Shadow of Betrayal

by Brett Battles

  “Come on.”

  He led them around the corner, and over to the door. Leaning forward, he listened again to see if he could hear anyone moving around. Still nothing. Then why was it open? Couldn’t have been the cops. Quinn had been one himself before Durrie had recruited him to be a cleaner. He knew the training, and the precautions taken at crime scenes. Leaving doors open just wasn’t done.

  He moved his head a few inches so he could look at the door itself. It had been swung open about halfway. The darkness made it hard to see anything for sure, but there were no obvious marks near the lock that would have indicated someone had broken in.

  A friend with a spare key? A killer who picked up a key on his way out? Or maybe had one all along? A neighbor kid who did the yard work and knew where an emergency key was hidden? It was human nature, after all, to be drawn to the pain and the horror life sometimes served up.

  But at the moment, it didn’t matter who had left the door open. The question was, was anyone still inside?

  Quinn looked back at Orlando.

  “Anything?” she mouthed.

  He shook his head, then indicated he was going in and wanted her to cover him. Once Orlando gave him a nod, Quinn leaned toward his mic and whispered, “We’re going in.”

  “Copy that,” Nate said over the receiver.

  Quinn put both hands on his gun, and aimed it like he’d been trained to do in dangerous situations as a rookie police cadet back in Phoenix. Behind him, he could sense Orlando moving into position.

  He silently counted to three, then stepped around the edge of the building and into the open doorway, his gun moving left, right, down, up, looking for targets. But the room was empty.

  It was a kitchen, lived in but neat. The semidarkness of the evening was cut only by the light filtering back from the lamps on the street, turning the interior into shades of gray Everything one would expect to be there was—refrigerator, dishwasher, sink. On the counter were several cookbooks, a toaster, a ceramic jar full of utensils, and a blender, all ready and waiting. And to the left, a small table was set against the wall wide enough only for one chair per each of the three remaining sides. One for Mrs. Dupuis and one for her husband, Quinn guessed. And the non-matching third chair that stuck out into the room? That had to be for the recently returned daughter.

  The only thing that was unusual was the stand-alone stovetop range. It had been pulled away from the wall, and turned at an angle so someone could get behind it. One of the first places checked for the gas leak, Quinn guessed.

  All in all, it could have been the kitchen of the house Quinn grew up in. All the similarities were there. Even the layout was basically the same. He stepped over the threshold, looking to his immediate left, then moved the door enough so he could look behind it and make sure no one was there.

  “Clear,” he mouthed to Orlando.

  He continued across the kitchen, and stopped just shy of the doorway that led into the rest of the house. There was a solitary creak behind him as Orlando stepped inside.

  “Everything all right?” Nate asked.

  “Fine,” Quinn whispered.

  On the other side of the doorway was the dining room. An oval dining table surrounded by five chairs filled half the space. The chairs were all perfect matches to the orphan chair in the kitchen. Along the wall to Quinn’s right was a wooden buffet cabinet. The bottom portion had two doors that would swing open to access whatever was stored inside. On the hutch above were three shelves. Instead of plates or other serving dishes, there were dozens of framed photos.

  Enough light came in through the window for Quinn to make out the faces. A mixture of shots, but all had at least one of four people in them. The older man and woman had to be Martin and Rose Dupuis. That meant one of the younger women was their daughter, Emily. The third woman looked a few years younger than Emily, but bore a striking resemblance to the others.

  The missing daughter.

  “What’s that?” Orlando whispered.

  Quinn looked at her. She was in the doorway, but her eyes were focused on a point at the far end of the room, past where he was standing. So he turned to see what had caught her attention.

  There was an item on the floor just a few feet beyond the dining room, in what Quinn guessed was the living room. It was a box, about the size law firms use to put files in. It was in the middle of the floor, definitely out of place. Quinn could see several items sticking out of the top—thin, flat, rectangular shapes.

  He looked back at the hutch, scanning the pictures, concentrating on the placement of the frames instead of the pictures themselves. On the pattern.

  He found what he was looking for toward the right side on the second shelf. An obvious open spot that Quinn imagined the Dupuises would have never created. There was another spot, too, on the shelf above toward the center.

  What the hell? Quinn thought.

  He eased into the living room, his eyes taking in everything before he approached the box.

  As he’d guessed, the items sticking out were pictures. But there were more than just two. Seven more by his quick count. But that wasn’t all. There was a small wooden box, a stuffed bear, an old book, and what looked like a scarf or maybe a sweater under the pictures.

  Quinn was leaning down to pick up one of the pictures when Nate’s voice cut through the silence. “Is that one of you?”

  “What?” Quinn asked.

  “Did one of you come outside?”

  “No. We’re both in the house.”

  “Somebody just crossed the front lawn,” Nate said, his voice rushed. “I think he came from around the side of the house. My angle’s bad here, I didn’t notice him until he was already a few feet into the yard.”

  Quinn shot a glance at Orlando, then pointed toward the back door. He made a gesture for Orlando to go out and around to the left. With a single nod, she ran through the kitchen, Quinn only steps behind her.

