They were startled by a noise resembling the striking of a matchstick: the burner on the gas furnace had just lit up. Victor released his breath, wiped his forehead with the back of his hand, and opened the door at the far end of the workshop.
The beam of his flashlight slid across the room, and a cry froze in his throat. An odour of death and offal hung in the air. The body of a man in his underwear lay in a puddle of blood and excrement.
The detective sergeant snapped a mental image of the scene: the corpse was lying face up, arms crossed. Brownish wounds were visible on the diaphanous skin of the throat and chest. The wrists bore purple bruises, and the cracked, dry lips had split open in several places.
The walls began to spin. Victor’s grip loosened, and his Glock and flashlight both clattered to the floor.
Suppressing the urge to vomit, he barrelled past Jacinthe as he rushed through the darkness toward the stairs.
The detective sergeant made it out onto the back deck in time to avoid throwing up. His nausea gradually dissipated in the cold air. He smoked a cigarette and gazed down at the winding road below the house, which had been freshly plowed.
Beyond Mount Royal, the lights of the city sparkled.
Recovering his cigarette stub to throw away, Victor went back inside. Through the living room window, he saw that the emergency lights were still flashing and the car doors were open. He stepped outside to radio for backup from the Crown Victoria. In front of the house, the wind was screaming through the treetops of Summit Woods. A light appeared in the forest, then went out.
Intrigued, the detective sergeant advanced a few paces, squinting. At first he couldn’t make out anything. Then he thought he saw movement behind a spruce tree. As his gaze swept over the area where he had spotted the movement, he reacted with a start: in the distance, a dark silhouette was watching him.
“Hey!” he yelled, waving. He knew lots of people went for walks along the wooded paths.
A halo of light began to dance away through the trees.
It took him a moment to realize that the silhouette had turned on a flashlight and was fleeing. Victor rushed forward in pursuit. “Taillon!” he shouted as loudly as he could, hoping she’d hear him.
Instead of circling around to the start of the path, he went straight up the two-metre escarpment that fronted the street. His high-tops skidded in the snow, but he managed to grab a branch and hoist himself up. He was now on rising ground among the trees, but the vegetation wasn’t thick enough to prevent him from reaching the path, which opened before him.
Reflexively, he touched his holster. Empty. His Glock and flashlight were still in the basement. Knee deep in snow, with branches slapping his face, he advanced as fast as he could in the darkness. He stopped for a second on the path to locate the halo; he’d momentarily lost sight of it. Then he set off again after the point of light, which he spotted about a hundred metres to his right.
Victor was gaining ground fast, ignoring the growing pain in his leg — the leg that had almost been torn off by a vicious criminal during a previous investigation. He could see the fugitive moving through the shadows. Another few steps and he’d be on him. Now he understood why he’d been able to catch up so quickly; the fugitive was wearing cross-country skis, which were slowing him down on the uphill path. But they were coming to the crest of the rise. Victor accelerated, putting all he had into the pursuit. If he didn’t catch the fugitive now, he’d have no chance once they started downhill.
“Stop!” the detective sergeant shouted, regretting that he didn’t have his pistol.
And then, even though he hadn’t made a false move, his leg gave out just as he was reaching desperately for the fugitive’s jacket. For an instant, he seemed to float, suspended in the air; then he fell, his head slamming into the ground. With a hood pulled low over his eyes, the shadowy figure returned and leaned over him. A powerful light blinded him. For a fraction of a second, the detective sergeant thought he saw a pistol pointed at his face. Or was it an illusion?
Everything began to spin.
He passed out.
29
SOUNDTRACK
The room was filled with tumbling words that his brain was struggling to grasp and arrange into sentences, whose meanings he couldn’t quite discern.
“You’re lucky I heard you yell …”
Sitting on the kitchen counter, Victor lowered the bag of ice that Jacinthe had given him and touched the bump on the side of his skull.
“You should have waited for me, instead of acting like an idiot!”
The detective sergeant remembered that when he had come to, Jacinthe was bending over him, and he was chilled to the bone. How they’d managed to make it back to Peter Frost’s house remained blurry in his memory.
“Good thing you’ve got a hard head …”
The sequence of events was starting to come back to him. The halo in the woods, the desperate pursuit, the skis. His fall. Then blackness.
“Are you feeling dizzy? You should probably go to the hospital. You may have a concussion …”
Victor waved his hands. “No, no, I’m okay,” he said in a low voice, as though to convince himself.
“How’s the leg?”
He bent and straightened the limb a few times, wincing. His leg would never regain its former strength. As far as the doctors were concerned, the fact that he could walk at all was an achievement. While he was in rehab, they’d stressed that he would have to take care from now on. Precisely the opposite of what he’d just done.
“It’s fine,” he lied.
“Here, pop a few of these,” Jacinthe ordered, handing him some acetaminophen tablets that she’d found in the medicine cabinet upstairs.
Victor washed them down with a gulp of water. Then he noticed that the lights were on in the house. Jacinthe confirmed that she’d restored the electricity herself. Someone had turned off the main switch on the breaker panel.
