by John Farrow
Also, their actions following Sandra’s abduction were consistent with her claim that they wanted to be perceived as being the good guys.
Trouble was, that last thought did not compute.
“Interestingly,” Cinq-Mars mused upon his return to where she was waiting, and moved his stool under a crossing beam so that he could hang himself from his hands, “if they didn’t know that I was out of the room, they might have been planning to kidnap me. You were Plan B. If they’d snatched me up, I wonder what our discussions would’ve been like and on what subjects.”
“If they already knew that you were out on the town, carousing with New Orleans’ finest—”
“I wouldn’t say carousing.”
“Hobnobbing, then. Whatever.” To kid and to be kidded felt good. Normal, even. “But if they did know you were out—” Sandra repeated.
“Then they knew that when I arrived back at the Hilton they’d have me dead to rights.”
He stretched as high as he could and worked his gloved fingers over the rough beam. Managing a speck of purchase, he stretched further, then released himself to hang in suspension, his feet dangling, his back straightening against its will. Émile grimaced, looking down between his feet. Sandra observed her husband, looking less Christ-like than like a cartoon cat hanging above a cavern just clear of a rotating saw operated by devilish mice, the whole of the feline’s body but particularly the arms elasticized and on the verge of snapping as the cat descended closer to the spinning steel blade. The image was striking enough, as he struggled to support himself with only his fingers, that she started laughing under her breath.
Grumpily, Émile called out, “What?” And again, when she only laughed harder, “What?”
The images, and the sight of her husband, took hold of her and brought on hysterics. She seemed out of control, so Émile, as if through a hangman’s trapdoor, let himself drop.
They held each other, gently.
Needing a break, he drove into the city to visit Bill Mathers. A last minute arrangement, and he presumed that he was interrupting the detective’s workday. So be it. A consultation between them was necessary.
Mathers knew that, too.
Cinq-Mars expected to find the detective still upset by the call to his home, when in fact his former protégé had managed a turnabout on that one. Time had shifted his perspective. The call from criminals continued to vex him, but he appreciated that Émile’s predicament at the time was far worse. His former partner had nothing to do with the call. Just bad news all around.
Cinq-Mars apologized anyway, but Bill was feeling sheepish about his reactions on that night and was having none of it. “Funny, we’re calm and rational when other people’s lives at stake, even when it’s our own lives, but when it’s our family the mind runs amok. Mine did. Sorry, Émile. I wasn’t much use that night.”
“It worked out in the end. That’s all that counts. So how’s business?”
The retired cop had warned him that he was coming, but sought to avoid a meeting at the old precinct building. Too many hands to shake and useless remarks to repeat. Officers might haul out pictures of their grandkids to show how they’d grown, as if there was ever a chance they’d shrink. So the two met at a café they had frequented in the past whenever a spot was required for a private chat that was both relatively close to the station yet far enough away to spare them the intrusion of other officers.
“Isn’t it the beauty of our profession, Émile?” Mathers remarked. “Put bad guys away, more arrive to take their place. I guess I’m getting older myself. I’m finding the common criminal more common and less interesting that he used to be. Like I say, maybe it’s because I’ve put on a few years.”
“We ran down a few doozies in our time.”
“How’s Sandra?”
Perhaps Mathers intended the question to be polite, casual, but it sucked the energy out of their nostalgia-speak in a hurry. Cinq-Mars told him that she was fine, and made a gratuitous comment that it would take awhile before she put everything behind her.
“What about you, Émile? Have you gotten past it?”
Cinq-Mars stared back at him. The fellow had learned a few things during his time on the force, and not only during the years before Émile retired. He knew how to sneak up on a point.
“You know, Bill, it was your friend who sent me down there.”
“Émile. I’m sorry—”
“Sorry? We were set upon by pickpockets, our room was broken into, Sandra was kidnapped, yet I haven’t heard boo from the man. I expected to hear from him.”
