A Deadly Divide

by Ausma Zehanat Khan

  Without a word, she removed her police ID from her bag and held it up under his nose. She was tall and strongly built herself; she didn’t back up a single step.

  “Community Policing?” His head swiveled in Khattak’s direction; then his penetrating blue eyes were back on Rachel’s face. “Who’s he, then? God’s gift to the SQ?”

  Rachel looked Lemaire over. “What’s the matter? Been hoarding that title to yourself?”

  There was a short pause and then Lemaire laughed, emphasizing the crow’s-feet at the corners of his eyes. He made the same survey of Rachel that she’d just made of him, taking note of the jacket she had folded over one arm.

  “You don’t like being stuffed into a suit any more than I do.”

  She supposed that was true. His jacket was straining the seams of his shoulders, and his tie had been yanked loose to hang around his collar.

  She shrugged. “It’s just another kind of uniform.” After a moment, she added, “Inspector.”

  He made an impatient gesture, his eyes searching past her head, taking note of the growing chaos at the edges of the cordon.

  “Call me Lemaire; everyone does.” He pushed Rachel’s phone back into her hand. “Never seen anything like this, though Christ knows we’ve been heading to this moment for a while.” His eyes flicked across Rachel’s face, making an assessment he didn’t share. He nodded at the far edge of the parking lot where two trailers had been set up head to head, bracketed by ambulances. The blue and red lights cut across the parking lot, the sirens long since silenced.

  “Incident room,” he snapped. “Team meeting. Join us, Sergeant Getty.”

  He was scrupulously attentive to her rank considering he’d just told her to call him by his name. She wondered how much training he’d had to undergo when it came to interacting with women officers. She was also curious about his lack of an accent. He spoke like an Anglophone, but his name was distinctively French. Christian Lemaire. A bearish brute of a man with a weathered face and an undisciplined mane of hair, but one she would be wise not to underestimate. She followed him to the incident room, reserving judgment for the moment.

  4

  Christian Lemaire was a forceful presence on a unit bristling with egos. Within hours of the shooting, command of the operation had been assumed by the provincial Integrated National Security Enforcement Team known as INSET. Officers from other law enforcement agencies, including Rachel and Khattak from Community Policing, and members of the Sûreté, had now been seconded to INSET, to function as a single unit. In a room crowded with men jockeying for position, Killiam and Rachel were the only women.

  Every woman who served in law enforcement was used to similar circumstances. Killiam took control of the room without noticeable effort, and when she was finished the officers in the room were taking notes. Her voice brisk, she laid out the operational procedures to be followed.

  “What we must determine up front is whether we are investigating a mass shooting or conducting a counter-terrorism operation.” She nodded at Lemaire. “Inspector Lemaire remains in command and all findings are to be channeled to me through him. Nothing gets leaked to the press, I repeat, nothing.” She examined each face in the room. “We have had no issues with unreliable team members in English Canada; I expect no less from officers in Québec.”

  Well, Rachel thought, that’s one way of dealing with simmering Anglo-Francophone tensions. Dealing it a death blow at the start with a challenge to national pride.

  Killiam called Khattak and Rachel up to the front of the room and introduced them. Letting her glasses slip to the tip of her nose, she examined each man in the room, ending with Christian Lemaire.

  “These Community Policing officers are here to deal with a community in grief and to head off an extremely volatile situation. You’ve seen Diana Shehadeh outside. She represents the Muslim Civil Liberties Union, and she will be waiting for us to make our first mistake. She’ll try to control the narrative of this shooting, but our priority is to find out who is responsible and to hold them to account. Now.” Killiam placed a firm hand on Rachel’s shoulder. “Make no mistake. These are my officers. They represent me. Inspector Khattak is second-in-command, and he will be working closely with Inspector Lemaire. Any obstruction of his work or questioning of his loyalties will not be tolerated. Understand that this shooting is a crime against the Muslim community in Saint-Isidore-du-Lac; have I made myself clear?”

  There was a rumble of assent.

  Killiam turned the meeting over to Lemaire.

  “I leave it in your capable hands.” She pointed at Rachel. “Come with me.”

  Quashing her sense of alarm, Rachel followed Killiam to the exit.

  “Are you taking me off this?” she asked when they were alone.

  Like Killiam, she kept her back to the trailer and her gaze focused on the crowds. Family members were in the lot, their grief and heartbreak palpable. Rachel scanned the crowd. To the west of the parking lot a trio of young women dressed in identical trench coats pressed against the cordon. A pair of female officers held them back. Two of the young women were strikingly similar in appearance, with long fair hair and blue eyes. The third woman’s hair was cut in choppy black waves that were subdued by a rhinestone headband.

  Killiam cleared her throat. “Far from it, Sergeant Getty. I want you to monitor every aspect of the situation and report back to me. If there is insubordination of the kind Inspector Khattak faced over the case in Algonquin, I want to know it immediately. No incident is too small for you to bring to my attention. This is not a case where I expect either of you to fail.”

  “Understood, ma’am.” Rachel tipped her head, considering. “Are you expecting trouble from Inspector Lemaire?”

