Boundary

by Andrée A. Michaud

  That was the scene Stan Michaud and Jim Cusack came upon when they pushed open the door to the cottage, after Brian Larue, outside, had brought them up to speed on the facts, four women in a state of shock, one virtually catatonic, the others trying to hide their distress to spare the first, and a young girl lying passed out on the couch, a sleeping beauty scratched raw by the thorns choking off the forest where the castle was falling down.

  Faced with those women, Michaud immediately felt like a fish out of water, and regretted being on the side of the men, on the side of death, of not being able, like all the Dotties in the world, to comfort women in distress. He thought again of his awkwardness with Laura Cusack on the telephone, and wanted to take to his heels, so stupid did he feel, faced with this feminine solidarity. Still, he advanced towards Suzanne Lamar, but she was in no state to talk, no more than her daughter, Frenchie, who began to stir, probably because she’d heard his voice deep in her slumber, a voice recalling that of another man or all men. When he asked Hope Jamison if, according to her, the young girl would soon revive, she replied that she didn’t know, that he’d have to wait for the doctor. That’s him! she cried, hearing three knocks at the door, relieved that someone had finally come who could awaken Frenchie and put Suzanne Lamar to sleep with some pills that would dissolve the vitreous screen hanging suspended over her gaze, a wild gaze that was sending chills down her back.

  But it wasn’t the doctor who’d arrived, it was Conrad Plamondon, come to advise the police that Mark Meyer had fled the campground. Call for reinforcements, Michaud right away ordered Cusack, and step on it! Just at that moment, Bob Lamar, who’d been delayed by engine trouble and had just learned about what had happened to his daughter, started bellowing at everyone in sight and accusing the police of being incompetent. Hearing her father’s voice, Frenchie opened her eyes and begged him to help her, No Dad! No! Help me! Please… Help me! But Bob Lamar had already roared away, swearing that he’d find Mark Meyer.

  I was behind my mother with Millie when Frenchie Lamar appeared on Turtle Road. She was walking stiff-legged, like Bill the robot, like Frankenstein, and she was bleeding everywhere, like one of Frankenstein’s victims, with her cheeks that had been black for three days, but on which long red drops were now mingling with her tears. Under other circumstances I’d have taken to my heels, sure that she was going to throw herself at me and clutch me in her long stiff arms, but I was paralysed, like all the people gathered on Turtle Road, except for Suzanne Lamar, who virtually took to the air in her dressing gown, trailing behind her a white veil in the darkening night. A vampire mother if there is such a thing, an old Transylvanian princess who had at last succeeded in prying open her tomb, hurtling towards her zombified daughter.

  What’s wrong with the Madame? Millie snivelled. My mother, who’d been in a momentary trance, quickly turned to take Millie in her arms and tell her that the lady had fallen, that it wasn’t serious. My mother was getting better where reality was concerned, because just before that she’d been telling Millie that the Lamars were getting ready for Halloween. She wiped her chin, where the ton of butter with which she’d smeared her corn had left trails full of crumbs of corn husk, then Millie was shifted into my father’s arms while my mother, along with the other saintly women who were there, went to pick up Suzanne and Frenchie Lamar, not even frightened by the idea that they might be bitten or hacked to pieces. The women then transported them to the Lamar cottage with the help of Brian Larue, my brother Bob, and Scott Miller, who was beginning to look like James Dean, with the blonde lock of hair falling over his forehead. Two or three years more, and it was with Scott that Zaza would have been frenching on the Loutre trail, while Sissy would have maybe been leading Bob onto another path, because he had style, my brother, even if there was no one like him to be a pain in the ass, but that would go away along with his last pimples, at least I hoped so.

  Still, I felt a pang in my heart at the thought that neither Zaza nor Sissy would ever french anyone any more, but there was still Frenchie who’d be presentable once she was cleaned up, and would feel the urge again, one day, to put her hand into that of a boy. But as for frenching, that would take an awfully long time, unless Frenchie’s name was in her guts, where hunger could conquer the fear of being poisoned by a piece of bad meat.

