Barrington Street Blues

Barrington Street Blues

Other books in this series

Sign of the Cross

Obit

Barrington Street
Blues

A MYSTERY

ANNE EMERY

Copyright © Anne Emery, 2008

Published by ECW Press
2120 Queen Street East, Suite 200, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4E 1E2

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any process — electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise — without the prior written permission of the copyright owners and ECW Press.

LIBRARY
AND
ARCHIVES
CANADA
CATALOGUING
IN
PUBLICATION

Emery, Anne
Barrington Street Blues / Anne Emery.
ISBN
-13: 978-1-55022-813-7

I. Title.

PS
8609.
M
47
B
37 2008     
C
813'.6        
C
2007-907092-2

Cover and Text Design: Tania Craan
Cover Image: Bojan Brecelj /
CORBIS
   Typesetting: Mary Bowness
  Production: Rachel Brooks
Printing: Transcontinental

This book is set in AGaramond and printed on paper that is 100% post consumer recycled.

The publication of
Barrington Street Blues
has been generously supported by the Canada Council for the Arts which last year invested $20.1 million in writing and publishing throughout Canada, by the Ontario Arts Council, by the Government of Ontario through Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit, by the
OMDC
Book Fund, an initiative of the Ontario Media Development Corporation, and by the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (
BPIDP
).

DISTRIBUTION
CANADA
: Jaguar Book Group, 100 Armstrong Ave., Georgetown, ON L7G 5S4
UNITED STATES
: Independent Publishers Goup, 814 North Franklin Street,
Chicago,
IL
, 60610

PRINTED AND BOUND IN CANADA

For
Ann Copeland
Friend, Lawyer, Master of Disguise

I would like to thank the following people for their kind assistance: Joe A. Cameron, Rhea McGarva, Joan Butcher, Helen MacDonnell, and Edna Barker. As always, PJEC. All characters and plots in the story are fictional, as are some of the locations. Other places are real. Any liberties taken in the interests of fiction, or any errors committed, are mine alone.

I am grateful for permission to reprint extracts from the following:

Same Old Loverman
, by Gordon Lightfoot. c. 1971 & 1999 (renewed) Early Morning Music. Used by permission.

Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down.
Words and Music by Kris Kristofferson
© 1969 (Renewed 1997)
TEMI
COMBINE
INC
.
All Rights Controlled by
COMBINE
MUSIC
CORP
. and Administered by
EMI
BLACKWOOD
MUSIC
INC
.
All Rights Reserved International Copyright Secured Used by Permission

GUILTY

RANDY
NEWMAN
© 1973 & 1975
WB
MUSIC
CORP
. &
RANDY
NEWMAN
All rights on behalf of
RANDY
NEWMAN
administered by
WB
MUSIC
CORP
.
All Rights Reserved Used by Permission of
ALFRED
PUBLISHING
CO
.,
INC
.

Every effort has been made to locate the copyright owners of material quoted in this book. Any omissions are sincerely regretted, and will be corrected in subsequent editions, if any, if brought to the publisher's attention.

“Two Dead in Barrington Street Shooting”

— Halifax
Daily News
, January 13, 1991

“It's the end of the road. The dark end, down by the train tracks, where Barrington Street peters out after running its course through downtown Halifax. One man lies face down on the pavement, his canvas field jacket stained with blood, a Rolex watch glimmering on his wrist. The other, dressed in sweatpants and a windbreaker advertising Gatorade, lies on his side, a gun still gripped in his right hand. The first homicides in Halifax in 1991. The city averages eight murders a year. If, as police believe, this was a murder-suicide . . .”

My client looked up from the newspaper clipping. “What's all this about their clothes? How's that news? They make it look like Corey was a bum, and him bein' dead doesn't matter as much as the guy with the watch.”

“It's not a news story, it's an opinion piece,” I told Amber Dawn Rhyno. “But never mind that. Your husband's death matters to us, so let's talk about him.”

“Corey's not — he wasn't my husband.”

“Common-law husband. How long did you live together?”

“You mean when he wasn't in jail or the treatment centre? Me and
Corey were together on and off for nine years. Ever since I had Zachary.”