Mathers nodded and sipped coffee. He accepted Cinq-Mars’s apology but his own wasn’t getting accepted in a hurry. “Émile, the only friend I have in all this is you. Buy that or not. My relationship with Rand Dreher is no different than my relationship to this table. Or to this cup. Or this—”
“I understood the first analogy.”
“But I heard from him. He asked about calling you or seeing you. He wanted my advice. It’s like being back in university and some guy asks you about a girl, if he should call her or not. Really, the guy was screwing up his courage.”
“Don’t compare me to a girl. That’s an analogy I don’t get. What did you say back then? In university, I mean?”
“I was all for it. Call the girl.”
“And now?”
“Leave Cinq-Mars alone. Let the dust settle. Words to that effect. Wait until he’s ready to deal with you. Then expect to be reamed out sideways with a rusty spear.”
Cinq-Mars thought about that exchange, then suggested, “He should’ve called. You should’ve let him. You shouldn’t deny me that satisfaction.”
Mathers was feeling his oats. “I’m a newfangled cop, Émile. I believe police should prevent crimes, not just solve them. Are you still in the mood to rip his skin off or have you settled down yet?”
The older of the two also sipped coffee, mulling the question, which he considered legitimate. “That’s the trouble,” he said. “That’s the nub of the matter.”
“What is?”
“I don’t know what mood I’m in.”
Later they walked.
The temperature nudged above freezing in the city, mild for the season, though still a huge drop from New Orleans. The city was probably five degrees warmer than the countryside. Wherever the sun broke through the phalanx of office towers and condominiums a melt ensued. They sidestepped and hopped puddles and minded the splash whenever cars drove by. Yet they enjoyed the walk, and where it was convenient, the two stuck to the side streets of Old Montreal. Cobblestone pavement. Horse-drawn calèche with tourists bundled under blankets clip-clopping past them. To think that he was that person himself a short time ago, in another city and climate, carefree and delighted. Now here, he was part of the scenery, someone who conveyed the tone and ambiance of these streets in his stride. He recalled the piano player in the old town of New Orleans. In a way, he resembled him. Someone who conveyed the soul of the city just by breathing the air.
“He’s disappointed,” Mathers said.
Cinq-Mars delayed his response. He was thinking that in this town in which he’d worked for decades, he was now a tourist, too. Time and even a short distance could do that to a person, make him a stranger amid familiar digs. “Dreher?” he asked. “Why? Because I’m back alive or not still down there?”
“Both. What I mean is, he’s sorry that you’re off the case.”
“Who says I’m off the case?”
“Émile.”
“Bill, of course I’m off the case. I’m up against people who will kidnap my wife for no other reason than to teach me a lesson. Imagine if they actually got angry with me. And as I keep reminding myself, I’m retired. I don’t need this garbage.”
At a corner, they waited for a red light to change. When it did neither man reacted, as if their boots had seized in the water freezing back to ice.
“That’s pretty much what Dreher expected, Émile. Nobody’s blaming you
. It’s impossible to continue. So don’t.”
“I won’t.”
“Good.”
“So tell him,” Cinq-Mars instructed him.
“I don’t have to. He already knows. Or guessed.”
“But he still wants to talk to me. Chickenshit is waiting for me to call.”
“He’s expecting you to call to cut him a new one. That’s it. That’s all.”
“That can’t be it. That can’t be all.”
“Émile.”
“Fuck off, Bill. All right?”
“All right.” Mathers was stymied by a red light again. “Look, I can give you that one shot, for how I reacted after I got the call at home. But that’s the last free pass you’re getting from me. I’m not your rookie lackey anymore.”
“You owe me a lot more than one free pass.”
“Bullshit.”
“Not just for ten, eleven days ago.”
“I know what you meant.”
“For all those old times.”
“I know what you meant, Émile. My answer is still the same.”
Oddly, Cinq-Mars felt lost. “Which is what?” he asked.
