Déjà Dead (44 page)

For the third time in as many hours I wove my way through a labyrinth of unlit side streets, tailing a quarry as close as I dared. I prayed he wouldn’t stop off at another beer joint. I wasn’t up to any more surveillance.

I needn’t have worried. After snaking through a maze of tributary streets and side alleys, the man made one final turn and went directly to a bow-fronted graystone. It was like a hundred others I’d passed tonight, though a bit less seedy, the stone a little less dirty, the rusted stairs curving to doors slightly less in need of paint.

He took the stairs quickly, the metallic slap of his footfalls sharp against the air, then disappeared through an ornately carved door. A light went on almost immediately on the second floor of the bow, showing windows half open, curtains hanging limp and lifeless. A shadowy figure moved about the room, veiled by the graying lace.

I crossed the street and waited. No alley this time.

For a while the figure shifted back and forth, then it disappeared.

I waited.

It’s him, Brennan. Outa here.

He could be visiting someone. Dropping something off.

You’ve got him. Let’s go.

I checked my watch—eleven-twenty. Still early. Ten more minutes.

It took less. The figure reappeared, raised the windows to full open, and vanished again. Then the room went black. Bedtime!

I waited five minutes to be sure no one left the building, then needed no more convincing. Ryan and the boys could take it from here.

I noted the address and began winding my way back to the car, hoping I could find it. The air was still leaden, the heat as intense as midafternoon. Leaves and curtains hung motionless, as if laundered and left to dry. The neon of St. Laurent glowed over the tops of the darkened buildings, backlighting the maze of streets through which I hurried.

The clock on the dash said midnight when I pulled into the garage. I
was
improving. Home before dawn.

The noise didn’t register at first. I was across the garage and singling out my key when it finally intruded on my conscious mind. I stood still to listen. A high-pitched beeping was coming from behind me, near the main auto entrance.

As I walked in that direction, trying to pinpoint its source, the tone clarified into a sharp, pulsating beat. When I drew near I could see that the noise came from a door to the right of the car ramp. Though the door appeared closed, the lock was only partly engaged, thus triggering the alarm.

I pushed, then pulled on the safety bar, slamming the door fully shut. The beeping stopped abruptly, leaving the garage deathly quiet. I reminded myself to mention the apparent malfunction to Winston.

The condo felt cool and fresh after my hours in hot, dirty crevices. For a moment I just stood in the hall, allowing the refrigerated air to roll over my hot skin. Birdie brushed back and forth against my leg, arching his back and purring in greeting. I looked down at him. Soft, white hairs clung to my sweaty legs. I stroked his head, fed him, and checked my messages. One hang-up. I headed for the shower.

As I lathered and relathered I ran over the events of the evening in my mind. What had I accomplished? Now I knew where Julie’s lingerie loony lived. At least I assumed that’s who he was since today was Thursday. So what? He might have nothing to do with the murders.

But I couldn’t quite convince myself. Why? Why did I think this guy was hooked in? Why did I think it was my job to nail him? Why was I afraid for Gabby? Julie had been fine.

After my shower I was still keyed up and knew I wouldn’t sleep, so I dug a chunk of Brie and a wedge of
tomme de chèvre de savoie
from the refrigerator and poured myself a ginger ale. Wrapping myself in a quilt, I stretched out on the couch, peeled an orange, and ate it with the cheese. Letterman couldn’t hold my attention. Back to the debate.

Why did I just spend four hours packed in with spiders and rats to spy on some guy who likes to see whores in lingerie? Why not let the cops handle it?

It kept coming back to that. Why didn’t I just tell Ryan what I knew and ask him to roust this guy?

Because it was personal. But not in the way I’d been telling myself. It wasn’t just a threat in my garden, an attack on my safety or Gabby’s. Something else was causing me to obsess over these cases, something deeper and more troubling. For the next hour, little by little, I admitted it to myself.

