Open Season (Luc Vanier)

by Peter Kirby

  “It’s medical. His mother pays me for it. He came here to study at McGill and went crazy. He’s seeing a psychiatrist. So I make sure he takes his pills and keep him in weed. She comes to see him once in a while.”

  “Yeah. You should get a medal. Now what did you see?” said Vanier.

  “All right. But you didn’t hear it from me. Angus has a bad gambling problem. My guess is that he just ran the tab up too high.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The two guys. I know them. They work for Danny Maloney. One of them used to come by here all the time collecting from Angus. Even asked me if I wanted to make bets. Do I look like I’ve got the money to make bets?”

  “You have names?”

  “The regular. His name’s Pat.”

  “Last name?”

  “No last name.”

  “So what happened?”

  “That night, they came into the lobby together, Pat and another guy. Pat makes a call on his phone and presses the elevator button. The elevator comes and only Pat gets in. The other guy takes the stairs.”

  “The way I figured it, Pat was checking that Angus was home. He takes the elevator and the other guy goes up the stairs in case Angus makes a run for it. I guess they met Angus in the stairwell. Ten minutes later they both came out of the stairwell and left. I went up to see what was going on.”

  “You know where I can find this Pat?”

  “I see him hanging around the Peel Pub sometimes.”

  “What does he look like?”

  “Average, nothing special. Always wearing jeans and a T-shirt and this leather jacket. Like he thinks it makes him look cool.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Yeah. He has a mean streak. You know, short temper. I once saw him break a glass in somebody’s face.”

  “No. I mean, how would I recognize him?”

  “Like I said, average. Except his hair. He has a ponytail. A blonde ponytail. Maybe that’s what makes him so sensitive. The ponytail. He’s bald in front and got a ponytail in back. Weird.”

  “That’s it?”

  “You see him, you’ll know what I mean.”

  Vanier figured he could check photos at headquarters. Maloney was well known to the police. He ran a gang that was into everything illegal in the West Island. If this Pat was an associate of Maloney, there would be a photo of him too.

  “Okay. Thanks.” Vanier looked at Saint Jacques. “Anything else?”

  She shook her head. She was leaning on the crutches as though spending so much time with Andy was making her nauseous.

  “Great place to deal dope,” Vanier said as they were walking to the car.

  “How so?”

  “Christ, I wouldn’t search the place in a hazmat suit.”

  Vanier was scrolling through photographs of known associates of Danny Maloney when his phone rang. He winced, and for the hundredth time made a mental note to change the tone to something other than electronic beeps.

  “Inspector Vanier?”

  “Yeah. Who’s this?”

  “Sergeant Faubert, Terrebonne Police.”

  Terrebonne was a north-shore suburb of Montreal on the banks of the Mille-Îles River. Not one of those fresh-built dormitory towns, but an ancient place that had grown slowly over five hundred years.

  “We found a body that’s connected to you.”

  Vanier’s mind started flashing through the possibilities. “A relative?”

  “I doubt it. Are you black?”

  He didn’t need to answer. Faubert would have known a black detective on the Montreal police force was unlikely. “So who is it?”

  “No idea. He has no ID on him, but he had your business card in his pocket.”

  “Describe him.”

  “Small, black guy. Big ears, well, not big, but strange looking. They stick straight out from his head. Maybe he wore glasses. He’s got those marks on the side of his nose, you know.”

  “Shit. Yeah, I know who he is.”

  Vanier wondered what Camara had been doing in Terrebonne. Off the island of Montreal, Quebec was a white man’s world. Unless he knew someone there, Terrebonne wasn’t a place to hide.

  “Where did you find him?”

  “In the dump. The Lachenaie site, just out of town.”

  “The dump?”

  “The garbage dump. He came in on a truck today.”

  “Okay. Don’t move him. I’m on my way.”

