by John Farrow
This second wave was either less loud or the first guy had deafened him. As the bikes went silent the riders slapped each other’s paws and beer appeared out of their saddlebags. One in their number lumbered over to the office to book rooms.
Not next door, Cinq-Mars was thinking. He might revive his thought about kicking testicles if that happened.
Like a hefty rock rolled down a hilltop into a pond, the bikers’ arrival produced a swift rippling effect. Others who’d been out on the porch returned indoors. Lights went off in at least three rooms, the curtains closed. Teens smoking between this property and the next chose to split. Cinq-Mars remained seated, and four of the five bikers, just one with a girlfriend, tramped past him after their rooms were acquired. The clerk apparently had a brain, sending them down to the far end of the building. In a mood, the policeman expected a confrontation, however mild; surprised, then, when the group proved courteous. One excused himself as he went around the seated man.
‘No problem,’ Cinq-Mars replied, and pulled his feet in.
‘That’s good shit,’ the lanky biker added, indicating the bottle and raising his own. He walked on.
Perhaps they were happy not to have been treated as vermin. Yet these few were not benign. Their colors declared them to be members of a criminal gang, a Hells Angels satellite. Their turf was outside Montreal; Cinq-Mars knew of their violent reputation.
Which signaled that their good manners might be fleeting.
The fifth, the guy with the outrageously loud Harley, sauntered by, his steps heavy and jangly on the porch wood. Chains on his boots. He nodded as he went by, yet something in the exchange alerted him. He stopped, came back. Leaned against the porch rail. It noticeably yielded to his weight. He put his beer bottle down, stuck one hand into the front of his jeans, and buried the other in an armpit. Overall, not a menacing pose, which belied his general look and attitude.
‘How’s it hanging?’ he inquired in French. He had a tiny mouth, virtually invisible under facial hair.
Cinq-Mars found the accent difficult to distinguish, new to his ear. ‘Not so bad. Nice evening.’
‘What I thought,’ the biker said.
‘What? That it’s a nice evening?’
‘That you’re doing good. You look it. You with that bottle.’ He took out the paw from under his belt to lift his beer and enjoy a thirsty swig. ‘From around here?’
‘What do you think? It’s a motel.’
‘Yeah. Me, too. On the move. You got a big nose, anybody ever tell you that?’
‘Nope. No one. I never noticed.’
‘That’s a lie and a half. I got a nose on me, too.’
Cinq-Mars looked more closely. If anything, it was diminutive for the scale of his visage. ‘Looks normal to me,’ he said.
‘Looks normal, you bet. But it don’t smell normal.’
‘Oh no? How’s that?’
‘I can smell a cop a mile away.’ The man was pleased that he got him to walk into that one. He added, ‘No offense.’
‘None taken,’ Cinq-Mars said right back, ‘given that you’re rather odiferous yourself.’
Cinq-Mars let his left arm fall to his side and found the neck of the Laphroaig bottle. He lifted it off the floor of the porch and shifted it to his right hand to be in his swinging arm and lowered it along his right side. The biker, after all, stood above him, and that beer bottle looked dangerous.
Whether or not the biker noticed or cared could not be discerned, but a chuckling emerged from deep within him, rising up through his chest to finally be emitted along with a smile.
‘Like I said, no offense.’
‘We both know it’s how I signed in,’ Cinq-Mars pointed out. Weary, he hadn’t been thinking, and had inscribed his name in the register the same way he signed in at the penitentiary. Sgt.-Det. É. Cinq-Mars. ‘Nothing to do with scent.’
The man chuckled some more. He seemed to genuinely be enjoying himself. ‘I’ll see you around,’ he said.
The old comeback, not if I see you first, was considered, then rejected. ‘Have a good evening.’
‘Always do, Sergeant-Detective. Count on that.’
‘You don’t mind,’ Cinq-Mars spoke up after the man had turned and walked several paces, which caused him to stop and return once more, ‘if I check out how you guys signed in.’
The biker seemed to think it over, perhaps casting his mind to the names he’d scribbled down. Having done his mental tally, he said, ‘Feel free, man. That ain’t no sweat off my balls.’
