“I think we’ve found a connection between Fortin and Mongeau,” Fernandez said eagerly.
Lessard sat up in his chair. His teeth were hurting. “I talked to the nurse at the hospital. She said Simone Fortin seemed to know a lot about health care. In fact, she suspected that Fortin might be a nurse herself.”
“So?”
“That surprised me. You had said she worked in IT. I checked the members’ directory of the Order of Nurses and found nothing. But that gave me another idea.”
“Get to the point, Nadja,” Lessard said impatiently.
“I checked the membership of the College of Physicians. And that’s where things get interesting.”
“Don’t tell me she’s a doctor!” Lessard exclaimed.
“She’s a doctor who doesn’t practise anymore,” Fernandez said. “I spoke to the administrator at the hospital where she worked. He confirmed that she was a resident in the emergency department until June 1998.”
“Why did she leave?”
“I don’t know yet. The administrator I spoke to wasn’t working there when it happened. But he gave me a number for a Dr. Stefan Gustaffson, who was Fortin’s department head. I left him a message.”
“You said there was a connection with Mongeau. I don’t see how that’s possible, unless Simone Fortin was working at the Montreal General Hospital.”
“No, she was at the Enfant-Jésus Hospital in Quebec City. Remember I told you Mongeau’s wife pressured him to leave Quebec City and come back to Montreal?”
“So Mongeau was executive director of the Enfant-Jésus before moving to the Montreal General?”
“Bingo. They worked in the same hospital at the same time.”
Lessard felt his excitement rising, but he was still puzzled.
“She was an emergency doctor in Quebec City until 1998, and now she’s working as an IT specialist in Montreal? That’s kind of unusual, isn’t it? Are you sure we’re talking about the same Simone Fortin?”
Sirois dropped a stack of wrinkled documents on the desk in front of Lessard.
“The administrator at the Enfant-Jésus gave us her social insurance number. I searched several databases and cross-checked the results with the information we already had. Debit and credit cards issued to Simone Fortin were cancelled and bank accounts held in that name were emptied in June 1998. The grand total is pretty impressive — fifty-four thousand dollars. Her driver’s licence, health insurance card, and passport were never renewed. Basically, she dropped off the grid. Then I checked the information that she gave you at the hospital. The address is right, she does live there. But when I checked with the owner of the building, I learned that the lease was signed in the name of Simone Ouellet. Strange coincidence, Ouellet is the maiden name of Simone Fortin’s mother. The phone number she gave you is valid, but it’s unlisted. She doesn’t have a landline. The social insurance number given to me by Dinar’s head of HR is the same as the number I got from the administrator at the Enfant-Jésus. The HR person told me Simone Fortin receives a salary cheque twice a month. She takes it to a cheque-cashing service and they give her the money in banknotes. No account or ID required.”
“So you’re telling me it’s the same person, and she’s doing her best to stay below the radar.”
“It’s the same person, all right. The social insurance number proves it. She’s tried to muddy the waters, but confirming her identity was pretty straightforward.”
Lessard smacked a fist into his palm. Were the pieces finally falling into place? What was lurking in Simone Fortin’s past? Why was she hiding from the world?
The detective sergeant turned to Sirois.
“I think we’re on to something. Keep digging. If Mongeau and Fortin were co-workers, she may have been a guest at his kinky parties.”
Sirois picked up the stack of papers and went out.
“Nadja, we can’t wait for Stefan Gustaffson to call us back. We need to speak to someone at the Enfant-Jésus Hospital.”
“I figured you’d say that. The administrator gave me the number of someone who worked with Fortin back then. Her name is Suzanne Schmidt.”
Lessard put the phone on speaker so that Fernandez could listen in. They needed to catch a break and speak to a human being, not another voice mail. Miraculously, someone answered. To Fernandez’s surprise, Lessard whooped joyfully.
“Hello?” said a little girl’s voice.
“Is your mommy there?”
They heard a bang as the handset was dropped onto a hard surface. Then they heard footsteps, followed by whispers.