  Vanier got instructions to get to the site from the highway and picked up Saint Jacques on the way out. It was highway driving almost all the way, and they were there in forty minutes. Saint Jacques had been doing research on the way, tapping on her phone. “It is the biggest landfill in Quebec. Takes almost half of Montreal’s garbage.”

  “How much is that?”

  “From the city, it’s over a hundred trucks a day. All told, they get over five hundred a day, five days a week,” Saint Jacques read on her screen.

  “Holy shit.”

  “Apparently, Quebec produces more garbage per person than any other province.”

  “At least we’re number one in something.”

  Vanier had prepared himself for the smell. He remembered the old Miron quarry in the Saint-Michel district and how it stunk up the entire neighbourhood during the summer. He expected the smell from Lachenaie to start early, that he’d be able to use his nose for the last ten kilometres. But there wasn’t a smell. The only sign that they were approaching the dump was too many seagulls—they were everywhere, and there wasn’t a fast-food joint in sight.

  When they got to the entrance, Vanier held his badge out the window and the guard waved them through.

  Three police cars, a funeral home van, and a dump truck were parked in a tight semi-circle, while dump trucks manoeuvred around them with the never-ending flow of garbage. A police officer came over, walking clumsily in large rubber boots.

  “Sergeant Faubert,” he said, holding out his hand to Vanier.

  Vanier introduced himself and Saint Jacques. Saint Jacques had left the crutches in the car, managing to walk with only a slight limp.

  “He’s over here,” Faubert said.

  They followed him to the edge of a crater where the garbage was dumped. Close up, there was no mistaking the smell. It clawed at the nose and settled in the stomach. It was bad, but Vanier had smelled worse in alleyways behind Montreal restaurants. They were joined by someone who obviously knew his way around.

  “This is Eugène Grimard. He’s the foreman.”

  Grimard started into the guided tour. “You’ve probably noticed, it’s not like the landfills you see on TV. We work hard to keep the place as clean as possible. It’s not just a big hole in the ground, there are a series of huge cells, like a beehive. Underneath are ten metres of clay to stop leakage. So the garbage is dumped and then crushed immediately, flattened as much as possible. The compactor weighs fifty tonnes. The guy on the compactor is supposed to look at the stuff coming out of the truck. We only accept non-hazardous waste, so he’s looking for electronics, paint, that sort of thing. Anyway, he saw this carpet unroll as it came off the truck, and then the body inside. It’s over there.” They looked over to where Grimard was pointing, and they could see Camara’s body lying on a threadbare brown carpet. He looked like he was sleeping, except half his head was missing. There was a huge dark stain on the carpet around his head, like a halo.

  “I mean, I thought they only did that in movies, you know?” Grimard said. “You know, wrapping a body in a carpet.”

  “Some people just don’t have any imagination,” said Vanier. He’d seen bodies wrapped in carpets before. He thought it was sloppy, but who knows how many body-filled carpets were decomposing in garbage dumps, gone forever, without a trace.

  “The coroner has been here, right?” Vanier ask
ed.

  “Been and gone,” said Faubert. “I got his card. I’ll email you the details. Said it looks like a gunshot to the head.”

  “This is the truck?” said Vanier, pointing to the empty vehicle backed up to the edge.

  “Yeah,” Grimard said. “I told them not to move anything. I mean, right away, we checked if he was alive, but there’s no way. It’s awful. You could see his brains. The truck, it’s evidence, right?”

  “We’ll take a look at it, but we’re not going to hold onto it. We’ll need the route though.”

  The foreman smiled. “I already asked for it. They’re going to fax it to me. The truck is one of ours. The driver said he was doing commercial pickups in Côte-des-Neiges, businesses and restaurants.”

  “Can we walk over to the body?”

  “Yeah, it’s solid. But I brought some boots,” said Grimard.

  Grimard handed Vanier and Saint Jacques a pair of boots each. They went back to sit half inside one of the squad cars and pulled them on. Vanier stood up. “Lead on.”

