The Dogs of Winter

by Ann Lambert

  Thirty-Nine

  ROMÉO DROVE ALONG the southwestern slope of Mount Royal, through the neighborhood of upper Westmount, for decades described as the richest in Canada. In spite of himself, Roméo still marveled at the homes he passed—palatial stone mansions with grand staircases separating them from the street, all certain of their own importance. Marie always said they looked like mausoleums, but some were more fancifully Victorian, featuring wraparound balconies and bell towers. One he passed had an enormous greenhouse attached to it, as well as tennis courts and a fully loaded hockey rink. Another had twin stone lions—almost the size of the ones in Trafalgar Square—on either side of its imposing front doors. Once the home of only the wealthiest Anglo Montrealers, upper Westmount now belonged to a more mixed arriviste crowd. But the legacy of white, Anglo privilege was there in every cornice, cupola, turret, and brilliantly chandeliered drawing room, still enough to get the blood boiling of every die-hard separatist in the province.

  Roméo descended Belvedere Road, turned down Mount Pleasant, and hit the brakes hard, as a middle-aged, probably Filipina, woman crossed the street with a dog twice her size who pulled her along in bursts of frustrated, boundless energy. She held onto the leash with both hands, and still couldn’t completely restrain him. It was dog-walking hour, and almost on cue Filipina nannies emerged from these homes to walk the family dog. It was the time of day called entre chien et loup—when the light is so dim you can’t distinguish a dog from a wolf, or the safely familiar from the unknown and dangerous. In February in Montreal, that was about five p.m.—just before their employers expected supper to be ready and waiting for them, the kids’ homework done, and the house spotless as well. Roméo made sure the woman got to the other side of the street safely and watched her wait patiently as the dog stopped to squat and deposited a huge poop on the sidewalk. He pulled away before he had to witness her picking it up in a little plastic baggie.

  As Roméo continued cautiously down the steep hill towards his destination, the contrast between these two possible worlds never failed to shock him. If you walked a straight line from this part of upper Westmount due south towards the St. Lawrence river, you would hit Cabot Square, less than two kilometers away. Roméo imagined how the people who lived in these castles would fare if they suddenly found themselves living like the homeless there. They wouldn’t survive the day, he thought. Not even one day.

  Roméo circled the narrow, congested streets near Ti-Coune’s rooming house looking for a place to park. Cars were plowed into snowbanks every which way, and every empty space he spotted either had a fire hydrant or plastic orange cones warning any hopeful driver away. He flicked off the radio in frustration. Once again it featured the crowing orange rooster from south of the border, and the indignant hens who had to react to every new outrage. Roméo couldn’t listen to another minute of him. Instead, he pulled away from the anarchy of Montreal streets in winter and into an empty construction lot beside another new condo project going up where the old Children’s Hospital used to be. He quickly checked the messages on his phone—one from Marie, one from Sophie, one from Nicole, and one from Ti-Coune, suggesting they meet at the Cock and Bull instead of his little room, which he claimed was too depressing.

  Roméo thought this was a terrible idea given how dramatically Ti-Coune fell off the wagon there last time. He shook his head in disapproval, but messaged Ti-Coune that he would meet him there, as they had agreed to compare any more information on the search for Hélène, and whatever light that search might shed on the Rosie Nukilik case. Roméo pulled out of the lot and headed towards the bar, reviewing the details of the various cases again. Rosie Nukilik knew Hélène Cousineau somehow—at least enough that she had her photo in her pocket and Roméo’s cell number on the back of it. Who else but Hélène would have written that? Maybe any number of people—maybe the photo of Hélène standing at Beaver Lake was no more than a piece of scrap paper to hastily scribble a number on. But Roméo didn’t think so. He felt certain there was a connection, however tenuous, between the two women. That older bartender with the orange hair also knew Hélène and thought she might be a bartender herself. Since then the trail had gone ice cold. Had Hélène left Montreal? Was she in some kind of danger related to the murder of Rosie? Or did that have absolutely nothing to do with her? Rosie also knew Isaac Blum. Or Isaac knew Rosie in some way, Roméo was sure of it. What was she to him? Someone to save? Someone to use? Someone to squeeze the life out of? Was he carrying the kind of rage that required? He could be. He said he had lost everything, and those who have nothing to lose can be dangerous—like one of those murderers Roméo had played in a production of Macbeth in grade ten at Outremont High. He never forgot one of the lines they say just before they go off and kill Macbeth’s best friend, Banquo. I am one, my liege, whom the vile blows and buffets of the world hath so incensed that I am reckless what I do to spite the world. Roméo smiled as he remembered who played the other murderer—none other than Ti-Coune Cousineau. Roméo remembered that Ti-Coune was so nervous the night of the show that Roméo had to say all his lines. Ti-Coune just stood there and tried to look menacing.

