by John Farrow
‘Don’t you get into nothing with me, Florence, not today.’
‘Anytime you’re mad at me, you call me Florence. Not Flo. You should call me Florence some time when you’re not mad, just to confuse me.’
‘You talk that crazy talk again. That gets you in big trouble.’
‘You think? I’m making sense to me. All that matters.’
Suspicious that something was brewing, C.O. Dabrezil walked away, hoping her nemesis would chill.
Flo continued to prepare chickens for the evening meal.
iii
‘Why do you think she did that?’ Cinq-Mars asked.
‘Coated the inside of chicken breasts with enough cayenne pepper to kill a grizzly bear. She did it because she was Flo. Understand me. She hated people. She wanted to show it.’
‘Mmm. Almost as though she wanted people to hate her. Strange behavior.’
‘I think so. You know what happened. More solitary.’
Cinq-Mars wrote down a few notes. Then changed the subject.
‘Do you mind detailing for me, Isaure, your history in the Sûreté du Québec leading to your suspension?’
The woman stared back at him, not hard, and in a way that seemed vacant, as though she was suddenly absent from herself. Then she answered, ‘I mind.’
‘Why’s that?’
She took her time before answering. ‘It’s a condition of my employment.’
‘With the penitentiary?’
‘With the SQ.’
‘Why is that? Forgive me, but it sounds strange.’
‘Not for the SQ. They don’t like to be embarrassed.’
‘You’re saying that if I learned why you are under suspension from your force, the force would be embarrassed.’
‘Humiliated, frankly.’
‘So you’ve been told to keep quiet.’
‘Quiet, I’m worth something. Talk, it’s good riddance to me.’
Cinq-Mars paused to study her. She was resolute in her body language, argumentative, defiant. ‘Did you commit a crime?’ he asked.
‘Some say.’
‘What do you say?’
‘I did the right thing.’
‘Were you charged with a crime? Bear in mind, if it’s a crime, that’s something I can find out. It’s not confidential.’
‘Not a crime, no,’ she stipulated. ‘So it is confidential.’
‘They suspended you for cause. For what reason? They didn’t say it was for doing the right thing.’
‘They called it insubordination. I’ll say no more.’
An insubordination that, if revealed to the public, might embarrass the provincial police. Yeah, he could see that.
‘Do you know why I was chosen for this investigation?’ Cinq-Mars asked.
‘Because of me?’
‘Yep. The SQ can’t investigate. Potentially, you’re a suspect, and you’re one of their own.’
‘Seriously, you don’t think I’m a suspect. You can’t!’
‘Imagine, if you’re guilty, how embarrassed the SQ will be then. They’ll be humiliated.’
She wasn’t sure if he was mocking her or not. Then decided not. ‘Let’s make sure that never happens. I do not want to embarrass my department.’
Now he wasn’t sure if she was mocking him. ‘First,’ he said, ‘tell me, as the others have, or they will if they haven’t had the chance to do so yet, that you didn’t kill Flo.’
‘I didn’t kill Flo.’
‘Where were you—’
‘I was on the other side of the room.’
‘The farthest away. That’s true. When Doi screamed. Before that—’
‘I didn’t move around much,’ Isaure Dabrezil claimed.
‘Ever go to the bathroom?’
She thought about it.
‘Remember,’ Cinq-Mars said, ‘seven surviving witnesses are recording where everyone was standing for me.’
‘Every one of them a criminal.’
‘Except you.’
‘Let’s hope.’
‘The bathroom?’
‘I sure was peeing a lot that day. One of those things. I went in a few times. I wanted it to look like I was checking things out, to make sure no one was goofing off in there. No one was. But really I was pissing a lot.’
‘Sorry to be personal, but can you define “a lot” for me?’
‘Four times. Maybe one more.’
‘When you were in the toilet room, did you look in the other stalls? Were you in there alone?’
