by Kathy Reichs
“Marcotte was Heathen payback for the Vipers blowing up the Vaillancourts. George and a full-patcher named Sylvain Lecomte took him out. The kid was a mistake.”
She braced a booted foot against the duffel.
“George thought the hit was his ticket to stardom. But the Heathens burned George because they thought he was going to give up Lecomte.” She snorted and tipped her chin. “George was actually waiting for me near the Cherokee hit scene. When he got busted by the Carcajou and then set up a meet with you, the Heathen brothers decided to do George before he could finger Lecomte. Big man, Lecomte. Wasted a little girl. Big turd,” she spat.
“Anything else?”
She shrugged.
“The St-Basile burials. I’ve been on the scene nine years. I’ve got plenty to trade.”
“Are you talking about witness protection?”
“Money and out.”
“Rehab?”
She shrugged.
“What about Cherokee?”
“He brought the girl’s bones up North, but I’ve put his story on paper. I give it up when my ass is safe and a long way from here.”
She sounded like the thought was collapsing even as she voiced it.
“Why now?”
“They wasted Dorsey. He did their work, and they wasted him.”
She shook her head and turned back to her surveillance.
“And I’ve become them.” Her voice dripped with self-loathing. “I set that reporter up.”
“What reporter?”
“Lyle Crease. I figured something was up when you asked about him, so I tuned into the news that night. Sure enough, he was the one I saw at Cherokee’s place. I dropped his name to the Vipers for a bag of flake.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“I’m a goddam junkie, all right?” It was almost a shriek. “When you’re coming down and the world is closing in, you’ll dime your mother for a score. Besides, I had other reasons.”
Her hands began to tremble, and she pressed her fingertips to her temples.
“Later, I phoned Crease to set up a meet at the cemetery.” Again the self-deprecating laugh. “Back on big rock candy mountain.”
“Did they ask you to arrange a meeting?”
“Yeah. They plan to take Crease out, and some Heathens, too.”
“What does this have to do with my nephew?” My mouth was so dry I could hardly speak.
“Crease said not to try anything funny because he would have the kid with him.”
I heard the rumble of a train far up the tunnel.
Again, the head shake. Her face looked hard in profile.
“This funeral’s going to be one big snuff film, and your nephew could have a starring role.”
I felt a change in air pressure as the train grew louder. Passengers on the far side moved toward the platform’s edge.
Jocelyn’s gaze froze on something across the tracks. The hooded eyes grew puzzled a moment, then widened in recognition. Her mouth opened.
“Lecom—!” she screamed, and her hand shot to the duffel’s zipper.
The train thundered in.
Jocelyn’s head flew backward, and a dark cumulus spread around it on the wall. I threw myself to the concrete, and covered my head with both hands.
Brakes shrilled, whooshed.
I tried to scramble behind the bench, under it, anywhere. It was bolted to the wall! There was nowhere to go!
Doors opened. Commuters both boarded and left the train.
On our side, screams. Faces turning. Bewilderment. Horror.
The train barreled off.
Then the sounds changed. Panicked retreat. People running.
After a full minute with no more shots, I cautiously rose to my feet, bone and brain matter on my jacket. My stomach lurched and I tasted bile.
Voices. English. French.
“Attention!”
“Sacrifice!”
“Call the police.”
“Elle est morte?”
“They’re on the way.”
“Mon Dieu!”
Confusion. A rush for the escalators.
Jocelyn’s body twitched, and a thread of saliva trailed from the corner of her mouth. I could smell urine and feces, and see blood pooling on the bench and floor.
I had a vision of Cherokee. Others, fast, like flashbulbs. Gately. Martineau. Savannah Osprey. Emily Anne Toussaint.
I could not have stopped those deaths, nor had I done anything to bring them about. And I could do nothing for Jocelyn. But I would not allow my nephew to be the next casualty. I would not permit that. Death dealt out by bikers would not happen. Not to Kit. Not to Harry. And not to me.