  I was thinking about what was left of Bob’s pimples, through which a thicker and thicker beard was growing, when he came out of the Lamar cottage with Scott Miller and Brian Larue. The women had chased them out, what was going on in that cottage was women’s business. The men, at least one among them, had already caused enough damage. They would do without their presence. They would practise their healing among themselves. In that moment I was proud of being a female, one of those who could be admitted to a birthing room, and could care for the wounded, because they knew what that was all about, a woman’s wound. I’d just aged several months in one night, to bring me closer to the menstruating half of the planet, even if I was late, as my grandmother said to my mother, asking her why she didn’t dress me like a girl.

  Still lost in thought, mite, my father said, gently ruffling my hair, and that gesture made me want to cry, because soon my father wouldn’t dare pass his hand through my hair that way, for the simple reason that I was less and less of a mite, that I was unbugging at the speed of light, like all those girls who from one day to the next start saying no to their parents’ goodnight kisses. He then led me into the cottage with Millie, while Bob stayed with the others, outside, waiting for the police and the next manhunt.

  My father had just tucked Millie in after reading her a shortened version of The Three Little Pigs, when Cusack and Michaud, tyres squealing, drove up unshaven through a cloud of fireflies, looking as if they’d just come out of a suitcase. The men surrounded them, Bob a bit outside the circle, not yet daring to assert himself as a member in good standing of the male fraternity, then Michaud passed his hand over his head, relieved to learn that Frenchie was alive, and probably trying to drive away the visions of traps that had been gnawing away at his brain ever since he’d been pulled from his bed, from his La-Z-Boy, from his rocking chair, or his dark thoughts. His head smoothed, he entered the Lamars’ with Cusack at his side.

  Ordinarily, my father would have told me to go to bed, it’s late, and blablabla, but since everything was all upside down, he let me stay on the veranda, to observe the coming and going at the Lamars’. As for him, he sat in the living room, his body bent over, his head in his hands, and I preferred to stay where I was. What can a twelve-year-old girl say to her father when he’s broken down and doesn’t understand a thing? I didn’t want to see my father like that. I may have been a girl, but I wasn’t yet a saint, a missionary, or anything close. I fixed my eyes on the Lamar yard, trying to see through the gathering darkness, and I saw Bob light a cigarette that was certainly not his first, in the company of Scott Miller. He was getting older too. I’d barely have time to turn my back before he’d be driving his own car, Millie would be wearing high heels, and my father would have grey hair.

  Fortunately, Conrad Plamondon created a distraction, because I was on the verge of lining us all up in our coffins. Plamondon had left a few minutes earlier for the campground, dragging his feet, as disoriented as my father, but he came running back, his hair flying, to go and pound on the Lamars’ door. They’d found another Zaza, another Sissy, that’s what I figured, trying to imagine who it was, Sandra Miller or Jane Mary Brown maybe, who I hated, but wouldn’t want to see die in a trap. I was going to run to my father when Conrad Plamondon came out of the cottage, wiping his brow just like Michaud, then passing his hand over his shirt, smearing it with his bad thoughts. Afterwards, it was all hands on deck, and I had another spell of paralysis, standing on the veranda, asking myself why the whole world had gone mad. Then Bob Lamar parked his broken down car in the yard and started to swear like a trooper after going up to Conrad Plamondon, meanwhile Plamondon waved his arms and th
e others came over, all talking at the same time, then Cusack came wheeling out of the Lamars’ cottage, and I couldn’t hear a word of what was being said.

  It was my mother, come in search of a hot water bottle and to see if everything was all right, who told us what was going on. She went to sit beside my father in the living room and murmured, it’s little Meyer, it seems like it’s little Meyer.

  They found Mark Meyer the next morning in a cabin near Coburn Gore, thanks to a call from a trucker who’d picked him up on Route 27. The young man was haggard, his clothes were torn, and you could see, from the lump in his shirt near his neck, that he had a dislocated shoulder. The agents who caught him had tried to make him talk, but Meyer just kept repeating two words, fucking bastard, which were perhaps addressed to one or other of the agents, or a phantom in pursuit of Meyer, who was locked into an anger that hardened his gaze, turning his eyes into two black pearls whose brilliance conveyed all the violence within his silence.

