Ice Lake (49 page)

The thug held him up with one hand and slammed blows to his midsection with the other. With every punch, Painchaud emitted the last of his air and spittle, and his body convulsed and he moaned aloud. He fell to his knees and the man punched his face then. He
heard his nose break and felt teeth pop loose, and his jaw cracked, and that punch turned him around and dashed him to the floor again.

He was being raised up once more, but now the pain and the shock and the misery raged inside him, and he was seated once more on the armrest, where he tottered.

“My man will keep whaling on you until you learn to speak truthfully. I know you think you’re Camille Choquette’s boyfriend, I know you were jealous that Andy was giving it to her the same time as you, and I know you killed him because you’re a jealous little prick. Now hold your head up and look at me, Sergeant!”

Fearfully, Painchaud managed to do so.

“Do you want me to take off my stocking? I’m asking you fair and square. Do you want me to take off my stocking?”

He knew what that meant. “No,” he mumbled.

“That’s the first smart thing you’ve said since I got here. I’m not going to knock you around for that. See how it goes? If you make sense, we leave you alone. We’ll listen to what you have to say. If you want to be an idiot and waste my time, then I’m sorry, but my partner’s going to work you over. Understood?”

Jacques was speaking rapid-fire French. Painchaud wanted to plead with him. He resisted, knowing that it would do him no good. With every unbroken bone in his body he wanted to reason with this man’s good nature, because with every pore of his flesh he wanted to believe the man had to have a good side to his nature—his life depended on it.

“I’ll ask you again. Do you want me take off my stocking?”

“No, don’t take it off,” Painchaud insisted, slurring his words as his tongue, which he had bitten himself, and his swollen lips no longer functioned properly.

He suddenly vomited blood, and the men waited for his retching to cease.

“Why’d you kill Andy?”

The thug was already raising his fists, the knuckles dripping blood. Those hands could do him serious damage. “I think I know who did it,” Painchaud managed to murmur. “But it wasn’t me.”

The man’s fist seemed the size of Painchaud’s head, and he raised it back with the brass glinting in the light as though to unleash a horrendous blow. The policeman cringed and was trying to back his head away when Jacques dropped an arm across the goon’s chest to deter him. “I’m listening,” he said.

“Werner Honigwachs,” he gasped. Painchaud winced as he tried to draw a decent breath.

“Look at this!” Jacques yelled at him as the third man in the room came over with the policeman’s holster and pistol. “We’ve got your weapon. We’ll use your own weapon! Now, do you want me to show you my face or not?”

“No! No! Don’t show me your face. I’m the Investigating Officer on this case.” He had to talk without moving his smashed mouth. “I believe it was Honigwachs!”

“Prove it.”

“I can’t! Yet.”

“I’m taking off the stocking now—” Jacques threatened.

“No! No! It wasn’t me!”

The next punch came right across his jaw, his head spun out and back, and Painchaud flew up and landed hard on the floor. The three men stood over him and he was breathing in pain and he was in shock and not wholly cognizant of his circumstances any more.

Then the two larger men came around to where he had fallen and between them they kicked him awhile.

Jacques bent down beside him when the other two
had stopped. “Your own gun,” he said in a low, soft voice. “Think about the indignity of that. That’s gotta be the worst thing for a cop. Everybody in the SQ will know it. They’ll say, poor bugger, he bought it the worst way there is. That’s a stinking way to die, if you ask me. Me, I’ll take my mask off. I’ll let you see my face. Then I’ll blow your brains out. But your buddies? The cops? They’ll kill you a thousand times over. Poor little shit, they’ll say. Took it up the ass with his own gun. Oh yeah,” he whispered. “First I’ll blow your brains out, as a kindness, then I’ll shoot one up your ass. For posterity, you know? You’ll be remembered that way. The cop who took it up the ass from his own weapon.”

He shifted his weight around to rest one of his bent knees. “Hand me his pistol,” he said to an associate. He took the gun in his hand. Jacques snapped the safety off. He pulled back the hammer and placed the cold steel of the barrel’s tip against Painchaud’s temple. He began to tug his stocking up and off.

“It wasn’t me,” Painchaud coughed, and with his words he spit blood.

“Why’d you kill Andy? Just tell me why, that’s all, and I will leave you.”

“It wasn’t me,” he pleaded.

Jacques tugged the stocking higher, revealing his chin and then his mouth. “Why?”

“It wasn’t me!” He breathed out heavily and a tooth that had been rammed through his lower lip tumbled out, pulled from its socket by the effort of speaking.

“Why’d you kill Andy?” The policeman’s head lolled around and Jacques followed it with the pistol.

He was weeping now. Painchaud sputtered quietly. “I didn’t. It wasn’t me.”

Jacques pulled the stocking up to his nose.

The cop dropped his head down and he found the strength to raise his hands and cover his eyes. He awaited death.

Jacques held the gun to his head.

Then he said, “Shit,” and he pulled the stocking down. He stood up. “The goddamned system gives us a reasonable doubt. I’ve gotten off on a reasonable doubt myself once or twice. Maybe it was three times. So I’ll do the same thing for you. This is your lucky day, asshole. I won’t do no cop-killing if I got a reasonable doubt.” He tossed the pistol onto the sofa. “Beat on him awhile,” he told his confederates, “just in case I’m wrong and he killed Andy. I wouldn’t want him to think he got away with something here.”

The two other men beat him with their boots and their brass-covered fists, and the only sounds in the room were the terrible thuds into the man’s body and the grunts emitted by his attackers. Finally Jacques said, “All right. Now wreck the room.” His goons went around the room smashing things until Jacques called them off.

The three left by the front door.

