by John Farrow
He then put a call through to Bill Mathers, who confirmed that he was deep in a driveway, buried in the woods, but with a sightline to Lucy’s house. He had already seen Constable Harvey drive onto the property. Cinq-Mars warned him to stay alert.
While listening to Painchaud’s story, Cinq-Mars had grown increasingly convinced that he needed Lucy Gabriel alive. He was desperate to find her. If she still walked among the living, he had to make contact. But how could she have been allowed to live while in possession of such terrible knowledge? What had impressed Cinq-Mars in the story’s detail was the involvement of Mohawk Warriors providing access to and from the United States. If they’d been involved at one stage, they might have continued to play a part. Whoever had abducted the young woman had wanted her alive, presumably for questioning, and after the interrogation had taken place in Old Montreal they had not left her corpse behind. On the contrary, a physician had attended to her. Why? Had Warriors intervened? Had the bad guys thought to make contact prior to an incursion onto Indian land? That would have been the wise thing to do. Had a deal been struck? Could Lucy’s life have been a concession granted to the power and, ultimately, the authority of Mohawk Warriors on Indian land?
Possibly.
He had to contact them. But how? He was white, he was a policeman, he’d be mistrusted at every turn. He had met only one Peacekeeper, and he’d have to go with him, to try to convince him to help.
As he drove across the ice, wearing sunglasses to protect against the brilliant shimmer off the snow, Cinq-Mars succumbed to thoughts of his ailing father. His dad had apologized for wishing that he could have been a priest. If matters in his father’s life had not gone awry, Emile would not have been born. The child, then, from one perspective, was a poor substitute for a thwarted ambition. Emile was ashamed that the statement had been necessary, for indeed he had lived with the burden of his father’s lost purpose. Perhaps it was that subliminal message, complete with its secret and hurtful underpinning, that had prevented him from fulfilling his father’s ambition in his stead. He had resented that his dad would have preferred the priesthood over fatherhood, and he was not going to devote his own life to the calling that would have denied him a chance at life itself. To have become a priest would have been tantamount to nullifying his life, correcting the mistake of his existence. He would not do it.
Cinq-Mars had talked these things through with his father’s priest, the one he had found for him. Some psychological murkiness had crystallized during the discussion, and now he had to come to terms with what he’d learned.
For many years, he had been burdened by a sense of error, as though his own soul was intransigent, as though he was repudiating his appointed destiny. Shaking off the shroud of his spiritual failure had taken awhile, longer still to acknowledge that he had found his proper work in life. He was doing what he was meant to do. As he had told Father Réjean, and not without a certain anger, his work was every bit as precious, every bit as ordained, every bit as consecrated as a life in the priesthood. This case had again demonstrated the truth of that viewpoint. A horrific tragedy had occurred in which many people had died. Their lives and their deaths moaned for justice. His reputation was like a beacon, and Charles Painchaud had drawn him into the fold to protect the women he cared about, and protect them also on behalf of those who had died.
Cinq-Mars reached the far shore and stepped hard on the gas pedal to ascend the snowy ramp into the village of Oka.
If a priest in the name of God called upon angels and saints to transform the world and defeat its devils, then the detective called upon his colleagues to institute justice. Devils or bad guys, he didn’t care about the terminology, he had forces to defeat and moral judgments to discern, and he was willing to take it upon himself to do both. The women had committed crimes. As a police officer, he had an obligation to drag them before the courts. As a police officer, he also believed that he had work to do apart from the everyday, separate from the routine, and beyond the purview of the law. As a police officer who carried with him a sense of theworld’s needforredemption, andnotmerely justice, there were times, and this was one of them, when he would act on his own, preferring to answer to the angels and the saints, whether or not they watched or cared, rather than superior officers or prosecuting attorneys. His father had wanted to be a priest, and failing that he had wanted his son to be one. What he had not perceived or acknowledged was that both of them had become priests, minus the garb and rituals, each in his own way. That awareness had taken Cinq-Mars some effort, and some time, both to comprehend and to accept.
