by Ritu Sethi
CHAPTER 2
April 1, 7am
ONCE AGAIN, GABRIELLE EVERETT couldn’t find her husband. He hadn’t come home the previous night, and she didn’t know where he was. Truth be told, this was the second one she’d lost. As Oscar Wilde would have said: to lose the first could be attributed to bad luck, but to lose a second was surely akin to carelessness. No longer in the throes of romantic love (she remained open to it; it was love that did not return the favor), she nevertheless believed in keeping a hold of one’s spouse. And here she was, having lost another one.
The first had gone missing ten years earlier in the Jean-Talon Market and never been heard from again. Gabi presumed he’d run away from his life as a lawyer, more than he’d run away from her, and could only hope it didn’t reflect too harshly on her public image.
Despite her Francophone beginnings below the railway tracks, she now lived in the affluent Anglo neighborhood of Westmount, where one was expected to keep the front garden professionally tended, and one’s reputation for austerity and predictability intact. Here, a four-way stop sign meant the grander car had the right of way, and scandal and discontent were best left blanketed under the carpet of one’s Mercedes.
Gabi closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Entering the kitchen, she decided to make a cappuccino. The freshly ground beans scented the air. Today, she poured frothed milk into a simple leaf design, though, in her barista days, she could have favored a swan, a butterfly, or even the face of a bulldog.
The empty day stretched before her. As did the empty house. The living room looked staged, as though tarted up for a quick sale; so different from the apartment she lived in when she was ten, where the air stank of dirty dishes and laundry drying on the radiator. Where the smell of mold and dead mice was the norm. Where on that fateful day, with a father who had recently died and a mother lying on the sofa in a drunken stupor, Gabi had frantically searched for the life-saving object – the medicine – that fateful moment when Gabi had learned what it meant to have nothing left to lose. And she’d never forgotten. Money helped. Becoming a monster helped.
Today, in her Westmount house, holding the steaming cup between cold hands, she stepped out onto the porch.
The crisp breeze gained momentum, carrying with it the sweet promise of spring as it swept across Georgian and Tudor-style manors lining the affluent hilltop. She breathed in deeply, washing away old memories and old remembered smells of mold and mice.
A figure caught her eye, coming out from behind a cherry tree. It bore an uncensored look of violence and contempt. The face seemed familiar, just at the edge of Gabi’s recollection – familiar, yet changed.
She scurried back into the house, slammed the door, and snapped the bolt in place. Recognition just within reach, she peered out the window for another glimpse and saw that the figure stood still, seemingly chiseled in granite.
And then it came to her: her husband, Norman, had revealed something while drinking – something regarding the health tech startup her son, Simon, had launched two years earlier, and in which Norman functioned as Medical Adviser. The company was poised to sell for hundreds of millions, and for Gabi, nothing mattered more than Simon. Nothing.
The links fit together in a chain of events. More were coming – it wasn’t over. All the faces concerned flashed in Gabi’s mind – of all the people involved, including the remembered face of her beloved little frail sister.
A shrill pierced the air and made her drop the cup. Coffee spilled onto the Persian. The phone kept ringing as the brown liquid spread and sank into the weave, the stain staring up at her, spoiling the perfection of her professionally decorated foyer.
She lifted the receiver. A baritone voice on the other end, smooth as cognac, eased her strain. Until he identified himself.
“Mrs. Everett?”
“Yes?”
“This is Chief Inspector Gray James of the SPVM. Your son reported your husband, Norman Everett, missing. Could I come and see you right away?”
Simon had done what? Already? Stupid boy. She swallowed the dry lump in her throat and pushed out the words. “Yes. I’m home now.” Of course, she was home. He’d telephoned the house, hadn’t he? The policeman thanked her and said he’d be over shortly.
Ending the call, Gabi peeked out the window. The figure had gone.
