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A Deadly Divide

Page 12

by Ausma Zehanat Khan


  From the way his brows drew together, Rachel could tell that Khattak was thinking the same thing that she was. The vigil would require police protection. If Étienne Roy was not the shooter, the suspect was still at large. And what better opportunity for the shooter to make his mark than by disrupting a peaceful vigil.

  “Even if we don’t advertise it, people will still show up. This just allows us to do something to honor the memory of our friends.”

  Khattak’s attention was distracted by the press of students on the other side of the glass. A few young men—tall, broad-shouldered, physically fit—were making obscene gestures at Amadou, who ignored them, going about the business of setting up the show. One was staring at Alizah with a fixed, unwavering gaze. Khattak turned back to the others. He spoke to Amadou.

  “You’ll wait for me to attend the vigil. I’ll escort you both personally.”

  Rachel watched as a silent communication passed between the two men.

  “We’ll wait,” he agreed. He indicated the students on the other side of the glass with a sharp lift of his chin. “But what you’re seeing out there is nothing new. It’s not something you can protect us from after the two of you leave.”

  He made the possibility of their departure sound imminent, irreversible. Beneath his calm expression, Rachel sensed a very real despair. Had he been expecting more from them? Something he hadn’t articulated because he didn’t know how to put it into words?

  “You just have to deal with it. It happens every day.”

  Khattak shook his head, but he wasn’t discounting Amadou’s words or his experience. He was bringing them back to the matter at hand, the matter that was weighing on their minds.

  “Not like this,” he said. “A mass murder at a mosque is not something that happens every day. And God forbid it should ever happen again.”

  He turned on his heel suddenly and banged a fist on the glass, holding up his ID. The students quickly scattered.

  “Alizah.” His tone was peremptory. “You said you heard a rumor about Thibault’s plans for tonight. Where? How did you hear it?”

  She didn’t speak, fiddling with her braid, suddenly seeming much younger than her age.

  “It wasn’t a request, Alizah.”

  Sparks flashed in the young woman’s eyes. She wasn’t used to this side of Khattak, and Rachel had to admit she hadn’t had much experience of it, either. He was cold, concise, focused, sparing little time for her feelings.

  Firming her lips, Alizah said, “It’s not my secret to tell.”

  Khattak’s gaze switched to Amadou, who shrugged.

  “Émilie Péladeau warned me.”

  “She’s a student here?”

  A glance passed between Amadou and Alizah. Then with a hint of discomfort, he nodded.

  But there was more to it. Rachel had looked over the list of names Christian Lemaire had collected—family members and friends who were anxiously awaiting news at the hospital.

  “She was at the hospital last night,” she put in. “Is she related to one of the victims?”

  But she already had a sense of the answer. “She was with Chloé, right? One of the girls dressed in black?”

  They both nodded.

  “That seemed like something,” Rachel pressed. “The black clothes, Chloé desperate for news about Youssef. Why were they there? Why do they have an ear on the ground for trouble from Thibault?”

  Somewhat stiffly, Alizah answered, “The girls you saw last night—they have their own group. They call themselves the Lilies of Anjou. Sometimes they hang out with Maxime.”

  Rachel’s eyebrows shot up. That wasn’t quite the vibe she’d picked up from the girls at the hospital. They hadn’t seemed anything like arm candy for a group of neo-Nazi thugs.

  “But Chloé is crazy about Youssef. Why would she have any sympathy for Thibault?”

  Alizah hesitated. “Everyone on campus knows Max. He has a charming side and he’s really popular. People get drawn into that before they find out anything else. Once they do, it can be … difficult … to refuse his friendship. Or to figure out a way to cut loose.”

  She sounded as though she knew something about the subject, as if it was a reason for her to stand by the young women she’d just described.

  “And Émilie Péladeau?” Khattak interjected. “The source of the rumor? What was she doing at the hospital?”

  Amadou’s gaze fell to his hands. He answered with an air of palpable embarrassment, flicking Alizah a discomfited look.

