“I’m on it, Victor. Let me see what I can find out.”
“Oh, and Fernandez, put out an alert to all patrol units. We’re looking for a black sedan, Lexus or Mercedes. No plate number.”
“That’s not much to go on.”
“I know. There’s no blood at the scene. I’d be surprised if there’s any on the car, but the body’s probably dented.”
“Got it.”
“Call me as soon as you have something, okay?”
“Sure.”
“Nadja?”
“Mm?”
“You’re an angel.”
“I know.”
He ended the call and turned to Ariane, whose features were tight with anxiety.
“How about a cup of coffee?” Lessard said, opening the door to the café.
“Okay,” she stammered.
“Don’t worry. We’ll figure out where she is, and I’ll take you there. Everything’s going to be fine.”
He reddened. When it came to lying, he was hopeless.
------------------------
Standing at the bus stop, the man wearing sunglasses watched Victor Lessard and Ariane Bélanger step into the café. He had heard their entire conversation. Calmly, he pulled out his notebook and wrote down the young woman’s name, address, and phone number.
That information might come in handy.
He still regretted having strayed from his plan, but there wasn’t time for second thoughts, and anyway, his foray had yielded more information than he’d expected.
First of all, he had confirmed the fact that mattered most: Simone Fortin was still alive.
He had also learned that the police were looking for a Lexus or a Mercedes, which meant he had some leeway. Finally, he had gotten the address of his victim’s close friend.
There was no reason to hang around.
The man set off in the direction of Forest Hill Avenue, where he had parked the BMW near a pharmacy. He would store the car in a safe place, then he’d call the ambulance service, Urgences-santé.
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Dressed like a wannabe rapper, the kid was working under the BMW’s dashboard.
“Come on, man,” urged Jimbo, a pimply youth in a baseball cap. “We don’t have all day.”
“Chill out,” Snake answered.
Modern security systems were easy to defeat for an experienced car thief like Snake. Stealing a 1994 BMW 740i that wasn’t even equipped with an antitheft device almost felt like an insult to his intelligence.
The engine started.
“How’d I do?”
“Thirty-two seconds,” Jimbo said. “You rock, man. You totally rock!”
With a screech of tires, they sped away from Forest Hill Avenue and headed east. Bypassing downtown Montreal, they drove for fifteen minutes before arriving at the abandoned garage that served as their hideout.
“Gimme that. Come on!”
“Whoa. Chill out, man.”
“Leave some for me.”
“Relax, will ya?”
Snake handed over the joint and sank back into the leather seat. The weed was starting to kick in. Nothing super crazy, though. Since his overdose last year, he’d been cautious, sticking to cannabis and maybe a little cocaine now and then.
The outline of Jimbo’s face was crystallized in a clearer image, his eyes becoming pinholes and his lips an infinitely fissured highway. A fit of laughter suddenly seized Snake and held him in its grip for a full minute. He calmed down gradually and felt the buzz go up another notch.
He was really high.
“Chill out, man.”
Snake had a single ambition: to gather enough money to go to Florida and open a skateboard school with Jimbo.
Skateboarding was his life. He could do amazing things on a board, weaving past obstacles like a serpent.
Hence the nickname.
And Florida was awesome, with its sunshine, its girls, its beaches. He’d probably miss his mother and sister. But not his father. His father had abandoned them. He was a scumbag.
Snake and Jimbo had been stealing vehicles for six months, supplying them to a local car-theft ring. They got a hundred and fifty dollars apiece for new models, up to five hundred for the most popular makes.
Since starting out, they’d earned about thirty-five thousand dollars and spent a little more than half of that. Snake figured they’d need at least a hundred grand before they could head south.
The acrid aroma of the marijuana hung in the air, making his throat tighten. He was floating.
He looked down at his heavily tattooed arms. Was there room for one more?
“Yo, Snake!”
“What?”
“You reek, man. It’s gross.”
“The hell I do. Your nose must be too close to your mouth.”
“I mean it. There’s a weird-ass smell in this car.”
“So what?” Snake said. “We’ll unload it tomorrow. Tool’s gonna give us two hundred for it.”
Jimbo started playing with the car radio, switching from station to station.
“Hey, Jimbo, listen.”
Snake farted loudly.
“Aww, man, you’re disgusting. I knew it was coming from you.”
4
To his own surprise, Lessard found the right words to reassure Ariane Bélanger. He also convinced her to go back to her office. He promised to call as soon as he located the hospital to which her friend had been admitted, adding, “It shouldn’t take long.”
She was a nice person. Generously curvaceous and pretty. He hadn’t seen a wedding ring. Was she single?
Ahh, why even think about it? As though anyone would be interested in him. He didn’t have what it took to charm a woman anymore. Still, he couldn’t help wondering how long it had been since he’d talked to someone so interesting.
He searched his memory and failed to come up with an answer. If his phone hadn’t been humming incessantly, he might even have risked suggesting that they have lunch together.
