Monday Mourning (29 page)

In a heartbeat Charbonneau’s voice crackled back, “I’m here. Was that gunfire?”

“Inside the house.”

“Who’s shooting?”

“Can’t tell. Any movement back there?”

“Nothing.”

“Hold position. We’re going in.”

“Move!” Ryan gestured me back.

I scrambled to the spot he indicated.

Claudel and Ryan rocketed to their feet and began battering the door, first with their shoulders, then with their boots. It held firm.

In the distance the stable dog flew into a frenzy.

The men kicked harder.

Splinters flew. Slivers of yellowed varnish skittered in the air. The weathered boards held.

More kicking. More cursing. Claudel’s face went raspberry. Ryan’s hairline grew damp.

Eventually I saw movement where the faceplate of the lock screwed into the wood.

Waving Claudel back, Ryan braced, flexed one leg, and thrust it forward in a karate kick. His boot slammed home, the latch bolt gave, and the door flew inward.

“Stay here,” Ryan panted in my direction.

Breathing hard, guns crooked two-handed to their noses, Claudel and Ryan entered the house, one moving left, the other right.

I slipped inside and pressed my back against the wall to the right of the door.

The foyer was dim and still and smelled faintly of gunpowder.

Claudel and Ryan crept down the hall, weapons arcing, eyes and bodies moving in sync.

Empty.

They moved into the parlor.

I moved to the far side of the foyer.

In seconds my eyes adjusted.

My hand flew to my mouth.

“Este!”
Claudel lowered his weapon.

Wordlessly, Ryan dropped his elbow and angled his Glock toward the ceiling.

Menard was seated where he’d been on Friday, his body slumped left, his head twisted strangely against the sofa back. His left hand dangled over the armrest. His right lay palm up in his lap, the fingers loosely curled around a nine-millimeter Smith & Wesson.

Charbonneau’s voice sputtered on the two-way. Claudel answered.

Ryan and I moved closer to Menard.

Claudel and Charbonneau exchanged excited words. I heard “suicide,” “SIJ,” “coroner.” The rest of their conversation didn’t register. I was mesmerized by the Menard-thing on the sofa.

Menard had a dime-sized hole in his right temple. A stream of blood trickled from its puckered white border.

The exit wound was at Menard’s left temple. Most of that side of his head was gone, spattered on the brass lamp, the dangling crystals, and the floral wallpaper of the hideous room. Mingled with Menard’s cranial wreckage was a macabre gumbo of blood and brain matter.

I felt a tremor under my tongue.

Ryan dragged the Windsor chair as far as from the body as possible, led me to it, and pressed gently on my shoulders. I sat and lowered my head.

I heard the uniformed cops storm in.

I heard Ryan’s voice, shouted orders.

I heard Charbonneau. The word “ambulance.” The name Pomerleau.

I heard doors kicked open as Ryan and the others moved through the house.

To escape the present, I tried to focus on all I would have to do in the future. Reassess the MP lists. Resubmit skeletal descriptors with open age estimates. Obtain DNA samples from Angie Robinson’s family.

It was no good. I couldn’t think. My attention kept drifting back across the room. My eyes roved the hands, the splayed legs, the gun.

The face.

Menard’s freckles stood out like dark little kidneys against the pallid skin. Though his eyes were open, the expression was blank. No pain. No surprise. No fear. Just the empty stare of death.

My own mind was a combat zone. Relief that Menard would hurt no one else. Anger that he’d escaped so easily. Pity for a life so grotesquely twisted. Anxiety for Anique Pomerleau.

Concern that we still did not have the answers.

This wasn’t Menard. Who
was
this guy? Where was Menard?

Fingers caressed my hair.

I looked up.

“You OK?”

I nodded, touched by the tenderness in Ryan’s expression. “Have you found Pomerleau?”

“House is empty.” Ryan’s voice was heavy as a coffin lid. “There are things here you might want to see.”

I followed him through a hallway, into a back room, and down a narrow stairway to a poorly lit cellar. The walls were brick and windowless, the floor cement. The air was damp and smelled of mold, dust, and dry rot.

Around me I could see the usual assortment of basement junk. A metal washtub. Garden implements. Stacks of cardboard boxes. An old sewing machine.

I heard voices, then a muffled expletive ahead and to my right.

