About Face

By Tony Thomson

In Tony Thomson's debut novel, a college student goes missing in the Annapolis Valley. The further the police and professor Ian Wallace look, the more things turn out not to be what they had seemed.

 About Face is a mix of police procedural, thriller, and social commentary, with a bit of farce and romance thrown in.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Moose House Publications
• Release date: Nov 27, 2022
• ISBN: 9781990187599

Tony Thomson

Tony Thomson was born in the Hydrostone District of Halifax and spent much of his youth on Lawrencetown Beach, where his parents had a cottage and later built a permanent home. He graduated from Graham Creighton High School and studied at Dalhousie and the University of Cambridge, where he completed a doctorate in social and political science. He enjoyed a long career teaching sociology at Acadia University, and still teaches part-time. He and his wife, Heather Frenette, worked on restoring a century home in Canning, where they raised two children, Julia and Devon. They now also enjoy their two grandchildren. "About Face" is his first work of fiction.

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© 2022 Anthony Thomson

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Cover image: Devon Thomson

Cover layout: Rebekah Wetmore

Editor: Andrew Wetmore

ISBN: 978-1-990187-59-9

First edition September, 2022

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2475 Perotte Road

Annapolis County, NS

B0S 1A0

moosehousepress.com

[e-mail]

We live and work in Mi’kma’ki, the ancestral and unceded territory of the Mi’kmaw people. This territory is covered by the Treaties of Peace and Friendship which Mi’kmaw and Wolastoqiyik (Maliseet) people first signed with the British Crown in 1725. The treaties did not deal with surrender of lands and resources but in fact recognized Mi’kmaq and Wolastoqiyik (Maliseet) title and established the rules for what was to be an ongoing relationship between nations. We are all Treaty people.

Use every man after his desert,

and who should ’scape whipping?

– Hamlet, Act II, sc. ii

For Heather

now, and always

This is a work of fiction. The author has created the characters, conversations, interactions, and events; and any resemblance of any character to any real person is coincidental.

About Face

Gravel Road Cops

GoodFare

Interrogation

Lord Byron

Student confidential

Grunge and Slacks

Two pizzas

Slim pickings

More than a paper cut-out

Symbols and doggerel

D. H. Nietzsche

Two colleagues

The Lockharts

Morgan's tale

Gould's neighbourhood

Warrantless search

Warrantless search

Debates

Steaks and knives

Xavier and Janelle

Break and enter

Gerald and Darryl

Shadow of doubt

Pick and roll

Round one

At last

Departure

Ethics

Trials

Choices

About the author

1: Gravel Road Cops

Monday, 29 March 1999

Sweat greased my fingers squeezing the snub-nosed .38 cradled gently under my thigh. Bright reds and blues glared in all three rear-view mirrors. My left hand rested casually on top of the steering wheel. The driver’s window was rolled down.

The cruiser’s only occupant approached slowly, his right-hand hovering over his unfastened holster. He bent down to look in the window, his eyes widening in recognition.

I whipped out the revolver, pointed it at his chest and pulled the trigger twice. He hadn’t even blinked.

He took one step back, then a second, one for each of the double taps from my empty revolver. If he’d said what his eyes were saying, it would have been drowned by the laughter from our early-morning audience, their  police automatics safely away. Constable Paul Dobson’s visible embarrassment over his screw-up matched the red from the cruiser’s lights.

What were you thinking, Dobson? Andy Graham asked incredulously. That he only had one arm?

It’s only Wallace. What was I supposed to think?

Remind me not to call you for backup, Andy said, adding sulphur to Paul’s wounded pride.

The simulated highway stop was the morning’s last exercise. I was the outsider. Andy had invited me to join the early-morning training and had lent me the .38 for the live-ammunition target practice. He had followed the shoot with a brief talk about safely approaching a potentially dangerous traffic stop—or unsafely, as it turned out. We’d unloaded our sidearms and passed them around the circle for everyone’s close inspection. Andy had assigned me to role-play the risky motorist. Good thing I’d aimed at Paul’s bullet-proof vest and not under the bison insignia on his yellow-banded hat. That would have been way too personal.