  “He’s getting in a car parked out front,” Nate said. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Follow him,” Quinn said as he exited the house.

  Instead of going to the left with Orlando, he went right. At the back corner of the house, he slowed only enough to take the turn, almost slipping on the grass. The home next door with the blaring TV was silent now. The only thing Quinn could hear was the pounding of his own footsteps as he ran along the side yard.

  “He’s got it started,” Nate said.

  “Where’s he parked?” Quinn asked.

  “Other side of the street. Almost directly across.”

  Quinn reached the street side of the house a second before Orlando did. On the opposite side of the road a car was pulling out in a hurry. It was a small two-door sedan.

  Quinn increased his speed as he weaved between two parked cars on the near side of the street, then raced across the asphalt toward the departing vehicle. He was able to come within a foot of the driver’s side door before the car sped away. But it had been enough.

  Back across the street, Nate made a quick U-turn from where he was parked, and took off in pursuit.

  “Dammit,” Orlando said as she joined Quinn. “Did you get a look at him?”

  “Find us a ride,” Quinn said. “But be discreet. I’m sure we’ve made more than enough noise to draw some attention.” He looked down the street to their left as the two cars disappeared around a corner. “Meet me down there at the end of the block in five minutes.”

  “Okay,” Orlando said. She turned, and soon disappeared in the shadows.

  Quinn spent two of the allotted five minutes finding a dark spot, then remained still, hoping to pick up on anyone who might be paying unnecessary attention to the Dupuis house. He saw the curtain of one window about five homes down on the other side of the street fall closed. Whoever had been holding it open seemed to have lost interest.

  The street felt calm again, like it had returned to its normal evening self. He waited an extra minute just to be sure, then slipped from his hiding spo
t and made his way back into the Dupuis house.

  In the dining room, he looked at the pictures again. The most recent one was a five-by-seven shot of the two daughters. Emily’s smile seemed put on, but the one on the face of her younger sister seemed genuine.

  Quinn grabbed the picture and started to turn toward the exit. But he didn’t even make it a step before he stopped himself and looked back at the box still sitting on the floor of the living room.

  He thought about it for less than a second, then walked over and grabbed it, adding the photo he’d just taken to the top. The photo of Emily and her sister—the same woman, not a man, who had been behind the wheel of the car Nate was now following.

  CHAPTER

  14

  HER PARENTS WERE DEAD.

  Her sister was dead.

  And the only person who could be blamed for it was Marion herself. That’s what she believed. How could there be any other answer?

  She had taken Iris on the train north from Penn Station back to Marion’s hometown of Montreal. She had used the false passports her friend in Côte d’Ivoire had given her when she purchased the tickets. She hoped it was enough to fool whoever was looking for her.

  While the child was asleep, Marion would stare out the window, not sure what she was going to do, but knowing if anyone could help her, it would be her parents.

  Sure, her sister was living back at home, and bringing a child into the house wasn’t going to do a lot to help Emily’s recovery. The divorce Emily had gone through had been wrenching. Marion couldn’t imagine what it must have felt like when her sister found out her husband, who never wanted to have children, was having an affair with someone who was now pregnant. Of course, that had been over a year ago. The baby was born by now.

  Marion knew her sister well. She knew Emily might not say anything, but she would feel humiliated, and think of herself as a freshly minted spinster too old to have children. It wasn’t true, but that’s the way Emily’s mind worked. Poetic and tragic.

  But Marion couldn’t worry about her sister’s feelings anymore. She’d been living with Emily’s drama since the day she was born. It was time to stop getting pulled into it. The reason was stretched out in the seat next to her, not asleep at that moment, but content. Iris.

  They arrived in her hometown that evening, then grabbed a taxi at the station. The cabbie took a second look at her and Iris, but said nothing.

  Iris seemed very interested in the world outside the taxi as they drove through the streets. The smile on the child’s face, the smile that was almost always there, seemed a fraction broader. Marion took this as a good sign.

  As they turned onto the street where her parents lived, the anxiousness Marion had been feeling for so long began to subside. Soon she would be in the home she grew up in, eating her mother’s food, sleeping in the room that had been hers, safe in the cocoon of family. But as they neared the house, she realized something wasn’t right.

  On the lawn in front of her house were dozens of flickering candles and bundles of flowers, and people, their heads bowed. The house itself, though, was dark.

  “Ici?” the driver said, not hiding the surprise in his voice.

  “No, no. Keep driving,” she told him in French. “I must have the wrong street.”

  The driver seemed relieved when she gave him the name of the next street over.

  “Horrible,” he said as he glanced over at her childhood home. “Just horrible.”

  She almost asked him what had happened. His words indicated he knew, but her own voice had left her. Someone had died in the house. There was no question about it. But who? Why? Water pooled in her eyes, but she held back her tears.

  On the next street over she got out, paid the cabbie, then watched him drive away.

  Ten minutes later, at a pay phone several blocks away, she called for another taxi.

  “Where to?” the driver asked once she and Iris were in the back seat.

  She had thought about this while she’d waited for him to arrive. She was afraid to use her false ID, thinking it might create a trail someone could pick up on. And there was no way she could use her real ID. She needed to find someplace anonymous.

