Grounded in the Wind - PP13 Paperback

Chapter 1
The day began like any other. Things had been pretty quiet on the homicide front, so the team had been working other Major Crimes cases, reviewing some cold homicides for any old evidence that might benefit from modern technology—such as more sophisticated search techniques, cutting-edge DNA testing, or an appeal to the public through social media. Margie looked forward to going home and spending some time with Christina at the end of the day. Her teenage daughter was getting older and more independent, and they didn’t get nearly as much time together as Margie would have liked. Between Margie’s work, Christina’s school schedule, and Tracy, Christina’s “friend who was a boy,” it could be hard to connect for any meaningful length of time.

Margie had reached out lately to her cousins, now that more public gatherings were allowed, and was trying to arrange some extended family activities to reconnect them with some of the tribal “brothers” and “sisters” she had lost touch with since she had been Christina’s age. She wanted to keep Christina connected with the Métis community, something that had not been easy during the early COVID months when they had first moved from Winnipeg to Calgary.

But tonight, they were planning a movie marathon, just Margie and Christina, bingeing Batman movies. Margie honestly wasn’t that excited about the newest Batman, but was looking forward to some of the cheesier early TV episodes and movies.

Staff Sergeant MacDonald came out of his office and whistled to get everyone’s attention, something she had never seen him do before. The effect was, therefore, instant. Everyone froze. Any banter between the detectives ceased, fingers froze over keyboards, and everyone looked at the tall, gray-haired man to see what was happening.

“We’ve got an incident,” MacDonald announced. “A possible attack directed at the airport. A drone has been launched and has disrupted flights. The airport is locked down, all flights in and out have been suspended until the drone can be neutralized. Police all over the city are being scrambled to deal with the threat to public safety and ensure that the public does not panic. Messaging is that the source and intent of the drone are unknown, but there is no apparent danger to the public.”

“Is there a danger?” Cruz asked.

“If there was going to be a weapons attack, it would likely have been deployed by now. It may be that the pilot lost control of the drone, it is being directed by someone without any real training or understanding of the restrictions they operate under, or that it is an act of mischief.”

“Are they going to shoot it down?”

“They have methods to deal with it. Our job is to check out a potential launch area and see if we can locate the point it went up from and the pilot.”

Margie’s heart was pumping hard and fast. Even though it didn’t sound like the drone was actually any threat, it was still very different from what they handled on a day-to-day basis and would unfold quickly. It was a dynamic situation that would require all of them to be at the top of their game to see that the public wasn’t put at risk and didn’t panic over nothing.

“Where are we going?” Kaitlyn Jones asked as everyone rose from their seats and quickly pulled on jackets, preparing to go.

“Prairie Winds Park is the apparent point of origin,” MacDonald announced, “given the reported sightings.”

Margie glanced around at the others, hoping they had a better idea of where Prairie Winds was than she did. She vaguely remembered it as a park the Calgary cousins had spoken of sledding at when they were all still kids. But Margie had rarely been to visit Calgary during the winter. When she had, they had found smaller hills close to home or gone skating at Bowness Park.

“I will send you all the GPS coordinates and you can use your maps apps if you are not familiar with it,” MacDonald advised. “We will all be heading out at the same time and can probably travel as a convoy, but if you get separated we don’t want anyone getting lost.”

“You’re going too?” Margie asked, surprised. MacDonald generally worked from the office and dealt with the mayor’s office or other political situations rather than going to crime scenes.

“In this case, I think it is best that I be on site to deal with any communications issues immediately.”

Margie nodded, as did the others, and they quickly prepared to leave. Margie’s phone chirped, and she saw the GPS coordinates MacDonald had broadcast, underlined as a link that meant her phone recognized the data format and would open it in her maps app, as MacDonald had suggested.

“Do you want to go together?” Jones asked Margie.

Margie grimaced. Unfortunately, her poor sense of direction had become legendary in the department. Even with GPS directions, it would not be unusual for Margie to miss an exit or take a wrong turn and add an extra twenty minutes to the trip to a location that should have been easy to find. Margie was sure that neither the French explorers nor the Cree making up her Métis heritage would have been very impressed by her ability to navigate by map or by memory.

“What part of the city is it in?”

“Northeast. If you started at your house and went north up Fifty-Second—”

“Uh, right.” Margie nodded. Considering the time and the fact that Jones would have to drive Margie back downtown to pick up her car after however long it took them to deal with the drone incident, Margie thought it was best not to impose on Jones. “I’d better take my car. Who knows how long this will take. We will probably be heading straight home afterward.”

Jones nodded and pushed back a curled lock of blond hair that had escaped her bobby pins. “You’re probably right. It shouldn’t be too hard for you to get to, even if we get separated. We’ll probably take Deerfoot, turn off at McKnight—”

“I’ll just follow everyone else or the GPS,” Margie interrupted. “There’s no point in telling me the route ahead of time.”

“You should just ride with someone else,” Gagnon told her as he headed for the door. Though Margie noticed he did not offer to drive Margie as Jones had.

Chapter 2
Within a few minutes, they were down to their cars and headed out in a convoy to the park.

No one had made any jokes about Detective “Parks Pat” being on this call. It was not her usual callout to a park because she had been specially requested by someone who thought she should be there to investigate a homicide in a park, since that was her specialty.