She had to think some more. ‘I kind of glanced in them the first time. The second time, when I was washing my hands, I could see in the mirror they were empty. After that, don’t remember. Lost interest maybe. I do not recall doing a serious check. Sue me.’
Cinq-Mars wrote down a note, then entwined his fingers on the secretary’s desktop. He gazed at that woman’s family photos and did a reconnaissance check on the desk clutter. He wasn’t being judgmental, as his desk at work habitually succumbed to chaos. Once a year, not more often, he’d clean up.
Officer Dabrezil was waiting for him to speak, and finally he obliged. ‘Please understand, Isaure, that I’m hoping you will be a critical component of my investigation.’
‘You mean as a suspect?’
‘That, too, but only if you’re guilty. Otherwise, I was thinking along the lines of being kept informed on how the group behaves. Whatever comes up that’s within your purview. We are on the same side of the law, are we not?’
‘Let’s hope. But sure, I’ll help. Even if I am a suspect.’ She was beginning to feel that she wasn’t. ‘In that case, it’s better to see that the real killer is caught, no?’
‘That makes sense. Anything and everything that comes up, Officer, I’d appreciate timely reports. Including minutia. It doesn’t matter if your information seems to be irrelevant. You never know what will help me paint the bigger picture.’
‘Fine with me. Like you say, we’re on the same side.’
‘Let’s hope,’ Cinq-Mars said, echoing her own words back to her.
iv
After Isaure Dabrezil’s departure, Cinq-Mars crossed the floor and knocked on the warden’s open office door. He was invited in. She was a handsome woman of sixty or so, with greying hair worn in a bob, dark-rimmed glasses that perhaps made her look too severe for her expressive eyes. He presented Warden Agathe Paquet with a plan that had ticked his interest during his talk with Dabrezil – one he kept from the guard – and he was well pleased that the warden acquiesced. Of course, she could say one thing and do another, he was not naive about such behavior, yet after this opening volley he felt optimistic.
His plan would also need to pass muster with the Chief of Police. Undoubtedly the more difficult sell, given that he’d already ordered up a motel room and a per diem. He’d be adding to the expenditures of his investigation without a resolution, or even progress, in sight.
Still. Worth a shot. And it might be fun.
He then departed the building, a confounding labyrinth of locked doors and different guards with separate keys and code words. No one person, including guards, had the capacity to exit the building on his or her own. That process served as an additional protective layer, so that merely seizing a guard or her keys provided no one with a way out. As well, every guard walked with a warning device in her palm. A press of the thumb: A thunderous, instant response.
Outside the penitentiary, Cinq-Mars immediately wanted back in. He returned to speak to the people who had just opened the outer door for him.
‘There are bikers in the parking lot – did they just leave?’
‘Yeah. Visitors’ Day. They were visiting.’
‘Who, specifically, were they visiting?’
‘I can find out for you.’
‘Please do.’
He waited. The woman inscribed names off a ledger. Then she returned.
‘Did they get past the spectrometry machine and the sniffer dogs?’
‘They didn’t
have to, sir. We don’t allow them direct contact with inmates. They converse through a glass shield. We confiscate their metal for the visit, of course. Guns. Knives. Weapons.’
‘They don’t have to pass the tests, but do they go through them anyway?’
‘They do.’ She shrugged. ‘They’re bikers, they failed the mass spectrometry. What else is new? They handled drugs in the recent past. The dogs indicated they had none on their person. The metal detectors went off, of course, they always do with bikers, but once we got the last of their rings and chains off them, they were admitted.’
The names of the inmates being visited were unknown to Cinq-Mars, all French. None from among his murder suspects.
‘Tell me, inmates in each house-unit have contact with all the other prisoners, correct?’
‘Sure. In the yard. The library. The workshop. The gym. Chapel. Therapy. Everybody runs into everybody else sooner or later.’
When he returned outside, the bikers were gone. He knew where to find them if he wanted to, unless they’d checked out of his motel in the morning. He didn’t really want to find them.
