The two men looked at each other, a conscious weighing of the priorities of each. Something in Khattak’s face seemed to set Lemaire at ease.
“Bon,” he said. “Let’s go.”
He led the way to his car, Khattak sliding into the passenger seat, puzzled by the look on Rachel’s face.
As Lemaire pulled out of the lot, he answered Khattak’s question. “No luck on the gun yet. We’ll have daylight soon; we’ll be able to search the creek.”
“What about your priest?”
Rachel leaned forward to answer him. “Hard to say what’s going on there, sir. There were some inconsistencies in his statement, but he might just be in shock. He’s been fingerprinted and his clothes have been taken for testing. Shoes, too.”
Khattak nodded. He was glad Rachel had caught that for herself. He held up his phone to show the others the text he’d been sent, but when he searched for it, it had vanished. Just like the first one he’d received.
And then he realized. Whoever had sent him those texts had used an encrypted service so that the texts would self-destruct after he’d clicked them open.
“What is it?”
Khattak turned to Lemaire. “There’s someone else we need to consider.” He explained about the texts, but Lemaire shrugged them off.
“You don’t have them?”
“I’ll screenshot the next one.”
“You think there will be another?”
“I’m certain of it. You know what messages like this can lead to.”
Lemaire’s deep voice rasped in his throat. “They’re like anonymous letters. They’re meant to assert control. Someone is toying with you, Khattak.”
Esa didn’t want to exaggerate his own sense of worry, but he was concerned by the threat to Diana.
“It might be wise to assign an officer to Diana Shehadeh for as long as she’s here.”
This time Lemaire parked in the emergency entrance, throwing his keys at a member of his team.
“I don’t have enough officers on the ground. Let’s wait and see, shall we? This might not be anything other than a college boy’s prank.”
“Some prank,” Rachel muttered.
But Khattak left it for now. If he pressed Lemaire, Lemaire might ask him to turn his phone over for forensic analysis, and he preferred that a member of his own team be the one to run that diagnostic.
* * *
Soufiane’s room was at the opposite end of the hall from Amadou Duchon’s. A pair of Sûreté officers were leaning over the reception desk flirting with the pretty nurse. Diana Shehadeh was outside the door, giving Soufiane’s family some privacy.
The trio of girls Khattak had noticed earlier was still there, the girl named Chloé hovering anxiously near the door, yet making no demands. Alizah was nowhere to be seen. The guards were still on Amadou’s door.
“Lemaire.” Khattak kept his voice down. “You don’t have a guard on Soufiane.”
Rachel had noticed, too. She’d taken up watch right outside Soufiane’s door.
Lemaire nodded at the reception desk. “My men are right there. He’s a victim, Khattak; he barely survived the attack. There’s no chance he did it himself.”
The words gave Esa pause. Had Lemaire really not considered the obvious?
“If he witnessed the attack, he’s a threat to the shooter. What if the shooter returns?”
Lemaire jerked his head in the direction of Amadou’s room.
“We have the shooter under guard.”
“Lemaire—”
Khattak pulled him aside. Diana Shehadeh was only steps away. If she caught wind of Lemaire’s words, the whole complexion of the case would change. Instead of a police investigation, they’d be dealing with a national scandal.
“What?” The other man sized Khattak up.
Khattak spoke each word slowly and deliberately.
“Amadou Duchon is not your shooter. Which means Soufiane is still at risk. If you don’t believe me, call in a profiler. Unless you already have one on your team.”
There’d been no time for a substantive team briefing yet because Lemaire’s INSET team was fully occupied: coordinating the search, processing the multiple crime scenes, dealing with the victims’ families, reporting to the mayor and the premier, and dealing with the press and the public. But they’d need to present a theory of the crime soon, from which their joint strategy would emerge. They needed a profiler at that meeting. Someone who would tell the members of Lemaire’s team, and Lemaire himself if necessary, what Khattak already knew.