  “We might as well tell the truth. Émilie was there for me.”

  26

  Amadou gave them directions to the office of the dean of the university. Their conversation wasn’t finished, but Lemaire had just called with an update.

  Rachel waited as Khattak listened to the other man on the phone, then laid out his own plans for the morning. Covering the phone with his hand, he spoke to Rachel: “Étienne Roy has given Lemaire permission to search both the church and his house for the handgun. He’s asking if you want to go with him. He’ll collect you on the way.”

  Surprised and a little disarmed, Rachel agreed, approving of the concise manner in which Khattak laid out his concerns. Khattak put his phone on speaker, treating Rachel to Lemaire’s litany of curses. The vigil was the last thing they needed, but if they tried to shut it down outside the mosque, mourners would find another place to gather. He concurred with Khattak that they needed to mobilize an immediate response. When pressed on the safety of Amadou and Alizah, Lemaire advised that it was better to speak in person, after the team regrouped.

  “I’ll meet you at the station in an hour,” Khattak said, terminating the call.

  Outside the dean’s office, he asked Rachel to take out her notebook, rattling off a list of tasks that included setting up a meeting with the dean, another with Diana Shehadeh, and the task of tracking down Émilie Péladeau.

  “We need background on this group—the Lilies of Anjou. Also, I want a list of the incidents reported to the dean, and the action the university took in response. When you have that list, get it to Diana Shehadeh and ask her to be at that meeting. Oh, and one more thing, Rachel.”

  Rachel looked up, her pen flying over her notepad. “Sir?”

  “Make sure Gaff’s settled in and connect him with Constable Benoit. There’s a task I’ll need him to do for me, but I don’t have the evidence yet.”

  Perplexed, Rachel stared at him. There was something about his expression that warned her not to inquire further.

  “What about you, sir? Where are you headed?” She tried to suppress the anxiety in her voice.

  “I’m going to see Pascal Richard.”

  Dismayed, Rachel said, “You won’t be able to shut him down. It’s a freedom of speech issue, sir.”

  She could tell that her boss was choosing his words with care—reminding himself that Rachel wasn’t the enemy, that she wasn’t responsible for the anger simmering just beneath his impassive exterior.

  “It’s strange, isn’t it, how much latitude hate is granted, the insidious way it creeps in under the protection of the law. People like Thibault are given the benefit of the doubt far more often than we are.”

  By “we” he didn’t mean police officers. It was obvious he meant members of minority communities—communities he identified with. Rachel couldn’t fault his conclusions. Freedom of speech as a value was nearly sacrosanct. And under its broad umbrella, groups like the Wolf Allegiance had not only come into being—they were flourishing.

  Not a lot of consolation to the families of the dead.

  Had it crossed over? she wondered. Speech into action, hate into blood?

  Khattak had used a similar phrase once when discussing the Christopher Drayton case—the case of a Bosnian Serb war criminal … a fugitive from justice who’d ended up in Canada.

  How quickly the violent ideals of ultra-nationalism led to hate, how quickly hate to blood.

  She struggled to clear her thoughts. This was
Québec, la belle province, not a distant land torn by a war fueled by nationalist identities. This was a blip, an anomaly—something that had happened once before with the shooting of young women at École Polytechnique—and now there was a new lone wolf, this one possibly radicalized online.

  She was convinced that the shooter would turn out to be a white male between the ages of twenty and forty, who was deeply disaffected, without genuine community ties, and who might have a history of domestic violence.

  This case was ugly because of the target—the shooter at École Polytechnique had targeted women engineering students, a different kind of ugliness—but it wasn’t emblematic of the greater violence she was beginning to believe Khattak feared.

  Though she couldn’t discount that it had happened in Saint-Isidore, or its infamous Code of Conduct, the code that may have been responsible for lighting the flame.

  Khattak was waiting for something more from her, but Rachel didn’t know what else to say, so left it at, “Just be careful, sir. I bet this guy has a lot of experience riling people up. Don’t let Richard mess with your head, sir. Don’t let him get to you.”