  After having contacted Michaud on a staticky radio, the police handcuffed Meyer to the cast-iron stove rusting in the cabin, because Michaud was adamant, stay there, I’m not far away, I’m coming. Still, it took more than an hour for Michaud to arrive with his men, during which time the two agents took turns guarding the prisoner, going outside one at a time to breathe the morning’s fresh air or smoke a cigarette so as to escape the cabin’s mouldering odour, wherein they detected the presence of a dead rat, fox, raccoon, or perhaps worse. You never knew, with those sickos. Most of the time it was impossible to know how many victims there were, young girls, runaways never found, travelling salesmen who vanished between two villages on a January night, any more than you could figure out what hiding places they’d been able to come up with for the bodies. But the officers, Armstrong and Carpenter, didn’t try searching under the cabin. They were ordinary highway cops, and such tasks were not their responsibility. They’d leave that to the guys trained for such work.

  When Michaud’s car, followed by two other vehicles, came into sight on the bumpy road winding through the trees, Armstrong was pissing beside an old fence, thinking that he’d have no scruples beating up on Meyer with his fists or a truncheon, in memory of those murdered girls, adolescents barely older than his little sister, who’d as yet seen nothing, known nothing in their lives other than a few thrills. He zipped up his fly, told himself that if anyone dared to touch his sister he’d torture him until he was begging to be killed, then he walked towards Michaud and his men, a bunch of guys with tired eyes, all of whom could have used a shower and a shave.

  Michaud insisted on doing the questioning alone with Cusack, whom he asked to keep silent, you watch, that’s all, but he took Meyer outside, the cabin stank, and ordered the technical team accompanying him to find the source of the smell, which didn’t augur well to him either, recalling the odour of the Salem dump where Esther Conrad’s body had been left, where her youthful fragrance had been overwhelmed by the reek rising from the mounds of rotten vegetables and sodden cardboard boxes and canned goods cooking in the sun.

  He led Meyer into the shade, where there were a few logs set up around what was left of a blackened fire, and had him sit facing him, his hands cuffed in front given the injury to his shoulder, they weren’t brutes after all, while he brought his notebook and pen out of his pocket, but slowly, to stop himself from leaping at the young man’s throat and strangling him then and there.

  Why, he asked, but Meyer, gone crimson from clenching his jaws, just bored his eyes into those of Michaud, defying him to extract a single word. Michaud sighed, it wasn’t the first time he’d dealt with a bastard whose need to justify his acts came close to farce. Why? he shouted, then he leapt up so fast that Meyer, taken by surprise, fell off his wobbly log, cried out himself, feeling the pain run through his shoulder, and crawled backwards, unable to use his arms to get up, while Michaud moved in and loomed over him, a giant with an ugly face who’d had no breakfast and would kill for a raw piece of meat.

  You’ll talk, you son of a bitch, and Michaud opened the floodgates to talk to him about Zaza, so young, so beautiful, her whole life before her, describing to him softly, taking his time, omitting no detail, the agony a trap’s jaws can inflict, ripping to the bone, tearing skin and muscles to shreds, the intolerable burning, then with the flow of blood and the progressive loss of consciousness, the realisation that death was approaching, death, for Christ’s sake! He talked about the mud in Zaza’s wound, the nocturnal insects, then went on to Sissy, sweet and lovely Sissy, so young, so bright, then Frenchie Lamar, poor little Franneswoise, who’d never get over her shock, never get rid of the bold scar defacing her cheek, and many other scars as well, less visible, but how much deeper. Just now Michaud had tried to question her, with no success. Why, Meyer? Why? Why was Frenchie not talking? Why was she protecting a scumbag’s ass?

  During Michaud’s long soliloquy, Meyer didn’t move, but the sun had shifted, casting Michaud’s shadow over the left side of his face, then shining on the black pearl deep in his right orbit, which seemed to sink in deeper still and to dilate when Michaud mentioned Françoise’s name, Françoise’s wounds, and Meyer cried no! not Frenchie, you’re lying, you’re a fucking liar!

