by Ritu Sethi
The silence stretched. Jenna Peters didn’t accost him with all the usual questions; the long lashes rose and fell, her features inscrutable and her hands firmly planted inside the pockets of her white coat.
Gray followed his instincts. “Is there something I should know about Holly? Something you want to tell me?”
“I can’t break the rules.”
“Doctor, she’s not just a victim, but also a suspect who tampered with vital evidence.”
“Then, she’s unlikely to confide in you.”
Gray rubbed the growing stubble on his chin. It has started to itch. “No. Murder suspects rarely confide in the police – which makes help from other professionals all the more important. I know you want to preserve patient confidentiality–”
“I wish to preserve my job, Chief Inspector.” She examined her nails. “But I do know Dr. Everett. He runs, or perhaps, ran, the ID consult service for the entire hospital.”
Gray nearly fell over. “Consult service? Above and beyond the ID department?” She nodded. “You mean, every bloody ward in this hospital? How many patients is that in the last year?”
“A great many.” She offered him a conciliatory half-smile and left.
Gray’s cell sounded. Vivienne’s voice rang out.
“According to Seymour, the blood matches,” she said. “That’s his quick and dirty preliminary analysis, anyway.”
He walked to the nearest stairwell and made his way to the lobby. “Holly’s nail clippings?”
“–match John Doe’s blood, and the remnants from the server room floor – all three came from the same victim, just like you thought. That means our faceless corpse, whoever he is, was killed at the startup, but why should the CEO tamper with evidence?”
“Either to protect her company’s sale or to protect the killer. She can’t deny cleaning up the murder scene now. Anything else?”
“You also asked me to check if Norman’s ID was used to enter the startup. Their system records him entering the building at ten pm the night he disappeared, and again last night at eleven-twenty.”
“Again, last night? The killer’s using his ID badge to gain access. Why haven’t they revoked it?”
“I told them to, but they didn’t,” Vivienne replied in a clipped tone.
Gray let it go, knowing Vivienne would remedy that situation and the person responsible would be missing a piece of their hide.
“We have a bigger problem,” Gray said, deciding now to be as good a time as ever to drop the bomb on his Second-In-Command. “Norman ran the hospital’s consult service, which means countless patients and countless charts to examine.”
“What? We don’t have the manpower.”
“Get Doug on it. Perhaps one of the other Sergeants at HQ can help.” He delivered the pertinent details and ended the call.
The team had one additional confirmation: the same killer responsible for the hanging corpse had returned to the startup last night, in possession of Norman’s entry card. Though, hadn’t that been obvious from the start? Each piece of firm evidence continued to link Norman to the faceless victim, despite his wife’s statement to the contrary. Without intending it, Gabi threw herself and her callow son to the forefront of his suspect list.
Or was everyone around him right and was he about to make a fatal assumption – one that would inexorably lead to another death?
CHAPTER 11
April 2, 2:30 pm
CARS HEADING TO and from downtown whizzed past him on le Chemin Bord Ouest; pedestrians hustled on the boardwalk tightly ensconced in coats, gloves, and hats. Only the river across the road looked asleep, the still surface resembling molten silver, sluggishly gurgling eastward, unaffected by the day’s dramatic events. Thirteen years earlier, he’d proposed to Sita on this very beach: her hair blowing in the wind, a faint musky scent from her breasts drifting down to him as he bent before her on one knee, the gentle surf soaking through his linen pants. It all occurred a lifetime ago, to a different person.
The uniformed officer outside the Westborough Psychiatric Institute, where Étienne remained, nodded somberly to Gray, all the while ardently rubbing together his leather-encased hands.
“Sir.”
“You must be freezing,” Gray said, checking his smartwatch.
“Nothing I can’t handle, sir. I’m used to guarding construction sites, and they’re mighty cold as well.”
“Anything grab your attention?”
“Nothing at all. It’s just that I feel wasted out here. Even if someone attacked the kid in his room or the halls, I couldn’t hear him. What use am I?”