On rubbery legs I staggered to the escalators, rode to ground level, and was carried along by the crush of pedestrians distancing themselves from tragedy. Already two cruisers blocked the entrance, doors open, lights flashing. Sirens foretold the arrival of others.
I should have stayed, given my story, and let the police handle the rest. I felt sick, and repulsed by the carnage we seemed powerless to stop. Fear for Kit twisted in my gut like a physical pain, overriding judgment and sense of duty.
I broke from the crowd and ran.
MY HANDS STILL TREMBLED AS I LET MYSELF INTO MY SILENT condo. I called out, not expecting an answer.
From my briefcase, I dug out the envelope Charbonneau had delivered from Roy. I scanned the protocol, checked my watch, and raced to the garage.
Though rush hour was tapering off, Centreville remained clogged. I crawled along, engine idling, heart racing, hands sweaty on the wheel, until I finally broke free, shot up the mountain, and pulled into a car park opposite Lac aux Castors.
The cemeteries sprawled along the uphill side of Chemin Remembrance, cities of the dead flowing toward the horizon. According to Roy’s map, the Dorsey plot was just inside the perimeter fence, twenty yards from the south gate. The cortege would arrive from the east and enter the cemetery opposite where I sat.
I wiped my hands on my jeans and checked the time.
Soon.
Normally, early morning meant few people on the mountain, but today mourners lined the shoulder and stood along the drive leading through the gate. Others wandered among the trees and headstones inside the cemetery grounds. The ritual hypocrisy struck me as surreal. Heathens and Rock Machine, burying with great ceremony the comrade they themselves had killed.
Manned cruisers were parked on both sides of Remembrance, lights flashing, radios sputtering. I locked the car and ran across the road, slipping on new grass beginning to green the median. Hurrying along the shoulder, I inspected those milling about. Most were male, young, and white. I saw Charbonneau leaning on a squad car, but there was no sign of Crease or Kit.
A uniformed officer stopped me at the gate.
“Whoa, there. Slow down, madam. I’m sorry, but there is a funeral expected shortly, and this entrance is closed. You’ll have to move on.”
He held out both arms, as if physical restraint might be necessary.
“Dr. Temperance Brennan,” I identified myself. “Carcajou.”
His face crimped with suspicion. He was about to speak when a sharp whistle split the air, like someone calling a dog. We both turned.
Claudel stood on a knoll a short distance back from the Dorsey grave site. When he had our attention he gave a crisp come-on signal with one hand. The guard pointed to me, and Claudel nodded. With a disapproving look, he passed me through the gate.
The Mont-Royal cemeteries are strange and beautiful places, acres of elegant landscaping and ornate funerary architecture rising and falling across the curves of the mountain. Mont-Royal. The Jewish. Notre-Dame-des-Neiges.
The latter is for the Catholic dead. Some are buried with elaborate tombs and monuments, others with simple plaques and ten-year leases. Since the mid-nineteenth century, over a million souls have been laid to rest within the cemetery’s wrought-iron fence. The complex contains mausoleums, crematoria, columbaria, and interment sites for the more t
raditional.
There are sections for the Polish. The Vietnamese. The Greek. The French. The English. Visitors can obtain maps pinpointing the graves of Montreal’s famous. The Dorsey family lay in the Troie section, not far from Marie Travers, the thirties singer known as La Bolduc.
More relevant was the fact that today’s burial would take place less than ten yards from Chemin Remembrance. Roy’s advisers felt that if a hit was planned the cemetery was the most likely location. And the most difficult to secure.
I sprinted up the gravel path and scrambled uphill to join Claudel. His greeting was not warm.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“Kit is with Crease and they’re coming here,” I panted.
“You just don’t listen, do you, Ms. Brennan?” His eyes swept the crowd as he spoke. “There’s already been one homicide today.”
My mind flashed to the métro. Jocelyn, searching. Jocelyn, in agonal spasm.
“I was with her.”
“What?” Claudel’s eyes flew to my face, then dropped to the blood and brain matter on my jacket.
I told him.
“And you left the scene?”
“There was nothing I could do.”
