By the streetlights’ wan glow, I saw a long scar on his face and instinctively retreated. Looking at the man, I felt a strange mixture of fear and respect.
“Simone Fortin?”
“Who are you? What do you want?”
“My name is Kurt Waldorf. I’d like to talk to you about Miles.”
PART THREE
My interest is in the future because I am going to spend the rest of my life there.
— Charles F. Kettering
23
4:45 a.m.
Exhausted, Lessard headed back to his apartment on Oxford Avenue. As he drove, he thought of the events that had marked this crazy day: Mongeau’s murder, the press conference marred by the commander’s clumsy intervention, and, finally, the discovery of a second body and the existence of a possible link between the two killings.
His son’s indirect involvement in the spiralling situation, combined with his own cover-up of that involvement, had left a knot of anxiety in his stomach.
He needed to prioritize, taking care not to neglect anything. As he drove west along Sherbrooke Street, he tried to sort out the tangled lines of thought in his brain.
First of all, there was the hit and run case. If he wanted to avoid giving ammunition to the higher-ups, he mustn’t neglect this ongoing investigation, even if he had two homicides to deal with at the same time. He would ask Constable Nguyen to take the lead on the hit and run.
Then there were the murders.
He would assemble the members of the investigation team to review leads and determine the best way to proceed. But what would he tell them? He mustn’t worry about that now. Fatigue was overwhelming him.
He lowered the car window. An icy wind slapped him. His mind refocused.
Ariane had been the only positive thing about this awful day.
He liked her. He would call later to apologize for his hasty departure. And he’d make sure to get her recipe for osso buco.
He stopped on the highway overpass at the corner of Côte-Saint-Luc Road and Décarie Boulevard. A newspaper vendor walked up. Poor guy. How could he stand being outside in the cold and wind every day?
Lessard bought a copy of the day’s paper.
The story had made the front page: JACQUES MONGEAU MURDERED. Lower down, Lessard saw his own face. The picture had been taken during the press conference.
There was a second headline: ARREST IMMINENT? INVESTIGATORS HAVE A LEAD.
He threw the paper onto the passenger seat and, with a growl, took another swig of Pepto-Bismol.
This time, he found a parking spot in front of his building. The temperature had fallen to minus fifteen degrees Celsius. Lessard noticed a sparrow hopping blithely along the top of a rickety fence. If someone had offered him the chance, he would gladly have sprouted wings and flown away from this dark world.
He kicked off his boots without unlacing them, threw his coat on the couch, and looked at his watch: 5:45 a.m. He set his alarm for 6:35 a.m. and got under the covers with his clothes still on. The commander’s face was among a succession of images that floated through his mind before he fell asleep.
“Don’t forget Tanguay,” he muttered to himself as he drifted off.
He would need to talk to the commander eventually and tell him about the second murder. But knowing that Tanguay wanted to hand off the case to the Major Crimes Unit, Lessard had decided to wait a few hours.
• • •
He was in a car with his son. They were speeding along a foggy tree-lined path. Cresting a hill, they shot out into the clear.
He only saw the wall at the last moment.
6:35 a.m.
The alarm was howling. His sweat-soaked hair was plastered to his forehead, and there was a piercing pain under his left shoulder blade. He dragged himself out of bed and let his clothes fall to the bathroom floor. He took a scalding shower, put on fresh clothes, and gulped down a cup of coffee.
He stepped outside with a crust of bread that he broke into pieces and left on the front porch. Would the sparrow be back? For a few seconds, he looked up at the sky and saw nothing but dull grey clouds. There was something soul-crushing about the unrelenting drabness of the season.
Goddamn winter.
In the car, he made a mental list of subjects he wanted to go over with the team. As he drove past Shäika Café, he resisted the temptation to stop for a croissant. He didn’t want to be late for his own meeting.
He spent the rest of the drive thinking about Martin.
He was still finding it hard to grasp how his son had managed to fool him so completely. He felt simultaneously helpless and incompetent as a father. What angle should he take to help Martin overcome his demons? Should he try to be understanding, or should he take the opposite approach and be a disciplinarian? How could he, who was so baffled when it came to young people, find the right words to comfort his boy?
In the parking area of the police station, he met Pearson and told him about the previous night’s events, omitting any mention of Martin, of course.
The younger detective frowned.
“Why didn’t you get me out of bed?”
“You ought to be looking after your wife and kids, Chris. That should be your priority. Don’t wreck everything the way I did.”
Pearson didn’t answer. But he looked at his fellow cop with the same empathy one might feel at the sight of a sick child.
Lessard poured himself a cup of coffee in the kitchenette. Fernandez was filling in Sirois on the discovery of the second murder victim. A box of pastries lay on the table. Lessard resisted a powerful urge to take one.
“You missed Berger by five minutes,” Fernandez said to him. “He’s gone home to bed.”
Lessard looked out the window. The grey sky stretched away as far as the eye could see. Was it possible for a normal human being to endure an entire lifetime of dreary Quebec winters? Billions were being spent on genome research and stem cells, but had anyone stopped to consider the possibility that dismal weather might be a cause of cancer? Dismal weather and loneliness. Lessard knew a thing or two about that, as well.
