by John Farrow
While it was not true, to his knowledge, that the murder had gone down under his nose, he could not alleviate the sensation that somehow, in some way, his nose was being rubbed in this death. The geography and the timing, not to mention his invitation to the rendezvous, had conspired to make this personal.
At a strip mall a half-mile away, Lucy Gabriel paced and fumed. She’d been back and forth between the donut shop, for coffee, and her car, a Honda Accord, six times, and still the person she had arranged to meet had not shown up. Inside the donut shop, a friend, a slim young man, was keeping the same vigil, only he was far more relaxed.
Lucy burst through the shop’s door once more and stormed across to their table. “What do you think? Maybe Andy went straight there.” She kept her voice low, hushed, urgent as she stood over him. “He could be talking to Cinq-Mars right now! Let’s check it out.”
“Andy knows he’s meeting us here, Luce. If he’s not here, I can promise you that he’s not there.” He sipped his hot chocolate.
“Then where is he?”
“That,” he stressed, “I don’t know. If he is on the lake, then I can guarantee you that he wants us here. No closer than here. Come on, Lucy. Sit down, warm yourself. Your teeth are chattering.”
“This isn’t working,” she grumbled as she slid into the booth. “Cinq-Mars won’t wait forever. If Andy doesn’t show—”
“—we’ll find another time. Andy’s not the most reliable guy on the planet, plus he’s working both ends against the middle. You know what that means.”
“No, what does that mean?”
She was finally wearing down his outer reserve. “Luce, if Werner Honigwachs crooks his little finger, Andy has to run, and we’re automatically postponed.
He wouldn’t be able to let us know. I expected something like this to happen. Give it another half-hour, after that we’ll call it a day. And Lucy—”
“What?”
“No more coffee. You’re wired, girl. You’re way too jumpy.”
“I got a bad feeling.”
“That’s what comes from drinking coffee by the barrel. Relax!”
She lasted about twenty seconds before wanting to bolt. “I’ll just go down to the shore. I won’t step on the ice. I’ll take a look around, make sure Andy’s car’s not there. How can that hurt?”
The young man sighed. “Tell you what. You stay here. I’ll go.”
“Why you?”
“Because you can’t be trusted. You’ll charge onto the ice and have your own powwow with the great white cop. I’ll check things out and be back in a flash. If Andy shows, just drive him down to the lake and we’ll continue as planned. Okay?”
Reluctantly, she consented to the compromise. At least they were doing something.
“Remember, Luce. About the coffee. Just say no.”
A widening of the Ottawa River, the Lake of Two Mountains is shaped somewhat like a dancing woman with a flared skirt. At its western head the river passes over and around a hydroelectric dam and gracefully swims downstream through an elongated neck, then fills at the bodice and narrows again at the waist. The lake dramatically broadens as the skirt spreads outward and then separates, about seven miles downstream from the bonnet, into two legs. One becomes what is known unofficially as the Back River, creating the north shore around the island of Montreal. The waters of the other plunge through rapids at its foot into the St. Lawrence River, forming the south shore.
Land around the lake is thinly populated. An Indian reserve, apple orchards, villages and two small towns, vast grounds for a monastery and an expansive provincial park occupy the north side. Homes poke out amid the canopy of trees along the southern embankment, until the trees yield to farmland at the eastern tip. On winter weekends, the lake is active with skiers, snowmobilers, and fisherfolk, and with those content to drive to a shack on the ice to drink and gab.
The Chief of Police for the Town of Vaudreuil-Dorion arrived in a squad car and descended the steep ramp from the road to the lake on foot. From a distance he struck Emile Cinq-Mars as being athletic, hale. Barrel-chested, he possessed good muscle tone for his age and took to the snow with a graceful lope. That he had chosen to leave his car on the road seemed worth evaluating. The Ford, a rear-wheel drive, likely would skid on the ice and the ramp’s steep pitch. The man had exercised due care, meaning either that he had profited from experience—a good sign—or that he was remarkably cautious, a quality of indeterminate value.