The shooter was going to be a young white male, disaffected and full of rage, prey to radicalization. It wasn’t Amadou Duchon, who had tried to save his friend’s life. It was also unlikely to have been Étienne Roy, whose actions required an explanation but were not necessarily incriminating.
They had released him after his initial interview, but Maxime Thibault fit the profile.
But to have sat there in that café so calmly, just hours after the shooting, he would have had to be a psychopath. Yet there was something about the texts sent to Khattak that strongly suggested Maxime as the culprit.
But he would withhold judgment. It was much too early to guess.
More pressing at this moment was his need to determine exactly what kind of an officer Christian Lemaire was. Superintendent Killiam had left the scene. There was no one on the ground to enforce her directive, and if Lemaire was half as good at assessing character as Khattak considered himself to be, he’d know that Khattak was unlikely to make a personal complaint. He could railroad the investigation in a particular direction if he chose to and take on the MCLU’s opposition merely as a matter of course.
The tone of political discourse in the province suggested that such an outcome was possible. Except that Lemaire wasn’t a politician. He was a decorated police officer with a stellar record in homicide. There wasn’t a hint of corruption attached to Lemaire’s name.
Khattak waited for his response. He watched as Lemaire reassessed the officers he’d assigned to the floor. Seven team members in total: five men and two women, all of them white. Four were at Amadou’s door, two at the reception desk, and one was keeping an eye on the elevator. Lemaire strode to Amadou’s door, snapping orders to his team. The men at the reception desk snapped to attention at Soufiane’s door. Two of the women joined him, while a third officer took up a post by the elevator.
Lemaire beckoned to Khattak. He made no apology, gave no explanation for his actions. What he did say with a faint softening of his voice was, “Perhaps you’d like to speak to Youssef Soufiane first.”
19
Rachel moved out of the way of the Sûreté officers, glad that whatever Khattak had said had prompted a reconsideration. The ward should be locked down. She was worried that it wasn’t. Why were the girls dressed in black still permitted to hang about the elevator? Chloé with her pale face and hair and slight outbreak of acne along one cheek appeared to be the youngest. The others paid more attention to the Sûreté officers than they did to Chloé, who was hovering at the fringes of Youssef Soufiane’s room.
The young man’s family had left the room shortly after Khattak had entered. A small woman wearing a head scarf and a long, demure gown brushed past Chloé, deliberately pushing her aside. The woman’s husband tutted at the girl as he passed, while Soufiane’s other relatives swept by the girl as if she weren’t there.
Her trembling, “Mr. Soufiane,” was swallowed up by the silence. The hand she’d raised to attract their attention fell to her side. Rachel caught a glimpse of a small black tattoo on the inside of the girl’s wrist. It was a delicately drawn rendering of the fleur-de-lis on the flag of the province of Québec. The very tip of the lily was edged in red.
The girl’s personality was timid, but the tattoo at her wrist hinted at unexplored depths.
Rachel approached her, flashing her ID.
“Your name is Chloé, right?”
The girl glanced up at Rachel like a startled creat
ure in the wild.
“It’s Chloé Villeneuve, but how did you know?” she whispered in French.
Rachel switched to the same language.
“Alizah Siddiqui told me. You’re friends, right?”
Chloé’s slim shoulders relaxed, and when Rachel nodded over at the waiting area she followed her to a seat in the lounge. Chloé sat forward in her seat, a posture that allowed one wing of her hair to cover the acne on her cheek. Rachel felt a pang of sympathy. She’d been just as self-conscious once, never quite sure what to do with her hands or how to arrange her long limbs in a way that no one would notice.
“You’re here very late,” she said to Chloé. “Do you know Youssef well?”
“He’s my friend.”
Her blank despair said otherwise.
“Do you know if he’s going to be okay?”
Rachel looked back at the door. Khattak was still inside the room, Lemaire was speaking quietly to Diana Shehadeh in the corner. From what Rachel had learned about her, Diana would be negotiating access to Amadou Duchon. She wondered for a moment if Lemaire would give in, studying his reassuringly solid frame.
