Red River Girl

by Joanna Jolly

  Cormier laughed and told her to chill. “Give me your hand,” he said. “I’m going to introduce you to my girlfriend. I’m going to introduce you to my best friend…You’re going to come over to my place.” He pulled her towards his apartment door.

  In unison, the Styx team shouted, “Don’t go in!” at the monitor screen. O’Donovan radioed a member of his undercover team who was on standby in a vehicle nearby and told her to head straight up to the fifth floor, pretending to be in the apartment building visiting friends. He wanted her to be close enough to intervene if Jenna needed help.

  In the hallway, Jenna calculated that it would be better to calm down and try to regain control of the situation. Cormier asked her if she knew his name.

  “It’s Raymond,” she said.

  “No, it’s not. It’s Sebastian,” he told her.

  O’Donovan thought this was significant. Cormier had been “Sebastian” to Tina. He seemed to prefer to use this name when he was dealing with young women, especially when he was trying to seduce them.

  “You’re acting like somebody who’s lost their sense of reality, Jenna,” said Cormier, his voice gentle and coaxing. “There’s children downstairs and you’re scaring them.”

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” said Jenna. “Can you just get him to call me?”

  Cormier said he would but that first he wanted her to give him Mo’s phone number. O’Donovan knew that Cormier already had it, so wondered if he was testing the officer. Jenna, who in reality didn’t know it, tried to dodge the question. Cormier suggested they sit together at the top of the stairs to the fire exit so that she could calm down. Again, she hesitated.

  “I need to breathe and I breathe better standing,” she said, adding she would leave right now if he promised to tell Mo to call her. Again, Cormier asked for Mo’s phone number, and Jenna replied that she couldn’t think straight. For O’Donovan, the scenario had gone on long enough, and he instructed the undercover operator to move in.

  “It’s okay, she’s distraught,” said Cormier when he saw the woman approaching.

  The officer came close and put her hand on Jenna’s arm, asking if she was okay.

  “I’m fine, I just want to go home,” said Jenna as Cormier stepped back towards his apartment.

  The two women waited for the elevator together. Once inside, the undercover officer squeezed Jenna’s hand and told her to stay in character outside the building in case Cormier was watching from a window. She was to head west for a couple of blocks until an unmarked car appeared to take her to the Public Safety Building.

  When Jenna arrived at headquarters, the team congratulated her on a convincing performance, in particular her surprising ability to cry on cue. Although the scenario had been nail-biting at times, O’Donovan considered it a complete success. On the surface, Cormier had seemed kindly, but his close physical proximity to the officer and his insistence that she follow him into his apartment confirmed the detective’s opinion that Cormier was a predator of young women.

  The question now was how to build on this. The team had been toying with the idea of putting Cormier into the middle of a domestic assault incident between Mo and Candace to gauge his tolerance for violence. But after the drama in the hallway, O’Donovan thought Jenna would be the better victim.

  “Let’s beat up Jenna,” he suggested to his team, who agreed that Cormier seemed to be more sexually interested in Jenna than the older woman.

  * * *

  —

  It was now September, three months since Project Styx had begun, and Cormier’s involvement with Mo’s fictional criminal gang was becoming a regular occurrence. The men had met Jay again, who had paid Cormier $200 for his latest job and sounded him out for more complicated work that involved picking up bags from the airport luggage carousel and delivering them to a nearby hotel. Cormier was excited, calculating that the higher the risk, the more chance he had of making good money. He saw a future with the gang, especially after Mo assured him that they looked after their people well.

  At the airport hotel, Cormier was introduced to Chris, a tall, well-dressed undercover officer who, like Cormier, had a French-Canadian background. Cormier had walked into the hotel room to find Chris sitting next to a vacuum-sealing machine, which he was using to pack up wads of cash. Cormier seemed in awe of Chris’s professional demeanour. When Chris mentioned that he didn’t realize there were French Canadians in New Brunswick, Cormier launched into a history lesson about his Acadian ancestors, descendants of French colonists who had settled in Canada’s Maritime provinces. In the eighteenth century, he told Chris, they had been expelled by the British, and some had settled in Louisiana, where they had become the Cajuns. One of these had been the pirate Jean Lafitte, who had helped the American colonists against the British. To Cormier, Lafitte was a rebel who had turned his life around to do something righteous—rather like himself, he told Chris, pleased that they had a topic over which they could bond.

