by John Farrow
‘Everybody is until you eliminate each woman, one by one. We’ve decided to keep them together until you do. Makes it easier on you. Easier on us to keep tabs. And, who knows, they might decide on their own form of justice, if they have an interest.’
‘Irregular, sir,’ Cinq-Mars interjected.
‘Highly,’ the chief agreed. ‘We have other reasons to keep them together.’
‘Such as?’
‘Other objectives. The dead inmate spent time in solitary. More than once. That tells me she had disciplinary issues, which tells me she had run-ins with her guard. So, until you say otherwise, the guard’s a suspect. But if she’s guilty and reassigned, how will pressure be brought to bear? I agree with keeping her in place. See how the dynamic plays out among the eight.’
‘I still have a question, sir, if I may. Why me?’
The chief’s chuckling caused the man’s jowls to quiver. ‘You seem reluctant, Cinq-Mars. I thought you’d welcome the change of pace. Life in the countryside. Not to mention that it’s a murder case. Not to mention the opportunity to spend a few weeks among a bevy of women.’
‘Weeks!’
‘However long it takes. Maybe months.’
‘Months. Ah, thank you for giving my leg that tug, sir, it was cramping up on me.’
‘You’re welcome, Sergeant-Detective.’
‘Sir? Come on. Why me?’
‘I know you love working with gang members.’
Another leg tug. He hated any involvement with gangs, and they both knew that.
‘The dead woman was associated with the Hells.’
‘A moll.’
‘Not the moll type. More like an unofficial associate. Unofficial due to her gender. OK, you hate the gang stuff, but you’re not without experience and knowledge there. Also, Sergeant-Detective, I mentioned another objective. You might like this one. Some of us are worried you might like it too much. You will recall an embezzler by the name of Abigail Lauzon.’
‘Of course. She’s in Nova Scotia, no?’
‘She’s since been transferred to Joliette. And yes, she’s one of the seven. In fact, she’s been identified by the first SQ detectives on the scene as our prime suspect. You two have a history together. That’s one reason I thought of you.’
A bit of a shock, that one. ‘Is there another?’
The chief had a distinguished look to him. He filled the uniform well. Thin on top, gray on the sides, the naturally chiseled features to his facial bone structure had been softened by time and weight, yet he carried himself with a countenance borne for the position: upright, calm, and superior in a manner that did not give offense. Cinq-Mars had noticed that his desk and office were tidy to the brink of being spartan.
‘Cinq-Mars, as you know, the SQ fought hard to get the Lauzon case for themselves. We fought them off. You helped convict her, but the money she embezzled went unrecovered. A feather in the cap of an officer who finds her loot.’
‘You’re saying I’m getting a second kick at the can.’
‘What I’m saying is, an officer willing to compromise his ethics might suggest to an innocent Ms Abigail Lauzon that he can put her away for life on the murder rap unless she tells us where the money is hiding. Do you follow?’
Cinq-Mars wasn’t sure how serious he was, or if he was serious at all. ‘I don’t. You’re either hoping to corrupt me or you’re saying she’s innocent of the murder but deserves to be bullied. What am I missing?’
‘This. If she’s as guilty as the ten deadliest sins combined, an ethically challenged officer might suggest that he can get her off, if only the money were to resurface. That resurfacing might benefit those she deceived, or, who knows, the officer himself. Or both. Who could not use an extra million or two in his or her retirement fund? Who would not be tempted?’
‘I’m sure a lot of guys would not be—’
‘Rose-colored glasses, Cinq-Mars. Love that about you. Still, I have never perceived you as being ethically challenged. Even with thirty-six million dollars at stake. I’m less certain that I can say the same for others. Now, some say you took a little too much of a liking to our Miss Lauzon.’ The chief threw up a hand to stifle his officer’s immediate protest. ‘Never mind the smoke: Where there’s fire, there’s truth, I always say. Doesn’t matter to me. It can work in your favor if you handle this right. Just another reason I chose you. Only, you will keep it zipped.’ He raised that threatening hand again to stymie objection. ‘Hey, you’re still single. I get it. Just don’t let me down on this one. Go straight to jail, Cinq-Mars. Do not pass Go. While you’re at it, do not prove me wrong. Oh. The murder? Get to the bottom of that, too. Of course. Keep your ethics. Why not? But also, you know how it goes. For God’s sake find the damn money.’
v
Émile Cinq-Mars offered Abigail a ballpoint pen and slid a single sheet of yellow legal-sized paper across the table to her.