Sensing her interest, he glanced over at her. Rachel flushed, quickly turning back to Chloé.
“The surgery went well and now it’s just a matter of waiting to see how well his body recovers. He’s out of immediate danger, but he’s not all the way out of the woods.”
Chloé’s relief was palpable. She’d check with Khattak to see if the young man had asked for her.
“Is he your boyfriend?” Rachel asked directly.
Chloé shook her head, her thin lips trembling. “No. I wish he was, but Youssef said no, his family wouldn’t accept it. They immigrated from Morocco. Youssef was born here.”
“So what are his thoughts?” Rachel probed. “You’re a pretty girl; it must have been hard for him to turn you down.”
Hope flashed into Chloé’s eyes. “Do you think so?” she asked.
“Didn’t Youssef?”
Youssef Soufiane’s family had gathered in a corner of the waiting room, taking up the rest of the seats. Chloé flicked a nervous glance at them to see if they were listening. Youssef’s mother glared at the girl, frowning under her head scarf. But the young girl sitting beside her offered Chloé a hesitant smile.
He’s going to be okay, she mouthed.
Chloé sank back into her seat, the tension easing from her body. She pushed a lock of fair hair behind her ear.
“Youssef was really kind to me—just like Amadou is. He could have taken advantage; he knows that I’m … stuck … on him. That I like him, I mean. But he told me he wanted to marry a girl from his own background, one who can speak Arabic as well as French, and he didn’t want to waste my time by offering me anything less.”
Surprised, Rachel said, “You’re both young to have spoken of marriage.”
Chloé blushed. “I know. But that’s how they do it in his family. Either you’re with someone for the purpose of getting married, or you’re not with anyone at all. He likes me. But maybe not in that way.”
She risked a glance at Youssef’s mother.
“I think—I think if his mother liked me, it might have made a difference. But Youssef would never want to hurt his mother. That’s what makes him so different.” She gave Rachel a searching glance. “He’s not all about himself like most of the others.”
Rachel was touched by the sweetness of the tribute, innocently offered and steadfastly believed. It must have hurt a girl as tenderhearted as Chloé to have faced such a harsh rejection from the Soufiane clan.
“How did you meet Youssef—and Amadou, as well? You mentioned that you know him.”
“We’re all at school together. Different programs. Amadou takes night classes in the journalism program. Youssef is studying engineering.”
“And you?”
“Graphic design.” She turned her wrist to show Rachel the tattoo. “I designed this for our group.”
“Your group?”
Suddenly abashed, Chloé dropped her chin to her chest. “The girls over by the elevator. They’re my friends. We thought we’d get one together—they asked me to design it.”
“Does it mean anything?” Rachel asked, pointing to the tattoo.
Chloé offered her a shy smile.
“It’s the fleur-de-lis,” she said, as if someone outside Québec wouldn’t know that. “And we’re the Lilies of Anjou.” She blushed again. “It’s just a silly clubhouse name. It doesn’t really mean anything. It gives us an excuse to hang out and talk about things we like.”
“Such as?”
Chloe sounded embarrassed. “Oh, you know. The power of the feminine in nature, and so on. We sometimes meet in the woods and try to commune.”
Though the words were offered without much confidence, they did suggest a reason for the lily tattoo as a symbol of the same.
“And was that all?” Rachel persisted, trying to get a better sense of who the Lilies were.
Chloe’s renewed blush was so vivid that Rachel guessed that the group of young women most likely confided their secrets in one another. Including their romantic inclinations.
Which brought her back to Youssef.
“How did you find out that Youssef had been shot?”
“We were supposed to meet Youssef and Amadou at the mosque after prayers. We usually hang out in the evening.”
“You mean with your friends, the Lilies of Anjou?”
Chloé shook her head. “Me and Alizah. She’s our friend, too. The others came to the mosque later. After the news had spread.”
Rachel stared at her, trying not to betray her intense interest in the statement. Lemaire had said there had been no witnesses at the scene, apart from Amadou and the priest.
