by Ann Lambert
“I am sorry. You shouldn’t have been able to find us. But, you were very persistent.”
“What WHAT feels like?” Nia shouted.
They heard the snow crunching under the person’s feet as he took a few steps closer. “Freezing to death, of course.”
Nia ran closer to Ti-Coune, and grabbed one of his frozen hands. Hamlet was out of his house and running back and forth against the fence, whining. Suddenly the other dogs started their chorus of barks, whines, and yowls.
The man must have done something, like blown a dog whistle—because just as suddenly the dogs went silent. Even Hamlet stopped and sat, his tail wrapped around his huge body and truncated front legs.
“This is all a misunderstanding. These dogs back here? They are never, never to be put up on the website. These are the special dogs that I rescued myself, personally. She knew they weren’t supposed to go on the website. She knew. You should never have come here. But now, here we are. What am I going to do with you?”
Ti-Coune stepped closer to where he heard the voice. “You’re going to unlock that gate and let us go back to our car and get the fuck out of here. And we will tell no one about the whole thing. That’s it, that’s all.”
Suddenly, they could make out the silhouette of the man as he stepped into the beam of light cast by the spotlight on the kennel. “You’re up shit creek without a paddle, my boy.” The voice chuckled. “That’s what the Man used to say to me when he sent me to the cage.”
“What cage?” Nia asked. “What are you talking about?”
Ti-Coune ran closer to the voice. “S’il te plait, tabernac. Je gèle. We just want the dog back.”
“Oh, I’m not giving you the dog back. He’s staying here, where he’s safe and cared for. I am never giving any of them back.” He paused for a moment, and they could hear his breath catch with emotion. “Do you remember that beautiful boy who froze to death a few months ago? Froze to death outside the metro, because his stupid owner didn’t care enough to give him up and find him a proper home? No. He kept him out on the streets, and that beautiful boy? He died.”
The man stepped closer. Nia could still not make out his features, but she could see something vertical in his hand. Was it a stick? Was it a gun? A rifle?
“When I saw that story on the television, I knew that it was finally time to do something. Really do something, after all these years. I wanted all those poor animals to know—help was on the way.”
His voice was just on the edge of being familiar to Nia. What was it? Soft-spoken. Higher register. Almost feminine. She forced herself to think, but just couldn’t place him. Yet.
“She was the one who first made me think about saving the dogs. She cried over it. Said something should be done. That it wasn’t right. I thought. I will fix this. I will help.”
“What the fuck are you talking about, man?” Ti-Coune asked, his voice weaker now.
“Why are people so cruel to animals? All they want is to love you. Unconditionally. They don’t make choices. They have no control over their lives. I know what it’s like to have no control, believe you me! But, you people do. You choose to keep those dogs on the street—living like, like garbage. Have you seen one with its paws frozen off? Its pads frozen to the sidewalk? What that looks like?”
Nia drew closer to the fence and the voice. She was so close to knowing who he was. She was sure of it.
“Sir? I am sorry you feel our dog was…abused. But we loved him. And we took good care of him. He had a good life with me and…me and Christian.”
The face turned and he took another step closer. “You look so much like her. That’s how I first noticed you. Do you remember?”
“Like who?” Nia asked gently.
“I told her about the Man. She was the only one who really understood, because she came from hell as well.”
Ti-Coune shouted into the near darkness. “Christi! I’m frozen! Let us out of here and we’ll talk—”
“When they asked me, years later, why didn’t you tell anyone? Why didn’t you escape? I thought every kid went home to a cage. I thought every kid wore a collar and was tied to a tree. That’s why I never told. Because I thought it was normal.”
“Sir? My friend here—is very, very cold. Could we—”
But he kept talking. “When they…arrested the Man and my mother, they were only sentenced to two years. Two. Years. After nine years of my life. My only companions for nine years were the other dogs. That’s why when that dog died, I had to help. They saved me.”
Nia went up to the fence and stared directly into the face she still couldn’t quite see. “Dogs are so important to homeless people, too. They’re often the only thing keeping us alive—the only animal we can trust. Like you with your dogs. We don’t want to ever hurt them. They save us, too—and maybe we save them?”
Ti-Coune was now slumped in a corner of the dog run, hugging his knees to his chest. He wasn’t talking anymore.
“Please. You can keep Hamlet. You can keep them all. Take good care of them all. It’s important what you’re doing. It really is. Just please let us go inside.”
There was no response at first. And then suddenly, the man flicked on a floodlight and stepped fully into its the beam. Then he shone his flashlight on Hamlet.
“Well, hello there, gorgeous.”
Nia gasped, and then in the most even voice she could muster, she said, “It’s you.”
Roméo Leduc trudged along the narrow snow path towards the faint light in the distance, careful to make as little sound as possible. Something felt very awry here. He slipped his gun from his shoulder holster and, just to be cautious, pulled back the safety. As he approached a series of outbuildings, he could hear voices going in and out of earshot depending on the direction of the wind,which had picked up. He turned in the direction of the speakers. One woman and one man. He inched closer. There was a very big man in the shadows, clearly growing more agitated, speaking to the girl, Nia. Another figure lay hunched against the fence, not moving. She was begging him to let them go. Roméo held his gun directly in front of him and stepped forward. Just at that moment, the wind direction must have changed, and suddenly the dogs picked up his scent. There was an explosion of barking, yapping, and howling dogs. The man stepped back into the shadows and disappeared. Roméo ran to the fence and turned on his flashlight. The entire dog run was illuminated, but the man was gone.
