One or the Other

by John McFetridge

  “All they’ll get is grief,” Legault said.

  “So, we’re going to do what we would have done anyway.”

  They passed through where the tollbooths had once been and headed onto the bridge.

  Legault said, “Yes, but the families shouldn’t have to go through the questioning again.”

  “And they’ll feel like no one is actually working on the case,” Dougherty said. “I hear you.”

  As they crested the high point and started down on the Montreal side of the bridge, past the second of the two tall steel spires topped with finials that looked like little Eiffel Towers, Dougherty got into the right-hand lane and slowed down, taking the exit for Île Sainte-Hélène. The off-ramp from the bridge curved around a large five-storey brick building. When the road straightened out at the bottom of the ramp on the island, Dougherty pulled over and stopped.

  “Come on, let’s see what we’ve got.”

  Legault got out of the car, too, and they walked over the grass to the door to the building and the stairway that led up to the bridge’s surface.

  Inside the wide stairwell it smelled of urine, and as they got to the first landing Legault stopped and looked through a boarded-up opening and said, “Why is this building so big?”

  “I don’t know,” Dougherty said. “I think it used to be a warehouse for the city. I think I smell horseshit, too.”

  At the top of the stairs, they stepped onto the bridge, and Dougherty stopped. There was a railing about four feet high dividing the sidewalk from the roadway.

  Legault said, “Once a month we get a call about a jumper on this bridge.”

  “You get the call in Longueuil?”

  “Harbour Patrol are supposed to respond, but if the jumper is past halfway towards the south shore, they usually call us.”

  “You’ve responded?”

  “A few times, yes.” Legault was looking down over the side of the bridge at the rushing St. Lawrence River. It was over a mile wide at this point. “Some we talk down.”

  Dougherty said, “That’s good.”

  He walked a few feet along the sidewalk, then stopped and looked around. “They left the concert around ten, so it was dark. It would have been easy for someone to surprise them on the stairs, follow them up here.”

  “But why?”

  Dougherty walked back into the building and looked at the boards covering the old doorway. He pulled it aside easily and stepped through the opening.

  The room was big and dark, with a high ceiling and window openings on every wall. There were steel I-beam pillars in long rows but otherwise the place was empty. Dougherty walked to the windows facing east; the openings were covered with steel mesh, like a fence, and there were a lot of pigeons coming and going.

  “It’s a nice view,” Dougherty said.

  “Look at this.”

  Legault was on the other side of the room, in a dark corner, bent over examining something. She looked over her shoulder as Dougherty approached.

  He said, “Yeah, that’s what we’re looking for.”

  Legault stood up with a length of rope in her hand, maybe two feet, frayed at both ends. “Maybe there will be fingerprints.”

  “We can hope.”

  “It won’t prove anything.”

  “It’s something,” Dougherty said.

  He started walking towards the stairs and Legault said, “Mon Dieu.” She was staring out the windows overlooking Île Sainte-Hélène and the old Expo 67 site. Many of the pavilions were closed, but some were still operating as Terre des Hommes and the roller coasters and other rides of the amusement park, La Ronde, were still in use.

  Dougherty said, “Wow.”

  A plume of black smoke was rising from the biosphere, the huge geodesic dome that was the American pavilion at Expo.

  Legault said, “The fire is spreading so fast.”

  “The dome is covered with acrylic,” Dougherty said. “I worked construction there in ’66. The rest of it is steel, it won’t burn.”

  The black smoke continued to rise, looking like a giant tornado.

  “The fire is just at the top,” Legault said.

  Dougherty said, “Yeah,” but watched it spread down around the sides of the dome. “We better get going before they close the bridge.”

  * * *

  “The pavilion on the Jacques Cartier Bridge,” Rozovsky said. “It was going to be a casino and a ballroom, there were big plans.”

  “What happened?”

  “The Depression. It was in all the papers, you must’ve heard about it.”

  “Yeah, my parents said something about it,” Dougherty said. “So it just sat there empty?”

  They were in the evidence room. Dougherty had introduced Legault to Rozovsky, but the conversation was in English.

  “When the war started, the army took it over. One of my uncles said that’s where he had to report when he signed up. Then they used it for storage.”

  “During the war?”

  “And I think afterwards the ground floor was a stable,” Rozovsky said. “Might’ve been police horses.”

  “It smelled like horseshit. And piss.”

  Rozovsky came to the table in the middle of the room with the file they were looking for. He spread the pictures on the table and looked at Legault. “You have the rope?”

  Dougherty said, “La corde.”

  Legault was already handing the piece of rope to Rozovsky, and she made a face at Dougherty, shaking her head a little.

  “Well, I’m no expert,” Rozovsky said, “but it looks like a match to me.”

  Dougherty looked at Legault and said, “C’en est un?”

  “Oui, c’est un match.”

  Rozovsky placed the piece of rope on top of an eight-by-ten picture of Mathieu Simard’s face. Now Rozovsky said, “I’ll get Morissette to check it for prints.”

