She pressed a button on the remote, and the image came back to life. Looking boyish, visibly afraid of the police officers surrounding him, his lips compressed, Oswald resumed his diatribe: “I’m just a patsy.”
Virginie hit the pause button again and lifted her chin in the direction of the screen. “He was twenty-four years old. Look at him. Do you honestly think he could have planned the Kennedy assassination?”
Victor shrugged. He almost asked her a question, but then realized he didn’t want to know the answer. Virginie groped under the pillows and retrieved a small metallic box. She opened it and inserted her little finger. When she pulled it out, there was white powder in the crook of the fingernail, which she brought to her nostril. After snorting the cocaine, she looked straight at Victor with shining eyes.
Though his own eyes were drawn to her bare shoulder, he forced himself to meet the young woman’s gaze.
She moistened her lips languorously. “Want some?”
Her seemingly complete lack of inhibition had a daunting effect on him. Victor’s body felt like an oppressive cage. He felt ridiculous as he stood there in front of her, unsure of what to do with his hands. The longer she looked at him, the greater his discomfort became. “No,” he answered at last.
“Are you going to put me in handcuffs?”
Virginie seemed genuinely disappointed when the detective sergeant replied without hesitation that he wasn’t a narcotics cop. She pinched her lower lip between her thumb and forefinger. A lock of hair fell in front of her face.
Ill at ease, Victor stared at the floor in front of him.
“Why did he do it?” she asked.
Victor pulled a few threads from the sleeve of his sweater. “The killer? It’s what he’s been doing since the start. Playing games with us. He put the documents in the garbage bags so we’d find them.”
“But why is he trying to ruin my father’s reputation? What has he got against him, exactly? Why did he leave these papers for us? What’s he thinking?”
Unless he absolutely had to, Victor wasn’t going to get into the details of what he’d found in the files. He wanted to spare the young woman.
“Maybe he’s not thinking all that much. Unlike the movies, where there’s always a ruthless logic behind every action, reality can be disappointing.”
“And disturbing,” she said. “Always disturbing. Do you think he’s crazy?” Virginie’s sweater had conspicuously slipped some more, revealing the upswell of her breasts.
Victor’s throat went dry; he was finding it hard to swallow. “I’d love to think so, but I doubt that’s the case. Whoever kidnapped your father wants to make him talk, or wants to shut him up.”
“How are you going to catch him?”
“By trying to figure out what he knows. There’s a name in the file. A man who lives in Dallas. Cleveland Willis … Does that name mean anything to you?”
“No. Will you go down there?”
The detective sergeant shrugged. “I don’t know.”
Virginie took his hand and pulled him toward the bed. “Come here,” she murmured.
Victor put a hand on her wrist and freed himself from her grasp.
Though Virginie attracted him, he didn’t want this. He had enough troubles already. There was no way he’d do the slightest thing that might compromise what remained of his relationship with Nadja.
Retreating a few steps, he patted his pockets for his cellphone. After a moment, he realized that he’d left it on the dining room table.
He heard a faint thumping, which wasn’t coming from his chest, though his heart was hammering.
Downstairs, someone was pounding on the front door.
74
SUSPECT
Victor unlocked the door and Jacinthe burst in, brushing snow off herself. The white stuff flew in all directions. “Too busy to pick up, big guy?” she asked irritably.
Out of the corner of one eye, the detective sergeant saw his phone lying in the midst of the documents on the dining room table, where he’d left it when he went upstairs. “Sorry. I was in the bathroom.”
Jacinthe checked her watch, then nodded toward the jacket he’d draped over the banister post on the staircase. “Get dressed. We’re leaving.”
“What’s up?”
“I just spoke to the Gnome. We have a suspect.”
Instead of swinging into action, Victor froze. How could Lemaire and Loïc already have a suspect? Between the snowy weather and the bad road conditions, they would barely have had time to reach Joliette. Then he remembered that Jacinthe had said they were going to meet the owner of an archery shop. “Thanks to the arrow in the cemetery?”
Jacinthe nodded as she moved toward the dining room. She glanced distractedly at the papers, then, examining the plate that Virginie had left on the table, she bit into an orphaned piece of sandwich.
Pulling on his jacket, Victor came into the room for his phone.
“The shop owner makes custom arrows,” Jacinthe said, her mouth full. “Because of the pink and grey feathers, he thinks this particular arrow came from a lot that he made for one of his customers.” She pointed to the documents on the table. “What’s all this stuff? Are we leaving it there?”
“Long story. I’ll explain later. I’m going to ask Garcia to come and keep an eye on Virginie and the papers until we get back. I don’t think she should be alone.”
Jacinthe took the bag of chips off the table and they headed for the door. Suddenly, a noise from above made them both turn toward the staircase.
“Victor?”
Virginie had come partway down, but she’d stopped when she saw Jacinthe.
Jacinthe gave her partner a little smile. “Oh, yeah … You were having a grand old time in the bathroom, weren’t you, my friend?”
“It’s not what you think,” Victor said through clenched teeth.