  The improvement in Cormier’s working life was in distinct contrast to the situation in his apartment, which was deteriorating by the day. He confided to Mo that he had started carrying a knife with him for protection. He had thrown out a couple of male friends and even shouted at Danielle, who had walked out in tears. The meth was making him paranoid. He felt as if he were living in a shadow world where nothing was real and no one could be trusted. People were taking advantage of him, and he had a lingering suspicion that he was constantly under some sort of surveillance. Mo listened sympathetically but told him his fears were just in his head. The drugs were making him crazy.

  The mics in Cormier’s apartment picked up a late-night conversation between him and a young female friend.

  “You ever been haunted by something?” asked Cormier. He continued, “I know, I’m really moving into the realm of fucking psychiatry…psychology…What happened there…it’s not right. Fuck! It’s right on the shore. So what do I do? Threw her in.”

  O’Donovan pressed pause so he could take in Cormier’s words. Was he admitting he had killed Tina on the banks of the Red River and then thrown her in? He noted the time of the statement and turned the recording on again.

  “What do you mean?” the girl asked.

  “I did Tina, fuckin’ supposed to be legal and only fifteen. No going back, too. The cops said if there would have been DNA, then probably they would have had enough evidence to charge me, you know that? For the murder of Tina Fontaine.”

  Cormier was clearly high. His words were slurring into each other, and O’Donovan was struggling to understand them. Cormier mentioned the truck and that someone had seen it. He said there were things about the police investigation that his friend didn’t know.

  “You know what MOM means when you’re being investigated?” he asked. “The means, the opportunity, and the motive.” He explained this was what detectives searched for when they tried to identify a suspect. He said if he could reverse time, he would have had a sexual relationship with Tina, even if it meant going to jail.

  The girl asked him what he meant by this, but Cormier changed the subject, suggesting instead they go out and get smashed. There was no more mention of Tina, and the couple remained in the apartment chatting.

  Half an hour later, Cormier suddenly said, “I beat two murders.”

  The girl asked if this meant he had killed his brother. Cormier just laughed, and again O’Donovan had the frustrating sense that his suspect had once more edged close to saying something significant but had been clever enough to pull himself back from the brink.

  * * *

  —

  The Project Styx team were now pinning their hopes for a confession on the domestic violence scenario between Jenna and Mo. They settled on a storyline in which Cormier would walk into the aftermath of a vicious argument between the couple. Mo would tell Cormier that he had knocked Jenna to the floor and she would appear close to death. Mo would then enlist Cormier’s help in trying to get rid of her. The hope was that Cormier wou
ld give practical advice about how to make Jenna’s body disappear and perhaps even confess that he had been through something similar with Tina.

  The date was set for the evening of October 1, 2015, exactly one year after Cormier was first arrested and interviewed for Tina’s murder. That afternoon, Jenna arrived at work to be met by a professional makeup artist. O’Donovan explained she’d been hired to make it look like Jenna had been violently attacked.

  For the next hour, the undercover officer sat patiently as the makeup artist took instruction from the Styx team. They wanted Jenna to have a swollen eye and a cut nose from being punched in the face. The makeup artist carefully applied fake congealed blood to Jenna’s hairline to mimic the appearance of the serious injury she would get from falling and smashing her head on Mo’s coffee table after he punched her.

  Once the monitoring team had confirmed that Cormier was at home, Mo and Jenna installed themselves in Mo’s apartment and prepared to start arguing. The idea was that Cormier would hear them and come over to see what the noise was about. Concerned that the fight might appear staged, Mo took a cheese grater from the kitchen and scraped his knuckles until blood dripped down his hand. Jenna looked on in awe at his commitment.