  “Saint Laurent,” she said, naming the borough on the west side of Montreal. “Boulevard Marcel-Laurin.”

  The cabbie eyed her in his rearview mirror. “Do you have a specific location?”

  She hadn’t recalled the name of the motel, but knew basically where it was located. A sleazy place that she’d heard charged room rates by the hour. It worried her to take Iris there, but she at least knew they wouldn’t ask for an ID.

  “I’ll tell you when we get there.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I need to know now.”

  She took a quick breath. She was on the edge of breaking down, but she forced herself to keep it together. “It’s a motel, okay? I don’t remember the name.”

  The driver hesitated. “Motel Monique?”

  “Yes,” she said, realizing he was right. “That’s it.”

  “Deposit,” he said.

  “What?”

  “I need a deposit first.”

  “I’ll pay you when we get there,” she said.

  “Maybe you don’t have the money.”

  “I have the money.”

  “Then pay me now. I’m not going to wait around while you say you’re going inside to get the cash from one of your … customers.”

  Marion stared at the man’s eyes in the mirror, unable to believe what she was hearing.

  “I’m not a…” She paused. “I’ve got a child with me! You think I’m a prostitute?”

  “Wouldn’t be the first hooker to have a kid, would you? Twenty dollars right now or no ride.”

  She stared at him for another second, then broke eye contact and pulled a twenty-dollar bill out of her purse. She dropped it in the front seat, purposely avoiding his outstretched hand.

  “Can we go now?” she said.

  The driver shook his head a couple of times, like he’d seen it before and knew he would see it again. He dropped the taxi into drive and pulled out onto the street.

  She spotted the Motel Monique a half a block before they arrived. It was a big dingy box of a building with a faded sign out front lit by a couple of floodlights. But most important, the neon sign that had been tacked on at the bottom said Vacancy.

  The first thing she did after the cabbie dropped her and Iris off in front of the motel was to walk over to a group of newspaper dispensers in front of the liquor store next door. There were no more copies of Le Devoir left, so she was forced to buy a copy of the English paper, the Gazette.

  It was right on front, the lead story.

  GAS LEAK ENDS IN FAMILY TRAGEDY

  She stared at it, wanting to read more. But she knew if she did, she’d break down right there on the sidewalk. So she forced herself to fold the paper and stick it into her travel case.

  Iris started to whimper against her shoulder. Marion repositioned her arm around the girl’s back, then said, “It’s okay, sweetie. Everything’s okay. You can lie down in a minute. Would you like that?”

  The tone of Marion’s voice carried an undercurrent of panic, but there was enough comfort to settle Iris. The whimpering ceased, and the little girl lay her head heavy against Marion’s shoulder. A few seconds later her breathing was deep and even. Asleep now, no need for a bed.

  Marion walked back to the Motel Monique clutching the child to her with one hand while pulling her suitcase behind her in the other.

  From the moment she entered the motel’s office, the clerk eyed her suspiciously. He was sitting behind a poorly laminated counter with the very classy addition of a Plexiglas wall that extended from the counter’s top all the way to the ceiling. There was a small circle cut into the see-through divider about a foot and a half above the counter, and another, half-moon shaped, where the plexi met the laminate. Like an old movie-house kiosk, only scummier. The plexi was scratched and worn, and at so
me point in the past several years it looked like someone had thrown liquid against the surface, and no one had gotten around to cleaning it yet. But it worked well with the rest of the office’s décor: old, barely functional, and uncared for.

  “Help you?” the clerk said as Marion approached the window. He was only slightly better than the room itself. At least it looked like he’d taken a shower in the last forty-eight hours.

  “I need a room,” she said.

  His gaze flicked to Iris, then back at Marion. “For how long?”

  “Just one night.”

  “The whole night?”

  “I just need a place to sleep. For me and my child.”

  “That’s your kid?” he asked, again with the suspicious eyes.

  “Just tell me how much.”

  “There’s an EconoLodge not too far from here. You’ll be more comfortable there.”

  “Your sign outside says Vacancy. Are you telling me you don’t have any rooms?” she said.

  “Lady, you’re not likely to get a lot of sleep here.”

  She pulled out several bills. “How much? Sixty dollars?”

  A slight widening of his eyes told her sixty was more than the going rate, but she wanted to close the deal.

  “Here,” she said. She put three twenties on the counter just her side of the half-moon opening. “That should do it, right?”

  He looked at the money for a moment, then reached under the counter and came up with a key.

  “Third floor, in the front,” he said. “You’ll hear the street, but most of the other guests prefer rooms in the back.”

  She understood what he was trying to tell her. “Thank you,” she said.

  She exchanged her money for the key.

  “Elevator’s out the door and to the right.”

  • • •

  The clerk had been right about the room. She could hear every car that passed on the street, but while there were the occasional voices from the far end of the motel corridor, there didn’t seem to be anyone using the rooms nearby.

  Iris didn’t seem to mind any of it. She was fast asleep on the bed beside Marion. Something Marion wished she could also do. She had never felt this tired in her life.