  As Roméo turned onto Ste. Catherine street and gunned his car towards a parking spot opening up, he thought of the other homicide victim. Christian Bourque was not part of the Cabot Square crowd—he and his girlfriend, Nia, hung out closer to the new shelter on Park Avenue. But both Rosie and Christian were asphyxiated. Christian had a dog that had gone missing. It had probably run for its life but was now most likely dead. And what about the guy who Isaac Blum described walking off with Christian, most likely to his death? Blum was the only one to have seen him. Did he even exist at all? The forensic evidence was scarce. They’d found a few fibers from a generic jacket that could have been purchased in any one of fifty stores. There were so many boot prints near Rosie’s body once the ambulance guys had left that the evidence was contaminated and useless. Anything near Christian’s body had been obliterated by snowfall. The only traces of DNA they’d found were from Nia holding him in her arms and from the dog.

  But they did know a few things: the killer was strong. Sizable. Almost certainly male. The murders were not random in the sense that homeless people were his targets, and the modus operandi was the same. He wondered again if there was a serial killer on the loose, and what his motives were. Was he on some kind of perverse personal mission? To do what? “Clean up” the streets?

  Roméo thought about the so-called “Starlight Tours,” where the police take Indigenous people they pick up off the streets for a “drive” in sub-zero temperatures and dump them on the outskirts of the city. Where they would freeze to death. To the twisted thinking of those police officers, that was social cleansing. Was it possible that this killer was a cop? One of his own? Roméo knew that in Montreal, racial profiling was notoriously common—people of color—especially Black and Arab—were arrested four times more frequently than people who were not. But Roméo also knew that Montrealers called the police to intervene on racialized people more than others. Was it only police racism or a xenophobic impulse so engrained in people that they saw a threat when none was there?

  The Cock and Bull pub was almost empty, except for a couple of hardcore VLTers staring slack-jawed at the fruit spinning into view on their screens and a greasy, gray-haired geezer playing pool by himself. Behind the bar was the bartender he remembered from his last visit, although her hair was now evenly dyed bright blond, and her eye makeup was a little less Cleopatra and more Marilyn Monroe—if she’d lived long enough to be a grandmaman. The snake tattoo that coiled down her forearm was hidden by a skin-tight, sparkly black sweater. She spotted Roméo immediately and smiled warmly. Then she disappeared into the back room. Ti-Coune was bent over a drink, staring hard at nothing. Roméo put a hand on his shoulder in greeting and pulled him out of his thoughts.

  “Salut, mon grand.” Roméo pointed at Ti-Coune’s sweaty drink. “C’est du Coca Cola, j’espere? T
’as vraiment caller l’orignal l’autre soir.”

  Ti-Coune smiled ruefully. “Ouah. Je veux pas avoir mal au cheveux. I’m not drinking tonight.” But he sure didn’t seem happy about it. Roméo reached into a bowl of peanuts and dropped a few into his mouth. As he chewed he reminded Ti-Coune about the play they were in way back when. Ti-Coune couldn’t remember any of it.

  “Anh? M’en souviens plus. T’es tu certain? Are you sure?”