‘What’s this for? I’m not confessing.’
‘I wish you would, Abi. Failing that, draw a diagram of your house-unit for me. You said Doi cried out or alerted you in some way when she came upon Florence. Show me where you were within the compound when Doi cried out. Then position everyone else at the time, to the best of your recollection.’
Abigail picked the pen up then put it down. One fist supported an elbow, the other tucked under her chin. A thoughtful contemplation. ‘Not so easy,’ she determined.
‘Why not? You don’t live in a mansion. It’s a limited space. We know where Florence was found. Doi must have told you. Start there. Draw the bathroom, then scribble in Flo’s name.’
Abi sighed, and did that. She had a careful hand. Not surprising, given that she’d been known to forge a signature on occasion. She drew three toilet stalls and three sinks, then wrote Flo’s name in the uppermost corner, the furthest stall from the doorway.
‘Where’s Doi, when she screamed or shouted?’
‘More like a shriek,’ Abi informed him. She performed her best imitation of the call, without raising her voice.
‘You sound like a trapped rabbit.’
‘Doi sounded like a trapped rabbit, if the trap was in my ear.’
‘Where was she?’
‘Also in the toilet, obviously.’ Abigail wrote her in. ‘Near the door.’
‘Two accounted for. One-quarter done. Not so hard. Now, where were you?’
She scrunched up her face. ‘This is where it gets tricky. I mean, we were doing our chores. Then we were finishing and moving around. So we were in motion. When was Flo killed? Before or after we started moving around? Only the killer knows. All we know is, Doi screamed and the guards burst in. At that moment we were moving around. Then Isaure – our guard – told us to stand still. I can probably tell you where everybody was at that moment, if I think about it. Where they were for every minute that they were milling around, see, that’s tricky.’
Cinq-Mars was pleased that she was working with him on this, rather than fighting against the project. ‘I understand. That makes sense. Let’s do this differently. We know where Doi and Flo were when Doi screamed.’
‘Shrieked.’
‘Shrieked. Can you draw a rabbit?’
‘A rabbit?’
‘A bunny with big ears. Draw one in the toilet space with little arrows to Doi and Florence.’
Abi had fun with that and created a cute bunny, one ear straight up, one flopping over. She took longer than Cinq-Mars would like, but he wasn’t going to press her on that.
‘The rabbit indicates that Doi is shrieking. Now write in where everyone was when they were doing chores. Put a little dark cloud over their names to indicate they were working.’
‘How about I draw something else?’
‘Why?’
‘In here we live with permanent dark clouds over our heads. I hate those.’
‘Fine. Then draw what?’
‘How about … a hammer. Us girls will be the nails.’
‘Do it.’
Florence’s name showed he
r in the galley, in the lower right corner of the page. Doi was to the left of that area in the pantry. Abi drew the dimensions for those rooms and inscribed what they were.
‘Let’s do you next. Where are you with a rabbit and where are you with a hammer?’
Abigail moved her rabbit-self in a central position in the common area, with a bias toward the right-hand side of the room. She was halfway between the washroom and the galley, in front of the pantry. Then she stopped writing.
‘What?’ Cinq-Mars asked her.
She didn’t answer. Rather, she sighed, and wrote her name in the galley next to Flo and drew a hammer over her head.
‘So you were with Flo,’ Cinq-Mars concluded.
‘For chores, yeah. That doesn’t mean I killed her. I didn’t.’
‘Doesn’t look good, though, does it?’
‘Not great. But you knew that.’
‘Let’s keep going,’ he said.