Thick clouds scurried overhead, blocking the sun and darkening the sky. An arc of light streamed in through the foyer window onto the rug, gradually narrowing to a sliver until it finally disappeared and she could no longer discern the coffee stain.
Her thoughts flew to her son. How could she protect him? From violence, from failure, from the arid clutches of poverty Gabi had once known so well herself?
But Gabi understood that the most dangerous person in the world was someone with nothing left to lose.
And she knew, in that instant, that her second husband would never come home.
***
Smoke from the fire tore at Gray’s throat; heat scorched his skin. Even the pain in his right shoulder and hand where he’d fallen barely penetrated his numb haze of disbelief. His car had actually exploded.
Seymour asked again, “What did you do?”
Gray couldn’t answer. All he could do was stay on the ground and watch his beloved Audi burn – six years of memories, of himself and his family, disintegrating in the glow and hurdling old feelings to the surface. From when his life had meaning – of wanting, needing things to work out a certain way. He’d worked hard to overcome those flaws. Three years of calm slipped, and rage mounted inside him, outstripping the draft from the inferno.
Vivienne had reached his side, her eyes wide, her face pale. Seymour stood and shook the debris from his coat.
The customized ringtone on his cell played Stravinsky’s dark Concerto No. 1, which invariably meant one thing.
Gray got up and answered while circling the periphery of the blast. First and foremost, he had to make sure no one was hurt. Thoughts of how or why this happened charged through his brain. He swallowed the pebble in his parched throat.
“Bon matin, Directeur,” he said.
“What’s all that commotion?” Director Cousineau’s voice battled the surrounding chaos. Beside Gray, Vivienne dialed emergency services.
“My car exploded.”
A short pause. “You must be careful,” Cousineau said.
“I’m always careful.”
“Non, mon ami. You walk the line. Always have. Sleeping with your boss’s mistress, especially a boss like Séverin, is not being careful.”
“You hired him,” Gray said, marching on feet that weren’t his own, rubbing smoke-stung eyes. There were no casualties, thank goodness – but the debris had flown into the crime scene boundaries. Would it also contaminate the investigation? “I’m the one stuck dealing with Séverin.”
“Gray, he knows you spent last night with Céline–”
“What’s done is done.”
“Then, undo it.”
Swirling around, he scanned the area for anyone suspicious. Lots of cars had stopped on the main road after the blast. Onlookers littered the sidelines, but no one stood inside the parking lot other than his men. No one. And his officers had secured the crime perimeter before his arrival. Which led to one inescapable conclusion.
“She’s telling everyone,” Cousineau said. “Why can’t you control your libido?”
As if that could explain this attack. No one in their right mind did this out of jealousy – not to a fellow policeman. But was Deputy Director Séverin in his right mind when it came to his secretary, Céline?
“I will take you off the case,” Cousineau said.
“No!” Gray needed this case, damn it. Idleness invariably brought forth an all-consuming blackness he couldn’t face.
“You’ve been compromised. I will assign Peter–”
“Absolutely not. I have to discover who killed this man. And I’m going to. Someone else can head the inquiry into the explosion, but the
murder investigation stays with me.”
“Who is the boss here, mon ami? I think you forget yourself, non?”
Gray brought his temper under control. Getting upset accomplished nothing. He now had two crimes surrounding him – the hanging corpse and now this bombing – all with his life in danger.
A fire engine bellowed as it drew closer, drowning out Cousineau’s words – Cousineau who would only protect Séverin if push came to shove. Cousineau who had promoted Gray but often kept his true loyalties hidden.
Gray ended the call and watched the water fly onto the jumble, the answering steam rise from the flames. A distance up the beach, clusters of onlookers and press stood riveted, taking videos and photographs, documenting the attempted murder of a Service de Police de la Ville de Montreal detective.
The investigation risked being compromised, his hair and clothes reeked of smoke and rubber, and someone was trying to kill him. Gray took a moment to compose himself. After a few deep breaths, stillness came. He was where he was supposed to be, in the middle of chaos, surrounded by unsolved problems. Once again, he felt calm and in control.
