They had expected to find a sparsely decorated workspace, with diplomas on the walls and piles of dusty files, but Dr. Mark McNeil’s office surprised them: white walls, dark wood floors, minimalist furniture, nothing visible on the desk but the clean lines of an iMac and an agenda.
The chief of psychiatry was a well-built man with a gravelly voice and a luxuriant moustache reminiscent of Magnum, P.I.
The detectives started out by settling legalities with McNeil, specifically the issue of doctor-patient confidentiality. Though he wasn’t obliged to answer their questions in the absence of a warrant, McNeil assured them that since Lortie had died without known next of kin, and since this was a murder case, he would be flexible.
Taillon and Victor then got down to business, asking the psychiatrist to tell them about André Lortie. Looking through his notes, McNeil told them that Lortie had first come under the hospital’s care in 1969. At the time, he had arrived at the emergency ward in crisis, suffering from psychotic delusions. After being examined and put under observation, he had been diagnosed with severe bipolar disorder — the term back then was manic depression — accompanied by typical delusions of grandeur and persecution.
McNeil explained that Lortie’s file contained few details about his past. Had he, like so many others, once had a house, a job, a social life, a wife? What events had tipped him into a life of vagrancy? The doctors who had worked on his case over the years didn’t seem to know. But McNeil was able to confirm that the man had spent the past several years living in the streets of downtown Montreal or staying at homeless shelters.
The psychiatrist also informed them that Lortie had been an in-patient at the Louis-H. Lafontaine Hospital numerous times since his first admission. Depending on the seriousness of his condition, these hospital stays had lasted from a few days to several months. Each time, he had presented symptoms of psychotic delusion. Nevertheless, over the past few years, thanks to an increasingly effective drug regimen and more structured treatment, his condition had been “stabilized.” More recently, he’d been able to move into the rooming house that the two detectives had visited.
“When you say Lortie was in a state of psychotic delusion, what does that mean, exactly?” Jacinthe asked, seeming for once to actually be interested in the conversation.
McNeil sat up straight, his hands lying flat on the armrests of his chair. “An intense manic phase can lead to psychotic symptoms like delusions and hallucinations. There’s often an element of truth in the delusions, but the person suffering from them loses touch with reality and becomes convinced of the veracity of something that is objectively false. Manic phases often involve dangerous behaviour on the part of the patient, or even depressive episodes marked by suicidal thoughts.”
“At which point hospitalization is in order,” Victor suggested.
“That’s right. Hospitalization happens voluntarily or at the request of a third party. In Lortie’s case, it was usually the police who brought him here when he stopped taking his medications.”
“And generally, what are the delusions about?” Victor asked.
“My goodness … the mentally ill can be delusional in a variety of ways. For example, there are delusions of persecution. That’s what happens when a person thinks he’s the object of a scheme or conspiracy.”
Jacinthe told the psychiatrist about the writing on the cardboard sheets found in Lortie’s room.
“We also found a newspaper article he’d hidden away,” Victor said. “It was about the kidnapping of Pierre Laporte.”
The psychiatrist’s expression became animated. “I wasn’t one of his treating physicians, but from what I remember of my conversations with colleagues, Laporte was one of Lortie’s obsessions. He claimed that he’d participated in the kidnapping. Which is false, obviously. The names of the FLQ members involved have been known for a long time. You see, this is a good example of megalomaniacal delusion: an overestimation of the self that is at odds with reality. The writing you saw on the cardboard sheets is most likely the product of his delusions.”
“Is it a sickness?” the detective sergeant asked.
“We refer to it as a psychiatric disorder. In itself, delusion is a symptom that shows us that the patient’s thoughts are disturbed.”
Victor lifted his gaze from his notebook; he had already filled several pages. “Are the causes known?”
“They can be numerous.” McNeil sighed. “Ingestion of toxic substances, disease of the central nervous system, trauma, inherited traits, stress. We try to identify precipitating factors, but often we don’t find any.”
“And Lortie?” Jacinthe asked.
The psychiatrist frowned doubtfully. “From what I recall, we never really identified a precise cause. Except that in his case, the symptoms finally evolved into chronic hallucinatory psychosis.”
“In words I can understand?” Jacinthe demanded.
“The patient hears voices. His condition fluctuates between periods of greater and lesser severity.”
“How is it treated? Is there any cure?” Victor asked.
“Antipsychotics allow for a reduction of symptoms in some cases. But no, there’s no cure. From the moment the defences crumble, the problem will come back repeatedly in the form of breakdowns. The sick person is condemned to extreme solitude. The social impact is terrible.”
Victor stood up and took a few steps around the office to restore circulation in his legs. “In your opinion, could Lortie have killed anyone?”
“Short answer: definitely. A person affected by bipolar disorder can have homicidal and suicidal tendencies.”
“And the long answer?” the detective sergeant ventured.
McNeil launched into a veritable dissertation, offering explanations that the two investigators didn’t altogether follow.
The conversation went on for a little while before Jacinthe changed the subject. “Did you know the people Lortie hung out with?”
