by Kathy Reichs
My own mind was a combat zone. Relief that Menard would hurt no one else. Anger that he’d escaped so easily. Pity for a life so grotesquely twisted. Anxiety for Anique Pomerleau.
Concern that we still did not have the answers.
This wasn’t Menard. Who was this guy? Where was Menard?
Fingers caressed my hair.
I looked up.
“You OK?”
I nodded, touched by the tenderness in Ryan’s expression. “Have you found Pomerleau?”
“House is empty.” Ryan’s voice was heavy as a coffin lid. “There are things here you might want to see.”
I followed him through a hallway, into a back room, and down a narrow stairway to a poorly lit cellar. The walls were brick and windowless, the floor cement. The air was damp and smelled of mold, dust, and dry rot.
Around me I could see the usual assortment of basement junk. A metal washtub. Garden implements. Stacks of cardboard boxes. An old sewing machine.
I heard voices, then a muffled expletive ahead and to my right.
Passing through an open door, Ryan led me into a second room. Though similar in construction to the outer basement, this one was smaller and brightly lit. Its walls and ceiling were covered with polyurethane panels.
Claudel and Charbonneau were standing by a counter that might once have served as a workbench. Both wore latex surgical gloves.
Hearing us enter, Charbonneau turned. His face looked like something in the claret family.
Ryan left to do another sweep of the basement.
“The little troll had himself a really special place down here.” Charbonneau swept a hand around the room. “Soundproofing and all.”
My eyes followed the arc of Charbonneau’s motion.
In one corner two sets of handcuffs dangled from a pair of rings imbedded in the ceiling. A crude table hugged the adjacent wall. I crossed to it, a cold numbness in my gut.
The table was sturdily built, of plywood and two-by-fours. Eyehooks had been screwed into each corner, then a leather cuff attached to each hook. Four chains lay coiled beside the cuffs.
“This table isn’t old,” I said.
“Table?” Charbonneau’s voice trembled with anger. “It’s a goddamn rack!”
I walked to the workbench. Claudel looked at me, then shifted left, his face a shrink-wrapped mask of control.
The numbness made the rounds of my innards.
A bullwhip. A cat-o’-nine-tails. A riding crop. A hide-covered paddle. A noose with an enormous knot at midloop.
“All the tricks needed to show your slave who’s boss.” A vein throbbed in Charbonneau’s temple. I saw fury in his eyes.
“Calme-toi, Michel.” Claudel’s voice was a flat line.
“And this asshole was real creative.”
Charbonneau jabbed at a horse bit, a curling iron, a crudely made gag with a ball in the center.
“Check out his reading material.”
Charbonneau’s rage made him hyperactive. He snatched up a magazine, tossed it down. “Porn. Bondage. S and M.” He grabbed a videotape. The Story of O.
As the video hit the workbench, Ryan charged in, his jaw muscles tightened all the way to his sternum.
“I’ve found something.”
We moved as one, out the door, through the outer basement, around an ancient furnace, and into a chamber much like the one we’d just left.
Floor-to-ceiling shelves wrapped three sides of this room. A single bare bulb hung from its ceiling.
Ryan strode to the far wall. We followed. Behind the shelving I could see polyurethane similar to that lining the other room. The edge of one panel had been pried free.
“This wall isn’t brick. It’s plywood.”
Ryan ran his fingertips vertically along the newly exposed plywood, just beyond the shelving.
“There’s a discontinuity.”
Claudel removed one glove, mimicked Ryan’s move, then nodded.
Ryan pointed to the door through which we’d entered.
“Check out the lights.”
We all turned. One switch plate looked shiny and new, the other dingy and cracked.
“The older one works the overhead.”
He left the rest unsaid.
Claudel yanked off his remaining glove. Wordlessly, he and Ryan began ripping polyurethane.
Charbonneau hurried to the outer basement. I heard clattering and scraping, then he was back with a rusted crowbar.
Within minutes Ryan and Claudel had bared a six-inch swath. In it I could see a crack and two hinges. Through the crack, not a sliver of light.
