by John Farrow
Tremblay doodled a few circles on the file folder lying in front of him. “That’ll be the day,” he stated.
“It’s true. It’s a good thing, too, because the prime suspect in the case happens to be the Investigating Officer from the SQ,.”
Tremblay threw down the pen. “Oh hell. Emile!”
“He’s coming in shortly for an interview. We’ll see what’s left of him when I’m done. Expect the shit to hit the fan, Remi. I’ll let you know in advance so you can contact your buddies in the SQ, break the news to them gently.”
“That’s all they need right now. A rotten officer.”
Cinq-Mars stood, preparing to depart. “Run this one through your head, Remi. A rotten officer, but with high-level family connections—political connections. Yep, when I’m done here, you’ll probably wish you’d never come to work today.”
Tremblay tilted his head to one side and rested it on a palm. “Get lost,” he instructed Cinq-Mars. “Don’t come back. And remember,” he hollered to the detective’s retreating back, “you’ve got no jurisdiction!”
Cinq-Mars shrugged, then turned. “What about those profiles on Lucy Gabriel and Andrew Stettler?”
“They’re on your desk—if you’d bother to look!” Tremblay admonished him.
Cinq-Mars had a sandwich quietly by himself in his cubicle, taking in the chatter from the squad room, while he read through the briefs. Just about everything on Lucy was taken from the public record. She’d been arrested at the end of the Oka crisis but not held, and eventually the charges had been dropped as the police focussed on a few criminal Indians rather than on half the reserve. Stettler’s brief was curious, in that very little jibed with what he had learned about the man so far.
After reading the reports, Cinq-Mars called through to his father, and the nurse picked up. His dad was resting. Things were quiet. He was breathing well but talking less, she said. He was eating less, also, but drinking tea, and she was giving him nourishment intravenously as well, just to keep his strength up. Strength up, Cinq-Mars wondered, for what? He was not in pain, thanks to medication, and the drugs he was taking appeared to be slowing the progress of his cancer, although he was failing, a little more every day. He thanked her and hung up, both grateful and disheartened. He supposed that it was necessary to keep up the strength of a dying man, if the issue was dignity or clarity of mind. He wondered how he himself would handle dying should the event also come to him slowly, piecemeal.
Cinq-Mars wished he could be there all the time, holding his father’s hand.
The call he was waiting for came through from downstairs, and Cinq-Mars asked that Painchaud be escorted up. The SQ, sergeant arrived in uniform, looking eager, happy to have the confidence of the famous detective. He sat in the cubicle and wanted to talk about the case, for he had had a discussion with Camille Choquette and with a few of Andrew Stettler’s fellow employees at BioLogika.
“What did they give you?” Cinq-Mars asked. Mathers joined them, bringing coffee for everyone, and he pulled up a chair beside the visitor.
“That’s the strange thing. He had a title, Head of Security, but nobody knows what he did.” Painchaud tore open a packet of sugar and poured it into his Styrofoam cup, then used the plastic stir-stick while he continued talking. “He had the ear of Werner Honigwachs, they spent time together, but the night watchmen and the guards at the gate, and the guys who looked after keeping information confidential, they never talked to Stettler. The computer guys, forget it. A couple of them paid him a visit when they had a problem. Guess what he said.”
Cinq-Mars shrugged.
“‘I don’t know anything about that shit. Figure it out for yourself.’ That’s what he told them.” Painchaud looked from one man to the other with wide eyes, wholly expecting them to share in his amazement.
Taking a moment to swallow a hot sip, Cinq-Mars suggested, “That’s the kind of advice I’d like to hear from executives more often.”
Painchaud looked over at Mathers, who gazed back at him without helping him out with his partner’s point of view. “Well,” he said, weakened, “it sounded like strange behaviour to me.”
Cinq-Mars grinned. “Come on,” he invited. “Grab your cup. There’s something I want to show you.”