Mathers pursed his lips briefly, chuckled slightly, and summoned the courage to look at him. “Bullshit,” he said.
“Fine,” Cinq-Mars responded. Looking away, he felt no particular animosity. “At least that’s settled.”
“What are we going to do?” The traffic passed. They started across the street before the light changed to green, although it did before they reached the other side. “You know what I mean. About Dreher.”
“I’m inclined to shoot him,” Cinq-Mars stated, “but like I said, I have to keep reminding myself that I’m retired.”
Mathers pointed out, “You’re the one who decided to go down south.”
“I took my wife on an excursion. A vacation, Bill. Mardi Gras. He never suggested that we were taking our lives in our hands by investigating the fringes of a cold case his own people undoubtedly bungled seven years ago.”
Cinq-Mars stopped walking. Struck by a thought.
“Émile? What’s up? What’s going on?”
The retired detective studied a pile of dirty snow, as if a body was surfacing from the melt.
“Émile?”
“God, I’m out of practice,” he said. “How long has this been staring me in the face? Hell, this makes going to New Orleans worthwhile.” He glanced at Mathers, then at the melting snow again, then illustrated his thought with a finger in the air. “Sergeant Dupree is a New Orleans detective. Right? My old rank. Yours, now.”
“I recall the name from the files. He investigated the case you were going to look into, the first murders.”
“Right. That makes him the first detective to have egg on his face for allowing the killer to hang around in the attic instead of doing the decent thing that all bad guys are supposed to do, namely running away to hide.”
“Okay. So?”
“So his mistake was revealed, he told me, by Agent Sivak of the FBI. She told the press.”
“Okay,” Mathers surmised, “so I guess we don’t like her very much, whoever she is. I’m down for that.”
“Follow me on this. That was the first of a series of murders, the one after Katrina, right?”
“That’s true, yeah.”
“So there was no series of murders back then, at that moment. At the time it was a one-off. As it turned out, the first of many, but no one knew that back then.”
“Okay,” Mathers said, expecting his former partner to continue. But a thought alighted. Cinq-Mars saw the light go on behind the younger man’s eyes and waited for Mathers to articulate what he just put together.
“This Agent Sivak told the press. So she was investigating the murder along with the NOPD.”
“Correct.”
“But why?”
“Exactly. It was not their case,” Cinq-Mars emphasized. “The FBI had no jurisdiction. Our Agent Dreher seems to readily flaunt his jurisdiction, doesn’t he? Case in point, coming up here.”
“Why would the NOPD let the FBI in on the case?” Mathers asked.
“Why would they?” Cinq-Mars asked him back.
“You tell me.”
“All right. I will. Possibly, Katrina had them understaffed and in disarray. But I don’t buy it. In all probability, this had to do with the victims. Why else? The FBI had some connection to the victims. That must have given them access to the case.”
In nodding agreement, Mathers was also looking at Cinq-Mars. He had another idea to process.
“What?”
“This has to do with, you know,” Bill Mathers assessed, “those FBI secrets you were accusing Dreher of. Forgive me, Émile, but I thought you were being paranoid that day. Or maybe just a little stuck in your ways. Now I’m not so sure.”
“Stuck in my ways?”
“Oh,” Bill defended, “don’t go off half-cocked on me now. It’s an expression.”
“Stuck in my ways?” Cinq-Mars jutted out his chin. “How about this, Sergeant-Detective Mathers? Contact Randolph Dreher. Tell him you think that maybe I’ve calmed down enough for him to approach me. Suggest that maybe he should crawl up my driveway to my doorstep on his knees wearing only sackcloth and ashes. It’s only a mile. Say that I might be cordial to him after that. Go ahead, make fun of me. Let him know that he’s found the soft spot in the retired old fart—that I got a check for my time and expenses so all is forgiven. But secretly, Bill, secretly, rather than be your usual naïve boring self, for once in your life keep your eyes and ears open in the company of another officer of the law, in case that helps you and perhaps helps us.”
