by John Farrow
ix
The unit was getting on with their afternoon clean-up. Everyone pitched in. Abi joined Flo in the galley, doing up the dishes and drying the cutlery, which meant an extra guard until they were done putting away what had not been consumed. The couple of knives they’d used, which were as dull as toast anyway, were counted then tucked away with the forks and spoons. Padlocks on the drawers were snapped in place, then that guard departed. Lunch had been pea soup and salmon sandwiches. The bread still fresh so the sandwiches were good. Cheeses, crackers, and a few grapes were left over. Flo had a habit of picking at the food they were putting away and Abi let her, voicing no complaint. Like a shadow.
The fridge was locked again once they were done.
The last that Abi saw them, Courtney and Jodi – commonly referred to as ‘the kids’ – were sweeping out the ward. The unit C.O. was with them and on occasion Abi heard her bass-level laughter while the kids squealed with the giggles. Everyone looked up when they burst out like that, then shook their heads, then smiled to themselves a little. Temple and Malka were doing laundry; they’d already announced they were doing only their own clothes today. No community wash. Abi considered Doi and Rozlynn, who were together in the utility space, an odd and potentially difficult pairing. Doi had taken a hatchet to her daughter and Roz had murdered her dad. Abi thought that they shared each other’s familial dysfunction, each as the other’s victim, each as the other’s perpetrator, although none of that seemed to come up as they sorted the garbage, dry from wet, stinky from benign. When that job was done, they were to take an inventory of supplies to prepare for the next shopping spree. Everyone liked to call the meetings where they ordered food a shopping spree although it was nothing like that, it just made the tedious sound fun. Even, now, to Abi.
Given that once a food order was submitted it could never be revised, the work of detailing the inventory on hand and what had been consumed or deficient was critical. Rozlynn and Doi had a routine, where Doi held up an item, read the label for contents and size, enumerated the quantity, and Roz found the item on her chart and jotted down the details. Boring work, but they did it harmoniously and accurately. As they seemed to enjoy the task, they were often chosen.
Overall, a quiet, orderly machine. A few were finishing up and starting in on personal tasks. They thought about taking a bathroom run, or picking up a book, finding a cranny to tuck themselves away for an hour. Naps were boring but comforting. The day both routine and tepid, typical that way, with every stomach full and everyone sensing the lassitude of a long afternoon with little to do. Abi was undecided. She wished she had something to work on, a project, not wanting to lose herself in useless daydreams. Maybe she could plan an elaborate cake and see if she couldn’t swing the ingredients. That would take some planning, and then some persuasion. More KD on the menu to help defray the cost of her cake.
A shriek suddenly pierced their quarters.
Jarring. A shock, to her, to everyone. Heads spun around. The corrections officer who was off on her own at that moment must have triggered the alarm she carried in her fist. What followed was a cacophony of heavy doors raging open – Abi jumped in her skin – then slamming shut again as more guards burst in. A stampede of heavy running steps followed and a lot of shouting as the guards tried to discern what the disturbance could be and where it had transpired.
Their regular corrections officer, a robust twenty-something Haitian woman named Isaure Dabrezil, was the first to enter the toilet chamber. She emerged and commanded, ‘Don’t nobody move not one fucking inch from where you stand right now, you fuckers!’
The inmates understood that she referred to them only, although they did not know why. Without speaking, they searched amid the flurry of guards to see who among their group was missing. Abi caught each woman’s eyes, nodded, then resumed her count. When she spotted Doi being led out of the toilet room she realized that the hatchet-wielding mom had emitted the scream. That left only one person unaccounted for. Flo had to be in trouble again. More days in solitary for her, most likely, for whatever she’d done now.
Then Doi made the sign of a slow knife-slash across her throat. They guessed that the missing Flo – ‘Florence’ as she liked to be called on occasion – was worse off than being in solitary.
They remained shocked when she emerged in a body bag.
Doi whispered to Abigail that she’d come upon her face-down in a toilet stall, a strangulation wire around her neck.
