Black Rock

by John McFetridge

  “All these bombs and demonstrations and riots and now … this kidnapping … everyone so scared — why are they doing it?” She was the most vulnerable Dougherty’d ever seen her, and he wanted to reassure her somehow, but all he could do was try to make a joke.

  “It’s the in thing,” he said. “Everybody’s doing it.”

  She shook her head. “What will you do now?”

  “Keep looking.”

  “Where?”

  “Everywhere. All I’ve got is the car; I’m looking for that.”

  “Needle in a haystack.”

  Dougherty said yeah, and Ruth picked up a stack of files but then just slammed them back down on the desk, and Dougherty said, “Whoa.”

  “Look at all this, look at this research we’re doing — all these interviews, all this evidence.” She opened a file and held up a picture, a woman’s dead body, a girl’s really. “What good is it?”

  “What?”

  “All this and we don’t know anything.” She turned the picture around and looked. “Except that he’s going to do it again.”

  Dougherty said, “And we’re going to catch him.”

  Ruth put the picture back in the file and nodded. “I hope it’s soon.”

  “Me too.”

  He went home and changed into street clothes, got into his own car — no destination, no plan, he just drove around.

  He joined the expressway at Guy, thinking this was probably where the guy in the Lincoln got on after he killed Shirley Audette and Jean Way, and instinctively headed west.

  Probably what the murderer had done.

  He passed the Ville St. Pierre exit that would have taken him into LaSalle, where Brenda Webber’s body had been left, and realized that was also likely where the guy got onto the expressway after trying to grab Nancy Barber in NDG.

  Dougherty drove past the exit for the Mercier Bridge. He wasn’t thinking, really, he was just driving, feeling the road going by and his hands on the wheel. He liked driving, always had, and he’d never thought about why. Now he was thinking it was almost hypnotic — the power of the car, the constant forward motion. He could drive all night.

  And he more or less did.

  He drove out to Dorval and around the interchange, the traffic circle, and headed back into town. The West Island suburbs were sleepy, street after street of red brick houses filled with office workers from downtown, their wives and kids all tucked in for the night.

  Back through downtown, into the Ville-Marie Tunnel and coming out a block or two from where Sylvie Berubé’s body was found. Another bridge, the Jacques Cartier, and Dougherty didn’t take that one, either. He had no idea why, but felt he should stay on the island of Montreal.

  Stay on the expressways.

  It was almost three in the morning when he finally headed home. A few hours later he was back standing in front of the house on Redpath Crescent.

  It was Wednesday now, and the federal Minister of External Affairs, Mitchell Sharpe, had announced that the government had rejected the kidnappers’ demands and asked that a negotiator be named. Meanwhile, the CAT Squad picked up twenty-seven people and the doctors went out on strike.

  Dougherty spent ten hours standing in front of the house on Redpath Crescent, then got back on the roads and drove all night.

  Thursday night the manifesto was read on French and English TV.

  And Dougherty spent another night driving.

  Friday, after he was relieved at six, Dougherty went to Bonsecours Street to talk to Detective Carpentier. He found him in the homicide office with a few other detectives on the CAT Squad.

  “You got your car,” Dougherty said, and Carpentier said, “No, we got a stolen taxi, but it’s not the one.”

  “But you have suspects.”

  Carpentier said, “Of course. It’s the same ones we got last March when they were going to kidnap the Israeli ambassador.”

  Dougherty was standing in front of Carpentier’s desk, and he was the only one in the room wearing a uniform. The other dozen men in the room were detectives working the phones. But for once Dougherty didn’t feel intimidated in the homicide office. “They’re out on bail?”

  “That’s right. Mrs. Cross has identified a photo, Jacques Lanctôt.”

  “So you’ll get him soon?”

  “We’re looking. What about your car?”

  “I’ve got nothing.”

  “But you’re sure it’s him?”

  “Yes,” Dougherty said. “And so are you.”

  Carpentier nodded. “All right, we should have more men soon.”

  Dougherty said, “Good,” and left the office.

  He saw Rozovsky by the elevator, slinging a couple of camera bags over his shoulder. “Going on a call?”

  “It’s not all fun and games,” Rozovsky said. “Sometimes there’s real work. Tonight’s the Bunny of the Year contest at the Playboy Club.”

  “And you’re taking pictures?”

  “No, I’m … never mind, that’s too easy. Are you off duty? Do you want to come along?”

  Dougherty said no, but then he thought maybe that was the kind of event the murderer might like, maybe he’d moved along in his progression from the Casa Loma to the Playboy Club. “Actually, yeah, I will.”

  The building still had ghost images of the graffiti on the walls — “Castrate Hugh Hefner,” and “This Building Exploits Women” — from the protest back in the summer, but it was nearly completely faded now.

  It was set up like a beauty pageant, with judges — a couple of newspaper reporters and a radio DJ — and the girls in their bunny uniforms with the cottontails. There was a talent contest, and they were all asked questions that were all to be sophisticated and sexy set-ups for the girls, but almost all got drowned out by the couple hundred rowdy guys in the place.

