Bones to Ashes (28 page)

I was opening a new folder when Hippo spoke.

“What the hell good’s this doing? I say we slide this garbage to NCECC and get our asses back on the street.”

The new folder was untitled. It contained eight files. I double-clicked the first and the video began loading.

“One familiar face.” Ryan’s fingers drummed the table. I could tell he wanted a cigarette. “One background detail.”

“Yeah?” The rusty voice dripped irritation. “What’s that give us?”

Ryan tipped his chair and thrust his feet onto the tabletop. “Right now, it’s our best shot at a lead.”

“Cormier was a perv. He’s dead.” Hippo took his zillionth antacid hit.

“He took photos of Quincy and Sicard.” Ryan wasn’t being goaded by Hippo’s ill temper.

“Hell-o. The guy was a photographer.”

Was Hippo being serious? Or playing devil’s advocate?

“Cormier may lead us to Bastarache,” I said. “Isn’t it your life’s dream to nail that bastard?”

The monitor went black, then a scene opened.

The camera is focused on a door.

“We’ve got nothing.” Hippo shifted and vinyl popped.

“We’ve got the contact sheet.”

“It’s older than Astroturf.”

“The
child
on that contact sheet was my friend. She worked in Bastarache’s house.”

“At the gray dawn of history.”

“When she was murdered!”

“Let’s concentrate.” Ryan. Sharp.

A girl appears in the doorway, young, maybe fifteen or sixteen. She is in a low-cut halter-top evening gown. Black. Her hair is up. She is wearing too much lipstick.

The camera zooms in. The girl looks straight into the lens.

Beside me, I heard a sharp intake of breath.

The girl’s eyes stare directly at us. She tilts her head, subtly raises one brow. Hints a smile.

“Mary mother of the sweet baby Jesus,” Hippo exhaled.

Ryan yanked his feet from the table. His chair legs smacked the floor.

Reaching behind her neck, the girl unties the halter. The dress falls, but she catches it to her breast.

The room was absolutely still.

Bending at the waist, the girl opens her mouth. Her tongue circles her lips. The camera zooms in and her features fill the screen.

Ryan jabbed a finger. “Stop it there!”

I moved to the keyboard. Hit
Pause.
The frame froze.

We all stared at the face.

Ryan spoke the name.

“Kelly Sicard.”

“Sicard posed for Cormier as Kitty Stanley,” I said.

“Crétaque.”

“The sonovabitch used his photography business to make contact with young girls.” Ryan was thinking out loud. “Then piped them into the skin trade.”

“Probably got a head fee every time he delivered a warm body.” Hippo.

“Maybe. But pedophiles aren’t like your regular criminals for profit. They don’t play just for money. They play for product. It’s an obsession.”

“You think the little perv hooked up girls to grow his collection?”

I jumped in. “Cormier’s motive doesn’t matter. If we’re going to find out what happened to Sicard, or Quincy, or any of his other victims, it’s the buyer we need. The creep who’s producing this filth.”

Ryan and Hippo exchanged glances.

“Bastarache,” I said. “It’s got to be him.”

Hippo ran a hand across his chin.

“Could be she’s right. Bastarache makes his living in the skin trade. Massage parlors, strip joints, prostitution.”

“It’s a short hop into porn,” I said. “Then kiddie porn.”

“Bastarache is a flesh bandit,” Ryan said. “But we’ve got nothing to tie him to this.”

“The contact sheet,” I said.

“He’ll deny knowing anything about it,” Ryan said.

“Even if he does, it’s still kiddie porn.”

Ryan shook his head. “It’s too old.”

“Évangéline worked for him.”

“You’re like an old record.”

“What will it take?”

“A direct link.”

Frustrated, I slumped into my chair and hit
Play
.

The camera zooms out. Sicard straightens, turns her back, playfully crooks one finger. Follow me.

The camera trails Sicard’s languid stroll across the room.

Still holding the halter straps, Sicard lowers herself onto the mattress. Curls, catlike.

Watching, I wondered what dreams filled her head. Lighted runways? Glossy magazines and red carpet openings?

Sicard smiles conspiratorially. Allows one strap of the halter to fall. A man enters and moves to the bed. Sucking one finger, Sicard looks up and smiles. Rises to her knees, allowing the dress to slip to her waist.