Long after they were gone, Painchaud was awakened from his stupor by the buzzing of his telephone. The instrument had been knocked from its table onto the floor, and the phone emitted a repetitive burring to alert the occupant that the receiver was off the hook. Painchaud gazed at the phone awhile. Then he crawled toward it. He had a little bit farther to go, although his body screamed to stay still.

Painchaud worked his thumb onto the small plastic bar that closed the line, then released it to get a dial tone. He had automatic dialling. The phone had been a Christmas gift from a brother who thought the convenience necessary for the proper enjoyment of life. Concentrating, Painchaud tapped Camille’s code. One digit. The only speed-dialling numbers he had entered were hers. He intended to call her at work, but in his pain and delirium he’d dialled her home answering machine by mistake. “Camille,” he stammered. “It’s
Charlie.” His voice was guttural, plaintive, slurred. “Need help. My place. Get help. Call someone. Hurry.” He never did hang up. The receiver fell at his side as he succumbed first to a tide of pain, then to a growing grey fog that seemed to rise from the floor like smoke and, entering through his skin and larynx, comforted him.

The same day, after dark, Tuesday, February 15th

Camille Choquette pushed her child ahead of her into the house, toting the groceries, yearning for the day when somebody else would perform these chores.
Freedom!
From the mundane,
from crap!
She was so close. She just had to get through these days, and she and Werner would be home free.

She’d had to pick up food for dinner, and something to serve Charlie and Cinq-Mars when they dropped by in the evening. She had had to dash to make it in from work, pick up Carole from her after-school babysitter, tidy the house, feed herself and her child, and plan what she was going to say and how she was going to say it.
Damn you, Charlie
—
springing this on me!

And yet, she could not have refused. Cinq-Mars knew things now, Charlie had said, and it would be just like the little prick to have revealed those things himself! She planned to wring his neck. He had actually sounded excited when he’d called. She didn’t think she had to worry, but things were moving so fast it was hard to stay calm. And she had to stay calm.

Andy was right to have wanted Cinq-Mars out of the way.

She was scrubbing up in the kitchen and yelling at her daughter to turn down the volume on the television when she reached out and punched the play button on her answering machine. Just one call. She froze with her hands under the taps. Then she spun the taps off, yelled
furiously at Carole once more, and replayed the message from the beginning. There was no end to it. Charlie never hung up. She tried her phone and there was no dial tone. Was she still connected to Charlie’s house? She said his name. Suddenly she was in a flurry again.

“Carole! Get dressed! We’re going out.”

“Mommy, I’m watching TV.”

“Get dressed!”

Her tone scared the girl, and Carole, whimpering, complaining incessantly but only to herself, put her winter clothes back on. Camille dressed as well and held open the front door for Carole to scamper past.

Storming violently through the suburban streets, she hit the highway on the fly. Charlie’s house was normally fifteen minutes away, but she was there in less than eight, fishtailing on the slippery slope that ran up between apple orchards. Both Charlie’s own car and his squad car were in the circular drive. No lights were on in the house. She drove onto the lawn where snow had been cleared for the purpose, and parked.

Camille turned to her daughter. “Stay here. You stay put! If you step out of the car, young lady, I’ll paddle your bare bottom until it bleeds. Do you hear me?”

“Mommy! Don’t say that!”

“Shut up and listen to me! Stay in the car!”

“Okay!” She slumped back in her seat, pouting, on the verge of tears. Her curls fell in a cascade along the top of her forehead under her multicoloured wool hat, and she reached across and clutched her favourite raggedy doll. The doll had often been patched over the years, and its lips were sewn shut to keep its stuffing in.

As though to emphasize her command, Camille slammed the door shut getting out. She stomped up to the house and rang the bell, but when she tried the outer storm door, which was usually kept locked, it swung open. The inner door opened as well, and Camille moved cautiously inside.

“Charlie?”

Everything was in darkness. She flicked the pair of light switches by the door. One was for the porch light behind her, the other, for a standing lamp along the wall on her right. The lamp came on, and Camille gave a start, for it lay on the floor.

The beam shone across the carpet, creating spooky designs on the ceiling and walls, and at first Camille noticed only the chaos. She stepped over and around debris carefully.

“Charlie!”

Then she saw him—or a body, anyway—behind the end of the sofa. He was lying on his stomach, one hand on the telephone receiver, his head facing away from her. She moved closer, tripping slightly over a belt of some kind.

Camille moved forward with baby steps, as if the floor might suddenly give way. Closer, she could see a dark pool of blood around his head, and more smashed objects in the room. She pulled the coffee table out of her path, leaned closer, and confirmed that it was him.

Camille backed off and stood still, five feet away from him, panting, fighting her surprise, and trying to think.

Suddenly, she stepped quickly toward the kitchen. She turned on the light there and glanced at the room, then came out and went down the corridor to the bedrooms. She turned on lights, and when she came back she switched on a wall lamp at the edge of the living room. She was alone. Whoever had done this was gone. Camille assumed that Charlie was dead.

She moved closer to him then, and knelt down a few feet from the top of his head. She heard a faint gurgling sound. Blood clogged his throat but he was still breathing and Camille flew into a tantrum. She stood up and spun around. She wanted to get her hands on the man
who had done this.
“I didn’t want him beaten up!”
she railed.
“I wanted him dead!”

She needed to cry. This was too much torment. She had hoped to get Charlie out of the picture and had assumed that Jacques was going to take care of that for her. She had told him that Charlie had killed Andy—shouldn’t Charlie’s death be the logical outcome? Now what? Had he talked? Had Jacques told him what she’d said? This was serious. She’d wanted him dead but now that he was both beaten
and
alive she was worse off, and Charlie was more dangerous to her. What did he know? What had he told Cinq-Mars? What did Cinq-Mars know?
Damn!