by John Farrow
When Lagarde finally emerged and readied himself for the day, he lumbered down the porch to where Cinq-Mars was sitting and stopped there. Stared out at the torrent and at the puddles surrounding his Softail Harley. ‘A man needs a boat,’ he said.
‘Take a seat,’ Cinq-Mars directed him.
‘Naw. Starving. I’ll catch you later.’
‘Sorry. My fault if I made that sound like an invitation.’
Lagarde gave him a look, chose to shrug, then slumped into the Adirondack next to Cinq-Mars. The porch overhang kept them dry.
They gazed out at the day and dark sky.
‘Last night, in town,’ Cinq-Mars told him, ‘a corrections officer was murdered. Tell me what you know about it.’
The gang member accepted the news as serious. Ramifications would have an effect.
‘Less than nothing,’ he said. ‘Why? What should I know?’
‘On the radio this morning, she’s described as SQ,’ Cinq-Mars explained. ‘Temporary leave of absence or something like that. That could be heavy news.’
With his massive hands on his thighs the man looked over at the policeman. ‘I hope you don’t think of pinning this on me.’
‘I’ll give it some thought, Mr Lagarde.’
‘I’m Mr Lagarde now?’
‘Sorry. Paul. Look, I spend time thinking things through. It’s what I do. I don’t admit this too often, but sometimes, it’s like I forget I exist. I just sit, and I think. Or lie down and think. It’s my worst trait, some say. I’m not convinced, but I get that it bugs people. Paul, hear me out. The dead woman fought back. She fought back hard. She was fierce. I need to speak to your four pals who were in here the other day.’
‘Why?’ The biker pounded a fist against his own chest. ‘Take my word. No way they were involved.’
‘Maybe so. I can account for where you were last night at the relevant hour. Also, your face is unmarked. I don’t know where the other four were or what their faces look like this morning. Whoever killed the guard had to be big, and I think it took more than one person. Whoever did it last night is marked up this morning, that’s my take. Bruises, cuts. I want to see your friends today, before they heal up if they need time for that.’
‘Like I said if you weren’t listening, it was never them.’
‘Now, Paul, can you honestly say that you’ve never lied to an officer of the law before? In declaring innocence for yourself or your friends, you have to admit, you lack credibility.’ He smiled, and the biker did, too. Lagarde gave a little tuck of his head that emulated a tip of the cap. ‘Easy to prove, anyway,’ Cinq-Mars advised him. ‘No point arguing. Show me their pretty faces. Not an invitation. I have their names from the motel register. You don’t want me tracking them down. I’ll arrive in a mood.’
Lagarde nodded solemnly this time. He seemed relieved. He leaned onto the armrest to bring himself closer to Cinq-Mars. ‘They don’t live so far away. I’ll send them around. Unless they cut themselves shaving this morning – fat chance, they got beards – they’ll pass your inspection.’
‘Good. Let’s say two o’clock. Right here. Constable Dubroc of the SQ will be on hand if I’m not. All we want to do is look at their faces and hands. Check that they’re not hobbled. Confirm their IDs. Process of elimination is all.’
‘I follow.’ Lagarde pushed himself forward to prepare to disembark from the chair. ‘Cinq-Mars, get this. I’m not spilling any lima beans here. If anybody in the outer clubs—’
‘The satellites, you mean.’
‘That’s who I mean. If a cop or a prison guard goes down, that’s a bigger deal than somebody’s got a skin rash. You know? It ain’t no settling of accounts. Something like that? A cop? A guard? If it happened? Not saying it did. That ain’t no minor scratch. Takes expertise. Experience. Somebody has to sit and think about it first. To put that on the back of a local chapter – I don’t see how that happens. No, for that, somebody shows up from someplace else. Always it’s an outside job. Otherwise, the local chapter gets shook down to the ground and how can that be fair? That can’t be justified in the long run. Makes it too easy for you guys.’
Every word made sense.
Still. ‘Bring your boys in,’ Cinq-Mars insisted. ‘We’ll check for war wounds then send them on their way.’
