Ice Lake

by John Farrow

  Three men entered the cubicle.

  Tremblay undertook the introductions. Austere, he carried himself with a professorial countenance. Not a man displaced by the new wizardry of statistical analysis or computer-generated profiles of crime suspects, the lieutenant was a team player at heart, although for him that usually meant being the team leader. Before Christmas, Cinq-Mars had enjoyed ribbing Tremblay after the lieutenant had given an interview on television. “Crime is down except in certain pockets of the city where children are stealing automobile hood ornaments, which is a new fad, thereby creating a statistical anomaly.” In department meetings, Cinq-Mars had taken to asking if they were going to put together a major task force to crack down on the scurrilous, hood-ornament-stealing, statistic-busting twelve-year-olds before it was too late, before all hell broke loose.

  “Detective First-Class Recchi, NYPD. His partner, Detective McGibbon,” Tremblay stated. “Gentlemen, may I introduce Sergeant-Detective Emile Cinq-Mars, the man I was telling you about. This is his partner, Detective William Mathers. You four have a lot to talk about. I have to run, so take care of our guests, Emile.” He gave a little questioning nod, as though to indicate to Cinq-Mars that his best behaviour was being solicited.

  They shook hands. They were all large men, Cinq-Mars the tallest, but the new arrivals had broad shoulders and chests and the necks of football linebackers. A black man, McGibbon offered a relaxed and cordial smile. Recchi, olive-skinned, dark-haired, carried himself with the chiseled head and loping, worried stance of a pugilist. Both men held their overcoats slung across a forearm.

  “Sit down,” Cinq-Mars invited. Mathers had already brought chairs in for the purpose. “What can I do for you?”

  Seated, McGibbon straightened his tie. “I didn’t know for sure if you guys spoke English up here.” He smiled again.

  “My partner’s English,” Cinq-Mars remarked. “He’s dragged me down to his level.” He wished they’d get on with it.

  McGibbon braced his hands on his knees, his overcoat falling across his lap. “We have a situation in New York, sir. Men with AIDS have been dying prematurely. Unexpectedly. All at the same time. Before dying, a few talked about being on a secret drug therapy program—some kind of thing like that. They’d been undergoing treatment for years, that’s what they told people, but this time, when the program changed, they didn’t stay well or get better. They got worse. They slid downhill fast.”

  Cinq-Mars and Mathers shared a glance. Chickens were coming home to roost. “The reason that my superior officer charged out of here so quickly—”

  “He explained,” Recchi said.

  “We have no jurisdiction on this case.”

  “He said something about SQ,?”

  “Za Sûreté du Québec, the provincial police.”

  “Sir,” McGibbon stated, straightening somewhat and lowering his voice, as though to sound conspiratorial, “obviously, we don’t know the ins and outs of how things work up here.”

  “Frankly, we don’t care,” Recchi put in.

  “The lieutenant, he said even though you don’t have jurisdiction, the one person up here we got to talk to, that one person is you. To confer with anybody else would be a waste of our time. Maybe damaging. Would you disagree?”

  Without committing himself, Cinq-Mars folded his arms across his chest. “What do you know?”

  “One woman came to New York City and administered drug cocktails to AIDS patients,” McGibbon recited. “The patients thought they were getting the latest deal, experimental drugs on the leading edge, not yet approved. That woman’s name was Lucy. She’s native, attractive, long-legged, black hair. We have a decent description. A week later a second woman appeared on the scene. She checked on the health of those taking the first woman’s medication, to see how they were doing. She’s referred to as Camille. Her name, and especially her accent—people thought maybe she was French Canadian, which pointed an arrow up here. By the time the second woman had shown up, patients were dying, a few were already dead.”

  They possessed a good overview.

  “I’m aware of your situation,” Cinq-Mars revealed.

  “You’re aware?” Recchi asked. “We could’ve used a heads-up. A consult.”

  “As far as I know, every patient was contacted, told to cease their medication and seek treatment.”

  “That’s another reason why we’re here. We heard about that. What does that do for us, Sergeant-Detective? It sorts out the medical side of things, maybe, but I don’t think it helps us out crime-wise, with the illegalities.” Recchi liked to gesture with one hand as he talked.

