High Octane ©

The other day I was sitting outside having a few drinks with some old friends and new.
It felt like a camping trip with the sky bright with lights and the moon shining down.
Beers were flowing and we were laughing, I was arguing with one of my neighbours over who has been in the neighbourhood the longest and we agreed it was I because even though she was here first she left for ten years when she moved to Quebec.
I asked about her family and particularly her brother who played hockey with me and against me for years.
Then we drifted to her husband’s family, which was big with 14 kids in it.
Big by our standards today but back then it was average in rural Quebec with some families I know with up to 20 siblings.

She told me that he had lost his two oldest brothers already, one last year.
I expressed my condolences.
That’s when she told me that his death was a murder and hadn’t been solved yet.
I asked how it happened and she told me.
I came in after they left and I started think of how something so simple could happen to anyone and have their life turned upside down.
I sat here playing poker at 3 am and thinking of the story and about these two people.
That’s when a song came on and I wrote something for them on my other blog then went to bed.
I didn’t know if I should write about this but then decided I should show how easy we could get screwed by people who jump to conclusions.

I guess I should start from the beginning.
B as I will call him finished university and worked in the aeronautics industry and travelled all over the world helping design airports and such.
He was making great money and traveling the world was free as his job took him everywhere.
While on a business trip he met a beautiful young woman in a South American country.
They got along so well he used to go visit he on his holidays as she did when she had time to come up here.
After a couple of years they decided to get married and she would move to Canada so they could start a family together.
They were a quiet couple that believed in family and their faith.
It wasn’t long before their one and only child was born and they we happy as they could be for fourteen years.
They had a nice big house in the country away from many of the pitfalls that the city offered and their daughter was driven to her private school daily.
His family loved his new wife and had accepted her with open arms from the first day they met her and she to them.
She spent a lot of time with his aging mother and a lot of the other members of his family.
Every few years they traveled to see her family for a month or two so that their daughter would know that side of her family, they were very family oriented.
Suffice to say, they were extremely happy living the life most people dream of.

They phone rang on night and my friend answered it only to hear the frantic voice of her SIL on the other end.
Her French nor English was perfect but she understood that there was something wrong with her brother in law and he had to be taken to the hospital.
She told her that she would call her husband and meet her at the hospital.
She called her husband to tell him that there was something wrong with his brother and was in the hospital and they had to go there quick because his wife didn’t understand what was happening.
As soon as she hung up the phone rang once more and it was her SIL crying on the phone telling her that he had died.
This was a big shock.
Everything happened so fast, she was still processing him being in the hospital and now he was dead and had to tell her husband his brother had died on the heels of him learning he was sick five minutes earlier.

When he got home to pick her up she sat him down and told him the news.
After getting past the shock they went to the hospital to be with his brother’s wife.
She was scared and alone with barely enough French to get by.
They met her at the hospital and while she sat with the wife her husband went to the doctors to find out what had happened.
The doctors told him they were running some test now to find that out and would tell them as soon as they knew.

He went back to be with his wife and SIL.
Other members of the family started showing up and they all gathered around the waiting room shocked and crying.
They asked her what happened and she told him that B came home after work and said he wasn’t feeling well.
After laying down for a couple of hours he started feeling better and they had dinner and watched TV before going off to bed.
In the middle of the night he stated getting bad cramps and wanted to go to the hospital right away.
She drove him to the hospital and the rest is history.

A couple of hours went by before the doctors came back and his wife got up and went to them but they refused to talk to her and asked to talk to his brother instead.
They told him that his brother died of poisoning, something he ingested.
That’s when the police showed up and wanted to talk to his SIL.

She asked that her BIL come along because she didn’t speak well and the police reluctantly agreed.
While they had her at the police station she was being questioned like any suspect would in a case that involved someone being poisoned.
For hours they talked to her and this on the day her husband died.
She was then released and they both went home to his mother’s house where everyone had gathered.
For a week the police had her come in for a talk.
One day they came with a search warrant and took items from her house and their computer.
A week later they came and wanted to speak to her daughter, she reluctantly agreed and they went to the police station where they took her daughter to a separate room.
She called my friends husband and he drove down to the police station to see what they wanted with his niece.
The police were pissed when he showed up because they wanted to talk to the niece alone and his SIL didn’t know she had the right to be with her daughter.
They asked the daughter about a couple of sites that they found in the history of the computer and she told them it was for a school project she had been there and not her mother.
When the hospital released the body a week later it wasn’t to her, instead they called the brother.
He told them to call the widow to see where she wants him sent but they refused.

For a year now this has been going on.
Her life is held back and his insurance won’t pay until this is over.
Their number one suspect is the wife; the only suspect seems to be the wife because they aren’t looking anywhere else.
The second the doctors saw it was poisoning the suspected the wife and told the police as much who drew a conclusion along the same lines and pretty much have convicted her without so much as a trial.
The whole family stands behind this woman and she knows she is part of this family.

Suicide was brought up but she adamantly says NEVER, her husband loved his daughter so much he would never even think of it.
I think the police should get their heads out of the Asses and look for the source of the poison for the people responsible or the reason why he was poisoned.
The doctors said he was poisoned with jet fuel.
Where the fuck would a simple housewife living in the country find jet fuel?
It’s not like it’s sitting next to the milk by the butter and eggs at the local grocery store.
Not even in Quebec would they sell jet fuel in a dépanneur, their beer is worse than jet fuel.
I would be looking at his work for a reason or a killer.
The guy worked in a place where there is jet fuel and I am sure easy to get if you work there.

I guess if there isn’t a butler employed there it’s the spouse that did it.
As I sat there listening to this story unfold before me that night I could see in the eyes of my friend as she told me how much this woman loved her husband.
She told me how she sat alone in a chair at the last family gathering looking off somewhere lost in her thoughts as others were talking about their brother, uncle, son…. her husband.

How could there be peace when the wound is still a gapping, festering ugly memory that is still haunting her and these people because of the police’s blind persistence in believing they are right but have no evidence that points to her but does at somewhere else.

Quebec is a beautiful province but how they think there, leaves little to be desired.
I hope one day the wake up and let this family have peace and let the healing begin so they could all live and laugh once more.

Have a nice day.

Walker