‘That’s fair. I don’t mind fair.’
Cinq-Mars stood before the other man did. He gathered up his paper coffee cup and breakfast waste. He made it to the top of the stairs. Before stepping out into the rain, he turned and said, ‘One more thing.’
Paul Lagarde pushed himself to his feet in his black leather jacket and gang insignia and waited for whatever came next. He may have been chewing a lip but that was impossible to know for sure under his overgrown beard, although his jaw appeared to be moving.
‘That killing last night?’ Cinq-Mars pointed out. ‘Total lack of expertise.’ He touched his famously massive nose. Lagarde had remarked previously on the value of his own sniffer. ‘Keep yours to the ground,’ Cinq-Mars forewarned. ‘Nobody made it look like an outside pro rode in. Makes a thinking man wonder: Does somebody want you shaken down?’
Lagarde took a couple of heavy steps forward, his boots loud on the wood porch, his various chains tinkling. ‘Say this, Cinq-Mars. You got a wilder kind of imagination in your head.’
‘Do I? Ask yourself, how is it you showed up at a pen the same day a mini riot breaks out? A day later a prison guard is murdered. Coincidence? Or was it your call? Or were you sent? You know, sent by somebody who maybe wanted to implicate your Harley ass.’
‘Maybe you do think too much,’ Lagarde brought up. ‘I can see why it pisses people off. It might do you harm one day.’
‘Or you.’ Cinq-Mars wanted that last word. Sometimes it felt necessary.
QUINN
i
The hole was situated above ground. The chambers for solitary were on the same level as the general population. Yet the cells were isolated and the level of silence inside the sector was striking. Haunting for some. Difficult to bear for many. Air was piped in so gently it could not be detected; panicked prisoners often believed they were suffocating. The light was cold, sharp, and could be disorienting over endless hours. Émile Cinq-Mars was admitted to a skinny side room. The door locked behind him. Protocol demanded that he keep a buzzer in hand if he needed help or rescue. He wouldn’t. He put the thing in a pocket.
‘The outfit suits you,’ he said to the woman rising from her bunk. A grey jumpsuit. A prisoner in solitary loses the privilege to wear her own clothes.
‘Think of me as Cinderella after midnight,’ she remarked. ‘I’ll think of you as my wicked stepmother.’
‘Wrong again.’
The two came together in the center of the small room and embraced.
The hug lasted before they split apart.
Then they both sat on the steel bed with the skimpy mattress.
‘You’ve come way up in the world, I see,’ Cinq-Mars mused.
‘You should talk. You’re still slumming.’
‘Can you take this?’
‘You mean the décor? No problem. Sixteen hours more. I can sleep the time away. But, you know, this interruption is welcome.’
‘How’re you doing, Quinn?’ Not a casual question. He meant to probe into her state of affairs, her life lately. They hadn’t seen each other for some time.
Quinn Tanner had started out as a thief dedicated to a life of crime when, twenty years earlier, their paths crossed. She’d been seventeen at the time; Cinq-Mars, thirty. He could not arrest her back then as an adult for burglary and would have lost control of her case booking her as a juvenile. He played it by ear. Eventually, he rescued her from the mob; Quinn saved his life, also. Either or both might have been killed in a skirmish. Each pulled the other through.
She quit her criminal escapades after that close call, grew up, tried school for a while, then traveled, then worked, then did more schooling. A number of career possibilities we
re open to her, though none had the flare and attraction that robbery had held for her. She finally conceded to her penchant for raw adventure – of the type she pursued as a thief, and of the type introduced to her by Cinq-Mars when he was battling the mob. Intervening on her behalf, Cinq-Mars helped her to join the Montreal Police Service.
She was entering the Joliette Institution for Women under her old guise, as a chronic thief, when really Cinq-Mars had conscripted her with the acquiescence of the warden and the Montreal Police Service to be his eyes and ears on the inside. With the death of a guard the night before, the duty was abruptly more complex and dangerous than first thought. He was visiting her in solitary to consult but also to let her know how the matter had changed.
