by Kathy Reichs
I waited for Claudel to speak. When he didn’t, I said, “I’ll phone Monsieur Authier and tell him we have a lead.”
Explain your lack of enthusiasm to the chief coroner, Monsieur Claudel.
After disconnecting, I returned to the living room. While Ryan spent another thirty minutes questioning Fisher, I observed quietly.
In my absence, tears had again wreaked havoc on the vivid maquillage. Fisher’s anguish was heartbreaking.
Bastillo was another story. Her spine remained rigid, her stare fixed and devoid of compassion for her mother’s grief. From time to time the younger woman would recross her legs, or refold her arms across her chest. Otherwise, she sat motionless and without comment.
At last Ryan finished.
We both rose, repeated our regrets to Fisher and her daughter, and took our leave.
Back in the car, Ryan suggested we grab a sandwich.
“No, thank you.”
My stomach chose that moment to growl.
“I’ll take that as a metabolic veto of your decision not to lunch.”
Without further discussion, Ryan pulled into the parking lot of a Lafleur, Montreal’s answer to fast food. Rounding the car, he opened my door, bowed at the waist, and made a sweeping gesture with his free hand.
What the hell. I was hungry.
Lafleur is famous for its steamed hot dogs and fries. Steamé et frites. Though regulars register blood cholesterol counts that would classify them as solids, now and then every Montrealer eats at Lafleurs.
Minutes later Ryan and I were seated at a Formica-topped table, four weenies and twenty pounds of fries between us.
My cell rang as I was starting my second dog. As usual Claudel wasted no time on greetings.
“Vous avez raison.”
I almost choked. Claudel was admitting I’d been right about something?
Ryan mouthed “Heimlich?” and stretched out his arms. I flapped a hand at him.
“Monsieur Stéphane Ménard was born Stephen Timothy Menard. Parents were Vermonters, Genevieve Rose Corneau and Simon Timothy Menard.”
“Fisher remembered correctly.”
“The Menards were schoolteachers who also owned and operated a small truck farm about fifteen miles outside of St. Johnsbury. Papa died in sixty-seven when the kid was five. Mama died in eighty-two.”
“How did Menard end up in Canada?”
“Legally. Corneau was born in Montreal. After hooking up with Menard she moved to Vermont, married, and became a U.S. citizen. Conveniently, Genevieve Rose was visiting the folks back home when little Stephen signaled his entrance.”
“Menard has dual citizenship.”
“Yes.”
“But he didn’t take up residence in Canada until eighty-nine?”
“When Corneau died in 1982, Menard inherited the truck farm. Three acres and a two-bedroom house.”
I did a quick calculation. “Menard was twenty.”
“Yes.”
Ryan was dousing his fries with vinegar, but listening attentively.
“Did Menard remain in Vermont?”
“Charbonneau is clarifying that with the St. Johnsbury PD. I’ve established that Menard’s grandparents died in an auto crash here in Montreal in 1988.”
“Let me guess. Menard inherited Grand-mère and Grand-père Corneau’s home, said au revoir to Vermont, added accents to his name, and headed north.”
“He took possession of the Corneau home in November 1988.”
“In Pointe-St-Charles.”
Claudel read off an address.
I gestured to Ryan. He handed me a pen and I jotted it on a napkin.
“He a loner?”
“No record of anyone else living there.”
“Does Menard have a jacket in the States?” I asked.
“DWI at age seventeen. Otherwise the young man was a paragon of virtue.”
Claudel’s cavalier attitude was doing its usual number on my disposition.
“Look, up to this point we’ve been focusing on the victims, working the case from the bottom up. It’s time to rethink that, go at it from the top down. Look at who might have put them in that basement.”
“And you think this Menard is your shovel man.”
“Do you have any better ideas, Monsieur Claudel?”
We disconnected simultaneously.
Between bites of my second hot dog, I relayed Claudel’s information. If Ryan had doubts about my suspicions concerning Menard, he kept them to himself.