“Remember what we talked about, sweetheart? You have to say, ‘Just a minute, please.’ Hello?”
“Suzanne Schmidt?”
“Speaking.”
Lessard introduced himself. There was a surprised silence at the other end of the line.
“Has something happened to my husband?”
“No, no, nothing like that. I’m calling about Simone Fortin.”
Without going into details, he said that Simone Fortin’s name had come up in the course of an investigation, and he needed to confirm a few facts.
“Is this about the man in the coma?”
“Pardon me?”
“Does it concern Miles Green? I had a feeling something strange was going on.”
Now it was Lessard’s turn to be surprised.
“Would you mind telling me what you’re talking about, Ms. Schmidt?”
She described the previous day’s phone conversation she’d had with Simone.
“So the last time you spoke to her was around six p.m. yesterday?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know whether she went to Trois-Pistoles to visit this man?”
“I have no idea. It’s been years since we were in touch.” She hesitated. “Has Simone done something wrong?”
“Not at all. On the contrary.”
This seemed to reassure the woman. Fernandez was looking puzzled. What connection did this man, Miles Green, have with the case? Was he a former patient? Lessard made an effort to stay focused.
“Ms. Schmidt, this is very important. I need to know the circumstances surrounding Simone Fortin’s departure from the Enfant-Jésus Hospital.”
He could sense her discomfort.
“It’s … it’s a sensitive subject, Detective. You should really talk to Stefan. He’d be in a better position to —”
“Stefan Gustaffson?”
“Yes. You know, it was hard for everyone when they split up. It was so sudden.”
Lessard and Fernandez exchanged startled looks.
“They were married?”
“No, but they’d been a loving couple.”
“We’ve been trying to reach Dr. Gustaffson without success. I must insist that you tell us what you know.”
“Did you try his pager?”
Fernandez spoke up. “I left him a message over forty minutes ago.”
“I’m surprised he hasn’t gotten back to you. You’ll probably hear from him in the next few minutes. He always returns his calls promptly. He’s on vacation until the middle of next week, but as head of the emergency department, he’s always on call.”
Lessard had to suppress his impatience. “We appreciate the explanation, ma’am, but we really need to know about Simone Fortin.”
“Stefan is the only person who can tell you exactly what happened. Simone and I weren’t close enough for her to confide in me.”
“You must have an idea of what happened.”
Lessard could hear her hesitating.
“I think she had some kind of breakdown. She went through a rough patch at work. An ethics complaint was lodged against her. From what I gathered, her relationship with Stefan was going downhill at the same time, but I couldn’t tell you exactly what went on between them.”
Lessard was searching for a crack in the wall, an opening of some kind. He decided to try a different approach.
“Does the name Jacques Mongeau mean anything to yo
u?”
“Of course. His picture has been in all the papers. I know he was our executive director while all this was happening, but I never had any direct contact with him. Why? What does he have to do with Simone?”
“That’s what we’re trying to determine, ma’am. Do you think she knew him?”
“By name, probably, same as me.”
“Not personally?”
“Not that I’m aware of.”
Lessard was thinking hard. What would cause a loving couple to split up so quickly?
“Ms. Schmidt, I’m going to put you on hold for a moment.”
He turned to Fernandez. “Let’s say Simone Fortin is participating in Mongeau’s soirées. Gustaffson finds out. He gets jealous, even enraged. Who knows? He could be our guy …”
“After all this time? I doubt it. But maybe he was a participant. It’s worth checking to see if he fits the descriptions given by Mongeau’s secretary and the pharmacist.”
Lessard put Suzanne Schmidt back on the line. “Ma’am, can you describe Stefan Gustaffson for me?”
“Early forties, tall, blond hair, fair skin. Stefan is an international chess master. There are pictures of him on his website if you want to have a look.”
Her description didn’t sound much like the killer, but Lessard wrote down the web address that Suzanne Schmidt gave him.
He asked a few more questions, then ended the conversation. Once again, he had a sinking feeling that he was driving the investigation into a dead end.
