Black Rock

by John McFetridge

  A woman’s voice said, “It must be Brenda, it’s gotta be,” and then a man’s voice said, “Dougherty, is it Brenda?”

  It was becoming a crowd and Carpentier said, “It’s like in Nap’s,” and Dougherty said yeah, feeling the tension and fear coming off the people in the street.

  “Did you find her?”

  “Where is she?”

  “Who did it?”

  Carpentier said, “Don’t say anything,” but Dougherty looked at the crowd standing in the street and said, “We have to take Mr. and Mrs. Webber to headquarters,” and a woman said, “I knew it.”

  A man said, “Jesus Christ,” and another man said, “Take that frog cop with you. Didn’t do fuck all to find Brenda.”

  Then Reverend Barker was coming out of the house with Millie Webber and Carpentier said, “My car,” and motioned to the Ford. Reverend Barker helped Millie into the back seat and Carpentier drove down Coleraine Street, the crowd not moving quite enough out of the way and the men brushing up against the car as it passed.

  Arlene was out of the house then and picking up the little boy and looking at Dougherty. “I’ll go get your father and take him to the station,” he said, “then I’ll bring them both back in a couple of hours.”

  The look on Arlene’s face was blank — she was in shock — and Dougherty said, “Is he yours?” and Arlene said, “Yeah, Mickey. Michael. We live upstairs now, I married Bobby Buchanan.”

  Dougherty said, “That’s good, he’s a good guy,” and Arlene nodded.

  Then Dougherty got in his squad car and the men crowded around it and walked in front of it and beside it, only letting Dougherty crawl down the street. He recognized the men, a lot of them had been in Nap’s, Carpentier was right about that — Danny Buckley; one of the Murphy kids and his father; Gordon Malley; Scotty Kendricks.

  At the Canada Packers plant loading dock Joe Webber looked at Dougherty the way every guy in the Point looks at a cop, like he was going to take a swing at him, until Dougherty said, “It’s Brenda,” and Joe just stared at him. Dougherty got him in the car and drove to Old Montreal, to police headquarters, where he handed him over to Carpentier, who was waiting by the front desk with Reverend Barker and Millie Webber.

  It was very quiet in the lobby then, the place empty except for the desk sergeant reading a newspaper. Dougherty had no idea how long Joe and Millie Webber would be in the morgue but didn’t imagine it would be more than a few minutes. He lit a cigarette and leaned against the wall and was thinking about Brenda’s body, something about the way it looked, and then he was startled by the bang of the front door of the building being pushed open hard and a man’s voice saying, “They’re not here yet,” as a few reporters and photographers rushed into the building.

  Dougherty looked at the desk sergeant, who was standing as the reporters crowded around the counter. Dougherty tried to get his attention, to motion to him that he’d get the squad car and drive it around back and the Webbers could come out that way, but just then Vachon and Meloche came into the station and the reporters turned on them, saying, “How much dynamite, Pierre?”

  More than a dozen cops followed them in, some of the big-shot detectives from anti-terrorist and a few uniformed cops carrying wooden crates and a couple of green duffle bags. A camera flash went off and a reporter said, “Is that guns?”

  The cop carrying one of the bags, an older cop Dougherty didn’t know, hefted it and said, “Machine guns,” and the flash went off again.

  “The Mayor of Westmount says you have no leads at all on the bombs there, is that true?”

  Vachon stopped and turned to face the reporters, and Dougherty saw Carpentier coming down the hall leading the Webbers, Joe with his arm around Millie, through the lobby.

  No one else noticed them.

  Dougherty got the Webbers into the back seat and was walking around the car when Carpentier said, “Tell them I’ll be by tomorrow.”

  “You’re not coming?” Dougherty said.

  Reverend Barker was standing by the car then, and Carpentier motioned for him to get into the passenger seat. Then he looked back at the big front doors of police headquarters and said, “Did you hear? They found dynamite, detonators, machine guns and bulletproof vests. These fucking guys want a war.”