Gauging door width, they attacked the other side of the shelving where two polyurethane panels met. Their efforts revealed another hairline fissure between sheets of plywood.
“Let me at it.” Charbonneau moved forward.
Ryan and Claudel stepped aside.
Charbonneau inserted the tip of the crowbar into the gap and levered.
A section of wall and shelving jigged forward.
Charbonneau slid the tip of the crowbar farther and heaved.
Plywood, batting, and shelving popped free.
Charbonneau grabbed a shelf and yanked. The false wall swung wide, revealing an opening approximately five by two feet.
The overhead bulb illuminated the first eighteen inches of the cavity behind the wall. Beyond that, the chamber was pitch-black.
Dashing to the door, I flicked the shiny switch, and spun.
My teeth clamped my lower lip as my throat clenched.
32
THE ROOM HAD BEGUN LIFE AS A FRUIT CELLAR OR storage bin. It was approximately eight by ten, and, like Menard’s little fun house, entirely soundproofed. The interior smelled of mold and old earth overlain by chemicals and something organic.
The furnishings were grimly stark. A naked bulb on a frayed wire. A portable camp toilet. A crudely built wooden platform. Two tattered blankets.
On the platform sat a pair of women, heads down, backs rounded against the polyurethane paneling. Each wore a studded leather collar. Nothing else.
The women’s skin looked bitter white, the shadows defining their ribs and vertebrae dark and sinuous. A long braid snaked from the nape of each neck.
Charbonneau let forth a curse charged with the full lexicon of anger and abhorrence.
One face snapped up. Haggard. Eyes like those of some wild creature startled in the night.
Anique Pomerleau.
Her companion remained motionless, head down, bony arms clutching her bony knees.
Claudel spun and disappeared into the outer basement. I heard boots cross cement then thunder up stairs.
“It’s all right, Anique,” I said, as gently as I knew how.
Pomerleau’s eyes flinched. The other woman hugged her legs harder to her chest.
“We’re here to help you.”
Pomerleau’s gaze darted between Ryan and Charbonneau.
Motioning the men back, I stepped into the chamber.
“These men are detectives.”
Pomerleau watched me, eyes wide black pools.
“It’s over now, Anique. It’s all over.”
Moving slowly, I crossed to the platform and laid a hand on Pomerleau’s shoulder. She recoiled from my touch.
“He can’t hurt you anymore, Anique.”
“Je m’appelle ‘Q.’” Pomerleau’s voice was flat and lifeless.
Removing my parka, I draped Pomerleau’s shoulders. She made no attempt to hold the garment in place.
“I’m ‘Q.’ She’s ‘D.’” Accented English. Pomerleau was Francophone.
Ryan shrugged off his jacket and handed it to me.
I took a cautious step toward “D,” gently touched her hair.
The woman tucked tighter and curled her hands into fists.
Enveloping “D” in Ryan’s jacket, I squatted to her level.
“He’s dead,” I said in French. “He can never harm you again.”
The woman rolled
her head from side to side, not wanting to see me, not wanting to hear me.
I didn’t press. There would be time to talk.
“I’ll stay with you.” My voice cracked. “I won’t leave.”
Stroking her foot, I rose and withdrew.
While Charbonneau remained in the antechamber, I retreated to the outer basement. Ryan followed.
The honest truth? I didn’t trust my own treacherous emotions. My mind was paralyzed by shock and by anguish for these women, my gut curdled by loathing for the monster who’d subjected them to this.
“You OK?” Ryan asked.
“Yes,” I said in the calmest voice possible. It was a lie. I was flailing, and feared an enormous coming apart.
Folding my arms to mask the tremors in my chest, I waited.
A lifetime later distant sirens split the stillness, then grew into a screaming presence. Boots pounded overhead, then down the staircase.
Pomerleau panicked at the sight of the paramedics. Darting to the toilet, she hopped up, wedged herself into the corner, and held both arms straight out in front of her. Neither the EMTs nor I could coax her down. The more we reassured, the more she resisted. In the end, force was required.
