Monday Mourning (26 page)

“Looks like Menard,” I said.

“And a thousand other guys with red hair, glasses, and freckles.”

I had to agree.

“Any word from your friend?”

“No.”

I shifted my feet. Unzipped my parka. I didn’t know what to do with my eyes. My legs. My arms. I felt awkward and uncomfortable with Ryan. I wasn’t sure I could manage conversation with him.

“Rough night?” Ryan asked.

“Why the sudden interest in my sleep patterns?”

“You look tired.”

I looked at Ryan. The shadows under his eyes seemed deeper, his whole face more clenched.

What the hell’s going on with you? I wanted to ask.

“I’ve got a number of things on my plate,” I said.

Ryan put a finger to the tip of my nose. “Don’t we all.”

Twenty minutes later we were on Cyr’s porch.

Ryan had phoned ahead, and Cyr answered on the first ring. This time the old coot was fully clothed.

In the living room, Cyr took the same recliner he’d occupied during my visit with Anne.

Ole Hopalong.

Put it away, Brennan.

I introduced Ryan and let him do the talking.

“Monsieur Cyr, nous avon
—”

“Speak English for the little lady.” Cyr grinned at me. “Where’s that good-looking friend of yours?”

“Anne’s gone home.”

Cyr cocked his head. “She’s a pistol, that one.”

“This will just take a moment.” Ryan pulled the fax from his pocket and handed it to Cyr. “Is that Stephen Menard?”

“Who?”

“Stéphane Ménard. The man who ran the pawnshop in your building.”

Cyr glanced at the fax.

“
Tabernouche!
I may look like Bogie, but I’m eighty-two years old.”

Cyr pushed to his feet, shuffled across the room, and turned on the TV. Picking up a large, boxy lens attached by a cord to the back of the set, he flipped a button and scanned the fax.

Menard’s face filled the screen.

“That’s terrific,” I said.

“Videolupe. Great little gadget. Magnifies so I can read just about everything.”

Cyr moved the lens casually over the photo, then focused on Menard’s ear. The image zoomed until the upper edge of the helix almost filled the screen.

“Nope.” Cyr straightened. “That’s not your boy.”

“How do you know?” I was astonished at his certainty.

Cyr lay down the lens, shuffled back, and crooked a finger at me.

I stood.

“See that?” Cyr fingered a small bump of cartilage on the upper part of his ear’s outer rim.

“A Darwin’s tubercle,” I said.

Cyr straightened. “Smart lady.”

Ryan was watching us, a look of confusion on his face.

“Never knew anybody had bumps like mine, so one time I showed them to my doctor. He told me it was a recessive trait, gave me some articles.” Cyr flicked his ear. “Know how these little buggers got their name?”

“They were once thought to be a vestige of pointed ears on quadrupeds.”

Cyr bounced on his toes, delighted.

“What does this have to do with Menard?” Ryan asked.

“Menard had the biggest bastards I’ve ever seen. I teased him about it. Told him one day I’d find him grazing on trees or eating small furry things in the basement. He wasn’t amused.”

Ryan rose. “And the man in the photo?”

Cyr held out the fax. “No bumps.”

At the door, Ryan paused.

“One last question, sir. Did you and Menard part on good terms?”

“Hell no. I threw his ass out.”

“Why was that?”

“Got tired of complaints from other tenants.”

“Complaints about what?”

“Unsavory clientele, mostly. Some about noise late at night.”

“What kind of noise?”

“Damned if I know. But I’d heard enough carping. Is that a word? Carping?”

“Yes.”

“Sounds like a fish.”

Ryan dropped me at home, apologized, said he’d be on duty all weekend. He promised to phone if he heard anything on Menard or the other set of prints. Or anything on Anne.

I didn’t ask if his work schedule extended into Saturday night.

Screw it. Who cares?

My answering machine held no messages.

Katy wanted me in Charlotte by the twenty-second, so I tried busying myself with tasks that had to be done before my departure.

Bed linen. Plants. Gift wrapping of packages for the caretaker, the techs at the lab.

Ryan?

I set that one aside.

I also busied myself with tasks that just had to be done.

Laundry. Cat litter. Mail.

I blasted Christmas music, hoping jingling bells or heralding angels might kick-start me into a holiday mood.

