One or the Other

by John McFetridge

Legault said, “Yes.”

  “Did he kill Manon and then himself?”

  “We don’t know yet,” Legault said.

  It was quiet for a moment, and then Dougherty said, “There was a rope around Mathieu’s neck. It looks like someone strangled him.”

  “There were marks on Manon’s neck,” Albert said. “Someone strangled her, too. Not Mathieu?”

  “We don’t know yet,” Dougherty said.

  Albert looked at him and said, “So, now it’s the Montreal police?”

  “Mathieu’s body was found in Montreal,” Legault said. “We will work with the Montreal police.”

  Albert was nodding. “You have done this before?”

  “Yes. A few times.”

  Dougherty heard a door open and footsteps, and a girl came into the living room. She looked like the picture of Manon he’d seen in the autopsy file but a couple of years younger. Her eyes were red from crying.

  “Mathieu est mort aussi?”

  Ginette nodded and the girl started crying. She sat on the couch beside her mother.

  After a few minutes, Legault stood up and said they had to go. She said to Ginette, “Call me anytime you want, day or night. I’ll tell you everything we know.”

  Outside, Dougherty said, “How many kids do they have?”

  “Just the two girls,” Legault said. “The one now.”

  They got into the car, and Legault said, “Mathieu Simard lived with his mother not far from here.” She put the car in gear and pulled away from the curb.

  “Just the two of them?”

  Legault took a moment and then said, “As far as I know. There are two other kids, boy and a girl, older. The mother says they don’t live with her, but I’m not sure.”

  “She’s not cooperative?”

  “It may be she doesn’t want people sticking their noses in her life.”

  “That’s going to be impossible to stop now,” Dougherty said. “There’ll be reporters and maybe TV coverage and every neighbour will have something to say.”

  They were on Chemin de Chambly then, and the bungalows had given way to fourplexes and small apartment buildings. Dougherty was thinking the neighbourhood wasn’t exactly what Judy would call underprivileged, but it was getting there.

  “Here we are.”

  Legault parked in front of one of the three-storey red-brick apartment buildings.

  The buzzer was answered right away, and Legault opened the door, saying, “She’s home.”

  On the third floor, Legault knocked at the door and a moment later it opened.

  “Madame Simard, on a des nouvelles.”

  She knew right away what news it was, of course, and backed into the apartment. Legault put an arm around the woman and led her to the couch.

  Dougherty closed the door and followed them into the small living room just past the kitchenette.

  Legault spoke quietly, telling the mother that her son was dead. She used the woman’s first name, Paulette, a few times.

  The apartment was untidy but clean. There were breakfast dishes on the drying rack beside the sink and a pile of paperback novels beside the couch. A couple of walls had framed prints, Quebec farms and countryside. The furniture was worn.

  After a few minutes, Legault said, “This is Detective Dougherty from Montreal, he will be helping.”

  Paulette looked up and said, “T’es Anglais, toé? Doe-er-tee?”

  “Oui.”

  “C’es pas grave, y’a ben des anglais au Pratt & Whitney.”

  Dougherty continued in French: “I’m very sorry for your loss.”

  “Who did it?”

  “We don’t know yet.”

  “It was not Mathieu,” Paulette said. “He did not do this, to Manon or himself.”

  “No,” Legault said, “he didn’t.” She glanced up at Dougherty, willing him to stay silent, but he wasn’t going to say anything. Maybe Mathieu killed the girl and then tried to hang himself and then jumped in the river, maybe he didn’t. They’d find out soon enough.

  Or never.

  But now the mother would have to be taken to the morgue to identify the body of her youngest child.

  Legault dropped Dougherty at the Longueuil police station, where he picked up his car. They agreed to meet there later, after Legault brought Paulette home. Dougherty decided not to go back over the bridge at rush hour, even if it was against the traffic, only to have to come back later, so he drove south on Taschereau Boulevard.

  Six lanes of bright-coloured signs and neon lights, car dealerships, gas stations, restaurants and bars — not exactly the Berlin Wall but the boulevard separated French Longueuil and Laflèche on one side and English St. Lambert and Greenfield Park on the other. Even the streets changed names when they crossed Taschereau: Boulevard Édouard became Churchill Boulevard and Rue Georges became Gladstone Street. Two hundred years side by side and they were determined to remain two solitudes.

  It was just before six when he pulled up in front of the house on Patricia, the corner lot on a block of identical houses — or what had started out as identical twenty years before. Now some had carports added or rooms off the kitchen or big decks in the backyards.

  The house looked empty. Dougherty went in through the back door into the kitchen and heard the music coming from the basement. It was so loud Dougherty was surprised he hadn’t seen the windows rattling from the outside.

  Tommy was on his back on the floor in the middle of what their mother always called the rec room, with its knotty pine walls and indoor-outdoor carpeting. Tommy’s eyes were closed, his hands were on his chest and he was so still he looked like a corpse.

  The song ended suddenly, the singer yelling what sounded to Dougherty like “Suffragette,” and the basement was completely silent.

  Dougherty said, “Hey,” and Tommy jumped like someone had hit him in the gut.

