Ice Lake (45 page)

“Someone took the trouble to open up the ice to shove him down the hole. Not
through
the hole, but under it. Peculiar, don’t you think? I have to wonder why.”

“You have so many questions, Cinq-Mars. As do I, in my business. But my business demands answers. I would think that yours does as well. Let me tell you, I’m disappointed in your lack of progress.” He folded his arms, with his elbows on the desk. These were all self-conscious gestures, Cinq-Mars believed, orchestrated to try to make him look relaxed, when clearly he was not.

“Do you really think we haven’t progressed?” Cinq-Mars narrowed his gaze slightly, as though trying to peer inside the president’s head, read his thoughts, worry him.

“What evidence do I have to the contrary?” Honigwachs asked. He shook his head, dismissing the detective’s opinions. “If you think that I was somehow involved in this crime, then I know you’re fishing.”

“Fishing, yes, as I was on the day we found Mr. Stettler. You’re right, sir, our businesses are alike. You allow a theory to evolve. You give it great thought and develop a formula that should work to suit the theory. You test the theory in the lab and on the computer, but at some point you must test your formula on people, see how they respond. That’s very much what I do. I can work an issue to death inside my head and among my colleagues, but at some point I must see how people react.”

“Then let’s conclude that your experiment today was
a failure, Cinq-Mars. It’s back to the drawing board for you.”

The detective raised a finger to the air. “I beg to differ.”

“How so?” Smiling, Honigwachs seemed to be enjoying the gamesmanship once again. “Have I compromised myself in some way, by your scorecard? I’ll admit, I was, as you say,
in the vicinity.
But that’s true of thousands of others, anyone who lives around here, anyone who was visiting. Anyone on the highway. That sort of information doesn’t allow you to convict the innocent, Cinq-Mars.”

The detective was smiling also, nodding slightly, as though to concede the point. He moved, ever so slowly, little more than a shuffle, toward the door. “There were subtle moments of interest.”

“Care to confide? Your mind is an attraction to me, Cinq-Mars. Clearly you’re out of kilter here, but I appreciate your intellect. I’m conscious of my innocence in this, so go ahead, enlighten me with your
subtle moments of interest”

Cinq-Mars put on his coat, and turned the collar-flap the right way out. “Thank you, sir. I appreciate
your
intellect, as well. I believe that what you do not say might be as significant as what you choose to confide. For instance, we know that Stettler was connected to bad guys. He was never an out-of-work bum. So why did he show up at Hillier-Largent as a lab rat? Why did you hire him? He was working for somebody. If he was working for you, he might have double-crossed you, sold out secrets, something like that. If he was working for Hillier-Largent, then you’d have an obvious reason to want him dead. Either way, I mentioned today that you had motivation to kill Andrew Stettler, and do you know, sir? You didn’t even blink. Which tells me that either the news came as no surprise to you, or you were relieved that I haven’t properly figured it out yet.
Either way, I appreciate, to use your words, our time together.”

“If that’s all you’ve got—”

“I agree, sir!” Cinq-Mars interrupted. He was through listening to this man. “Mere speculation. Nothing I can take to a court of law, but we are discussing
subtle
moments of interest. We’ve agreed on that. For instance, I revealed to you something that no one knows. Andrew Stettler was shoved down the same hole he was found in. No one knows that. No one’s even thought that. And yet, you greet the news with scarcely a ripple. As if, sir, you knew it all along.”

Honigwachs wetted his lips, and his chin did a small, involuntary jerk. When he spoke again his tone was modulated, controlled, as usual. “Always a pleasure, Cinq-Mars. Now if you will excuse me, I have to get back to more serious matters.”

The cop nodded. “Finally! I am being dismissed. Don’t you think that it’s a lot like being on an event horizon, flowing toward the black hole?”

“What is?”