The truth was that, lately, I was scaring myself. I saw violent death every day. Some woman killed by some man and thrown into a river, a wood, a dump. Some child’s fractured bones uncovered in a box, a culvert, a plastic bag. Day after day I cleaned them up, examined them, sorted them out. I wrote reports. Testified. And sometimes I felt nothing. Professional detachment. Clinical disinterest. I saw death too often, too close, and I feared I was losing a sense of its meaning. I knew I couldn’t grieve for the human being that each of my cadavers had been. That would empty my emotional reservoir for sure. Some amount of professional detachment was mandatory in order to do the work, but not to the extent of abandoning all feeling.

The deaths of these women had stirred something in me. I ached for their fear, their pain, their helplessness in the face of madness. I felt anger and outrage, and a need to root out the animal responsible for the slaughter. I felt for these victims, and my response to their deaths was like a lifeline to my feelings. To my own humanity and my celebration of life. I felt, and I was grateful for the feeling.

That’s how it was personal. That’s why I wouldn’t stop. That’s why I’d prowl the monastery grounds, and the woods, and the bars and back streets of the Main. I’d persuade Ryan to follow this up. I’d figure out Julie’s client. I’d find Gabby. Maybe this was connected. Maybe not. No matter. One way or another, I’d flush out the sonofabitch responsible for this shedding of female blood, and I’d help shut him down. For good.

S
PURRING THE INVESTIGATION TURNED OUT TO BE HARDER THAN
I thought. Partly because of me.

By five-thirty on Friday afternoon my head and my stomach ached from the endless cups of machine coffee. We’d been discussing the files for hours. No one had turned up much, so we kept rehashing the same things over and over, sifting through the mountains of information, desperately searching for something new. There was little.

Bertrand was working the realtor angle. Morisette-Champoux and Adkins had listed their condos with ReMax. So had Gagnon’s neighbor. Huge firm, three different offices, three separate agents. None of them remembered the victims, or even the properties. Trottier’s father had used Royal Lepage.

Pitre’s former boyfriend was a doper who’d killed a prostitute in Winnipeg. Could be a break. Could be nothing. Claudel was on that.

The questioning of known sex offenders was continuing, coming up empty. Big surprise.

Teams of uniformed officers were canvassing the neighborhoods around the Adkins and Morisette-Champoux condos. Zero.

We had nowhere to turn so we were turning on one another. The mood was gloomy and patience was in short supply, so I bided my time, waiting for the right opening. They listened politely as I told them about the situation with Gabby, about the night in the car. I described the drawing, my conversation with J.S., and my surveillance of Julie.

When I finished, no one spoke. Seven women watched mutely from portable bulletin boards. Claudel’s pen wove complex webs and grids. He’d been silent and withdrawn all afternoon, as if disconnected from the rest of us. My account made him even more sullen. The sound of the large electric clock began to dominate the room.

Buzzzz.

“And you have no idea if this is the same sack of shit we chased from Berger?” Bertrand.

I shook my head.

Buzzzz.

“I say we bust the cocksucker.” Ketterling.

“For what?” Ryan.

Buzzzz.

“We could just be there for him, see how he deals with pressure.” Charbonneau.

“If he is our boy that might spook him. The last thing we want is for him to panic and blow town.” Rousseau.

“No. The last thing we want is for him to shove a plastic Jesus up someone else’s sweet spot.” Bertrand.

“The guy’s probably just a wienie wagger.”

“Or he could be Bundy with an underwear twist.”

Buzzzz.

Round and round it went like that, zigging and zagging from French to English. Eventually, everyone was drawing Claudel lines.

Buzzzz.

Then.

“How unreliable is this Gabby?” Charbonneau.

I hesitated. Somehow daylight colored things differently. I’d sent these men on a chase before, and we still didn’t know if it had been for wild geese.

Claudel looked up at me, eyes reptilian cold, and I felt the tightening in my stomach. This man despised me, wanted to destroy me. What was he doing behind my back? How far had his complaint gone? What if I was wrong?

And then I did something I would forever be unable to change. Deep down maybe I didn’t think anything bad would really happen to Gabby. She’d always landed on her feet before. Maybe I just took the safe path. Who knows? I did not elevate concern for my friend’s safety to the level of urgency. I backed off.

“She has taken off before.”

Buzzzz.

Buzzzz.

Buzzzz.

Ryan was the first to respond.

“Like this? Without a word?”

I nodded.

Buzzzz.

