by Ann Lambert
Praise for The Dogs of Winter
Book Two in the Russell and Leduc Mysteries:
“The Dogs of Winter is as much an exploration of a city and its communities as a traditional crime novel. It’s about power and powerlessness in the dead of winter. And more than that, it’s a rollicking good read.”
—Ann Cleeves, author of the Shetland and Vera series
“Marie Russell makes her triumphant return in this compelling and irresistible sequel to The Birds That Stay. Moving the story from the Laurentian mountains to the heart of the city of Montreal, Lambert’s second Russell and Leduc mystery features the welcome return of old favourites and a new cast of fascinating characters. The Dogs of Winter builds on the crackling chemistry between Professor Marie Russell and Detective Roméo Leduc, propelling them into a new investigation lined with unsung heroes and unseen villains. Marie is truly a great Canadian character, and we see her pitted against not only a sinister and elusive killer, but an equally insidious structural inequity that stifles the course of justice at every turn. Like its predecessor, The Dogs of Winter does not shy away from the darker side of Canada’s history—nor its present—and makes for compulsive reading. With Lambert’s characteristic blend of humour, pathos, and vivid prose, The Dogs of Winter should fly off the shelves.”
—Anne Lagacé Dowson,
Montreal commentator and activist
Praise for The Birds That Stay, Book One in the
Russell and Leduc Mysteries:
—Book Riot’s list of “HIGHLY ANTICIPATED CRIME NOVELS”
“TEN THRILLERS THAT WILL KEEP YOU ON THE EDGE OF YOUR SEAT UNTIL SUMMERTIME…The setting is the Laurentians, north of Montreal. That leads one to inevitably think of Louise Penny’s Three Pines, but let the comparison stop there. Yes, both are rural and very Quebec, but Lambert is telling a very different story in a very different way.”
—Margaret Cannon, The Globe and Mail
“The Birds That Stay is populated with complex characters, not one of whom has been untouched by some form of trauma, be it divorce, addiction, abuse, abandonment, or betrayal. The skillful way in which these characters are rendered is part of what makes the book so engaging.”
—Montreal Review of Books
“…a fascinating and gripping tale of suspense, and there’s
even a hint of romance here.”
—New York Journal of Books
“Lambert will scratch your murder-mystery itch, rest assured, but she resists the common tendency to place the action in a sealed-off world where murder is normalized. The Birds That Stay is fully engaged with life.”
—The Montreal Gazette
“Lambert’s confidence in her characters, her intelligent plot, and digressions that both instruct and delight make The Birds That Stay is an engaging and un-put-down-able read.”
—Jury comments for the Concordia
First Book Prize 2019 (Shortlisted)
We have to be able to imagine a future in which we matter.
One
Saturday night
January 26, 2019
SHE KNEW it was stupid to go out in that storm. She knew it was dangerous. When Rosie Nukilik had first started out that afternoon, the city looked like the inside of the snow globe that she used to have, the kind that you could buy on Ste. Catherine street at souvenir shops—the sparkly skyline of Montreal with two skaters twirling in a plastic circle. But now, that gentle, snow-globe winter had transformed itself into a howling wolf.
The wind was blowing her sideways, and she struggled for traction on the narrow sidewalk. As she slid inside, the tunnel offered a blessed reprieve, and she briefly considered hiding there until the worst of it was over. She’d also lost one of her cherished mittens, the sealskin ones her aana had made for her when she turned twelve. She couldn’t feel her fingers at all anymore, so she tucked her right hand inside her jacket and then squeezed it under her armpit in the hopes of restoring sensation. She’d had frostbite last winter, when one fingertip had to be amputated from her left hand. She stopped to catch her breath. He said he would meet her in the bus shelter on the other side of the tunnel. He promised. But now she realized he wouldn’t be there. Not in this. Rosie knew she couldn’t stay in the tunnel and continued carefully along, palming the wall with her covered left hand for guidance. Her right hand held her coat tightly, to protect him as much as she could.
As she emerged from the shelter of the tunnel, shards of icy snow cut into her face and a blast of wind almost blew her off her feet. The storm was so powerful now that almost everything was obliterated. She’d never seen that in the city before. There was no skyline, no trees, no cars. She remembered those whiteouts at home, where in seconds you couldn’t know which way you were heading. You didn’t even know if you were up or down. Her uncle died in one of those, trying to get her baby cousin home after a party. The baby had somehow been found alive, but no one could imagine how. Her aana said it was his spirit animal who had carried him back to safety.