  Dougherty said, “All right, I’ll sign it in.” He got an evidence form and started filling it out.

  Rozovsky got out his camera and put a yellow ruler next to the rope.

  “I think this is the first time I’ve ever seen you take pictures of evidence.”

  “Very funny.” The camera clicked and the flash went off. “And you know I should be at the biosphere getting pictures. That was the American pavilion, they might sell in the U.S.”

  “There was a plane flying by,” Dougherty said. “I’m pretty sure I saw a guy taking pictures.”

  “That’s the one the papers will use,” Rozovsky said. “But I could get a better one from the ground.”

  “I’m sure you could.”

  Then Dougherty looked at Legault and said, “Come on, we better go talk to Detective Carpentier.” Walking up the stairs to the homicide office he said, in French, “He was on a call this morning. Drug dealer killed.”

  There were a few guys sitting at desks in the big open room that was the homicide office, and Dougherty saw Carpentier getting himself a cup of coffee from the machine in the corner.

  As Dougherty and Legault approached, Carpentier said, in English, “Someone just made a fresh pot.”

  “Detective Carpentier, this is Sergeant Legault from Longueuil.”

  “You have an update?”

  Carpentier walked back to his desk, and Dougherty followed, saying, “We stopped at the Jacques Cartier Bridge, that pavilion by the off-ramp, and Legault found some rope. It looks like a match to the marks on Mathieu Simard’s neck.”

  “I haven’t been in that building in years,” Carpentier said. “Since the war, I think. Did it look like Mathieu could have attempted to hang himself there?”

  Dougherty hadn’t thought of that. “I don’t know.” He looked at Legault and got the feeling she hadn’t thought of it, either. “It’s possible, we’ll go back and check. Right now we’re running the rope
for prints.”

  “That’s good.” Carpentier sat down and said, “Anything else?”

  “Not yet.”

  “All right.”

  It felt like a dismissal, so Dougherty started walking out of the office. In the hall he said to Legault, “I still think you’re right, this wasn’t a suicide attempt.”

  They were at the elevator, and Dougherty pushed the button. “What do you think?”

  “Parlez-vous toujours anglais aux homicides?”

  Dougherty switched to French and said, “However the boss talks to me is how I answer.”

  The elevator doors opened, and they stepped on.

  “Let’s say the bridge is the crime scene,” Dougherty said. “Maybe this isn’t the first time.”

  “Not the first murder?”

  The elevator doors opened on the ground floor, and Dougherty and Legault walked through the lobby. “Not the first assault, anyway.”

  “You know of others?”

  “Someone might.”

  “Oh,” Legault said. “Harbour police.”

  Dougherty stopped on the front steps of the building and said, “First let’s talk to our guys.”

  He started walking and looked back over his shoulder and said, “We might talk to some of them in English,” and he was pretty sure he saw her smile a little.

  * * *

  Constable Salvatore Galluccio’s first language was Italian, his second was French and his third was English. He parked his patrol car on D’Youville Street and walked towards Dougherty and Legault, who were sitting on a bench. To Dougherty he said, in English, “How can you eat that?”

  “What are you talking about, it’s a hot dog.”

  “On a mushy white-bread bun covered in cabbage.”

  “And onions and mustard. Are you telling me you don’t eat steamies?”

  Galluccio looked at Legault and said, “S’il vous plaît, dites-moi que vous mangez pas comme ça.”

  She shrugged a little and motioned to the garbage can at the end of the bench, the paper wrapper from her steamie and fries still on top. She drank from her Pepsi bottle and said, “Deux steamés, une frite pis un Pepsi.”

  Galluccio exaggerated his disappointment. Or maybe not. He switched back to English and said to Dougherty, “Sergeant Delisle said you wanted to talk to me, what’s it about?”

  Dougherty motioned across the street, past the customs building that took up the entire block, a big stone Beaux-Arts building with a dozen steps leading up to three large doorways and columns on the façade from the second storey to the fifth. He said, “You work the port? And the bridges?”

  “When the harbour police aren’t getting in the way.”

  “The bridges? You work the Jacques Cartier?”

  “And the Victoria, but it’s usually just traffic calls.”

  “What about muggings?”

  “Not on the Victoria,” Galluccio said. “There’s barely room for cars on there.”

  “The Jacques Cartier. And St. Helen’s Island.”

  “Yeah, we get calls. The bridge is getting more popular. Sometimes there are guys hanging around it at night, the stairwell, you know.”

  “That’s what we’re looking at,” Dougherty said. “Right there.”

  “Fags?”

  “What?”

  Galluccio said, “Sometimes we get calls to roust the fags.”

  “No, we don’t care about that.”

  Galluccio shrugged and said, “Neither do I, but we get the calls.”

  “But what about muggings?”

  “Sure, yeah, there are some muggings on the island. We got guys working La Ronde all summer, I worked there last year.”

  “We’re looking for someone who might be working the bridge.”