‘You’re pulling my leg,’ she said, stunned by the news.
‘Hardly.’
‘A guard’s dead, too?’
They sat silently under the solemnity of that news. Cinq-Mars suggested, ‘We can call it off.’
‘Sure. Send me back to traffic patrol.’
‘Is that where you’ve been keeping? Traffic?’
‘A bigger punishment than solitary, let me tell you.’
‘Official punishment?’
‘I might’ve, you know, pissed someone off, like royally. I’m not much of an underling it turns out.’
Cinq-Mars laughed. So did she.
Quinn Tanner arrived at Joliette with only the warden knowing the story. She purposefully contrived to tick off the guard on duty to draw her stint in solitary. Her way to both make her mark within the community and to initiate private and secret contact with Émile Cinq-Mars.
‘Wits’ end, boss. This is like Disneyland compared to traffic. Thrilled to get the call, not only because it was you. My boss was sure pissed. I liked that, too.’
He filled her in on his conversations. He had no conclusions to proffer except that Abigail was under scrutiny by a variety of forces: money talks, and she was sitting on a chatty Fort Knox. ‘Trust no one on anything but especially not on that. Biker or cop, warden or inmate, money warps light. I swear, money is like a planet weighing down the time-space continuum.’
He seemed strangely angry to her. Unlike him to be that way. ‘I know it’s your thing, Émile, but how about you spare me the cosmological analogies.’
‘Why do you think I brought you in here? Precisely so I could bend your ear with a few cosmological analogies.’
She put her dukes up to feign boxing him. They were both enjoying the other’s company.
‘I have a new girlfriend,’ he confided. ‘I think.’
‘Émile! About effing time! Oh God, don’t tell me she’s an inmate.’
‘Worse. She’s an American who’s nineteen years younger.’
‘Than me?’
‘No, stupid, than me.’
‘Which still makes her younger than me. Whoa, Émile, what are you doing?’
‘I don’t know. Not sure I have much choice. What about you, romance-wise? Last time we talked, it was another break-up.’
‘You’re hoping I’m off your list? I’m off your list. He’s a prosecutor who might be heading for private practice soon.’
‘A handsome devil?’
‘He’s so effing hot. Our children, if that happens – I’m running out of time – will be so freaking gorgeous, Émile, it’s insane. So, how do I get to live long enough to have kids?’
An ex-thief, Quinn was also the daughter of a reformed safe-cracker. She’d mingled with the nefarious and tangled with evil. She wouldn’t have to fake it too much within the prison population, although she’d be judged constantly and everyone would be suspicious. She and Émile concocted a history where she’d been a model prisoner briefly in Alberta, where no one in her group had ever resided, and before that she’d been clever enough to stay out of jail. So – an experienced crook, but with no hard time as a convict. That should cover her tracks. As well, her evident intelligence might draw Abigail towards her.
‘Abigail and a First Nations woman, Rozlynn, are close pals,’ Cinq-Mars let her know. ‘Try to get along with Rozlynn. Age-wise, you’re between the older and younger ones, maybe you can get along with both.’
‘Or neither. Should I pick a fight? For appearances?’
‘With care. Nothing to suggest in that regard. I’m going hard on everyone very soon to see who’s breakable. What I don’t get to observe is how they recover once they return to their bunks and hang out with the other inmates again. Keep an eye peeled on that. Who talks to who when they’re pissed off? Who retreats? Each of them has gone off the handle in their lives. That could happen again, so take care.’
‘Great. You’ll crank up violent personalities and leave me to be their punching-bag. I like this gig, Émile.’
‘I knew you would. Really, you can thank me later.’
‘Yeah. If there is a later.’
They laughed lightly, but each knew the situation was dicey and possibly dire.
COURTNEY
i
The women were marshaled into the larger kitchen off their dorm. Normally kept locked, the room came into use when preparing meals and for baking cakes, cookies, and pies. None of that was on tap which confused the inmates. Usually they had to pester a guard to have the kitchen opened; they were never herded into the space without explanation. Their best baker was in solitary. Four of their number – Abi, Jodi, Temple, and the new girl, Quinn – were in solitary. That left Malka and Doi, Courtney and Rozlynn, abandoned to the kitchen with nothing to cook.
