Chapter 9

_____________________________________

Sunday, December 12

“Chris, Chris, wake up and grab the phone, Joe wants you.”

“Hello.”

“Got a bit of news on Leo, Dutch.

“I have probably more than a bit. But I believe there will be more to the story today, as the day progresses, than what I have heard. Here is what I’ve heard so far. I’ve gotten five or six phone calls already this morning. Everyone in the harbour thinks I should know all the facts on Leo because we spent so much time in the pit. Anyway, apparently Leo got out through a window on the first floor, the one towards the rear of the house, the side towards Sharon’s. He got out as soon as they starting spraying water in. He crawled on his stomach, past the two police vehicles by Sharon’s house, and made his way to Long Pond Path and then to the highway by way of the woods. He broke out somewhere around Gordie Williams’s sod farm. And I guess he walked to Big Pond on the highway. I guess every time he saw a car coming he’d duck into the woods.”

“Joe, I’m thinking you’re right, that he probably picked up the road by Gordie Williams’s sod farm.”

“Yes, Dutch.”

“Joe, they started spraying into the house around five to nine. And we suspect that he was on his way to Big Pond by then. So, Joe, he was making good time. If he crawled from the house past the two police vehicles by Sharon’s, sure, that would take the better part of a half-hour. And then he had to stay away from all the pole lights on Irish Town Road and all the way up Long Pond Path. So, guaranteed, he was soaking wet.”

“Definitely, after being in the grass and woods for that long.”

“Man, he punched some hard time. Walking in the woods in the dark without a flashlight. I’d say there are a few scratches on his face from all the branches beating against it. I had to do it one time I got lost out in Terra Nova on a moose and caribou hunting trip with Boggy and Randell O’Rielly, back in 1988. I spent the whole day walking around in circles. By the time they found me I was scratched to death, blood dried on my face and more running down my face. I never realized how hard it was to walk in complete darkness. Water looks like rocks and rocks look like water. I was fourteen hours and I was soaked from head to toe. And I was wearing oil clothes. I would have punched some night only for them. I learned a lot from that adventure. I guarantee you I’ll never be lost again. At least not in the woods.”

“So, either way, he still got wet. Might not have been from the water from the firehoses but from the elements. The poor bastard.”

“Joe, how the hell did Leo get past the two police vehicles parked next to Sharon’s house? Coming on dark Friday night there were two vehicles parked there, I’m 100 per cent sure of that. Not a light came on in either of those vehicles. I had them in the scope and they never moved up to the time we left. A black Chevrolet Suburban on the upper side and a full-size grey Chevrolet car close to St. John’s Road.”

“They must have been asleep.”

“They had to be. All week, those two vehicles were there, with two people in each.”

“And to think they were spraying water into the house again this morning. Into an empty house. And Leo somewhere between Bay Bulls and Big Pond.”

“Tell me they won’t have some questions to answer from their superiors.”

“Dutch, I guess Leo crawled the whole way.”

“Yes, Joe, but he had to come out through the window. How did they not see him? Joe, Leo is a 200-pound man. Kind of a big object to miss. Not only a big object, but a moving object. You would think the movement of anything around that house would have alerted the cops.”

“The inquiry into this standoff will be some interesting. Actually, this escape will make the inquiry so much more interesting. We need an inquiry into why this lasted a full week. And now the escape will trump that. Really, we need two inquiries.”

“I guess they’ll blame it on the water being sprayed into the house. They’ll blame it on something. Equipment failure because of the water or because the water was so cold. Don’t worry, we’ll hear them all. Excuse after excuse. Because they had to turn off some equipment, because they didn’t want it to get damaged by the water, right?

“Well, what a week we’re going to have listening to the media on this. And beating it back and forth to court. A man barricaded in a house for a full week, surrounded by dozens of cops. And they find him in Goulds, over twenty kilometres away from where he should have been. The only thing missing here to make this a good western movie is the horse. Or, if it was a chase and a shootout with Tommy guns after a bank robbery in the ’30s in Chicago, the bloodhounds on the trail of the bank robbers. But it’s not, it’s a story about a fiercely determined Newfoundlander crawling through the grass with rubber boots on. Looking back at his family homestead being destroyed. Why?”

“Dutch, what did you hear?”

“I heard that the RCMP had three warrants signed off by two different judges from the fifth to the ninth.”

“But why didn’t they serve them?”

“Joe, they never served them because they knew early into the standoff on Saturday that they had made a major mistake by not serving them from the beginning of this standoff. They should have known from their dealings with Leo in 1998 that they weren’t dealing with the average person.