Lunch was next. He drove away from the prison, across a rural landscape back into town.
MALKA
i
‘You won’t give away my secret, will you?’ Malka urged Cinq-Mars upon arriving for her interview, mid-afternoon. ‘Keeps me alive in here.’
On the spot, he determined the remark to be a ploy to control the conversation. He knew better than to bite. Still, he was intrigued by the notion that her life was bound by a secret to which he unknowingly had access. Her file did not allude to any big secret, and yet asking her to explain it to him would weaken his position. He postponed falling for her game. The maintenance of authority was critical to any endeavor to unmask and hollow out an individual.
If one inmate among the few he’d spoken to wore a mask, it was Malka Hayer.
Her look differed from the others. She arrived in a tailored suit, as if on her way to a consultation with her accountant. She’d been a politician – a minor one; a large coy swimming in a municipal wading pool, was Cinq-Mars’s evaluation – and she appeared not to have relinquished the privileges of her office. He guessed that she wanted his vote and was willing to pay for it. Whatever it might cost.
‘Before we go there,’ Cinq-Mars countered, ‘remind me, what chore were you doing when, or just before, Florence was killed?’
‘Oh my goodness,’ Malka demurred. She placed the tips of the fingers of her right hand between buttons on her blouse and caressed the skin between her breasts. ‘The way you say that. Killed, that word, the way it comes off your lips, so naturally. To think of Florence – I mean, she was an odd creature, we all know that, she scared the living daylights out of me – but to think of her face-down in the john – I won’t use that stall now, I just won’t – strangled! Killed! Murdered! This is what my life has come to, living among people who talk about murder with no more concern about it than if they were reading the funny papers on a Sunday afternoon.’
Quite the speech. He was willing to give her a lengthy measure of rope, to see what she might do with it. ‘Living among criminals is a strain on you.’
‘It is! I see that you appreciate my situation, Detective. I see that. Thank you. It’s true what they say I did, I killed my husband. You’ve read my file. But it also tells you there that I did not inflict the greatest agony possible on the man I deeply loved and cherished.’
Her file told him the story. Malka had killed her husband because he was dying horribly. A mercy killing. The courts were not being lenient in such circumstances. A move afoot to revamp the law had not come through soon enough to help her, although she was counting on a change of law and heart to secure a release long before the full length of her sentence expired.
Cinq-Mars latched on to her secret then. ‘To other inmates, you say you murdered your husband … not out of mercy? What do you say? Revenge, blind hatred, a lover’s quarrel? A crime of passion? Self-defense? What do you tell your housemates?’
‘Not much. Only that he died slowly, thanks to me, and deserved it ten times over. In truth, the poor dear man did not deserve to suffer. That’s what I alleviated, and the courts know it, the police know it, only I don’t say that in here. My Roy pleaded with me over months to end his life. Love made me a killer, Sergeant-Detective. I’d rather people within these walls never hear that truth. To them, I’m as malicious as they come. It’s best if they think that way. Self-preservation, I call it. If they think I’m just a nice old lady I’m in deeper trouble than I can handle.’
He caught on to the scheme. The sort of ruse that transpired in a jailhouse. The meek pretended to be vicious; the frail, manic. On the other hand, Malka was making a case that, not being a willful killer, except as an act of mercy, she should not be considered for the murder that occurred within her prison family. That opinion might be valid except for the overriding fact that one of eight women killed Florence and she was one of those suspects. No one escaped scrutiny.
‘In case you’ve forgotten the question, what chore occupied your time when, or just before, Florence was killed?’
‘A woman’s work is never done, Sergeant-Detective! Are you aware? I was doing laundry. Not the general laundry, which is a chore. Temple and I were doing our personal clothes. Just us.’
Cinq-Mars was confused. He misheard her words. ‘Justice?’ he asked.