Rosie leaned back into the tunnel and watched as the waves of snow tumbled overhead. She and Maggie had dreamed of having a big house in the city, where they and all their friends could live. Where they would eat country food all day, and she would play the piano for them, singing all their favorite tunes. He had promised her a piano. She looked back into the tunnel behind her but could see nothing—it had become like the black bottom of the bay in early winter. She tucked her face deeper into her jacket and pulled the bits of scarf over her head tighter, but her right hand felt frozen like a stone. She peeked into her coat. Amazingly, he was still asleep.
She stepped over the rail to make a run for it, but her feet skidded out from under her. She struggled to one knee, using her free, frozen hand for purchase in the snowdrift. Suddenly a light appeared through the tunnel like a phantom, like a revenant. She got unsteadily to her feet and tried to run. He had promised her. He had promised her.
Two
IT HAD BEEN a fantastic day. It was one of those days where everything could have gone wrong, but nothing did. Everyone showed up. No one had a breakdown. She had navigated the needs and egos of the several high-maintenance guests who had nearly driven her crazy with their idiosyncratic demands. Her own keynote speech was inspiring—she knew it—and her Women Smash the Glass! conference was a resounding, exuberant success. And it was her baby. She was the germinator—but she was more than that. She was the terminator as well. If anyone knew anything about Danielle Champagne, it was that she could see an idea, a concept, a way of life, and see it to full actualization. Yes, today was a great success. She killed it, as her daughter would say. At one point, taking in the entire conference hall from her lectern on the enormous stage and seeing her giant image projected behind her, she had felt dizzy with joy and satisfaction. There was the mayor, in the front row, flanked by Michelle Obama and Reese Witherspoon. There were young women from across the entire spectrum, from every walk of life, looking up at her like she had the answer to all their questions. She, little Danielle Payette from La Pocatière, had brought all these disparate groups of girls and women from all over North America together to find a common voice in the struggle against the glass ceiling that thwarted so many women the world over. If conferences like this could be held in every country, especially those where women were seen as barely more than chattel, they could change the world. In two years, she wanted to see simultaneous conferences in Mumbai, Los Angeles, Frankfurt, Cape Town, Jakarta, Sao Paolo, and Moscow. They had already asked her to organize next year’s, and she would be sure to at least double her fee. One of the main lessons she had learned over the many years was know what you are worth, and don’t be a
fraid to ask for it. She could hear her mother’s voice commenting bitterly on her success—Tu te prends pas pour du Seven Up flat, anh? Danielle smiled as she wondered how she’d translate that one for her American friends—it means you’re getting so full of yourself. She often entertained them with stories of her mother’s uniquely Quebecois expressions that even the French from France (FFFs as they were called here) couldn’t understand. Her mother’s other favorite was t’étais pas né pour un petit pain, which literally means you’re not born for a little bread. As an idiom, it means the small life is not for you. But the connotation is pejorative, like being an ambitious woman is unseemly. Unattractive. Danielle had resisted that kind of attitude her whole life. It started when she legally changed her last name to Champagne, the symbolic
snipping of the cord to her childhood self. Now she really wished her mother was still alive to see just how big a life she’d created for herself. Not her mother’s life, bitter about a husband who left her with five kids, a shitty old car, and a house with a mortgage that would take her three lifetimes to pay off.