Andy and I watched as the cops dispersed for their morning shifts. Paul fishtailed in the slippery gravel and didn’t switch off his red and blues until he was well down the road. The fumes from his exhaust mingled in the nippy, spring air with the pungent smell of gunpowder lingering from the target drill.

That didn’t go well, I said.

It went very well, Andy replied. They’ll remember it. Things aren’t always what they seem.

They’re never what they seem.

Don’t go all professor on me. In my line of work, facts are all we have.

Paul won’t forget who was behind the .38.

Everybody knew you had the revolver, Andy said offhandedly. He didn’t think you’d be so quick. He’ll get over it. Ready for patrol?

Sure, I said, thankful for my flexible work hours at the college.

I’d accompanied Andy on my first shift in the county. He’d bought an extra-large, black coffee for me at the local Tim Horton’s café—the Tango Hotel, in cop dialect—and headed out for what became an interminable evening. Driving along the bumpiest back roads in the county, he graphically translating the bilingual Royal Canadian Mounted Police acronym—RCMP-GRC: Gravel Road Cops. Before long, my bladder had forced me to plead for mercy. Andy’s version of water torture for initiates.

We strolled over to his light-blue Crown Victoria, a ghost car assigned to Highway Patrol. Even with no police markings or light bar on top, the car is obvious on close inspection, with enough bulbs on the front and back to make a Christmas tree envious. It transforms in a flash from inconspicuous to emergency, partly for the safety of its driver and, it occurred to me, for its passenger. My seat isn’t exactly riding shotgun. Even without a small cannon between the seats, the interior of a police cruiser is crammed with impressive technology, a cockpit even when the cop is a woman.

You finish your hour of work yet? Andy asked with what he probably meant as a wry smile. It was the usual greeting and a running joke.

This time in the morning, I’d have to start lecturing at seven. University students don’t wake up until noon.

They all knew I taught nine hours of classes a week at the college. In their minds, that was the extent of my work. For them, my so-called job is a worse boondoggle than teaching school, or a better one, depending on how you look at it.

My involvement with rural police forces in Nova Scotia was six years in, a spin-off from my graduate research on the gap between police policy and officers’ actions. My final degree helped me land a job teaching criminal justice at Sterling University College, while the expertise had pried a modicum of respect from local police chiefs and detachment NCOs.

Developing a close relationship with ordinary constables had been trickier. They needed to trust my discretion, to know I don’t report to their supervisors. Before long, some of the cops began inviting me into more complex investigations, appreciating my alternative eye. The mixed feelings I have about the criminal justice system remain private. It’s often my primary antagonist.

Andy swung the car out of the firing range, cruising through the stop sign and heading along Highway One towards Halstead, the county seat and home of the college. Laid out during the horse and buggy era, the old main highway meanders through a dozen small towns strung along its east-west route like hooks on a jig. Giant Elms stretch along the road and line the longer driveways, bereft of concealing foliage this early in the spring. Gaping holes in the rows reveal where Dutch Elm rot had taken down some of the larger specimens and opened the properties to a passing view. Verandas slouch along the ground floors of the century-old farmhouses. Eyebrow windows on the top half-storeys scan the countryside for something out of place.

From this distance you couldn’t see the crumbling shingles and chimneys, the rot in the casements and front steps, or smell the mould creeping from the perpetually-damp, rock-walled basements. Too many decorative, built-to-impress oak foyers opened to shadowy interiors and smouldering desperation. It isn’t only personal experience making me wonder whether happy families were only apocryphal. Cops see behind too many of these facades.

This morning, not much seemed to be happening in any direction, including front and back, where Andy’s attention was fixed. The only signs of mayhem were porcupines crushed in the centre of the highway and a few dead raccoons curled on the shoulder like they were taking a nap.

Andy looked every inch the 40 he had recently turned, with thinning brown hair grizzled around the ears. Squat and barrel-chested, he was a little less than the minimum recruitment height two decades ago. The detachment rumour was that Andy had spent the summer before his medical exam using a home-made contraption to stretch his ligaments. Being recruited is that important to most aspiring Mounties.