The psychiatrist shook his head. “As I said, the impact of this illness makes it hard to sustain social relationships. Lortie probably didn’t have many friends.”
“I understand,” Victor said, nodding. “But I’ll try my luck one last time: did he ever mention a Sylvie?”
For a moment, McNeil studied the documents spread out before him, smoothing his moustache. “I don’t see anything in the file,” he said, lifting his eyes. “But maybe you could talk to Ms. Couture.”
“Who’s that?” Jacinthe asked.
“She’s an orderly who often looked after Lortie. I’ll have my assistant take you to her.”
The two cops thanked the psychiatrist. They were about to walk out when McNeil put a hand on the detective sergeant’s shoulder, studying his face. “Forgive me, Detective, but something’s been bothering me since you walked in. Do we know each other? Your face seems familiar.”
Victor lowered his eyes. Taillon looked over in surprise.
“We saw each other at the psychiatric emergency ward in July.” Victor smiled awkwardly. “You prescribed Paxil for me.”
Victor had gone into a serious depression after the King of Flies case. One night, with dark ideas slithering like worms inside his head, he’d voluntarily checked himself into Louis-H. after coming within a hair’s breadth of losing his sobriety at a bar in the Hochelaga-Maisonneuve district. The detective sergeant had spent a few days at the hospital on a voluntary basis.
“Of course! Forgive my indiscretion,” McNeil said, looking sincerely sorry.
Self-effacing and anonymous, Dr. McNeil’s secretary walked noiselessly as she guided them through a maze of corridors. Jacinthe glanced suspiciously in all directions, half expecting the characters from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest to jump out at her. When they came to a waiting room, the secretary asked them to take a seat and excused herself to search for the orderly. Wringing her hands, Jacinthe wondered how to dispel the awkwardness and break the wall of silence — but Victor spoke first.
“Did you know that Émil
e Nelligan lived here from 1925 until his death?”
“The poet? Was he crazy?”
“That’s the official story. But he was probably just somewhat asocial. So you see, it isn’t just insane people who end up in an asylum.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
The detective sergeant’s eyes dimmed. He shrugged.
Jacinthe put a hand on his forearm. She knew how sensitive the moment was. “For a long time, Lessard, you were the only person on the team who knew about my private life. You never judged me. I say plenty of dumb things, but I never would have joked about this.”
Victor said nothing.
“Anyway, that explains the ‘Tylenol’ you’ve been taking on the sly. You should have talked to me. I was scared you were getting hooked again.”
“I haven’t had a drink in seven years,” Victor said, turning his head slowly toward his partner with a dark expression. “Get over it.”
He went to AA meetings four times a year, more to see old friends in the group than out of necessity.
“I’m not just talking about alcohol, Lessard. With all the medication you had to take for your leg, you could’ve gotten hooked. They say dependency is genetic. It’s not your fault. There’s a fragility in you.”
A fleeting image arose in Victor’s memory: his drunken father, mouth foaming, had just given his mother another beating before Victor’s eyes.
“Whatever,” he muttered, shaking his head.
“You never know, my friend.”
Jacinthe’s remarks had stirred dark, painful emotions in him, but he held his temper in check and didn’t react.
They waited in silence for a few minutes, neither one saying a word, until a woman entered. Dressed in a powder-blue uniform, she had touches of pink in her cheeks, and her ash-blond hair was held back with an elastic.
“Hello,” she said in a calm voice. “I was told you wanted to see me.”
“Yes,” Victor said. “Dr. McNeil thinks you may be able to help us with a case.”
“I have to look after a patient. If you don’t mind, we’ll talk on the way.”
Victor began to ask questions about Lortie, trying to learn more about the people he had spent time with. As McNeil had already indicated, Lortie had led a marginal life, with limited social interaction. Making an effort to remember, the orderly eventually told them about a young man with whom Lortie had occasionally played chess, but the memory was too vague for her to remember his name. As for the places he’d frequented, her memory was even less clear.
They came to a room in which an obese male patient lay on his side. The orderly approached him, speaking softly. He emitted a few guttural growls. Victor and Jacinthe understood that it was a matter of going to the bathroom, and the man was expressing strong reluctance. With manifest empathy, the orderly helped him roll over and get on his feet. She supported him all the way to the bathroom, then came out once he was safely installed.
“How do you do it?” Victor asked. “It must take incredible patience and strength to do your job.”
“I have my father to thank for the strength,” the woman said, chuckling. “He always wished I’d been a boy.”
“Did André Lortie ever mention the names of people close to him? Sylvie, for example?”
“Not to my knowledge,” the woman said after thinking for a moment. “But if you don’t mind my asking, what’s prompted all these questions? Did something happen to Mr. Lortie?”
“Oh. I’m sorry. I thought you knew.”
Victor described the circumstances of the homeless man’s death.
A frown creased the woman’s brow. “Maybe Dr. McNeil already told you, but what you’ve described sounds a lot like a story that Mr. Lortie often told.”
“What was it?”
“He was convinced that he’d had blackouts in the past. And after one of those episodes, he’d woken up in a panic, believing he had killed somebody.”
