He had studied medicine at the University of Manitoba, further training in obstetrics and gynecology in Chicago, then moved to Emo, a town of a couple thousand in northwestern Ontario, where he set up practice. He and his wife, Fagie, eventually moved to Winnipeg. There was something of the legend about tall, handsome Jack Fainman. The story went that, when he worked as a country doctor in Emo, more than once he walked across the frozen lake in the dark, the wind whipping his face, just to get to a patient. One day, before the advent of Canada’s universal health care system, a pregnant woman refused to go to hospital because she couldn’t afford it. So broad-shouldered Jack Fainman went to her home, picked her off the ground and literally carried her to the hospital.
He also provided abortion services. In 1997 he was 66 years old and still working. He taught medicine at St. Boniface General Hospital. He was one of about a dozen doctors in the city who were referred patients for abortions. But Fainman didn’t handle as many referrals as some of the others, nor did he tend to do later-term abortions like some. A quiet, unassuming man, he put more emphasis, people said, on prenatal care, maybe booked one or two abortions a week.
Just before 9 p.m., he sat in the living room on the other side of the yawning glass wall. To someone outside, just 15 meters away, the light of the room cast Jack Fainman in perfect silhouette.
The explosion, a window shatters, Jack Fainman collapses to the ground, a gusher of blood bursting from his right shoulder. His wife rushes into the room, picks up the phone, calls 911. Fainman himself takes the phone. There is urgency in his voice, but also a cool, clinical tone.
“Hello—” he says.
“Hello,” replies the dispatcher.
“This is Dr. Fainman. I’m hemorrhaging here. Get an ambulance quickly.”
It took nine minutes for police to arrive at the front of the Fainman house. The sniper was gone. Perhaps he drove up Salme Crescent, onto Dunkirk, past the police community kiosk in the strip mall, past the neon glow from the sign of the Dakota Motel, towards the Bishop Grandin expressway. Dr. Fainman, meanwhile, was stable in hospital, as staff debated on whether to remove the bullet embedded deep in his shoulder. Police dogs, forensic unit, detectives combed the scene. The shooter left footprints in the snow, tire tracks. Plaster casts were taken of the tracks. Ron Oliver, a city policeman, took photos of two tire impressions consistent with a General Motors car. Goodyear tire, Concorde caliber, size 195 x 75 x 14, a 5.5-inch-wide tire. Midsize GM car, consistent with model from years 1981 to 1990.
It takes an hour and half to reach the North Dakota border from Winnipeg. At night the four-lane is lonely and dark, vast stretches of farmland on either side blend into blackness, it feels as though you are in a tunnel, on a drive to nowhere. And then lights, a sign declaring you are about to cross the 49th parallel. Hard on the border is Pembina, North Dakota, population just over 600, the first opportunity for food off Route 59 is a greasy spoon called The Depot Cafe that serves lead-in-your belly cheeseburger soup. At 1:10 a.m. a car license plate was recorded crossing the border: Vermont BPE 216.
Late in 1997 the Hamilton police investigation into the maiming of Dr. Hugh Short was still open, but little was happening. A meeting was called at central station on King William Street on November 18, 1997. A detective named Aivars Jekabsons was summoned to see Acting Superintendent Dave Bowen, Steve Hrab (the senior man in the Major Crime Unit) and Detective Peter Abi-Rashed, who was one of the original detectives on the Short file. Jekabsons, who had a relaxed, irreverent air to him, entered the room, looking like an unemployed surfer. His hair hung long, past his shoulders, tied in a ponytail. Ragged clothes, beard. It was part of the uniform, working undercover on the streets. Jekabsons was a 44-year-old vice and drugs detective with 21 years on the force. His Latvian parents had wanted him to pursue accounting. Aivars had wanted to pursue criminals.
As an investigator he had come to the conclusion that everything is just a matter of time. There is always a trail. Just stay with it, good things will happen. But if ever his patience would be tried, it would be in the Hugh Short case.
Two years after the shooting, there were no suspects, and senior officers at the meeting asked Jekabsons if he would take charge of revisiting the cold case. He accepted. Soon after that, Abi-Rashed handed over boxes of evidence and background and investigator notes to the new man. “Here you go,” Abi-Rashed said. “Start reading.” The next step was introducing Jekabsons to Hugh and Katherine Short. Abi-Rashed and Jekabsons visited the house on Sulphur Springs.
“Detective Jekabsons will now be completely dedicated to the case,” Abi-Rashed told the Shorts. “The investigation is going full bore.”
Hugh Short looked over the ragged Jekabsons. “So I’m being assigned a guy who looks like this?”
Jekabsons laughed. He said he planned to get a haircut and shave. They got along just fine after that. The detective came to like the Shorts. There were good people who deserved answers.
Back at the office he started from scratch, digging through documents, forensics. Jekabsons thought the boys who first handled the case did a solid job. But sometimes a fresh set of eyes can spot something new. At least he hoped so. He visited the Shorts’ backyard one night, stood inside the quiet shed where the sniper had waited, then outside, staring at the second-floor window, putting himself inside the shooter’s skin, assuming the firing position, imagining the shot, checking the terrain around him. Two shots in quick succession. Where do you go? Where is the escape route? You probably don’t park your car on the street. Sulphur Springs Road is narrow, in an isolated area, not many homes. A neighbor would notice a strange car parked on the street. There was probably a second person who picked him up. That needs to be coordinated. Not with a cell phone. Back in ’95, you couldn’t count on a cell in a remote area like this. You’d need a walkie-talkie, or to establish a pre-set pick-up time.
The anti-abortion motive dictated that the investigation had to stretch far and wide. Jekabsons tried to sell his superiors on the international angle. He had to take the show well beyond Hamilton. They said he was biting off too much. Let’s not get too carried away here. But Aivars Jekabsons was ahead of the game. After the sniper attack on Dr. Jack Fainman, Winnipeg police chief Dave Cassels was talking privately about forming a national task force to investigate the link between the three Canadian shootings, and also the attempted shooting in Rochester, New York. On Saturday, November 29, Jekabsons flew to Winnipeg to meet with officers from Winnipeg, Vancouver, the RCMP, and the New York State Police. The task force was an unusual step. Canadian and American police did not typically combine resources. But participants in this effort would share information, hold weekly conference calls, meet in person regularly, cast the widest possible net. Detectives in each city would make up the bulk of the force and would be overseen by a joint management committee of senior officers.
In Hamilton, Detective Larry Penfold was seconded out of the forensics office to team up with Jekabsons. Penfold got the impression that his new assignment might last a couple of weeks. It turned into two years. On January 26, 1998, the task force met in Hamilton for three days, keeping the meeting a secret from the media. An officer named Jim Van Allen attended. He was a behavioral analyst with the Ontario Provincial Police, working out of Orillia. He was, in the vernacular, a criminal profiler. Van Allen was just the second behavioral profiler the OPP had ever trained, but he had been a police officer for 20 years. He was presented with the evidence to date and asked to compose a profile of the sniper—or snipers—still at large. Van Allen reviewed what had been gathered at the crime scenes. He asked the task force for more information, but there was little more to tell him. From the relatively thin evidence available, Van Allen felt that the shooter was probably Canadian, given his choice of targets, and that if he didn’t strike in Quebec soon, was probably unilingual. The profiler also came to believe that, since the sniper clearly had a political goal in mind, he was not shooting to kill. He was shooting to wound.