No go. All I could think about were the bones on my lab tables, the printouts on my blotter, and where the hell was Anne.

At three, I gave in and headed to Wilfrid-Derome.

Typical Saturday afternoon. The lab was empty and still as a tomb.

One
Demande d’expertise
form lay on my desk.

Four months earlier an elevator worker had disappeared from an inspection job at a building in Côte St-Luc. Thursday his decomposed body was found in Parc Angrignon in LaSalle. X-rays showed multiple fractures. Pelletier wanted me to analyze the trauma when the bones were cleaned.

Setting the form aside, I again took up Claudel’s list.

Overhead, the fluorescents hummed. Outside, gusts whined around the window casings. Now and then some frozen windborne particle ticked a pane.

Simone Badeau.
Too old.

Isabelle Lemieux.
Dental work.

Marie-Lucille d’Aquin.
Black.

Micheline Thibault.
Too young.

Tawny McGee.
Way too young.

Céline Dallaire.
Broken collarbone at age fourteen.

The names went on and on.

After an hour I switched to Charbonneau’s list.

Jennifer Kay. Esther Anne Pigeon. Elaine Masse. Amy Fish. Theresa Perez.

Now and then I crossed to the lab to recheck a bone, hoping to find some detail I’d overlooked. Each time I returned disappointed.

When I’d finished with the names, I went back through the lists by age. Then height. Date of disappearance.

I knew I was grasping at straws, but it was like a compulsion. I couldn’t stop myself.

Down the corridor, I heard the security doors swoosh.

Place of disappearance.

Terrebonne. Anjou. Gatineau. Beaconsfield.

Butte County. Tehama County. San Mateo County.

At six I sat back, thoroughly discouraged. Two and a half hours, and I’d accomplished nothing.

Footsteps sounded hollow in the empty hall. Probably LaManche. Besides me, the chief would be the only one punching in on a Saturday night.

Congratulations, Brennan. You have the same social life as a sexagenarian with seven grandchildren.

Back to the lists.

I still had the persistent feeling I was missing some connection.

What?

The cut marks?

All three skulls bore evidence of sharp instrument trauma. With the girl in the leather shroud, the cuts appeared to have been made postmortem. With the others, the cuts appeared to have been made to fresh bone. With all three, the cuts were limited to the ear region.

Death sequence?

Carbon 14 dating suggested the girl in the leather shroud died in the eighties, the other two in the nineties.

Place of origin?

Strontium isotope analysis suggested the girl in the leather shroud might have been born or lived her early childhood in north-central California, then moved to Vermont or Quebec. The others might have lived their whole lives in Quebec.

Might have.

Maybe I was hanging too much on the strontium. Maybe the California angle was a dead end.

Another swoosh, then the sound of voices.

But Menard attended grad school in Chico. Chico is in north-central California. Menard was a renter where the dead girls were found. The period of his tenancy coincided with the timing of at least two of the deaths. Louise Parent saw him with young girls on two occasions. One running. One unconscious.

Was the California link mere coincidence?

My hindbrain thought sat up, settled back.

What?

Try as I might, I couldn’t lure the thought from its lair.

Back to Menard.

Menard took possession of his grandparents’ home in Montreal in 1988.

But the guy living there now isn’t Menard, though he’s using Menard’s name.

I threw my pen on the blotter.

“So who the hell is he?”

“I don’t know.”

I jumped at the voice.

Looking up, I saw Ryan standing in my doorway.

“But we got a hit on his girlfriend.”

“A
NIQUE
P
OMERLEAU
.”

I curled my fingers in a give-it-to-me gesture.

“Went missing in 1990.”

“Age?”

“Fifteen.”

That fit. The woman at Menard’s house appeared to be in her mid to late twenties.

“From where?”

“Mascouche.”

“What happened?”

“Kid told her parents she was spending the weekend with a friend. Turned out the girls had cooked up a story so Pomerleau could bunk in with her new squeeze. When she didn’t turn up on Sunday, the parents started checking. On Monday they filed the MP report. At that point Anique had been gone for almost sixty hours.”

“She never made it to the boyfriend’s place?”

“She made it all right. The two hit a couple of bars Friday night, got into a fight, Anique stormed out. Lover boy got lucky, spent the weekend with bachelorette number two.”