  “Whoa.”

  “You’re not stoned, are you?” Dougherty said.

  Tommy was getting up and he said, “No.”

  The next song had started, guitar strumming steadily, and then the singer came in: “Time takes a cigarette.”

  Tommy said, “What are you doing here?”

  “Mom and Dad not home yet?”

  “Any minute.” Tommy was at the stereo, then he lifted the needle off the record. “You staying for dinner?”

  “Yeah, I was in the neighbourhood.”

  “In this neighbourhood? Way out here? Why?”

  “What do you mean, way out here?”

  “Suburbs, boonies.” Tommy was putting the record in a paper sleeve and then he slid that into the cardboard cover. “One of my teachers, Mr. Mardinger, he said to us, ‘How can you live way out here?’ Like we have some say in it.”

  Dougherty was shaking his head. “It’s nice here.”

  Tommy wasn’t buying it. He sat down on the couch.

  “Hey,” Dougherty said, “did you hear anything about a couple of kids from around here who went missing a few days ago?”

  “From Greenfield Park?”

  “Longueuil.”

  Tommy said, “No,” dragging it out like it was the craziest thing he could imagine.

  Dougherty was thinking it was like a bubble, this little English town. Tommy was in his last year of high school; Dougherty couldn’t imagine him sticking around much longer.

  “They went to a concert at Place des Nations and never made it home.”

  “Gentle Giant.”

  “What?”

  “That was the concert on Monday at Place des Nations, Gentle Giant and, I think, Harmonium.”

  “Did you go?”

  “No, but I know some people who did.”

  “I guess these missing kids went to the French high school.”

  Tommy shrugged. “If they w
ere French, I guess so.”

  “Anyway,” Dougherty said, starting to get annoyed and looking to shock his little brother, “they’re not missing anymore, they were killed.”

  Tommy said, “That’s too bad,” with no emotion.

  “Are you sure you’re not stoned?”

  “Why, you want some?”

  Dougherty looked around the rec room and got the feeling Tommy was the only one who ever spent any time there. Their sister, Cheryl, had graduated high school and moved out a couple years before, and Tommy was the only kid left at home. The place felt cold.

  “Okay, I’m going to wait upstairs.”

  Tommy said, “Okay,” but didn’t make a move to follow.

  In the kitchen, Dougherty looked out the back window at the apple tree his mother had planted that never had any apples. He saw she hadn’t started any work in the garden, but he wasn’t sure if it was time for that yet or not.

  Music started up in the basement again, loud and aggressive. When he could make out the words, Dougherty was pretty sure it was something about fly by night, away from here, and then something about my ship isn’t coming and I just can’t pretend.

  Dougherty walked into the living room and looked out the big picture window onto Patricia Street. Both sides of the street were lined with the side-by-side two-storey red-brick houses with flat roofs, small front lawns and driveways. It did feel far from city life, Dougherty agreed with that, but that was the point. He watched a car drive along the street, stop at the corner and disappear up Fairfield, and he thought he could understand Tommy’s feeling like he was ready to get out, but Dougherty was starting to think that he was ready to come back to a place like this.

  He doubted it was something Judy was thinking about these days, though.

  The back door opened then, and Dougherty’s mother came in, saying, “Édouard, what are you doing here?”

  “I was in the neighbourhood.”

  Dougherty’s father was coming in then, too, and he said, “Well, this is a nice surprise.”

  “Supper in half an hour,” his mother said.

  Dougherty’s father made a couple of rum and Cokes, and they sat at the kitchen table while his mother put a ham in the oven and got the potatoes on to boil. They talked about work for a while, both his parents with the phone company, his mother working as a clerk in the east end and his father building switchboards and installing them in office buildings. His father complained about the traffic on the bridge and the possibility of another strike.

  Dougherty said, “This summer?”

  “Maybe in the fall,” his father said. “Seems like everybody’s on strike. Nurses, teachers, post office.”

  “Using the Olympics for pressure. I’m surprised you guys aren’t talking about going out sooner.”

  “Too much overtime getting ready for the games.” Then he said, “What brought you out here?”

  “I’m working,” Dougherty said. “On a homicide.”

  “Detective?”

  “Nothing official,” Dougherty said. “Acting detective.”

  Dougherty’s mother said, “Like your father, longest-serving acting foreman at the Bell.”

  His father said, “Not this week.”

  “It’s the union work,” his mother said. “None of the ones who started the lineman’s union got promoted.”

  “Was the homicide on the south shore?” His father clearly didn’t want to talk about his own job.

  “It was two kids,” Dougherty said, “high school students. They were at a concert at Place des Nations, and then the bodies were found in the river.” He glanced at his mother as he said that, but she was at the sink cutting up carrots and he couldn’t see her face. “We’re not sure where they went into the river. But they were strangled first.”

  “So why are you on it?”

  “Detective Carpentier is friends with the captain in Longueuil, so I’m here helping out. And one of the bodies washed up on the Montreal side of the river.”

  “Nasty business,” his father said.

  “But it’s got to be done.”