Passing through an open door, Ryan led me into a second room. Though similar in construction to the outer basement, this one was smaller and brightly lit. Its walls and ceiling were covered with polyurethane panels.

Claudel and Charbonneau were standing by a counter that might once have served as a workbench. Both wore latex surgical gloves.

Hearing us enter, Charbonneau turned. His face looked like something in the claret family.

Ryan left to do another sweep of the basement.

“The little troll had himself a really special place down here.” Charbonneau swept a hand around the room. “Soundproofing and all.”

My eyes followed the arc of Charbonneau’s motion.

In one corner two sets of handcuffs dangled from a pair of rings imbedded in the ceiling. A crude table hugged the adjacent wall. I crossed to it, a cold numbness in my gut.

The table was sturdily built, of plywood and two-by-fours. Eye-hooks had been screwed into each corner, then a leather cuff attached to each hook. Four chains lay coiled beside the cuffs.

“This table isn’t old,” I said.

“Table?” Charbonneau’s voice trembled with anger. “It’s a goddamn rack!”

I walked to the workbench. Claudel looked at me, then shifted left, his face a shrink-wrapped mask of control.

The numbness made the rounds of my innards.

A bullwhip. A cat-o’-nine-tails. A riding crop. A hide-covered paddle. A noose with an enormous knot at midloop.

“All the tricks needed to show your slave who’s boss.” A vein throbbed in Charbonneau’s temple. I saw fury in his eyes.

“Calm-toi, Michel.”
Claudel’s voice was a flat line.

“And this asshole was real creative.”

Charbonneau jabbed at a horse bit, a curling iron, a crudely made gag with a ball in the center.

“Check out his reading material.”

Charbonneau’s rage made him hyperactive. He snatched up a magazine, tossed it down. “Porn. Bondage. S and M.” He grabbed a videotape.
The Story of O.

As the video hit the workbench, Ryan charged in, his jaw muscles tightened all the way to his sternum.

“I’ve found something.”

We moved as one, out the door, through the outer basement, around an ancient furnace, and into a chamber much like the one we’d just left.

Floor-to-ceiling shelves wrapped three sides of this room. A single bare bulb hung from its ceiling.

Ryan strode to the far wall. We followed. Behind the shelving I could see polyurethane similar to that lining the other room. The edge of one panel had been pried free.

“This wall isn’t brick. It’s plywood.”

Ryan ran his fingertips vertically along the newly exposed plywood, just beyond the shelving.

“There’s a discontinuity.”

Claudel removed one glove, mimicked Ryan’s move, then nodded.

Ryan pointed to the door through which we’d entered.

“Check out the lights.”

We all turned. One switch plate looked shiny and new, the other dingy and cracked.

“The older one works the overhead.”

He left the rest unsaid.

Claudel yanked off his remaining glove. Wordlessly, he and Ryan began ripping polyurethane.

Charbonneau hurried to the outer basement. I heard clattering and scraping, then he was back with a rusted crowbar.

Within minutes Ryan and Claudel had bared a six-inch swath. In it I could see a crack and two hinges. Through the crack, not a sliver of light.

Gauging door width, they attacked the other side of the shelving where two polyurethane panels met. Their efforts revealed another hairline fissure between sheets of plywood.

“Let me at it.” Charbonneau moved forward.

Ryan and Claudel stepped aside.

Charbonneau inserted the tip of the crowbar into the gap and levered.

A section of wall and shelving jigged forward.

Charbonneau slid the tip of the crowbar farther and heaved.

Plywood, batting, and shelving popped free.

Charbonneau grabbed a shelf and yanked. The false wall swung wide, revealing an opening approximately five by two feet.

The overhead bulb illuminated the first eighteen inches of the cavity behind the wall. Beyond that, the chamber was pitch-black.

Dashing to the door, I flicked the shiny switch, and spun.

My teeth clamped my lower lip as my throat clenched.

T
HE ROOM HAD BEGUN LIFE AS A FRUIT CELLAR OR STORAGE BIN
. It was approximately eight by ten, and, like Menard’s little fun house, entirely soundproofed. The interior smelled of mold and old earth overlain by chemicals and something organic.

The furnishings were grimly stark. A naked bulb on a frayed wire. A portable camp toilet. A crudely built wooden platform. Two tattered blankets.