Cinq-Mars returned to the shack where Mathers had remained with the dead man, partly for the warmth, as the stove-fire was blazing now, but principally to make himself difficult to dismiss when the chief went about his business. He produced his badge the moment the officer arrived, in case the fellow tried giving him the boot.
“Cinq-Mars,” he stated, “MUCPD.” Announcing that he was a member of the Montreal Urban Community Police Department would not earn him brownie points with a small-town chief, but there was no getting around that. “My partner, Detective Bill Mathers.”
“You put in the call?” the chief asked.
“I did.”
“How’d you get here?”
“We were fishing. Practically next door. Off duty.”
“Émk Cinq-Mars?” the chief probed. Younger than him, about forty-five, he spoke with a gruffness born of self-doubt Cinq-Mars worried that he’d made a mistake. He had hoped for a savvy small-town cop happy to have a significant crime to track down, but he ran the risk of landing a mayor’s shoddy cousin, or some such.
“Yes, sir.” At that moment, Cinq-Mars noticed the minnow bucket, where ice remained attached to the edges. The little fish hardly swam at all in the cold, but why was the water not frozen solid when the cabin was not yet fully warmed by the stove? A bucket of solid ice would take a while to thaw.
The chief shot him a glance and uttered a sound inside his chest, a cross between a harumph and a belch. “Chief Jean-Guy Brasseur. This is not your case.”
“Did I say it was?”
“Have you disturbed anything?”
“When we first showed up, the body was on the cot. For safekeeping, we put him underwater.”
“Your press clippings don’t mean squat to me, smartass. All you city cops are crooked anyways.”
Cinq-Mars could hear Mathers chuckling behind his back, enjoying his senior’s predicament. “Country cops are bumpkins. Now then, we’ve insulted each other. What does that prove? Are you interested in this crime, or not?”
“The SQ will take it over.”
“Give them a call. You might need them to blow your nose.”
“Don’t get smart with me, bud. What do we got here, anyways?”
“Thanks for taking an interest. There’s a man under the ice, Chief. A bullet hole through his throat.”
“A fishstick?”
Cinq-Mars was familiar with the reference to frozen corpses. “Pretty much.”
The Chief did not kneel to have a closer look. He gazed down at the victim for a moment, then glanced about the shack. “How’d he get down there?” he asked.
“Floated in, I imagine,” Cinq-Mars suggested.
“You were just fishing? That’s a coincidence. You’re carrying your shield, that’s also a coincidence. Are you carrying an issue?”
“Habit,” he acknowledged. At least this guy had half a brain. Cinq-Mars was beginning to appreciate a few of his meagre qualities.
“What about you?” the chief asked Mathers.
“Shield, yes. Always do. Issue, no. I prefer to catch fish with hooks, not shoot them.” Mathers gave Cinq-Mars a scorching look. He could not believe his partner had carried a service revolver to go fishing on a weekend off.
“You’re a famous detective,” summarized Chief Brasseur. “A legend in your own time, they say. You’re fishing, carrying a shield and pistol, when a body bobs to the surface near your hook. So I’m wondering, what did you use for bait?” A pair of constables arrived at the door and the chief ordered them to cl
ear and secure the perimeter. He turned back to Cinq-Mars. “Did you say you called the SQ or not?”
“I thought you’d prefer to do that.”
“Their case, bud. The coroner will assign it that way.”
“You’ll be privy.”
“Don’t count on it. Not with the SQ. What we know for sure is, you won’t be.”
“I happened to be on hand, Chief. I’m not fighting you on jurisdiction.”
“What else do you know?” the younger man asked him.
“Excuse me?”
“About this case.”
“I cleared civilians away and called the cops. That’s the full extent of my involvement.”
“You can’t see any bullet hole from here,” the chief reminded him.
“I discovered it, actually,” Mathers put in.
“The body or the bullet hole?”
“The hole. The entry wound is in the back of the neck, under all that hair. The exit wound is out the front of the throat.”
“Do you think I give a flying fuck? Tell it to the SQ, as if they need your input.”