Virginie had gone back up to the landing, but her soft voice came down: “Victor? Can I talk to you for a second?”
As she was heading out the door, Jacinthe told him in a growling voice to hurry up; she’d be waiting in the car.
The detective sergeant ran up the stairs and found himself face to face with the young woman. Her eyes were puffy. She’d clearly been crying.
“I’m sorry about what happened just now. I don’t know what got into me … I’m not that kind of person.”
With the bag of chips jammed between her legs, Jacinthe was driving as fast as she was chewing, but the blowing snow made road conditions difficult.
“Where are we going?” Victor asked.
“A house on Hill Park Circle.”
Victor visualized the twisting road that rose from the foot of Mount Royal. He knew the area.
“I asked to have a patrol car sent over there to keep the house under discreet surveillance,” Jacinthe said, “but I told them not to go in before we arrive. Hold the bag for me, will ya?”
The detective sergeant held the bag of chips at an angle so she could reach in more easily.
“Are Gilles and Loïc already there, or are they going to Joliette?”
“They’re on their way to the suspect’s house, but we’ll get there long before they do. The archery shop is way up in Pierrefonds.”
Victor told Jacinthe about the video footage of Tousignant’s kidnapping, then summarized the contents of the files that the man in the baseball cap had left in the garbage bags beside the driveway. When he mentioned the payments that had occurred before and after the Kennedy assassination, and when he described Virginie’s conviction that her father’s disappearance was connected to that event, Jacinthe bristled.
“Oh, gimme a break! Kennedy … you’ve got to be kidding!”
Victor also described the newspaper clippings dealing with the “accidental” deaths of the accounting firm’s three employees.
“By the way,” Jacinthe said, “Gilles talked to an officer at the provincial police detachment in Joliette. For the moment, there isn’t much point in going out
there. They can’t find anything in their database. They’re still checking to see if there’s a file in the archives. But I’m not holding my breath. Back then, it was the Joliette municipal force that handled the case, and this hunting accident happened before the Police Information Centre was set up. Since the matter wasn’t considered a crime, the file may never have been registered.”
“We’ll have to follow up with Gilles’s contact to give him the names of the other two victims in 1964. Everything’s closed on Boxing Day, but I’ll call the National Library tomorrow. We need to look at newspaper archives for the dates in question. With a little luck, we’ll come up with something. We also need to see what we can find out about Evergreen.”
“Your mysterious secret word,” Jacinthe scoffed. “Maybe we’ll catch a break and none of that will be necessary. We have a suspect, remember?”
The detective sergeant was so busy organizing his thoughts and trying to work out connections among the facts he’d learned that he didn’t seem to hear Jacinthe’s remark.
“What did you learn from Bennett?”
Jacinthe’s head bobbled. “You want the long version or the short?”
“How about something between the two?”
“Bennett was paying for hookers, supplied by a pimp named Daman. He got his kicks from putting a dog collar and leash around the girls’ necks, then tying them up before he fucked them. From what I gather, things got out of hand a couple of times, and the girls were injured. The latest one was found last Wednesday, unconscious in a motel-room bathtub. She had a fractured skull. The crazy thing is, Bennett says he got up to all that stuff with Judith Harper’s blessing. She even joined in sometimes.”
“After the pictures I just saw, that doesn’t surprise me,” Victor said.
Jacinthe raised her eyebrows. “Pictures?”
The detective sergeant told her about the envelope he’d found in the file folder and the photographs it contained.
“Fucking scumbags, the whole bunch of them,” she muttered in disgust. After a moment’s silence, she added, “Anyway, the doctor says Bennett has chlamydia, too. So the guy’s a nutcase, but I don’t think he had anything to do with the murders. Also, Burgers told me the dog collar they found in Bennett’s possessions wasn’t the same as the one that left marks on Harper and Lawson.”
Jacinthe licked the salt-and-vinegar residue from her thumb. The Crown Victoria fishtailed briefly as she swerved into an unplowed lane to pass a car, but she was able to regain control with a few skillful manoeuvres that left Victor’s heart in his mouth.
“What do we have on the suspect? What’s his name?”
“Finally! I thought you’d never ask. His name is Lucian Duca. Midthirties. No record.”
“Do we know what he does for a living?”
“That’s the most interesting part.”
Taillon’s eyes left the snowy road to look at Victor for a second.
“Duca works in the mailroom at Baker Lawson Watkins. He’s the dude we talked to on the phone the other day.”
75
PURSUIT
At the foot of Mount Royal, Hill Park Circle snaked up from Côte-des-Neiges to Beaver Lake. The patrol officers had parked their car on a hairpin curve a few metres above the house, which was a brick cube with elongated windows resembling arrow slits.
Jacinthe drove past the house, rounded the curve, and pulled up behind the patrol car. Through the windshield, despite the darkness, Victor could see one of the patrol cops speaking into his shoulder microphone. The cop and the two detectives got out of their cars at the same time and stood between the vehicles. Jacinthe squinted to read the cop’s name tag: Legris.
In the woods facing the house, snow was swirling among the trees. The wind was blowing hard, forcing them to raise their voices.