Buzzzz.

Buzzzz.

Ryan’s expression was grim. “All right. Let’s get a name, run a check. But we’ll keep it low profile for now. Without something else, we couldn’t get a warrant anyway.” He turned to Charbonneau. “Michel?”

Charbonneau nodded. We discussed a few other points, gathered our things, and broke.

In the many times I’d look back on that meeting, I’d always wonder if I could have altered later events. Why had I not sounded the cry over Gabby? Had the sight of Claudel dampened my resolve? Had I sacrificed the previous evening’s zeal on the altar of professional caution? Had I compromised Gabby’s survival rather than risk my professional standing? Would an all-out search begun that day have made any difference?

That night I went home and warmed a TV dinner. Swiss steak, I think. When the microwave beeped I removed the tray and peeled back the foil.

I stood there a moment, watching synthetic gravy congeal on synthetic mashed potatoes, feeling loneliness and frustration tune up for the overture. I could eat this and spend another night fighting back demons, with the cat and the sitcoms, or I could be the conductor of the evening’s performance.

“Fuck this. Maestro . . . ?”

I threw the dinner into the trash and walked to Chez Katsura on Rue de la Montagne, where I treated myself to sushi and exchanged small talk with a card salesman from Sudbury. Then, declining his invitations, I moved on and caught the late showing of
The Lion King
at Le Faubourg.

It was ten-forty when I left the theater and took the escalator to the main level. The tiny mall was largely deserted, the vendors gone, their wares stowed and sealed in carts. I passed the bagel bakery, the frozen yogurt stand, the Japanese carry-out, their shelves and counters stripped and barricaded behind collapsible security gates. Knives and saws hung in neat rows behind the butcher’s empty cases.

The movie had been just what I needed. Singing hyenas, pounding African rhythms, and lion cub romance kept me from thinking of the murders for hours.

Well orchestrated, Brennan. Hakuna Matata.

I crossed Ste. Catherine and walked toward home. It was still hot and very humid. Mist haloed the streetlamps and hovered over the pavement, like steam from a hot tub on a cold winter night.

I saw the envelope as soon as I left the lobby and turned down my hall. It was wedged between the brass knob and the doorjamb. My first thought was Winston. Perhaps he needed to fix something and would be turning off the power or the water. No. He’d post a notice. A complaint about Birdie? A note from Gabby?

It wasn’t. In fact, it wasn’t a note at all. The envelope held two items, which lay on the table now, silent and terrible. I stared at them, heart pounding, hands trembling, knowing, yet refusing to admit their meaning.

The envelope contained a plastic ID. Gabby’s name, date of birth, and
numéro d’assurance maladie
appeared in raised white letters below a red sunset on the left-hand side of the card. Her image was at the upper right, dreadlocks winging, something silver dangling from each ear.

The other item was a two-inch square cut from a large-scale city map. The map was in French, and showed streets and green spaces in an agonizingly familiar color code. I looked for landmarks or names that would help me pinpoint the neighborhood. Rue Ste. Hélène. Rue Beauchamp. Rue Champlain. I didn’t know those streets. Could be Montreal, could be a score of other cities. I hadn’t lived in Quebec long enough to know. The map contained no highways or features I could identify. Except one. A large black X covered the center of the map.

I stared numbly at the X. Terrible images formed in my mind but I fought them off, denying the one acceptable conclusion. It was a bluff. It was like the skull in the garden. This maniac was toying with me. Seeing how frightened he could make me.

I don’t know how long I looked at Gabby’s face, remembering it in other places, other times. A happy face in a clown hat at Katy’s third birthday party. A face bathed in tears as she told me of her brother’s suicide.

The house was silent around me, the universe at a standstill. Then horrible certainty overtook me.

It wasn’t a bluff. Dear God, dear God, dear Gabby. I’m so very, terribly sorry.

Ryan picked up on the third ring.

“He’s got Gabby,” I whispered, knuckles white on the receiver, voice steady by sheer strength of will.

He wasn’t fooled.

“Who?” he asked, sensing the underlying terror and going straight to the crux.

“I don’t know.”

“Where are they?”

“I—I don’t know.”

I heard the sound of a hand passing over a face.