Trouble ahead.
ÉMILE
i
Down the hall from the warden’s office through an ochre steel door Abigail waited in a small anteroom. Locked in. A guard outside. She had hoped for a window; she always did when being shuffled within a penitentiary. Something to see to buoy her spirits, a tree leaf, a bird, an aircraft in flight, a cloud. Finding no window was no surprise, yet a disappointment as always. This particular room felt more like prison than everyday life in her new prison.
Sightings out a window lifted her, and she wouldn’t want to go through life without them, although inevitably, in the quiet of her night, the memory of such sightings made her sad.
She anticipated being interrogated. No worries. Everybody was going to be questioned and while it was disconcerting to be called first, she had nothing to hide. She was feeling a trifle glum – then quickly became excited, and agitated, when the policeman stepped into the room. She recognized this detective in an instant. He’d arrested her. What on earth was he doing here? He was a Montreal cop who investigated fraud, among other crimes, not murder. Why him? Here? Now? For this? Questions of that nature smacked her one-by-one as her chin precipitously dropped. Was he not outside his jurisdiction by a long shot?
That was not her only concern and she knew it.
Stepping around a small table and facing her, he smiled, perhaps taking pleasure in her shock of recognition. Behind him, the guard who had stood outside now stood inside the locked door.
‘Hello, Abigail. Good to see you again. How’s it going?’
‘How’s it going? What the hell, March Five?’
‘You may call me Detective Cinq-Mars in here, if you like.’
‘Why? What happened? Were you demoted? You used to be a Sergeant-Detective, no?’
‘Still am. It’s easier to say. Detective rolls off the tongue. If you prefer formality, Sergeant-Detective is fine.’
‘I’d rather call you March Five. Or Émile.’
He smiled as he sat, taking no offense. ‘Detective, for short, Abi. Protocol. It’s how we’ll do things in here.’
‘As opposed to someplace else? I don’t get around much anymore.’
‘Not entirely true. I thought you were tucked away in Nova Scotia. Surprised to find you in my backyard.’
‘Were you?’
‘Quite amazed, really.’
‘Oh yeah? Were you flabbergasted, Detective?’
Cinq-Mars cracked a smile. He was not the cheery type in her estimation; a curmudgeon, really, a grump, although even-tempered, she’d give him that. She had found him severe and unflinching when accumulating evidence against her, and intractable. Back then, she tried every which-way to get around him, to no avail. Of course, he’d had good reason, then, to seek a conviction. Now, he didn’t, yet she’d not want him lined up against her even if innocent of a charge. As he had once noted to her in the midst of a robust exchange, being innocent of a specific action did not, by itself, make anyone wholly innocent. She got that part. Back when he was nailing her to the cross – how she preferred to describe their talks and her ordeal – he proclaimed checkmate to her every move, rather easily, too. Although he was always slow, turtle-like, and seemed always to prolong things. In this instance, having in her mind the truth on her side seemed a frail defense if Émile Cinq-Mars sat opposite her in an adversarial chair.
‘I wouldn’t go that far,’ he admitted. ‘I don’t flabbergast that easily.’
‘No kidding.’
ii
No
less than Abigail, Sergeant-Detective Émile Cinq-Mars was taken aback to find himself inside these prison walls. He had endeavored to adjust to the idea on the drive out from the city. That took an hour and twenty minutes out of his day and he had that same commute to not look forward to going home. Next time, he might be quicker finding his way, but to do this drive daily was an unwelcome sortie.
‘How does this make a minute’s sense?’ he had asked the Chief of Police. Receiving orders right from the top was strange in itself; to be assigned a task which no Montreal police detective in the normal course of events had any business being assigned provoked the question. Unfortunately, the top cop’s explanation sounded viable. This was more than a bureaucratic shuffle; serious thought had gone into it. He was afraid of that. His shoulders slumped. No getting out of this one, not when the Chief himself gave the order and it held valid rationale. A final, rather desperate plea, ‘Why me?’ had again been countered by a logic he could not refute.