“Nia! Get Ti-Coune on his feet now! Make him walk. Now. DO IT!”
Nia ran to Ti-Coune and started punching and pushing him, but he refused to stand up. Roméo held the flashlight high above his head, and with his gun cocked and the dogs still barking hysterically, he ran towards the kennel.
This was ridiculous. She’d been sitting in the car for a good ten minutes, trying not to look at her phone. To distract herself, she was trying to appreciate the neon streaks of fuchsia the setting sun was painting across the sky. But the more she thought about it, the sillier it was—they were at a dog shelter, for God’s sake, not the hideout of the Hells Angels. What would it hurt if she were to just step out of the car and take a little look around? She opened the car door and immediately heard the dogs. At the same moment, Marie was quite certain she saw a curtain in the window of the house flutter. So someone was watching her.
Roméo stepped cautiously into the damp and close, doggy warmth of the kennel, and inched carefully past the dogs who watched him, oddly silenced by his presence. He looked around for a light switch but couldn’t find it. The beam of his flashlight illuminated a swath of the kennel quite effectively, but the corners were in darkness and he was on hyper alert for any sound that would betray where the man was. Roméo knew he was at a dangerous disadvantage—he was on the killer’s territory, which he knew intimately, it was almost completely dark, and he was armed as far as Roméo could tell with a 22-caliber hunting rifle. The man had seemed familiar t
o him—something in his voice—and then Roméo remembered where they’d met. He followed along the wall, his empty hand feeling along it for the light switch still, trying to control his breathing and pounding heart.
“Why did you have to come here?”
Roméo heard the click of a rifle’s safety being released.
“Drop your gun, please. And flashlight. Now.”
For one nanosecond Roméo thought he’d take a shot. But there was purpose in what the man said. Lethal purpose. He dropped his gun into the sawdust on the floor. It landed with a small thud. He thought of hurling the flashlight at the man’s head, but instead dropped it as well.
“Now please put your hands on your head and walk straight out that door.”
Roméo did as he was told, his mind racing with possible counterattack. Nothing seemed plausible at that moment.
“Could you please let the girl and her friend inside the kennel? I think they’re both severely hypothermic. Do you want their deaths on your conscience?”
“They should’ve minded their own business. Same as you. Then, we’d be good. All of us.”
“You killed her boyfriend. You stole her dog.”
“Stop right here.”
“And why Rosie Nukilik? What did she ever do to you?”
The man hesitated. “She couldn’t take care of the dog. It would’ve been dead in weeks. It was just a matter of time.”
Roméo turned around to face the man. “You can’t bear to see dogs suffer? Is the suffering of dogs, not humans, intolerable to you?” Roméo watched the rifle carefully. The man handled it easily. He had clearly hunted before.
“Humans have control over their lives. They make choices. They are the only species that enjoys the suffering of other sentient beings. I could not watch another human enslave a dog to his life. We’d all be better off if we as a species were entirely eradicated.”
Roméo shook his head. “I have to admit a big part of me agrees with you there.”
“Could you get down on your knees, please?”
Roméo did not like where this was going. His heart was pounding hard enough to make his breath catch. He struggled to get down on his knees with his hands on his head.
“Did you meet Rosie at your friend’s place? What happened to your friend, Hélène Cousineau?”
“You shut your mouth—”
“Did you…do something to her? Did she deserve to be punished too?”
“I said, shut your goddamn mouth.”
“Did you know that is her brother over there freezing to death?”
The man paused for just a moment, then quietly commented. “Good riddance, from what I heard.”
“What did you do to Hélène? Did you kill her, too?”
Almost before the last word escaped Roméo’s lips, he felt the force of an animal hit him. He fell back off his knees, and into the deeper snow. The man was straddling his chest, squeezing the air out of him. Roméo flailed away, but he knew he was in deep trouble. The man’s strength was feral. Roméo knew he only had a few seconds. The man leaned over him and whispered into his ear, “I’m so sorry.”
Just as Roméo was letting it all go, all of it, and accepting the calm and peace that came with that release, he felt a thump and then another, and the terrible pressure ceased. As he struggled to get air back into his lungs and up to his brain, he opened his eyes for a second, and there was Marie standing over him, a bloodied log in her hand, staring at him wild-eyed and screaming for him to wake up.