  Roméo nodded. “Ah oui, mon ami. Monsieur Shakespeare. Meme en l’anglais de la Reine Elizabeth!”

  Ti-Coune smiled grudgingly again. “Me, I prefer to forget about those days. They weren’t so great.”

  Roméo and Ti-Coune weren’t exactly friends in high school. Roméo was a star hockey player and dutiful student. Ti-Coune was an undiagnosed dyslexic and already a delinquent. But they both got beaten up regularly by the adult men in their lives—Roméo by his father, Ti-Coune by his mother’s various boyfriends. There was solidarity in their shared shame and anger. Roméo sometimes wondered if Ti-Coune had PTSD from his childhood—he’d heard a psychologist recently on Radio Canada suggest that many children did and were never properly treated for it.

  “I’m sorry, Jean-Michel. But so far, I’ve found nothing about Hélène. Except this connection to the dead woman. A possible connection.”

  Ti-Coune stared down disconsolately into his glass.

  “And me, I found nothing neither. Maybe I’ll head back up to Val David. Ma chienne me manque. I miss my dog.”

  Roméo tried to catch his eye, but he wouldn’t return the glance.

  “Pis? Ta blonde?” Roméo asked if he missed his girlfriend.

  Ti-Coune finally looked at Roméo. “Hélène is gone. I don’t know where, but I know she’s not in this fucking city anymore.”

  Suddenly the bartender appeared before them, and Roméo ordered a club soda. In solidarity. As she handed it to him, she leaned a very impressive pair of breasts onto the bar in front of Roméo. Ti-Coune gave a low whistle.

  “You’re still in town, Detective Inspector.”

  Roméo nodded and sipped at his drink. “There’s nothing quite like Montreal in February.”

  She reached into her décolletage with two red-nailed fingers and withdrew a folded piece of paper. “I have a message for you.”

  Roméo was trying very hard not to stare where he shouldn’t. It was a challenge.

  “This girl came in here a few nights ago. I saw that she was…a Native person, and so I thought, why not ask her if she knew this this Rosie Niku…Niku…The woman who was killed. I told her you’d been here looking for some information. She told me…that she was Rosie’s best friend. But no cop has even come to ask her about Rosie.”

  She rested her hand on Roméo’s and slid the paper between his long fingers. “She didn’t want to talk to the police at all, but I told her you were different. This is her number. She is expecting your call, and she will only talk to you.”

  Roméo looked up into the eyes of the bartender. They were a deep brown, outlined with jet black eyeliner and watching Roméo with amusement under those same painted on brows. She smelled of jasmine and flat beer.

  “My number’s there, too. Just in case you need my help.”

  Roméo reached into his wallet and left two twenties on the bar. “Merci, Madame.”

  Ti-Coune was staring at the wall of liquor in front of him like he could empty every bottle right then and there. He looked like Captain Haddock from the Tintin books when he desperately needed a drink—choking and sweating with the thirst for it. Roméo grabbed his arm and pulled him off the stool. “Come on, mon chum. Allons-y.”

  But Ti-Coune shrugged him off and slid back onto his seat. “I’m staying here.”

  Roméo took his arm again, but Ti-Coune shoved him away. Roméo knew better than to force him. When it came to man versus booze, booze usually bats last.

