by John Farrow
The pair did not enter the premises of Hillier-Largent Global by the front door, nor did they choose the loading ramp or the side access to the parking lot. Rather, they waited by a small fire door, which did not have a handle on the outside. In a minute, a young woman opened it from the inside, her form visible in the red glow of an exit lamp, and the visitors—Lucy Gabriel and Brother Tom—stepped inside.
Their accomplice eased the door shut, making sure that the latch did not click too loudly. The door was connected to an alarm, but the woman inside had the key, which she inserted into a wall device that armed the system again. She then placed the key in a gap under a built-in radiator and pointed at it.
Lucy understood. She was to replace the key in the same spot when she was done. Lucy touched her forearm lightly. “Thanks,” she whispered.
“Shhh,” the other woman dictated, putting a finger to her lips. “You’re on your own from now on, kiddo.”
“I owe you.”
“Big time.” The woman opened the door to the lower floor, listened a moment, then went through it.
“This way,” Lucy whispered, and she led Brother Tom up the stairwell.
Whenever they passed a window, Lucy insisted that they duck. They moved at a pace Brother Tom could manage, and, accustomed to climbing stairs, he diligently kept going. At the third floor they paused while he caught his breath, then Lucy opened the door and listened to the hush of the nearly vacant building.
An empty building at night is never quiet. The thrum of its heating and air-filtering systems, the underlying hint of electrical buzz, can be boisterous. Furniture and doors might squeak, or shift, or sigh, or suddenly release a crack.
There’d be security guards. The possibility of scientists or managers working late could not be discounted.
Brother Tom was breathing like a violent locomotive, every little sound exaggerated.
Lucy heard her first step out onto the corridor carpet and was terrified. The carpet was an industrial, heavy-duty fibre with a bland checked design of browns, yellows and pale reds. The material was so thin that their steps were not muffled unless they stepped lightly, and what sound they made echoed along the empty corridor. Lucy crept alongside the wall, Brother Tom following, until he clutched her wrist suddenly and made her start.
“What!” she whispered hotly. “What!”
He could not explain except in sign language.
“You want us to walk down the centre? Why?”
He put his hands out as if the answer was obvious, but Lucy wasn’t getting it. She acquiesced only because she wanted to get on with this and not waste her time arguing with a mute.
She understood before long. Creeping along the walls was suspicious and made them no less visible. Walking naturally, as if they were going about their business, would not immediately give them away if they were spotted by a security camera or by a guard.
They walked on.
The lighting was dimmer in the executive area. Lucy guided her companion to an office where the name Harold Hillier was imprinted on the door.
The door was locked when she tried it.
She crooked her finger and signalled Brother Tom to keep following her.
The next door down opened, and they entered the office for Harry Hillier’s secretary and clerks. A door led from that office into Hillier’s, and in a secretary’s desk she found the door key in the top left-hand drawer, her hand going to the correct spot immediately. Harry himself had told her where to find it, but that had been a long time ago, when they had worked together on a different project.
He was such a cute little man, with his shiny head and big smile, and he had always been so fond of her. Harry was also brilliant. They’d had fun in the past whenever she had assisted him on his research. She’d known why she had been chosen for certain tasks. She never complained about the long hours, but mainly she was pretty and she could be good company. Her job had been to keep Harry entertained, to keep him in good humour and thereby keep him awake and working, and she really hadn’t minded doing that at all, especially as she had learned so much and become a better technician because of it.
She opened the door to his office, entered, and she and Brother Tom shut it behind themselves.
Brother Tom turned the lever on the vertical blinds to close them, and only then did Lucy switch on a table lamp. In the large maple executive desk, Lucy quickly located a key to a filing cabinet. To her surprise, however, she found that the cabinet had been left unlocked. Opening it, she went straight to the files under “D” and sorted through them. Almost immediately she came across a file marked “Darkling Star.” Camille Choquette had told her the name, and here it was. Pulling it out, she stood bent over the drawer, reading intently.
The file contained a typed report, a series of notes in Hillier’s outlandish handwriting and tossed in at random—a filing procedure that had always given her headaches—and a collection of material photocopied from scientific journals and added to the hodgepodge. This was Harry’s way of working—to bring intuition and evidence and experiments together, throw everything into the mental mix and see what jelled.
Lucy wanted to exploit any advantage she might have. Her friendship with Harry Hillier, and her belief that he was a good guy, were avenues she wanted to investigate. She did not believe that Harry could knowingly be involved with the deadly aspects of Darkling Star. She had always been told not to mention anything about it, or their other illegal experiments, around him, but she also knew that whatever was learned from their covert work eventually had to be sifted through him. He was the bright one, the affable, unassuming genius. Sooner or later, in some disguised way, the knowledge had to be passed to Harry.
Lucy did not know what she was looking for, but she found it anyway. In the formal report, certain passages had been highlighted by a yellow marker. In the margins next to these sections was scribbled the word “human,” followed either by a question mark or a frantic series of exclamation marks. Lucy picked up the telephone receiver.
Dialled.
A woman answered.