His career had not unfolded as expected. After twenty years in the Force, Andy was still a Constable, one of several veterans in the detachment. In their eyes, they’re the real cops, up to their nostrils in other people’s shit lives. As the years go by without promotion, their morale sags along with their jowls. Most had joined the force when it was still possible without a university education or being more or less bilingual, which had become vaulting poles through the ranks. Veteran constables worried that women or visible minorities were becoming the new targets for token promotions.

Stopping on the shoulder, Andy took out a pair of tuning forks, gave each a sharp tap on the steering wheel and held their persistent hums to the fixed radar on the dash. Two numbers appeared in red, one calibrated for on-coming vehicles, the other simulating the patrol car’s speed.

Close enough, Andy said. He had once explained the complicated radar system, in his way: Some asshole is going to take his speeding ticket to court and ask when I last checked my radar. So I’ll be ready.

Almost every member of the public is an asshole. Not other cops, although they can sometimes be called worse things.

Andy set the radar to signal at 100 kilometres per hour, 20 over the limit. No point pulling anyone over under that. They’d be full of excuses you had to listen to, and the usual speed was closer to 90. He made a quick note of the time and the reading in his police notebook. Andy didn’t believe in handing out warnings. If I have to get out of the car, he’d explained, they’re getting a ticket. It wasn’t always true.

As the cruiser gained speed, the fluttering swarm of gnats re-awakened in my stomach. On any shift you never know what will happen, even driving aimlessly through the rural countryside or circling around the small-town streets. The happenings occur randomly, some intensely etched, fodder for so much cop-to-cop dialogue and anecdote. Collisions on the highway, chases ending badly, alarms that turn out to be real, domestics, abused children—the harms possible in even the quietest police beat. Driving anywhere in the county, I come upon an otherwise nondescript intersection or pass an ordinary-looking house and a queasy memory surfaces, like fingers protruding from a loose grave.

None of them are my tragedies. I have no official responsibility to do anything. I’m usually a privileged observer, an almost-disembodied presence floating above the bedlam. Except the horror penetrates my senses.  An intense configuration of visions and emotions are entangled in the multiple helices of my memory.

The police radio crackled out of its slumber. Reported missing person, Painton, female, 19, five foot five, 120 pounds, blonde hair. A pause. Missing since Saturday. Time unconfirmed.

The initial description was hardly worth the airtime. You’d have to investigate half the college-aged women in Halstead.

For Andy, a missing-person call was none of his business, a morsel for the cops on Detachment duty, not Highway Patrol. Within a second, Paul Dobson answered dispatch and asked for directions. Brown-nosing, as usual.

I made a mental note to reach out to him for the scoop, hoping I hadn’t permanently blown our rapport. I’ll make amends with a bottle of his favourite rum.

Nova Scotia has its share of unsolved murdered-women cases, a few of them here in Sterling County. Missing-person files can be convoluted and often end tragically, although a few are wrapped quickly and simply. Last year, a Halstead woman reported her toddler missing. When a cop arrived, the kid popped out from the cushions piled on the sectional sofa.

That missing 19-year-old is probably a college student, I said.

Ah ha, Andy replied, acknowledging the obvious. Nothing about what she was doing Saturday night. Probably out to the Bridgeside looking for a new boyfriend and still with him. If anything, it’s just another ‘my innocent daughter didn’t come home last night’ complaint.

I hoped Andy was right, although Saturday was two days ago. Late any weekend evening you can watch the parade of college-aged women sashaying along Main Street, dressed for a party at the Bridgeside, the only pub in town with a dance floor. If you were out early enough on Sunday, you could see a few stragglers heading home, hoping to avoid the stares of disapproving morning people. It’s called the slut walk in the Baptist town, a word referring only to the women.

Andy turned left from Highway One on Trunk 11-A. It wends around a half-dozen family farms on the Valley floor then gradually ascends the South Mountain towards the hump of the long, narrow province.

Sterling County is sandwiched in the middle of Nova Scotia’s Annapolis Valley between Kings and Annapolis Counties, like Saskatchewan in the Prairies. Low, wide ranges, known on the east coast as mountains, bound the wide, flat valley on either side. They are both under one thousand feet in elevation. In British Columbia, no one would notice them.