Danielle smiled as she beeped off the alarm on her car and slid into the buttery leather seat of her white Lexus. But as she pulled out of the underground parking lot, her smile disappeared. The entire day’s experience had left her feeling so magnanimous that she’d told her assistant, Chloé, to go home early, as it was her father’s sixtieth birthday party and she was already late. But Danielle hated driving at night, and she was already regretting the gesture. She’d also had two glasses of wine—under the legal limit, she thought. Her regret turned to rage when she pulled out of the underground parking lot and onto Viger by the Convention Centre. The snow was falling so furiously that she couldn’t make out whether the traffic light was green or red. The few cars on the road were crawling along, and one was already stuck in a snowdrift, its wheels spinning and whining with futility. She considered going right back into the safety of the lot, but she too wanted to get home and into the evening she had planned—a bottle of wine and a piping hot bubble bath. Danielle soon found herself at the entrance to the 20, the highway that in the old days would take her home on a Saturday evening in twenty-five minutes, but over the past two years Montreal had been replacing its entire infrastructure, after years of using subpar materials in its construction. In broad daylight, the entire area looked like Beirut circa 1974. But this was no war—this was simply Montreal fixing what should have been built properly in the first place. In a snowstorm, with all the construction and detours, it was impossible to even know where she was. She peered at the road sign that loomed at her, too late for her to react. She was just trying to get home to Beaconsfield, but it seemed that every possibility had been closed by orange cones. She slid slowly over to the left lane, where a truck loomed out of the swirling tornadoes of snow like some avenging fury. He blasted her with his horn. Danielle was redirected to the right lane and had no choice but to follow wherever it led. Maybe she could pull over into a parking lot or a McDonald’s or something and wait for the storm to abate. Her Google maps app was calmly suggesting another route for the third time—her GPS could not keep up with the road closures that plagued Montreal. She screamed at it to shut up, and then punched it off. She inched along at about thirty kilometers an hour, clutching the steering wheel and peering out at the darkness, her windshield wipers swishing frantically and uselessly. The snow was just too thick, too relentless. She gasped at another sign that was briefly illuminated by someone’s headlights: 20 Est Centre-Ville. Somehow, she had turned herself around and was heading east, back to the Convention Centre. There were no cars out. No snowplows. No police. It was like one of those end-of-the-world movies where the hero is utterly, irrevocably alone.
She pushed the button to put a call though to her daughter and got her voice mail. Then she called Chloé but ended the call immediately. What the hell was Chloé supposed to do?
Danielle followed the road signs as best she could, but this was terra incognita—she could end up on a bridge and heading off the island at any minute. Or she could even drive into the St. Lawrence river itself, she thought. That would be a fucking ironic ending to her perfect day—not the kind of bath she was hoping for. Then, as the wind abated for a few seconds as though catching its breath for another blast, the sign for the Atwater Tunnel briefly appeared. Her relief was so palpable she felt like she was going to cry. If she could get through the tunnel and up the Atwater hill, she could just dump her car somewhere in a snowbank and go see a movie at the Cineplex there. That’s what she’d do. Or she could call her friend Monique and ask to spend the night in her condo in Westmount Square. This was just a snowstorm, and she’d survived many before, but the wind was now blowing so ferociously that Danielle could feel her car bouncing. As she entered the tunnel the wind stopped and for a few seconds, she could see. She considered just waiting it out in the tunnel, but it was much too dangerous. She could get rear-ended by a monster truck. Even if she locked herself in her car, she wouldn’t feel safe in that part of town at night. She sped up on the dry, protected surface and unclenched her fingers from the steering wheel—her hands were aching with tension. She slowed down a bit as she exited the tunnel, but the wind came up and swirling snow blinded her instantly. And then out of nowhere, a hunched, dark shape just materialized in front of her, and Danielle slammed the brake to the floor. She felt the Lexus starting to spin out, and then a sickening thud. Her car skidded off whatever she hit, slid perilously close to the concrete barricade, then righted itself and shot forward at greater velocity. Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. What the fuck was that? Was it a dog? Or a coyote? They are all over Montreal now, she read somewhere. It must have been a dog—she had seen it lurching in front of her, trying to get across the road but mistiming its run.
Danielle was finally able to pull up at the traffic light a few hundred meters ahead. It was swaying in the storm’s wind as though any minute it might detach itself and plummet to the ground. What should she do? What should she do? The dog might be badly hurt. Or dead. Should she go back? What if it was a coyote and now it was injured and dangerous? She couldn’t just leave it there. But she couldn’t go back. She couldn’t. She could call someone. Who? The SPCA? The police? But what would she say? She hit an animal and she didn’t stop for it? What kind of person does that? She tried to think clearly. This situation could be managed. She would call the SPCA as soon as she got inside somewhere safe and sound. Danielle clutched at the steering wheel and began the long, very slow ascent of the Atwater hill, her car barely visible in the whiteness that seemed to swallow it whole.