“Why do you see a link with our story?” Victor asked, intrigued.
“Because he said that when he woke up, his clothes were bloodstained.”
The orderly raised her head and looked at the two cops with piercing eyes before continuing. “And according to him, he had the victims’ wallets in his possession.”
20
BAD SON
“You’ll never take me alive! Never!”
Martin turned and saw them on the other side of the chain-link fence, running toward the adult, their strident yells filling the air.
Grabbing the YMCA teacher’s legs, the children wrestled him to the ground. Overwhelmed by their weight and their laughter, he died in a flurry of theatrical convulsions on the snow.
Leaving the daycare behind him, Martin continued on his way. As he looked at a line of crows perched on a wire, he tried to recall the moment in his imaginative progress through childhood when he had tilted into the dismal reality of adult life. A distant memory came back to him, bringing a smile to his lips. His father had woken him up early one morning. They had tiptoed out into the silver glow of dawn. At the park, in silence, they had flown a red kite.
The smile faded. Each return of that reminiscence brought its share of melancholy. Why couldn’t he shed the impression that his childhood had been stolen from him? That he had wasted his time? Why did only fragments remain? After all, Martin hadn’t had a particularly difficult childhood. He’d always been able to count on his loving parents.
There had been times when he tried to follow the thread of memory back in time to figure out what had caused the change in his trajectory. One certainty emerged: it wasn’t a single decisive event, but rather a series of factors that had all seemed trivial in the moment.
Martin crossed Notre-Dame-de-Grâce Avenue and continued south on Hampton.
It was 8:53 a.m. The temperature was minus eight degrees Celsius, and he was walking unhurriedly, with his hoodie pulled low over his eyes.
He was a few blocks from his father’s apartment, hoping not to run into him. But if he did happen to see him, he would say that he’d spent the night at Mélodie’s place in Côte-Saint-Luc and was on his way to have a cup of coffee with some friends.
Which wasn’t too far from the truth …
As he cautiously neared his mother’s house, Martin keyed a number into his phone and waited for the voice mail before hanging up. He repeated the procedure twice. When he was certain that the coast was clear, he went around the side of the house and, calf deep in snow, crossed the yard to the deck. The key was hidden in the usual place.
He entered through the French doors and left his shoes on the rubber mat. Listening to be sure no one was home, he hurried up the stairs to the second floor. He hesitated for a few seconds, then opened his bedroom door, stopping on the threshold. His mother hadn’t touched anything since his departure. Everything was as it had been: his hockey cards were still stacked on the chest of drawers, his Guitar Hero instruments were piled in the corner, and his old Canadiens’ jersey was rolled in a ball on the carpet. Kurt Cobain, crucified on the wall, looked down at him.
His parents’ divorce had happened a few years ago. Martin had seen them both struggle with the messiness of being single. His mother had coped more successfully at first, while Victor had sunk into depression. Marie’s return to unmarried life had been pretty painless; still in her early forties, she had turned into a cougar, going out with men much younger than she was.
Funnily, his relationship with her had never been so close and harmonious as it was during that period, when she’d seemed to understand him better, and rules were more relaxed. One evening, she had even confided to him that she’d taken ecstasy at a rave.
Then, after a few wild years, she had settled down with Derek, an accountant whose pleasant personality Martin hated, believing it to be insincere.
Marie, on the other hand, was utterly smitten: “Derek says …”; “Derek thinks …”; “Derek believes …”
There had been no quarrels with Marie. Martin
hadn’t slammed the door. He had simply found refuge at Victor’s place, his arrivals and departures dictated by the ups and downs of his relationship with Mélodie.
The young man stepped into the room. He pulled out the bottom drawer of the chest and turned it over on the bed. The object he had come for was wrapped in a white cloth and taped to the external surface of the back of the drawer. Martin hadn’t touched the weapon since his father had saved his ass, getting him out of a dangerous situation a few years ago. He removed the cloth and felt the object’s weight in his hand for a moment before sliding it into his belt.
This time, he would see it through.
And he wouldn’t need anyone’s help to get him out of trouble.
Martin restored the drawer to its place. Shaking off his nostalgia, he glanced around the room one last time, then closed the door.
He went down the stairs, holding the handrail. The pistol bumped against the small of his back.
21
FORTUNE TELLER
Jacinthe and Victor stood facing a diminutive elderly woman. Dressed in a flowing ochre robe, her head encased in a rainbow-coloured turban, she looked like a fortune teller in some cheesy sitcom from the 1960s. Mona Vézina had left a message on Victor’s voice mail an hour earlier, but he had listened to it only as they were leaving Louis-H. The detective sergeant had called back, and they had agreed to meet right away. The woman occupied a small, nondescript space in a commercial building not far from Place Versailles that contained several professional offices.
“Come in, sit down,” the documents expert said, gesturing to her guest chairs, making the dozens of bracelets on her wrists jangle.
For a second or two, they half expected her to pull a crystal ball out of a drawer and start reading their fortunes.
“Thanks for seeing us,” the detective sergeant mumbled as he sat down.
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