Ice Lake (17 page)

Snow was melting off his boots, creating a puddle on the floor. He held one forearm across the chair back and another along a thigh, a rattler sliding over rock, his gaze cool and animal-like and sexual, even with a shotgun aimed at his vital organs. She loved his hands, those long, curled fingers.

“Lucy, listen to me,” Andy started, and now his tone was grave. “I’m your best chance right now, so you have to figure this out in a hurry.”

“You’re
my best chance?” she sneered. “Now I know I’m really fucked.”

“I’m in tight with Honigwachs because I’m his security director right now. I got promoted. When he found out what I could do for him, he boosted me up the ladder.”

“What
can
you do for him?”

He put both hands on the back of his chair now, as though to slither around it, to cover it with his full length, his legs coiled around the base. His long, black hair fell down one side of his face, casting a shadow across the other. “Bad boys don’t grow on trees, contrary to public opinion. We’re a breed apart. I know the criminal stuff, except I’m not interested in being a criminal no more. That’s old, it’s not for me. You know what they say, if you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime. I can’t do the time, Lucy. I won’t do the time. I’m sick of being inside. I want to live for a change. I want to be around girls, you know? But for somebody like me—I don’t fit in this world, there’s no place for me. As it turns out, I’m somebody Honigwachs can use, and that’s been all right, until now.”

“Now what, a crisis of conscience?” She jerked her shotgun up and down in rhythm with her words. “I’m supposed to feel sorry for you?”

He pushed a hand through his hair, tucking the longer strands behind an ear. She could see his face much better now, and it seemed that he had wanted that, that he had wanted to indicate that he should be trusted in this circumstance. “Lucy, you’re in trouble here. You’re in deep. Do you know that much? You brought drug cocktails down to seventy, eighty guys. Half of them are dead now.”

She did not respond to his question right away, her gaze travelling off, and when she did speak she inquired, in a quiet voice, “Half?” Fear cascaded through her.

“About half, yeah.”

“So we had guys who were going to die and a control group, placebo boys?”

“Could be,” Andy acknowledged. “Something like that.”

“That was never our thing. We promised no placebos. We told our people we would give them the best shot available, no control groups, no dummy drugs.”

“Yeah, well,” Andy noted, “maybe this time it was lucky.”

That might be true, fewer men were dead, but she wondered where the larger betrayal began and where it ended.

“I know how much trouble I’m in,” Lucy confessed. “I always knew that something could go wrong, that a drug might not work. But never, never in my wildest imagination could I picture this. I never signed on for this horror story.”

“You weren’t part of it,” Andy said, “you couldn’t have known what was going to happen.”

“Of course I wasn’t!” she threw back, offended by the suggestion. “I mean, I was part of it, but I didn’t know what was really happening. Oh God. I know a judge and jury won’t care about the difference.”

“Where’s Luc?” he asked her abruptly.

Lucy looked down, at her shotgun, then up. “He’s dead, Andy.”

They were quiet awhile, letting that news resonate between them.

“Tell me about it,” Andy asked.

“There’s not much to tell.” Lucy looked away as she spoke. “I brought him to a hospital in Baltimore. He made a call down to Florida and the next day this hairy guy knocked on my motel room door—
big
hairy guy—and paid me cash for the truck. I took my stuff out and paid Luc the money. I knew about the deal. He was to get the truck. Luc put up the truck money for his hospital bills but he went down fast. I stayed for the five days he was alive. He could see the ocean from his room. That gave him an idea about his funeral. I took his
ashes down to the harbour and floated them on a falling tide.”

Andy had expected the news, but he had to adjust to the image. A friend—someone he had not known well, but they had been in the can together, and that counted for something—had been reduced to ash. He’d floated out to sea. Andy had drawn him into this escapade, and to this end.

“Lucy,” he started up momentarily, then stopped. He put his hands on his widespread knees, thinking. “Lie low for a bit, okay? Say nothing to no one. Do nothing. No one should know that you treated Luc. If the wrong people find out, they’ll guess that you know too much. Tell them only that Luc got sick and died. No details. He had
AIDS,
it happens. It upset you and that’s what brought you home.”

Lucy aimed her shotgun at the ceiling, the butt-end tucked into the base of her hip. Then she stood, paced, and put the gun down on her kitchen counter. She had her back to Andy and looked at him over her shoulder. “I can’t just do nothing.”

He stood as well, pulling the chair out from under him and setting it aside. “What’s there to do?”

Lucy was gazing out her back window. The blackness outside reflected back her own image, but she wasn’t seeing it. She saw only space, the dark, a void. “We can lie low, like you said, but we can also gather information. Figure out what happened, why, who was responsible.” She turned around to face him. “We have to gather evidence, Andy. It’s the only way.”

“Dangerous, Lucy. If you just lie low—”

“Lie low, with the deaths of those poor men on my mind? Who knows how many? A few were my friends. I can’t live with it. Besides, I don’t want to go to prison for this, Andy, it wasn’t my fault.” Her body shook as she breathed deeply, a mix of rage and sorrow overtaking her. “I told them, I told my boys, leading-edge medicine
is dangerous. Nothing’s been tested. You take your chances. But, the worst I ever counted on was failure. Failure means my boys would die, but they would have died anyway. This wasn’t mere failure, Andy. God. The drugs made them sicker. The drugs killed them a whole lot quicker than just having
AIDS
would’ve!” She breathed heavily, willing herself to calm down, without letting go of her anger. “I’m not a frigging martyr, Andy, but I sure don’t want whoever’s guilty—Honigwachs, presumably, but
whoever
—I don’t want anybody getting away with this. I’ll lie low, but I want justice for those dead men, for each and every one of them.”

“Lucy, it’s so risky right now—”

She turned to face him, putting her hands back on the rim of the counter behind her. “Choose, Andy. Whose side are you on?”

