The Marble Mask

by Mayor, Archer

  “We have a lot of crooks living like that back home,” I said carefully. “Doesn’t necessarily mean the locals are on the take.”

  Rousseau looked at me with feigned shock. “Did I say that?”

  He laughed and walked away, leaving me with an unpleasant taste in my mouth. As he’d demonstrated before, he was the foreign element here—the federal outsider from the big city. But I couldn’t in all honesty entirely dismiss what he’d said. It had been known to happen.

  · · ·

  The phone jarred me awake, filling me instantly with dread. I opened my eyes, focused on the motel room’s dusky ceiling, and hesitated answering, knowing that midnight calls never bore good news, and that for someone to reach me this far from home boded twice as ill.

  “Hello?”

  “You are Gunther, of the United States?” The voice was male, low, and barely spoke English.

  “Yes.”

  “You investigate the Deschamps?”

  “Who wants to know?”

  He ignored the question, as I thought he might. “Hell’s Angels did not kill Tessier.”

  “Who did, then?”

  “We meet.”

  “What good would that do? I’m just an observer in this country. You need to talk to the police.”

  He laughed scornfully. “Then I die. How you think Deschamps get rich in Sherbrooke without the police help?”

  That was the third such statement I’d heard in two days. “What if I refuse to meet with you?”

  “More people die. Tessier was number one. Now he gone, now the Deschamps bulldog is gone. People have protection no more. We want no more killing.”

  “Why don’t you just tell me what’s on your mind here and now and get it over with?”

  “I have proof. Otherwise, this is talk only.”

  “Where?” I asked after a moment’s hesitation.

  “An old jail, abandoned. It is on Rue Cliff, near the gorge. You find this?”

  “I have a map.”

  “It is near Rue Winter, at the corner. You will see steps to a porch and a door. Go in and we talk.”

  “Or go in and have my head blown off.”

  I could sense his exasperation as he cursed in French and then added, “Why? You can stop this. Lacombe is your friend. You will talk to him.”

  “Call him yourself,” I suggested.

  “He will not see me alone, and I do not trust them with him. Only you.”

  “I’ll think about it,” I finally said.

  “One hour. You be alone, or people die.”

  The phone went dead.

  I replaced the handset and lay in the dark, thinking. It sounded plausible. The Angels had been blamed for Tessier’s death—maybe they had proof of their innocence and even of someone else’s guilt. Given my suspicions about most of what had fallen into our laps up to now—from Christophe Bossard as Tessier’s unlikely killer to Marcel’s conveniently safeguarded ice pick—I found the nature of this phone call almost irresistible.

  Which was probably the whole point.

  At home, the solution would have been obvious—round up some backup, get to the site early, and proceed with caution. Here, with suspicions ballooning about the case and the people investigating it, I found myself uncomfortably at sea. I was an organization man, as used to teamwork as a fish to water, and since arriving in Canada, I hadn’t been shut out and information hadn’t been withheld from me. I’d had no complaints.

  So why this debate?

  I got out of bed, conscious of the one-hour deadline, and turned on the light over the desk by the window. I opened a map and located the address I’d been given. It was north of the gorge, midway along its length, at the bottom of a three-sided, horseshoe-like block of streets. Cliff Street paralleled the gorge.

  Still unsure of my actions, I began to dress.

  It wouldn’t be the first time a generations-old crime family had found its way into a local police force, however discreetly. Some of the caller’s reserve might even have stemmed from simple paranoia rather than any knowledge of corruption. He was apparently sticking his neck out, indulging in covert diplomacy, hoping to keep the peace between two illegal organizations. It stood to reason he might be a little twitchy, with an old pro like Jean-Luc Tessier being knocked off with such ease.

  Especially since Christophe Bossard—the unlikeliest of suspects—was being prosecuted for that crime.