“Menard must be in his forties now,” he said, crumpling his waxed paper wrappers into the grease-stained carton that had held our food.
“With no obvious means of support for the past several years.”
“But real estate holdings in Vermont and Quebec.”
“And a lot of dead relatives,” I said.
Charbonneau phoned as we were paying our bill.
“How’s it hanging, Doc?”
“Good.”
“Did some interesting chin wagging with several of our Green Mountain neighbors. Seems your boy was a college grad.”
“Where?”
“University of Vermont. Class of 1984. Nice lady in the registrar’s office even faxed me a yearbook photo. Kid looks like every mama’s dream. Howdy Doody hair and freckles, Clark Kent glasses, and a Donny Osmond smile.”
“Redhead?”
“Looked like Opie in specs. Oh, and you’re going to love this, Doc. Menard earned a BA in anthropology.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Story gets better. Menard went on to graduate school. Enrolled in a master’s program in archaeology at some place called—” Pause. “Wait. I got it. Chico.” My heart rate shot into the stratosphere.
“California State University at Chico?”
Ryan’s head whipped around at the sharpness of my tone.
“Yep. Long way from home for a kid from Vermont.”
I reminded Charbonneau about the strontium isotope testing Art Holliday had done on the skeletons.
“Her dental strontium ratios suggest the girl in the leather shroud may have grown up in north-central California, remember?”
“Right.”
“Chico is in north-central California.”
“I’ll be damned.”
“And remember too, her skeletal strontium ratios suggest she may have lived the last years of her life in Vermont.”
“Sonovabitch.”
“What else did you get?”
“Apparently Menard’s scholarship left something to be desired. He either dropped out or got booted after one year in the program. Hasta la vista. No degree.”
“Where did he go?”
“Showed up at Mama’s farm in Vermont in January eighty-six.”
“If he dropped out of Chico after one academic year, that leaves a gap from the end of spring term in eighty-five until January eighty-six. Where was he during that period?”
“I’ll make some calls to Chico.”
“What did Menard do when he landed back in Vermont?”
“Grew vegetables, I guess. Lived off his inheritance. Paid no Social Security, filed no tax returns.”
“Did you talk to the locals?”
“I managed to scare up a couple of neighbors who remembered him. Most people in the area are newcomers since Menard left, but a few old-timers remembered Genevieve Rose and her son. Apparently Mama was one tough lady. Kept the kid on a very short rein.”
“Corneau never remarried?”
“Nope. Single parent. Folks remember Menard as a quiet kid who stayed in a lot. Didn’t participate in sports or the usual extracurricular school stuff. One or two said they recalled seeing him during the year following his return from Chico. Guy must have had some sort of epiphany in grad school. Made an impression back home with the dreadlocks and beard.”
“It’s Vermont.”
“Meaning?”
“They’re conservative. What else did these neighbors say?”
“
Not much. Apparently Menard kept to himself, only ventured out to buy groceries or fill up on gas.”
“Talk to Chico. Dig up everything you can on this guy. And get a list of every female aged fifteen to twenty-five who went missing in the area while Menard was out there.”
“You really liking Menard for these pizza skeletons?”
“It’s the classic profile. Dominating mother. Failed ambition. A loner. An isolated location.”
“I don’t know.”
“Connect the dots, Charbonneau. Three girls were buried in the basement of a property Menard rented for nine years. Carbon 14 dating suggests that the timing of their deaths coincides with the period of Menard’s tenancy. Louise Parent was sufficiently suspicious of Menard to phone me twice.”
I was summarizing as much for Ryan’s sake as for Charbonneau’s.
“According to her sister, what Parent wanted to tell me was that on one occasion she had observed Menard carrying an unconscious teenaged girl into his shop. On another occasion she had observed Menard dragging a fleeing girl back into his shop. Both incidents took place late at night.”
“And Parent is now dead,” Charbonneau said.
I looked at Ryan. He was following every word.
“And Parent is now dead,” I said.
“Bring out the party hats. We may all be working the same patch.”
“Looks that way.”