“I’m not going to point out the obvious.”
“She was dead!” I snapped. Fear, anger, and guilt churned in my head, and his unfeeling attitude did nothing to calm me. A sob welled in my chest.
No. No tears!
At that moment his Carcajou partner appeared over the edge of the hillock. Quickwater approached Claudel, spoke in a low voice, and left without acknowledging my presence. In seconds he reappeared below, wove through a grouping of ornamental headstones, and positioned himself behind a pink granite obelisk.
“If I say dive, you take cover. No questions. No heroics. Do you understand?”
“Fine.”
He did not resume our conversation.
That was fine, too. I recoiled from voicing my fear for Kit, afraid that shaping the threat into words might cause it to be realized. I would tell him later about Lecomte.
Five minutes passed. Ten. I scanned the bereaved. Business suits mixed with chains, swastikas, studs, and bandannas.
I heard the noise before I saw the procession. It started as a low rumble and grew to a roar as two police cruisers rounded the curve, then a hearse, limo, and a half-dozen cars. A phalanx of cycles followed, four abreast behind the cars, in twos and threes farther back. Soon the road was dense with bikes, and I could not see the end of the line.
Sun flashed off chrome as the cortege slowed and turned into the cemetery. The air filled with the sound of engines and shifting gears as bikers broke formation and massed around the entrance. Men in greasy Levi’s, beards, and shades began to dismount and move toward the gate.
Claudel’s eyes narrowed as he watched the graveyard below become a human zoo.
“Sacré bleu. We should keep this outside the fence.”
“Roy says that’s not possible.”
“Civil rights be damned. Bar the vermin, and let their lawyers sue.”
The cortege turned left and crept along the tree-lined road skirting the Troie section. When it pulled to a stop a suited man moved to the limo and opened the rear door. People emerged wearing the bewildered expressions of those unfamiliar with personal service.
I watched the funeral director lead the family to folding chairs beneath a bright green canopy. An old man in an old suit. Two matrons in black dresses, faux pearls around their necks. A young woman in a floral print. A boy in a jacket with sleeves that did not reach his wrists. An elderly priest.
As friends and relatives climbed from cars, Dorsey’s other family drew together. Joking and calling, they formed a ragged horseshoe outside the canopy. Under it, the new grave lay draped like a patient awaiting surgery.
A detachment of eight slowly gathered at the hearse, all in denim and shades. At a sign from the director, an assistant offered gloves, which a behemoth in a do-rag batted aside. Barehanded, the pallbearers slid the casket free and carried it toward the canopy, struggling under the weight of the deceased and his packaging.
The branches above me lifted and fell, and I caught the scent of flowers and freshly turned earth. The bikes had gone still. A sob drifted from under the canopy, slipping free on the breeze to ride over the graves of the surrounding dead.
“Sacré bleu!”
When I turned, Claudel was staring at the gate. I followed his gaze, and fear shot through me.
Crease and Kit were making their way through those lingering at the entrance, moving past the semicircle of mourners, and stepping into the shadow of a life-sized bronze angel, its arms perpendicularly outstretched, as if treading water.
I started to speak but Claudel silenced me with a hand. Lifting his radio, he looked down at his partner. Quickwater made a subtle gesture, first to his right, then straight ahead.
I looked where Quickwater had indicated. Beyond the mourners, partially hidden among the tombstones and trees, were men whose attention was not on the service. Like Claudel and Quickwater their eyes never rested, and they carried handsets. Unlike the Carcajou investigators, these men were tattooed and booted.
I looked a question at Claudel.
“Rock Machine security.”
Under the canopy the priest stood and opened his prayer book. Hands rose and fell, crossing chests. Missal pages fluttered as the old priest began the rites for the dead, and he extended a gnarled finger to hold them still. The breeze played with his words, stealing some, sharing others.
“—who art in heaven, hallow—”
Beside me, Claudel tensed.
A man had appeared among a cluster of cement crypts sixty feet to the west. Head down, he walked toward the canopy.