  I finished dressing and stood looking down at the map. I had no fear for myself despite the concern I’d voiced to the caller. It didn’t make sense that I should be anyone’s target, and nothing suggested this whole thing wasn’t as simple as it looked. Some guy from their side had something of value for someone neutral from our side. And I was that someone.

  I scooped up the map and left.

  · · ·

  Cliff Street was in the heart of the Vieux Nord neighborhood, which explained why most of the streets had Anglo names—Island, High, Court, William, even London. There was a shoved-together intimacy to the buildings, as if they’d moved imperceptibly closer to each other as the town had grown up around them.

  I drove across Queen slowly onto de Montréal, looking for where High Street would take me one block south to Cliff. My headlights slid along dark, quiet walls and over empty, snow-covered lawns. Traffic was nonexistent at this hour.

  The setting helped make me feel better about what I was doing. Had it been a warehouse district, or some industrial wasteland on the edge of town, I would have been more apprehensive. But this was as settled an area as Sherbrooke had to offer—something my anonymous caller had probably understood when he’d chosen it.

  A row of trees loomed up ahead and High Street t-boned into Cliff. I turned left and parked. As I killed the engine, I could hear the dull rumble of water cascading through the gorge just beyond the screen of woods. It sounded cold and ominous, undermining my efforts to feel good about being here.

  I got out of the car. Across the narrow street, the old jail stretched up into the night sky. Four or five stories tall, built of featureless gray stone, it appeared to have a separate warden’s quarters glued to its side—red-bricked and equipped with windows. But it, too, seemed abandoned and forlorn despite the efforts to make it look homey.

  I saw the steps the caller had mentioned leading up to the front door. Flashlight in hand, I tentatively climbed to the concrete porch and laid my hand on the doorknob. There were no lights and no sounds from within.

  The door was unlocked and opened without protest. Now thoroughly doubting my wisdom, I stepped into an empty, dusty room with a counter running across it. Playing the light around, I could tell where bars or metal meshing had once run from counter to ceiling, and guessed that the house had been remodeled from warden’s home to front office before being abandoned altogether, presumably to linger in perpetuity on the local historical society’s list of things to restore.

  I’d done what I’d been told to do and was now suddenly at a loss, vaguely disappointed after all my misgivings to be merely standing alone in a cold and empty room.

  “Hello?” I finally called out tentatively.

  Nothing greeted me in return.

  I walked through a gap in the counter and discovered a heavy iron door on the other side connecting the house to the jail itself. It was half open. I slipped into its dark embrace, hearing my footsteps echo off hard, unyielding surfaces all around, grit and debris crunching underfoot.

  Before me was a long, high-ceilinged stone hallway, lined with open doors. My flashlight revealed no colors whatsoever—just the sliding scale of a black-and-white photograph, looking a hundred years old.

  “Hello?” I tried again.

  I followed the reverberation of my own voice down the hall, pausing at each doorway to check where it led, mostly into narrow cells, each one fitted with an arched and shuttered metal-barred window.

  At the far end of the corridor was a steel spiral staircase. Though less apprehensive as my confidence grew t
hat I was alone, I still wasn’t inclined to head for the basement, so I climbed instead, making an unholy racket as shoe leather hit metal.

  The second floor resembled the first, except for a wider area halfway down the corridor which might have once served as a dayroom. I approached it cautiously, still pausing at each doorway, but again only surrounded by sounds of my own making.

  In that open, central area, however, my isolation finally ended—replaced by something far more tangibly grim. A man was sitting, legs sprawled before him, propped up against the wall, his eyes still open and his throat slit wide.

  Although slowing down, his blood was still pumping all over the front of his denim Hell’s Angels jacket.

  He’d been killed while I’d been in the building.

  I stood absolutely still, frozen as much by that sudden realization as by the overwhelming evidence that I’d committed a fundamental and potentially fatal mistake. Instead of wondering how and why this man might’ve died, I was seized by a double dose of anger and fear.