  “Not at all. I paired Khattak with Lemaire deliberately. I can’t think of an officer in whom I have more faith.”

  Rachel was glad to hear it. It made a nice change from working under a cloud, even if she and Lemaire had gotten off to a bad start.

  “That’s not all, Sergeant Getty. I want you to report to me about Inspector Khattak.”

  Rachel frowned. “I’m not spying on Khattak for you.”

  Killiam’s response was freezing. “I’m not asking you to. I’m asking you to consider whether this particular investigation may be more difficult than others assigned to your unit. More personal for Inspector Khattak. He would never ask to be reassigned.” She sighed. “He treats each case like personal penance. If it seems to you to be weighing on him too deeply, that’s something I want to know. We have plans for Khattak. We don’t want to burn him out.”

  She didn’t elaborate further and Rachel didn’t dare ask. She was taken aback by the trust being placed in her and was eager to prove herself worthy of it. Seeing her commitment in her face, Killiam unbent to say, “Rachel. There may be some unexpected … unpleasantness … on this team. I know you’ve been there before, but as your superior officer, I’ll treat any complaint you make with utmost seriousness. No matter who it’s against.”

  A hesitant smile broke across Rachel’s face. She’d never had a woman at her back.

  “Thank you, ma’am; that means a lot.” She glanced across at the crowd, some of whom were holding placards that featured appalling statements. “But that’s not where I suspect most of the trouble will be.”

  5

  ÉLISE DOUCET’S BLOG

  [Translated from the French]

  ÉLISE DOUCET

  Montréal, Québec

  To insist on a responsible immigration policy is not racist. We have a right to know who is coming here and what they stand for. Is it fair to bring people here and put them in detention centers at public expense when we can’t even care for our own? There are people who need government services more than ever, the elderly, the disabled … meanwhile those who hate us come to live here on our dime.

  Our government brings them and then tells us we must be the ones to adapt when they refuse to respect us. They must adapt to us: to our cul
ture, our language, our values. Does saying this make me racist or does it make me a responsible citizen of Québec?

  You asked about the Muslims. I am only against the extremists, the ones who hide their faces. I am not a radical. I am not for La Meute or the Sons of Odin or the Storm Alliance, though I do wish we could work together … maybe have a dialogue.

  The people of Québec are always kind and generous. But when you make fools of us we get angry. And that’s when we fight back.

  * * *

  COMMENTS:

  CANDLELITVIGIL: 100% respect to you for your words. I am not racist either. I am someone who doesn’t want to lose everything I love.

  EDITH SAUCIER: I agree that we should not fight amongst ourselves. We need La Meute and Storm Alliance, and now that this has happened in Saint-Isidore, the Wolf Allegiance needs to start talking with them again. What is your position on the Wolves?

  ÉLISE DOUCET: I am for whoever wants to work to build a better Québec.

  EDITH SAUCIER: They are decent French boys who have been shamefully maligned.

  ABEAUTIFULMERCY: Decent French girls, too.

  ÉLISE DOUCET: In the new Québec, everyone’s a racist.

  CANDLELITVIGIL: We need to change that. We need to change the way they talk about us.

  ABEAUTIFULMERCY: The change has already come.

  * * *

  6

  The vast machinery of law enforcement was put to work. There were crime scene technicians on the scene, mortuary vans waiting to take bodies to the morgue, grief counselors keeping family members of those who hadn’t returned home away from the scene using a wait-and-see vocabulary, senior officers conferring in government offices with local and provincial politicians, guards at the local station with strict instructions on the transfer of the priest Étienne Roy, others at the hospital with those who had been wounded in the shooting and taken away before Esa and Rachel’s arrival, and armed guards outside the room of one victim in particular.

  Killiam was dealing with politicians. Khattak and Rachel were en route to the hospital with Lemaire.

  “There’s more,” Lemaire told them abruptly, leaning on his horn to clear the road ahead.

  Rachel leaned forward in her seat. “More what?”

  “There’s another crime scene. Well, it’s part of the same scene, but we cleared it before you got here. That’s why the press arrived so quickly. That’s why your friend Diana Shehadeh is here.” He said this to Khattak, but the words didn’t have the effect Rachel was anticipating; she thought Khattak might interpret them as an insult and choose to respond in kind. Instead, his face had gone pale—but then, he often made connections that weren’t apparent to Rachel.

  “The shooter began in the women’s section?”

  Lemaire turned left, his car slowing down on the long climb up the hill.

  “How did you know that?” He made no effort to mask the unease in his voice.

  “We were called to the scene because of our expertise.”

  Khattak’s tone and words were neutral, but Rachel knew the undercurrents all too well.

  “Yes, the women’s section. It’s in the basement. Four more bodies. We processed them first. They’re already at the morgue.”

  “So the shooter came in the side entrance.”

  Khattak’s voice had thickened slightly. He turned to look out the window.

  “Back entrance. This is not the most enlightened community.” Lemaire made no apology for his statement. When Khattak didn’t react, neither did Rachel. She’d learned to hold her tongue, to wait for the opportune moment to speak. And she kept Martine Killiam’s assessment of Lemaire in mind. She’d called him an excellent police officer, one of the best she knew. So Rachel would wait to see if that was true. She asked a different question, hoping to confound Lemaire’s expectations.

