Never Forget

by Martin Michaud

  Professional care / mutual friend = Judith Harper = MK-ULTRA?

  BO / consulate / Langley???

  Who is CW?

  Virginie reappeared a few minutes later, carrying a tray of freshly made sandwiches, a large bag of salt-and-vinegar chips, and some beverages. Victor grabbed a bottle of V8, unscrewed the top, and took a gulp.

  Then he bit into a ham sandwich and noticed that she had put in a slice of processed cheese, just as Ted used to do in the old days.

  “Is it okay?” Virginie asked, gesturing at the food.

  “It’s great,” he said, putting a handful of chips on his plate. “Thanks.”

  She opened her mouth, then hesitated, seeming unsure of how to frame the question she wanted to ask. At that moment, before the words came out of Virginie’s mouth, Victor regretted having consented to let her examine the papers with him.

  But damn it, he’d had no choice.

  Virginie was going to ask about the documents he’d just been looking over, and he was going to have to reveal what he had learned about her father. At best, he supposed, there would be tears. At worst, there would be a meltdown.

  “Are you good at tracking down missing persons?”

  The question caught him by surprise. He reflected for a moment. If he’d been completely honest, he’d have answered that you always find missing persons in the end, but too often they’re not in the condition you had hoped for. But this wasn’t an answer he could give without deepening Virginie’s worries about her father. Evasively, he said, “Not bad, I guess …”

  Virginie interpreted this answer as false humility. “Someday, you’ll have to help me find Cormac McCarthy.”

  Cormac McCarthy? The name was buried too deep in his memory for him to know right away who she was talking about.

  Virginie could see him drawing a blank. “The novelist.”

  Victor slapped his forehead. Of course. No Country for Old Men. He had intended, a few years back, to read the book after seeing the Coen brothers’ film. “For an article?”

  Virginie’s eyes wandered along the wood grain of the dining room table, landing at last on Victor’s fingers. “No.” A long silence. “I’d just like to know what he’s up to.”

  “Except in cases where they’re taken against their will,” Victor said after a moment, “people don’t generally disappear without a trace. A person always preserves a link to his past, even if he doesn’t realize it. A motivated searcher could find him.”

  The silence was starting to thicken when Virginie got up to go to the bathroom. Victor took the opportunity to return to his reading:

  Montreal

  September 21st, 1964

  PRIVILEGED AND STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL

  Dear Nathan,

  Our mutual friend confirms that the treatments administered to Subject #1 were successful. I would therefore ask you to make the necessary arrangements with AL and CW at the consulate, so that the two individuals in whom Subject #1 confided can receive the same treatments from our friend and her assistant.

  I hope this goes without saying:

  TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE.

  Thanking you in advance for your ever-reliable co-operation, I am, as ever,

  Cordially yours,

  Daniel

  Montreal

  October 20th, 1964

  PRIVILEGED AND STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL

  Dear Nathan,

  I am informed that Subject #1 has, unfortunately, started making noises once again about Evergreen’s financial statements, and that he has been trying to persuade Subjects #2 and #3 to help him gather additional information for the apparent purpose of bringing the matter before the authorities.

  According to my source, it is only a matter of time before they put the puzzle pieces together. You will readily understand that we cannot run the risk of letting them get any closer to the heart of the undertaking. It is imperative that the participants’ identities not be compromised.

  Langley has just confirmed to me that AL has received instructions to carry out a cleanup operation. My source informs me that CW is opposed to the plan. Given your ongoing contact with CW, I’m counting on you to let me know if you learn of any attempt on his part to impede AL’s work.

  Cordially yours,

  Daniel

  Without Victor’s being fully aware of it, the pieces were falling into place. A picture was taking shape. Questions were emerging with sudden clarity: was the “Subject #1” to whom Tousignant referred André Lortie? Or was Lortie, rather, the individual referred to as “AL”? What was Tousignant alluding to when he mentioned that Langley had dispatched an asset to carry out a cleanup operation?