“Victor?”
He came back to reality.
“Sorry,” he said. “What was the conclusion?”
“The two victims were killed with the same weapon,” Fernandez said. “The possibility of error is very low, practically zero. The first victim was killed Thursday, sometime between three o’clock and eleven o’clock at night. Berger should be able to give us a precise time of death after further tests.”
“Do we know the victim’s name? Did Berger find any ID?”
“No, but his assistant is trying to identify the body by looking for a dental match in the Register of Missing Persons.”
“That’ll take too long. What else have we got?”
“The toxicology report should come in early this afternoon.”
“We need to identify the body as soon as possible, Nadja. Have you seen this morning’s paper? If we don’t get a breakthrough in the next few hours, Tanguay will take the case out of our hands. He’s itching to do it. The vultures from Major Crimes are circling.”
“Have you spoken to him?”
“No. I can buy us a little time, but when he hears about the second murder, he’s going to hit the panic button.”
Putting his hands on his knees, Lessard winced suddenly with pain.
“You okay?” Fernandez asked with concern.
He blinked to signify a yes. He had an impulse to ease his conscience and tell his colleagues about Martin’s involvement in the case. What had possessed him to lie to them?
But he kept the truth to himself. His son’s redemption hung in the balance. Perhaps, in some small measure, his own did, too.
“Have you found the owner of the BMW?” he asked.
“The car belongs to one Éric Leclerc,” Fernandez said. “His alibi checks out. He parked the car at Quebec City Airport on March 12th. He’s been in Florida since then. I reached him at his hotel. His st
ory was backed up by his wife and another couple who are down there with them. Unless the guy’s an illusionist, he didn’t kill our two victims.”
“I’d still like to talk to him. Have him stay in his room. Tell him I’ll be calling in the next hour. Where’s Doug?”
“At the police garage,” Fernandez said. “I spoke to him less than half an hour ago. He was about to start examining the car.”
Lessard had assembled the investigation team in the conference room. He wasn’t sure where to begin. To improve his spirits, he imagined himself with Martin and Charlotte, camping in the Rockies. A lie is a terrible thing, he thought. But there was no going back.
“Last night, a call came in on my cellphone. The caller, a male, said he’d discovered a body in the trunk of a car. He gave me an address. I went there and found the body.”
Pearson was taking notes.
“Did the caller say anything else?”
“Only that he’d stolen the car around noon on Friday at the corner of Forest Hill and Côte-des-Neiges, and that he had nothing to do with the murder.”
“We’ll need to look at your phone log. We may be able to trace the call.”
“Already done,” Lessard said, lying again. “The call came from a pay phone.”
“There’s no way to be sure he was telling the truth,” Pearson said. “Your anonymous informant may be the killer himself.”
Lessard had to concede the validity of that point. But what would his colleagues think of him, of his skills as a father, if they learned that the car thief was his own son? He tried to redirect the conversation.
“You’re right, but I have a feeling he was telling the truth. In any case, we’ll need to question residents and store owners on that stretch of Forest Hill Avenue. Someone may have noticed something.”
Pearson raised his hand.
“I’ll handle it.”
Without realizing, Lessard took a sip from Fernandez’s coffee cup. She didn’t object.
“We have two bodies. Berger thinks we’re looking at a single killer, based on the murder weapon, the stab wounds to the chest, and the fact that both victims had their throats cut. But there are two significant differences. The killer cut off Jacques Mongeau’s index finger, and he left a CD on Mongeau’s desk.”
Sirois got up and mumbled an apology before going to the men’s room. Lessard waited until he came back, then continued.
“We don’t have much of a timeline. On Thursday, between three and eleven p.m., the killer murders the man whose body we found in the trunk of the BMW. On Friday, between two-thirty and three-thirty p.m., he kills Jacques Mongeau in his office.”
There were nods around the table.
“The BMW was parked at the airport in Quebec City. It belongs to a man who was out of the country when the murders occurred. The man’s alibi has been checked and corroborated. We can assume that the killer stole the car from the airport. Does it follow that the dead man in the BMW was a Quebec City resident? We’ll need to look into that.”
“The possibilities are endless,” Sirois interjected. “The killer could have stolen the BMW in Quebec City and committed the murder someplace else.”
“That would be an excellent way to throw us off the trail,” Pearson said.
“Good point,” Lessard said. “We’ll have to fax a photograph of the body to Quebec City police headquarters. Can someone take care of that without attracting Tanguay’s attention?”
“I’ll do it,” Sirois said.
“What else do we know about the first murder?” Lessard asked.
He waited for someone else to speak, but the other members of the team stayed silent, preferring to let him continue.
“The killer took the trouble to wrap the body in a plastic sheet,” Lessard said. “That suggests he was acting methodically. His crime was carefully planned. It was lucky for us that the car got stolen, or it might have been some time before we found the body.”