Andy’s aim was fixed on suspended drivers. Like drunks, they roam the back roads out of the cross-hairs of the cops, the mountain’s occupying force. Experienced cops recognize unlicensed drivers by sight or from their exhaust fumes as they accelerate away. Some of their beat-up trucks display Confederate flags in the back window, the owners proclaiming they’re rebels.

I was admiring the view when Andy exclaimed, Take a gander at that.

A Ford F-150 truck was using the downslope as a runway. It had gained only a few inches of altitude when it raced by us, its transfixed driver staring straight ahead.

Andy switched on the lights and made a three-point turn on the narrow road, leaving enough tread on the asphalt for some teenager to claim as his. I tightened my seat belt to near asphyxia.

Andy closed the gap hitting 140, slowed when we reached the curved flats near the bottom of the mountain and closed on the truck, which was still driving over the limit. The driver hadn’t noticed the lights. A couple of wails from the siren caught his attention.

Impaired, Andy growled. This time of the day it’s gotta be chronic.

The driver pulled over with his right tires on the gravel shoulder. Andy blocked the entire lane behind him. If the next driver was as blind as this one seemed to be, he’d be taken out by the chain reaction collision.

Andy wrote some details in his notebook and called dispatch. I’ve got a 10-83, possible impaired, red Ford-150 truck, Alberta registration, Alpha Charlie Romeo, Five Eight Three. A few seconds pause. Heading south on Trunk 11A, north of Pitch Lake Road.

Andy leisurely swung both legs out the door as if he had the whole day to cover the short distance. I followed Andy’s lead, heading towards the passenger side of the truck.  Bringing a drunk into the detachment for a Breathalyzer can stretch into the early afternoon. He left his hat in the car. Members were supposed to put them on in public. He wasn’t in the mood to follow petty regulations. Besides, he’d told me, people stare at the insignia on the front of the hat and not in your eyes when you’re talking to them.

Walking carefully toward the still-running vehicle, Andy rested his right hand on his holster and paused to glance behind the front seat. You never know what might be lying in plain sight and give grounds for a search. He was thinking a bottle, but he also made sure the driver was alone.

The wary approach had been the subject of this morning’s training. Random car checks can be as dangerous for cops as domestics. Rarely doesn’t matter: careless once is all it takes, especially for RCMP members patrolling alone.

From my point of view, the cautious expect-the-worst approach is too intimidating a style for a rural county. Almost everyone they stop is facing their first brush with the law, not the prime suspect in some serial murder case the pulled-over motorists think they’ve been mistaken for.

Andy looked puzzled as he took position just aft of the front door. The driver’s window was still closed. The first thing a drunk will do when the lights come on is open all the windows, hoping to freshen the cabin air. You can nose even faint alcohol fumes, like the reek of a smoker’s clothes after you’ve quit.

Andy tapped on the window and the driver rolled it down. I couldn’t judge his reaction to the spill out.

The male driver appeared to be in his early 40s, broad-shouldered with large tattoos on his tanned forearms, a cropped, thin beard and straight black hair topped with an Edmonton Oilers’ cap. He was wearing a hunter’s red plaid shirt. He glanced at me through the passenger window just long enough to deliver an evil omen through dark, piercing eyes. He was grimacing a half smile when he turned back to Andy.

Turn off the vehicle, please, Andy said, donning his professionalism if not his cap. You were hitting the pedal pretty hard there. He leaned on the door and peered in, breaching standard protocol.

I’m in an awful hurry, Plaid Shirt blurted, seeming more in shock than nervous, as if he’d awakened from a nightmare only to be plunged into another.  My mother’s sick and she’s home by herself. She just got out of hospital. I’ve got to put her in an old-folks home and just went to see about it, back there in Bridgewater. It took a long time, and she gets in a bad way by herself. And I just came back to Nova Scotia in time for my father’s funeral.

Andy went through his formal ‘give me your papers’ routine.