The other woman went fetal as she was placed on a gurney, covered, and removed from the cell.
Ryan and I accompanied the ambulance to the Montreal General. Claudel and Charbonneau remained to greet LaManche and the coroner’s van, and to oversee the SIJ techs in processing the house.
Ryan smoked as he drove. I kept my eyes on the city sliding by my window.
At the ER, Ryan paced while I sat. Around us swirled a cacophony of bronchial coughs, colicky wails, exhausted moans, and anxious conversation. In one corner Dr. Phil chastised a couple who’d been sexless for years.
Now and then Ryan would drop next to me and we’d exchange whispered comments.
“These women don’t even know their names.”
“Or they’re too terrified to use them.”
“They look starved.”
“Yes.”
“‘D’ looks worse.”
“I think she’s younger.”
“I never saw her face.”
“Sonovabitch.”
“Sonovabitch.”
We’d been there an hour when Ryan’s cell vibrated. He stepped outside. In minutes he was back.
“That was Claudel. The prick made home movies.”
I nodded numbly.
“I’m to call Charbonneau when we leave here.”
Twenty minutes later a frizzy-haired woman entered through sliding doors that led to the ER. She wore a white lab coat and carried two clipboards and one of those plastic bags used for patient possessions.
A huge black woman with swollen breasts and a bawling newborn lumbered to her feet and zeroed in. The doctor led the mother back to her chair, glanced at her infant, then spoke a few words. The woman shouldered her baby and patted its back.
The doctor wove toward us through the obstacle course of human misery. Scores of eyes followed her, some frightened, some angry, all nervous.
Again, her progress was blocked, this time by a burly man with a towel-wrapped hand. As before, the doctor took the time to reassure.
Ryan and I rose.
“I’m Dr. Feldman.” Feldman’s eyes were bloodshot. She looked exhausted. “I’m treating the two women brought in a short time ago.”
Ryan made introductions.
“The older—”
“Anique Pomerleau,” I cut in.
Feldman made a notation on the top chart.
“Ms. Pomerleau has minor bruising, but otherwise looks pretty good. Her lungs are clear. Her X-rays are normal. We’re waiting for results on bloodwork. Just to be sure, we’ll run her through the scanner when it’s free.”
“Is she talking?” I asked.
“No.” Clipped. I have a hundred others waiting to be seen.
“Any signs of sexual assault?” Ryan asked.
“No. But the kid’s a different story.”
“Kid?” I popped.
Feldman exchanged the bottom chart for Pomerleau’s. “Do you have a name?”
Ryan and I both shook our heads.
“I’d say the younger one’s fifteen, maybe sixteen, although she’s so emaciated I could be underestimating. Someone’s used this kid as a punching bag for a very long time.”
I felt white heat invading my brain.
Feldman flipped a page and read from her notes. “Old and new bruising. Poorly healed fractures of the left ulna and several ribs. Scarring around the anus and genitals. Burns on the breasts and limbs from some sort of—”
“Curling iron?” I kept my voice even, my face neutral.
“That would do it.” Feldman wrist-flipped the pages of the chart into place.
“Is she lucid?” I asked.
“She’s practically catatonic. Unresponsive. Stone-flat eyes. I’m no psychiatrist.” The harried face went from Ryan to me. “But this kid may never be lucid.”
“Where are they now?” Ryan asked.
“On their way upstairs.”
An orderly appeared at the sliding doors. Catching Feldman’s attention, he waggled a chart. She waved in his direction.
“When can we talk to them?” Ryan asked.
“I’m not sure.” The orderly threw up both hands. Feldman gave him a hold-on gesture. “What about security? Is some psycho papa or ex-hubby going to bluster in and try to reclaim his possessions?”
“The psycho in this case just blew his brains out.”
“Pity.”
We gave Feldman our cards. She pocketed them.
“I’ll call.” She held out the bag. “Here are their outfits.”
I could see metal studs poking through the plastic.