  And any number of those couple hundred guys could have passed as the cop sidekick on Ironside, as Nancy Barber had described the guy in the Lincoln.

  In the end Lorna Scoville from Sudbury, now a McGill student (something the emcee made sound dirty), beat out Roxanne “Rocky” Rozon from Montreal to win Canadian Bunny of the Year. Her prize was a snowmobile and a trip to Chicago to compete for International Bunny of the Year.

  Saturday, the Quebec Justice Minister, Pierre Laporte, was kidnapped from the front lawn of his house in St. Lambert on the South Shore, a couple of miles from Dougherty’s parents’ house in Greenfield Park, where he went for Thanksgiving dinner on Sunday.

  chapter

  thirty-one

  Thanksgiving.

  “Why do you have to work tomorrow?” The first thing Dougherty’s mother said when he walked into the kitchen from the yard.

  “What’s the big deal? We have the turkey today, and you don’t have to cook tomorrow.”

  “Don’t have to?” She gave him a quick kiss on the cheek and turned back to the stove.

  “Where’s Dad?”

  “In the basement; he says he’s working.”

  Dougherty went downstairs and found his father in the rec room with the furniture pushed against one wall and a pile of lumber against the other. He said, “Your mother wants it carpeted down here.”

  “Why?”

  “She wants to move the TV down here.”

  Dougherty knew enough not to bother asking why, neither of them would ever be able to figure that out. They could only work on how.

  “So what’s with the wood?”

  “We’ll have to raise up the floor a half inch or so.”

  “Why can’t you put the carpet down on these,” Dougherty said, tapping his foot on the black and white tiles he and his father had put down directly over the concrete floor a few years earlier.

  “That’s what your mother suggested, but it would be too damp.”

  “If you say
so.”

  Tommy came downstairs then and said, “Ed-die,” when he saw his big brother.

  “You helping?”

  “Yeah.” Tommy handed his dad a pencil and said, “Sharpened.”

  They worked together for a couple of hours, putting down strapping and then plywood on half the ­basement, then moved the furniture onto that and started the other side. About an hour in, Dougherty’s dad said, “Do you want a beer? There’s some in the fridge,” and Tommy said, “I’ll get it,” and ran up the stairs.

  A little while later they heard Cheryl come in, and Dougherty and his dad stopped what they were doing and stood, waiting, Dougherty with a hammer in his hand and his father with a saw, but they didn’t hear any fighting. After a minute they heard voices, then footsteps and drawers opening and the table being set, and Dougherty even thought he heard someone ­laughing at one point.

  When they sat down for dinner, Dougherty’s father said, “Well, it’s good to have everyone together for Thanksgiving.”

  “And no politics,” his mother said.

  So Tommy told them the Boston Bruins were going to win the Stanley Cup, and Dougherty told him, “The season just started,” and Tommy said, “Yeah, but they have Bobby Orr.”

  “So, the Canadiens aren’t going to win it?”

  Tommy said nope.

  Dougherty looked at his sister and said, “So, Cheryl, how’s CEGEP?”

  He half expected her to get mad and yell at him, maybe he even wanted that, the peaceful dinner not what he’d expected at all, but instead she said, “It’s okay. It’s really just more high school, but they don’t take attendance.”

  “So, do you bother to go to class?”

  She looked at him, more exasperated than upset. “Yes, I go to class.” There was even a little smile.

  They finished the turkey and cleared the table and had pumpkin pie and whipped cream for dessert. Dougherty volunteered to wash the dishes if Cheryl would dry, the way they had when he’d lived at home. To his surprise she said sure.

  Later that night Dougherty and his father sat at the kitchen table in the quiet house and shared a couple of drinks and some small talk.

  Dougherty felt good when he left. But he didn’t go straight home.

  He drove through Greenfield Park and into St. Lambert. It was barely out of his way and he cruised through the newer part of the suburb — post-war bungalows and split-levels, nice houses, more expensive than the semi-detatched his parents had bought in the Park, maybe something his father’s boss might live in, but not a company vice-president or anything like that.

  He turned onto Robitaille Street. It was deserted. Cars in driveways and TV light flickering in living room windows.

  Nothing to show that a man had been kidnapped here the day before.

  It didn’t look anything like Redpath Crescent at the foot of Mount Royal, lined with old stone houses — mansions — and now also with police.

  There was a single cop car in front of 725, a guy in the driver’s seat and another in the passenger seat. They both stared at Dougherty as he drove by but didn’t move.

  The house was about twenty feet back from the street. There was a driveway beside a neatly trimmed front lawn. The lawn where a kid threw a football to his uncle and a car pulled up and men got out. Men who shoved a gun in a man’s face, then forced him into the car and drove away.

  Men forcing people into cars. Politicians. Women. Girls.

  It was a fucking epidemic.

  Dougherty sped up, turned the corner and didn’t look back.

  The next morning he was in Station Ten at seven thirty along with every other cop on the day and night shift. Delisle got them all together in the parade room and told them Captain Perreault would be talking to them. A few minutes later, the captain came out of his office. It was the first time Dougherty had ever seen a captain address the troops, and by the looks of the older cops in the station house he had a feeling it was the first time for most of them, too.