As best as she was able – ‘I was in the galley, it’s not like I could see everybody’ – she drew everyone in their work area. Courtney, Jodi, and the guard were sweeping up: ‘They could have been just about anywhere.’ Temple and Malka were supposed to be in the laundry. Doi and Rozlynn were doing inventory in the pantry. That room was drawn at the bottom center of the page.
‘Now, where is everyone when the guard told you to stand still?’
The young woman drew clever stick figures for each person, and had them standing on their names, as if hammered in, like nails. ‘Best as I can recall,’ she said.
‘This is very helpful, Abi. You can do me a favor – and if you believe in your innocence, do yourself a favor, too – if you tell no one what we’ve done here. It’ll be interesting to see how drawings from each of you compare.’
Abigail gave her drawing a final look, then shrugged. ‘Best I can do,’ she said. ‘Can’t say it’s perfect. We finished our chores and moved around.’
‘I understand. Now, before this happened, when was the last time you used the bathroom?’
She stared at him without responding.
‘Abigail?’
She seemed catatonic for the moment.
‘Did you go while you were still working?’
‘All right. Yeah. Sure. Why not?’
‘Well, did you, or didn’t you?’
‘I did. I told you. Yes.’
‘The truth will set you free, Abigail.’
‘Oh bullshit. The truth might put a noose around my neck.’
‘We don’t hang people anymore.’
‘Figure of speech and you know it.’
‘Did Flo?’
‘Go to the bathroom? Yes. Maybe. I mean, she said she was going. Does that set me free, too?’
‘Why the antagonism all of a sudden?’
‘I don’t like this. She went to the bathroom. I went to the bathroom.’
‘Did she come back?’
‘Yes!’
‘Then what’s the problem?’
‘People were still working. Probably nobody saw.’
‘One step at a time, Abigail. We’ll figure this out.’
‘If I get a life sentence, I swear, I’ll find a way out.’
‘Out? Escape, you mean?’
‘From life, yeah. Wait. Do you think it’s possible?’
‘To kill yourself?’
‘To escape.’
‘Not my department. I don’t imagine you can, but I know nothing about this place. I suppose if anybody could find a way out, it would be you. I’m not recommending it. I think you’re better off doing the time.’
‘I’ll do my time. As long as you don’t make it for fucking life.’
Cinq-Mars signaled the corrections officer at the door. Abigail thought Cinq-Mars was leaving. Instead, it was the guard who departed.
‘What? We’re alone now? You beat me up now? Or worse. Really?’
‘Abigail, we’ll be talking again another time. For now, there’s just one more thing. The C.O. is out of the room because no one but me can know how you answer my next question. You’ll know why in a minute. Let’s say you didn’t nab Flo in the toilet and strangle her with a wire.’
‘Yeah, and let’s say she didn’t reach down my throat and pull out my lungs while I was trying to do that.’
‘Right. So if you didn’t do it, who do you think did?’
They both knew the situation he was putting her in. Snitching was not a good thing in a penitentiary. It’s why the guard had been dismissed. A crime, in the culture. At the same time, self-preservation was involved. Abi understood that every prisoner would be asked the same question, and who knows what the others would say, or not say.
‘If I had a clue, Émile, I probably wouldn’t tell you. Since I don’t have a clue, I’ll keep it to myself.’
Her words weren’t quite making sense, except as a kind of joke that he wasn’t getting. He remembered how she used to try to evade him by twisting logic. A memory that provoked a smile.
‘Good talking to you, Abi.’
‘Same. Let’s do this again soon. Trust me, talking to you beats the daily monotony all to hell. By the way. Speaking of monotony.’
He waited on her to continue. She looked impish.
‘How’s your love life, March Five?’
Something she had needled him about in the old days. Cinq-Mars closed his file folder and called out, ‘Guard!’
‘Oh yeah? Really? Something’s going on! What? What?’