  This time, the officers were each wearing two body packs to record audio. They briefly turned away from each other to switch them on, then stood face to face in silence, waiting to begin. In the Public Safety Building, the Styx team had gathered together in the monitoring room to listen to the live audio feed, and O’Donovan had positioned more officers in vehicles close to the apartment building in case backup was needed.

  Mo counted them down. “Three…two…one…”

  “Fucking why did you come here?” he screamed.

  “It doesn’t fuckin’ matter,” Jenna screamed back, and the fight was on.

  Jenna grabbed an open beer can and threw it against the wall, splattering beer from floor to ceiling. In return, Mo picked up a framed picture and hurled it across the room, watching with satisfaction as the glass shattered into tiny pieces. A shard caught Jenna on her hand, adding her blood to the growing mess and chaos.

  The officers were doing their best to make as much noise as they could, but after five minutes of shouting, it was clear that Cormier wasn’t coming.

  “I’m going to get him,” Mo whispered to Jenna.

  After he left, Jenna lay down on the floor with her head next to the coffee table to wait for the men to return. Her instructions were to make faint noises to show she was still conscious, but only just. The main lights in the room were off, and she positioned herself so that her face lay in a long shadow thrown by a lamp in the corner of the room, praying that it was dark enough to make her injuries look real.

  In the apartment hallway, Mo was banging on Cormier’s door.

  “It’s Mohammad, Raymond,” he shouted. “I need your help for a second, buddy, five minutes.”

  When Cormier answered the door, Mo could see he was dressed ready for a night out stealing and had collected a group of men to go with him. After a brief discussion, Cormier reluctantly agreed to leave them and followed Mo back to his apartment.

  “Hey, look at her fuckin’ like this. This is not good,” said Mo, dragging Cormier to stand over Jenna’s limp body.

  Cormier took a flashlight from his backpack and shone it down onto Jenna’s face.

  “Whoa,” he said.

  Mo told Cormier to grab a coat to wrap Jenna up in it. He said he had already called Jay, who was out of town but was sending over one of his men to take Jenna away. On the floor, Jenna made a gurgling noise as if she were struggling to breathe.

  Cormier snapped into action, kicking off Jenna’s sandals and picking her up by her belt buckle. Jenna stayed limp as Cormier secured her onto Mo’s shoulders in a piggyback lift. He walked behind them, still holding onto Jenna’s belt, as they shuffled out into the hallway. Conscious of the bright lights outside the apartment, Jenna made sure the coat stayed securely over her face as Mo struggled to carry her down the stairs.

  “Fucking cameras all over this fucking place,” said Cormier, suggesting they should stop to cover them up.

  Mo said no, they had to hurry up and get Jenna out to Jay’s man, who would be waiting for them by now in his hatchback by the back door. Once there, Cormier helped Mo throw Jenna into the back. He tried to speak to the undercover officer who was masquerading as the driver, but the man gave only a curt reply before driving away at speed.

  As they walked back upstairs, Mo asked Cormier if he would come in and sit with him for a while. “Give me five minutes,” Mo said. He was acting as if he was in shock, insisting he had only hit Jenna because she had run at him with a knife.

  Cormier hesitated, saying that his crew was waiting for him. But Mo kept pressing until Cormier finally relented and followed him inside.

  “If she dies and she told somebody about you, they’re gonna come here. We have to fucking clean this place up,” Cormier said, looking at the mess. He told Mo there was stuff they could buy that would get rid of every drop of blood.

  Mo paced up and down, too worried he might be sent to jail to start cleaning. Cormier reassured him, saying it was unlikely the cops would come after him when he didn’t have a record for domestic abuse and wasn’t a known gang member.