Roméo watched the entire denouement unfold like it was a police action movie with the sound on mute. There was Ti-Coune being loaded into an ambulance, looking small under the emergency blanket, his hands folded across it and wrapped in enormous white bandages. Roméo was relieved to see he was conscious. There was a very large person, a woman, he thought, sobbing and cradling the big man’s bloodied and bandaged head in her lap, begging the SQ officers to let her into the ambulance with her brother. There was Nia Fellows, also under a metallic emergency blanket, but clearly in better shape than Ti-Coune. A very large and strange-looking dog was in her arms, looking up at Nia in worship, and licking her entire face every few seconds. Suddenly, the paramedic ripped the blood pressure strap from Roméo’s arm and gave him a terse thumbs up. Still, Roméo knew several ribs were broken, and for some reason he was still having trouble hearing anything clearly. Roméo turned to see Nicole LaFramboise appear beside him, a phone to her ear and directing the first ambulance off to the hospital. He could see that the CSI vehicle was just arriving and would soon secure the entire area for evidence. Roméo was very grateful for the call he made to Nicole in St. Jerome before he headed out to the wilds of l’Épiphanie.
And then, there was Marie. He could see that Nicole was now sitting next to her in the back of a third ambulance, looking right into her eyes and nodding at something Marie said. She took Marie’s hand and gave it a squeeze. Then she stood up and headed over to welcome the CSI team. Roméo tried to smile as Marie approached him. She looked about as shocked as someone would who’d just beaten a man with a log. Roméo thought he had never seen anyone more beautiful in his entire life, real or fantastic. Marie sat next to Roméo, gently touched her head to Roméo’s chest, careful to avoid any pressure where she knew he was hurt, and sobbed.
Fifty-Two
Five days later
February 18, 2019
WHEN A NUNAVIK RESIDENT DIES in a Montreal hospital, the government pays to transport the deceased person home. The same is often the case if someone dies in prison. But if the deceased had been living on the streets, it becomes the family’s responsibility to pay to transport that person’s body back north. Rosie Nukilik’s mother had died six years earlier, and her father, who was grieving terribly, could not begin to afford to fly his daughter home—the price of a ticket to Nunavik was astronomically out of reach. Annie Qinnuayuak persuaded the Native Women’s Network to pay for Rosie Nukilik’s body to be flown back to Salluit to her loved ones, accompanied by her friend, Charlotte. The flight was the very next morning, so a small, symbolic funeral ceremony was being held for her in Cabot Square. It was a gloriously mild February morning, and the mourners had slowly peeled back the layers of protection each had worn and allowed themselves to be warmed by the sun. Rosie’s friend, Charlotte, was delivering a tearful eulogy.
“I think a few of you here know that Rosie loved so many songs, and I wanted to sing one of her favorites, but I can’t sing. Like, at all. So, I wanted to finish today with a poem she really liked and that reminds me so much of who she was. It doesn’t rhyme or anything, but this really makes me think of Rosie and the kind of friend she was. Oh, I changed it just a little bit. I hope that’s okay.” Charlotte opened a piece of paper and began to read.
“I said: What about my eyes?
She said: Keep them on the road.
I said: What about my passion?
She said: Keep it burning.
I said: What about my heart?
She said: Tell me what you hold inside it.
I said: Pain and sorrow.
She said: Stay with it. The wound is the place the light enters you.”
Charlotte slowly folded her piece of paper and returned in tears to the hugs of a group of girlfriends. Then an elderly priest solemnly took Charlotte’s place and asked the mourners to join him in a prayer. Annie closed her eyes and tried to focus, but all she could think about was him—Peter LaFlèche. He had come to her two years earlier and offered to volunteer a few hours a week doing basic IT for Le Foyer.
He quickly and unobtrusively made himself indispensable. Within six months, they were able to offer him a tiny salary to work for them three days a week. He graciously accepted. Peter was kind, competent, and a generous team player. But to say he was guarded with his emotions would certainly be an understatement. The man revealed nothing about his personal or
emotional life, and Annie had not inquired about that side of Peter because he was so necessary to her work, and he so clearly did not want to share himself. When Annie thought of what he’d done to Rosie and Christian Bourque—and now the police were saying perhaps others, too—she felt the bile rise to her throat and thought she might vomit. How had she worked with this man for two years and not seen the signs of a sick soul? How had she not known? Had she been south in the city too long? How long before her soul, too, became completely eroded, flayed to the bone? How many more bodies would she be sending home?
Annie had to put out so many metaphorical fires every day that she had little time to think too much—because if she did, she’d never get up in the morning. She tried to remind herself of all the good that they’d done, the success stories of people who’d gotten off the streets, found their way back home—alive, and if not exactly well, then better. She refused to see her people as perpetual victims, but as survivors. But still. She had allowed that—what was he? A monster? He wasn’t born that way. Monsters are created. Annie had learned that Peter LaFlèche had managed to completely transform himself depending on the different roles he was playing.
At the Salvation Army shelter, where she found out he volunteered one or two days a week, he wore a full uniform. When he wanted to prey on and blend in with the people he served, he seamlessly became a street person. Annie thought of the stories her grandmother had told her, about the Ijiraat—shape shifters who could transform themselves into any arctic animal—bear, caribou, wolf, or raven—and who often led wanderers to their deaths. Many believed they were not inherently evil but misunderstood—and were the embodiment of the souls that had not found peace after dying. Although they could transform themselves to deceive their victims, they could not disguise their eyes, which were always red—whether they were in their animal shape or human. How had she not seen the truth in his eyes?