Gray scanned the lot and surrounding garden. The day and night promised to be bitterly cold. “You’re right. Go home when your shift is complete. You can’t stay out here indefinitely.”
Five minutes later, Gray found his witness in the cafeteria. Fluorescent lights hung from the high ceilings, encasing the room in a blue hue. Rows of institutional tables and chairs filled the space. Étienne sat in a corner by himself, slouching, pushing frozen peas across a steel plate. He looked the same: hair greasy, a small and skinny frame, and a pimply face. Seeing Gray, he gave a toothy grin.
“Inspector?” The pre-pubescent voice was heavily accented with a working-class Quebecois accent.
“Hello, Étienne.”
His warmth and enthusiasm felt at once welcoming and disconcerting. Was he so deprived of affection and acceptance that he’d trust a relative stranger? Looking around, Gray could understand the reason. The other occupants of the room must seem frightening to a child. Two older boys arm wrestled at a nearby table, their faces scrunched in concentration. The larger one swiftly won and slammed the other boy’s hand on the laminate surface. The resulting thud made Étienne jump.
“You come to see me?” The puppy dog eyes, wet and apologetic, looked at Gray who, straddling a chair, asked: “Étienne, how are you?”
“Okay. No killer come to get me. But I have no guard.”
“Director LeBlanc won’t allow my men inside the Institute. I’m working on it. Give me time.”
The boy’s eyes fell to his plate. Gravy congealed on the sliced turkey. At least, it looked like turkey, the edges of the meat ominously gray.
“I won’t ever get out of here,” Étienne said. “Claire want me to join her, with her foster parents, but no one help.”
“Claire?”
“My little sister. She live with her new Mama et Papa who will shortly adopt her, and they like me. Once, they come to visit, but the other boys yell at them. They only bring Claire sometimes now.”
“Where are your birth parents?” Gray asked
“There are none.”
“We all have parents, Étienne. Even someone as old as me.”
The small lips pressed together. “Once.”
Gray lowered his voice. He wanted to know what made the boy tick, what path had led him here to this desolate place. “How old were you when they left?”
“Me, I’m three. But Claire, she was a baby.”
“What happened to them?”
Étienne jumped up and shouted. “I don’t know what happen to them. I don’t care.”
The inmates looked their way; a guard made eye contact, and after Gray’s reassuring nod, turned away. Leaning his head on one hand, Gray waited. After sheepishly looking around, Étienne took his seat.
Always extenuating circumstances, LeBlanc had chided. You bet there were. The silence stretched, but he needed the whole truth. “What did you do to land in this prison? Why are you here?”
Clumps of the gravy now coated the frozen peas, and Étienne pushed them across the steel tray with his fork. “I want to forget.”
“That’s up to you. But I can’t help if I don’t know the reason you’re here. LeBlanc told me you killed another boy.”
“He hit my sister,” Étienne said. Leaning in, he spoke in hushed, urgent sounds. “He grab her hair and hit her. We are in the playground. She cry, but she can’t get away
. And boy was too big for me, so I run and pick up a rock.”
“When was this?”
“I was ten.”
“You defended your younger sister, and they convicted you of murder?”
“But I not stop. I keep hitting and hitting. Like a father hits. I see my father’s face, and I am him, but I don't know his face or remember it.” His mouth opened and closed. “It is the face of a stranger. Claire yell at me to stop, but I don't stop, and my hand has blood all over.” He lifted his right palm; his voice shook. “I am a bad boy, a killer.”
Gray swallowed. The rasping of his breath, in and out, sounded inordinately loud in the nearly empty room.
A loud clang made both him and the boy jump. An inmate had dropped a metal tray onto the floor nearby. The spell broke.
Étienne examined his feet. “Director LeBlanc tell me, I have delusion.”
“I bet he does.”
“You have a son, Inspector?”
Gray blinked. “I used to.”
“What happen?”