That guy looks weird, I said, back in the cruiser. And he invented a pretty wild story. What didn’t go wrong for him? I was wondering what he’d make up next.

I believe him, Andy said. He hadn’t made any move towards the roadside alert, the first breath test. Must not have been a whiff.

He filled out most of the Summary Offence Ticket while he waited for dispatch to check whether Plaid Shirt had any outstanding warrants. He didn’t.

Andy exited the cruiser more adroitly than last time. I have to give you a ticket, he said apologetically to the driver. Going one-nineteen on this highway is way too fast for just a warning. The ticket is for exceeding posted speed limits, the lowest I can give you, so it could have been a lot worse.

He didn’t give his usual lecture about the consequences of excessive speed. He’d seen enough to keep him from sleeping long into retirement, the details deeply recessed and private. Not part of any kind of talk.

Thank you, the driver said, despite holding his ticket like a rotten valley apple. People around here usually thank the cops for their traffic ticket. Plaid Shirt wasn’t from Alberta, I guessed. Like a fish too small for the fryer, he was happy to be released after being snared. Chronic traffic offenders disregard another ticket as just one more unjust aggravation, tossing it in the glove compartment to join the collection.

Andy resumed the patrol along Trunk 11-A, taking a left to Pitch Lake Road, just beyond where he’d spotted the Ford-150. No more out-of-province speeders or missing women reports. Suspicious traffic was in short supply on the mountain, probably thanks to someone with both ears to a police scanner. Warnings of an unmarked police car spread quickly through the rural telephone tree. When a ghost car's identity becomes too obvious, they send it to another posting. Churches use the same solution for abusive priests.

Just past the noon hour, Andy dropped me at Sterling College as requested, giving me plenty of time before my two afternoon classes. He would take the cruiser home at four, eat the usual dinner his wife had prepared, and settle down in front of the TV for another evening with a bottle for a companion, numbing his mind and dousing his grievances. His wife would read in the corner under a floor lamp before heading early to bed. Romance novels were her favourite.

I was eager to work my way into Dobson’s missing person file. Maybe I’d need three bottles of dark Bacardi, two for him and one for me.

2: GoodFare

Entering through the back door of the Arts and Administration Building, I resumed the less remarkable part of my split life. I was usually happy to go into the college, even more now I lived alone. But this abrupt change of roles always left some lingering tightness in my core.

Andy hadn’t stopped all morning for a break at a Tim’s and there wasn’t time to make my usual noon-hour basketball scrimmage. I entrusted my lunch and health to the Grab & Gag cafeteria in the A&A building—officially the Grab & Go. I couldn’t tell how many hours the pizza had been sweating under the warming lamp. I hoped not long enough to confess its worst microbial sins to my olfactory police. I elected a mushroom and dried tomato veggie slice—self-smell-and-serve—with a small dark roast to smooth its way down.

Looking for a comfortable space away from the gaggling students, I saw Robert Teasdale signalling discreetly from a quiet corner table. Should I pretend not to notice? Would he feign not being offended?

Feeling ensnared, I weaved in his direction through the leg and sneaker obstacle course. With a straggly white goatee, pale skin, a head of tightly curled, silver hair, and light-coloured eyes, everything above Robert’s neck practically disappeared when he stood in front of a white background. His beige shirt showcased his crimson tie, emblazoned with miniature College crests. Trying to be natty, as usual.

Of all the faculty in the department, only Robert had voted against hiring me. Not that I was supposed to know, but that kind of information permeates the college like dust from the chalk boards we still used. Robert thought they should have brought in another American. Or one who knew how to dress properly. That was a decade ago. Even so, my feelings about Robert aren’t water under the bridge. They’re more orange, low-tide, Bay-of-Fundy mud, still viscous and gummy if you find yourself wading in. Resentments die hard.

Hey, Ian, Robert greeted me with what he hoped would be taken as a friendly come-and-sit. Anything new?

Vague generalities were all I owed him. I just finished a stint on highway patrol. Not much happened, I added in hopeful discouragement. My answer nudged his thinking only slightly to a follow-up I’d hoped not to hear.

"You still doing that police thing? I thought you’d finished that years ago. Have you