  Forty

  Saturday night

  February 9, 2019

  THE VIEW OF LAC ST. LOUIS from the living room window that ran the length of the entire enormous room was quite spectacular, as a full moon illuminated its frozen surface so brightly it looked like it was almost daytime. A fire crackled convincingly in the fireplace, which had been painstakingly built by a family of stonemasons she had tracked down living in the little village of Ste. Lucie in the Laurentians. The grand room was made more intimate by the overstuffed armchairs in rich fabric the color of pomegranates, the intricately carved coffee table that had once been the door to a derelict temple in Thailand, and the several cashmere carpets she’d bought on a trip to Turkey when she’d made her first million dollars. The gorgeous bouquet of fresh gardenias she had received that morning from Sidney filled the entire room with their cloying fragrance. But Danielle didn’t even see or appreciate any of it. Instead, she was drinking her fourth Negroni and staring at a gigantic television screen while she obsessively changed channels. Despite poring over every newspaper and online source she could find, there was still little information about the girl, and even less on the investigation into her death. Did she have parents who were grieving for her? A husband? Did she have a child? Children? What little the news covered didn’t include anything personal, anyone speaking out for her. She turned up the volume on Say Yes to the Dress, and watched the store manager trying to fit a very small wedding dress on a very large woman. She changed the channel. A woman was sitting in her living room, piled high with garbage and papers and about twenty cats milling around. She changed the channel again to a young couple wandering around a gorgeous house in the tropics somewhere. Home porn. She could settle on that for a few minutes. Danielle needed sound. She needed voices who didn’t know her, stories so removed from her experience that she could pretend a little longer that that terrible night had never happened. She needed to be anesthetized by the irrelevance of television, because if she wasn’t, she kept hearing and feeling the horrible thump of her car as she hit that girl. She swallowed the last of the Negroni, opened her laptop and erased her search history again, terrified they could somehow find all this on her computer and arrest her based on that alone.

  She looked at her phone again. She could ask to speak to the officer in charge and just tell him what happened. Just like that. She should never have left the scene of course, but she was convinced she’d hit a dog and the storm was too violent, too extreme to stop. He would understand. She would have to turn herself in. Go to court. Pay a fine. Maybe go before a judge and receive a sentence of a few years, which they would—what was the word? Postpone? Commute? Because of who she was in her community. Commune. Community. Were those words related? Of course she should have called her lawyer. Why didn’t she call her fucking lawyer right away? Because her lawyer was her new boyfriend, that’s why. Who Danielle was pretty sure wouldn’t be too impressed with her. Who she was supposed to be out with tonight. When she called him to cancel he sounded more irritated than hurt. He’d made a reservation at L’Epicurien three months ago, and tonight was finally the Big Night.

  So maybe that would come to an end, too. She had said she was sick to her stomach, and that at least, was true. She mixed herself another Negroni and began to pace up and down the huge room, oblivious to the lunar spectacle outside. She closed her eyes and thought at least she hadn’t told Chloé, although she’d come close. So close. But when she looked up into Chloé’s eyes, which were empty of anything but admiration and affection for her, she just couldn’t.

  If she actually told someone, then she’d have to accept that it might really have happened. But her need to confess was unbearable. She could talk to a priest—maybe the one who ran her little parish in La Pocatière, who had given her first communion and taken her first confession. But he had been arrested a few years ago for assaulting several boys at the boarding school he worked at. She could tell a friend, or one of her sisters, but just the idea of them first judging her and then maybe
feeling pleased that something terribly unlucky had happened to her and not them was even more unacceptable.

  Danielle lay down flat on her back on the plush cashmere rug and tried to breathe. Her head was spinning from the last drink. Maybe she could call anonymously. She could call from a phone booth—were there even any pay phones anymore? And say…what? Disguise her voice and say she did it? The couple on TV were sitting in two beach chairs leaning in for a kiss as the sun was setting over the ocean. Guess they bought the house. Just do it. Like the Nike ads. Get it over with.

  Danielle suddenly got to her feet and grabbed her phone. She knew the Station 12 phone number off by heart. But the phone buzzed in her hand, startling her. Julie. Julie was calling. Danielle hesitated and then pressed accept.

  “Maman?”

  “What’s wrong? Are you all right?”

  Julie was at her best friend’s house for an overnight movie party, and would never normally call her. She could hear shrieking in the background, and Julie’s voice was shaky.

  “Maman? I…I just got a call.” More screams and now laughter in the background. Danielle felt an ocean of relief.

  “I got a phone call from a funny man with an accent—he sounded like the mawwage man in The Princess Bride—remember him? He called from Oxford university—I am accepted to Oxford—in modern languages and linguistics! Maman? Did you hear me? I got into Oxford! Maman?”