  Khattak’s razor-sharp smile was thoroughly unsettling.

  “I’m the one who’s planning to get to him.”

  * * *

  Leaving Rachel to team up with Lemaire, Khattak sorted through the details of the case in his mind, mentally arranging a list of questions to prioritize. The issue of first importance was not only to uncover the location of the missing handgun but also to determine how two such weapons had fallen into the hands of the unknown shooter. Gun control laws in both the province and the nation were strict. The question of access to the weapons used in the shooting suggested a high degree of premeditation and a deliberate attempt by the shooter to cover his tracks.

  They were looking for a psychopath, perhaps. The executions in the basement of the mosque represented cold, controlled rage. But what of the upstairs shooting—the spray of bullets and the hate embodied in the message drawn on Youssef Soufiane’s back? Still controlled, Khattak thought. Operating under pressure in a high-stakes environment, the shooter had kept his calm and exited from the scene safely.

  And if he was able to project himself as undisturbed by the night’s events—if he was in some way celebrating them even now—that meant he might have the coolness of nerve required to return to the scene tonight, to keep tabs on the investigation, or to surveil the planned vigil.

  Even to attack again, if he was willing to accept the much greater risk of being caught.

  Who had the self-possession to carry out such an attack and also have access to a gun linked to organized crime? Khattak ran over a list of names in his mind: Roy and Amadou at the scene. Thibault or the Lilies of Anjou by implication, though he wasn’t certain of the role either had played. As important as the timeline on the night of the shootings was the need for a timeline that tracked the incidents mentioned by Alizah and Amadou from the passing of the Code of Conduct to the shooting at the mosque last night. There had to be something there—a trigger they’d overlooked. And there was also the question of the role Pascal Richard had played.

  Which reminded him of something he’d forgotten to ask Rachel. But better to go through Gaffney directly. Pulling into the parking lot at the radio station, he called Gaffney and explained what he wanted. It was mind-numbing, time-consuming work, but there was a reasonable possibility that Gaffney’s efforts would yield a lead.

  He ended the call, following the directions to the third floor, where Richard was busy in a program meeting. The receptionist pointed Khattak to a waiting area where a student intern crossed his path, a young man with a brush cut, dressed like another of Maxime Thibault’s acolytes, but with an attitude of pleasant cooperation. Discovering that Khattak wasn’t fluent in French, he switched politely to English.

  “Do you save the recordings of Monsieur Richard’s call-in shows? On tapes or discs, I’m not sure of the technology involved?”

  The intern, whose name was André Martin, nodded. “But they only go back as far as six months.”

  Not long enough, Khattak thought. But it was a beginning.

  “I’ll need those recordings. I’d appreciate if you’d have them delivered to my car.”

  André’s mouth gaped. He looked perturbed by the request; he’d guessed the connection between Khattak’s request and the shooting last night at the mosque.

  “I’m not sure … I don’t think I can decide that. You’d have to ask my boss.”

  Khattak gave him a quizzical glance.

  “Do you think he might have some reason to refuse?”

  Now André seemed truly alarmed, stumbling over his words as he searched for an appropriate response.

  Surprising Khattak, he answered at last, “If the reason you’re asking is because of last night, I think he’d mind very much.” He cast a furtive glance behind him at the door. “Pascal is not the type to take the blame for anything on his own shoulders.” With a sudden flash of perception, he added, “He’s not smart enough to understand the obvious. It’s all a game to him.”

  Khattak watched the young man closely. “It’s not a question of conviction, then? Nor of deep-rooted ideology?”

  André didn’t hesitate. “Not at all.” He gestured expansively at the closed door. “Pascal is a clown.”

  “And yourself?” Khattak canvased the young man’s haircut and clothing again. “Would you say you subscribe to a particular set of convictions?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You work for Monsieur Richard,” Khattak said. “You’re sporting a certain form of dress. It’s … suggestive.”

