“Tough luck for them.”
“Give me a little time, okay? The higher-ups are feeling the heat. If Lawson doesn’t turn up in twenty-four hours, you’ll get your missing person alert.”
Victor made a face. He didn’t like the idea, but he trusted Delaney’s judgment and knew the top brass were making his life difficult. Besides, although the chief didn’t owe him any explanations, he was still keeping him in the loop — for which Victor was grateful. Delaney’s work methods showed him to be the polar opposite of Victor’s former boss, Tanguay.
“Okay, Paul.”
The detective sergeant was already on his feet, ready to leave, but Delaney detained him.
“Hey, Vic … Gilles was telling me you’ve put Loïc back out in the field.”
“Yeah.”
“You sure that’s a good idea?” Delaney was glad the initiative had come from Victor, but he didn’t want him feeling obligated to take Blouin-Dubois under his wing. A few weeks previously, while examining photographs of a crime scene where Loïc had assisted them, Jacinthe and Victor had noticed that the young man had stepped with both feet onto a bloodstained carpet. It was clearly inadvertent, but his contamination of an important element of the crime scene had provoked anger among his colleagues.
“The kid knows nothing about homicide, but he knows the street. In any case, it’s time we gave him another chance …”
In the conference room, with crime-scene photos arrayed in a semicircle in front of her, Jacinthe was eating the contents of a box of brownies and feeling miserable. Though she hated to admit it, Lessard had been right: going back to see Horowitz had been a waste of time. The interrogation of Bennett had also proven useless.
It was past 5:00 p.m. Another day had been wasted following leads that went nowhere. Jacinthe had hoped that looking at the photographs would yield a flash of insight — but there was nothing. Nothing but emptiness, piling up on itself.
She finally tore her gaze away from Judith Harper’s bluish face, stood up, and turned off the light. The show was over. She was going home.
Lessard still lingered at his desk. He was usually the last to leave the office. She was about to make a wisecrack when she realized that he was whispering into his phone. Silently edging closer, she caught snatches of his conversation.
“I’m sending them to you … but you’ve got to keep this to yourself. If anyone finds out, I’m going to be in hot water.” With that, the detective sergeant hung up.
“Who you talking to, Lessard?” she asked, walking up to him.
Victor reacted with surprise. He hadn’t noticed her approaching. “Jacinthe! You startled me,” he stammered. His heart was pounding.
Taillon was gazing at him sus piciously. “Who was that on the phone?” she insisted.
“Huh? Uhh … it was Nadja,” he said, looking her in the eye.
Victor left around 8:00 p.m., completely drained, with a single thought in his head: to eat something and go to bed. He stopped to pick up butter chicken at D.A.D.’s Bagels on Sherbrooke, a 24-7 curry place where he’d spent Christmas Eve the year after his separation.
After dumping his things on the couch, he turned on the TV and resumed watching Casablanca. He and Nadja had started the film the night before, but he’d fallen asleep before the end. And while Humphrey Bogart, his face bleak, promised Ingrid Bergman that they’d always have Paris, he ate the meal he’d heated up in the microwave. In a daze, he watched the end credits without seeing them, then abandoned his dirty dishes in the sink. He was in his undershirt, brushing his teeth before bed, when he heard the front door creak open.
Nadja, on night duty at Station 11, had come by during her break to say hello. Victor was about to kiss her and ask how the evening was going when she bit his lip and pressed him against the tiled wall. “Fuck me.”
He took her there, among their hastily discarded clothes, from behind, against the bathroom sink. Nadja’s panting breath fogged the mirror each time he pressed into her; her shining lips brushed against the glass. Gripping her by the hips, Victor watched her spine dancing to the rhythm of his thrusts. He didn’t take his eyes off the perfect curve of her haunches until he exploded into them.
Nadja had come and gone; she’d evaporated, evanescent as a ghost. Now that she was sharing his bed almost every night, he had trouble falling asleep without her. He’d gotten up several times to go to the bathroom, he’d rearranged his pillows repeatedly, and he’d been unable to make up his mind whether to leave one leg outside the covers.
His mind strayed idly in a half-conscious doze, mixing up details of the case with old memories: his mother and his brother Raymond, both murdered, were walking barefoot over shards of glass, leading Judith Harper into a dark and sinister forest. He dreamed that Nadja, pregnant by him, had given birth to triplets in the kitchen; when he got home from the office, he found the infants sitting in a puddle of blood in front of the refrigerator, playing with magnetic letters and numbers. Nadja was seated in a corner, weeping, her face buried in her wrinkled hands.
He cried out and sat up abruptly in bed. After catching his breath, he checked his watch. Too bad. He got up, pulled on his jeans, and opened the window. After a few drags on a cigarette, he picked up his phone from the bedside table.
“Hello?” a sleepy female voice said.
“Jacinthe?”
“No. Just a second, Victor, I’ll put her on …”
The whispers he heard at first soon gave way to loud exhortations. Clearly, Taillon was a heavy sleeper.
“What the fuck, Lessard!” she roared when she finally came on the line.
“Judith Harper didn’t have children.”
“You woke me up at two in the morning to tell me that?”