Zachary was her son. The whole time they had been in my law office, the boy had been sitting on my side table and falling off, sitting and falling. Each time he fell, he took a stack of my files with him to the floor. I tried to ignore him.

“All right, Amber. Tell me what happened when you first heard about Corey's suicide.”

“I wasn't surprised at all. Not one bit. He blamed that place. Or, like, he would've if he didn't die. If he came out of it, he woulda said it was all their fault.”

I studied Amber Dawn Rhyno, imagining her on the witness stand in a damages suit against the addiction treatment centre where Corey Leaman had been staying before he was found with a bullet in his brain. Amber Dawn was a short, skinny woman in her late twenties. She had a hard-bitten face, and thin brown hair that was straight for about six inches, frizzy at the ends. An acid-green tank top revealed a tattooed left shoulder.

“Who's Troy?” I asked her.

“Troy?”

“The tattoo.”

“Oh.” She shrugged. “Just this guy.”

“Someone you were involved with?”

“We weren't really, like, involved.”

I let it go. It was not as if I would allow her anywhere near opposing counsel — never mind a courtroom — in a sleeveless top.

“Zach!”

The child had picked up my radio, and was trying to pull the knobs off it.

“Put that down,” I told him. “Now.”

“You can't make me!”

“Yeah. I can.” I got up and wrenched the radio from his hands. He began to howl.

“It's not his fault,” his mother said. “The social worker says he has a problem.”

“I'm sorry, Amber, but I have another client coming in. We'll get together again. In the meantime, I'd like you to write up a little history
of your relationship with Corey Leaman, including what you recall about the times he was admitted to the Baird Treatment Centre.”

“But I already told you everything.”

“There's a lot more that you'll remember when you sit down and think about it.”

My clients would never sit down and write. But I would worry about that later. Zachary's howling had reached a new, ear-splitting pitch. Time for them to go.

“Call me if you need anything. You have my number.”

“Yeah, okay. Thanks, Ross.”

“I'm Monty. Ross is the other lawyer working on your case.”

“Sorry. Can I have your card? I already got Ross's.”

“Here you go.”

She read the card: “Montague M. Collins, B.A., LL. B. Right. Okay, bye.”

I watched Amber drag her son out the door and thought about her case. Corey Leaman, her common-law husband, and another man, named Graham Scott, were found dead of gunshot wounds at five o'clock in the morning of January 12, 1991, in the parking lot of the Fore-And-Aft. This was a nautically themed strip joint situated across from the Wallace Rennie Baird Addiction Treatment Centre. The two buildings are the last structures at the bottom end of Barrington Street, which runs along the eastern edge of the Halifax Peninsula, from Bedford Basin in the north to the train tracks that traverse the south end of the city. The street had seen better days, and would again, I knew. But that was neither here nor there for the two men who had been found sprawled on the pavement at the end of the road.

The gun was in Leaman's right hand. He had apparently dispatched Scott with two bullets in the back of the head, then put a bullet in his own right temple. Leaman's drug addiction had landed him in the Baird Centre; he had been released shortly before his death. The police were keeping the file open even though the medical examiner had declared the case a probable murder-suicide. Now, three months after the deaths, my firm was representing the families of Leaman and Scott in a lawsuit against the Baird Centre. We claimed
the treatment facility had been negligent in releasing Leaman when it knew, or ought to have known, that Leaman presented a danger to others and to himself. It was by no means certain that we could pin the responsibility on the treatment centre, but we would do our best.

†

The following night, Tuesday, I had left the world of drugs and guns and was seated in the choir loft of St. Bernadette's Church. Next to me was another unlikely choirboy, Ed Johnson. Ed and I were more accustomed to wailing the blues in our band, Functus, which we had formed in law school more than twenty years ago; the St. B's gig was something new. A much purer tone of voice was expected here. That wasn't going to be easy, given that Johnson and I had spent the previous night in a succession of bars around the city. But the choirmaster had ordained that we be present, and so we were.

“I hear you've got the Leaman case, Collins,” said Johnson. “How much do you expect to rake in?”