys are too good to be true,” Esme murmured.

  Then, as they were settling back in their seats, a third man came out of nowhere, pushed Molly brusquely into the middle of the seat, got in, and slammed the door. “Remember me?” he said, leering. “I’m the brother of the guy you killed. And these dudes are his good buddies.”

  Esme pulled on her door handle. The door didn’t open. “Childproof,” said the driver, smirking.

  Molly looked hard at the man next to her. “You’re the guy in the other car at Windsor Lake. You’re Danny Power. We’re not supposed to have any contact with you.”

  “When we’re finished with you two,” said Danny, “contact will be too mild a word for it. Yeah, I’m the dude you’re trying to frame for murder.”

  “What are you talking about?” said Esme. “We never even mentioned you.”

  “That’s not what the cops say. They told me that you two claimed I was down there by the pond and got into a fight with my own brother over the dope money, and grabbed your pole and stabbed him in the eye. I was in the clink for a month before I made bai
l. Who would you believe, if you were me, a brace of bitches who murdered my brother or the famous Royal Newfoundland Constabulary?” He laughed. “Now there’s something to pick from for ya. Listen, whatever. That’s not even what I gives a shag about. What I’m doing here is, you killed my brother. I’ve been biding my time and waiting for my chance and now here it is. B’ys, there is a God. It’s payback time. You two are going to get what’s due. The boys here will see to that. Hand over your cells.”

  “I don’t know what you guys are planning,” said Esme, “but how do you expect to get away with anything? People saw us leave with you two, and the first person the police will suspect is Jason’s brother.”

  “You let us worry about that,” said Danny. “First off, the police will have to have some evidence connecting us to whatever goes down with the two of you, and that’s not going to happen. Nobody will ever know.” He grabbed Molly by the hair and yanked her head back. “You deaf? Hand over your cellphones, I said.” The girls complied. He passed them to the fellow in the front passenger seat. “Here,” said Danny, “make good use of them. Okay, let me out of here. Like this skank just said, I’m not even supposed to be seen with these two while I’m out on bail.”

  The driver pressed something and Danny opened his door. Esme tried to open her door, too, but the guy in front was waiting for that and lunged halfway over his seat. He grabbed Esme by the arm of her jacket and pulled her back. Then he seized her throat and forced her hard against the seat, making her gag. “Stay put,” he said, “if you don’t feel like being strangled right here and now.” Meanwhile, Molly was trying to squeeze out through the other door, but Danny punched her in the solar plexus and she toppled back on the seat, gasping. Her head landed on Esme’s lap.

  Danny said, “Okay, don’t try anything else funny or these dudes will off you without even a heads-up, just like you offed my brother. That’s only what you deserve, for sure. But if you keep still, maybe we’ll only ruin your lives totally, but at least you might still be breathing. It’s fifty-fifty right now. Don’t push us. See ya at the safe house, b’ys.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  The two thugs drove Molly and Esme across the city, past the Avalon Mall and down Thorburn Road, heading in the direction of Portugal Cove-St. Philip’s. They would be travelling by a short section of Windsor Lake.

  When the police asked Danny Power later why his buddies chose Thorburn rather than Portugal Cove Road, which was closer to the actual house they were heading for, he replied that none of the boys could stand to go out the Cove road anymore, ever since the Browning bitch murdered Jason on that side of the pond. The police deduced from answers to their questions from other gang members, though, that they routinely took Thorburn Road out because it was less frequently patrolled by police in the nights, and, also, it allowed them to throw off anyone looking for them who might expect them to drive on the more direct road out of St. John’s.

  This last reason for the gang’s driving ploy I found to be true on the night in question after I got a phone call from Craig. He told me he was worried. He and Molly had had a little tiff, he said, and when he went back to apologize to her, Todd told him she and Esme had left to get a taxi. “Let’s go find them,” Craig had said.

  Outside, the girls were not to be seen. Craig and Todd walked over to the taxi rank, and Craig asked a guy he knew there if he’d seen Molly and her friend Esme. The guy responded, “I can’t keep up with your girlfriends, man—” He was just being a joker, Craig insisted. “—and there’s lots of chicks on the go down here tonight.” Craig described Molly and Esme to him and he said, “You mean those two hotties who were just here? I think they were with a couple of Danny Power’s buddies. What are they, mules?”

  “I don’t know for sure if it was them,” Craig said, “but it sounds like it. I’m worried. I’m sure they didn’t know there was a connection between those guys and Power. Do you think I should call the police?”

  “You stay on the line. I’ll put you on hold and I’ll call the police.”