  Those words echoed through the treetops, you’re lying, you’re a fucking liar, then into Michaud’s head as a blackbird sang out behind Meyer’s moaning, no, not Frenchie! Something was awry, the blackbird was whistling off-key and the rustling of the leaves was deafening. Michaud couldn’t think straight so he struck again, spelling out Frenchie’s every wound, however unsightly, however many there were, while Meyer kept tossing about, swearing that the story was a pack of lies.

  After a few minutes, Michaud went silent and looked Cusack straight in the eyes: Meyer wasn’t lying. Meyer didn’t know that Frenchie had been attacked. Meyer was not their man.

  AFTER FRENCHIE

  It took several hours to make Mark Meyer spill it all out, he wouldn’t talk because he wanted to protect Frenchie, because Frenchie had asked him not to and he loved Frenchie and her smile, a smile that would never betray him.

  It had all begun early in the summer, when Zaza Mulligan and Sissy Morgan agreed to listen to A Whiter Shade of Pale in Frenchie’s room. After, Frenchie thought they’d become friends, and had trailed after them, that’s what Sissy and Zaza claimed, letting her follow them just the same because they could look down on her, laughing at her accent, her clothes, her tan, even though it was perfect.

  It had all begun when Frenchie Lamar fell in love with him, Mark Meyer, and became horribly jealous of Zaza Mulligan. That was when she’d made off with Millie Duchamp’s doll, which the child had left on the beach near a sandcastle that was crumbling in the sun. She took advantage of the fact that the Duchamps had gone in for supper, to take a closer look at the bundle of rags that Millie was carrying around everywhere. A dirty doll whose grey cheeks were dotted with freckles. Éphélides, her mother would have corrected her, but she didn’t care, éphélides, freckles, brown spots, bits of bran, or whatever, because the doll had hair as red as Zaza Mulligan’s, and wretched little green eyes that she right away wanted to bury in the doll’s soft head. Without a thought for Millie Duchamp, she grabbed the doll and took it home. Into the semi-darkness of her room, she pulled out one by one its long long eyelashes, one for Zaza, one for my love, and one for me, then kicked it again and again, take that, Zaza, and that, and that, and this.

  What are you doing with that doll? her mother asked when she went in, but Frenchie slammed her bedroom door, and Suzanne Lamar only heard take this, and this, and that.

  When he got home, her father found her in tears, the doll at her feet. He sat down with her until she told him everything, the humiliations, the anger, Meyer, jealousy. Then he got up, walked over the doll, and promised Frenchie that he’d take care of everything, that she wouldn’t have to worry about it any more. That’s where it all began, when Bob Lamar saw his little
Françoise suffering, his own doll, his angel. Nobody will ever hurt my wife, my daughter, my father, my dog.

  It was only at the end of the day, Friday 18 August, that they got on Bob Lamar’s trail. They’d checked all the highways, set up roadblocks at the border crossings and just about everywhere the State of Maine had drivable roads, but Lamar had taken to the woods, back where it had all begun. His car was spotted by a State Police helicopter right near Boundary, hidden in a clearing screened off by brush.

  Michaud arrived on site with his team and took the path Lamar had beaten into the grass, only to lose track of him once he got into the trees. He split his men into three groups that entered the woods to the north, east, and west. Michaud chose to head east, following his hunch. If his sense of direction was right, he’d soon join Otter Trail, but as he advanced, an overpowering sense of urgency pushed him to hurry his steps, to angrily sweep aside the branches barring his way, forcing Cusack to dodge the whiplashes that stung in the humid air. But Cusack didn’t mind, he shared Michaud’s fears. He took branches full in the face, wiping away the sweat running on his brow, while rubbing at the soreness caused by the thrashing he was receiving.

  They turned onto Otter Trail and began to run towards the site of the first murder, that of Zaza Mulligan, Cusack faster than Michaud, who had to slow his pace and stop so he wouldn’t pass out. He leaned down, rested his veined hands on his knees, and counted to twenty-five, a number that seemed high enough for him not to collapse, a magic number in which he wanted to believe. At twenty-six, he was still huffing like a bull. But he started off again at a trot, following the white patch, far in front, of Cusack’s shirt, stuck to his back like a second skin.