“Premeditated murder.” Putting his head back, Cinq-Mars used majestic hand gestures to underscore his words. “The killer feels the presence of a black hole ahead and commits his victim to being crushed, to having the totality of his knowledge and light extinguished. A fearful thing, don’t you think, to be poised above that precipice before the murder? Equally fearful, you must agree, is the realization
after
the murder that the victim has not yet gone over the edge, that the victim has not yet been wholly consumed but continues to emit erratic light and issue blips of knowledge. In the meantime, the killer discovers that he is upon an event horizon himself, inextricably drawn into the clamour and weight and awesome gravity of a black hole—his view of the justice system.”

Sitting cockeyed, leaning on one arm of his chair as
though in danger of toppling over, Honigwachs maintained a bemused expression that the detective, for all his dramatics, could not vanquish. “I take it that you’re a frustrated actor,” he replied.

“Priest, some would say. Good day, sir. Thank you for your time.”

He departed with a flourish, closing the door firmly behind him.

In the corridor, Mathers was waiting. “Painchaud,” he said, indicating his cellphone. “He’s agreed to meet for a conference, so he thinks, downtown.”

“I don’t want it to be Painchaud,” Cinq-Mars admitted.

“Yeah,” Mathers agreed. “Nobody likes busting cops.”

“That’s not it,” he told him brusquely. He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “I want it to be this guy. I don’t like him.” Cinq-Mars noted his partner’s expression. “What are you grinning about?”

“You want it to be the guy you first thought it was. You don’t want to admit how much you’ve confided to the real killer.”

“Don’t jump to conclusions, Bill. We don’t know it’s Painchaud.”

“It’s how we’re betting,” Mathers pointed out. He punched the call button for the elevator.

Cinq-Mars again aimed his thumb in the direction of the president’s office. “He’s hiding something,” he decreed. “Mark my words. That man’s seriously worried.”

The same day, mid-afternoon, Tuesday, February 15, 1999

Cinq-Mars slipped into the squad room and headed for his cubicle. He hadn’t been here much lately—he’d been taking days off at random to visit his father—and he missed the place, although nothing had become any neater in his absence and yet more
paper had accumulated. News of his arrival got around, and he was called in to see Lieutenant-Detective Remi Tremblay, who asked if his caseload was going to remain untouched forever.

“I’ve got a murder to solve,” Cinq-Mars told him.

“Really. Let me see.” His friend took a quick glance at the shift rotations. “Nope. Nobody put you in Homicide.”

Cinq-Mars chuckled and took a seat, putting his hands behind his head and stretching his legs. He and his boss might be close, but he would still have to explain himself. “Whoever attacked my house put me in Homicide. The two events are knit together.”

“You know that for a fact?”

“Remi, it’s a perfectly valid hunch.”

Tremblay picked up his ballpoint pen, a sign that he was about to get serious. “Emile, it’s an SQ case. They don’t inspire you with confidence, I know, but—”

“I’m working very closely with the SQ. They’re happy to have my input.”

Tremblay doodled a few circles on the file folder lying in front of him. “That’ll be the day,” he stated.

“It’s true. It’s a good thing, too, because the prime suspect in the case happens to be the Investigating Officer from the SQ,.”

Tremblay threw down the pen. “Oh hell. Emile!”

“He’s coming in shortly for an interview. We’ll see what’s left of him when I’m done. Expect the shit to hit the fan, Remi. I’ll let you know in advance so you can contact your buddies in the SQ, break the news to them gently.”

“That’s all they need right now. A rotten officer.”

Cinq-Mars stood, preparing to depart. “Run this one through your head, Remi. A rotten officer, but with high-level family connections—political connections. Yep, when I’m done here, you’ll probably wish you’d never come to work today.”

Tremblay tilted his head to one side and rested it on a palm. “Get lost,” he instructed Cinq-Mars. “Don’t come back. And remember,” he hollered to the detective’s retreating back, “you’ve got no jurisdiction!”

Cinq-Mars shrugged, then turned. “What about those profiles on Lucy Gabriel and Andrew Stettler?”