Leaving his own cup on his desk, he led the officer from the Sûreté du Québec upstairs to the interrogation rooms. He took the steps three at a time, and while he did not wear the younger man down, his long strides forced Painchaud to jog at a quickened pace while trying not to spill his coffee. For reasons he did not comprehend, his joints had stopped bothering him, and Cinq-Mars felt energetic, even twentyish.
“What’s up?” Painchaud asked as the door to the sparse room closed behind the three of them. He was flicking his fingers dry.
“This is where we bring our tough guys.”
Painchaud remained confused. The paralysis of his facial muscles seemed more evident when he wasn’t smiling or avidly talking. “Who’re you bringing in?”
“Sit down,” Cinq-Mars told him.
“I don’t get it.”
Mathers seated himself, putting his own coffee down. “Would you mind sitting on the other side of the table, please?”
“I’m sorry,” Painchaud declared, “what’s going on here?” He had a pinched, offended look on his face, as if he were being bullied and had suffered similar abuse in the past but would tolerate no more of it.
“Please, sit down, sir,” Cinq-Mars instructed.
The use of the word “sir” impressed Charles Painchaud, and he proceeded to the opposite side of the table in the dull room where paint was peeling off the walls, and he put his coffee down, spilling some more. He seated himself, his chair scraping the floor. He looked from one Montreal cop to the other. “What’s going on?” he asked tersely.
“You tell me,” Cinq-Mars suggested.
“I don’t understand.”
“Yes you do.”
“No, I’m sorry, I don’t.”
Cinq-Mars signalled to the officer behind the one-way mirror to roll the tape recorder. “We’ll record this conversation, if you don’t mind.” He looked back at Painchaud, who appeared ashen and stunned. “I can start you off, Charles. However, it would be better all around if you just told me everything.”
The younger man folded his arms across his chest. The gesture did not seem particularly defiant, rather, the man appeared to be settling in, as though he assumed that this was going to take a while. “Start me off, Emile, because I don’t know where you are.”
Cinq-Mars identified himself and the other two men in the room for the sake of the recording. Then he declared that, “Andrew Stettler was killed in the fishing hut where he was found—”
“He was?”
“—a fishing hut that belongs to your girlfriend, Camille Choquette.”
Gradually, his chin fell, his gaze shifted downward. When he lifted his head again, he did not make eye contact. He looked higher, over Mathers’s head, as though scanning his brain for thoughts. “If I’m not under arrest—” he said finally.
“Not yet,” Mathers qualified.
“—then we are in this room as equals. As fellow police officers.”
“That could change in a hurry,” he was warned.
“Until it does, I have a proposition for you.”
“What’s that?” Cinq-Mars was willing to give him a little latitude, as the man had not denigrated himself either by denying the charge or offering up an inane lie.
“I will tell you something pertinent to this case that you don’t know, and then you will answer a question of mine.” He looked at Cinq-Mars. “You can cut off the discussion if you decide you’re not interested.”
The deal was a good one. “All right,” Cinq-Mars began. “Tell me something I don’t know.”
“I put you on this case.”
The older cop checked with his partner to see if this made any sense. Mathers shrugged.
“You know yourself that
I could have blown you off the ice the day that we found Andy. And incidentally, Andy was a friend of mine. Did you know that?”
Cinq-Mars spoke slowly. “You knew the victim and you’re telling me that that information is incidental?”
“Think back, Emile. I allowed you to stay on the lake. For what it’s worth, I was behind getting you to be there. After that, I allowed you to stay in touch with this case. I fed you information.”
“What information?” Cinq-Mars corrected him. “You left out pertinent facts!”
Painchaud tilted his head as though to concede that much. “What I’m trying to tell you is, I was the one who told Lucy Gabriel to call you. How else do you think she got your home number? I used my connections to get it. I’m the one who put you on the ice that morning.”
The two men stared at one another. Mathers’s gaze drifted between the two.
“Why?” Cinq-Mars asked.
“It’s time for you to answer a question of mine,” Painchaud determined.
“Don’t push my buttons, Charlie. I might be charging you with murder today.”