“Good evening. Is Mr. Hillier there, please?” she asked.
“One moment, please.”
In a moment she heard Harry’s voice. “Hello?”
“Harry? It’s me. Lucy.”
“Lucy! My God! I’ve been worried sick! Where are you?”
“I’m in your office, Harry.”
“What! What do you mean? What are you saying?”
“I’m in your office, Harry, and guess what? I’ve found the file. Darkling Star. I know what you’ve done, Harry. Harry? Harry? Are you listening to me? I know what you’ve done. I know whose side you’re on. I’ll be in touch.”
She hung up, tucked the file under her arms, and switched off the light. “Let’s go,” she said to Brother Tom.
At the door from the secretary’s office she froze—a cleaning lady was coming down the corridor. They waited, wondering where they could hide. The woman opened a door a good distance from them and went inside another room. Still, they were no longer alone on the floor and would have to move carefully. They would also have to pass the room where she was working.
Lucy indicated that it was time to move. They crept away, and this time they did cling to a wall and work their way down, as if somehow that made them invisible. At the room where the woman laboured, Lucy stole a glance inside, then skipped across the open space. She took another look, and signalled to Brother Tom to jump across as well. How, she wondered, do I explain the monk if we get caught? But she didn’t want to have to do that, she didn’t want to get caught.
Downstairs, they found the key to the alarm where they had left it, shut it down and opened the door. Brother Tom held the door while Lucy ditched the key under the radiator, then the two of them scurried off.
Lucy Gabriel took the file called Darkling Star away with her.
Running behind schedule, Emile Cinq-Mars decided to stick to his plan and make another visit. While it was a
little late for a social call, this was business, and the business at hand was of more than trivial importance. Painchaud had been doing a good job, and was proving to be cooperative, but in the long run Cinq-Mars preferred to receive his information straight from the source. While he would, no doubt, be disturbing a woman who was raising a small child by calling on her so late, that could not be helped. The detective chose a rural route that followed the north side of the Back River, then the forested north side of Lac des Deux-Montagnes. Camille Choquette rented the hut where Andrew Stettler’s body had floated to the surface—a good enough reason to ask her a few questions. She had testified to Sergeant Charles Painchaud that she had not been up to the hut for a while, testimony brought under scrutiny by the minnows found swimming in a bucket of water not wholly frozen. She also knew people—Lucy Gabriel, and maybe Andrew Stettler. So the interview had to be conducted.
The woman lived in the small community of Lac des Deux Montagnes, on a street of modest cottages. For Cinq-Mars, the village was only slightly out of his way home, as long as he could make the ice-bridge before it closed for the night. He had to ask directions at an all-night gas station but found his way soon enough.
Two cars were parked in front of Camille’s house, one in the short driveway, which did not lead into a garage, the second, on the street. Cinq-Mars recognized the second vehicle, so he parked farther down the block. To make certain, he called in the license plate number, and was informed that the vehicle belonged to Sergeant Charles Painchaud of the SQ. So the other man was also pulling long hours—a credit to his profession. Cinq-Mars elected to wait, perhaps talk to Painchaud before he interviewed the woman. That way, any contradictions could be worked to their advantage.
His bones ached, his eyelids were heavy. Cold, and huddling inside his coat, the city detective nodded off. He woke up frigid in his car and immediately started the engine to generate heat. Painchaud must still be inside, his car remained at the curb. Cinq-Mars did a slow drive-by, to see if there was anything to pick up. He observed a light being extinguished in the living room. He parked and walked by on foot. Lights were on at the back of the house, which was strange—not customary procedure for a police interrogation. Two options presented themselves. Painchaud could be in danger. Unlikely, but conceivable. Or—but the second option struck him as absurd.
Cinq-Mars walked up the drive. He hated to go around to the side or rear of the house, as his footprints would be well marked in the snow. Instead, he went up to a window in the front door, which didn’t have curtains, and peered inside. He was patient, glancing in from time to time, then ducking his head out of sight. He saw nothing.
Then he did see something.
Charles Painchaud emerged from the bathroom. He was out of uniform.
Camille Choquette bounced up to him and gave him a peck on the lips before she entered the bathroom herself.
The police officer disappeared down a hall, turning left.
Emile Cinq-Mars returned to his car.
On his cellphone, he called his partner. “Bill? Before we meet on the ice tomorrow morning, I’ve got a couple of things for you to think about.”
“What’s up?” Mathers asked. He was wary about losing his night off.
“Andrew Stettler was connected to organized crime. It’s tenuous, but it’s real enough for me. His buddies are Hell’s Angels.”
“That opens up the floodgates. What else do you have?”
“Camille Choquette, the woman who discovered Stettler’s body—”
“I remember who she is.”
“—and Charles Painchaud, remember him? They’re lovers.” After listening to dead air awhile, Cinq-Mars added, “Kind of takes your breath away, doesn’t it?”
“How do you know?”
“I saw it with my own eyes, Bill. Good thing, too. I might not have believed it otherwise.”
“Emile,” Mathers said, “something’s going on.”
“Tell me about it. Do you know what else?”