He didn’t know what ‘tell’ he’d shown her, what infinitesimal twinge gave him away. She had probably intended to flirt, but he’d given something away that she’d caught. He was reminded of how accomplished Abi could be at reading others. She could have been a detective herself. With that in mind he considered, if she was innocent of this crime, she might prove useful to his investigation of the others.
‘Abi. Out,’ he said, and she smiled, flashed her fingers across an eyebrow, a half-salute, half wave goodbye, and stood up to leave. ‘Guard!’ he shouted again.
DOI
i
Paper was so damn precious. Doi retrieved an unlined sheet hidden near the bottom of her basket of towels. She plucked a pen from her pants pocket. She’d been busy sorting and folding laundry pulled from the dryer when Malka stopped by for a chat, but as Doi appeared to be in a mood, Malka moved on. Her back to the room, Doi wrote on the paper in careful cursive that invariably slanted upward on the right, and she checked often to confirm that no one was noticing. She re-read what she put down, then more quickly added lines. Finally, she squirreled her sheet of paper away amid the towels – under the mauve one and above the pink so that she could locate it quickly – and packed them alongside her clean clothing in the laundry basket. She scooted back to her bunk.
Her nest, she called it.
Put her stuff away. The basket needed to be returned to its proper place. An imperative that everything, once moved for a purpose, is quickly returned to its assigned spot.
With enthusiasm, Doi obeyed the rules.
More than anyone she believed in rules. Still, she had her secrets. And her paper.
She dutifully wrote letters to the daughter she’d maimed.
She wanted to convince her to visit.
The outside door opened with a grating clang. As always, the inmates looked up. They had a special reason to be interested this time as Abigail was returning from her interrogation. She’d been the first. The door clapped shut behind her, bolted and locked, the last of the sounds like a hammer’s stroke. Like a nail in my coffin, Doi thought sometimes. She wanted to talk to Abigail, but she wasn’t the only one and the others gathered around the young woman before she could get close. Doi hung back then, for she really only wanted to talk in private. She desired to know how everything went. She needed a heads-up on what questions had been asked of Abi that would also be asked of her. More importantly, she wanted to know what to say, how to answer those questions when her turn came for the third degree.
Abi would
know.
Only Abi would know.
Among them, she was the smart one.
They didn’t call her an artist – a fraud artist – for nothing.
You could talk to Abi. She could, anyway. The young woman was quiet and possessed a sympathetic nature. Everybody could see that. Not like these other killers and misfits. Doi didn’t belong in their midst and she knew that Abi didn’t either. They had that in common. They were separate, in every way that mattered, from the others.
Having missed any chance to catch her alone, she tagged on to the fringe of the group, listening in. They were working their way toward the octagonal table for lunch, then she took a seat there. Temple and Rozlynn were responsible for lunch today which meant it was likely to be edible. Not that it was hard to screw up soup and sandwiches, although somehow Courtney and Jodi managed the feat on a regular basis.
Tomato, the soup. Hot, with soda crackers.
She added butter and pepper.
The sandwiches were salmon. Leave it to Roz to choose one kind of fish or another.
Good, though. So good. She liked how Rozlynn added chopped-up green onions and just the right amount of mayo.
They all wanted to know how the interrogation went. What was it like being grilled by a visiting detective? The women no sooner fired off their questions than they proposed varying and differing opinions on the subject before Abi had the chance to answer.
‘Let her speak!’
Doi rarely jumped in like that. She never asserted herself. This time she did. She couldn’t stop herself from blurting out her decree and then Malka backed her up. ‘Yeah. Let the girl speak.’
‘I know him, the detective,’ Abigail said. That astonished them all. ‘Get this. Get this,’ she said, and the women leaned into her. She dropped her voice to a conspiratorial level. ‘He’s the one who arrested me.’
A couple of mouths dropped open. A hush crisscrossed the table, like a wave in the air.
‘Whoa. Wait. What’s going on?’ Temple asked.
‘You know him? What’s he like?’ inquired Malka.
That’s what Doi wanted to know, too, but she wanted to hear the answer in private, not in this public gabfest. She sipped soup from her spoon.