  Dougherty didn’t know what to say, from the chatter he heard in the station houses a lot of the cops wanted a war, too, get it out in the open and be done with it, but it didn’t look like that’s what Carpentier wanted. The detective stood there for another moment and then said, “Bon, c’est ça. Take the Webbers home,” and walked back into the station.

  The crowd was gone on Coleraine Street but Arlene Webber was still sitting on the front stoop when Dougherty pulled up. She didn’t get up when Reverend Barker led her parents into the house, just moved over a little to let them pass and then she said, “Did you see her?”

  Dougherty said yeah, and he was thinking about saying “she looked just like you” but didn’t.

  Arlene nodded and took a drag on her cigarette then blew out a long stream of smoke and said, “Little bitch, never listened,” and Dougherty saw the streaks of tears on her face and watched as she started to shake and sob.

  He had no idea what to say, standing there in his uniform, feeling so useless. This sure wasn’t the kind of action he’d signed up for.

  Arlene looked up at him. “Who did it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Is anybody going to try and find out?”

  “Yeah, of course.”

  “Really, Eddie?”

  She was looking right at him, shaking a little, not angry or resentful, just wanting an honest answer.

  And he didn’t want to lie to her so he didn’t say anything.

  chapter

  three

  The loud, clanging bell of the phone woke Dougherty from a deep sleep. He stumbled out of bed and took the three steps into his kitchenette, thinking he must have slept all day and was late for his four-to-midnight. He hadn’t been able to fall asleep for hours when he’d got back from the Point, the sun was just coming up when he finally nodded off. When he picked up the receiver and said, “Hello,” it was his mother’s voice saying, “Is it true?”

  “Ma, wha— is what true?”

  “Brenda Webber,” his mother’s French accent drawing out the name and he said, “Yeah, it’s true.”

  “You see her?”

  Dougherty sat down on the only chair in the place, a wooden kitchen chair that came with his furnished room. “Yeah, I saw her. How do you know?”

  “It’s in the Gazette. Tommy saw it.”

  “Front page?”

  “No, the front page is the dynamite and the machine guns they find in the garage. Tommy, after he finish his route he read the paper.”

  Dougherty stood up and retrieved his smokes from the pocket coat, saying, “I thought he just read the sports.”

  “He read the whole paper.” She didn’t sound too happy about it. Tommy was her youngest — her baby, almost twelve — and Dougherty was getting ready for her usual speech about how the kid should be out playing in the fresh air but she said, “Poor Millie, mon dieu.”

  “I took her and Mr. Webber to the station to identify the body.”

  “Mon dieu.”

  Dougherty lit his cigarette and looked for his watch but couldn’t find it.

  “When will be the funeral?”

  “I don’t know, Ma. When I left last night Reverend Barker was still there. I guess he’s going to take care of it.” Dougherty wasn’t sure what day it was and had to count back to Sunday and then forward to Wednesday and then he said, “Friday, I guess. Would that be right, three days?”

  “Protestants,” his mother said, “I don’t know.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Nine thirty. I’m on my coffee
break — I have to go back to work. You coming Sunday?”

  “If I’m not working.”

  He hung up and found his watch. Nine thirty-five; he’d had maybe two hours’ sleep. He went back to bed but felt wide awake, blowing smoke at the ceiling. The single room was barely big enough for the bed, the dresser and an armchair but it had a private bathroom and for thirteen dollars a week it was in a three-storey walk-up on Pierce, half a block up from St. Catherine Street, only a couple of blocks from Station Ten.

  And then he thought he knew what it was about Brenda’s body that seemed odd. Not odd, familiar. He got up and looked for some clothes but everything he had was ready for the laundry, which he’d do if he made it to his parents’ on Sunday, so he put on his uniform and headed out. He found his car, a five-year-old Mustang with just over eighty thousand miles on it, parked a block over and drove down to Bonsecours Street in Old Montreal.