Pulling out the ID found at the scene, he examined the photo, thinking about what Vivienne had said. That the person in the photo could be the killer. Now, she’d maybe suggest the same person rigged Gray’s car to explode. But Gray couldn’t get himself to believe it. The eyes in the picture, wide and wet like a puppy’s revealed something alarming. Institutional pictures – particularly those of Westmount Psychiatric, an institute for the criminally insane location adjacent to the main hospital – could be deceiving. But Gray was certain of one thing: the picture belonged to a child, a boy of around twelve.
Gray brushed the grit off his suit. Somewhere out there, was a vulnerable and unstable minor who witnessed this terrible murder. And it was up to Gray to protect him.
***
This early and she’d already told everyone about last night.Gray wished only to change his clothes at home and slip out unnoticed. She might still be there – in the bedroom where he’d left her in the early hours of the morning – but he didn’t want to deal with Céline at present, not with the complexities of the case now at the forefront of his mind.
Still, he couldn’t go and speak to a witness in clothes that smelled like death and explosions. He parked the loaner police car in the rear parking pad at the back of his house on Leeson Avenue; it choked to a halt. The fabric interior smelled like dog and cigar smoke – intermixed with the acrid scent Gray carried from the explosion.
Unfolding his bruised and aching body, he stepped onto the crunching gravel, glad to still be in one piece after the morning’s chilling experience.
A dog barked in the distance; no immediate neighbors currently worked their backyards or came out of doors. The narrow lots of detached and semi-detached Victorians and Edwardians crowded together on either side of his house like elegant monuments to a more refined time.
Making his way across the modest rectangular backyard, he headed towards the back kitchen entrance, passing a grapevine which never gave sweet grapes, haustras of various sizes he’d planted himself, and a stone path in imminent need to repair.
The three-storey Edwardian satisfied his primary requirements: high ceilings and tall doorways, so he never had to stoop or crouch. With each step, the century-old pine creaked reassuringly under his feet, and he made his way towards his first destination: the sculpting studio at the back of the house.
The old lock turned smoothly with a click; the hinges moved silently.
Clay hung in the air, chalky, sweet, and reminiscent of petrichor, the earthy scent produced by rain on dry soil. An overhead skylight illumined two dozen sculptures of heads lining the shelves against the wall – all of his son at various ages from nine to about twelve.
No matter how often Gray tried, he couldn’t get angles of the face just right: the straight and short forehead inherited from his East Indian mother; the classic nose and delicate, high cheekbones; the thin lips trembling...as they had that last fateful day.
Capturing Craig’s likeness at nine, from memory, was challenging enough – but Gray had compounded this task by also undertaking sculptures depicting Craig at ten, eleven, twelve: features imagined as they might look in maturity – with more determined eyes (maybe), a stronger, more masculine nose, the lips less afraid. As though these older representations could live the life his son was never allowed to live.
Nothing stirred while he silently stood observing the room, meeting the complexities of the moment to try and further still his mind – in this most complex of rooms.
Coming here had become a nightly obsession, working on the busts by moonlight an overwhelming need without which sleep refused to come.
Here, Craig’s moulded faces watched him reassuringly, and Gray stared back – but now, he should go. He turned and locked the studio behind him.
In the upstairs bathroom, he splashed cold water over his face and examined the lethargic-looking stranger in the mirror.
“Why didn’t you answer?” A curt voice said. “I called you twice.”
Céline Lapin stormed in naked and pushed her way past him. Without waiting for an answer, she stepped into the small clawfoot tub, sporting a mug filled with instant coffee crystals and nothing else.
She turned the temperature knob to hot, filling the bathroom with steam and fogging the mirror. When the water turned sufficiently scalding, she held her mug under the shower head and filled it to the rim. He watched her combining two activities that should never be combined. She sniffed the dubious blend and then sipped it like a Chardonnay, her auburn hair clinging to her neck and the curve of her spine.