He should kick them in anyway, Cinq-Mars mused. Curious, he thought, how that was a thing with him this evening. Perhaps it stemmed from some reflex, or weariness of mind, or an intuitive response to danger beyond his knowing.
He might choose to sleep lightly, just in case.
ii
Before contemplating dinner, Cinq-Mars telephoned Sandra Lowndes in New Hampshire. Younger than him by nineteen years, the woman was the apple of his eye these days and he’d been alone in the orchard for some time. He’d fallen in love with the lady, instantly and perilously, which he recognized as a hopeless venture. He shouldn’t bother. Yet his customary discipline had deserted him around her.
‘Are you in your tiny monk’s cell?’ Sandra inquired, teasing. He had told her that that’s how he’d been living for years now, in a miniature Montreal apartment. If he considered his digs to be some kind of penance, he didn’t know what for. Unless it was for becoming a cop when he thought he’d be a priest. He’d revealed all that to her. With her voice on the phone in his ear, her eyes, her lips, her hair, her sensible nose – their children might stand a chance at normalcy – formed in his head. He’d called with nothing to say and now the news of the motel’s biker inhabitants and charm-free rooms gave him something to relate. Which led to the obvious question of what he was doing there.
‘I’m spending my working hours in prison.’ More news to relate. Sandra was eager to learn about the women in the Joliette Institution and Cinq-Mars obliged her curiosity. Grand to be talking to her.
‘Who do you think did it? Do you have a suspicion?’
Normally he’d curtail such talk. Not now. This was a woman for whom he’d taken a major tumble. He’d been out in the desert so long that an oasis – perhaps real, perhaps a mirage – exploded across his senses.
‘Way too soon to say. I have about half the suspects still to meet.’ That was too dull a comment to offer up to the woman who enchanted him, so he carried on. ‘It’s a David and Goliath thing, in reverse, in a way.’
‘No David. No Goliath,’ she pointed out. ‘They’re all women.’
‘A few, shall we say, are larger and more physically endowed than others. The dead woman, Florence, she was powerful. Thick. Very muscular and imposing. Tough and rough by all accounts.’
‘A Goliath.’
‘That’s it. So far, anyone who identifies as a David – small, frail in comparison to Flo – plays that card. The improbability of taking down a Goliath. But David had his slingshot, didn’t he? Florence’s killer used a strangulation wire. A wire around a neck can incapacitate a victim very quickly. If the victim tries only to defeat the wire, which is a typical reaction, if she doesn’t strike an effective blow or kick behind her back, she dies. That’s my only conclusion so far. Essentially, anyone could have done it.’
Time flew by. The long-distance charges would be something, probably eclipse the room fee. The two had met in New Hampshire when Cinq-Mars was taking time off to run an errand for his dad. His father raised horses and relied upon his son’s expert eye to select new ponies when demand eclipsed what his mares produced. He had stepped into a barn and seen her – had she been shoeing a horse or merely cleaning its hoof? He couldn’t recall, so taken was he by the image of her in a sliver of natural light through a notch in the barn’s wood. Nothing could remedy a sudden swerve off his axis.
She had looked back at him. Swiped the back of her hand across her cheek, muddying it. Which only ench
anted him more.
Sandra caught his awkwardness in the moment and sensed its provenance. She put him at ease, helping him land gently. They discussed horses. Including their purchase. While he was seeing her for the first time, he had evaluated her animals earlier and ably wheeled off a comprehensive summary of their merits and demerits. She disputed none of his opinions, only what value he assigned to each horse. A discussion, Cinq-Mars suggested, that might best be resolved over dinner. Sandra emitted then a ghost of a smile, which indicated that she knew what was going on but also that she did not mind. ‘I could eat,’ she said.
The subject of food came up again over the telephone. Both admitted to being famished; they’d need to break off for dinner, and finally said goodnight. Cinq-Mars walked down the road to a restaurant he’d noticed, his spirits buoyed, his pulse quick. He didn’t know how a relationship with Sandra could ever evolve but at the same time he had no idea how it could not. Even the realization that he had selected the same restaurant as the bikers he’d met earlier failed to undercut his upbeat mood.