“What about the body downstairs?” Victor asked.
“It’s Lawson, all right. The forensics team is on its way.”
The detective sergeant had more questions for his partner, but Jacinthe wanted to discuss what had just happened in Summit Woods. She suggested that the skier might simply have misunderstood Victor’s intentions, becoming frightened when Victor had charged at him.
“You’re forgetting the gun,” he said.
“You’re not even sure he had one,” Taillon replied.
On the way back to the house, Victor had indeed admitted his uncertainty. Had his disoriented mind imagined what he’d seen? Despite his doubts, he couldn’t help thinking of the old cliché: the killer returning to the scene of his crime. Was that what had happened? He didn’t have to ask out loud. He knew the question was already on Jacinthe’s mind.
The two detectives quickly went to work when the forensics team arrived.
While Jacinthe coordinated with the crime-scene technicians, Victor called the Gnome and enlisted his aid. They needed a profile on Peter Frost. Then the detective sergeant went down to the basement, where he found several old pairs of cross-country skis, along with footprints in the snow outside the garden door. Under his thoughtful gaze, one of the techs made casts of several prints that led out to the street.
Had the killer been in the house when they arrived? Had he seized his opportunity, while they were searching the upstairs rooms, to grab a pair of skis from the basement and flee?
Victor went back out into the forest with the technician. The ski tracks ended at the edge of the road on the far side of the woods, near the lookout.
Had a car been waiting for the skier there? If so, any tire marks in the snow had been obliterated by the plow that had cleared the street before they arrived.
Victor lit a cigarette and propped an elbow on the parapet. His gaze plunged down toward the luxurious houses of Westmount, the lights of Montreal, and the river.
Victor had finished searching the ground floor of the house when the Gnome called back. Pe
ter Frost was the owner of several pharmacies. He had died a month earlier following a lengthy illness. According to his sister, Frost had named his old friend Lawson as his executor. The woman had also confided to Lemaire that Frost and Lawson had once been lovers.
The detective sergeant thanked Lemaire and called the real estate broker whose name and number were on the FOR SALE sign in front of the house. The broker told him that the property had gone on the market two weeks previously, on Lawson’s orders as executor, and that all communications with Lawson had been by telephone.
The agent also said that the steep asking price and the seasonal slowdown in activity explained why the house hadn’t yet been visited by any prospective buyers.
The place was full of crime-scene spotlights, with technicians in jumpsuits moving around, taking care not to trip over the wires that snaked across the floor. Victor and Jacinthe had been working together so long that they could operate in the midst of this silent ballet without a word to each other.
While Taillon helped the technicians in their preliminary examination of the body, the detective sergeant searched the room with the unmade bed, where he found clothes and a leather overnight bag containing additional garments, as well as a passport and papers in the name of Nathan R. Lawson. A glass that had contained alcohol stood on the nightstand. Victor sniffed it: whisky. He also found a loaded hunting rifle under the bed. The weapon had come from Frost’s personal collection, which was kept in a locked cabinet in his office.
Victor outlined his findings to Jacinthe when she came up from the basement and found him in the dining room, examining papers that he had laid out on the table. “He was never planning to go abroad,” Victor said. “He was in hiding, afraid for his life. Judging from the dirty dishes in the sink and the contents of the wastebasket, I’d say he’d had a few meals. My guess is he’s been here since the day he went missing.”
“I don’t know when he arrived, or how,” Jacinthe said, “but he has the same wounds as Judith Harper. I’m sure you realize what that implies.”
“Please, fill me in,” Victor challenged her.
“You’re the expert on serial killers, my friend.”
Jacinthe was provoking him, referring to a previous investigation that had made Victor the reluctant object of extensive media coverage, giving him a public profile that he disliked and would gladly have done without.
“Don’t start with me,” he said, scowling.
“Relax, I’m kidding. But still —”
Victor didn’t let her finish. “You’re getting ahead of yourself! The wounds may look identical, but you and I aren’t medical examiners. And even if both murders were committed by the same person, that doesn’t mean we have any basis for talking about a serial killer!” Victor wiped his mouth. He’d been spitting as he spoke.
“Whoa, settle down there, big guy,” Jacinthe said, raising her hands in a humorous attempt to shield her face from the flying spittle.
He shook his head and sighed deeply. Then he spoke again in a low voice. “Change of topic. I looked everywhere for the file but didn’t find it.”
Jacinthe frowned, puzzled. “What file?” she asked.
“Lawson’s secretary told us that on the day he disappeared, he left with a couple of boxes of documents in the trunk of his car.”
“Right, I forgot,” she conceded.
Suddenly they looked at each other, both struck by the same thought.
“The car!” Jacinthe exclaimed.
The garage was a brick structure that stood apart from the house at the end of the driveway. Through the layer of frost covering the window, the two officers saw a Mercedes parked in the shadowy interior. Victor went back into the house and retrieved the set of keys he’d found upstairs in one of the dead man’s pants pockets.
Despite a careful search of the car and the garage, they found nothing but a pair of empty cardboard boxes in the trunk. No sign of the file.