“We thought you might be interested in a homicide in your own backyard, Chief,” Cinq-Mars interrupted. “Our mistake. Obviously, you’d rather hand out traffic tickets, investigate dog poop on lawns.”
“Don’t talk like that. Not to me. I warned you once.”
“We’ve pulled you away from poop-’n’-scoop patrol, I can tell.”
The chief responded with a snide laugh, then stepped up to Cinq-Mars, though he stood under the other man’s nose. “I’m not interested in you, Cinq-Mars. I don’t need you on my turf taking credit. You want publicity? You want to be a front-page cop? Go back to the city, don’t sniff around here.”
“I live out here. I’m a citizen.”
“You’re a TV cop, Cinq-Mars. I know your kind.”
“You used to be on the force yourself, is that it? What happened? Did I get promoted while you got skunked?”
“You want to talk about promotions? I’m Chief of Police. You’re a rat-shit Sergeant-Detective.”
“How’d you get this job if you got trashed out? Who’d you marry?”
Chief Brasseur reached between his legs and gave his paraphernalia a hoist. “Up yours,” he added.
“Call the SQ, Chief.”
“You think I don’t know why you called me? You expect I’ll be your bum-boy from the little town. Sure, I’ll call the SQ. They think even less of you than I do.”
Cinq-Mars shook the tension from his shoulders as though he’d rather be throwing punches. “Listen. I was out here fishing. A woman screamed. We went over. We found a body in the water under the floorboards. I buzzed the cops. I’m a citizen. What’s your problem with that?” If the local chief wanted to get under his skin, he was making good progress.
“You’re right, I was on the force, so I know how assholes like you operate,” the chief threw back at him, ignoring his question. “Every word you speak is two parts bullshit to one part jam. You’re spreading it right now.”
Cinq-Mars stared down the prodigious slope of his nose at this poor excuse for a civil servant. He’d seen much worse, but when men brought their pathetic grudges and grievances to the job, to any job, he felt no compassion. Ages ago he had given up trying to disguise that stance, and while he understood that cops were envious of him, he had ceased to care. “Sorry to interrupt your Sunday nap, Chief. I guess you can’t function with the Super Bowl behind us. Why don’t you just call the SQ before the body goes smelly.”
“Wiseass. I’ll make that call.” Under his overcoat he wore a policeman’s leather bomber jacket, and under that a microphone pinned to his shirt. He tapped it and called his station, his voice relayed through the transmitter in his cruiser. He informed his subordinate to forward the news to the SQ.
Finally, the chief bent to his knees and leaned over the hole. He pulled the deceased’s head up by the hair and studied the face.
“He’s thawing,” Mathers noticed.
“What?”
“When I first looked at him, the face seemed more frozen than that. Ice was poking out the nostrils. Not now. Maybe it’s the warmth of the cabin.”
“You got no jurisdiction here,” the chief reminded them both. “Why don’t you both buzz off?”
Cinq-Mars nodded. “I’m on my way.”
“But not too far. Don’t leave the lake until the SQ gets a crack at you.”
Cinq-Mars left and marched briskly through the snow to his rental hut. He looked neither left nor right, and failed to acknowledge the questions of those on the ice awaiting news. Mathers raced to catch up, fearing that the door might slam in his face if he didn’t duck inside soon enough.
“Do we stick around like he said?” Mathers asked in the cabin. A superior’s command carried little weight with his partner. That the superior in this case came from another force made that order irrelevant.
Pacing the small quarters, Cinq-Mars considered what to do. He would have preferred to send Mathers home, except they had only one vehicle between them. “Bill, we stay. It’ll be an education. Take notes on how the SQ botch things this time.” He paused, and eyed his partner closely. When he spoke again he had lowered his voice. “There’s something you should know, partner. Friday, I received a call. I was advised to rent a fishing shack on this lake this morning and wait for a visit. Someone with information to peddle. A woman’s voice, that’s all I know. Whoever called knows I fish here on occasion, and that was enough to arouse my curiosity. I didn’t tell you for a couple of reasons. First off, it was liable to be a wild-gooser. I didn’t want to get you excited for nothing—I wanted you to concentrate on fishing. Besides that, I gave my word not to tell. Point is, we have to hang out to see if my contact shows. If she does, after all this mess, that’ll be good. If not, at least we can say it’s been an eventful afternoon.”