  Vanier stepped up onto the pile of garbage. It was like walking on a rancid sponge. Grimard offered Saint Jacques his arm. “It takes a while to get used to it,” he said to her.

  She reached out and grabbed onto his arm, followed him onto the pile. “Thanks.”

  Camara was lying on his back, his blank eyes open. He had taken a shot to the head. The entry wound was through his forehead and the back half of his head was missing. Up close you could hear the buzzing of flies already crawling inside to lay eggs. Vanier leaned down and grabbed Camara’s chin, working his head around to check for other wounds.

  Then he stood back up and turned to Faubert, pointing at the corpse. “His pockets are turned out. Were they like this?”

  “Yeah. My guess is someone already searched him. But they missed your card.”

  Vanier looked at the ground, and then back to Camara. The smell was overpowering, like being trapped in a bag of rotting meat.

  “We’ll need to get a photographer out here.”

  “I called one. He’s at a wedding but he said he’d come over.”

  “And someone is going to have to search around for the weapon.”

  “You’re kidding, right?” said Faubert.

  “I doubt the weapon is here. But someone has to put in an hour or two to look for it.”

  Faubert cracked a smile. He looked back to the parked cars where two uniformed officers were lounging on the hood, shooting the breeze. “I got just the guys for you. After we get the body out of here.”

  “I’m sorry.” Saint Jacques said. They turned to look at her. Her face was bloodless.

  “We’re finished here, “Vanier said. Let’s go back.”

  Saint Jacques turned, bent over and started retching. It took a while until there was nothing left. Then she stood upright, tried for a smile and bent over again to finish the job.

  Back on dry land, Saint Jacques limped off, distracted and unsteady, her hands resting on her hips as though she had just finished a marathon.

  Vanier turned to Faubert. “We’ll need the photographs first, then the morgue can have him. Once he’s gone, your guys can search for the weapon. We’ll need to keep the carpet.” Faubert nodded. “And Mr. Grimard, do you think it’s possible to tell anything about the pickup location from where the body was when it came out of the truck?”

  The foreman was enjoying himself. “Absolutely. With garbage, it’s first in, last out. The body was at the back end of the load, so most likely he was picked up at the start of the route. Maybe not the first pickup, but early on. Everything gets compressed and pushed to the back as the truck goes through the route. If you’re finished here, we can go over to the office and pick up the route map.”

  “Is the driver there?”

  “Yeah, he didn’t want to stick around here.”

  Saint Jacques caught up with them as they were walking. Some colour was coming back to her cheeks. Vanier slowed down for her. “Feeling better?”

  “Yes. Sorry about that.”

  “Nothing.”

  The driver was checking emails on a computer. Grimard waved a hand in his direction “This is Louis Guérin. He was driving the truck.”

  Guérin’s pupils were dilated, his eyes blinking up at them in the light. He still smelled of the joint he had just finished. Vanier couldn’t really blame him, he would have killed for a stiff drink himself. Vanier nodded, didn’t shake hands. “So, did you notice anything?”

  “No, man. Come on. I drive up, push the dumpster into place, pull the lever and watch the shit go into the back. Then I push the lever, the dumpster comes down, I unhook it and push it back out of the way. I’ve got sixty-five stops. It all looks the same after a while.

  “You drive stoned all the time?” said Vanier.

  “I wasn’t driving stoned, man. I had a stash. I’ve been driving around with a dead body all day. How would you feel?”

  Grimard handed Vanier a list of all the stops the truck had made. Vanier glanced at it but was finding it hard to concentrate. His stomach was churning, the air smelled like it was rotting. He thanked Grimard and made for the door.

  As they were walking back to the car, Grimard came out of the office and called after them. Vanier and Saint Jacques turned around. The foreman was pointing at their boots, he wanted them back.