Ryan and I met Charbonneau at Schwartz’s deli on boulevard St-Laurent. Though I had no appetite, Ryan insisted food would sharpen our minds.
We placed three identical orders. Smoked meat sandwich, lean. Pickle. Fries. Cott’s cherry soda.
We updated one another as we ate.
“Doc LaManche lifted prints from the corpse that ain’t Menard. They’re a match for the ones from the letter opener. Luc’s ringing the land of fruits and nuts.”
“When did the latents go into the California system?” Ryan asked.
“Late Friday.” Charbonneau took a bite of his sandwich, knuckled mustard from a corner of his mouth. “If California’s a bust, Luc’ll shoot the prints through Canada and the rest of the States.”
Ryan told Charbonneau what Feldman had found.
“This guy was a frickin’ sadist.” Charbonneau picked up his pickle. “Shot pics of the good times to keep the tingle in his weenie.” Charbonneau finished the pickle, then tipped back his head and drained his soda. “The shots in his scrapbooks look like amateur mock-ups from the porn gallery. Sick bastard tried to re-create life from his art.”
“Did you find photos of ‘D’?” My voice didn’t sound like my own.
Tight nod. “One pretty good face shot. Luc’s circulating it in Canada and south of the border.”
“Where were the home videos?” Ryan asked.
“Mixed in with the porn tapes.”
“Got them with you?”
Charbonneau nodded.
“Your place or ours?”
“Our unit’s piece-of-crap VCR is busted again.” Charbonneau wadded his napkin and chucked it onto his plate.
“There’s a setup in our conference room,” I said.
“Let’s do it.” Ryan scooped up the bill.
“Bring some sunshine into my day.” Charbonneau pushed back his chair.
My sandwich lay untouched on my plate.
* * *
It was worse than I could have imagined. Girls suspended by their arms. Bound wrist to ankle. Spread-eagle. Always hooded. Always passive.
Ryan, Charbonneau, and I watched in silence. Now and then Charbonneau would clear his throat, shift his feet, recross his a
rms. Now and then Ryan would reach for a smoke, remember, finger-drum the table.
Some footage was jerky, as though taken with a handheld. Some was steady, probably shot from a tripod or some other fixed position.
The tapes were numbered one through six. We’d gotten through most of the first when Claudel walked in.
Three heads swiveled.
“Tawny McGee.” Claudel looked like he’d sucked on a lime.
I hit PAUSE.
“‘D’?” I asked.
Curt nod. “Reported missing by the parents in ninety-nine.”
“Where?” Ryan asked.
“Maniwaki.”
Claudel slid a fax across the table. Charbonneau glanced at it, then handed it to Ryan, who handed it to me.
My scalp prickled.
I was looking at the face of a child. Round cheeks. Braids. Eyes that were eager, curious, always up to something.
Imp. My mother would have called this child an imp.
Like she called me.
Like I called Katy.
I scanned the descriptors.
Tawny McGee disappeared when she was twelve years old.
I swallowed.
“Are you sure this is ‘D’?”
Claudel slid another fax across the table. I picked it up. On it was the inquiry he’d circulated.
The face in the photo was an Auschwitz version of the one I’d just viewed. Older. Thinner. A hope-lost expression.
No. That was wrong. Tawny McGee’s face showed nothing at all.
“Have you gotten anything on the bastard that had her?” I asked, my voice taut with anger.
“I’m working on it.”
“Have you called the McGee family?”
“Maniwaki’s handling that.”
“Where the hell’s Stephen Menard?” My pitch was rising with each question. “Could Menard be in on this? Could Menard and this guy have been working a tag team? Did SIJ find other prints in that house?”
Claudel tipped back his head and slid a look down his nose.
Charbonneau got to his feet. “I’m on Menard.”
When they left I punched PLAY, biting a knuckle to maintain control.
We were twenty minutes into the second tape when the phone rang. The receptionist announced Dr. Feldman. I mouthed the name to Ryan as I waited for the connection.
“Dr. Brennan.”
“Penny Feldman at Montreal General.”
“How are they?”
