McConnell House

1906 Part 3

Next day there was no sign that anything had gone wrong at the work site. Work continued as normal, steadily draining Richards pocket. He might have fooled himself to believe it a bad dream if Boyle didn’t give him strange looks all day long.

Any chance of forgetting what happened that night was dashed later in the week. For one, Rosalie became pale again, and had morning sickness most of the day. Dr Feeley kept assuring them that it was normal, but Richard started to think he was a quack.

The other was that Detective Brody started hanging around the barracks, making friends with members of the RNWMP. He also started asking questions, some that Richard felt were too intimate with what he was doing. When confronted, Brody reminded him that he had the RNWMP cooperation with his case. Richard couldn’t understand why the Calgary Police Service would assign one of their Detectives to a murdered Indian boy.

Richard wasn’t the only person upset with Brody’s presence, and Gillespie let Richard know exactly how he felt one day in his office.

“Richard, we have to do something about this Detective. He could bring trouble to us and our operation.” Gillespie had recently started calling Richard by his first name, instead of sir or his title. The longer time went on with their removing undesirables from settlers land, the more liberties Gillespie took. Richard let Gillespie run the whole show, but took most of the profit, so he couldn’t afford to put him in his place yet. Gillespie had even been pushing Richard to request a lieutenancy for him. After the house was built, Richard planned on putting him in his place.

“You don’t think I know that? I didn’t expect such a big deal over this. What is the Calgary Police thinking, wasting man power on it?”

“It’s not them, it Brody. He smells something fishy around here, and there are dollar signs in his eyes. He is not going to quit until he finds out and blackmails us back to the poor house. Something has to be done about him now.”

“You have something in mind?”

“Yeah, but you don’t need to know. The less people know, the better.”

“Remember, I don’t want any unwanted attention. Whatever your plan is, make sure it doesn’t lead back to this barracks.”

“I’m not an idiot, of course it won’t. With your permission, I’ll be going.” Not waiting for his permission, Gillespie left without waiting for another word. Gillespie was getting smugger by the day.

Sitting at his desk next morning, while drinking his coffee, Richard opened the Calgary Daily Herald. The morning's headline screamed back at him.

POLICE MAN FOUND MURDERED

BODY FOUND BY BOYS NEAR ELBOW RIVER

CALGARY – A Calgary police officer was found murdered last night near the elbow river, in Inglewood, or was he? Trent Bryce, 15, and friend Terry Hart, 14, were travelling back to Bryce’s house late last night, when they came upon two shadowy forms by the river.

 “At first we thought they were drifters making camp by the river. But one turned around and saw us, gestured to his friend, and they both ran the opposite direction.” Trent said.  “We thought it was really strange.”

 “It looked like they left something behind. So we went to go see what it was.” Terry added. “What we found was a guy without a head!”

The boys ran to the nearby Fort Calgary to report what they found to the RNWMP. Sgt. Boyle, who was on gate duty that night, followed the boys, who lead him to  the deadman. When questioned, he had no comment for the Calgary Daily Herald at this time.