Ice Lake (38 page)

Bill Mathers took the elevated Metropolitan east-bound from near the industrial park where Hillier-Largent Global was housed. As they drove, they could easily see the mountain, ten miles away. On the other side was downtown. They passed the edge of an affluent suburb and turned onto the l’Acadie circle where a congested immigrant quarter began, and they got bogged down in the usual snarl of traffic there. Pedestrians and cars moved to and from a busy shopping centre. Cinq-Mars was tempted to join the hordes himself and hunt down a hit of Kaopectate, but the congestion deterred him.

“Scary,” he mentioned, without any particular reference.

“What is?” Mathers was thinking about his wife, wondering what she was feeling now, trundled off to his sister’s house. Perhaps she was at the shopping centre at that moment, walking through in order to change cabs, so that no single cabby could connect her point of origin to her destination. Following the line of his partner’s gaze, he took in the pedestrians, an immigrant crowd, the colours and hues and languages of the world mingling and shuffling along. They were neighbours, as his apartment was located nearby, a few blocks up.

“It’s scary that people sniff nose-sprays and swallow pills and allow serums to be injected into their arms to see whether or not they’ll have a bad reaction. It’s a game of Russian roulette.”

“I’ve heard of worse.”

“I’m not making comparisons, Bill, I’m just saying. It’s amazing that this is routine. If you advertise in the paper for guinea pigs, they’ll line up and actually hope to be selected.”

Traffic moved a hundred feet before stalling again. “In the States,” Mathers went on, “I think in Chicago, men volunteered to get
AIDS.”

“Excuse me?”

“I kid you not.”

“For what purpose?”

“So they could be experimented on later.”

“Hold it.”

“That’s what I heard.”

Cinq-Mars had to mull that one over. “You mean that people have volunteered to be injected with
HIV
so
they could be useful guinea pigs for a cure? How much does that pay?”

“Nothing. It’s a public service. You know, men who had lost lovers but didn’t get the disease, they agreed to get the disease to help with the cure. Other kinds of idealists. It’s an epidemic, Emile. Some people have lost dozens of friends. Some people are willing to lay down their lives.”

“Meanwhile,” Cinq-Mars observed, “some scientists are willing to postpone their research until they’ve been assured a better cut of the profits. They say it’s the nature of the beast. What do you make of that?”

“Medicine is money,” Mathers postulated. “Health is big business. Medical research is a growth industry. You know how things go when money’s involved.”

“I’ve seen a few things.”

“I heard that if the big international drug companies sold heroin and crack on the streets, they’d have to take a cut in their profit margins. Imagine that.”

Cinq-Mars whistled at the comment, then paused to stretch in the limited confines of the car. “So far we’ve worked this case top-down, Bill. Sooner or later we’ll try bottom-up. Trace the life and times of Andrew Stettler. How’d he win friends and influence people? How does a lab rat get to be the job-boss? What’s up with Lucy Gabriel? Where does she fit in? Honigwachs and Hillier and Largent can enlighten us with their view from on high, but what’s life like down in the lab, where most visiting rats get injected except for one, one special rodent, who gets promoted? I’d like to know what the technicians think.”

“About what?” Mathers asked. With any luck he’d make the next light and be free to scoot up Boulevard l’Acadie. The route separated the rich from the poor, and immigrants from established residents. To further divide the classes, the boulevard was guarded with a chain-link fence down one entire side, the contemporary mansions behind it having perfectly manicured, treed lawns, while on the opposite side were row houses, scruffy apartment buildings, and scarcely a blade of grass.

“About their bosses. About life in the biological sciences. Are they idealists or skimmers? Are they devoted to antihistamines or the cure for
AIDS?
What do they think about the nature of the beast?”

He didn’t make the light, but his would be the first car out of the chute on the next green. “You’re right. We don’t know the environment. Bottom-up it is.”

“There’s a blood trail and it’s still fresh. I got a feeling we need to know what’s on the ground. I bet some people are stepping on monkey poop and rat feces, and we’ve got to find out what’s in it for them.”

“Then there’s Lucy,” Mathers reminded him.

“That’s true, there’s Lucy. Did you notice? We told Hillier and Largent that she’d been kidnapped, and both of them neglected to ask the big question.”

“Which is?”

“You should know.”

Mathers thought for a moment. He was about to complain about his weariness when the obvious struck. “They didn’t ask if there was a ransom demand.”

“The first question on anybody’s lips after they hear about a kidnapping, what do the bad guys want? What’s the ransom? How many bucks. File that one away. Hillier and Largent didn’t ask. Maybe it’s because they know why somebody would want her.”

“Are we going to ask?”

“Bottom-up, Bill. I want knowledge first. Then I’ll ask.”

Mathers shot forward on the green light as if giving chase. Pushed back in his seat, Cinq-Mars braced his abdominal muscles against an impending turmoil.

“What’s next?” Mathers wondered.

“Drive us to the station. I want to pick up my car. I’m going home. Visit your family at your sister’s. Just make sure you’re not followed.”

“We’re knocking off?” Mathers doubted the apparent good fortune.

“Not quite.”

“Ah, here we go. What do I have to do while you’re home napping?”

Cinq-Mars tilted his head back, as if to bring his partner into clearer focus, and stared down his impressive beak at him. “Youth is not an achievement,” he preached, “it’s a responsibility. While I am napping, pup, you will be finding Camille Choquette’s address for me. You’ll also find Andrew Stettler’s. Then tonight, while you’re enjoying Valentine’s Day with your wife, I will be talking to Ms. Choquette. Tonight, while you are making your wife feel better, I will be
taking a stroll through Andrew Stettler’s residence. Tomorrow morning, there will be no excuse for you to be late for our rendezvous.”