“Ryan there?”
“Yes.”
“Put him on.”
I handed Ryan the phone, then watched as he listened to Charbonneau. Though my nerves were high-stepping, I kept my face neutral. No hint of the jolt Charbonneau had just given me. No hint of the pain Charbonneau had triggered on Monday. No hint of the torture last night’s phone call had been.
I’d vowed to distance myself from Ryan, but all the threads were starting to connect. With the Parent and pizza basement investigations merging, professional separation would not yet be possible.
C’est la vie. I would be a pro. I would do my job. Then I would wish Ryan well and move on.
“Yeah, she is.” Ryan chuckled the chuckle men use when sharing a joke about women.
Paranoia roared. She is what? Which she?
Forget it, Brennan. Focus on the case. Keep your energy pointed there.
I pictured the bones in their anonymous cellar graves, Menard buying and selling above in his shop. Electronics stolen for a drug hit. Family heirlooms tendered with regret.
I pictured Menard in Vermont, hoeing peas and potatoes. Menard in California, studying Struever, Binford, Buikstra, Fagan.
An ill-defined thought tried to get my attention.
Chico.
“—got it right here.” Ryan rotated the napkin to read Menard’s address.
Chico is in north-central California. I know that. So why the heads-up from my hindbrain?
That wasn’t it. There was something more. What?
“Will do,” Ryan said.
Charbonneau said something.
“Yeah. Squeeze the squirrel a little. See how he reacts.”
Ryan clicked off and handed me my phone.
“You up for a little chat with this guy?”
“Menard?”
Ryan nodded.
“Definitely.”
The hindbrain thought seemed to relax slightly.
As Ryan and I left the restaurant we had no idea we were being watched.
26
THE MAP OF MONTREAL MAKES ME THINK OF A FOOT, with Dorval Airport and the west island suburbs forming the ankle, the toes pointing east, and the heel dropping down into the Fleuve St-Laurent. Verdun forms the fatty pad of the heel, with Pointe-St-Charles as a tiny toeward bunion.
The Point is topped off by the Lachine Canal, and bottoms out in the CP rail yards. Vieux-Montréal and its port lie to the east. Originally inhabited by immigrants working construction on Montreal’s bridges, the Point has street names that reflect a strong Irish presence. Rue St-Patrick. Sullivan. Dublin. Mullins.
But that’s history. Today the Point is largely French.
Less than twenty minutes after leaving Lafleur, Ryan turned onto rue Wellington, the neighborhood’s main east-west artery. We passed sporting goods stores, tattoo parlors, the MH Grover clothing shop, a Wellington institution for decades. Here and there, a perky café interrupted the drab little strip.
Ryan paused where rue Dublin tied into Wellington on the left. On the right, a row of Victorians looked incongruously playful, styling out in pastels, ornate woodwork, brick arches, and leaded glass. I could read the name Dr. George Hall scripted in milky glass above one front door.
Ryan noticed my gaze.
“Doctor’s Row,” he said. “Built in the nineteenth century by a group of fat-cat physicians looking for prestigious addresses. The hood’s changed a bit since then.”
“Are they still private homes?”
“They’re divided into condos, I think.”
“Where’s rue de Sébastopol?”
Ryan tipped his head left. “It’s a rabbit warren in there, lot of dead ends and one-ways. I think de Sébastopol skims the edge of the rail yard.”
As Ryan turned onto Dublin, I noticed a historic marker out my window.
“What’s Parc Marguerite-Bourgeoys?”
“Mon Dieu, Madame la docteure, you’re referring to one of Quebec’s best-loved ladies. Sister Maggie set up schools for little girls back in the seventeenth century. Pretty rad idea for Quebec at the time. She also founded the Soeurs de la Congrégation de Notre-Dame. A few years ago the church upped her pay grade to saint.”
“Why the sign?” I asked.
“In the mid-sixteen hundreds Bourgeoys was given a hefty hunk of this little peninsula. Bit by bit, the nuns sold the land off, and Pointe-St-Charles now covers most of the acreage, but Bourgeoys’s original school and parts of the farm are up ahead. Site’s now a museum.”