It was the first time he’d witnessed this absurd scene, and he decided it would be the last.
Gray walked out and headed to his bedroom. After easing into a crisp blue shirt, socks, and a clean suit, he returned to the steamy bathroom. Céline stepped out of the tub; a puddle expanded beneath her feet onto his bathroom floor. She grabbed Gray’s robe and slipped it on her wet body.
“You also didn’t tell me about your personal involvement with Séverin.”
“You didn’t ask. We both work under him; some of us more than others. Why? What’s happened?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“What doesn’t matter?”
Damp fingers caressed his cheek, the long nails sharp against his skin. Her breath smelled of instant coffee. And he remembered another face, eyes softer, nails short and clean. The familiar stab still surprised him after three years. His wife’s presence drifted in, and he imagined what she’d say about the woman in his robe.
Really, Darling? Another redhead? How many is that now? The last one, at least, was nice.
That final sight of Sita lay etched in memory, slim hips swaying under the fuchsia jersey-knit dress, backdropped by sand and choppy river, not blaming him, but not able to look at him, either. Disappearing off the face of the Earth.
“I like being with the Wonder Boy of the department,” Céline said, popping the bubble of silence.
Thoughts of Sita receded, leaving the usual emptiness Gray never fought. A moment later, that too disappeared.
He lowered Céline’s clammy hand from his face; it fell to her side in a fist. Their parting would result in no sorrow, no real loss whatsoever on either side. He thought nothing more damning could be said about any relationship, however brief.
“I have to go. You can leave the door unlocked on your way out.” Gray felt the sharp eyes stab his back as he walked down the hall and descended the stairs. As Gray left through his kitchen, he hoped this minor chapter in his life with Céline would now be closed.
He drove towards Westmount to interview the wife of the missing man Vivienne had told him about. Standing in front of Norman Everett’s house, he admired the hilltop view overlooking downtown, Old Montréal, and the distant river. It was a pricey street, even for a prominent medical consultant.
A short, slightly pl
ump woman around fifty answered the door. She wore a white linen suit with a bright red camisole that matched her lipstick exactly. The straight blunt hair, just skimming her shoulders, bespoke of weekly visits to the salon. Even indoors, she wore dazzling high heels covered with multicolored jewels. Gabrielle Everett cared about her appearance and what others thought of her. So far, she matched her house perfectly.
Her deep-set eyes crinkled in the corners. Brow furrowed, she looked past him and down the road, signaling fear that surpassed concern over her husband’s disappearance: she was scared of Gray being there, and he had to wonder why.
“Mrs. Everett, I’m Chief Inspector Gray James of the SPVM. Your son reported your husband missing.”
She moved to one side. The fearful eyes rapidly relaxed and became less guarded. He felt an illogical urge to warn her, to remind her he was a policeman and not her friend.
Her living room, all white leather and glass, sparkled – everything except a large brown stain on the foyer rug which resembled spilled coffee. She noticed his gaze and rubbed at the mark with one twinkling shoe. The room should have been cold and uninviting, but it was saved by a wood-burning fireplace on one side.
She motioned Gray to an armchair opposite the sofa.
“You and Dr. Everett have a lovely home here,” he said.
“The house is mine, from my first marriage. Norman couldn’t afford this.”
“About your husband, Mrs. Everett.”
“Call me Gabi.”
“Gabi. Could he be with someone else?”
“Husbands sometimes have girlfriends,” she hedged.
“But not yours?”
“He had the ego, but not the energy,” she replied.
Gray didn’t miss her use of the past tense.
“You mean he’s impotent?”
“In a word, yes. If you have to use a word.”
“Does your husband have any other medical problems?” he asked.
“Norman has a bad heart. If he doesn’t take his medicine, he gets an irregular heartbeat.”
A heart condition? Would Dr. Seymour’s autopsy confirm the same in the faceless corpse?