But during the fifteen minutes they’d spent in the café, Commander Tanguay had called three times. Tanguay had unfortunately decided that now was the best time to request an update on the car-theft case. The commander pointed out to Lessard that the mayor was losing patience.
The detective sergeant almost retorted that the mayor should be focusing on more important matters, like repairing potholes and cleaning up the filth that was piling up all over the city. But he kept his mouth shut. This job was all he had left.
By rights, he should have handed off the hit-and-run case to a junior officer. He was a detective, after all.
But the station was woefully short of personnel, and Lessard couldn’t bring himself to let cops from another district intrude on his territory.
Instead of going straight back to the office, he decided to stop by his apartment and take a quick shower before his AA meeting.
He turned left from Sherbrooke Street onto Oxford Avenue, where he’d been living since his separation.
Lessard loved the Notre-Dame-de-Grâce district. The English-style cottages and mature trees created an island of comfort in which it was easy to forget how close it was to downtown Montreal.
A new generation of homeowners had come into the district since the turn of the millennium, most of them young families.
Children played in the alleys and schoolyards, couples pushed strollers along the sidewalks, and the area teemed with life, even in winter.
Monkland Avenue, the commercial thoroughfare that ran through the district, had also been revitalized. Cafés, bars, restaurants, and shops were flourishing.
Sherbrooke Street was undergoing a similar renaissance. Korean, Middle Eastern, Chinese, and Thai grocery stores had sprung up, delighting Lessard, who was gradually improving his rudimentary culinary skills.
But all was not perfect; far from it.
On Sundays, when he went running through NDG Park, too many scraps of paper littered the ground. That came as no surprise
to Lessard. City workers, protected by a gold-plated collective agreement, weren’t doing their jobs.
Parked cars lined both sides of the street. Lessard drove past his building, looking for a free space. He was going too fast and had to slam on the brakes when a father and his child burst out from between two parked vehicles. The furious father brought a fist down on the Corolla’s hood. Lessard shrugged apologetically.
He rubbed his face, and his fingers touched a bit of tissue that he’d stuck to his chin after nicking himself with the razor that morning. He’d been walking around with toilet paper on his face … what a crappy day.
His thoughts strayed to his sister. He hadn’t spoken to her since December, when he had passed out, dead drunk, at her dining-room table in the midst of Christmas dinner. He really should give her a call.
Lessard stopped behind an elderly lady who had just gotten into her car. Finally, a parking space. He waited for a long minute, then the lady got back out of the car and walked into a nearby building. Lessard swore.
He gave up the search for a space and double-parked. As he was emerging from his car, he slipped on a patch of ice and came down on his backside.
A group of passing children saw him fall and couldn’t help laughing. He shook a fist at them.
“Little shits!”
He turned his key in the front door lock, stepped into his apartment, and saw his dirty clothes piled up on the couch.
He had completely forgotten to do his laundry.
He swore to himself. There was nothing he hated more than putting on dirty underwear after a shower.
Discouragement welled up in him. He wasn’t going to make it. He thought about taking refuge under the covers with a glass. One little glass.
Don’t screw up, Lessard.
------------------------
The killer took off his sunglasses and frantically scanned Forest Hill Avenue, but he knew he hadn’t mixed up the location.
The BMW had vanished! How the hell was that possible?
Unable to suppress his frustration, he kicked a brick wall repeatedly. When a passerby gave him a look, he made an effort to compose himself. He couldn’t afford to lose control.
Not now.
He saw that there was no parking restriction in the spot where he’d left the car. In any case, the car wouldn’t have been towed away for a simple parking violation. Try as he might to consider the problem from every angle, he kept coming back to the same two hypotheses: either the police had discovered the vehicle, or it had been stolen.
He decided to walk into the pharmacy and question the employees. They might have seen something, perhaps a tow truck in the street, or maybe the police. But he changed his mind at the last moment.
This time, he would think before acting.
Deep in thought, he kept walking until he reached a restaurant that he’d noticed earlier. He chose a table at the back and ordered a cup of coffee.
At first glance, there was nothing that linked him to the first victim. But if the police had managed to get their hands on the vehicle so quickly, that didn’t bode well. Even though he’d taken every possible precaution, a single oversight on his part might be enough to put them on his trail.
Those police bottom-feeders never fail to come up with some clue.
He scoured his memory. Had he forgotten any compromising items in the car, anything at all that might make it possible to identify him? He didn’t think so.
But how could he be sure?
The hypothesis that the car had been stolen presented fewer short-term risks.
After discovering the body, a car thief would surely abandon the BMW on a quiet street, taking care to wipe off any fingerprints. As improbable as this hypothesis might seem, it was the one he favoured. He had heard the detective giving orders over the phone. The police were looking for the wrong make of car.
If he was right, the theft offered him a brief respite, perhaps a few hours before the car was back on the street, and a couple of days at most before the smell of the corpse caught the attention of some passerby.