“Where does this leave us, Victor?” Fernandez asked.
Simone Fortin had suddenly abandoned the medical profession and ended her relationship with Gustaffson. Why? Lessard sighed wearily.
“I don’t know,” he said, opening his browser to have a look at Gustaffson’s website. He pecked at the keyboard for a few seconds, hit ENTER, and waited for the home page to appear on the screen.
Suddenly, he stiffened in his chair.
“What is it?” Fernandez asked. From where she was standing, she couldn’t see what he was looking at.
Lessard had recognized the man instantly. Under the photograph, the caption read: Stefan Gustaffson, 3rd Place, 2004 Nantes Open.
“What’s the matter, Victor?”
“We just identified our first victim, Nadja.”
He turned the screen so that Fernandez could look at the picture.
A blond man was smiling at the camera, little suspecting that he would end up in the trunk of a BMW with his throat slashed.
30
Laurent filled the stove with logs.
I gave him a detailed account of my encounter with Miles. He was affected by the description of their old apartment.
“I went back a few years ago,” he said wistfully. “There’s an elderly couple living there now. They let me look around the place.”
Of course! Laurent was the young man the old lady had told me about.
“The wife lives alone now,” I said. “Her husband died last year.”
Infernal heat was filling the room, which seemed to be closing in on itself. Laurent got up, his face sweating, and opened the window. An icy wind blew in.
Laurent questioned me on specific points, demanding precise descriptions of certain details and asking me to repeat some parts of the story. I didn’t try to convince him of the truth of my account. I simply answered his questions, knowing how important this was to him.
I understood his anguish. On the one hand, he wanted to believe that Miles was alive and well in some hypothetical elsewhere.
On the other, common sense was telling him to be skeptical.
At one point, I mentioned the treasure chest that he and Miles had planned to dig up in the year 2000. Seeing how emotional Laurent was, I put an arm around his shoulders.
A strange sensation came over me. It was as though I knew him intimately. Some people can cross your path every day for years without having any effect, while others blaze though your life like a meteor, changing your existence forever.
Laurent got up and went to the window. “Everything you’ve told me about Miles is true, down to the smallest detail. There’s just one thing that doesn’t fit. He asked Gustave and Waldorf to let me know he wanted to die, but he didn’t ask the same of you.”
Why hadn’t Miles used me as a messenger? That was the question tormenting Laurent.
What should he believe?
Was it possible that Miles had changed his mind?
“Maybe,” he mused, “he did give you a message, but not in a form you could decipher by yourself. Maybe he said something that didn’t strike you as important when you heard it.”
Hearing him use the word “decipher” reminded me of the word games that he and Miles had played when he was a boy.
“He told me you often communicated in anagrams.”
Laurent stepped closer to me. There was a sudden eager light in his eyes. “Yes. And?”
“And nothing. I just remembered, that’s all.”
He started pacing back and forth across the room, his steps as precise and regular as if they’d been mapped out on the floor. “Could he have given you a series of words for me …?”
“If he did, I wasn’t aware of it.”
Laurent couldn’t conceal his disappointment.
He rubbed his temples for a moment, then picked up his coat. “Come on,” he said. “I have a treasure chest to dig up. And I’m five years overdue.”
• • •
We drove along the Chemin du Havre and parked next to a house with decrepit shingled walls. There was a FOR SALE sign standing half-buried in the snow. Laurent took a shovel from the trunk of the car and went up the walk.
When he saw me hesitating, he said, “Don’t worry. Nobody lives here.” We went around to the backyard, which overlooked the river.
“This is the place.”
Before starting to dig, he sighed like a condemned man.
“You okay?” I asked.
He gave me a look.
“Yeah.”
Despite the frozen ground, it only took him a few minutes to dig up the chest.
“Do you want to open it here?”
Laurent gazed at it. His face was haggard. “I was just a kid when we buried this thing. The year 2000 seemed so far away …”
“Do you remember what you put in it?”