  Captain Perreault started by saying, in French, “As you know, all vacations have been cancelled. Every officer of the Montreal police is working double shifts. These kidnappings are not our number one priority, they are our only priority.”

  He paused and looked around the room, and there was enough grumbling for Dougherty to know he wasn’t the only one who could think of a few other priorities.

  “Every man on every police force in the province — the QPP, the RCMP, every police force — is working this.” He paused again and the grumbling died down and no one said anything. “Now, this is a very difficult situation, we all know this. The lives of two men, two very important men, are at stake. As you know, the kidnappers have demanded that all police action be stopped. Of course, we’re not doing that, but we are using the utmost discretion.” Another pause, another slow look around the room. More tension, every cop in the place feeling it.

  Detective Boisjoli said, “Tabarnak, Denis, c’est fou,” and Dougherty was thinking, Yeah, that’s for sure, but “crazy” might not be the word I’d use.

  Perreault said, “Kid gloves. We don’t want to make them …” and he paused again before settling on, “nervous. No one is to attempt individual action. No unpremeditated moves by individuals or partners. If anyone finds a strong lead as to the whereabouts to either of the hostages, bring that information back here.”

  Everyone in the room knew how ridiculous this all was but no one said anything. They could all tell Captain Perreault was just reading something he’d been sent from higher up. It was likely every captain in every station in the city was reading the same thing.

  “If and when there are solid leads,” Perreault said, “contigency plans will be put in motion, the first goal of which is to free these two men safely.” Another pause, another look around the room. “After that the guilty parties will be taken, but only then.”

  Someone said, “Taken down,” and someone else said, “All the way down.”

  Captain Perreault looked at Sergeant Delisle and said, “Bien, au travail.”

  Deslisle said, “You heard the man — let’s get to work.”

  Cops started filing out of the station and Dougherty stepped up to Delisle, but before he could say anything, the sergeant said, “You’re back on Redpath.”

  “What for?”

  “That’s your job. We’re now covering every consulate, every diplomat, every judge, every minister in the government. We’re swamped — we have far more to cover than we have men.”

  Dougherty said, “Why don’t they hire their own security, get Pinkertons or Burns or something?”

  “They have, they’re swamped, too.”

  “And you want me standing around on the street?”

  “It’s important for the Cross family to see the police,” Delisle said. “And for the reporters. Go.”

  “Look,” Dougherty said, “there are other things we need to do.”

  “Dog-eh-dee, you just do your job, okay?”

  And right now Dougherty’s job was to stand in front of the house on Redpath Crescent and do nothing.

  The only thing that happened all day was in the early afternoon when a cop on a horse came down from Mount Royal and clopped along Redpath. The Cross daughter came out of the house with the maid and they fed the horse some apples. It was probably the first time the daughter — and the maid — had smiled since this whole thing started for them a week ago.

  Then it was back to standing around and doing nothing.

  The reporter, Logan, came by in the afternoon, and Dougherty asked if there was anything else going on in the world.

  “A plane was hijacked in Iran and taken to Bagdad. They’re demanding the release of twenty-one political prisoners.”

  “Only twenty-one,” Doughetry said, “we can beat that. Anything else?”

  Logan took a pack of
cigarettes out of his sports coat, Export A’s, and held it out to Dougherty, who took one. “We’re recognizing Red China, so Chinese Taiwan is closing its embassy in Ottawa.”

  “That’s one we don’t have to cover.”

  Logan said, “Very funny.” Then he motioned towards the house. “Anything going on here?”

  Dougherty told him about the horse, and Logan said he might be able to use that. “Human interest. I heard Mrs. Cross identified a picture — you know anything about that?”

  “From the last time they tried to kidnap someone, the American.”

  “That’s the cab driver?”

  Dougherty said, “I think so.”

  “Master criminals.”

  “They’ve got us jumping through hoops.”

  “Yeah,” Logan said, “but you’re all jumping through the same hoop.”

  “I read the papers,” Dougherty said, “you’re jumping through it, too.”

  Before Logan could say anything, a dark sedan pulled up in front of the house and two men in overcoats jumped out and rushed past Dougherty and into the house.

  Logan said, “Inspector Roland Jodin, intelligence squad, organized crime, undercover operations,” and Dougherty said, “We call it the Social Security Squad. And he’s Chief-Inspector.”

  “I’ll be sure and mention that.” Logan was writing in his notebook.

  “He’s been running the CAT Squad for months.”

  “I know,” Logan said. “What do you think’s going on?”

  “I think if you want to know what’s going on, standing next to me is the last place you should be.”

  Logan didn’t smile, but Dougherty could tell he appreciated the joke.

  About half an hour later, Jodin and the other detective came out of the house, got back in their car and drove away.

  Then Gagnon came out and lit a cigarette and Dougherty said to him, “C’est quoi?”

  “They got another note.”

  Logan said, “Another communiqué?”

  Gagnon shook his head. “No, from Cross. Hand­written.”

  “What did it say?”

  “Not much. Said he listened to Bourassa’s three-minute speech on the radio and that he was well.”