Turning the corner toward Lucy Gabriel’s house, Emile Cinq-Mars called upon the powers of the universe to lend a hand with the scheme he was about to put into play.
What Painchaud had told him had changed everything—almost. What had not changed was Andrew Stettler. He remained dead, but he also remained the one person in this case who had made things happen. He had not been fully consumed by a black hole, but continued to emit blips of light, squawks of information. Having talked to his mother, Cinq-Mars now viewed him somewhat differently, and certainly more deeply. What he had dredged up from the brief that Lieutenant Tremblay had passed on to him was interesting in that nothing fit with his recent involvement with BioLogika. Cinq-Mars believed that he had good reason to focus on the man. The more that he uncovered about the case—and he had uncovered a lot in a short time, thanks to Painchaud—the more he realized that he had been launched among conspirators of every description, a phalanx of shooting stars. Honigwachs liked to dabble in cosmology and ponder the possible origins and fate of the universe. In those interests, they were alike. For Cinq-Mars, every aspect of the case, every turn, was complicated, not unlike trying to figure out the grand issues of time and space. Black holes and comets and the influence of dark matter and galaxies collapsing and red shifts of light—in his personal constellation he could rely upon one thing only. Anything that had happened of any consequence, any planetary rotation, had revolved around Andrew Stettler.
After interrogating Painchaud, while he was waiting for Bill Mathers to put on a disguise, Cinq-Mars once again read the report on the ex-con. He had been raised by a single mother, the wacky apparition encountered the night before, in some kind of spiritual cult. Cinq-Mars imagined that the boy had learned to be secretive from infancy. Probably, he had never been allowed to bring friends home or talk about his life. He began to build a sense of the man as a divided mind, someone who could bring down the curtain on one part of himself and seal it off from another. The record showed that he had begun his troubled youth in a spectacular fashion. He’d never been known to rob or do violence, but one day, at the age of sixteen, he had advised a few young friends that he felt like killing somebody, nobody in particular: That night at an amusement park a youth was knifed, his life taken, and Andrew Stettler was arrested for the murder. He got off, pleading self-defence, but the jail time that he served during the trial, and the nature of the crime, attracted the attention of the Hell’s Angels, who were always on the lookout for talent in the prisons they controlled. After that, he’d suffered a few minor busts for burglary, then dropped off the radar screen. Had he reformed?
Given his connections, his smarts, his ability to live a covert life with ease and, apparently, with conviction, Cinq-Mars readily imagined that Stettler had proven to be an asset to one gang or another. From what his mother had said, the Hell’s Angels were his associates. He was not a full-patch member—all of these were known to the police—but he must have developed talents that the gang could use, which would have made him a valuable entity. As he had enjoyed a meteoric rise inside the BioLogika Corporation, it stood to reason that BioLogika, and, by extension, Honigwachs himself, were also involved with the Angels.
Andrew Stettler was the go-between.
Now men were dead by the dozen.
Coincidence?
Emile Cinq-Mars turned down the drive onto Lucy Gabriel’s property, which was much easier to fin
d in the daylight than it had been on the night of her abduction. Roland Harvey’s patrol car was parked there, although the officer was not in sight. He resisted the urge to see if he could spot his partner, as the act of looking for him could compromise their situation. Instead, Cinq-Mars searched for Roland Harvey, which led him to take a peek through a garage window. Then he noticed tire tracks leading into, or out of, the garage, beneath a light dusting of snow. He also discovered footprints going one way only, upstairs, to Lucy’s loft. Cinq-Mars climbed the stairs himself, but, before he had a chance to knock, the Mohawk Peacekeeper opened the door for him.
“Hey! Good to see you again, Roland. How’ve you been?”
“Not bad. You?” Although the uniformed officer was being civil, his tone indicated wariness.
“Not too bad. Obviously, you have a key to this place.”
The officer nodded and looked around. “I thought I’d see what there is to see. Nothing much here, I guess.”