  Cinq-Mars imagined that a few perpetrators had been swatted by that hand over the years. He tried to redirect the conversation. “I understand, sir, that we’re talking about two young, idealistic women, who thought they were helping. For years they were helping, before something went wrong. They never had any intent to do harm.”

  “Sir,” McGibbon interrupted, “do you have any idea how many people ended up dead from their desire to do no harm?”

  “Forty-two,” Cinq-Mars replied, which startled both visitors. Both their heads shifted back as if from a blow. ‘You didn’t know it was that many because we’re not only talking about New York.”

  “We know about Jersey.”

  “Add on Philadelphia.”

  ‘Jesus,” Recchi said.

  “Baltimore,” Cinq-Mars mentioned, “escaped by the skin of its teeth.”

  “Forty-two dead by your count,” McGibbon summarized. “I think we have a crime here. I don’t think it matters how idealistic they were.”

  “We have a crime,” Cinq-Mars concurred. “But—behind the crime are men, and syndicates, who knew exactly what they were doing. People who deliberately killed others to advance science. The mob’s involved. Around here, if something’s big, the mob’s always involved. They insist. Usually, all we have to do is figure out which gang. What I’m trying to say is, the women were pawns. If I’ve been protecting them, it might be because they’re the only hope I have left to nail the real criminals.”

  This time, McGibbon and Recchi shared a covert communication. “We’d like to talk to them,” Recchi said.

  “No can do.”

  “Why not?”

  “They’re in hiding.” Cinq-Mars saw no need to discriminate between Lucy and Camille. These men had no particular right to his knowledge.

  “From who?”

  “Not from me.”

  McGibbon turned his head to one side and nodded while looking down at the desk. He finally understood that the meeting was adversarial. “Are they police informants?”

  “Would I tell you if they were?”

  “I don’t know why not.”

  “Would you?”

  “That would depend.” Under the stern gaze of Emile Cinq-Mars, McGibbon made a decision and spoke honestly. “Probably not.”

  “I won’t tell you if they’re informants or not.”

  “We’re on the job, like you.”

  “Yes, you are. With respect, sir, I don’t know you.”

  Recchi brushed a hand through his hair and breathed out with apparent impatience. “Tiddlywinks. We’ve got—how many, you said?—forty-two dead. You want to screw us around here?”

  “We’ve got an officer assigned to this investigation beaten to death,” Cinq-Mars told him. “We’ve got key witnesses blown up in their automobiles. I’ve had an assault upon my home and family. My partner’s family’s in hiding. I don’t know you, sir.” Cinq-Mars put both elbows on his desk and pointed a telling finger at the visitor. “I don’t know you.”

  The four men were quiet awhile, each mulling avenues of possible reciprocity.

  Recchi broke the silence. “Look, we’re on your turf. What you say goes. We can’t do anything here. We’d be lost. How can we make this work? How can we make this happen, Sergeant-Detective?”

  Cinq-Mars leaned back in his swivel chair and issued a lengthy yawn. “All right,” h
e declared when he snapped forward again. “We’re driving out to a crime scene. If you want to tag along…?”

  “What’s the crime?”

  “A cop was beaten and shot to death in his home. I want to revisit the scene. We can start there. See how it goes.”

  McGibbon checked with Recchi, who shrugged. “All right. Let’s go.”

  Cinq-Mars jumped to his feet and grabbed his coat. “You guys armed?”

  Reaching down, McGibbon retrieved the computer mouse that dangled just above his feet and put the object on the desk where he thought it belonged. The wee, plastic creature had obviously been irritating him. When he stood, he tapped his hip holster, and Recchi nodded.

  “Good.I wouldn’t want you reading tourist brochures. I wouldn’t want you thinking you’ve crossed into a safe country. It’s not safe if you’re law enforcement. This time of year, especially. The gangs are bomb-happy. This time of year, they might blow a man up just for using a word like ‘tiddlywinks.’ That wouldn’t surprise me one bit. Show them your gold shields and tell them you’re from New York, they might not be impressed.”

  “I got that message,” Recchi said.

  “What’s so special about this time of year?” McGibbon asked.