“There’s more?” Mathers asked.
“We don’t have a clue what’s up. What do you think about that?”
He could almost hear Mathers shaking his head, trying to put something together, but coming away more dumbfounded than before.
“That’s what I say,” Cinq-Mars told him. “My sentiments exactly.”
13
PICKING BONES
The next day, Tuesday morning, February 15, 1999
Close to the appointed hour, at seven minutes past 8:00 a.m., Detective Bill Mathers joined Emile Cinq-Mars on the frozen lake for breakfast, near the hut where Andrew Stettler’s body had been found afloat. He parked on the ice between his partner’s Pathfinder and the makeshift white trailer that had the word RESTAURANT emblazoned in bold red letters. At one end, the diner served up bait, and at the other perchaud—grilled fresh perch served on a hot dog bun with tartar sauce. A full breakfast was also on the menu, and during the day the diner did a brisk business in hamburgers and hot dogs. The restaurant opened at six each morning, catering to fishermen who had slept in their huts overnight. Snowmobilers dropped in as well, along with commuters on the lake road bound for their jobs in the city. As these patrons had to get going early, the detectives were arriving after the usual morning flurry, and, for a little while at least, they had the place to themselves.
Awaiting his bacon and eggs, Bill Mathers studied the wall of fame—fish photographed with the proud men and women who had made the catch. One man he recognized. A large, hefty walleye was held aloft by a straining, smiling Emile Cinq-Mars. “You never told me.”
“I’m a modest man, Bill. But that was one impressive fish.”
“Maybe that’s how she knew to call you down here.”
“Who?”
“Lucy Gabriel. When all this began, she asked to meet you here, didn’t she?”
He hadn’t considered the possibility before, that his honoured place amid proud anglers had compromised his anonymity. “It’s not that good a picture,” Cinq-Mars grumbled, his usual surly morning self.
“It must be a likeness, Emile. I picked you out.”
Their coffees came up first, and each man was anxious for a gulp.
Bacon and eggs, hash browns, toast and jam followed. The men devoured their food with wanton appetites, although they took care this time not to go overboard. Counters ran along opposite sides of the trailer, and they sat in chairs that offered a view of the lake. Although the room was warm, the knowledge that they were on ice caused both men to keep their coats buttoned up.
Cinq-Mars filled his partner in on the strange news from the previous night’s reconnaissance.
“What now?” Mathers wondered.
“Let’s study the shack again.”
“Hoping to find out what, exactly?”
Cinq-Mars nodded slowly, as though he’d been asking himself the same question. “We’ll keep an open mind. So far, the hut has been thoroughly inspected only by Painchaud, and we don’t know if he did a proper job. It’s his girlfriend’s hut. We thought he was a good cop. Now that we’re thinking he’s not, it gives me an incentive to double-check his work. He might’ve been covering up.”
“That man has some explaining to do.”
“I’d be interested in hearing how he’d even begin.”
After breakfast, they learned that the crime scene had been placed under police lock, and that the hut’s proprietor had not been furnished with a key. He was a squat, cheerful sort who owned the farm on the opposite side of the road from the lake. His wife and daughters managed the leasing of the fishing huts and ran the bait shop and the restaurant, while he controlled public access for vehicles driving onto the ice. The farmer had met Cinq-Mars when the policeman had come to fish, and had often read about him in the papers.
“Do you have bolt-cutters?” Cinq-Mars asked the man.
“You’ll sign a paper?”
“Happily.”
The detectives waited on the ice, away from the restaur
ant and just beyond the parking lot, stamping their feet and gazing across the vast white expanse. “You look tired, Bill,” Cinq-Mars observed.
“I had my line checked for bugs. Then Donna and I talked half the night. She’s not thrilled about all this, Émile.”
Cinq-Mars nodded. “We’ll get our lives back.”
“What are the odds on that?” Mathers didn’t expect an answer. He sounded, if not bitter, fed up. The prospect of living a bachelor’s lifestyle again did not appeal to him.
“I’m churning a few thoughts,” his partner told him, as though that vague notion ought to be sufficiently soothing.
They continued to gaze across the frozen lake.
Both were dwelling on private matters. Cinq-Mars reminded himself to call his father. Mathers reflected on his wife’s upset. Together, they toed the snow, drawing doodles, their hands stuffed in their pockets, collars up to ward off the breeze.
Cinq-Mars broke the silence, bringing them back to the task at hand. “Bill, why?”
“Excuse me?”
“Why trouble yourself putting the body under the ice? Ice is heavy. Bodies are cumbersome. The night was cold, freezing. Why put yourself out? Most killers prefer to get away from the corpse, beat a retreat. As it turns out, the corpse was discovered, and it hasn’t told us a whole lot. Why go to the trouble?”
Mathers stretched in the blinding sunlight, working a morning tension out of his joints. Driving out from the city at dawn had stiffened his muscles. “We don’t know where the body went in the water. Maybe it was easy. We don’t know if the killer expected the body to be found anytime soon.”
“Maybe it went in where it was found, and that wasn’t easy at all.”
“Why, though?”