“Lucy, come on, I’m with you.”

“Are you? Don’t forget, it’s risky and dangerous, quote, unquote.”

“Come here,” he invited.

That was difficult for her, to cross that expanse of floor, although she wanted to go there. She hesitated at first, crossing her arms under her breasts. Eventually, she put her arms down, and her feet stepped on the area rug, and she moved cautiously across the floor, circling him somewhat, not going straight to him. When they met, she pressed herself against him, and they held onto to one another, and she was grateful for the contact, for the pressure of his arms and the warmth of his body. She did not know whom to trust, she did not know whom to love, but she had to have this also, she craved affection right now. She had killed people, inadvertently she had destroyed many lives, and she needed to affirm that she was not the evil one, not the criminal here. Lucy sought justice for the dead. She wanted to uncover and expose the hard truths, she would see to it that the truly responsible were identified. But clasped in the
arms of Andrew Stettler she also required absolution, and needed, desperately, to be touched, now, here, to be comforted.

Emile Cinq-Mars drove up to the rectory and parked along one side. Modest shelter from the wind was available there as he walked to the back door, his head bent forward and turned away from the stiffer gusts. One of the things he had liked about this priest from the outset had been his generous, friendly invitation to drop by anytime, and to use the kitchen door in the rear.

A light was on, and Father Réjean quickly responded to his visitor’s knock. A night owl, he had been up with a book and a coffee.

“Come in, come in, Emile. Out of that weather. My goodness.”

Cinq-Mars dusted the snow off his chest, then slapped his wool cap against his thigh to knock it from both the cap and his coat. “I hope I’m not intruding, Father Réjean. I know it’s late.”

“Nonsense. I’m delighted to see you, Émile. I’m pleased to have the company. I hope that you can assure me, though, that you haven’t arrived with dire news.”

“No. It’s not that, Father.” Cinq-Mars pulled his coat off, and the priest helped him with it and hung it on a hook. The detective unwound his scarf, stuffed it into the coatsleeve, and plunked his wool cap on the hook to dry. “My dad had a difficult time yesterday, so I came up. But he was much better by this evening.”

“That’s good to hear. It’s a trial, I know. You’re heading home?”

“Yes, Father.” Cinq-Mars nodded with resignation. “No rest for the wicked. I have to work tomorrow.”

“That’s a long drive at night. You will be careful, Émile. Coffee?”

“Thanks.”

“Now you won’t consider me a ‘whiskey priest/will you, if I offer you a glass of Glenfiddich?”

“Are you a whiskey priest, Father?”

The priest shook his finger at him as Cinq-Mars took a chair at the long and narrow antique pine table. “I should remember that I’m talking to a detective.”

“I’m happy to join you for a small one.”

“Fine. Fine. I’d press a large one on you, but I know you have that drive.”

“I’d accept a large one, or two, Father, if not for that.”

The priest busied himself with glasses. He was a man of average height and build, although now that he was sixty his body had slumped. His hair was white and quite full, and he combed it straight back. He had a liverspotted forehead, soft, intelligent brown eyes, and a small, charming pug nose. He was wearing black, but not clerical garb—slacks and a heavy wool sweater. Over the door, as in most of Quebec Catholic households, hung a crucifix. Inside the kitchen, nothing distinguished the room from farmhouse kitchens for miles around. Old, a dark, sombre patina graced the woodwork, and the floor sloped gently in different directions, quietly buckling with age. Cinq-Mars felt comfortable here, not because he was in a priest’s residence, but because he was in a home similar to those he had visited during his childhood.

The refrigerator door had pictures of children pressed to its surface with magnets, unusual in a rectory. In his investigation of priests, Cinq-Mars had learned that Father Réjean had had a previous existence as a part-time lecturer in economics. He had also been a husband, a parent, and a failed entrepreneur. Some years after the death of his wife, he had opted for the priesthood, and had actually made his way through the seminary while still an active single parent. His children were now grown, educated, off on their own in distant
big cities, while Father Réjean had been assigned to the countryside, an entirely new environment for him.

“How’s everything, Father?”

“Oh, you know.” He brought the tiny glasses back full. “There are days when I think that my real job is to be a glorified social director. At other times I know I’m needed. And with you?”

Cinq-Mars put his elbows on the table and folded his hands thoughtfully. “There are days when I know I’m useful. Other days when I believe the criminals are fortunate to have such a bungling idiot as an adversary.”

Father Réjean laughed. The two clinked glasses, and cried,
“Santé!”

Both men enjoyed a sip.

“You can’t believe that, Emile. You’re no bungler.”

“Some days you’re right. I’m not. Then again, I’ve long believed that one of the most important aspects of my profession is learning to deal with failure. You have to be willing to make mistakes, and to suffer the consequences. Otherwise, in a job like mine, it’s easy to become paralysed. I’ll thank you to not to let the criminals know that. I wouldn’t want to give them comfort.”

“Ah, yes,” Father Réjean noted, “comfort to the criminals. Now that would be my profession, wouldn’t it?” He sat with a contented grin on his face, the wee glass held between the chubby fingers of both hands.

“Somebody has to do the dirty work, Father.”

“Someone must!” he burst out. “But is that my job or yours, that’s the question! Is it a dirtier job to comfort criminals, or to catch them?”

“I’ll concede the high ground.”

“You say that, Detective, but do you mean it? Or is it a ploy, culled from a policeman’s bag of tricks, to lead me down a road of no return? You do that sort of thing, don’t you, Emile?”

“What sort ofthing?”

“Snare people in the maze of their character flaws.”

Cinq-Mars laughed lightly, and took another sip of the single malt. “Let’s just say, Father, that when those in your profession fail, I’m left to pick up the pieces.”