  The detective sergeant was as fearful of the answer as he was convinced that he knew it.

  When he picked up his pen to make further notes, he felt his hand shaking. A horrifying vision rose up in his memory. He felt the same vertiginous sensation he’d had when one of the Red Blood Spillers had pressed his Beretta into Victor’s throat, forcing him to watch as two of his men were coldly murdered.

  The memory gave way to the drawing of the hanged man.

  At that moment, Victor had a powerful impression that the rope had been placed around his own neck, and at any moment the trap door might open under his feet.

  72

  EXHIBITS

  Eyes closed, hands flat on the table, Victor concentrated on the rhythm of his breathing. Images rioted behind his eyelids, and he let them run free, making no effort to dispel them. Often, when he was beset by anxiety, ghosts from his most distant past came back to haunt him, especially those related to the death of his family.

  Walking into the room, Victor sees his father stretched out on the bed. Having killed Victor’s mother and two brothers, he has tried to take his own life, too: the bullet has entered below the chin and exited through the top of the skull.

  When he realizes that his father is still breathing, Victor is propelled by a force he can’t resist. He puts his hands around his father’s throat.

  He squeezes, squeezes, until the wound stops bubbling.

  Then, in a silence that stretches to infinity, Victor looks at the blood on his hands.

  As time passed, the images faded. Victor’s panic subsided little by little. He felt ready to resume his examination of the file.

  In the folder labelled P-2, he found documents relating to the operations of MK-ULTRA, as well as internal memos and correspondence. As far as he could tell, certain documents dating back to 1962 and 1963 concerned the establishment of a private lab under Judith Harper’s authority. Victor went through the documents eagerly, noting sentence fragments here and there, searching above all for references to the “subjects” mentioned in the correspondence between Lawson and Tousignant.

  But he was unable to find anything about treatments inflicted on specific patients. Victor did note, however, that all communications between Tousignant and Judith Harper’s organization had gone through Nathan Lawson.

  Judging from the sample he found in the file, such communications had been infrequent.

  As he withdrew another sheaf of documents from the folder, a yellowed envelope held together by an elastic band fell to the floor. Intrigued, he bent over to retrieve it and pulled off the elastic. Inside, he found a series of black-and-white photographs in which Judith Harper and Mark McNeil were easily recognizable. In the pictures, the two associates were committing a wide variety of abusive acts. Abetted by her assistant, Harper could be seen mistreating her semiconscious victims.

  And in every snapshot, the tormentors wore smiles imbued with a mix of pride and scorn — smiles that Victor knew well, having seen them on the faces of too many psychopaths. These dark images shook him so deeply that he had to leave the table for a few minutes and go outside for a cigarette.

  As he stood there, smoking, a single question gnawed at him: how could someone inflict such suffering on other human beings and enjoy it?

  When he came back, Victor picked up the coffee po
t from the tray that Virginie had placed at the corner of the table a few hours earlier. He filled his cup with cold coffee and took a few gulps.

  It was as he went through the contents of folder P-3 that the detective sergeant had the sudden sensation of a veil falling away.

  Three newspaper clippings, which he held delicately between his fingers for fear of tearing them, shed new light on the identities of the subjects mentioned in Tousignant’s correspondence with Lawson.

  On October 23rd, 1964, thirty-nine-year-old Gilbert Couture and his son, Léonard, aged nineteen, had died in the forest near their family home.

  Investigators had briefly wondered whether the father had shot his son in a mercy killing before turning his gun on himself. But the Joliette Municipal Police had eventually concluded that the deaths were the result of a hunting accident. Couture had been hired only a few weeks previously as an auditor at the local accounting firm of Bélanger, Monette and Associates.

  Lost in thought, Victor raised his head briefly, bit into the sandwich he’d picked up from the tray, and chewed mechanically.