“Answer my question. How could Andy die in the hut and end up under the water?”
Cinq-Mars sat back. To answer the question was to put Painchaud on a different plane, removing him from the status of a suspect and restoring him to that of cop. He didn’t like the shift, but believed that he could move him back at any moment. “Ice was cut out and raised using a block-and-tackle attached to the roof beam, which was stout enough. Stettler’s body was tossed in. The human debris and blood was scraped off the surface, then the surface was re-formed, and the ice was frozen back into place.”
Painchaud mulled the information awhile. Maintaining one arm across his chest, he rubbed his face with his other hand. Interestingly, for Cinq-Mars, he rubbed the side of his face that was paralysed, as though trying to awaken something that had atrophied within him. “How did Andy get in?” he asked. “He didn’t have a key.”
“Maybe not, but he has a background. I checked his record. It wouldn’t have been the first lock he’d ever jimmied. Or, you let him in. Or, Camille let him in. Or, he had his own key.”
“I asked Camille. She told me he didn’t have a key. So maybe you’re right. He has a background. Maybe he didn’t need a key.” He seemed dazed.
“Camille’s your girlfriend?” Mathers wanted confirmed.
As a small man, Painchaud felt somewhat compromised behind the large table. He leaned forward, putting his elbows on the table and folding his hands together. “You have to start with this one point, Emile. I brought you onto this case. Andy Stettler, Lucy Gabriel, Camille Choquette and me, we were ail working together, and together we brought you onto this case.”
Cinq-Mars copied his posture, except that he raised both his forefingers to form a point, steeple-like. “All right,” he told him. “I’ve got that. I admit that it’s interesting. Now I need you to sell me on it. I need you to tell me why.”
“I was involved in a case I couldn’t handle by myself.”
“Why not invite the SQ, to join you?”
“I can’t trust my department. Not with something so big, or, from my perspective, so sensitive. My colleagues don’t trust me any more than I trust them. If I had suggested to someone that I wanted to spare my girlfriend, I’d probably have been arrested along with her on the spot. Even if I’d found people I could trust and who would trust me, we’d probably still have botched it. I needed somebody good, Cinq-Mars. I needed you.”
A compliment wasn’t going to weaken his aggressive approach. “Why keep your relationship with Camille Choquette a secret?”
“For starters, I’ve had one friend murdered and another abducted. I kept Camille a secret because I believed that her life might depend on it. Also, and this is not a small point, she’s in trouble with the law. The law doesn’t know it. I’ve protected her to give us time to get at the real culprit in a terrible conspiracy.”
“Lovely.” Cinq-Mars let his hands fall hard upon the table. “Just what I need. A conspiracy theory. Is the world in danger, Charlie?”
The smaller man would not accept the abuse. He continued to stare at Cinq-Mars, and he did not relent until the other man did so first.
“Who’s the real culprit?” the detective asked at last.
“Werner Honigwachs.”
Cinq-Mars looked across at Mathers. “Bingo,” he said.
“Your lucky day,” Mathers replied.
“All right,” the senior cop decided, addressing Painchaud. “Convince me.”
To his increasing astonishment, Sergeant Charles Painchaud managed to do so. He had been brought into the fray because Camille Choquette and Lucy Gabriel were in trouble, and the nature of that trouble horrified him. Painchaud had a story to tell, and the pair of Montreal policeman absorbed it all with trepidation. If the SQ, officer was wiggling out of things, he was doing it awfully well.
The three men sat in the stillness of the room awhile, each gazing at the table or at a wall, until Cinq-Mars finally signalled the recording to be stopped. He made a cut sign with his hands to indicate to the officer in the booth to leave them in peace, and a moment later he asked Mathers to check that they had been left alone. When Mathers came back with the all-clear, Cinq-Mars addressed Painchaud.
“Tell me more,” he demanded. “Details.”
Painchaud told him Lucy’s story about the motel clerk in Paramus and that Camille had said that she had found him dying. He had died in her arms. He told stories of the men who were Lucy’s friends, and that Camille had reported on which ones had lived and which had died, and that Lucy had wept at the recital of names.