Anger surged through him. He had prepared everything to the last detail, and now his plan lay in tatters. He smacked the table with the palm of his hand. Conversation in the restaurant stopped. A few diners turned to look at him.
He pretended to have bumped his elbow.
When he was calm again, he took stock of the situation. There was now a significant risk that the BMW would be found and traced back to him before he could carry out the rest of his plan.
He would have to improvise.
He didn’t give a damn about what might happen if he was arrested afterward. The only thing that mattered was getting it done.
A fallback plan was slowly taking shape in his mind.
She must see.
Barring a miracle, the first body was lost. But he still had the photographs. He realized that retaining possession of the third target’s body would complicate his task and increase his chances of getting caught.
Before dying, she must see.
The scenario he had originally conceived was no longer possible, but with the photos, he would be able to present her with a slide show. And add material to the blog.
All was not lost.
He drew up a mental inventory. What had he left in the car?
He had stored his clothes in the motel room, and his laptop was in his knapsack, so the only items he had lost were his photography equipment and the vials he’d stolen from the pharmacy the previous night. The photography equipment wouldn’t be a problem. He could go to any store and buy a cheap camera. Replacing the vials, on the other hand, was going to be a lot trickier in broad daylight. Breaking into another pharmacy was out of the question. He left a five-dollar bill on the table and walked out of the restaurant.
On the off chance that he’d missed something, he walked back to the pharmacy, scanning the street for any sign of the BMW. It was gone. But the pharmacist was standing outside, smoking a fresh cigarette.
You must really be weak-willed if you can’t quit.
He made up his mind to go back to the motel and get himself organized. He was about to walk away when the smoker called out to him.
“Are you looking for something?”
“No, I …”
His initial reflex was denial, but on second thought, if the pharmacist had noticed him, maybe he had also observed something related to the car theft.
As it turned out, the pharmacist hadn’t seen the BMW or noted any suspicious activity. He offered to call the police.
“Thanks, it’s already taken care of.”
His mind was racing. He decided to take a chance. “My antidepressants were in the car. Would you be able to help me out?”
“Sure. Do you have your prescription?”
“No. It was in the car, too.”
The pharmacist stubbed out his cigarette against the brick wall and tossed it in the snow. “Step inside, I’ll look you up on the database.”
He had foreseen this. “The trouble is … I live in Ontario.”
The Quebec pharmaceutical database was unlikely to provide information on an out-of-province prescription. The pharmacist hesitated, looking at the man’s honest, respectable features.
“What’s the medication?”
“Amytal. It’s a barbiturate.”
The pharmacist shook his head. “I wish I could help you. If it were a different drug, I might have been able to tide you over with a couple of doses. But for Amytal, you’re going to need to see your doctor.”
“I understand,” he said in a voice devoid of expression. When he had walked some distance down the street, he hailed a taxi.
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A parking ticket was waiting on Lessard’s windshield when he got back to his car. In his annoyance, he punched the dashboard, which accomplished nothing apart from making his knuckles sore.
His late arrival at the AA meeting earned him a scolding from his sponsor. Discipline was v
ery important, the sponsor pointed out. It might save him from giving in to temptation someday. Lessard wanted to smack the guy in the head to stop the drivel. But he restrained himself.
After the meeting, he went home for a bite to eat. He was thinking of reheating some of the lamb couscous he’d made the night before. Over the last few months, Lessard had discovered the pleasures of cooking. He’d gotten into the habit of trying out new recipes that he received from friends or dug up on the internet.
He’d found an Iranian grocery store in the neighbourhood: Supermarché Akhavan. He enjoyed going there to shop for ethnic foods. On December 31st, he had stopped off at the spice counter and exchanged significant looks and smiles with the salesgirl, whose amber eyes had haunted him through the night. He’d gone back two days later, hoping to invite her out for a drink, but she hadn’t been there.
Since then, he’d been returning every week with clockwork regularity, his pulse quickening at the thought of meeting the young woman. He didn’t want to leave a message. The mystery and hope of his unfulfilled wish did more for his spirits than any practical action ever could. Now and then he would tell himself that an exciting romance with the young woman lay just around the corner, and he’d savour the thought that nothing had been settled, anything could happen, the future was still wide open.
Deciding that couscous would be too filling, he made himself a cucumber-and-tomato salad, which he ate while watching a documentary about Muhammad Ali that he had previously recorded.
The legendary heavyweight had become Lessard’s new passion. He wasn’t a boxing fan, but he never wearied of watching the fighter rally to defeat his adversaries, even when the whole world thought he was beaten. Lessard envied Ali’s strength, his determination, and his absolute faith in his own abilities.
The salad didn’t satisfy him. Without thinking about it, he munched crackers during the entire bout against Sonny Liston. He’d have to get things back under control tomorrow.
But would he have the willpower?
Lessard was driving back to the station when his phone rang. He considered letting the call go to voice mail, but answering the phone is second nature for a cop.
Without Blood Page 5