Cinq-Mars surveyed the premises himself. He liked the apartment, for often crime scenes gave no clue to an occupant’s character. The general tone of the place defined Lucy’s personality in his mind. The apartment spoke of an active, engaged, interested, casual, intent, whimsical, probably talkative and well-informed, probably complicated and somewhat troubled individual. The subdued chaos of the room alluded to her free spirit, and it was that innate spiritedness that had gotten her into trouble, no doubt, as Painchaud had implied.
Cinq-Mars faced his native counterpart. “Advise me on something, Roland. If I wanted to set up a meeting with the Mohawk Warriors, how would I go about that?”
The constable’s eyes shifted away, then back again. “Anybody in particular?” he asked.
“Ones who count. Men who make decisions. The leadership.”
“What about?” Roland Harvey asked him.
“Personal matters,” Cinq-Mars told him.
The thermostat had been turned down. Cinq-Mars stood with his long overcoat buttoned in the cool room, while the zipper and the snaps were done up on Harvey’s police bomber jacket.
“Not police business?” the Mohawk constable inquired.
“Personal matters,” Cinq-Mars reiterated. “You’d be welcome to attend the meeting yourself, Roland.”
The two men were gazing at one another. Harvey had the wide neck and big chest of someone who used to lift weights, the muscles having fallen into fat now that he had quit working out. His stomach was quite immense. Cinq-Mars crossed his hands in front of him. A softness to the eyes of each man indicated that they were not staring one another down, but making an evaluation.
“You’re assuming that I’m on speaking terms with Warriors.”
“In my department,” Cinq-Mars countered, “guys in the anti-gang squad are always on speaking terms with the bikers. It’s only normal. I figure it can’t be much different here. I want you to know, I don’t mean any offence by that.”
Roland Harvey put his thumbs in his gun-belt and thoughtfully nodded. “I could arrange it,” he agreed, “if the Warriors are willing. They might say no.”
“No is no. I’m just asking for the meeting to be proposed.”
Roland Harvey had sagging jowls and a flat face, and when he shook his head his double chin trembled like jelly. “I might need more to go on than ‘personal matters,’” he pointed out. “Nobody knows what personal matters you got going with the Mohawk Warriors.”
Cinq-Mars did a little tour around the room. “Roland,” he said, “I want to be straight with you.” He opened a couple of cupboards and gazed inside at the plates and cups, glassware and pans. Lucy didn’t stick to patterns with respect to her dinner service, and had accumulated mismatched pieces throughout her life. “Lucy Gabriel’s in trouble with the law, but I don’t give a damn about that. All I care about is that she’s safe, and that the trouble she’s in doesn’t get pinned on her. She has information. That makes Lucy a valuable commodity in this world. I think she’s doing the right thing to be in hiding—”
“Who says she’s in hiding?” the officer interrupted. “The last I heard she’d been kidnapped.”
“Well, now, Roland, there’s kidnapping and then there’s kidnapping. I don’t know for sure if she’s being held against her will, but it’s not a big concern of mine. Tell the Warriors that, in case they’re the ones holding her.”
“What makes you think so?” Harvey didn’t move from his position, just followed Cinq-Mars around the room with his eyes.
“Come on, Roland, do you really think the bad guys came onto this reserve without first getting permission from the Warriors? It’s common sense. If the Warriors gave their permission, do you think they’d also give them permission to do whatever the hell they wanted? I don’t think so. Warriors would look out for a woman who fought alongside them during the crisis, or the war, or whatever you want to call it. I think they’d take an interest in her safety, just like I’m doing. Especially because recent information which has come my way indicates that the Warriors were a party to her present difficulty.”
“What does that mean?” Harvey asked. He led only with questions, never responses, but the nature of those questions allowed Cinq-Mars to trace an outline of the man’s knowledge.
“I mean she was crossing the border at Akwesasne and the Warriors over there assisted with that. I know this to be true. I don’t believe they’d just abandon her to some white gang. Do you know what I mean?” Cinq-Mars caught Roland Harvey nodding for a split second before the man altered his demeanour and merely shrugged. The visiting cop continued to browse through cupboards and drawers and wound up doing a full circle of the room before returning to Roland Harvey’s side. “Well,” he concluded, “it’s not in here.”