  As Mo acted panicked, Cormier remained relaxed. He seemed to be taking control of the situation and enjoying his role as mentor. He asked if the neighbours had heard anything. Had Mo had sex with Jenna earlier in the evening, which would mean his DNA would be in her body? Mo told him yes, he had, but he was confident that Jay would look after him. He knew Jay had dirty cops on his payroll and this was just the sort of problem they could make go away. Cormier urged him to be careful, telling him to clean the place up and get away as soon as he could. If the cops came by, Cormier would cover for him. If they knew Jenna had been at his place, he would say that she’d been drinking too much and had fallen over. He said he would try to get the tapes from the security camera in the hallway, a detail that amused the team listening in the monitoring room. Cormier was thinking back to a time when security camera footage was recorded on VCR, but now it was digital and stored on a remote server.

  Meanwhile, Jenna had returned to the Public Safety Building and was listening to the conversation with the rest of the team. O’Donovan was impressed by Cormier’s knowledge of how to clean up a crime scene, but as yet he had said nothing to indicate he had done something similar with Tina.

  In the apartment, Cormier told Mo he needed to go back to his own place to check on his crew and take a shower. Half an hour later, he was back at Mo’s door holding a gift box of stolen shower goods, which he offered to sell him for forty dollars, saying he was giving Mo a fantastic discount. Mo looked at him in disbelief, then brushed him aside, saying now was not the time to make money. He was still acting as if panicked about what he should do. Just as he said this, the officer playing Jay called Mo’s cell to say that his men had told him that Jenna was still alive but was barely clinging to life.

  “Dump the body,” said Cormier when Mo got off the call.

  “What do you mean? How do you fuckin’ dump a body?” asked Mo.

  “Never to be found,” Cormier replied. Jay would know what to do, he said.

  Cormier was sure that as long as there wasn’t a body, the police would not be able to pin anything on Mo. Once more, he said he would try to get the tapes from the security camera in the hallway to make sure no one could connect Jenna with Mo’s apartment. But, he warned, if a forensic team came, they would find blood, no matter how hard he and Mo tried to clean it up.

  “But if they don’t find a body, then where was she?” he said calmly before helping himself to a can of beer.

  Sensing that Cormier was beginning to relax, Mo changed his tactics from appearing panicked to praising Cormier, telling him that Jay knew how much of a help he was being and had been really impressed. Flattered, Cormier continued to give out advice.

>   “If I found myself in a situation where a body had to disappear, it would disappear, there’s no way you’re gonna find it,” he said, letting out a chuckle.

  He advised Mo to keep his mouth shut if the police arrived. He should give only his name and address and ask to speak to a lawyer. Cormier knew how the game worked. They were going to ask questions, but Mo should keep quiet. Mo needed to get his story straight. The only way the police would know what happened was if there was some sort of surveillance in the apartment building.

  “I was investigated for the murder of Tina Fontaine, remember?” he said. “I’m still here, y’know what I mean?”

  The important thing was, Cormier said, could Mo live with himself if she was dead? Would he be able to look himself in the mirror? Of course he was going to feel shitty, but he had to stay free and stick with the plan. Cormier added that, as for himself, there was no way he was going back to jail. If Jay could keep Mo out of prison, then Mo would owe Jay his life.

  Once again, Cormier went over Mo’s story to make sure he had it straight. He instructed him to throw away his bloody clothes, but not in the garbage, and burn the coffee table on which Jenna had hit her head. Mo was his friend, so he was giving this advice to look after him. Mo nodded with gratitude, saying that when he had cleaned up he would head to Candace’s place and lie low for a while, but he would be in touch soon.

  “Don’t panic,” Cormier advised him before the men parted ways.

  * * *

  —

  To the Project Styx team, the night had been a success. It had given them a chilling insight into Cormier’s mind. Although he had not specifically admitted to disposing of Tina’s body, he had behaved like a man who knew exactly how to make someone disappear. Cormier’s ability to remain calm and take control had been impressive and had confirmed their belief that he was the person responsible for wrapping Tina in a duvet cover and weighting her body down in the river.