Fernandez opened her mouth to speak, then seemed to think better of it. The detective sergeant noticed.
“What is it, Nadja?”
“Just an idea. We’re assuming the killer abandoned the BMW on the street after committing the murder. But there’s another possibility.”
“Go on.”
“The killer may have parked the BMW with the intention of coming back for it.”
“Unlikely,” Sirois said. “Why would he risk leaving the car unattended?”
“He couldn’t have guessed that it would get stolen,” Pearson ventured.
“True,” Sirois replied, “but you’re not going to walk away from a car with a corpse in the trunk unless you have a damn good reason.”
Voices were starting to rise.
“Okay, that’s enough,” Lessard said.
There was a heavy silence. Lessard spoke again.
“The best explanation we have for the severed finger is biometrics. The killer had a specific need for Jacques Mongeau’s index finger. We need to figure out why.”
He looked around at the members of the team and saw nothing but uncombed hair, unshaved beards, and rings under weary eyes.
“The trouble is, we don’t have a motive to guide us. There has to be some link between the two murders. We’ve got to keep digging until we know what it is. We don’t have all the relevant information yet, but we need to work with what we’ve got, or we won’t make any progress at all.”
“Knowing the first victim’s identity would be a big help,” Pearson grumbled.
Lessard turned to Fernandez.
“Nadja, call Berger and find out where things stand with the dental information. He should accelerate the process by sending the records directly to dentists’ offices.”
“It’s Saturday, Victor.”
He swore. He had lost all sense of time.
“What about the kinky photographs?” Sirois asked. “Where do they fit in? Should we be looking for a political angle in all this?”
“And let’s not forget the CD,” Fernandez added. “The killer was clearly sending us some kind of message regarding Mongeau.”
They were trying to put together a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle without having seen the picture it was made from. Lessard could feel a migraine coming on.
“I’m still trying to figure this thing out,” he admitted. “But whatever we do, we’d better do it fast, before Tanguay takes the case out of our hands.”
The meeting was wrapping up. As the other cops rose to leave the room, Lessard spoke.
“One last thing. We need to cover our asses with the higher-ups and make sure they don’t think we’re dropping the ball on other investigations. Apart from the hit and run, what have we got going at the moment?”
Fernandez gave him a quick list of active cases. None of them seemed to require immediate attention.
“Nadja, do you think Nguyen could handle follow-up on the hit and run?”
“Sure. I’ll talk to him.”
Sirois frowned.
“Wasn’t the car in question a black sedan?”
They’d been looking for a black Mercedes or Lexus, but given the age of the witness, he could easily have gotten mixed up.
Lessard wondered why he hadn’t thought of it before.
As Lessard and Fernandez hurried into the police garage, they saw Adams on his hands and knees on the concrete floor, scrutinizing the BMW’s body with a work light.
“Doug, did you find signs of an impact on the car?”
“I found more than that. I was just about to call you.”
He walked to a stainless-steel counter and came back with a plastic bag containing a bit of torn fabric. Lessard peered at it.
“What is that?”
“A piece of denim. It was stuck in a gap in the front bumper.”
“Do you think the car might have hit a pedestrian?”
“Yes. The bumper has buckled in one spot, and there’s a slight dent in the hood.”
Lessard thought back to his conversation with t
he doctor at the Montreal General Hospital. The physician had said Simone Fortin was struck in the legs. That helped explain why the damage to the car was relatively minor.
“Nadja, try to get in touch with Simone Fortin for an identification. Have her come in as soon as possible with the clothes she was wearing at the time of the accident. And call the witness, the elderly gentleman I spoke to yesterday.”
“The one who was walking his dog?”
Butor. The only name he could remember was the dog’s.
“Right.”
As Fernandez left the garage, Lessard pondered. For the moment, there was no conclusive proof that the BMW had struck Simone Fortin. But he couldn’t help wondering. If the car had indeed hit her, what did that mean? Probably nothing, except that she’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
“I also found some half-smoked cigarettes and joints in the ashtray. I’ve sent them to the lab. The saliva traces should yield plenty of DNA.”
Lessard turned pale. He had no doubt about the smoker’s identity. It was his own son.
“Come here,” Adams said. “I have something else to show you.”
Adams led him to a table where a complete set of photography equipment was arrayed.
“Was this in the car?”
“Yes. Under the hockey bag.”
“Was it used to take the pictures we found on the disc?”
“No, but it’s top-notch equipment. We should be able to find out where it was purchased. I’ve already called a few camera stores. And look at this.”
Adams pointed at several plastic bags filled with water.
“Ice bags?” Lessard guessed.
“Yes,” Adams said. “It seems like someone wanted to preserve the body. And there’s something else.”
He handed a small plastic evidence bag to Lessard.
“It’s a slip of paper I found under the driver’s seat. There’s writing on it.”
“4100 CN. What’s CN? Canadian National? The railway company?”
“I was thinking the same thing. It could be the number of a train car or a specific route.”
“Or maybe another error code. I’ll put Pearson on it.”
Lessard’s cellphone hummed.
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