  Joe Beans hadn’t been mistaken. This was surely the hunting accident that the old archivist had told him about. The detective sergeant turned his attention to the second clipping.

  Assuming these newspaper stories were actually about the subjects discussed by Tousignant, they solved the mystery surrounding the written message on the matchbook: there were others.

  As he read the articles, Victor had a clear sense, now, of who those others were.

  On October 30th, 1964, twenty-nine-year-old Mathias Lévesque had been killed in a car accident near the town of Saint-Ambroise-de-Kildare. His car had inexplicably overturned and plunged into a ravine. Lévesque was employed as an auditor at Bélanger, Monette and Associates, an accounting firm in Joliette.

  The third clipping was in very poor condition. Victor had to hold it up close to make it out.

  On November 7th, 1964, in Saint-Liguori, forty-two-year-old Chantal Coulombe had been killed in a hit-and-run on the town’s main street. The driver had never been found. The victim worked as an accountant for Bélanger, Monette and Associates.

  The last article had appeared in L’Étoile du Nord, which was Joliette’s local paper at the time. It also mentioned that this was the third accidental death to strike the firm in the space of a few weeks.

  The firm’s management expressed its sadness over the spate of unfortunate accidents and promised to “provide grieving families and colleagues with any support they might need.”

  After rereading the three articles, Victor saw only one possible conclusion: the subjects referred to by Tousignant were indeed the three murdered employees of the accounting firm.

  And he couldn’t help thinking they had died for nothing.

  Gilbert Couture had been killed because he had uncovered something while working on the Evergreen financial statements: a secret whose dimensions he didn’t realize, and whose implications he never suspected.

  The two others had died because their colleague had taken them into his confidence, thus turning them into troublesome witnesses. Because they had strayed into forbidden territory, a decision had been made: nothing could be left to chance. The three had been eliminated.

  Couture’s son, Léonard, was simply collateral damage.

  Victor rubbed his eyes and ran a hand over his chin. He was tired, but he was also determined to go through the entire file. Folder P-4 contained copies of Evergreen’s articles of incorporation and corporate bylaws. The company had been created in 1961 by Daniel Tousignant, who acted as its first president, secretary, and chairman of the board.

  Under the heading Fields of Activity, there was an entry stating that the corporation was engaged in organizing international trade fairs.

  Knowing from experience that corporate bylaws rarely held any useful information, Victor skimmed them, but he paid particular attention to the list of company directors. These included Daniel Tousignant, Nathan R. Lawson, Dr. Judith Harper, and nearly a dozen others whose names Victor didn’t recognize, but about whom he would have an analyst prepare a research report.

  A single unopened file folder remained in front of him on the table. It was the least voluminous of the group. Wondering what he would find, Victor slipped a finger under the flap of folder P-5 and opened it.

  The file consisted of a single sheet of paper, in the middle of which one paragraph had been typed many years ago on an old typewriter, as evidenced by consistent imperfections in the appearance of certain letters. The paragraph indicated the year, 1975, as well as the name and address of an individual in Dallas, Texas.

  This contact information seemed to have been subsequently revised. The year had been scratched out and replaced with 2003 in ballpoint pen, along with a handwritten modification of the address. Only the name of the individual, Cleveland Willis, had not been amended.

  In his notebook, Victor wrote:

  CW = Cleveland Willis?

  In light of everything he’d just read, the detective sergeant had arrived at three definite conclusions about the mass of documents lying in front of him. One: this was the file that Nathan Lawson had pulled from his firm’s archives hours before disappearing. Two: it had nothing to do with Northern Industrial Textiles, which was simply a cover for Lawson to hide the material he had assembled on Evergreen. And three: the file was incomplete.

  The killer was toying with investigators. He had given them part of the puzzle, but he had removed the key piece.

  Typically, in a criminal trial, the prosecution would set out the facts alleged against the accused, as well as the offences committed under the Criminal Code, in an indictment. The evidence presented in support of the allegations would be annexed to the indictment in the form of exhibits.