“I’ll need to speak to Camille,” Cinq-Mars pointed out.
“She’s not the one we’re after,” Painchaud attested. He took a sip of coffee.
“I need to talk to her.”
The officer conceded as much. “All right.”
“You both live on the other side of the lake. I’ll pick you up this evening, after her working day is done, let’s say seven, then we’ll drive to her house.”
“We can meet at her house, if you like. Or she can come to mine.”
“No. I’ll pick you up. I’ll have a few more questions for you by then.”
“All right.”
“You don’t know what’s happened to Lucy Gabriel?”
“Not a clue. I fear for her.”
Cinq-Mars nodded.
“We have to protect the two women, Emile. They’re not innocent, but they were both used as pawns in this.”
Cinq-Mars continued to nod. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”
“I had to involve you, Emile. I had to get you onside. I couldn’t say to you, here’s Camille Choquette, she’s partly responsible for the deaths of forty-two people. That’s the final body count, as far as we’ve been able to determine. The woman you’re hunting, Lucy Gabriel, she administered the drug cocktails. So I tell you that, and then I’m supposed to say, ‘Oh, by the way, I want you to watch out for these women, and look after them, and see that they go free.’”
“No one’s been granted their freedom yet,” Cinq-Mars emphasized.
“I had to involve you in the ramifications of this case first, Emile. I’m sorry about that, but I had to work you. I had to arouse your interest.”
The older man clenched his fists and tapped them on the table lightly. He had to reprogram his thinking. One part of him was judgmental, but that attitude warred against a part of him that understood the benefits of compromise and the need for mercy. “You can go,” Cinq-Mars said. Painchaud left without saying goodbye, and several minutes later Mathers tapped his partner on the shoulder to break the spell, to draw him out of his trance.
“What do you think?” Mathers asked.
“When we go onto Indian land, what do we do?”
The answer surprised him. His partner had moved on to a different subject, it seemed. The younger man had to think about his response. “We notify the
Mohawk Peacekeepers.”
“What do you think the bad guys do?”
Mathers thought about that. How the question was connected to the matters under discussion he did not know. Again, he had to think hard before answering, and even then posed his reply as a question. “Do they call the Mohawk Warriors?”
“I don’t know, but it makes sense to me. I’m going out to the reserve before heading home. I’ll pick up Charlie as planned this evening. After we talk to Camille, I’ll give you a buzz. We’ll thrash this through.”
“What do I do in the meantime?”
“Do what you do best, Bill. My dirty work.”
“Meaning?”
“Follow me out there. I’ll take the ice-bridge to Oka. I want you to take the land route around. Arrive ahead of me in some beat-up old crate. Wear grubby clothes. As soon as I find out where my meeting takes place, I’ll let you know. After I leave the meeting, tail whoever’s behind me. Find out where he goes, stay on him until he moves again. Very important, Bill. You’ll be on Indian land, so don’t get caught. As a precaution, I’d take your badge out of your pocket. Hide it under your seat. But keep your gun.”
Mathers nodded. “What are we looking for?” he asked.
“Knowledge. It’s been in short supply around here lately.” Cinq-Mars patted his shoulder as they vacated the room. “Better get down to the costume room, Bill.” Mathers nodded but didn’t appear to be in any great rush, as though the news of the afternoon had left him stunned. “Hickory dickory,” his senior admonished him.
14
COMMEMORATION
The same day, Tuesday afternoon, February 15th, 1999
Crossing the lake under a bright glare intensified by the sparkling snow, Sergeant-Detective Emile Cinq-Mars put in a call to Constable Roland Harvey of the Mohawk Peacekeepers. Even in broad daylight, and driving an unmarked car, he preferred to cross onto Indian land with the acquiescence of the local constabulary—and preferably with their protection. He and the constable arranged to meet at Lucy Gabriel’s house, and Cinq-Mars told him that he would be there shortly.