“Are you alone, Legris?” Taillon asked, hitching up her pants.
“My partner’s in the neighbour’s yard, watching the back door.”
Victor zipped up his jacket, fished his cap from a pocket, and put it on. “Anybody inside?” he asked.
“Hard to say,” the cop answered.
Victor had spoken to Lemaire moments ago. Because of the snow and traffic, he and Loïc wouldn’t arrive for at least another twenty minutes. The Gnome had agreed that waiting for them was out of the question.
With her coat open and the tops of her unzipped boots dragging through the slush, Jacinthe rose to her full height, monolithic and seemingly impervious to the bitter weather.
“Okay, Legris,” she said in a patronizing tone, putting her hand on the cop’s shoulder, “you’re going to take position between the car and the house, and let your partner know we’re coming. If there’s trouble, or if you notice anything unusual, you call us. Got it?”
Taking out his walkie-talkie, Victor told Legris which frequency they’d be using and urged him to be careful. The man they were after was a skilled archer who could put an arrow through a man’s forehead at a fair distance.
Unable to hold still any longer, Jacinthe unleashed her war cry. “You’re mine, asshole!”
Victor caught up to her as she reached the house and pressed up against the wall, drawing her pistol. His own weapon was in his hand. He took a breath. The blood was pounding in his temples. His whole body was surfing on a wave of adrenalin.
The detective sergeant banged on the door repeatedly. Not getting a response, he tried the handle. It was locked.
Without even consulting him, Jacinthe threw her shoulder against the door, which gave way under her weight.
Victor pointed his gun into the house and yelled: “Police! Anybody there? Duca?!”
As Constable Legris watched the two detectives rush into the house, he cursed his bad luck. He’d been a Montreal cop for nearly two years, and it was always the same old story. Whenever some decent action broke out, he was the one who had to wait outside, freezing his ass off.
Tugging at the elastic leg band on his briefs, which kept riding up between his buttocks, he told himself he should have joined the army like his younger brother, André, who’d done two tours in Afghanistan and seen combat against the Taliban.
An entire wall in their mother’s house was covered with photographs of André in the war zone. As for Legris himself, images of his only moment of glory had been captured two springtimes ago, during the mini-riot that had erupted in downtown Montreal after the Canadiens eliminated the Washington Capitals during the NHL playoffs.
And now the fat cow was treating him like he was in kindergarten.
Legris pressed his hands together, brought them to his mouth, and blew between his palms in an effort to warm them up. He patted his pockets, searching for his gloves, and realized he’d left them in the car. Without taking his eyes off the front door, he retreated toward the car.
To his left, in the woods, something moved among the trees. He glanced quickly in that direction, then turned back to watch the door.
Had he seen something? Hard to be sure with all the snow.
Legris stopped moving back. His thoughts were bouncing back and forth between three points: the front door of the house, his gloves in the car, and the shadowy woods.
His eye caught another movement through the trees. The gloves ceased to be a concern. Now only the woods and the front door vied for his attention.
His vigilance rose a notch. All his senses were on high alert. He turned his gaze decisively away from the door. His heart began to pound and his hand slipped down to his hip, unholstering his pistol.
Something was moving in the woods! And it wasn’t an animal.
Legris fired at the same instant that his right leg exploded in pain, collapsing under him.
As he fell, the cop saw a silhouette burst out of the woods, a hood pulled over his head. Carrying a bow, the figure ran toward the patrol car. Diving into the vehicle, the archer started the engine and sped away.
A spurt of adrenalin roused Legris. He had to act fast, or his attacker would get away. Lying on
his back, he took aim at the car as it raced away down the slope.
Just then, his partner and the fat cow, who had heard his shot, came running. On the sidewalk, the second detective, wearing a furious expression, emptied his magazine into the speeding car, shattering its rear window. Then he broke into a limping run.
Legris had an arrow in his thigh. A red bloom was spreading out on the snow. The pain was starting to come, but that wasn’t what fuelled his rage.
“The son of a bitch stole my car!”
Jacinthe turned left onto Côte-des-Neiges and saw Victor a hundred metres ahead, limping as fast as his legs would carry him in the middle of the street. How much time had elapsed between the moment they broke down the front door and the first gunshot? A minute? Two, max? They’d barely had time to determine that Duca wasn’t in the dwelling, and that his taste in furnishings left something to be desired. Apart from a bed, a dilapidated couch, an old TV set, and a few kitchen accessories, the place was bare.
Jacinthe pulled up a few metres ahead of Victor and opened the passenger door. As he jumped in, she hit the accelerator.
Out of breath, his lungs on fire, the detective sergeant buckled his seat belt and gripped his bad leg with both hands. “Straight ahead.” He coughed. “I lost sight of him as he went past the Trafalgar Building.” Still panting, Victor activated the emergency lights and siren, then grabbed the radio mic. “All units.” He coughed again. “I have an officer down on Hill Park Circle. Suspect has taken patrol car 26-11. We are in pursuit, southbound on Côte-des-Neiges. Suspect is armed and dangerous.”
Never Forget Page 36