“Maybe you’ve received your information.”
“Meaning?”
Bill Mathers motioned in the direction of the crime scene.
“That I don’t know,” Cinq-Mars admitted.
“I’ll stay on one condition,” Mathers negotiated.
“What’s that?”
“No more bloody fishing. I’ve hooked my last minnow.”
Lucy Gabriel was waiting outside in the freezing cold, her neck tucked deep into her collar, when her friend returned. He was no longer quite so calm and collected.
“What’s up?” she asked him.
“Something’s happened on the ice.”
“What?”
“A death. You know how it goes, some old guy drinks himself into a stupor then freezes when his fire goes out. Or he gets excited reeling in a big fish and has a heart attack. It happens every few years. Anyway, there’s too much activity out there, we’re not meeting Cinq-Mars today.”
Lucy was pounding one foot against the other to keep her toes warm. “We should find out what happened, don’t you think? Camille’s there—”
“Not both of us. I will. Go home, Lucy. I’ll give you a ring later.”
“Don’t bother,” she told him. “The day’s shot. I’m going into the city.”
“To do what?”
“Drink. Laugh. Be with people.”
“I warned you, Luce. The coffee has you wired.”
“The situation has me wired. You take it easy. We’ll talk.”
Pensive, Sergeant-Detective Emile Cinq-Mars ground his upper and lower molars together while Bill Mathers tended to the wood-burning stove. The junior officer discovered that if he played with the fire and arranged it to one side, less smoke leaked into the cabin, which made breathing more relaxed. Meanwhile the constant tinkering helped pass the time.
When the SQ, arrived, Cinq-Mars didn’t bother going onto the lake to greet them. “What kind of a uniform is that?” he mocked, watching through the frosty glass. “Whose idea was it to dress them up in brown shirts? Doesn’t anybody understand the symbolism?”
“I thi
nk they’re meant to be green,” Mathers said, hoping to cool him down.
“Green! Who’re they supposed to be, the Environment Police? Heaven help us if that’s true. Cops should wear blue. True blue. These guys look like something scraped off a pasture.”
Cinq-Mars sat back down awhile, wishing that he still smoked. Twelve years now since his last puff, time that had gone by in an eye-blink. He wasn’t a reformed smoker who had learned to detest smoke. Half the time he wished he still indulged—not for the taste or to feed a craving or for the show, but just to help get him through those hours when he had nothing to do but wait, sit still and be bored, then wait some more.
Both men were startled by a fierce knock. The door sprang open without their invitation.
“Sûreté,” an officer informed them.
“As if we couldn’t tell from the uniform,” Cinq-Mars grumbled.
Mathers showed him a badge in return, and the young officer came in with an even younger, apparently pubescent partner in tow. They’d been told whom they’d find inside, and both men did their best not to appear impressed. They were intent on treating the city cops no differently than nuisance civilians.
“We’re taking down everybody’s name, then releasing them.”
“Releasing?”
“Sending them home. Clearing the site. You’re Cinq-Mars?”
“I’m pleased to meet you. My partner, Bill Mathers. Who’s the Investigating Officer?”
“Sergeant Painchaud is the IO. He just arrived. You know him?”
Cinq-Mars shook his head and surrendered his phone numbers when asked. Mathers did the same.
“All right,” the slightly older of the two said, “you can go now.”
“I’ll stay.”
The officer was lean, arrow-straight, almost gaunt. His thin moustache stood out, a match for his heavy eyebrows. He was filling out his form with a pencil in his left hand, curling his wrist above the line he was inscribing. The remark seemed to fluster him.
“I don’t know. You’re not supposed to. Why would you stay?”
“I’m fishing.”
“I’ll ask about that.”
“Go ahead. In the meantime, Officer, did you know that when addressing a superior from another force it’s customary to use the appellation ‘sir’? It’s a courtesy. Is this news to you?”