She looked curiously back at him. Of course, he was French. Pronunciations could be missed. ‘Just us,’ she repeated, more slowly. ‘Temple and me, our clothes only.’
Cinq-Mars pushed his pad of foolscap across the table and asked her to do what others had done. Where had everyone been at the moment when Doi cried out? Where when Isaure Dabrezil ordered everyone stationary? Where had she been, and where were the others, before all that? Malka’s drawing skills were the best of the bunch and the information close to what others recalled. No one drastically contradicted anyone else. He could not believe that they were all in cahoots with the murderer, but they could be pooling their resources with respect to these maps. Which raised the specter that they all might know who committed the crime, and together worked to obscure the truth. Cinq-Mars stood up to stretch while Malka labored over her diagrams, and he realized then that he had neglected to ask Officer Dabrezil to do this simple exercise. And Doi. He’d have to get a map from Doi as well.
Time for that in the days ahead.
ii
Group laundry sanctioned a chaos of sheets and towels to be cleaned, but not personal items. Lumping everyone’s general laundry in together created its own quagmire to sort through and it wasn’t done. Instead, personal clothing was undertaken by two inmates at a time. Never individually, never more than two. Given scheduling requirements and restrictions, over time the same pairs did the job together. Temple and Malka, then, were doing their personal laundry the day Florence was strangled.
Most of the time, the task meant observing the washer turn around and around, then spin, then do the same with the dryer. The most boring of duties within an environment that was interminably boring made the task a grind. Minutes barely ticked by. Malka, the small-town, small-time socialite and politician, and Temple, a black woman mixed up with gangs who smuggled both light and heavy weapons, grated on each other’s nerves.
‘Gotta go pee,’ Temple said.
‘Break out the champagne,’ Malka shot back, before she could censor her own tongue.
Temple rose quickly to any challenge. ‘What’s your beef?’
‘I don’t have one. Why should I?’
‘It bothers you if I piss in a hole?’
‘A simple observation, that’s all. You pee often.’ She realized that she ought to diffuse the situation. Temple was not a woman anyone wanted to fight. ‘It’s the washer, isn’t it? I think so. All that water sloshing around. Makes a girl want to pee.’
‘You want I should piss in your ear?’
‘Temple, I’m sorry
, there’s no need for hostility. I take it right back. I promise. I won’t notice again how many times you rush off to the can.’
‘You want to keep track of something like that?’ Temple asked. ‘Do you? You’ll wake up one morning, your life is the shits. It’s one thing when you don’t want to live, everybody feels that way sometimes. A different thing, when you’re wishing with all your heart and with all your wretched soul, if you still have one, that you never was born. You’re wishing your own mommy had such a powerful orgasm when she was doing it in some backseat of some Pontiac in some back alley somewhere that she dropped dead before you got conceived. That’s what I say anyhow.’
‘Probably I agree with you.’ Malka went along with her. She hated the reference to her mother, yet her death-wish was not strong enough to give voice to her objection. Backing down helped moderate their dispute, although Temple continued to burn as she trundled off to the washroom to relieve herself, for neither the first nor the last time that morning.
Each time she returned, Malka said, ‘Oh hell, me, too,’ and walked across the common room to the washroom herself.
‘You mocking me?’ Temple asked after her third trip.
‘I don’t get it either,’ Malka replied.
Temple mulled that over before asking what she meant.
‘I have to go, too, today. Often. I don’t get it.’
‘Like you said, maybe it’s the sloshing around.’
They made peace that way, and sorted through their things, separating shirts and undergarments. They jerked to attention when Doi let out her high-pitched scream.
‘Jesus!’ Malka exclaimed, spinning around for a look.
‘Trouble,’ Temple said. She was calm. She was expectant. The voice of experience. ‘What the hell did Flo do now?’ Which was interesting, Malka would think later, because who knew at that moment Flo was central to the matter? It wasn’t Flo in full scream. She wasn’t anywhere in sight.
iii