“What an ending to our week in the pit, Joe! And it’s not over yet. This most likely will be the story that stays in the media for years, because the person barricaded inside came out of it alive. I’ll give the RCMP a bit of credit: at least Leo’s alive. They could have stormed that house on the first or second night and had a shootout with Leo.

“Joe, if all of us in the pit for the past week had to pick a scenario of how this would end, I don’t think anybody would have come close to this ending. When this all settles down I’m going to do research on Canadian escapes. Actually, I might broaden it to the states. Escapes that were off the wall, like this one. This one will be analyzed for years to come. This will be discussed in training classes for police officers, and probably in law schools. So, Joe, did he walk all the way to Billy’s Friday night?”

“Apparently not. He showed up at Billy’s around noon yesterday.”

“Okay.”

“The story I got is that he got a run from a young girl named Amy Guest and her boyfriend, Jason Follett, from Big Pond.”

“That makes sense. Wayne Guest lives in Big Pond. He’s Ronnie and Llewellyn Guest’s first cousin. And he has a daughter who is old enough to drive. So I’d say it was his daughter.”

“Apparently he walked into this fellow Guest’s yard and asked him for a run to Petty Harbour Road. Said his truck was broken down over by Schinagl’s garage. The fellow told him his daughter was on her way to the Village Mall with her boyfriend to go shopping and said she would kindly give him a lift. And, get a hold of this, Dutch, he even stopped at the corner store on the top of Petty Harbour Road for a pack of cigarettes.”

“Now we know why he left the house. Ran out of smokes.”

“Know how they figured out who he was?”

“How?”

“The girl’s boyfriend knows the Crockwell brothers. He works in an automotive parts store, and Billy and Leo are in and out a couple of times a year. But he always got them confused. When Leo was getting out, he said, ‘You’re a Crockwell, ain’t you?’ And Leo said, ‘Yes, I’m Leo.’”

“So he didn’t give a fuck about getting caught. If he didn’t want to be caught, all he had to say was that he was Billy or Francie. Joe, I guess Leo was of the opinion that the game was over. ‘I beat you, now come and get me.’”

“And Dutch, listen to this. Leo threw thirty bucks on the car seat and wished them a merry Christmas.”

“Joe, that’s so much like Leo. So that’s how he got the run from Big Pond to Billy’s on Saturday noon.”

“Who did you get all the details from?”

“Dutch, I’ve been talking to at least a dozen people about all this between last night and this morning. My phone is ringing off the hook.”

“Joe, we might get to see him on the six o’clock news this evening. NTV has a news broadcast at six on Sundays.

“I laugh at this, Joe. Leo was arrested in a Crockwell home, but the wrong Crockwell home. One over twenty kilometres away from the home where he should have been arrested. We’ve got to hand it to him. The media was told all week that they weren’t dealing with the average person. And Leo made us look good, about what we were saying all week. He not only made us look good, he made himself look super good. Love him or hate him, respect him or not, you gotta give him credit.

“So what you just told me answers what I read late last night online. Sergeant Merrill said when Crockwell was arrested it was ‘community information’ that led to his arrest. I knew when I read that that no community information from Bay Bulls led to his arrest. Because we knew that Leo could not and did not have any contact with anyone from or in Bay Bulls. Not Friday night or Saturday morning, or for the past eight days.”

“Apparently he is being arraigned in court this morning.”

“Joe, I wonder if we went out, would we get to see him?”

“Doubt it, Dutch. Being Sunday, he’ll be in and out of court in seconds. Charges read, and back in the lock-up under the clock. It would be a waste of time.”

“Joe, someone told me that late last night on the phone, that two cops were overheard talking up to Paddy’s last evening. They said that never in the history of policing in Canada had they thrown so much at an individual and that person hadn’t given up. They were amazed Leo never walked out of the house.”

“I guess they were talking what went down on Wednesday night.”

“They had to be. Wednesday night was the only night that they bombarded him with the noisemakers, flash bombs, and, we suspect, pepper bomb grenades. Haven’t we been saying it all week that Leo is one tough bastard? Joe, I can’t wait to see the bill for this standoff. I’d say it will be many hundred thousand dollars.

“Okay. You hear more, call me. I’m just up. I’m going to get online and see what people are posting on the Telegram and CBC websites. People can comment on news stories posted. When I’m finished surfing I’ll call you back.”

“Okay, Dutch.”

“I also have to find the interview that Merrill gave by Uncle Tom’s. I need to see it, to dissect it. I looked for it quickly last night, with no luck. But some news doesn’t go online for a day or two. It might be online now.