“What rendezvous?”

“The ice-village, for breakfast, let’s say, eight? We’ll have a thorough look at the crime scene after you’ve had a good night’s sleep. I, on the other hand, will be feeling no less ornery than I do right now.”

Mathers thought about fighting back. He knew that his partner had problems. Today they were partly physical, but also he had a father who was dying, and his own home had been attacked the night before. Now was not a time to get crotchety himself and tell him to stuff his crankiness.

“I’ll do my part.”

“One more thing. Let’s drop by your place. Surely you have some Kao in your medicine cabinet? Or, like everybody else, will you send me down the block?”

Mathers had reached his limit for one day. “We’ll pass a pharmacy along the way, Emile. You can buy your own damn Kaopectate.”

Cinq-Mars glared at him, astounded. “I should have known. You’re like all the rest. You’re a thoroughly unworthy sort of man, Bill.”

Mathers chuckled. “You know where you can shove that, Emile. But before you do, let’s find you that Kao.”

12
PERILOUS LIAISONS

Later the same day, Monday, February 14, 1999

From a small portal in the thick stone wall, the young woman gazed down at the lake and the twinkle of lights surrounding the expanse of ice wherever cottage windows reflected the sun. Her loneliness swelled and yawed and settled inside her. From her precipice, Lucy Gabriel cast a light of her own, felt her spirit float free and rise on a sunbeam. She sensed a kinship with damsels in distress from olden days, fair maidens locked in towers awaiting rescue by a knight. She hated the association, for despite her depression and anxiety, and her aching, warring loneliness, she was a woman who wanted to act. She had every intention of slaying her own dragons and assailing her own castle walls. Her favourite fairy tales might derive from English lore, she might be a native steeped in the myths of her culture, but she also knew that she was a woman who lived in different times, modern times, one who moved across borders and communities. She worked among scientists and native activists. She had hobnobbed with criminals. While she enjoyed the nightlife of the city, she would never think to permanently move off the reserve and away from her people, for she was committed to their causes. She was off the reserve now, though, she
admitted, unable to hide among her own, a refugee in a tower, hidden from the world, frightened by forces unseen and persons unknown.

Turning, she looked at the man behind her. Brother Tom checked on her regularly, although only for a few minutes at a time. As he had taken a vow of silence, their conversations would travel in one direction only.

“I need to get out of here, Bro’.”

He raised only his eyes when he looked at her, the angle of his chin tilting downward slightly, perhaps denoting disapproval of the enterprise.

“I’m serious. I can’t defend myself stuck in here. It’s not a question of my freaking safety, it’s a question of finding out who did what to who when. And then proving it. I’m the only one who can really do that.”

The monk was sitting on one of two ladderback chairs. She pulled the other in front of him, sat, and leaned closer to him. Whenever he shifted his weight, the chair squeaked.

“In my house, in the garage under my house, I have a car. I have a guy who ploughs the snow. He doesn’t know I’m here, he’ll just keep ploughing until I tell him to stop. The point is, Bro’, if we go get the car, we’ll be able to get out all right.” Perhaps because she was off the reserve, she deliberately wore a shirt with native embroidery and decoration. She had many shirts that carried Mohawk symbols, but over the years she’d also gone to meetings and public powwows where native crafts from all round the continent were sold, and she had acquired both jewellery and clothes from other Indian nations. The white shirt she had on now was Navaho, while the beading on her denim skirt was a Sioux creation.

“There’s plenty of spots to park it down below. With our own car, we could slip out when we needed to—you could come with me, Tommy, if that helps. I don’t mind. But I can’t sit around on my ass all day—I’m
sorry, my rear end all day—while people are messing with my life!” She had her elbows on her knees and implored him with her eyes. “Tommy. Brother Tom. I know—I know you think you’re saving me from harm. But if I’m not out
there,
harm is being done to me, and you’re not helping
at all.
You’re hindering. I have to be out there. I’m the only one who can solve my own problems.”

She made eye contact while speaking, talking as though her words flowed into the monk’s eyes. She liked people to see the intensity behind her thoughts. She declined to take her eyes off Brother Tom’s. Seated alongside a little pine table, his hands folded in front of him, he was squirming around a little under her gaze, his chair noisily complaining about each movement as though the wood might snap.

He appeared to be contemplating her words. She had not expected to make much headway, but with her eyes locked on his she did not detect any denial there, or any particular restraint. When she eventually chose to have mercy on him and relinquished her claim to his eyes, it seemed to Lucy Gabriel that the possibility of her request being accepted was somehow vibrant in the air.

“Brother Tom?” she stated simply, without looking at him. “I need your help.”

He nodded, but she did not know what that meant exactly, or if they had agreed upon anything of substance or not.

While her husband slept into the afternoon, Sandra Lowndes fed and groomed her horses. She was glad to have him in the house during the day, even if he was in bed, and even if he had warned her that he’d be going out again that evening. She felt a certain comfort, following their eventful night, in having her husband at home.

From an early age, Sandra had known that her life
would revolve around horses. Her love for the animals was not dissimilar to that of her school chums, but she was convinced that her parents’ assumption—that one day her interests would break out along the predictable paths—was mistaken. Her folks had hoped that horses would inspire a sense of responsibility in their daughter, that the sport would equip her with a healthy lifestyle and a rounded education. Equestrian discipline was supposed to be preparatory to something else—a law degree, perhaps, or medical school. Although it was never stated, growing up she’d come to realize that, bereft of sons, her father imagined an important career for his outstanding daughter. Sandra secretly discarded his aspirations as being far too time-consuming. If his plans were going to take her away from horses, she wasn’t interested.