“We’ll have a forensics tech dust for prints,” Victor said at last.
He looked at his watch: 5:12 p.m. In his notebook, he found Adèle Thibault’s number and dialed it. With a little luck, she’d still be at the office.
When she answered, Victor put his phone on speaker so Jacinthe could listen in. Without telling Lawson’s assistant that they’d just found her boss’s body, Victor asked again about the file. Was she sure it had been in Lawson’s possession when he left the office? She repeated her version of the facts: that it was Lucian the mail boy who had helped the lawyer stow the boxes in his car. Victor asked to speak to him. The secretary put him on hold while she checked to see if the mail boy was still in the office.
Several clicks later, he was talking to Lucian, who confirmed that he had transported the boxes to Lawson’s car in the underground parking garage.
“A metallic-grey Mercedes,” Victor said.
“That’s right,” Lucian answered, specifying the model number. “I put the two boxes in the trunk. Mr. Lawson kept looking around. He seemed nervous.”
Victor glanced significantly at Jacinthe, who remained impassive, her face illuminated by the harsh glow of the ceiling light. “Do you know what was in the boxes? Did he say anything about a file?”
“No. He was more interested in the message.”
“What message?”
“I’m not sure … a sheet of paper he said someone sent him.”
Victor’s follow-up inquiries didn’t yield any additional information about the sheet. Lucian had no memory of that particular message. His job involved putting hundreds of documents into hundreds of pigeonholes every day.
Lucian said he’d given the same answer to Lawson on the way down to the parking garage when the lawyer had asked him where the sheet of paper had come from.
The call was transferred again. There was a long silence on the line. More clicks. After giving it some thought, Lawson’s secretary told the detective sergeant that she couldn’t remember discussing a specific message with her boss on the day of his disappearance. Or maybe, yes, now that she thought about it, he had stood in her doorway, holding a piece of paper.
But she couldn’t remember anything more than that. She hadn’t been paying attention.
Baffled, Victor ended the call. Beside him, Jacinthe was leaning into the Mercedes’s interior, her large, latex-gloved hand probing the space between the passenger seat and the transmission console.
“What are you doing?” he asked impatiently.
“Hang on, there’s something stuck in here,” she grunted.
When she withdrew her hand, she was holding a CD between her fingers. “Start the car,” she suggested.
Victor complied, and she slid the disc into the CD player.
A voice neither of them recognized started repeating a single sentence in a loop: “I emphatically deny these charges … I emphatically deny these charges … I emphatic …”
30
LAURENTIANS
The minivan tore along the icy highway. Now and then, the lights of a house would break the dark monotony of the evergreens. Through the speakers, Eminem and Pink were chanting that they wouldn’t back down. In the back seat, fear was gnawing at his entrails. The time for doubt had passed. It was useless to ask questions or seek answers.
The gears were turning. He was caught in the machinery. There would be no turning back now.
The man in the passenger seat looked hard at him. “Almost there … You ready, Lessard?”
Martin nodded. His hand closed on the butt of his gun.
“Remember what we said. It’s closing time. Just a couple of employees in the place. No cameras, no armed guards, no security system …”
“Fuck, they don’t even have a fence, Boris!” the driver said, laughing.
“In and out,” Boris continued, ignoring the interruption. “We put what we need in the bag, not one stick more, then we’re gone. No problem.”
The driver downshifted to slow the vehicle and turned onto a secondary road. He drove along
for a few minutes, then, extinguishing the headlights, entered a gravel drive that led to a concrete warehouse. The minivan stopped a hundred metres from the parking area. Two trucks were parked next to the building.
“Let’s go,” Boris said, quietly opening the passenger door.
Martin pulled the ski mask down over his face. “No problem,” he murmured, as though trying to convince himself.
The two silhouettes advanced as far as they could in the shadow of the building, nearly invisible in their black jumpsuits. Beating against the windowpanes, the wind howled and wept frozen tears. Brandishing pistols, the pair burst in on an employee seated at the reception desk reading a newspaper. His soft belly sagged under a distended T-shirt that must have been the right size in another life.
Before the man could react, Boris approached and pressed a gun barrel to his head.
“Here’s the deal, lard-ass. Do what I say and there won’t be any problems. Try to be a hero and they’ll take you away in a body bag. Are we clear?”
“Y-y-yes,” the man stammered, terrified.
Martin looked around the warehouse: dead calm. No one else in sight. No movement.
“How many others are on duty?” Boris asked.
“Ap-ap-apart from me, one guy. He’s in the b-back.”
“Call him,” Boris said, unlatching the safety on his gun. “And don’t try anything stupid.”
The man swallowed, shaking with fear. Martin saw a puddle on the concrete floor. The poor guy had wet himself.
“Mar-Marcel?” he called out in a weak voice. “Marcel?”
Like his co-worker, Marcel was dumbstruck by the two steel barrels aimed at his face. He put up no resistance.
Martin did a quick recount of the dynamite sticks he’d carefully slipped into the compartments of the bag. The number was right. He nodded to his partner, whose gun was pointed at the demolition company’s two employees. The operation had taken less than two minutes.
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