“Chloé, am I the first police officer you’ve spoken to tonight? Has anyone else taken your statement?”
Chloé looked confused. She chewed a strand of hair between her lips. “No. Should they have?”
Keeping her voice even, Rachel asked, “What time did you arrive at the mosque tonight? Before or after the shooting?”
Chloé paused, perhaps alerted by the note of suppressed excitement in Rachel’s voice.
“I heard it,” she said. “But I wasn’t there. I was just making my way down the hill. And I heard these sounds. Rat-a-tat, rat-a-tat. I’m sorry I don’t know how to describe it. Just that sound—like muffled firecrackers, I think. Very close together, very loud. So I began to run.”
At Rachel’s questioning look, she added, “I knew it wasn’t firecrackers.” And then with a deep sigh, she sank all the way down in her seat and added, “We have a problem in this town.”
* * *
No kidding, Rachel thought. Khattak had already used the terms “hate crime” and “terrorist attack” to describe the shooting at the mosque. Now someone turned up the volume of the television in the waiting room, and as the prime minister appeared on the screen every head in the waiting area swiveled to watch. Rachel had met the prime minister earlier this year at a dinner at Rideau Hall. He was clearly shaken by the news, his statement clear and concise. He called the attack a cowardly act of terror and urged the nation to come together.
Looking around the ward—at the Sûreté officers, at members of the Soufiane family, at Diana Shehadeh and the Lilies of Anjou—Rachel didn’t see much faith in the prime minister’s assurances. Diana Shehadeh looked angry, the officers skeptical, and Youssef’s family simply bewildered.
“What kind of problem?” Rachel asked Chloé.
“Listen,” Chloé said, shrinking from another hostile glance from Youssef’s mother. “I don’t think we should talk about this here. Do you have a card? Can I call you?”
Starting to feel a little bleary-eyed, Rachel handed her card to Chloé.
“I’ll tell you what you want to know, but will you let me know if you hear anything about Youssef? Like his visiting hours or anything?” She cast a longing glance at his door as she moved t
o the elevator. Rachel had the feeling that Chloé was holding something back.
Rachel dropped her voice. “Is it about that group that calls themselves the Wolf Allegiance?”
Chloé hesitated before the open doors. The two girls dressed in black joined her in the elevator, blocking her from Rachel’s view. Were they simply being protective, as friends who belonged in a small, closed group? Or did they have something to hide?
She didn’t have a chance to hear Chloé Villeneuve’s answer.
20
“Youssef,” Esa said. “Do you feel up to talking with me? Are you comfortable speaking in English, or should I request a translator?”
The young man in the bed had a face that was pale beneath the even brown tones of his skin. He was younger than Esa had expected, his densely clustered curls giving him the appearance of a boy, an appearance enhanced by his expression of youthful wonder. He studied Esa for several moments, then answered him in Arabic.
Esa demurred in the same language, expressing his disappointment that he didn’t speak it. The few phrases he knew were not enough to sustain the conversation they needed to have.
Youssef switched to English, his fluency greater than Esa’s in French, the slurring of the words along his tongue suggesting the drowsing effect of medication.
Gently, Esa took him over events at the mosque, easing him into describing the moment of the attack. It had happened so quickly that Youssef wasn’t sure what he’d seen, whether he’d been shot first or last. His respiration began to accelerate, his breath rasping in his lungs.
“I was in prayer,” he said. “I didn’t see. Who shoots someone in the back?” He choked over the words. “When I fell, I heard people screaming. I turned my head to the side to see. I heard footsteps. I thought the shooter was coming closer to make sure I was dead.”
Intent now, Esa asked, “Did you see him?”
Youssef hesitated, as if he was making sense of what he’d witnessed. “I saw—someone dressed in black. I saw—Abubekr. He was trying to protect Adam. It happened so fast. The shooter stood over Abubekr. He shot them both—just like a spray. The bullets scattered everywhere; it was so loud that I felt it … here.”
A Deadly Divide Page 8
