Kay and Blatchford combed through the Late Start documents, compiling a list of inmates Essex had worked with. From there we pulled court records and scanned newspaper articles, piecing together who had been released and where they lived now. One in Halifax, three in Ontario, two more spread over the prairies. All possibilities that would have to be checked. But three other felons lived in the Pacific Northwest; we started with them.
Robert Gordon Henshaw lived in Creston, a brewery town near the Idaho border. He’d killed two people, shot them, a pair of brothers who’d insulted him in a bar. Henshaw was seventy-three years old now, had been released last year. He lived with his daughter and her husband.
Lee Henry Crowhurst lived in Redmond, Washington, on some sort of farm. He’d beaten a senior citizen to death, been caught coming out of the man’s apartment. He’d given no reason for the crime, and hadn’t stolen anything or known the victim. His IQ was low. Of all the possibles, Essex had seemed to make the least progress with him. He was fifty-eight.
The last was Dale NMI Petrie, fifty-four, who lived on Vancouver Island, near a town called Ladysmith. Petrie had ties to the Ontario chapters of the Exiles Motorcycle Club. He’d killed a woman, killed her for money, and used a knife to do it.
The woman’s name had been Joanna Disher, a twenty-seven-year-old bartender who’d witnessed an altercation between another biker and a local businessman outside a bar in Toronto. Her body had been discovered weeks before the case came to trial.
Petrie had been released six years ago, and seemed to be retired. When he’d moved to the coast, he hadn’t made connections with the local biker gangs. Which was good—the last thing I wanted now was trouble with the Exiles.
We sat around Sonia’s table, the four of us, copies of Father Darian’s records piled in the center. Blatchford thought Petrie was the most likely by far.
“You read the reports,” Blatchford explained. “Our gal uses the same descriptions with Henshaw and Crowhurst—with all the others, really. ‘Progressing’ or ‘not progressing,’ ‘putting in effort’ and whatnot. But read Petrie’s.”
I did, and saw what he meant. With the others, Essex tracked what she covered in each study session. With Petrie, though, her reports were more psychological. She wrote of his poor attitude, his excessive off-topic questioning. She felt bullied by him, like he didn’t take her seriously.
I looked around the table. Kay shrugged. Sonia said, “Being cranky and a bad speller doesn’t make him our killer.”
Our. I let the word pass.
Blatchford said, “It’s how she wrote about him. He got to her. Some people thrive on being pushed around, bullied a bit. Right frame of mind, I’m one of them.”
“Still doesn’t make him Tabitha’s killer,” Sonia countered.
“Passion is passion. It’s the people that agitate you that you’re most drawn to. Isn’t it?” Nodding toward me, he said to Sonia, “Who can piss you off quicker than he can?”
“First let’s cross off Henshaw and Crowhurst,” I said. “Kay and I can look into Petrie, figure out a way to approach him.”
“We take him out now,” Blatchford said, “head on, we all sleep easier.”
“If he’s the most dangerous and the most likely, we have to be the most careful with him. Two days we’ll know more.”
Blatchford grumbled but agreed to check out Henshaw and Crowhurst first. I asked if he wanted company.
“Better you stay here,” he said, getting up from the table. “This kind of skullduggery I do better without an audience.”
Blatchford was probably right about Petrie. He did seem the most likely. He also seemed more than capable of cutting another throat—Tabitha’s, Blatchford’s, Sonia’s, mine. Maybe it was inevitable we confront him. If so, two days wouldn’t make much difference.