  “Boredom, maybe. Long winter nights.”

  “The mob here kills cops?” Recchi asked Mathers, as they followed Cinq-Mars out of the cubicle.

  “Somebody does,” Cinq-Mars told him over his shoulder.

  “Cops. They kill cops?” Recchi, hurrying in pursuit, pressed the junior officer in a hushed tone, as if he wasn’t sure whether he could believe the older guy or not.

  Bringing up the rear, bobbing as he picked up his rubber boots on the fly, then reaching out to grab his overcoat off a hook, Mathers confided, “Lately.”

  Lucy Gabriel was standing by the highway, keeping an eye out for Camille’s car. She had stepped out when she saw her friend coming, but was taken aback by the smashed window. Camille had covered it with a plastic sheet and so had to open the door to talk to her.

  “What happened?” Lucy asked.

  “Long story. Are you getting in?”

  “Nope. Keep going down the road until you see a monk. He’ll direct you.”

  Lucy disappeared into the trees on foot.

  Camille drove on, and eventually a monk stood on the highway pointing to the parking lot of the monastery. She drove down and waited for the man to join her. He didn’t say anything, but helped her unpack the car and guided the woman and her daughter to the ninth floor of the empty western wing.

  Lucy came along quite awhile later, as though she’d been keeping watch, to confirm that Camille hadn’t been followed, and the two women hugged. They wept for Charlie and Andy.

  “Cinq-Mars is coming this afternoon.”

  “He is?”

  “We’ll have to tell him everything.”

  “We will,” Camille agreed. “Oh God, Lucy! You lost Andy. I’ve lost Charlie!”

  “Baby.” They held one another again, and only the monk’s return helped them pull themselves together.

  “Does he talk?” Camille asked about Brother Tom.

  “Not a peep. We communicate though, in our own way. Come on, Camille, pick a room. You might as well make yourself at home.”

  Camille put her things away in the simple room identical to Lucy’s across the hall. Carole insisted on her own room and chose one two doors down. The little girl was permitted to unpack her own bag, and Lucy and Camille left her alone. Camille filled the little drawers in her room with her underthings and stacked her pants and blouses on the desk. She hung one dress on a small rack intended for a monk’s robes. With Lucy’s help she made the bed with the sheets and blankets brought in by Brother Tom, then Camille flopped down for a bed test.

  “It ain’t much, but it’s home.” Lucy tried to smile, but tears quickly sprang to her eyes instead. This time, Camille comforted her. “I guess if Cinq-Mars can’t help us,” Lucy said, dabbing her eyes, “he can always toss us in jail.”

  “Cheery thought.”

  “It keeps me going.” She stuffed a Kleenex into the tight front pocket of her jeans.

  “What do you do for fun around here?” Camille called back over her shoulder as Lucy tagged along. They were off to check on Carole.

  “Arm-wrestle Brother Tom. Yesterday I raced him down the hall after giving him a thirty-yard head start. I try to get him to talk, unsuccessfully so far. And I thought up a new game, where I give him a pat on the ass when he least expects it.”

  “You don’t. Lucy! Poor Brother Tom!”

  Camille was dragged away by Carole, who had taken it into her head that she wanted a bath. “I’m a guppy,” she called back to Lucy.

  Her mother turned on the bathtub taps. The seven-year-old seemed amazed that the bathtub was in a room all by itself, with no toilet and no sink. While they waited for the slowly pouring water, Lucy showed them the washroom.

  “No urinals,” Camille noted.

  “Monks in robes, they’d rather sit, I guess,” Lucy explained, and the women’s laughter echoed off the tile walls and marble floor.

  “Anyway, right now, only the fourth stall has paper, so that’s the one we use.”

  “Gotcha.” Camille tested the water in the bath while Carole got out of her clothes.

  “Brother Tom will bring you banana bread and chocolate milk after your bath, Carole!” Lucy said. She wanted to protect the child from the sorrow she was feeling. It was all so horrible. Charlie, dead. Harry, dead. What was going on? How could they escape? She desperately needed to talk to Cinq-Mars. She desperately needed to trust him.

  “I’m going to have a bath of my own,” Camille decided. “There’s more than one tub, right?”