“Thy kingdom—thy will—”
I looked down at Quickwater. His eyes were fixed on the Rock Machine sentries. One spoke into his walkie-talkie. Across the grounds, another listened. Quickwater stared at them, then raised his radio.
Claudel keyed his partner, eyes glued to the man closing in on the grave site.
“—forgive—who trespass against us—”
“Trouble?” I asked when the transmission ended.
“He’s not Rock Machine. He could be Bandidos, but the lookouts aren’t sure.”
“How—?”
“He reads lips.”
“Do you recognize the guy?”
“He’s not a cop.”
My nerves prickled. As with many in the crowd, a bandanna covered the lower face of the approaching figure, and a cap shadowed his eyes. But this man looked wrong. His jacket was too heavy for the day, his arms held too tightly to his sides.
Suddenly a Jeep roared up Remembrance and veered toward the fence. At the same moment a motor flared and a Harley shot through the gate.
The next events seemed to continue forever, each unfolding in slow motion. They told me later that the entire episode lasted two minutes.
In the horseshoe of bikers a man spun sideways and flew into a canopy support pole. Screams. Gunfire. The tent collapsed. The crowd froze momentarily, then scattered.
“Down!”
Claudel pushed hard on my back, slamming me to the ground.
A bearded man crawled from the heap of canvas and ran toward a stone Jesus with outstretched arms. Halfway there his back arched, and he fell forward. He was dragging himself across the ground, when his body jerked again and collapsed.
I spit dirt from my mouth and tried to see. A bullet whacked into the chestnut behind me.
When I looked again the jacketed man with the bandanna-covered face was behind a vault, bending toward the base of the crypt. He stood, and sun glinted off steel as he pulled back the slide on a semiautomatic. Then he dropped his hand straight to his side and walked toward the swimming angel.
Fear shot through me.
Without thinking, I began to crawl toward the path.
“Get back here, Brennan,” Claudel shouted
.
Ignoring him, I pushed to my feet and scrabbled down the hill, keeping to the far side to avoid gunfire. Crouching low and darting from monument to monument, I worked my way toward the statue sheltering my nephew.
Pistols and semiautomatics barked around me. The Angels were reaping their vengeance, and the Machine were returning fire. Bullets sparked off tombs and headstones. A granite splinter struck my cheek, and something warm trickled down my face.
As I rounded the statue on one side, the jacketed man appeared on the other. Crease and Kit stood directly between us. The gunman raised his arm and aimed.
Crease swung Kit around to shield himself.
“Get down!” I screamed. Sweat trickled from my hairline, and the wind felt cold on my face.
It took Kit a moment to realize his situation. Then he spun and brought his knee up hard between the reporter’s legs. Crease’s hand flew up and his mouth opened in a perfect O, but one hand held tight to Kit’s shirt.
Kit twisted to his right, but Crease yanked hard just as the shooter squeezed the trigger. A deafening sound reverberated off the bronze torso and wings above us. My nephew fell to the ground and lay still.
“No!” My scream was drowned by the sound of engines and gunfire.
Another thunderous roar. I saw a hole open in Crease’s chest, and a liquid river of red streamed down his front. He went rigid for a moment, then dropped next to Kit.
I sensed a figure moving around the monument, and threw myself forward to cover Kit. His hand moved feebly and a burgundy stain was spreading across his back.
The figure loomed larger and filled the gap between the angel and the neighboring tomb, feet spread, pistol extended in a two-handed grip toward the gunman above us. The muzzle flashed. Another deafening crack. The gunman’s eye exploded, blood bubbled from his mouth, and he crumpled to the ground beside me.
My eyes met eyes bluer than a butane flame. Then Ryan whirled and was gone.
At that instant Quickwater flung himself under the angel and dragged and shoved Kit and me toward the base. Crouching in front of the supine bodies of Crease and his assassin, he swept his gun in wide arcs, using the monument for cover.
I tried to swallow, but my mouth was a desert. Bullets strafed the earth beside me, and again I was conscious of the smell of dirt and flowers. Outside our tiny cave I could see figures running in all directions.