He was falling in love.
Fallen, he corrected himself, over dessert.
Once he got the proper tense in his head, he knew what he should do.
ISAURE
i
The warden’s secretary took the morning off, giving Émile Cinq-Mars the opportunity to use her office to interview Corrections Officer Isaure Dabrezil. Arriving, the woman’s walk was heavy, augmented by her large steel-toed work boots, although she countermanded that abrasive presence with a full, bright smile upon entering the room. The boots were a choice, not part of any uniform, for as the inmates at Joliette wore street clothes, most guards did too. At a glance, they were indistinguishable. The guards, though, always chose jeans or pants, never skirts or dresses. The Haitian woman held out her hand across the desk and Cinq-Mars returned a gentle smile of his own. He gave her muscular mitt a solid shake.
‘Have a seat. How’s everything going?’ he asked.
‘Good. How goes it with you, Sergeant-Detective Cinq-Mars?’
He did not reply, not being inclined to answer questions, even though his mood this morning was buoyant. He had wanted to interview Isaure Dabrezil in a different room than the one where he sequestered inmates. The interrogation room’s atmosphere felt automatically adversarial, judgmental, and by virtue of her job, the corrections officer deserved differential treatment. He wanted her to feel relaxed, despite an intention to challenge her.
‘I’m glad we could pull you away from your duties, Officer Dabrezil. It took some finagling, as I found out.’
‘Visitors’ Day today. Inmates, we move back and forth. Busy-busy. Not like in a regular girl-jail, these ladies, they have their privileges. They need time to do their make-up, you know, fix their hair. Look tidy. They do it, then at the last minute go look in the mirror again. A big to-do.’
‘Yes, if loved ones are showing up, it must be a big to-do.’
‘A bigger to-do when they don’t show up. Then comes the sadness, you know. Sometimes trouble follows after that. The lashing out. Things have turned that way.’
Cinq-Mars took that in. He spoke thoughtfully. ‘Not hard to see how that could damage an inmate’s morale. In your group, we’ve had a murder. How are your ladies coping in the aftermath? I can’t imagine it’s business as usual.’
‘Oh, on edge, on edge,’ Dabrezil confirmed. ‘Nasty work. I don’t think anyone was so sorry to see Flo go, not deep in their heart, but the way it happened is bad. Under their noses like that, a murder, and by who? Difficult for everybody. Then comes the investigation, you know, everybody questioned, that makes them tense, too. Nobody knows who done it, for sure everybody’s jittery.’
‘Is it difficult for you?’
‘Sorry?’
Corrections Officer Isaure Dabrezil was a thick-shouldered woman, broad through the hips and thighs, with a ponderous bosom. If a female prisoner guard was needed in a tough prison she’d be handpicked first. Cinq-Mars pegged her to be equally capable among rough men. Few would try anything. He had been a breeder and trainer of horses, and within that field was known for feats of natural strength, but he wouldn’t want to tangle with her.
‘The murder occurred under your nose, Officer Dabrezil.’
‘Please, call me Isaure.’
He did so, and said, ‘Keeping the peace is your responsibility. A murder violates the trust the institution has placed in you.’
She crossed her heavy arms, as a way to fortify an implicit barrier between them.
‘Who can be everywhere at once? Tell me that. It’s obvious the killer picked her spot when I was someplace else. Nothing I could do. No one knew it was happening. Even when it was over no one knew. That came later.’
‘We presume so. In any case, tell me about the day’s events. Any clues or suspicions, now would be the time to share.’
The woman sighed and mulled it over. ‘Clues, I have none. Florence was a big rough woman, her. Tough as nails. Do you know why she was inside? Throws acid straight in a person’s face. She looks another woman in the eye then throws acid. That’s a mean one, in her heart, who does something like that. That’s Flo. Not your average alley cat. I think you have to be almost crazy to take on Flo. Almost fearless, I would say. You make a mistake, it goes the other way.’
‘The other way?’
‘Flo would kill you if you tried killing her but failed.’