“They’re on your desk—if you’d bother to look!” Tremblay admonished him.

Cinq-Mars had a sandwich quietly by himself in his cubicle, taking in the chatter from the squad room, while he read through the briefs. Just about everything on Lucy was taken from the public record. She’d been arrested at the end of the Oka crisis but not held, and eventually the charges had been dropped as the police focussed on a few criminal Indians rather than on half the reserve. Stettler’s brief was curious, in that very little jibed with what he had learned about the man so far.

After reading the reports, Cinq-Mars called through to his father, and the nurse picked up. His dad was resting. Things were quiet. He was breathing well but talking less, she said. He was eating less, also, but drinking tea, and she was giving him nourishment intravenously as well, just to keep his strength up.
Strength up,
Cinq-Mars wondered,
for
what?
He was not in pain, thanks to medication, and the drugs he was taking appeared to be slowing the progress of his cancer, although he was failing, a little more every day. He thanked her and hung up, both grateful and disheartened. He supposed that it was necessary to keep up the strength of a dying man, if the issue was dignity or clarity of mind. He wondered how he himself would handle dying should the event also come to him slowly, piecemeal.

Cinq-Mars wished he could be there all the time, holding his father’s hand.

The call he was waiting for came through from downstairs, and Cinq-Mars asked that Painchaud be escorted up. The SQ, sergeant arrived in uniform,
looking eager, happy to have the confidence of the famous detective. He sat in the cubicle and wanted to talk about the case, for he had had a discussion with Camille Choquette and with a few of Andrew Stettler’s fellow employees at BioLogika.

“What did they give you?” Cinq-Mars asked. Mathers joined them, bringing coffee for everyone, and he pulled up a chair beside the visitor.

“That’s the strange thing. He had a title, Head of Security, but nobody knows what he did.” Painchaud tore open a packet of sugar and poured it into his Styrofoam cup, then used the plastic stir-stick while he continued talking. “He had the ear of Werner Honigwachs, they spent time together, but the night watchmen and the guards at the gate, and the guys who looked after keeping information confidential, they never talked to Stettler. The computer guys, forget it. A couple of them paid him a visit when they had a problem. Guess what he said.”

Cinq-Mars shrugged.

“‘I don’t know anything about that shit. Figure it out for yourself.’ That’s what he told them.” Painchaud looked from one man to the other with wide eyes, wholly expecting them to share in his amazement.

Taking a moment to swallow a hot sip, Cinq-Mars suggested, “That’s the kind of advice I’d like to hear from executives more often.”

Painchaud looked over at Mathers, who gazed back at him without helping him out with his partner’s point of view. “Well,” he said, weakened, “it sounded like strange behaviour to me.”

Cinq-Mars grinned. “Come on,” he invited. “Grab your cup. There’s something I want to show you.”

Leaving his own cup on his desk, he led the officer from the
Sûreté du Québec
upstairs to the interrogation rooms. He took the steps three at a time, and while he
did not wear the younger man down, his long strides forced Painchaud to jog at a quickened pace while trying not to spill his coffee. For reasons he did not comprehend, his joints had stopped bothering him, and Cinq-Mars felt energetic, even twentyish.

“What’s up?” Painchaud asked as the door to the sparse room closed behind the three of them. He was flicking his fingers dry.

“This is where we bring our tough guys.”

Painchaud remained confused. The paralysis of his facial muscles seemed more evident when he wasn’t smiling or avidly talking. “Who’re you bringing in?”

“Sit down,” Cinq-Mars told him.

“I don’t get it.”

Mathers seated himself, putting his own coffee down. “Would you mind sitting on the other side of the table, please?”

“I’m sorry,” Painchaud declared, “what’s going on here?” He had a pinched, offended look on his face, as if he were being bullied and had suffered similar abuse in the past but would tolerate no more of it.

“Please, sit down, sir,” Cinq-Mars instructed.