  André swallowed, his large Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. He looked as though he were about to cry, a sensitivity at odds with his appearance.

  “No matter what Pascal stands for, this is a good internship. A step up the ladder for me. I don’t share Pascal’s views, whatever his actual views may be. And I can assure you, I’m not one of Thibault’s Wolves. I’m a military cadet—a certain professionalism is expected.”

  The door behind André opened and, very much on his dignity, he excused himself from Khattak’s presence.

  In other circumstances, Khattak would have been abashed and offered the young man an apology. In this case, he didn’t. He was weighing André’s denial against his unexpected revelation: as a military cadet, André would have had extensive training in the use of firearms.

  * * *

  Pascal Richard leaned back in his chair, stretching his arms out behind his head, blocking the view from a suite of windows—and what a view it was. Perched above the lake, framed by a blossoming forest of maples and alders, where the cool gray water rolled over a stony ground in an undulating rhythm, the picture window opened on to a terrace that was set with a bistro table and matching chairs. A window nearly as large on a perpendicular wall gave him a view into the next-door studio, where a different broadcast was airing. From a wall of windows, the studio shared the spectacular view of the lake and the wraparound outdoor terrace.

  With its framed vanity photographs and awards and impeccably chosen furniture, the interior of Richard’s office was immaculate.

  Khattak wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting—a senior figure who may have served as a mentor to Maxime Thibault, well-groomed and self-possessed, perhaps. Or a loud, brash personality along the colorful lines of Canadian icon Don Cherry. Instead, Pascal Richard more closely resembled Cherry’s longtime counterpart on Hockey Night in Canada, the likable Ron MacLean.

  Richard wore a pinstriped shirt with cuff links. His brown hair had a natural wave and was worn loose and long in the front. His attractive face was permanently creased with laugh lines, and he looked Khattak over with an unconcealed and vivid interest. He was fluently bilingual, and the resonant timbre of his voice was perfectly suited to his work.

  He didn’t look anything like Khattak’s conception of a purveyor of mainstream hate. But appearances didn’t
mean anything, as Khattak had learned again during his last case investigating two murders on the Greek islands. He skipped over the preliminaries and asked Richard to provide an account of his actions the previous evening, curious to see the man’s response to a direct approach.

  “You think I carried out the shooting?”

  “Did you?”

  “Hell, no.” He gestured at a trophy on his desk in the shape of an oversized microphone. “That’s the only weapon I require.”

  Khattak found this answer revealing.

  “Who do you consider your enemy, Monsieur Richard?” He rested his arms on Richard’s desk, a tactic designed to encroach on Richard’s territory. “Who are you armed against?”

  To his surprise, Richard mimicked the gesture, leaning in close enough for Khattak to smell his aftershave—woodsy and pleasant like Richard. He took his time looking Khattak over, a wicked spark in his eyes.

  “Not who you’re imagining,” he said easily. “Not someone like you.”

  Khattak was caught off-guard. By both the implied intimacy of the remark and the suggestion that Richard had recognized him. Richard seized his advantage.

  “Come on,” he said with a grin. “You’re famous, Inspector Khattak. You have a legion of female fans. Maybe some men, too. Meeting you in person, I see why.”

  It was a flirtatious comment, offered by a man with considerable charm of his own. Esa wondered if Richard thought he would be rattled by the other man’s interest. He wasn’t, though he shifted back in his chair.

  “Look,” Richard continued. “I’m deeply sorry about what happened at the mosque. But it is in no way connected to my program or to me. I was at a bar last night—having a drink with friends from work.”

  Khattak remembered André.

  “Is your intern old enough to drink?”

  “Who, André? Yes, he’s old enough. We invited him along.”

  “Was he with you the entire night?”

  “The entire night?” There was a swift spark of interest in Richard’s eyes. “I couldn’t say for certain—everyone has their own thing, pool, darts, chatting up someone who shows an interest. He came with us. I’m not sure when he left.”

 

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