“We need to go back to her apartment with the forensics team.”
“You’re wasting my time, Lessard. I’m hanging up now.”
“There were number magnets on the fridge, Jacinthe. Coloured plastic numbers — for kids. Think about it. The killer was there!”
17
COLLAR
The car window descended, revealing the sinister features of the huge man behind the wheel. Wearing sunglasses at night, he looked like a Corey Hart wannabe.
Will Bennett handed him the envelope.
As the driver counted the wad of bills, he smiled, revealing immaculate teeth. “Room 38,” the man said, giving him a key.
The window was rising when Bennett put out a hand to stop it. “I hope the merchandise is top quality. Because last time …”
The driver took off his glasses, narrowed his eyes, and gave Bennett a long look. He seemed to be hesitating between laughter and black rage. “It is,” he said. “But no bruises this time. Or it’ll be the last.”
Will Bennett entered through a door that opened onto the parking area, thus avoiding any contact with the motel receptionist. The drab room was lit by a lamp on the nightstand.
The girl was stretched out on the unmade bed with a collar around her neck, her hands tied behind her back, her legs bound by duct tape. A rope attached to the collar was fastened to the bedposts, immobilizing her head, while a rubber ball, held in place by a leather strap, gagged her.
Will Bennett saw fear in the girl’s eyes as he advanced toward the bed. He pulled on his gloves, in no hurry.
18
EVIL
Evil creeps. Evil prowls. It insinuates itself into the soul’s blank spaces. And sometimes, for no apparent reason, when you’re sure it’s busy elsewhere, it catches your scent of ashes on the cold air, turns from its path and follows you. From that moment onward, every fibre of your body knows there will be no truce. The husk that carries you is doomed. But the brain, up to the very last second, manages to create the illusion that there’s a way out, some possible avenue of escape.
While he drifted between half-conscious states, Nathan Lawson had been untied from the bed. A collar had been attached to his neck with a metal rod whose sharp points penetrated the flesh on his br
eastbone and under his chin, forcing his head back at a forty-five-degree angle, making it an agony to swallow and preventing him from breathing normally.
Behind Lawson’s back, a complicated mechanism linked the collar to the metal shackles encasing his hands. At its other end, a sort of metal spider armed with a black dart loomed threateningly over the back of his neck. Before Lawson had fully woken up, his eyes and mouth had been covered with duct tape.
A yellow brilliance had scalded his retinas when the tape was pulled off, but it had taken him only an instant to assess the danger of his situation.
Lawson was in the storeroom, in the basement. He had recognized the space when he saw the jars of preserves on the shelves and the butcher’s table standing in the corner.
The tiny space was sealed by a metal door. The glow from the ceiling bulb licked the grey concrete. Lawson could walk, but he was unable to bend his knees; he had strained his eyes in a vain effort to understand why.
He was shaking with cold. As far as he could tell, only his underwear remained on his body.
Each time his alertness waned and his head sagged, the sharp points dug into the flesh of his sternum and his chin. They didn’t touch any vital organs, but the searing pain forced him to stay awake. A rivulet of blood flowed from his wounds, drying in layers on his throat and chest.
How long had he been here? Two hours? Twenty?
The second answer seemed more likely: the odour of his own excrement hung in the air, and his soiled legs were trembling with fatigue. He had briefly contemplated letting himself fall to the floor to rest, but he was stopped by fear of the points penetrating his soft flesh. He couldn’t stand any more pain.
At first, he had convinced himself that he wanted to die.
At his age, he had no regrets. He had lived the life he’d dreamed of: he had seen what he wanted to see in the world, acquired the objects he coveted, treated himself to all the sex he desired. On a human level, now that his mother was gone, he had no attachments left, no one to miss, no one to be missed by. There was his work. He could have continued for a few more years. But he knew the end was drawing near.
Then he started to think about the situation in which he found himself. He hadn’t seen his executioner; they hadn’t exchanged a word. But he knew it could only be André Lortie. Once again, without being able to formulate an answer, he wondered why the affair was resurfacing now.
Then fear had engulfed him, and all his attention had turned to the key he’d seen out of the corner of his eye, lying on the table. For hours it had occupied his thoughts. For hours his brain had tried unremittingly to convince him that the key held the promise of escape, that if he succeeded in getting his hands on it, he could open the shackles that bound his wrists and free himself from this trap.
Ready to die?
On the contrary, Nathan Lawson felt ready to do anything just to savour one more Christmas Eve, which he’d spend alone, continuing the ritual that he and his mother had observed for so many years: watching The Phantom of the Opera — the classic silent version — while consuming large amounts of champagne and foie gras.
And yet, for hours, his body had refused to obey him and pick up the key.
All because of the red line.
Indeed, there was a strip of red tape in front of the table. Each time he approached it, his body would contract and he’d retreat a few paces, convinced that it was a trap or a signal; that if he crossed the line, he would die.