Mathers bobbed his head from side to side. “You’re supposed to be retired,” he complained. “Too bad that doesn’t apply to your sarcastic attitude. I’d like to retire that.”
Cinq-Mars put a friendly hand upon the man’s shoulder. “Good to see you again, Bill. Sure, for a second there, I forgot myself. This feels like old times.”
“Before you go,” Mathers said.
“Yeah?”
“We found the dog.”
“Dog?”
“And the family cats. Their bodies were more or less holding together, not rotten yet, frozen in the snow.”
Cinq-Mars cottoned on that he was talking about the family pets of the murdered couple out near his place. “Anything pertinent to the case?”
“Not that anybody can tell. A dog in one spot, two cats five feet away. That slight difference in location suggests two separate trips out to the field, which makes sense. No collars on any animal. So no prints. The dog was big, a shepherd, a load to carry, but sorry, no hunk of human DNA down its gizzard. That’s all we got. At least we took care of the carcasses with some dignity.”
“Cremated after an autopsy, you mean? Yeah, dignified enough. Beats a slow rot in the springtime. Or being mauled by crows. Anything else?”
“A lawyer came forward with the couple’s wills.”
“Are you serious? Do we have a next of kin?”
Mathers shook his head. “No such luck. They left the farm, everything, to a charity.”
Cinq-Mars expired a heavy gust of air. No break ever emerged in this mire. “What charity?”
“A children’s hospital.”
“Yet we think they’re childless, no?”
“It gets more interesting than that. You remember we were told that Adele and Morris Lumen came to Quebec from the Maritimes? They may have. We haven’t found anything to confirm or contradict that. They’re still a mystery couple. But the hospital to which they left everything? St. Louis, Missouri.”
Cinq-Mars seemed to relish the news. “That makes sense,” he said.
“How so?”
“The FBI has no interest whatsoever in Canadians. Nor should they. You can take that to the grave. I’ll bet you dollars to doughnuts they weren’t always childless. They once had a kid treated in St. Lou. Hey, Bill. Where’d your good friend Dreher say he was fr
om?”
“Why do you always ask me questions you already know the answer to?”
“To find out if you’re keeping up. What’s wrong with that?”
“The American Midwest.”
“Isn’t that where St. Louis is located?”
“You know the answer to that, too. But what does it prove? Not much.”
“Yeah,” Cinq-Mars concurred. “Not much. Still. It’s something. All I’ve had so far is a tall stack of nothing. So are they going to sell?”
“Who? What?”
“The hospital. The farm.”
“I don’t know. I suppose so. Why do you care?”
Cinq-Mars smiled. “I might want to make a deal for the barn. Didn’t you notice? It’s an admirable barn.”
Going into the meeting with Mathers, Cinq-Mars had no prior expectation or result in mind. Coming away from the talk he realized that he knew all along exactly what he was looking for. He wanted a little company, a sympathetic ear, a kind word, and a chance to indulge himself a little, and even, perhaps, to mope. He could admit to all that on the drive home, if not before. Instead of caring about any of those things now he was coming away fired up, transformed. He did not have a clue what he was going to do next, but he appreciated the renewed energy pumping through his veins, and the return of his usual unrelenting combative spirit when it came to ferreting out the truth to arrive at a reasonable facsimile of justice. Just maybe, he was thinking, retired or not, that’s what made his life worth living.
“Up justice,” he told himself out loud. “I just want to get these guys.”
Sandra noticed the change in him when he got home, which surprised him because he tried his best to conceal his new mood. He didn’t want her getting her back up or to fret that he might again put them in danger. One thing he knew well: He was not heading back down to New Orleans as a tourist in a maelstrom without a compass or a roadmap. Enough of that. But perhaps he could do something from home. After all, the murders of the two police officers and the couple in Quebec had occurred on his home turf, and no one was suggesting, yet, that he disregard that crime. Indeed, that was the crime he was hired to solve.
So he wanted to get on it.