It took until midafternoon. The folder was titled
Vintage.
The footage was old. Hairstyles and clothing in some scenes suggested the fifties and sixties.

Video file seven. The script was hardly original.

The girl is in her midteens, tall, with center-parted dark hair. She is wearing a black bustier, garter belt, and fish-net hose. She appears ill at ease.

The girl glances to her left. The camera follows as she crosses a room and sits on a bench below and to the right of a window. Again she looks to her left, as though seeking direction. Sunlight falls on her hair.

My eyes drifted to the window framing the girl. Scanned the drapes. The woodwork. The misty landscape beyond the glass.

It took a few moments to register.

Hitting
Pause,
I studied the screen. Studied the shape. The hazy contour below it.

Somewhere, a million miles away, voices were talking.

I hit
Play. Stop. Play.

Rewound. Did it again. And again.

“I’ve got him.” Calm, though my heart was in my throat.

The voices stopped.

“I’ve got the wife-beating sonovabitch.”

H
IPPO AND RYAN JOINED ME.

“This video was shot at Bastarache’s house in Tracadie.” I pointed at the image frozen on the monitor. “You can see totem poles through the window.”

Hippo leaned so close the toothpick jutting from his lips nearly grazed my cheek.

“Beside that funny-looking shed?”

“It’s a gazebo.”

“Why the tom-tom kitsch?”

“That’s not the point.”

Scowling, Hippo rolled the toothpick to the front of his mouth.

“You saw the poles and gazebo on Bastarache’s property?” Ryan asked.

“In the backyard.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes. I may have also seen the carved bench the girl’s sitting on.”

Straightening, Hippo pointed the toothpick at Ryan and spoke around it.

“Video’s old.”

“Kid’s not.”

“And she’s getting her ta-tas immortalized in Bastarache’s crib.”

“She is.”

“Enough to net him?”

“Enough for me.”

“Probable cause?”

“I think a judge will buy it.”

“I call Quebec City while you chase a warrant?”

Ryan nodded.

When Hippo left, Ryan turned to me.

“Good job, hawk eye.”

“Thanks.”

“You think you can stick with this a little while longer?” Ryan chin-cocked the monitor.

“Indubitably.”

“Good word, that.”

By four, Bastarache was in custody, and Ryan had warrants allowing searches of his apartment and bar in Quebec City. No go on Tracadie, since Bastarache wasn’t living in that house.

Ryan found me in the conference room still plodding through smut. Other than the times I’d stopped to check my home, office, and cell phones for input from Harry, I’d taken no breaks.

“Bastarache’s lawyer was at the jail before the door clanged shut. Outraged. Can you imagine?”

“Is he aware that his client is a child pornographer?”

“She. Isabelle Francoeur. According to Francoeur, Bastarache is about to be short-listed for the Order of Canada.”

“Did he walk?”

“Francoeur’s working on it. QC cops say they can hold him for twenty-four. Then it’s charge him or kick him.”

“What happens now?”

“Hippo paws through Bastarache’s shorts while I engage him in verbal discourse.”

“You’re going to Quebec City?”

“Hippo’s pulling the car around now.”

“I want to go with you.”

Ryan looked at me for a very long time, undoubtedly sensing my hidden agenda.

“If your friends are mentioned it’s because
I
bring them up.”

I started to protest, thought better of it. “It’s your bust.”

“What are their names?”

“Évangéline and Obéline.”

“You are strictly an observer.”

“I’ll observe my ass off.”

Ten minutes later we were motoring northeast on Highway 40, paralleling the shore of the St. Lawrence River. Hippo was at the wheel. Ryan was riding shotgun. I was in back, lurching and bouncing and trying not to barf.

On the way, Ryan explained the plan. I could barely hear him over the sputtering static from the radio. At my request, Hippo turned it off.

The strategy. Ryan and I would go to la prison d’Orsainville, where Bastarache was being held. Hippo would continue on into the city to oversee the tossing of Bastarache’s bar.

The drive from Montreal normally takes three hours. Hippo made it in a little over two. Throughout, I checked my phone. No Harry. I told myself she was always going AWOL. Nevertheless, my apprehension was growing. Why didn’t she phone?