The high-pitched voice made it hard not to answer, and Gray found himself wanting to talk for the first time, but he couldn’t burden a child with the brick wedged in his heart. “I didn’t take good enough care of him. And he died.”
Etienne touched the scar on Gray’s wrist, a feather-light touch which tickled. He smiled. “He was lucky to have a dad like you who cares and misses him. More lucky than me.” Now, the boy squeezed his hand. “It is not your fault, Inspector.”
Gray blinked and swallowed.
A guard approached their table. “Sorry, Chief Inspector. Visiting time’s over.”
Gray walked Étienne to the staircase. He put a hand on the bony shoulder. “I’ll try and visit tomorrow. If I can’t make it, Detective Caron will come in my place.”
Étienne nodded and went up the stairs. Instead of possessing the bounce of youth, he had the mark of an aging man.
Once outside, Gray pulled his lapels together against the bone-chilling air. The full moon hung low in the azure sky, enormous, expectant.
But he found it more ominous than beautiful.
His cell burred, and he answered it, realizing his day wasn’t yet over.
Gray rode up the elevator of the Service de Police de la Ville de Montréal headquarters, each successive number on the panel lighting, each floor upward inexorably leading towards the enemy. Towards the inevitable confrontation with his boss. Séverin had called demanding an update, and Gray was expected to deliver now.
Watching the cold steel elevator doors, Gray evened his breath, firmed his resolve. His fists clenched and unclenched, but they wouldn’t have the satisfaction of meeting with Séverin’s jaw. Not today.
The elevator opened to a hot draft, stuffy and claustrophobic. The after-work office looked deserted. His boots sank into the beige wall to wall carpeting, and stale cigarette smoke gripped his throat. Institutional furniture and the overall impression of blue, gray, and red hit him. Nothing like being transported back to 1984.
He reached Céline’s desk. She swiveled side to side in her squeaky leather chair and looked up. Her tight silk dress matched the overly fruity perfume, which must have put Séverin back a few hundred.
Gray felt nothing of the temporary desire he’d indulged the other night and got down to business. “He called me; I don’t have much time.”
“I’ll go in with you.”
“No.”
Her mascaraed lashes lowered. The coolness of their earlier exchange hung in the air. Both she and her boss wanted to use him; he wouldn’t be used.
Céline buzzed Gray in. He turned the handle and stepped into the lion’s den, entering the usual miasma of sweat, old takeaway, and damp socks.
The fat man stood backlit, both arms planted on his desk like wooden logs. His face lay in shadows, the large, wobbly jowls outlined in gray and black.
On the right wall, a dozen misaligned frames held photographs of Séverin shaking hands – with the Provincial Premier, the Governor General, and various politicians on both sides of the French and English standoff. In each, he looked at the camera wearing the same toothy smile.
Gray felt dirty just being in the room.
“I call, and the puppy comes running.” The Deputy Director’s thick Quebecois accent, more suited to a truck driver than Deputy Director, slammed across the room.
“Séverin –”
A tall, thickset man with heavy bags under his eyes and a perpetual half-smile moved up from a corner. Gray hadn’t expected to see Cousineau, and if the two directors had called him in for a discussion, it could only be about one thing.
He braced himself for the inevitable, choosing the strategy that would buy him and the team the most time. Every Canadian boy grew up knowing hockey, and here, a good offence was the best defence.
Cousineau motioned for him to sit. “Thank you for coming, Chief Inspector. I believe you know police procedures exist for good reason. You have not kept us apprised of your progress.”
Gray bet he knew how they’d found out. Having Doug on the team had both advantages and disadvantages.
Séverin lit a cigarette, but no fire alarm sounded. He dropped into a creaky chair and put his feet up, foot odor drifting across the room. “You have no identification of the body. The victim is not Norman Everett.”
“Those feet could be biological weapons.”
“Mon Dieu.” Cousineau sat to his left. “Perhaps you should not lead this investigation. I will assign you to another case.”