  On the third floor, Dougherty asked the desk sergeant at the section de l’identification judiciaire if Rozovsky was in, and the sergeant didn’t even look up from the newspaper he was reading, just motioned towards the offices.

  Rozovsky was standing in front of a desk, looking at a big leather-covered book and he said, “I’m looking at the requests now.” He looked up and saw it was Dougherty. “Oh, it’s you.”

  “You got a minute?”

  Rozovsky looked like he was still in his twenties, barely, maybe a couple of years older than Dougherty, but he had a full beard and his hair was a little too long to be a cop, a uniform cop anyway. Maybe a ­detective could get away with his hair touching his collar like that, though Dougherty had no idea why anybody would want to.

  “One minute.” Rozovsky put a piece of paper in the front pocket of the book and looked at Dougherty, waiting.

  “That girl last night, Brenda Webber — I’ve seen something like that before.”

  “Like what?”

  “A girl tied up with a bedsheet. It was last year, I was working out of Eleven.”

  “The deepest, darkest east end and your name is Dougherty? Whose cereal did you piss in?”

  “Found her in a lane behind that little restaurant on the corner of Craig and Wolfe.”

  Rozovsky said, “That’s still there — it didn’t get bulldozed for the expressway where the Ville-Marie Tunnel lets out,” and Dougherty said, “Or where the tunnel starts if you’re coming that way.”

  Rozovsky said, “The next street is Montcalm, right?” and Dougherty said yeah, and Rozovsky said, “That’s funny, isn’t it?” but he wasn’t smiling like he found it funny, and Dougherty didn’t say anything.

  “This city named the streets next to each other Montcalm and Wolfe, the generals who fought each other on the Plains of Abraham. You went to school, didn’t you?”

  Dougherty said, “Yeah, it’s funny.” Then he said, “She was just the same, naked but with shoes on, boots I think, and a bedsheet around her neck.”

  “You know the date?”

  “It was right around the first Expos game, the spring.”

  Rozovsky walked across the office to some filing cabinets. “Beginning of April, right? Who was the detective?”

  Dougherty said, “Campagnolo,” and Rozovsky stopped with his hand on a drawer handle and said, “Of course,” shaking his head and opening the drawer.

  “I was reassigned to Station Ten in May. I never heard anything else about it.”

  “Probably because there was nothing to hear.” Rozovsky flipped through files and then pulled one out of the drawer and opened it as he walked back. “These were taken by Geoffrion — he retired in January.” He dropped the file open on the desk. “Nice boots, probably a go-go dancer.”

  “That’s what Campagnolo figured. That or a prostitute.”

  “No reason she couldn’t be both,” Rozovsky said. “Hard-working girl from the Gaspé, looks like. Sylvie Berubé. There’s no bedsheet.”

  “No, it was just like with Brenda Webber, it wasn’t really tied, it was just kind of wrapped around her neck.”

  “It’s not in any of these pictures.”

  “I remember it, I saw it.”

  “Geoffrion would have taken a picture of it, it’s evidence.”

  Now Dougherty wasn’t sure. “But everything else, it’s the same.”

  “Close enough,” Rozovsky said.

  “I guess we better tell Campagnolo.”

  “He’s working mad bombers now.”

  “Who’s working this?”

  Rozovsky shrugged. “No one.”

  “I guess we better tell Carpentier.”

  “We?” He held out the file. “Around the corner and down the hall.”

  Dougherty walked down the hall, further than he’d expected, and stopped at the open door to the Homicide Office. He stood there for a moment, too nervous to just walk in but not wanting to knock on the door frame, not sure of the protocol or if there was any protocol. Usually as the uniform cop you didn’t say anything to the detectives, just answered their questions.

  But Dougherty didn’t think any of the detectives were ever going to ask about this, so he cleared his throat and tapped the file against his thigh and walked into the office.

  Carpentier was standing by the big window facing Rue St. Louis, the side street behind the police station, and he didn’t turn around, he just said, “Laisse-le sur mon bureau,” and Dougherty said, “Excuse me?”