“What’s not?” The officer was genuinely puzzled this time.
“Her Honda Accord. It was in the garage downstairs two nights ago when she was abducted, but it’s not there now. Do you know where it is, Roland?”
He had caught him off guard, Cinq-Mars guessed, but he didn’t know what to make of that. “No,” he confessed, “I don’t.”
“Neither do I. Do you think if we find the Accord we’ll find Lucy?”
The Indian cop made a questioning gesture with his hands. “I don’t know.”
Cinq-Mars found it curious that he was finally speaking to him about matters beyond his awareness. “Neither do I,” he admitted. “That’s something else I’d like to talk to the Warriors about, Roland. But understand, this is strictly personal. I won’t be going into that meeting as a cop. I’ll be going into that meeting as someone who wants Lucy Gabriel alive and, as soon as it’s possible, I want her out of hiding also. Do you want that, Roland?”
The question was trickier than it might have sounded, for to answer in the affirmative Roland Harvey had to agree on some level that Lucy Gabriel was in hiding and was not being held against her will. Cinq-Mars would not have pilloried the man had he missed that subtlety, but the constable appeared to be giving his reply all due consideration, which suggested that he might be fully cognizant of the ramifications. Constable Harvey said, “Sure.”
Cinq-Mars lightly patted his shoulder.
In his car again and driving away from the meeting, Cinq-Mars called Bill Mathers on his cellular. “Track him, Bill. And listen up, we’re looking for a relatively late-model Honda Accord. I don’t recall the colour. It’s missing from Lucy’s garage. I’ll get that information and a plate number for you. Lucy could be mobile.”
That was interesting, he was thinking. If Lucy Gabriel was driving around, what would she be up to? Mischief, most likely. From all that he knew about her, she wasn’t a woman to be kept down for long. As a captive, she wouldn’t make a model prisoner, and if she had chosen to be in hiding, probably she stunk at it. Either scenario, Cinq-Mars mused, suited him.
Sergeant Charles Painchaud was feeling excited and confident. All along, he’d planned to coax Cinq-Mars onto the case, keeping him interested long enough to learn the playe
rs and draw the right conclusions. He’d succeeded in that. The celebrated detective had made no promises, but he seemed inclined to adopt a favourable attitude. He sympathized with the women and reviled Honigwachs. Now, he had only to wait for the detective at home, and they’d be going over to Camille’s house, where his girlfriend would continue the eminent police officer’s education.
Charles Painchaud’s life and career had been an ongoing frustration to him. As a child, he had been regarded as unpromising. People thought less of him because he had fallen victim to polio and his mouth was partially paralysed. Early in his life, dyslexia had been wrongly diagnosed as a lack of aptitude. That he was too small to compete with his older brothers in anything athletic confirmed that he would be the underachieving, ordinary son. By the time that he was ready for university, his reading disability had been diagnosed, and Charles successfully clawed his way through classes by recording lectures and playing them back until he had them all but memorized. Although reading remained a chore, he managed some plodding improvement, enough to graduate, but Charles would not be able to prove himself by following his brothers into law, or his father into politics. Law enforcement interested him, however, for surely he’d be looked upon differently in a uniform.
Diminutive, Charles had to lean on his father to coax the police department to make an exception to the rules. The process was humiliating on several levels. He had to plead with his father. He had to listen to his father get on the phone to beseech high-ranking officers in the department. When he was finally awarded a hearing, he had to point out to a panel of officers that the SQ was finally hiring women, and that many of the women were no bigger than he was. It seemed a mortifying position to take—my daddy’s power-fid and I’m no smaller than most girls, and they’re no stronger than me—but he so desperately wanted in.
Promotions would come at regular intervals—no one could say for certain why, but most officers were willing to guess, and the word went around that Charles Painchaud was connected. His old man looked after him. Having begged his dad to get him onto the force, he couldn’t suddenly ask him to butt out, and the young man was obliged to accept promotions he knew he did not wholly deserve.