“Joe, before you go, did you run into the Telegram reporter yesterday afternoon? The young guy who has been in the harbour all week? Actually, the fellow who tried to get a story from us in the pit the other morning.”

“No. Didn’t see him.”

“I was talking to him by the town hall roughly a half-hour after the standoff was over. He was cruising around looking for people to interview on the escape and discovery of Leo in Goulds.”

“Did you give him an interview?”

“I spoke with him for five minutes. Really, it wasn’t an interview. I put more questions to him than he asked me. I told him I couldn’t give an interview to a story that I never had the ending to. I told him I would do one later in the day, but I never saw him again. I told him to go to the Sapphire Pub to find people to talk to. I guess we’ll know Monday morning when the Telegram comes out who he found for an interview, if anyone. I’m kind of surprised he didn’t hunt you down after talking to me. Seeing the two of us together in the pit the other day, I’m thinking he put a story together.”

“Well, if he did I can’t wait to see how he ended it. That should be interesting. Dutch, I found all week he was pretty good on Leo. He was fair. He stuck to the story, the actual standoff, not who the person was that was barricaded in the house. He never once attacked Leo as a person, and for that he deserves respect. Not like the other media outlets, bringing up all the dirt from 1998. Stuff that had absolutely nothing to do with this standoff. Two complete and different issues. You wait and see, he’ll make a good name for himself in the future.”

After I said goodbye to Joe, I called Randy Cat.

“Randy, sorry for calling so early.”

“Dutch, this is not early.”

“It is for me. Is Darlene there? Or, should I say, is she up?”

“Right here next to me.”

“Put her on the phone, please. I can’t wait to question her on Leo. I have to try and put all this together, in perspective.

“Darlene, this is Dutch. Good morning. Fill me in on where you saw Leo yesterday morning in Big Pond.”

“Well, Chris, where do I start? I was driving around Big Pond and I saw someone walking on the side of the road, walking towards Goulds. As I got closer, I could not believe my eyes. There was Leo Crockwell, walking on the shoulder of the road. He was wearing dark clothes. Might have been coveralls. And it looked like he had rubber boots on. If they weren’t rubber boots they were some type of boot that went nearly to the knee.”

“What did you think?”

“I didn’t know what to think. For a second I doubted what I had just seen. And then I said to myself, ‘That definitely was Leo Crockwell. I’ve known Leo for over twenty-five years.’”

“Darlene, where exactly did you see him?”

“He was on this side of Marty Vickers’s house. So, anyway, I couldn’t confuse him with anyone else. Maybe Billy. I used to get them confused when I first knew them, but that was thirty years ago.”

“Darlene, you must have felt some sure of yourself when you heard Leo was arrested on Petty Harbour Road.”

“Actually, I heard it on the radio.”

“Anyway, Darlene, thanks for setting the story straight. I suspect the media and/or the police will be looking for you today or tomorrow when your story gets out. Hope you don’t mind if I quote you. I will need to, to get this whole story straightened out.”

“I hope not, Chris. I’m not a big fan of talking to the media.”

“Talk to you later. Thanks again.”

I spent the rest of the morning searching online for any updates on Leo. Tina and I went to her brother’s house for dinner; Tammy had cooked quite the scoff. We spent most of Sunday afternoon driving around Bay Bulls, keeping an eye on all the police vehicles at the Crockwell home. The RCMP were face and eyes into their investigation of the week-long standoff. When we got home, Joe called me.

“Dutch, did you watch the six o’clock news?”

“No, fill me in on what they said about Leo.”

“Listen to this, they have sixteen charges against him.”

“What? Where the fuck did they come up with that many charges?”

“Four of them were over the domestic dispute with Cathy.”

“Well, they can forget about them sticking. Joe, you wait and see. By the time this is over, Leo might have three or four charges to stand for. You know as well as me the majority of those charges are trumped-up. The RCMP has to do that, to make Leo out to be the devil. And to try to justify their wasteful eight days in Bay Bulls. I can’t wait for the news conference tomorrow. Should be interesting. I wonder if Merrill will do the talking? If he does, I hope he tells the truth. Because you and I know he did not tell the full story yesterday, when he gave the first interview in Bay Bulls after Leo’s arrest in Goulds.

“Be interesting watching him grasping for words to try and explain how Leo walked away underneath their noses.”

Lying in bed that Sunday night, I chuckled to myself. I’d said all week long that Leo would come out on top in this standoff.

I guess the saying is not always true. The Mounties don’t always get their man.