  The clear sound of a shoe scraping the floor behind me snapped me out of it, and the anger won over, fueled by the guilt of having been so stupid. I turned, yelled, “Stop—police,” and ran headlong down the cold, dark hallway, now in pursuit of clattering footsteps half falling down the metal staircase.

  It was no more reasonable than having come here in the first place, of course. Alone, unarmed, and with no radio or backup, I should have stayed put, let whoever it was escape, and then found a phone to summon help. But impulse was driving me now—along with a furious need to take back control and make some sense of all these riddles. I knew I couldn’t actually catch the man ahead of me, and that to succeed might earn me a knife in the chest, but I wanted to at least get a glimpse of him, if for no other reason than to partially offset my embarrassment.

  I pounded down the first-floor corridor, retracing my steps to the warden’s quarters, and just caught the shadow of my quarry as he slammed through the metal door at the far end.

  Bursting out onto the porch moments later, I finally spotted him, briefly and from afar—a dark shape in full flight—rounding the corner of Cliff onto Winter, his legs and arms pumping like a sprinter’s. I chased after him still but without the same drive, that brief glimpse having told me that I was no match for his youthful speed. When I then slipped and fell on an icy patch at the same corner, I didn’t bother regaining my feet but lay there instead, panting and stunned, slowly feeling the icy cold reassert itself until all that was left in the surrounding night sky was the ceaseless rumble of the water rushing through the gorge.

  Chapter 16

  GILLES LACOMBE ENTERED THE ROOM ON THE FIRST floor of the Sûreté building and looked at me sitting in a metal chair by the wall, a plastic cup of coffee on the table beside me. It was not an office, but a cross between an interrogation room and a storage closet, complete with no windows. A doghouse, in fact, I knew ruefully, despite the open door. I’d been brought here and debriefed by an SQ detective, who hadn’t bothered hiding his contempt for my behavior.

  But Lacombe didn’t reflect the irritation I had for myself. He hitched a leg on the table’s edge and thoughtfully asked instead, “You are not hurt, I hope?”

  “A small bruise on the hip where I fell, richly deserved.”

  He nodded, as if to himself. “That is good. You are lucky.” He then looked me straight in the eye and gently asked, “Why did you do this thing?”

  His obvious disappointment hurt worse than I’d anticipated. This man had bent over backward to accommodate us, and his confusion now spoke more clearly of his generosity—and my betrayal of it—than any angry outburst could have. I couldn’t bring myself to be honest and deepen the wound by admitting my paranoid suspicions of the night before. Better to just look as stupid as I felt.

  “He told me to come alone—that he had proof Bossard didn’t kill Tessier—and not to bring anyone local. I thought it might help.”

  He was polite enough not to make any more of it. “Did the man tell you anything before he died?” he asked.

  “No. I must’ve gotten there less than a minute after his throat was cut.”

  “He told you he had proof on the telephone. Did he carry anything?”

  I shook my head. “I went back after I called for backup. He was clean. The other guy must’ve grabbed it.”

  “Or it was not real,” Lacombe mused.

  That possibility didn’t make me feel any better. I hadn’t thought the whole thing might have been a setup from the start.

  “Was the dead man a Hell’s Angel?”

  “Oh, yes. And he might have called you,” Lacombe said. “But it is possible the killer called him and you each one, so you could see the death of an Angel. It is good headlines, you as witness, as we have this morning, and it makes more tension between the Deschamps and the Hell’s Angels.”

  “And it makes the cops look like idiots,” I added. “I am sorry, Gilles. I really messed this up. I’d be madder than hell if I were you.”

  He smiled and patted my shoulder. “It is not so big a deal, Joe. Americans take this more personally than we do. You were not hurt. That is good. The rest is little. And they already call us idiots.”

  He took pity on me then. His voice warmed as he added, “And if somebody is making a war between the Deschamps and the Angels, it is not working very well. Both are still telling us they are innocent.”