‘I understand. No one wanted to mess with Florence.’
‘Who would dare? For me, that’s the one question. The bigger women might stand a chance, so that would be Temple, of course, or Malka. Doi is like a housewife, but she’s not small, and we know what she did to her own daughter. She can fool anybody with that way she has, like a little old housewife. Like I said, Temple is strong enough. Also, she comes from a hard background. Malka is big, not necessarily so strong. It’s not like she worked at hard labor in her life. She was a mayor in her town, she’d didn’t mix concrete, you know. Still, big enough. And like I said, Doi. Now, if you’re looking at crazy enough, that would be the kids, Jodi and Courtney. But they’re so small. Hard to imagine. They were with me most of the time anyway. Not all the time. It’s possible it’s them. It’s possible it’s anybody.’
‘What about Abigail?’
‘That’s who the police think, isn’t it? I mean the police who came here first. I don’t see it in her personality, do you? I don’t see her strong enough neither.’
‘That leaves only one woman you haven’t mentioned.’
‘I know. The best to last.’
‘Best?’
‘My best guess. Only a guess. Who knows what goes on in her head. Rozlynn, I’m talking about. She murdered her dad. She could do anything. If I was marking the odds, it’s her. But I don’t know why I say that. I could be dead wrong.’
Cinq-Mars leaned to one side in his chair. The backrest yielded to him. He intertwined his fingers, then separated his hands and with the thumb and forefinger of one outlined his lower lip repeatedly. An attitude of concentration. He looked across at Isaure Dabrezil and kept his gaze on her a while, then asked, ‘How did you get along with the dead woman?’
The officer crossed her thick arms again, erecting that barrier.
‘Me? You mean with Flo? Nobody got along with Flo.’
‘No reason why you should. She was a prisoner. You were her principal guard during the day. Still, you packed her off to solitary a few times. You had those interactions.’
Isaure Dabrezil raised her eyebrows – they jerked upward suddenly, scrunching her brow and seemingly pushing back her hairline, as if she’d suddenly been struck by a bolt of insight as swift and as bright as lightning. ‘You’re thinking of me for this? Because don’t. Just because I do my job that don’t mean nothing. I didn’t have it in for Flo.’
‘She gave you a hard time?’
‘Me and most of the universe, so what? Why would I strangle her with a wire when any day I want I can
stick her back in solitary? It’s not hard to get her out of my sight.’
‘Is that why you put her there? To make her disappear?’
‘For her violence, I put her there. What she deserved. For her threats, you know. Refusing to cooperate, to get along, to stay calm. She could be one huge aggravation on a person but I can deal with that. She pissed me off, but I never felt the need to terminate her existence. That’s going too far. That would not be very Christian of me. One thing I am, it’s Christian. I go by that.’
‘Good. We have that in common.’
The remark brought her up short again, only this time her brow unfurled, and her eyes squinted as if she’d lost her light.
‘Why did you put her in solitary, Officer Dabrezil?’
‘Misbehavior.’
‘Specifically, I mean.’
She mentioned that Flo would insult her. Isaure would laugh her off and advise her to mind her tongue. Then the woman would insult her race, and Isaure would demand that she take that back, but Flo would use the foulest language to insult the color of her skin. Isaure deposited her in solitary. Freed, Flo would then compliment her race, as if she’d learned her lesson. ‘Black is so beautiful, it’s gorgeous! You, too, Isaure!’ She’d go on like that and be irritating. Isaure could not put her away for antics like that. Then the next day, she’d insult her island.
‘“You don’t talk to me about Haiti like that,” I’d tell her.’
But she did anyway, her tongue becoming increasingly vicious. ‘Black is beautiful, but Haiti is dog shit piled on—’
Another round of solitary.
‘On we go that way. Then the last time, that was different.’
ii
‘Isaure! Help me wring the neck of this here chicken.’
‘That bird already dead, Flo.’
‘Aw, but I need the practice, Dabby. Don’t you do this with your Haiti Voodoo shit? Wring chickens’ necks? You castrate goats, right? Make a stew of cockroaches and rat cocks.’