  Carpentier turned around then and said, “I thought you spoke French?” and Dougherty said he did, and then he said, “I didn’t want to just leave it on your desk.”

  “That’s not coffee.”

  Dougherty really wished Rozovsky had come with him. Now he wasn’t sure what to say, and just then a woman pushed past him into the office, carrying a coffee mug that she put down on Carpentier’s desk. She looked at Dougherty.

  Carpentier said, “Would you like a coffee?”

  For a moment Dougherty thought, Yeah, I would like a coffee, but he was still nervous being in the homicide office and he didn’t say anything. Carpentier nodded at the secretary, and she shrugged and rolled her eyes a little and walked out. Carpentier said, “What is it?”

  Dougherty took a couple of quick steps closer to the detective’s desk, they were the only two people in the office now and Dougherty said, “There was another murder last year.”

  “There were many murders last year.”

  “Yes, but this one …” He put the open file on Carpentier’s desk and stood back a bit while the detective picked up his cup of coffee.

  Carpentier sat down then and looked through all the pictures of the body of Sylvie Berubé and then looked up at Dougherty and said, “You remembered this from …” He looked at the date on the file, “The ninth of April last year?”

  “I just remembered it was around the first Expos game; Rozovsky found the file.”

  Carpentier sipped his coffee and looked through the whole file and said, “There isn’t much.”

  Dougherty didn’t say anything, just stood there feeling like he was standing in front of the vice-principal.

  “This was before Bill,” Carpentier said, “so we didn’t know.”

  Dougherty looked at the wall of the homicide office where the pictures of the victims were tacked up and he said, “They look like nice girls.”

  “I’m sure when Sylvie Berubé went home to her maman in Matane, she looked like a nice girl, too. You find out a lot about people in homicide. Too much.”

  Dougherty nodded and he was thinking how all the new recruits wanted to get promoted into plainclothes, how they all wanted to work robbery and fraud and homicide but it seemed like they never thought about what that really meant.

  Then Carpentier stood up. “We’ll have to show this to Detective-Lieutenant Desjardins — he’s in charge of the investigation.” He looked at Dougher
ty and said, “Good work, Constable.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Well, now I have to go to Point St. Charles and talk to the family of Brenda Webber. Would you like to come?”

  “Sir?”

  “Maybe you could help.”

  “Yes sir, it’s just … I’m working a four-to-midnight at Station Ten, sir.”

  Carpentier motioned to Dougherty’s uniform. “You’re not on duty now?”

  “No, sir.” He didn’t know what else to say, so he just stood there and Carpentier shrugged a little and said, “We should be done by four, Constable.”

  In the car Carpentier told Dougherty the coroner’s report on Brenda Webber would be ready in a few days, but it looked like she was strangled, though probably not with the bedsheet they found around her neck. “Michaelchuk says it was probably a rope.”

  “So why the bedsheet?”

  “Don’t know.”

  They drove through the Wellington Tunnel under the Lachine canal and came out the other side in the Point. Turning onto Coleraine Street, Carpentier said, “Tout le monde est ici,” and Dougherty said yeah, not surprised by the crowd in front of the Webbers’.

  Carpentier parked a few houses down, and as they approached the Webbers’ door in the row house, the crowd saw them and seemed to perk up a little. But really nobody moved.

  A man said, “What do you want, Dougherty?” and that’s when Dougherty realized there were a lot of men in the crowd, more than he expected in the middle of a weekday in June.

  Carpentier just pushed his way through the crowd like he owned the place and Dougherty followed. The Webbers’ place looked exactly the same as the first-floor house Dougherty grew up in — front room, long hallway, kitchen at the back.

  And that’s where Millie Webber was sitting, of course, at the kitchen table, smoking and drinking coffee in the middle of another crowd. They all looked up when Carpentier pushed his way into the kitchen, and Millie Webber said, “Oh, you.”

  Dougherty hung back in the hallway. He didn’t see Arlene anywhere, but he did recognize a few of the faces in the kitchen, mostly women.