“Maison St-Gabriel?”
Ryan nodded.
Snow removal in the area had been sketchy at best.
Sidewalks were mounded and parked cars jutted into the traffic lanes. Ryan drove slowly, pulling far to the right for oncoming traffic. As we moved deeper into the Point I assessed my surroundings.
The architecture was a jumble of nineteenth- and twentieth-century housing, most of which appeared to have been built for the working-class poor. Many streets were lined with two-story redbrick row houses whose front doors opened right at the curb. Other streets tended toward rough-hewn limestone. While most residences were starkly plain, a few sported a cornice, a false mansard, or a carved wooden dormer.
Mixed in with the previous century’s efforts were three-story tri- or six-plexes built during the early years of this one. Their creators favored more generous setbacks allowing tiny front gardens, recessed entrances, yellow, chamois, or brown brick facing, and exterior staircases twisting to second-floor balconies.
Near the entrance to the Maison St-Gabriel, we passed several four-story postwar monstrosities with entrances canopied under concrete or plastic. The designers of these eyesores obviously placed efficiency well before style. So much for feng shui.
After several turns, Ryan made a right, and rue de Sébastopol stretched before us. To our left sprawled the rail yards, half-hidden by six-foot fencing and evergreen shrubbery. Through the branches and chain-linking, I could see row after row of rusted tanker cars.
Snow crunched under our tires as Ryan rolled to a stop. Wordlessly, we each made a visual tour.
At midblock, a series of redbrick row houses elbowed up to the curb, the run-down little dwellings seeming to huddle together for support. Or warmth.
Beyond the row houses, I could see a gap, then a hodgepodge of cement structures with graffiti scarring their exterior walls. To our right stood a seedy barn enclosed within a dilapidated fence. Inside the fence, a mongrel dog took issue with our presence.
Bare trees fingered up through the power lines. Previously plowed snow sat mounded and blackened
with grime.
Rue de Sébastopol looked like many other streets in the Point.
Yet somehow more bleak.
More isolated.
To our left yawned the vast uninhabited rail yard. Behind us lay the only vehicle access to the lane.
As I stared the length of the block, I felt a deep sense of foreboding.
Ryan nodded toward the row houses. “That’s Sébastopol Row, built in the 1850s by the Grand Trunk Railway.”
“Apparently Big Railroad didn’t pony up for aesthetics.”
Ryan pulled the napkin from his pocket, checked the address, then advanced so he could see the digits on the first row house.
The dog stopped barking, rose with forepaws on the fence, and watched our progress.
“What’s the number?”
Ryan told me.
“Must be farther down.”
As Ryan crept forward, I read off the addresses. The numbers on the row houses didn’t go high enough, but that on the first cement structure indicated we’d gone too far.
“Maybe it’s farther off the pavement, back in that vacant area,” I suggested.
Ryan reversed up the block and parked opposite the last of the row houses. A silhouette was faintly visible through bare trees and heavy pines.
“Ready?” Ryan scooped his gloves from the backseat.
“Ready.”
I pulled on my mittens and got out. At the thunk-thunk of our doors, the dog reengaged.
Ryan proceeded up an ice-crusted walkway six feet beyond the outer wall of the last row house. Needled boughs and bare branches blocked the sky, creating a gloomy tunnel effect.
The air smelled of pine, coal smoke, and something organic.
“What’s that odor?” I hissed.
“Horse manure.” Ryan was also whispering. “Old Yeller is guarding a calèche horse stable.”
“The horses that pull the carriages in Old Montreal?”
“The very ones.”
I took another whiff.
Maybe. But there was something else there.
Ryan and I picked our way carefully along the uneven walk, breaths billowing, collars up to ward off the cold.
Ten yards off de Sébastopol the path took a sharp left, and Ryan and I found ourselves facing a weathered brick building. We both stopped and read the rusted numbers above the door.