Three
MARIE FINALLY SETTLED back into her beloved old armchair and picked up the stack of papers she had been studiously avoiding for several hours. She had washed the dishes, restacked the firewood, brushed both dogs, and rearranged one kitchen cabinet. Supper was already chopped and waiting to be thrown into the pan for a stir-fry. The salad was washed, dressing prepared. Dessert was thawing in the fridge. She had showered and washed her hair. Unless she needed to start picking the lint off her sweaters, Marie had no choice now but to start marking the first assignments of the semester. It was the third week of classes of the winter term at Dawson College, where she was back teaching after a one-year sabbatical. It was also when students and teacher realize that the honeymoon is over. Marie was starting to figure out who the keeners and slackers were, the grade grubbers who’d do anything for a high mark, and their opposite—those who had never encountered an A in their lives and wouldn’t know one if it attacked them and etched itself into their foreheads.
Marie didn’t pick up her green pen though, the one she always corrected with. She stared into the fire, now roaring mutely behind the tempered glass of her wood stove. Barney, her Puggle, was curled up in a tight little fur circle by her feet, snoring softly. Her other dog, Dog, was lying on his back, his hind legs immodestly splayed, his ridiculously long front legs stretched over his head just begging for someone
to scratch his belly. Marie loved her life here in her little house in the woods. After her ex-husband, Daniel, had walked out on their twenty-two-year marriage, it had taken her a long time to accept it. But Marie had finally sold their Montreal home and the life that went with it and moved in full time to their cottage, just outside the village of Ste. Lucie in the hills of the Laurentians. She kept a cramped and not cheap enough pied à terre in Montreal, so she didn’t have to drive the hour or so up to Ste. Lucie on her three teaching days. But all that was possibly about to change.
Marie forced herself back to her students’ papers and selected the first one on the pile. She picked up her pen and began to read the introduction: “There is only one species that kills for pleasure. There is only one species that has destroyed the multiple whales that used to roam the oceans. That is the human species…the cereal killers of the planet.” Yes, we stabbed the Rice Krispies to death. We shot the Shreddies. Marie circled the spelling mistake and wrote (sp)! next to it—the millionth time she had done so. She continued reading: “Whales, especially humback (sp)! whales, long to be free. Free of hunting. But in countries like Norway, Japan and Ireland, they are always looking over their shoulders, scarred (sp)! a whaling harpon (sp)! is pointed right at them.” Marie sighed. This was not a good start. Marie was teaching a course about whales—specifically the interaction of humans and cetaceans—and it attracted a lot of students. But many of them had no idea what they were doing in college, and much of their work was half-baked opinion based on Wikipedia research. Marie resorted to the age-old technique of marking survival: abandon the depressing one and move on. She read the beginnings of three more papers, but all of them had major spelling mistakes in the opening paragraph.
Marie picked up a fourth. This student was examining the anthropomorphism of whales, and how this has both served to protect and endanger them. She used several sources—including the gutting documentary story of orcas in captivity in Blackfish. The writing was lucid, her argumentation well-documented, effective, and thoughtful. Most importantly, the paper was concise. Marie hadn’t read anything this good in a very long time. She took note of the student’s name: Michaela Cruz. Which one was she? Marie closed her eyes and mapped out the class in her head. Michaela. Right. Second row, two chairs out from the wall. When she first saw her walk into class wearing six-inch heels and a crop-top that accentuated her voluptuous breasts on her tiny frame, Marie thought she had to be a ditz—the kind of girl you see lined up outside a club in sub-zero temperatures in thigh-high hooker boots and a crotch-grabbing mini-skirt. Marie recalled that Michaela had one of those breathy, little-girl voices that Marie couldn’t help but think was an affectation. Affecting what? Weakness? Stupidity? Is that little girl stuff still considered sexy? But her paper was brilliant. Once again, Marie was reminded never to judge someone by her appearance. She returned to the paper, wrote “Thank you for this!” in green pen on the cover page, and gave it an A-plus. She leaned in to grab another paper, but her concentration was broken by the scene outside her living room window. The few meandering snowflakes that were falling earlier had apparently transformed into a blizzard. When did this happen? She got up to flick on the radio, and the disturbance caused Dog to change his upward dog yoga position ever so slightly. Barney, almost twelve years old, didn’t hear her at all and didn’t even budge. She turned on the radio and hit the weather report at precisely the correct moment. The weather channel was forecasting thirty to forty centimeters of snow, and dangerous roads because of high winds. They were warning of whiteout conditions. Marie flicked on her outdoor floodlight and returned to the window. She peered out into the night. Was Roméo still coming, or was the storm a perfect excuse? Not excuse—a good reason to stay home and safe. She decided to call.