  “Dozens,” Lucy confirmed. “Four on each floor.”

  Lucy returned to her room and stood looking out overthelake. She had done the right thing, she believed, bringing Camille here. She didn’t want to lose another friend.

  Mathers drove the police issue, their guests in the rear seat. They’d headed out to the ice-bridge with Cinq-Mars urging him to use a heavy foot. On the ice, though, he demanded that Mathers stop.

  The officer braked the car slowly.

  In the back, Detective McGibbon, seated directly behind Cinq-Mars, asked, “What’re we stopping here for?”

  Mathers was looked intently at his partner, as though he had the same question on his mind, only he knew better than to ask.

  “I’ve made this,” Cinq-Mars declared.

  “What do you mean?” Recchi asked.

  “I just have to figure it out.” He was hardly noticing the men with him. In his own world, Cinq-Mars stepped out of the car and walked a hundred feet across the ice and snow.

  “What the fuck is going on?” Recchi demanded to know.

  Mathers said, “You guys stay here, all right?” He climbed out from behind the driver’s seat.

  “Is he nuts?” Recchi pestered him.

  “Yeah,” Mathers said, before he closed the door. “He’s crazy.” He watched his partner stop and crouch down, then place his head in his hands. Mathers waited a minute, observing him, before he walked up behind him. When he got close, he moved to one side, and saw that Cinq-Mars was trying to wipe away a tear. “Emile?” he asked quietly.

  The man was embarrassed and tried to turn his head away. When he felt that he had done all he could to dry his eyes, he stood. “My dad’s dying,” he explained. “It’s any day now. Maybe any hour.”

  “I know, Emile. I’m sorry about that. You want to take some time?”

  Cinq-Mars shook his head. “God! What—is—it?”

  After that outburst, Mathers was afraid to speak again.

  Then Cinq-Mars said, “It wasn’t Painchaud’s house, Bill, it was Camille’s!”

  With his hands in his pockets, Mathers shrugged. “What was?”

  “The clue I saw but missed.” Mathers seemed confused, and Cinq-Mars shook his hands at him. “Her drive
way. I’m sure, I’m positive, was full of cop cars. But there’s no garage and her car was nowhere around.”

  “So?”

  Cinq-Mars was taking large breaths, as though he was winded by an acceleration to his thinking. “So, where was her car?”

  Mathers continued to stare at him, without comprehension.

  “But I need it all, Bill. I need it all and it’s coming. I tell you. I’ve prepared myself for this. I’m sorry if I don’t know how to handle it.”

  “Émile—”

  “Stettler wrote lips lips lips. He was concerned about lips, something about lips. Then Charlie has his lips sewn shut. You know I don’t believe in coincidence. Coincidence is the biggest fraud going. Everything in life is interwoven, everything’s connected. So Stettler knew about a problem with lips, something that confused him, upset him probably, so much so that a very secretive man wrote the words down and underlined them three times. As if he was trying to get his brain to figure it out. I know what that’s like.”

  Cinq-Mars bent over at the waist, as if the adrenaline pumping through his system contorted him. “Stettler had some concern that he probably didn’t understand about lips.” He returned to an upright stance again. “And he bobs to the surface in Camille Choquette’s fishing hut. Charlie is killed and he has his lips sewn shut, and his telephone is an open line to Camille’s house. That’s no coincidence. Two bodies, both connected to some place where Camille sleeps. Fishing line, telephone line—it all connects.”

  “All right,” Mathers said, “I see where you’re going. But we also have to deal with the small matter of proof.”

  “Yes, yes,” Cinq-Mars agreed, impatiently. He had one hand in a pocket and the other he shook in midair, waist-high. “Let’s just say you’ve killed someone and you run outside and you find out you’ve locked your keys in the car. What do you do? Call a locksmith? An automobile club? Do you go looking for a coathanger to jimmy the lock? No! Bill! We’ve already seen the shards of glass. You smash the damn window and get the hell out of there. But after that—”

  Mathers had it now. “After that you don’t park your car in the driveway, with the window out. It’s Camille. We haven’t even interviewed her yet, but we know now it’s Camille. For some reason she wanted her boyfriend dead.”