“And I won’t stop investigating, even unofficially. Not until the bastard who bombed my car and shot at me is behind bars.” He looked at Severin.
“How dare you?” the fat man said.
“Deputy Director –” Cousineau waved a calming hand. “We are all friends here. Now who would risk killing a Chief Inspector of the SPVM? Only a fool, certainement?”
“I agree. A big fool. I can guess who planted that bomb. And I know who ordered it.”
Séverin sprung forward from his chair. “I hope you aren’t accusing me.” His breath smelled sour from coffee and bagels, and poppy seeds dotted bared teeth. “You work here because of Director Cousineau. Not because I want you on my force. No matter how many cases you solve.”
“You’re quick enough to take credit for my successes.” Gray’s gaze didn’t waver. The back of the wooden chair dug into his aching back. “No more violence.”
“Or what? You will ride up on your white horse and fix the rest of us? Except, it isn’t white, is it? It’s jet black. You’re no hero; you’re a villain. As that voice inside you whispers at night. Killer, it says. Murderer.”
Severin puffed out his chest. “Outside, the thousand-dollar suit. Inside, the storm. That is you, Chief Inspector.”
Cousineau moved between them. “I could order you off this investigation.”
“I’ve never left a case unsolved,” Gray said. “And I never will.”
Gray strode out of the office, passing Céline. She followed him to the elevator and squeezed through the doors just before they closed, her breath heavy, the silk dress stretching over high, pointed breasts.
“When will I see you?” she said.
“You won’t. I’m sorry. From the bottom of my heart, I’m sorry.”
“It took me two years to get you into bed, and you’re dumping me after one time? You enjoyed it. So why?”
How could he tell her that she was merely a temporary if ineffective respite? How could he say anything that cruel to anyone? “I’m sorry. Impulse got the better of us. We both agreed to a one-night stand. And we both had too much to drink.”
She waved her hand. “Men always say that. They don’t mean it.”
“Perhaps I’m not enough of a man then. But other things need my attention. I have to get on with the case.”
“Other things? Other people?”
“A child’s life may be at stake–”
She slapped him across the chest, hard; it knocked
the breath out of his lungs. “I don’t care,” she said. “You and I belong together. You’ll be Director one day –”
“I won’t be Director, Céline. I’ll never accept that position.” He stopped himself from saying the rest. That he wouldn’t, couldn’t get serious about anyone. Let alone her.
Céline’s face paled. Her chest rose high and rigid. Her stilettos clicked on the elevator tile as she stepped closer. “Séverin will believe what I tell him. And I’ll say we love each other, that we’re going away together – unless you come to your senses. There’s no telling what he’ll do if he thinks he’s lost me to you. He’s a jealous man, Gray.”
The elevator jerked at the ground floor. The doors slid open, letting in fresh air.
She got out and turned back. “Compris?”
No one understood you better than your enemy.
***
The house lay quiet, save the crackling of a fire, and the gentle clang of ice in his scotch-filled tumbler. Red and gold embers danced in the fire; the wood shifted and crackled, moisture sending off sparks against the surrounding red bricks. Outside his window, dusk gently settled over the tree-lined street.
It was too early to sleep. On impulse, he grabbed his coat and sprinted the two blocks to Dr. Jenna Peters’s house on Pearson Avenue. With a little luck, she’d be home from the hospital, and be willing to discuss her tenebrous patient, Holly.
The Victorian structure stood in darkness, except for a gentle glow emanating from the main ground floor window. He passed a mature lavender tree which dominated the front yard, its trunk corrugated and patched below the dominant branches, each sprouting spring shoots lined with opening leaves and puckered buds. The ripe, rich scent teased his nostrils, and he sucked it in hungrily.
Jenna opened the door carrying a drink. Flickering lights coming from behind darted through the glass of red wine in prisms forming a mahogany kaleidoscope. Chopin’s Etude No. 9 drifted in from behind.
“I’m sorry to bother you,” Gray said.
Jenna still had her work clothes on. “It’s all right.”