  “You want another drink?” His father was already up and going to the cabinet beside the oven where he kept the booze.

  “Dinner’s almost ready.” Dougherty’s mother was coming to the table with plates. Then she called Tommy up from the basement, finished mashing the potatoes and brought the food to the table, saying, “So, how is Judy?”

  Dougherty said, “She’s good.” For a moment he thought about mentioning that her parents had split up, but he knew that would just lead to a whole lot of questions and he didn’t have any answers.

  Tommy came upstairs and grunted his way through the meal, giving one-word answers to every question he was asked. Before he’d even chewed the last mouthful, he got up from the table and left.

  Dougherty said, “You don’t make him do the dishes? You always made me and Cheryl clean up,” and his mother just said, “It’s no trouble.”

  It was almost eight when Dougherty left the house and drove to the Longueuil police station. He got there just as Legault was leaving, pulling out of the parking lot in the unmarked car as Dougherty was pulling in. He rolled down his window and said, “Where you going?”

  She said, “We’ve been replaced,” and drove off.

  CHAPTER

  EIGHT

  Dougherty walked into Captain Allard’s office and knew right away the two men with him were detectives. Plain dark suits, white shirts, ties and giving off the vibe that they ran the place.

  Allard said, “Bonjour, Dougherty.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “We’ve decided — I’ve decided — to bring in our detectives to run this one.”

  Dougherty said, “That sounds like a good idea, this is a major case. Can I still be any help?”

  “Yes, of course.” Allard looked relieved. “We will need to coordinate with the Montreal police, of course.”

  “All right.”

  “So,” Allard said, “this is Detective Boudreau and Detective Lefebvre.”

  Boudreau was standing up and held out his hand and Dougherty shook it, but Lefebvre was sitting down and didn’t make a move.

  Dougherty said, “What about Sergeant Legault?”

  Lefebvre said, “This is homicide, it’s not women’s work.”

  “No,” Dougherty said, “it’s police work.” He regretted it as soon as he’d said it, but he didn’t like these detectives. And, he realized, he did like Legault — he liked the way she’d been honest and up front with the families of the victims. He’d been looking forward to working with her.

  Allard said, “Sergeant Legault is still working the investigation. She will be the liaison with the families.”

  Lefebvre said, “We’ll call you if we need you.”

  Dougherty said, “Okay.”

  He left the office and drove a few blocks to Taschereau and stopped at a strip mall. Found a phone booth and called the pager number on Legault’s business card. He punched in the pay phone’s number, hung up and waited.

  And, as he expected, the phone rang within a minute.

  “Dougherty.”

  There was a pause and then Legault said, “Oh, c’est toi. Que veux-tu?”

  Dougherty spoke French, saying, “Let’s have a drink.”

  “Not interested.”

  “We’re still working, let’s work.”

  “Do they need someone to bring coffee and doughnuts to the office?”

  “Look, I can see a place, La Barre 500, you know it?”

  “Not there, everyone knows it.”

  Dougherty smiled to himself a little. Legault was negotiating, which meant she was going to meet. He wasn’t too surprised, she had a lot to complain about and it would be better to let it all out to Dougherty than to someone she a
ctually cared about.

  “There’s a bar on Victoria Avenue, that’s what Boulevard Lapinière is called on the other side of Taschereau,” Dougherty said. “The Rustic Tavern, do you know it?”

  “Not in my territory.”

  “Ten minutes,” Dougherty said.

  The Rustic was in the end unit of a strip mall next to a dry cleaner and a convenience store, but inside it did a pretty good job of looking rustic: dark wood panelling, heavy wooden bar, low lighting. And it was English all the way.

  Dougherty got a table near the door, ordered a draught and waited. Almost half an hour later Legault came in, stood by Dougherty’s table and said, in French, “There isn’t anything to say.”

  “Well, you’re here now.” Dougherty finished off his beer and motioned to the bartender.

  Legault sat down. Reluctantly. So reluctantly it almost made Dougherty laugh.

  A waitress came to the table and said, “What’ll it be?”

  Dougherty handed her his empty glass and looked at Legault. She didn’t say anything so Dougherty said, “Couple more, thanks.”

  Legault looked around the bar and said, “It’s all English here.”

  “Our little hideaway.”

  The waitress brought the beers and dropped a couple of menus on the table. “In case you’re hungry.”

  Dougherty said, “Thanks,” and then went back to French, saying, “So, I met Boudreau and Lefebvre.”

  Legault said, “You will be working with them now.”

  “No, I’ll still be working with you.”

  “Fine. I work youth services. You’re going to love it.”

  Dougherty drank his beer and waited a moment and then said, “You know there’s nothing here at all, nothing. And they’re not going to get anything. This is most likely going to be an open file forever.”

  “So I should just forget it?”

  “Yeah, that’s right, just forget it.”

  Legault smirked at him and started to say something and then stopped. Then she said, “Oh, you don’t mean that.”

  “Of course I don’t mean it. Look, this is just politics. There’s always politics, and it’s always bullshit.”

  Legault drank her beer and didn’t say anything.