“Not really.” For a moment, he was lost in thought. “There’s a quiet restaurant near the church where we can go for a cup of coffee.”
Laurent started the car.
I held the treasure chest in my lap, moved by the knowledge that I was holding fragments of Miles’s past, and touched by the thought that his love for his son had prompted him to bury objects so that when the boy became a man, he would have things that reminded him of his youth. The chest made me painfully aware of the deep void my own father had left in my cardboard existence.
As we approached the church with its multiple towers, I thought about how the gift of life comes with a pair of parents. There’s no choice involved. It’s just luck of the draw. Maybe fortune will smile on you. Or maybe not, in which case — assuming you believe in reincarnation — better luck next time.
Were all my memories of my father painful?
Would I ever forgive him for starting a new life with a woman barely older than myself? Would I ever get past the sense of betrayal that I felt when he showered all his attention on the child he’d had with his second wife?
As Laurent had predicted, there were only a few customers in the restaurant. We took a table in the back and ordered two bowls of café au lait. The waitress knew Laurent by name and offered to liven up our coffees with some cognac. He declined, looking embarrassed.
“This is it,” he said brightly, trying to mask his emotions. “The moment of truth.”
He reached for the chest, but I stopped him. “Wait. Try to remember what’s inside.”
Laurent made an effort to concentrate. “I think there’s a picture of Miles and me in a
cornfield. I had one heck of a scare that day.”
“What else?”
“A marble, maybe. I can’t remember anymore.”
He started to lift the lid, then paused.
“I don’t have the nerve. You do it for me.”
Why should I have the nerve, if he didn’t? I felt about as brave as a damsel in distress. Even so, I drew my chair closer and did as he asked.
The chest contained four kraft paper envelopes. I opened the first and withdrew a little pile of yellowed newspaper clippings from 1986. We looked through them together.
February 25th, Cory Aquino is elected president of the Philippines, restoring democracy and putting an end to the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos; February 28th, Swedish prime minister Olof Palme is assassinated; March 29th, Falco’s “Rock Me Amadeus” becomes the first German-language song to hit number one in the United States; April 3rd, Out of Africa, directed by Sydney Pollack, wins the Academy Award for Best Picture; April 26th, the nuclear power station at Chernobyl explodes; May 24th, the Montreal Canadiens defeat the Calgary Flames four games to one to win the Stanley Cup; September 5th, in Pakistan, four hijackers seize control of a Pan Am Boeing 747, leading to an army assault that kills twenty-one people and injures over one hundred; September 17th, a bomb explodes on the Rue de Rennes in Paris, causing seven deaths and fifty-one injuries; October 11th, Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev meet at a summit in Reykjavik; November 17th, Georges Besse, chief executive officer of Renault, is assassinated by the Action directe terrorist group; November 28th, the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded to Elie Wiesel; November 29th, actor Cary Grant dies.
The second envelope contained two drawings by Laurent.
In the third envelope, we found a dozen photographs, including a picture of Laurent as a baby in his mother’s arms, a snapshot of the family in front of a sailboat, and the photo in the cornfield that Laurent had mentioned.
The fourth envelope contained a note in Miles’s handwriting.
November 29th, 1986
Laurent,
In a little while, we’ll bury our treasure chest. The plan is to open it together in 2000. For a boy your age, that seems like a lifetime from now. But that’s not how it feels to me. As I write these words, I know something you’ll only learn years from now — that once you reach the age of twenty, time begins to race by. You find yourself wishing you could stop the clock to enjoy life more fully. I’ll admit, the very idea of stopping the clock is selfish. It’s a notion that adults have come up with out of nostalgia, which is something kids don’t suffer from. As I watch you grow up, I wish this period in our lives would never end. I’m already dreading the moment when you start to separate yourself from me. But at the same time, I’m so proud of you, so proud of the progress you’re making. And now, rereading my words, I see that the impulse was too strong to resist. I’ve written this note to the boy sleeping in the next room rather than to the man he will become. If you have children of your own when you read this, perhaps you’ll understand some of what I’m feeling right now.
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