  Galluccio thought about it for a moment and said, “Not lately. I’ve heard about a couple of drug dealers, working as a team, one of them sells to kids, teenagers, and the other one robs them when they get there. They probably sell the same nickel bag five times, but no one’s made a report, it’s just a rumour.”

  Dougherty said, “That’s exactly what we’re looking for. Do you have a description?”

  “A description? They look like drug dealers.”

  Standing up, Dougherty said, “Okay, can you put together a list for me, anybody who’s been picked up for mugging or pickpocketing or anything like that on or near the bridge?”

  Galluccio laughed and said, “Just that? How far back you want to go?”

  Dougherty looked at Legault and switched to French, saying, “When was the bridge built, the ’30s sometime?”

  Legault said, “How about we go back a year? There was probably nothing over the winter, nobody on the bridge or the island, so it’s really just last fall and summer.”

  “She’s right, Galloosh,” Dougherty said. “It’s really just a couple of months.”

  “I told you, most of the robberies don’t even get reported. It’s usually someone buying drugs or doing something they don’t want to talk to us about.”

  “You must have picked up some of these dealers. Get those names, too. Even the ones you didn’t charge — I don’t care what kind of deals you made with them, this isn’t a narco investigation.”

  “Now I’m your go-boy? I’m not that much younger than you.”

  “Chain of command. You ever want to get out of that uniform?”

  Walking back to his car, Galluccio said, “I don’t know about that, the chicks really dig it.”

  After the patrol car drove off, Dougherty said to Legault, “People are probably starting work at Place des Nations now, there’s a concert tonight. We should talk to them before it starts.”

  Legault stood up from the park bench and said, “You work overtime every night?”

  “If I have to.”

  They started walking towards McGill Street and the parking lot beside the old train station that was now a restaurant, and Legault said, “You’re not married?”

  “No, not yet.”

  “You’re engaged?”

  “No,” Dougherty said, “also not yet.” They crossed McGill, weaving through the traffic, and Dougherty said, “It’s a little complicated, I guess.”

  “Okay.”

  At the car, Dougherty said, “You’re married, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is he a cop, too?”

  “No, he’s a builder,” Legault said. “Houses, renovations, additions.”

  “Sets his own hours.”

  “Too many hours.”

  Dougherty got into the car, saying, “Same as us.”

  Legault said, “Yes.”

  Pulling into traffic, Dougherty didn’t say anything, but he was pleased that there was at least one kind of us that included himself and Legault.

  * * *

  On Île Sainte-Hélène their first stop was the Métro station, where Legault showed school pictures of Mathieu Simard and Manon Houle and got nothing but shrugs. Legault explained, talking through the small circle in the Plexiglas barrier, that Mathieu had longer hair now and Manon wouldn’t have been wearing her glasses, but that didn’t help.

  Dougherty drove slowly around the island, taking the long way around to avoid the mess at the biosphere. The fire had burned for a couple of hours and now the whole side of the island was blocked.

  He said, “Did you spend a lot of time at Expo?”

  “A little,” Legault said. “I was working that summer in the Gaspésie, but I got to Expo.” She looked at him and said, “Everybody went to Expo.”

  “Yeah, it was a great party,” Dougherty said. “The whole world came.”

  Most of the pavilions were still there as part of Terre des Hommes, but quite a few no longer represented the nations they had. Across the small channel on Île Notre-Dame, the Un
ion Jack on the old British pavilion had been repainted as the flag of Montreal with the fleur-de-lis, shamrock, rose and thistle in the four corners, and the rest of that island was being converted for Olympic rowing events.

  “Manon and Mathieu would have been seven years old, do you think they went?” Legault said.

  “Yeah, probably. Seems like a long time ago now.”

  “But not for them,” Legault said.

  Dougherty said, “No.”

  He parked in front of the entrance to Place des Nations, and a security guard walked up to the car saying, “Eilles, tu peux pas stationner ici.”

  Dougherty said, “We’re police,” and he almost added, We can park anywhere we want, but instead he said, “We need to talk to the manager.”

  People, mostly young with long hair and wearing jeans and jean jackets with embroidered designs, were streaming into the concert venue. Place des Nations was an outdoor venue, a couple of small cement bleachers and a big open space that held about seven or eight thousand people.

  The security guard led the way into the office in the small building beside the entrance gate.

  In the office, two men were sitting across a desk from one another and one of them looked up as the door opened. He saw Legault in her uniform and started waving his hand through the cloud of smoke in front of his face and put his other hand down below the desk.

  Legault said, “Bonjour, M. Tardif.”

  “Wow,” Dougherty said, “that smells like some good weed. Way better than the kids in the cheap seats are smoking.”

  The other guy at the desk said, “Bonjour, Sergeant Legault. Still looking for those kids?”

  “No, we found them,” Legault said. “Now we’re looking for who killed them.”

  Tardif, who’d been holding his breath since the cops walked in, exhaled a big cloud of smoke and then said, “That’s too bad, I’m sorry to hear that.”

  Legault took the pictures out of her jacket pocket and put them down on the desk, saying, “So, I ask you one more time. Did you see these kids at the concert?”