A further contribution to his reluctance was irrelevant to the commute to the Joliette Institution for Women or to his general disinterest in the project. He had recently fallen hopelessly in love, which, as far as he could decipher, was what had been going on with him in recent weeks. Not that he was certain. He decided that that’s what must be happening despite foreseeing his interest in the lady as ultimately futile. She lived across the border, in New Hampshire; she was nineteen years his junior; he was a cop and she was a breeder of horses with no interest in a life in the big city. Pretty clear that the man who married her would be marrying a stable, and he had no room for horses on the back porch of his tiny apartment. Yet his infatuation lingered and overruled his synapses a whole lot more on the drive out to the women’s penitentiary than did a nasty murder involving a young woman he’d sent up in the past.
Still, duty called.
iii
‘Seriously, Detective, what are you doing here?’ Abigail probed again.
‘Abi, how about I ask the questions, as has always been our routine, then you reply?’
‘Didn’t do me much good the last time, did it?’
He laughed. She did, too. It brought back memories. They’d had a good time during their weeks of interrogation together. They both knew that she’d been losing their joust and didn’t have a prayer, but she made him earn every tick on his ledger. Also, he never got everything he was after – principally, the money she stole. A victory for her.
‘How did you wind up here?’
‘You should know.’
‘I mean here, in Joliette.’
‘Beats me. I was told about the place, for sure. Communal living. Sounded all right. A step up. My name goes on a list. Fat chance, right? That chance came around. Quicker than expected. Figured I was chosen because I’m white collar, not considered a violent offender. Then I arrive and like, I expect a certain kind of inmate, right? What do I get? One old gal hacked up her daughter. A First Nations girl did in her old man. One kid shot up a corner store and this other one stabbed her best friend to death. Whoa, Nellie, was I wrong. I thought Temple was in for peddling drugs, something like that, turns out she hustled firearms for the mob. Give me a royal break – please. I have no clue why I was sent here. You’d think they’d want to keep non-violent girls like me away from these lumpy hard asses.’
Cinq-Mars sat back in his chair, crossed his arms over his chest, and considered her response.
‘Sent,’ he quoted her. ‘You didn’t apply?’
‘I applied. Encouraged to do so. So I did.’
He scanned the first pages of her file, searching for verification.
‘Seriously, though, Sergeant-Detective. Montreal Police Service, that’s still you, right? That hasn’t changed?’
‘Can’t say it has, no.’
‘We’re out in the boonies. I don’t know exactly where Joliette is on a map, but it’s not in Montreal. This is a federal penitentiary. Maybe the feds can’t investigate a homicide in their own institution, is that it? Doesn’t that leave the SQ? They handle murder in Quebec outside Montreal as I recall. Yeah, they do, everybody knows that. So how do you get to butt in? Émile, Detective, March Five, Sergeant-Detective, whatever I call you, if that’s the case my question stands. What are you doing here? Did you miss me that much?’
‘It’s a long story, Abigail. Maybe someday I’ll tell you. For now, it’s partly your fault, I’ll say that. The fact that I booked you in the past has something to do with being selected to interrogate you now. People think it gives me a head start.’
She let that notion sift through her, then asked, ‘How so?’
‘You’re the prime suspect and we have a history. The slow wheels of justice might speed up if I interview you about the murder.’
She stared back at him. The fun she’d enjoyed meeting him again dissipated. Her pleasure in combating an old foe with whom she had tangled in the past vanished. ‘Émile – and never mind that you never speed up – why am I the prime suspect? I didn’t kill Flo.’
‘I’ve given the file a glance, Abi, nothing more. It says you were in close proximity to the victim when she was discovered.’
‘Not only me. We were all in the vicinity.’
‘You were closer than others. You were doing clean-up duty with her after lunch.’
‘We finished cleaning up. Doi screamed when she found her. That makes her a whole lot closer than me. Anyway, what does closer have to do with the price of cocaine? If I killed Flo, wouldn’t I stay as far away as possible afterwards?’