  “How’re things moving against Marcel?” I asked, mostly to shift the attention off me. “Bartlett was saying yesterday they think he might be innocent.”

  He shrugged philosophically. “We do what we do, they do the rest. If they will not prosecute, we have to return to…” he groped for the right expression.

  “First base?” I finished to help him out.

  “That is it. But I do not think it will be simple. Marcel fit as his father’s killer. After all this time, I do not know where else we could go. Also, it will be difficult to keep the task force together.”

  “Marcel and his lawyers must know that.”

  He nodded. “It is an interesting time.”

  “Anything else come up from the search of his house?”

  “The DNA found on the ice pick is the same as Jean Deschamps’s, and Marcel had fingerprints on the handle, but the Deschamps can have the best lawyers in Canada.”

  “What about all the paperwork from Marcel’s office?”

  Lacombe thought back. “No,” he said slowly. “They are still analyzing it, but it looks like mostly business affairs. It is clear they either have a second office we did not find or they do not write down what we would like to see. We also are running tests on all the other weapons we found in that closet. If not his father, maybe somebody else can be tied to Marcel.”

  He rose to his feet, preparing to go, and then stopped. “There is something interesting, speaking of killed people—a little history. We found documentation from the Second World War in the papers of Jean Deschamps that Marcel had stored. It looks like the father thought his older son Antoine had been murdered in Italy and not killed in battle.”

  “By who?”

  Lacombe resumed walking to the door. “They do not say. And it might not be true. What we found were copies of letters Jean wrote to the army. The replies all say that it did not happen that way—that Jean should be proud of his son’s sacrifice, et cetera, et cetera.”

  He paused on the threshold. “I have to do some of my other work right now. I am very glad things worked out last night, Joe. I would feel badly if you got hurt.”

  “I know. And I really am sorry, Gilles. It was a spur-of-the-moment thing. It won’t happen again.”

  He left then, but despite his kind words and gentle manner I knew I’d crossed a line—and suspected I’d be seen as more hindrance than help from now on.

  It was time to return home, not just to mend fences back there, since I knew I’d just made VBI look a little less than stellar, but because it was becoming clear that the case
against Marcel—passed polygraph or not—wasn’t panning out as we’d all hoped it might.

  Despite the setbacks, though, I couldn’t repress a paradoxical optimism, as if having just been deprived of the only prize I thought was available, I now could suddenly see others of equal—if less obvious—merit.

  Lost in a flurry of new options, I slowly went upstairs in search of a phone.

  · · ·

  Willy Kunkle came through my open door at the Commodore Inn back in Stowe and leaned up against the wall, watching me unpack.

  “They throw you out or are you running for cover?”

  I didn’t look up at him. “Guess you heard.”

  “Hell, yeah. Didn’t make the papers—not like if I’d screwed up—but no cop I know hasn’t heard about it. Cowboy Joe, head of the Untouchables. They’re all laughing their asses off.”

  I knew he was just rubbing it in—that was as natural as breathing to him. But it didn’t make it any easier to take.

  “Maybe it was a blessing in disguise,” I said as a diversion.

  He laughed. “God, I’m glad I never used that line on you.”

  I stopped what I was doing and straightened. “Where’re Sam and Tom?”

  “Sam’s in her room doing homework. I dunno about Tom. We don’t hang out.”

  I resisted suggesting why that might be. “Round them up. If I’m going to tell you what I’m thinking, they might as well hear it, too.”

  We convened in a small booth at the back of the inn’s over-decorated bar. It was early evening, the TV set’s volume was hovering at near murmur, and we had the place mostly to ourselves.

  “I got Willy’s version of the fallout,” I told the other two. “What’ve you heard?”

  I was looking at Tom Shanklin, on loan from the state police, curious about how he’d handle it.

  “Not much,” he said, his voice neutral. “Just that you had a meet with some informant that went sour. No big deal.”