  Twenty-two

  Pavlov Kedrov was sitting on a sofa in the Whole World Productions office. Opposite him, on another sofa, a man in his late forties alternated between a humourless smile and a gloomy look, nervously pushing his hand through his hair every few minutes. He was wearing a tan jacket and jeans that looked like they had been pressed. An assortment of worn porno magazines were strewn across a cheap coffee table that separated the mismatched sofas.

  Kedrov was sitting with his legs splayed out like he owned the place. “You have the money?”

  “Yeah. I got the money.” Tan jacket leaned forward and patted his back pocket.

  Kedrov held his hand out and the man pulled a wad of bills from his pocket, fifties and hundreds. He counted $1,000 onto the table.

  “They explained the deal to you?”

  “Kinda.”

  “A thousand gets you one hour with the girl. We’ll tell you when you have fifteen minutes left. We film everything and we own the film. You want a copy, it’s $500 extra.”

  “Can I see it first?”

  “No. You give us the five hundred and we’ll send it to you. That’s the deal.”

  “Okay, but I’ll have to come back with the five hundred.”

  “It’s up to you. Some rules. You’ve got one hour, so try to make things last. Start off easy. An hour’s longer than you think.”

  “I understand. Make it last.” He grinned.

  “Right. Start off easy and work it up. Pretend the cameras aren’t there. Are you going to have a problem doing this in front of people?”

  Tan jacket was still grinning. “No. I got no problem with that. Anybody in that room would probably like to be doing what I’ll be doing anyway.”

  “Okay. We want lots of shots of the girl’s face. So every now and then, you hold her head up and make her look at the camera. Don’t forget that. It’s important.”

  The man nodded. He understood.

  “And remember. She likes it rough, very rough. She won’t show it because she’s acting. So don’t worry about hurting her, she’s enjoying herself.”

  “That’s not really my issue, is it?”

  “Okay. But remember, start slowly and build up. Try to avoid broken bones. If we tell you to stop, you stop. I don’t want to deal with corpses. And lots of face shots to the camera. Got it?”

  “Sure. When do we start?”

  Kedrov reached down and grabbed the money. “Follow me.”

  He led the man dow
n a hallway, pulled open a door, and walked into a small room, empty except for a table and chair.

  “Take your clothes off in here. Then you come out through there.” He pointed to a second door and left through it.

  The man took off his jacket and placed it carefully on the back of a chair. He removed the rest of his clothes, carefully folding everything and placing them on the chair. When he was naked, he pushed the door open. The room on the other side was dark except for an igloo of light over a large bed. A boom microphone was hanging in the shadows and two mounted cameras were aimed at the bed. He counted four men moving around in the shadows. A skinny girl dressed up like a schoolgirl was lying face down on the bed, her eyes hidden in the curl of her arm.

  “Okay, we’re ready to run,” he heard someone say.

  He walked across the room feeling like he owned the place. It was a rush he’d never felt before. He approached the bed, leaned down, grabbed her hair and turned her head around to force her to look at him.

  Katya opened her eyes.

  He could see she was afraid; she was terrified. That’s when he knew it was going to be worth the thousand bucks. He was going to enjoy himself.

  Twenty-three

  Saint Jacques hung up the phone and yelled across to Vanier. “It’s what we thought, sir. I just heard from Inspector Laframboise. They’ve finished the fire inspection at Whole Earth. He says the fifth floor looks like a whorehouse doubling as a movie studio. Ten small rooms that lock from the outside and a couple of rooms made up like movie studios. Five of the rooms were occupied, four women and one guy. He said when they were doing the inspection they were shadowed everywhere by two heavies. The rooms were not locked, but the women and the boy were obviously intimidated, like they were distressed, but too scared to say anything. I think we’ve got enough for a search warrant. Laframboise said he’d be happy to sign an affidavit.”

  Vanier was on his feet. “Great.” He pointed to Saint Jacques. “You collect Laframboise and get him over to the Crown. Who’s the Crown on duty today?”

  “Pascal Dubois, I checked. He said he’ll be in his office all afternoon.”