On the platform sat a pair of women, heads down, backs rounded against the polyurethane paneling. Each wore a studded leather collar. Nothing else.

The women’s skin looked bitter white, the shadows defining their ribs and vertebrae dark and sinuous. A long braid snaked from the nape of each neck.

Charbonneau let forth a curse charged with the full lexicon of anger and abhorrence.

One face snapped up. Haggard. Eyes like those of some wild creature startled in the night.

Anique Pomerleau.

Her companion remained motionless, head down, bony arms clutching her bony knees.

Claudel spun and disappeared into the outer basement. I heard boots cross cement then thunder up stairs.

“It’s all right, Anique,” I said, as gently as I knew how.

Pomerleau’s eyes flinched. The other woman hugged her legs harder to her chest.

“We’re here to help you.”

Pomerleau’s gaze darted between Ryan and Charbonneau.

Motioning the men back, I stepped into the chamber.

“These men are detectives.”

Pomerleau watched me, eyes wide black pools.

“It’s over now, Anique. It’s all over.”

Moving slowly, I crossed to the platform and laid a hand on Pomerleau’s shoulder. She recoiled from my touch.

“He can’t hurt you anymore, Anique.”

“Je m’appelle ‘Q.’”
Pomerleau’s voice was flat and lifeless.

Removing my parka, I draped Pomerleau’s shoulders. She made no attempt to hold the garment in place.

“I’m ‘Q.’ She’s ‘D.’” Accented English. Pomerleau was Francophone.

Ryan shrugged off his jacket and handed it to me.

I took a cautious step toward “D,” gently touched her hair.

The woman tucked tighter and curled her hands into fists.

Enveloping “D” in Ryan’s jacket, I squatted to her level.

“He’s dead,” I said in French. “He can never harm you again.”

The woman rolled her head from side to side, not wanting to see me, not wanting to hear me.

I didn’t press. There would be time to talk.

“I’ll stay with you.” My voice cracked. “I won’t leave.”

Stroking her foot, I rose and withdrew.

While Charbonneau remained in the antechamber, I retreated to the outer basement. Ryan followed.

The honest truth? I didn’t trust my own treacherous emotions. My mind was paralyzed by shock and by anguish for these women, my gut curdled by loathing for the monster who’d subjected them to this.

“You OK?” Ryan asked.

“Yes,” I said in the calmest voice possible. It was a lie. I was flailing, and feared an enormous coming apart.

Folding my arms to mask the tremors in my chest, I waited.

A lifetime later distant sirens split the stillness, then grew into a screaming presence. Boots pounded overhead, then down the staircase.

Pomerleau panicked at the sight of the paramedics. Darting to the toilet, she hopped up, wedged herself into the corner, and held both arms straight out in front of her. Neither the EMTs nor I could coax her down. The more we reassured, the more she resisted. In the end, force was required.

The other woman went fetal as she was placed on a gurney, covered, and removed from the cell.

Ryan and I accompanied the ambulance to Montreal General. Claudel and Charbonneau remained to greet LaManche and the coroner’s van, and to oversee the SIJ techs in processing the house.

Ryan smoked as he drove. I kept my eyes on the city sliding by my window.

At the ER, Ryan paced while I sat. Around us swirled a cacophony of bronchial coughs, colicky wails, exhausted moans, and anxious conversation. In one corner Dr. Phil chastised a couple who’d been sexless for years.

Now and then Ryan would drop next to me and we’d exchange whispered comments.

“These women don’t even know their names.”

“Or they’re too terrified to use them.”

“They look starved.”

“Yes.”

“‘D’ looks worse.”

“I think she’s younger.”

“I never saw her face.”

“Sonovabitch.”

“Sonovabitch.”

We’d been there an hour when Ryan’s cell vibrated. He stepped outside. In minutes he was back.

“That was Claudel. The prick made home movies.”

I nodded numbly.

“I’m to call Charbonneau when we leave here.”

Twenty minutes later a frizzy-haired woman entered through sliding doors that led to the ER. She wore a white lab coat and carried two clipboards and one of those plastic bags used for patient possessions.

A huge black woman with swollen breasts and a bawling newborn lumbered to her feet and zeroed in. The doctor led the mother back to her chair, glanced at her infant, then spoke a few words. The woman shouldered her baby and patted its back.