  While it was clear to Victor that Lawson had put together a case for the prosecution, it was equally clear that the file contained nothing more than the exhibits. It held only the evidence assembled by Lawson to prove the guilt of one or more individuals.

  Yet without a central document to provide the arguments and background logic — without an indictment — it was difficult to grasp the precise nature of the allegations.

  Victor looked up from his reading. Absorbed in his work, he had lost all sense of time. He realized that Virginie wasn’t in the room, and he remembered that she had gone to the bathroom. The file she had begun to examine, the only one Victor hadn’t yet read, lay open on a corner of the table. The detective sergeant reached out to pick up his phone. Looking at its clock, he realized he hadn’t seen her in an hour.

  “Virginie?”

  After calling her name a few times, he searched the ground floor. Was his mind playing tricks on him? The house seemed oddly silent; it was missing the creaks and funny noises that normally populate homes.

  Victor stopped for a moment at the living room window and watched the snowflakes whirling like insects in the light of the streetlamp. He was about to return to the dining room when he saw the high heels that Virginie had put on earlier. They were lying on the third step of the staircase that led to the second floor.

  He climbed a few steps in silence, then stopped and listened.

  At first, he heard nothing. Then, as he concentrated, his suspicion became a conviction: he could hear a voice. It was indistinct, but it was definitely a voice. A man’s voice.

  His mind began to race, his imagination churning with possibilities. Had Virginie heard a noise upstairs and removed her shoes to catch the intruder unawares?

  Breathing hard, with his Glock in his hand, Victor crept upstairs soundlessly and found himself in a dark hallway. A strip of light was visible under a door at the end of the hall. Raising his gun, Victor waited a moment, letting his eyes adjust to the shadows, then moved forward. Advancing with infinite caution, trying to minimize the sound of his breathing, knowing that a single creaking floorboard would reverberate like an alarm, he took a full minute to reach his objective.

  The door
was closed, but now, on the other side, he could clearly hear a man’s nasal voice: “I didn’t shoot anybody, no sir!”

  Thin trickles of cold sweat ran down his temples. Holding his breath, bracing his muscles, aiming at a spot near the handle, he drove his foot with all his strength through the door.

  73

  PILLOW TALK

  The only piece of furniture in the room was a bed. Apart from the black rectangle of the flat screen on the wall, everything was white, pure, immaculate.

  Catching his breath, Victor stood motionless in the middle of the room for a moment, then reholstered his pistol. Holding a remote control in her hand, Virginie didn’t seem affected by his crashing entrance, nor by the dislocated door.

  “Did you get through all the documents?” she asked, her gaze unfocused. “I looked over some accounting statements for a company called Evergreen for the 1963–64 financial year.” Silence. “Then I stopped. I was scared of what I might find.”

  She had hit the pause button. Lee Harvey Oswald’s face was frozen, open mouthed, on the screen. The black-and-white image, projected onto the bedspread and onto Virginie herself, created a striking visual effect. “This is about Kennedy, isn’t it?” she asked.

  Victor’s gaze was shifting between the screen and the young woman. She was stretched out on the bed, her upper body propped up on a mound of pillows. The strap of her bra had slipped off her bare shoulder, which emerged from the low neckline of her sweater.

  Victor ran a hand through his hair, looking uncomfortable. “Why do you say that?”

  “I didn’t understand much of what was in those statements, but it wouldn’t take a financial wizard to notice that there were big outflows of money in the weeks before November 22, 1963, and in the days that followed. Anyway, I already knew. It was always about Kennedy. That was my father’s obsession.” She closed her eyes for a moment, revisiting old memories. “I remember back in the early eighties, I used to find him watching this video. He must have thought I was too young to understand. There was one time in particular … he’d been drinking, and as he looked at Oswald, he kept saying something had gone wrong.”