‘Mmm,’ Cinq-Mars murmured, neither agreeing with her nor disputing the argument. ‘That’s what I’m here to find out.’
‘Come on, Detective. Seriously. I mean, it had to be one of us, but why start with the assumption it was me? I don’t like that. We got axe-wielders in here. Knife stabbers. Poisoners. As one of my housemates put it, I “cooks the books”, that’s all. Flo was the type to throw acid in the face of somebody she didn’t like, that’s what she was in for. In her words it was cool because her victim was asking for it. If you pushed her, she’d probably tell you her victim was begging to have acid thrown in her face. Acid, Émile. In the face. I should be the last person in here you should think about for strangling Flo with a wire. God. She was twice my size. Three times my size? How could I take her on? How could I be stupid enough to risk wrestling a woman who throws acid in people’s faces when she could take me out with a hand strapped behind her back while hopping on one leg?’
Good point. ‘It says here that you were the last person to have clothes delivered. Some think that that’s how the strangulation wire was smuggled in.’
‘Does everyone walk around naked? We all wear clothes.’
‘Yours arrived last.’
‘So? Somebody else stored a wire for a while.’
She had always defended herself well. Cinq-Mars appreciated that. In part, for the challenge. Abi was smart.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘I’ll consider everybody else, too.’
‘Good! But here I am, the prime suspect. Jesus, Émile. That makes my day.’
‘The investigators first on the scene fingered you. I’ll make up my own mind.’
‘Thank God for that.’ She slumped down in her chair as if depressed. Then straightened her posture again, growing comfortable with her new situation. ‘Actually, Detective, really, I’m glad you’re here. That it’s you and not the bastards who fingered me for no reason. You’re a smart cookie. Smart enough to figure out it wasn’t me. I empty bank accounts. I’m not the Boston Strangler.’
iv
On the cusp of his retirement, a new Chief of Police had rescued Émile Cinq-Mars from the purgatory of the suburbs and brought him back downtown. Previous administrations thought it comical to keep him away from any case deemed interesting, although he managed, while assigned to humdrum felonies, to solve a few murders and disrupt significant forays by organized crime. The new chief, Alexandre DesSaulniers, and Cinq-Mars remained on amicable terms
although at arm’s length, so that being called in for a meeting with the boss was a rarity and defied explanation. He expected a demotion while, as always, fearing a promotion more.
‘I’m assigning you to investigate a murder, Sergeant-Detective, that took place at the Joliette Institution for Women.’
‘That’s SQ, sir, if it’s in a prison, if not the Mounties.’
‘Normally. Not this time.’
‘Ah, I’m not following you, sir. I’m not in Homicide. How does this make a minute’s sense?’
‘When the murder took place, Sergeant-Detective, eight inmates were locked in their house-unit. That leaves us how many suspects?’
He assumed it was not a math question, so it must be a riddle. ‘One dead inmate leaves seven and however many guards were with them. Unless you also want to consider suicide, in which case it’s the full complement of prisoners, all eight, plus the guards.’
‘I’ve never heard of a suicide by strangulation, have you? Let’s rule that out. You’re right. Seven inmates and one guard only. Her name is Isaure Dabrezil and this is where things get complicated. She happens to be an SQ officer currently serving a year-long suspension. I don’t know what it was for and I hear that I should not expect to be told. Suspended without pay from the SQ, yet they arranged work for her as a prison guard. Part purgatory, while helping her survive her exile with an income.’
‘Sounds irregular.’
‘Doesn’t it? Now, suspended or not, she is still officially a member of the SQ.’
‘They’re not permitted to investigate their own for murder.’
‘Precisely. It’s either us or the Mounties, but since it’s a Federal Institution—’
‘They’re not eligible, either.’
‘It was the Mounties who advised the SQ to bug out. Otherwise, they might have gone ahead without us.’
‘Is the guard a suspect?’