  I gave the police the details and told them what we feared had happened, and, within minutes, they’d ascertained from their surveillance records that although Danny Power and most of his associates lived in downtown St. John’s, they spent a lot of time in the Portugal Cove area. It was suspected that Jason Power had had the run of a house out there that his gang used as a headquarters, and that the car containing Esme and Molly might be headed out that way.

  The police scoured the city roads and Portugal Cove Road, patrolling back and forth, searching, keeping their eyes out for a car described rather vaguely by Craig’s informant on George Street. “I think those guys own a blue Ford. I’m not sure—it was dark when I saw it, man.”

  Meanwhile, Jennifer and I were on tenterhooks, waiting. We called Maggie to see if they were over there, but we didn’t tell her anything when she said they weren’t. Then we paced the floor, wringing our hands.

  At length, police in a patrol car searching for Molly and Esme heard an item on their radio scanner and put two and two together: on the Thorburn Road side of Windsor Lake, a bizarre motor vehicle accident had taken place.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  The police reconstructed what they believed the men in the car had intended for Esme and Molly. The driver of the car had, in fact, been heading for the house, possessed by Jason Power but registered in someone else’s name, obscurely located up from the main road in Portugal Cove. Inside this secret house, hidden below floorboards, detectives found cellphones owned by three individual teenaged girls. Saved in each phone were photographs of its young owner in various states of undress and intimate exposure.

  The girls in the photos were identified as residents of the St. John’s area, and were obviously not professional models. They turned out to be in the lower grades of high school. All three were in police records for suspected drug use and having had their nude images transmitted, together with their names and addresses, in emails, text messages, and tweets, and placed on various social media and porn sites. The photos bore the appearance of being selfies, and the sources of the transmitted pictures and messages and postings were identified as each girl’s own smart phone.

  One of the girls, whose pictures and information were common on all the social media, was already the subject of an intensive child abuse and child pornography investigation by the police. Her parents had instigated it after she had either attempted suicide or accidently overdosed on cocaine.

  The police had discovered from questioning her friends that she had been intimidated into silence about who had done this to her, and that suicide may have been preferable to continuing to live with those gruesome images on the Internet, and the violence done to her and still threatened, and the drug use. She was in hospital, incoherent, but, with luck, recovering from a critical condition, and addiction to crack cocaine.

  Another of the teenaged girls pictured pornographically—she was fifteen years old—had been missing for eight months. She had vanished seemingly into thin air and had not been seen since she’d left school on a day early in September before her class was dismissed, having told a friend she was going to walk home, just a half-mile away. There was evidence in her record to suggest she had been close to completely out of control. At first the police had conjectured that she was another runaway, but by now they feared the very worst.

  The motives behind the dissemination of the photographs appeared to be punishment and intimidation of the girls for various purposes. One involved a gruesome hint to young drug users to pay up and not buck the gang in any way, or face worse. Another entailed possible forced prostitution, with Internet exposure serving to threaten, demoralize, and discredit these young girls in their own eyes. And then there was enticement, and, likely forced addiction, to narcotics.

  It was surmised by the police, based on suggestions from informants, that the missing fifteen-year-old had
been forced to prostitute herself to two or three adults at high returns to the gang, and that she had “got disappeared” by them when an implied threat to go to the police made her hazardous merchandise.

  The police report on Molly and Esme said the investigators had determined that they had in fact been threatened with the same kind of intimate public exposure and abuse all over the Internet. Danny Power, who broke under police questioning when they told him of the fatalities in the car accident and confronted him with the enormity of the new charges he would be facing—conspiracy to commit murder, child pornography, and sexual assault against minors, for starters—indicated that the driver of the car, his lieutenant, would have used on Esme and Molly his habitual taunt to girls they were brutalizing: “They don’t call it the World Wide Web for nothing. And that’s where your little oysters and orchids are going—worldwide, duckies.” Apparently, the thug’s favourite website was the pornographic Oysters and Orchids.

  The police concluded that Danny Power and his men intended to punish Esme and Molly through their intimate exposure method, not for purposes of enforcement or intimidation regarding other activities profitable to the gang, but for simple vengeance. What the gang may have intended for them besides the punishment, judging by the missing girl, was too horrific to bear contemplating.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  The initial police report was clear on what actually befell the car that Esme and Molly were in, on Thorburn Road. But how and why it happened was, pending further investigation, still somewhat opaque.

  The car had been moving at a moderate speed at first, according to witnesses in other cars, probably at about seventy kilometres an hour. But at a certain point it accelerated to perhaps twice that speed, judging by the distance it flew through the air when it left the road. Certainly, it suddenly began to pass every other car on the road in front of it. The police concluded that the two men had heard on their police radio scanner that police were looking for them on Portugal Cove Road, and so they were racing to arrive at their safe house and hide the car.