Ryan called ahead as we approached the city’s outskirts. Hippo dropped us at the prison then gunned off. By the time we cleared security, Bastarache was already in an interrogation room. A guard stood by the door, looking like his feet hurt.

Perhaps I’d seen too many
Sopranos
episodes. I was expecting mode de mobster. Oiled hair. Gold chains. Steroid-swollen muscles. I got a beluga in polyester with small piggy eyes.

The room held the usual four chairs and a table. Ryan and I took seats on one side. Bastarache filled the other. I was surprised not to see Francoeur.

Ryan introduced himself, explained that he was SQ and that he’d come from Montreal.

The piggy eyes slid my way.

“Would you prefer to wait for your attorney?” Ryan asked, refusing to assuage Bastarache’s curiosity. Good. Let him wonder about me.

“
Frippe-moi l’chu
.” Roughly translated from
chiac
, “kiss my ass.” “I own lounges. I run ’em clean. When will you assholes figure that out?”

“You own strip bars.”

“Last I checked, exotic dancing’s still legal in this country. Every one of my girls is over eighteen.” Bastarache spoke with a cadence similar to Hippo’s.

“You sure of that?”

“I check ID’s.”

“One or two manage to slip under your radar?”

Bastarache crimped his lips tightly and breathed through his nose. It made a wheezing sound.

“Way under. Sweet sixteen. I wonder. She have the braces off yet?”

A flush crept north from Bastarache’s collar. “The kid lied.”

Ryan clucked and gave a short wag of his head. “Kids today.”

“She wasn’t complaining.”

“You like the young stuff, Dave?”

“The kid swore she was twenty-three.”

“Age-appropriate for a guy like you.”

“Look, there’s two kinds of women in this world. Those you slip it to and those you take home to Sunday dinner. This chick wasn’t going to Grand-mère’s for pot roast, know what I’m saying?”

“You nailed the third type.”

Bastarache tipped his head.

“Jail bait.”

The flush spread upward to Bastarache’s face. “Same old recycled bullshit. She said she was legal. What you want me to do, check her teeth?”

“How about hooking? That legal?”

“A girl leaves the bar, we got no control over her personal life.”

Ryan responded with silence, knowing most interviewees feel compelled to fill it. Bastarache wasn’t one of them.

“We’ve got some girls missing down our way,” Ryan continued. “Some dead ones. You know anything about that?”

“Got no ties to Montreal.”

Ryan used another interrogation trick I’d seen him employ. Sudden switch of topic.

“You like movies, Dave?”

“What?”

“Lights! Camera! Action!”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Let me guess. You decided to branch out. Go Hollywood.”

Bastarache’s hands were resting on the table, fingers interlaced like short, fat sausages. At Ryan’s question, the sausages tightened.

“Bare tit on a pole. That’s pretty low-rent action.”

Bastarache glowered mutely.

“Motion pictures. That’s the big time.”

“You’re goddamn crazy.”

“Let’s just say, for argument’s sake, you got a kid eager to earn a few bucks. You propose a little poontang on camera. She goes along.”

“What?”

“Am I going too fast for you, Dave?”

“What are we talking about here?”

“You know what I’m talking about.”

“Porn flicks?”

“Of a very special genre.”

“You lost me, pal.”

Ryan’s voice turned glacial. “I’m talking kiddie porn, Dave. Children.”

Bastarache disengaged his hands and slapped them down on the table. “I. Don’t. Mess. With. Kids.”

The guard poked his head into the room. “We good here?”

“Jim dandy,” Ryan said.

While Bastarache locked glares with Ryan, I observed him covertly. The rolls in his neck and stomach looked hard and his arms were corded with muscle. The guy wasn’t the lardo I’d first taken him for.

Never breaking eye contact with Bastarache, Ryan reached into a pocket and withdrew one of several stills I’d printed from the video in Cormier’s
Vintage
folder. Wordlessly, he slid the print across the table.

Bastarache looked down at the girl on the bench. I watched his body language. Saw no tensing.

“You check this little girl’s ID?” Ryan asked.

“I never laid eyes on her.”

“What’s her name?”

“I told you.” The piggy eyes rolled up. “I never met the young lady.”

“You know a photographer named Stanislas Cormier?”

“Sorry.” Bastarache started running a thumbnail through a scratch on the tabletop.