“Cops believed his story?”

“The bartender and the lucky lady backed him up. Pomerleau was a troubled kid with a history of runaways. The parents insisted she’d been abducted, but the cops figured she’d taken off.”

“Did they pursue the case?”

“Until the leads went cold.”

“That was it?”

“Not quite. Three years later the Pomerleaus got a call from little Anique. Said she was fine, wouldn’t divulge her whereabouts.”

“That must have been a shock.”

“Couple years go by, the phone rings again. Same deal. Anique tells them she’s OK, but not a word about where she’s living. Last call came in ninety-seven. Father’s dead by then. Mother’s living in a bottle of Bombay Sapphire.”

“Pomerleau’s prints were on file here in Quebec?”

Ryan nodded. “She’s got a jacket full of petty stuff. Vandalism. Shoplifting. One incident involving a stolen auto. Probably joyriding. Last entry was four months before her disappearance.”

I felt agitation bubbling to the surface. Here was another twist that didn’t fit. “What on God’s earth is Anique Pomerleau doing with Stephen Menard?”

“He’s not Menard.”

“Don’t patronize me, Ryan.” I picked up my pen, tossed it back on the blotter. “Mister X.
Monsieur X.
How’d she end up with the guy?”

I snatched up the pen and pointed it at Ryan.

“And why can’t we find out who this toad is? And where’s the real Stephen Menard? And when did the identity switch take place?”

“Would you like some dinner?”

“What?”

“Dinner.”

“Why?”

“I have some things I want to tell you.”

“Right. You and Claudel keep a hotline to my phone for all breaking news. Where the hell is Claudel, anyway?”

Ryan started to speak. I cut him off.

“I’m sick to death of Claudel and his fuck-you-if-you-don’t-like-it attitude. Charbonneau’s the only one who treats me with any respect.”

“Claudel’s got his own way of doing things.”

“So do echinoderms.”

“You’re judging Claudel harshly. What are echinoderms?”

That tripped the switch.

“
I’m
judging
him
harshly? From the outset I’ve had to fight that narcissistic little prig to get him to take me seriously. To get
anyone
to take me seriously.”

I considered crushing the pen.

“The bones are too old. Carbon 14 is too expensive. The girls were hookers. Louise Parent died in her sleep. Old ladies do that. They’re known for doing it.”

“I was referring to drooling.”

“See!” I jabbed the pen at Ryan. “Your flip attitude doesn’t help.”

“Tempe—” Ryan reached out to touch me. I drew back.

“Of course. I forgot. You love me. But you love a lot of things. Goat cheese. Parakeets. The Weeki-Wachee Mermaids.”

Ryan’s mouth opened to say something. I cut him off.

“Right. You love me. You just can’t find time to be with me.”

I stormed on, all the pent-up frustration rolling in one powerful surge.

“Now, suddenly you’re free for dinner! On Saturday night! What a lucky girl I am!”

The words spewed like water through a sluice gate.

“What about duty? What about your” — I hooked my index fingers to bracket the word — “niece?”

The pen ricocheted off the blotter and winged toward Ryan. Throwing up a hand, he deflected it.

I shot to my feet.

“Oh God, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hit you.”

Dropping into my chair, I put my face in my palms. My cheeks felt warm and damp.

“Christ. What’s wrong with me?”

I felt a hand on my shoulder.

Palming away wetness, I did an ear-tuck with my hair and raised my head.

Ryan was gazing down at me, the travel-poster eyes filled with concern.

Or pity?

Or what?

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m not sure where all that came from.”

“Everyone’s under pressure.”

“Everyone’s not turning into Il Duce.”

I was aware of LaManche before actually seeing him. Movement in my peripheral vision. The smell of pipe tobacco and drugstore cologne.

Throat clearing.

Ryan and I turned. LaManche was in my doorway.

“I thought you both might like to know. The coroner has officially ruled Louise Parent’s death a homicide.”

“She was smothered?” I asked.

“I believe so.”

“Have you gotten the tox results?” Ryan asked.

“Traces of sleeping medication, Ambien, were detected in the blood and urine. Levels were consistent with the ingestion of ten milligrams several hours before death.”