Hobbling to the metallic accompaniment of his restraints, Lawson advanced to the table in a stiff-legged penguin walk. He had finally convinced himself that he had to do something; that he’d soon die anyway if he didn’t take a chance. His strength was ebbing fast. He was losing blood and wouldn’t be able to endure the pain much longer before lapsing into madness. His entire body was racked by suffering. His neck felt like it was about to snap; his arms and back were at the breaking point.
Lawson paused to think. He must, at all costs, see what was under the butcher’s table. Because of the yoke that immobilized his head and impeded any movement, it was the only place he’d been unable to look. It was the only place where a threat might still be hiding.
Eyes bulging, short of breath, his nostrils greedily sucking in every molecule of air, Lawson forced his head forward. The sharp points drove farther into his breastbone and his chin; blood spurted; the pain became unbearable.
A scream died in his throat. Tears rose to his eyes.
But he had seen! There was nothing under the table. Nothing!
He took superstitious care not to touch the red line with his feet.
With his back to the table, he groped along the surface until the key was in his hand. With a twisting effort, he managed to insert the key into the lock of his shackles. When he turned it, he felt relief as the hold on his wrists loosened.
His brain rejoiced. All the time he had lost was compressed, passing before his eyes like a promise.
At the same moment, the turn of the key triggered a mechanism: latches were unbarred, springs were released. The dart flew with blinding speed into the back of his neck and came out his throat, perforating the carotid artery and severing the jugular vein.
Face down on the floor, Lawson was soon lying in a pool of blood. Until the last second, he had believed there was a possibility of escape. If he had listened to his instincts instead of his mind, he would no doubt have lived longer.
But just a little longer.
NOVEMBER 1981
THE NIGHT OF THE LONG KNIVES
That night, in a kitchen of the Château Laurier Hotel in Ottawa, while René Lévesque and his delegation slept in Hull, Attorney General Jean Chrétien was negotiating in secret with the premiers of Canada’s other provinces.
The shock was brutal: a deal to patriate Canada’s Constitution was struck by Prime Minister Trudeau and agreed to by ten of the country’s eleven governments, without the assent of the government of Quebec.
Obviously, Lévesque refused to sign. On television, there was a romantic quality to his sad expression. It was justified. He felt betrayed, stabbed in the back by the other provincial premiers.
I wish I could take him in my arms and whisper to him that we’ll overcome the rage of being held captive in our own land. Just as I have overcome the rage of being held captive in my body and mind.
Living in the pain of exclusion, Quebec is a different being, a unique entity, a space to be shaped and defined.
I believe exactly the same thing could be said of me.
READ-ONLY MEMORY
19
LOUIS-H. LAFONTAINE
Tuesday, December 20th
It was 6:25 a.m., and the plastic plants at Chez la Mère were swaying to the rhythm of the plow’s rumble as it pushed the previous night’s snowfall to the edge of the sidewalk. Nearby, at the corner of Pie-IX Boulevard, a tow truck siren ululated, commanding those who hadn’t yet moved their cars to do so now. Taillon was about to dig into a poutine, while Victor’s ill temper swirled at the surface of his coffee. They had been in the restaurant for a few minutes, having spent most of the night exploring Judith Harper’s apartment with the forensics team.
“Watching your cholesterol, are you?” he asked ironically.
“It’s this or cigarettes. Gotta die of something, right?”
Reaching for the condiments, she turned her food into a sodden mush. The detective sergeant shrugged and went on: “It’s pretty frustrating …”
“What?” Jacinthe asked, before stuffing a quarter of the poutine into her face on the first bite.
“0 blue, 1 red, 2 orange, 3 yellow, 4 purple, 6 green,” Victor recited, his eyes on his notebook as he reviewed the colours of the magnetic numbers found on Judith Harper’s refrigerator. “We worked through the night, and this is all we’ve got.”
“Unless the forensics people come up with prints.”
“Don’t count on it. That wasn’t an oversight. The killer wanted us to find the numbers.”
“Why? To give us a lead?” she asked between bites.
Victor blew on his steaming drink before taking a sip.
“Did you notice that there were six digits? One less than for a phone number, but it could be a date …”
Jacinthe’s fork hung in the air, then her fist banged the table. “Maybe he’s trying to direct our attention to something that happened!”
“Or to some significant date for Judith Harper.”
“Okay! So why were you bitching just now, like we had nothing to go on?” She scratched her forehead. “But if he was trying to give us a lead, why leave the numbers all mixed up?”
“No idea.” He was silent for a moment. “You’ve got sauce on your chin,” he said, yawning.
“Six digits … that’s a lot of possibilities.” She wiped her face with the back of her hand. “What time are we seeing the psychiatrist again?”
“Eight o’clock. Give me the keys. I want to take a nap in the car. I’m fried.”
Jacinthe handed him the keys and said something about dessert, but Victor had already hoisted himself from his seat and was moving between the tables, where a few customers sat reading the Journal de Montréal.
He opened the restaurant door and his eyes were bathed in whiteness. The cottony sky hung so low that he wanted to lie down in it and fall asleep.
Taillon had woken him up after parking the car in the lot of the Louis-H. Lafontaine psychiatric hospital. With a stiff lower back, Victor had smoked a cigarette in front of the hospital entrance, his teeth chattering.
Never Forget Page 8