They felt apprehensive.
The kitchen décor was white on white. Counters, walls, ceiling, even the dining table: white. Small black circles centered white floor tiles. The space might resemble any large home’s kitchen if the drawers, cupboards, and refrigerator were not shuttered with chains and padlocks.
Courtney pushed herself up onto the counter and sat there.
Surprised to have been left alone, the four waited without a guard. Their surprise redoubled when Jodi was escorted in, released early from solitary; moments later Temple and Abigail showed up in tandem. The house-unit was together again, although for an unknown reason sequestered in the kitchen.
The guards left them alone once more.
Temple and Abigail were soon gabby. Jodi, withdrawn.
Courtney wondered aloud if the new girl was also going to arrive, then explained to the three who’d been in solitary that Flo had been replaced.
‘We have a new bunkmate?’ Abigail repeated, her suspicion apparent.
‘Her name’s Quinn.’
‘Wait. She went straight to solitary? What the fuck?’
That had to be explained and the women took turns. ‘Quinn seemed OK.’
‘Settling in. But then—’
‘Somebody told her—’
‘That would be me,’ Doi admitted.
‘—that the last person in the bunk was dead. Killed.’
‘Know what she said?’ Courtney asked Temple.
‘I wasn’t here, remember,’ Temple said.
‘“I’m not sleeping in no dead girl’s shit.” That’s what she said.’
‘There’s nowhere else to sleep, right?’ Courtney pointed out.
‘She flat out refused,’ Doi explained, with a distinct note of appreciation. ‘The new guard sent her to solitary. What happens when she gets out, don’t ask me, but I’m betting she won’t sleep in Flo’s bed. She’s stubborn that one!’
‘Like she has a phobia,’ Malka said.
‘I’ll sleep in Flo’s bed,’ Abigail offered. ‘Puts me head-to-head with Roz. We can share our dreams. I don’t mind. This Quinn-chicka-filla thingee can have my bed.’
That, then, was settled. As she had not been involved in the brawl, the new inmate would be serving her full hours, they surmised. They heard the door unlocking. All eyes turned that way. The next arrival was not the new girl, but their inquisitor, Émile Cinq-Mars, with a pair of corrections officers in tow.
‘Can we bake you a c
ake, Detective-man?’ Abi exclaimed, glad to see him.
‘That won’t be necessary.’
‘You don’t like cake?’
He looked directly at her. ‘Not your conversation, Abi.’
She relented. Took a seat.
‘Good idea,’ Cinq-Mars said. ‘Why don’t you all sit?’
Temple and Rozlynn chose to lean. Others sat in chairs around the dining table with Courtney staying put on the countertop.
Abi put her hand up.
‘Don’t annoy me,’ Cinq-Mars warned her.
‘Legit question,’ she stated.
‘What?’
‘The ones who just got out of solo, after this talk or whatever it is, do we go back?’
‘You’re out of solitary,’ Cinq-Mars confirmed. ‘Up to you to keep it that way.’
The ladies were happy about that, although Jodi aired a note of skepticism. ‘So much for the good news. What’s the bad?’
They caught on and looked at the policeman. They noticed his reticence, his seriousness.
‘Something I need to tell you. A shock. Corrections Officer Isaure Dabrezil is dead. Like Flo, she was murdered.’
News of a guard’s death might be greeted with jubilation in some prisons, at worst, or at best with mere disinterest. Here, the shock and a palpable dread glued everyone in place. No one asked the obvious next question.
Cinq-Mars had requested to be the one to share the news, wanting to reconnoiter their reactions. He was somewhat taken aback by their response. Real or imagined, these women were living in fear. That would be his takeaway.
They waited for him to address their unspoken query.
‘It happened last night. She was killed in her home. The killer – or killers – has not been apprehended. If any of you has evidence or any suspicion, tell me now, or tell me later in private, as you wish.’
On the spot, no one volunteered.