Not that Margie had any particular talent for solving murders that took place in parks. She couldn’t track and was more likely to get lost than anyone else if she set off on a hiking trail alone.

She kept focused on Jones’s car in front of her, following as closely as she could without putting herself in danger of rear-ending her at the speeds they were traveling. Deerfoot had a speed limit of 100 kilometers per hour, and escorted by patrol cars with flashing lights, they were quickly passing all other traffic. They would beat the 18 minutes predicted by her maps app.

Margie let her eyes stray to the sky once or twice, wondering whether she would be able to spot the drone or any military aircraft sent to take it down. Surely they wouldn’t shoot it down over the city, even over an airport runway.

Would she even be able to see it? They hadn’t been given any details on the size of the drone, whether it was a child’s toy, the type that could deploy a missile, or something in between. She assumed it wasn’t the missile type, if it had been launched from a park. But she couldn’t imagine a child’s toy causing a panic at the airport, either.

The other cars in the convoy were exiting, so Margie followed suit. At the speed they were driving, she probably would have missed the exit if she had been on her own. So much of the time, it seemed that her maps app did not inform her of an exit until she had passed it. It couldn’t just be hers. Did everybody else experience the same thing, and they were just better at anticipating a turn or recovering from a wrong move? She didn’t understand how she could be that much worse than anyone else when she was being directed by a computer. She also had the ability to make several wrong turns in a row trying to get back on track, while others recovered after the first one.

They had to slow down considerably to crawl through the curving, single-lane roads in a retail shopping area, so she figured she would be able to stay with the rest of the convoy without getting lost.

In a couple of minutes, they were pulling into the parking lot of Prairie Winds Park. They didn’t take the time to find individual parking spots, but instead pulled onto the grass. Margie looked around. It didn’t appear to be a large park. Not like Glenbow Ranch, Fish Creek, or Nose Hill. There was a splash park and some playground equipment. The big sledding hill was the central feature of the park, and Margie figured that was the most likely place to launch a drone. It had only a few trees at the top, with wide grass expanses encircling it. It was higher than anything else in the area. A good reason for the authorities to suspect this was where the drone had been launched from. MacDonald gave directions, sending his detectives around and up the hill from various directions. They would all converge at the top, having covered most of the park so they could report anything suspicious and work out a plan of action.

Margie and Detective Jones took the right-hand trail after walking through the playgrounds. They encouraged people to leave as they walked through, trying to make their warnings sound stern but not frightening enough to make people panic. “We are investigating a situation. We need people to return to their cars for their own safety. Please move along…”

More law enforcement officers would be arriving to help evacuate the park, so they didn’t spend much precious time encouraging those who were resistant. They had a situation to investigate. Margie kept her eyes peeled for anything that might be a remote control for a drone, for any weapons, and for anyone who looked suspicious.

It wasn’t the kind of situation where they could weed people out by whether they had children with them or not. There were plenty of people who went to the park alone, from athletes obviously training for their particular sports to seniors with walkers or hiking poles walking only the flat areas or the gentle slopes. Some children didn’t seem to be attached to any of the adults present, but Margie figured that if anyone were to approach them and try to engage them or remove them, their parents would quickly make themselves known.

They walked along the pathway, heads on a swivel, checking 360 degrees around them for anything out of place or that might flag the launching point of the drone.

Margie had expected it to be pretty clear who was involved. She had thought the culprit would be showing off, making a big deal of what he had done, even if he knew it was illegal. But there was no launchpad that she could identify. No man or group of teens standing around a controller or staring up at the sky. Margie and Jones had worked small drones with cameras when they had been looking for evidence in Edworthy Park on a previous case, so she had some idea of what to look for.

“Have you seen anyone with a drone or controller?” they asked various people they encountered on the path, before directing them back to the parking lot.

“What is this?” demanded a dark-skinned man in a gray hoodie. “Where did you all come from, and what is this all about? I have a legitimate reason to be in the park; you can’t just kick us out of a public place.”

Margie looked him over. His racial origins weren’t clear. He could be Hispanic or Indigenous, or a mix of any number of races. Was it possible he was Middle Eastern? Was it bad that her mind went there when they were investigating a potential terrorist act? His loose hoodie could be hiding weapons in his waistband or pockets. She didn’t like the way he moved his hands as he talked or how confrontational he was.

“Sir, could I get you to put your hands on your head, please?” Margie instructed him in a steely cop voice, “Interlace your fingers.”

“What?” he blustered, “You don’t have any right to come around here and order me around. I’m not doing anything wrong, working out at a public park.” He still gestured as he spoke.

“Hands on your head, now!” Jones ordered, her voice a shade louder than Margie’s. They wanted to control him, but not cause concern or panic among the other park users. They didn’t even know if he were anything to be concerned about at this point. They could be putting themselves at risk from another direction by focusing on an innocent bystander not accustomed to following orders.

The man’s eyes widened and he tried to watch them both as they approached him from different directions, each with their hands on their service weapons.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” he said defensively, bringing his hands up to ear level and no longer gesticulating. “No need to overreact, here.”

“Hands interlaced behind your head,” Margie told him.