  “If the shooter hit the women’s prayer area first, why didn’t the men have enough time to escape?”

  Lemaire drew into the hospital’s parking lot. The receiving area was clogged with ambulances, their lurid lights flashing against the gray concrete. It struck Rachel that for a scene of such urgency and chaos there was a cathedral hush around events.

  “Christ,” Rachel whispered. “How many were wounded in the shooting?”

  “Another dozen. The chief surgeon has warned us that many of them will die. You know what an assault rifle does to a person’s body—the wounds are too severe. And to answer your other question, the basement is insulated. It has no windows, and the door and rafters are solid.”

  Khattak shook his head. “They would still have heard an assault rifle.”

  Lemaire’s interest in Khattak sharpened.

  “You’re right,” he said. “But each of the four women in the basement was killed execution-style. A single gunshot to the head.”

  “Back or front?” Khattak asked.

  “Front. Just like the one in the upstairs hallway.”

  “It was personal, then. The shooter wanted to look them in the eye. Do you have anything else in terms of victim profile?”

  Lemaire had locked his vehicle and they were headed to the hospital concourse, slipping past the cordon set up by team members to hold back nonessential personnel.

  “Too soon. It’s too soon for any of that. The women were different ages, different backgrounds. The only thing they have in common is that they all wore the veil.”

  “Head scarf or face veil?”

  At the elevator, Lemaire paused to consider her. He didn’t say, as she expected, What difference does it make? He rocked back on his heels in the lift.

  “So that’s why they called you. Because of the politics here.”

  “That’s not an answer, sir.”

  “Lemaire,” he reminded her. “I don’t let anyone call me sir.” He went on to answer her question. “We could see their faces, so I suppose they wore head scarves. Possibly that made them a target, or maybe they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “No.” Khattak’s response was definitive. “A head scarf worn in the mosque doesn’t necessarily translate into one worn outside the mosque. We’ll need to check that out as it could speak to targeting. But execution-style killing is personal, regardless. We can assume the man in the hallway was killed in the same manner to buy the shooter … or shooters … time to use the assault rifle. Which brings us to the subject of your priest, a subject we need to discuss.”

  The elevator doors opened on to a scene of chaos. Though triage was still taking place in the emergency department, the surgical ward was packed with medical staff, police officers, and family members.

  Lemaire cut the discussion short.

  “You think this is a hate crime, eh?” There was something needling about his tone.

  Khattak replied evenly, “I think it’s an act of terror. That’s why INSET is here.”

  Lemaire ran his hand over the bristles on his chin. He nodded at a passageway that led off the main reception area. At its end, four armed guards were stationed outside a door.

  “What on earth—”

  It was Rachel’s turn to be cut off.

  “We have a suspect under guard in a hospital room. He’s being treated for shock.” He shifted his body closer to Khattak, sizing him up head to head. “We caught him running from the mosque after police arrived at the scene and began lockdown. When we caught him, he had blood all over his clothes, and on his face and hands.” He jabbed Khattak’s chest with a finger. “If this was a hate crime, or an act of terrorism as you say, why was he shouting, ‘Allahu Akbar’?”

  Khattak took a step back. But he did so in a way that suggested nothing more than distaste at Lemaire’s unwarranted encroachment.

  “Who was he? Who did you arrest when it was your priest who was found with the rifle in his hands?”

  “A young black man we’ve identified as Amadou Duchon.”

  “You identified him?”

  Despite the press of people waiting to speak to him, Lemaire’s at
tention focused on Khattak. “Fine, then. He identified himself to police.”

  Khattak was shaking his head. He pulled Lemaire a little aside.

  “So you’ve arrested a young black man, while the priest you found with the weapon in his hands hasn’t been processed or arrested?”

  Lemaire fired up, at once. “There’s no prejudice here. Not in my department. The boy ran, he was arrested.” He caught the sharp edge of Khattak’s smile, the instant of recognition, and his eyes flared in response. He nodded to himself, clasping his large hands together.

  “All right. You’ve made your point, Inspector Khattak. I won’t make assumptions about you, and you won’t make them about the Sûreté du Québec.” He glanced over at Rachel. “You should have warned me about your boss.”

  Rachel flashed him an insincere smile.

  “The superintendent said you’re good at what you do. I figured you’d find out for yourself.”

  Khattak interrupted. “Amadou Duchon. Where is he?”

  Lemaire pointed to the door under guard. “He’s been cautioned and interviewed.”

  “By you?” Khattak’s eyebrows went up.

  Lemaire looked wary. “Preliminary intake only.”

  “And did he confess?”

  “No.”

  “Then I’d like to speak to him. Alone.”

  Khattak was heading toward the room under guard when a commotion broke out at the elevator. A young woman’s voice called out Rachel’s name.

  Rachel turned at once. For a moment, memory slashed through her, sharp and sickening, of a beautiful, blank face on a table at the morgue.

  The face looking back at her was just as beautiful but very much alive.

  She hurried over to the elevator and clasped the young woman’s hand urgently in her own.