One or the Other (9 page)

“Detective?”

“Nothing official,” Dougherty said. “Acting detective.”

Dougherty's mother said, “Like your father, longest-serving acting foreman at the Bell.”

His father said, “Not this week.”

“It's the union work,” his mother said. “None of the ones who started the lineman's union got promoted.”

“Was the homicide on the south shore?” His father clearly didn't want to talk about his own job.

“It was two kids,” Dougherty said, “high school students. They were at a concert at Place des Nations, and then the bodies were found in the river.” He glanced at his mother as he said that, but she was at the sink cutting up carrots and he couldn't see her face. “We're not sure where they went into the river. But they were strangled first.”

“So why are you on it?”

“Detective Carpentier is friends with the captain in Longueuil, so I'm here helping out. And one of the bodies washed up on the Montreal side of the river.”

“Nasty business,” his father said.

“But it's got to be done.”

“You want another drink?” His father was already up and going to the cabinet beside the oven where he kept the booze.

“Dinner's almost ready.” Dougherty's mother was coming to the table with plates. Then she called Tommy up from the basement, finished mashing the potatoes and brought the food to the table, saying, “So, how is Judy?”

Dougherty said, “She's good.” For a moment he thought about mentioning that her parents had split up, but he knew that would just lead to a whole lot of questions and he didn't have any answers.

Tommy came upstairs and grunted his way through the meal, giving one-word answers to every question he was asked. Before he'd even chewed the last mouthful, he got up from the table and left.

Dougherty said, “You don't make him do the dishes? You always made me and Cheryl clean up,” and his mother just said, “It's no trouble.”

It was almost eight when Dougherty left the house and drove to the Longueuil police station. He got there just as Legault was leaving, pulling out of the parking lot in the unmarked car as Dougherty was pulling in. He rolled down his window and said, “Where you going?”

She said, “We've been replaced,” and drove off.

Dougherty walked into Captain Allard's office and knew right away the two men with him were detectives. Plain dark suits, white shirts, ties and giving off the vibe that they ran the place.

Allard said, “
Bonjour, Dougherty
.”

“What's going on?”

“We've decided — I've decided — to bring in our detectives to run this one.”

Dougherty said, “That sounds like a good idea, this is a major case. Can I still be any help?”

“Yes, of course.” Allard looked relieved. “We will need to coordinate with the Montreal police, of course.”

“All right.”

“So,” Allard said, “this is Detective Boudreau and Detective Lefebvre.”

Boudreau was standing up and held out his hand and Dougherty shook it, but Lefebvre was sitting down and didn't make a move.

Dougherty said, “What about Sergeant Legault?”

Lefebvre said, “This is homicide, it's not women's work.”

“No,” Dougherty said, “it's police work.” He regretted it as soon as he'd said it, but he didn't like these detectives. And, he realized, he did like Legault — he liked the way she'd been honest and up front with the families of the victims. He'd been looking forward to working with her.

Allard said, “Sergeant Legault is still working the investigation. She will be the liaison with the families.”

Lefebvre said, “We'll call you if we need you.”

Dougherty said, “Okay.”

He left the office and drove a few blocks to Taschereau and stopped at a strip mall. Found a phone booth and called the pager number on Legault's business card. He punched in the pay phone's number, hung up and waited.

And, as he expected, the phone rang within a minute.

“Dougherty.”

There was a pause and then Legault said, “
Oh, c'est toi.
Que veux-tu?
”

Dougherty spoke French, saying, “Let's have a drink.”

“Not interested.”

“We're still working, let's work.”

“Do they need someone to bring coffee and doughnuts to the office?”

“Look, I can see a place, La Barre 500, you know it?”

“Not there, everyone knows it.”

Dougherty smiled to himself a little. Legault was negotiating, which meant she was going to meet. He wasn't too surprised, she had a lot to complain about and it would be better to let it all out to Dougherty than to someone she actually cared about.

“There's a bar on Victoria Avenue, that's what Boulevard Lapinière is called on the other side of Taschereau,” Dougherty said. “The Rustic Tavern, do you know it?”

“Not in my territory.”

“Ten minutes,” Dougherty said.

The Rustic was in the end unit of a strip mall next to a dry cleaner and a convenience store, but inside it did a pretty good job of looking rustic: dark wood panelling, heavy wooden bar, low lighting. And it was English all the way.

Dougherty got a table near the door, ordered a draught and waited. Almost half an hour later Legault came in, stood by Dougherty's table and said, in French, “There isn't anything to say.”

“Well, you're here now.” Dougherty finished off his beer and motioned to the bartender.

Legault sat down. Reluctantly. So reluctantly it almost made Dougherty laugh.

A waitress came to the table and said, “What'll it be?”

Dougherty handed her his empty glass and looked at Legault. She didn't say anything so Dougherty said, “Couple more, thanks.”

Legault looked around the bar and said, “It's all English here.”

“Our little hideaway.”

The waitress brought the beers and dropped a couple of menus on the table. “In case you're hungry.”

Dougherty said, “Thanks,” and then went back to French, saying, “So, I met Boudreau and Lefebvre.”

Legault said, “You will be working with them now.”

“No, I'll still be working with you.”

“Fine. I work youth services. You're going to love it.”

Dougherty drank his beer and waited a moment and then said, “You know there's nothing here at all, nothing. And they're not going to get anything. This is most likely going to be an open file forever.”

“So I should just forget it?”

“Yeah, that's right, just forget it.”

Legault smirked at him and started to say something and then stopped. Then she said, “Oh, you don't mean that.”

“Of course I don't mean it. Look, this is just politics. There's always politics, and it's always bullshit.”

Legault drank her beer and didn't say anything.

“Look, you knew you weren't going to head up a homicide investigation from youth services.”

“No one cared until now.” She put down her glass and looked at Dougherty. “Until you got involved.”

“That's what I mean,” Dougherty said, “it's politics. The English have an expression, ‘it's above my pay grade.'”

“So you don't care?”

“I don't care about the politics, no. Look, I haven't been doing this that long myself, but I've learned a few things. There's always something else going on, there's always something between the inspectors and captains and chiefs and mayors and whatever else, but it all goes on at another level and it's got nothing to do with us. The best thing we can do, the only thing, is deal with what's right in front of us the best we can. We're trying to find out what happened to these kids, and if someone killed them we're going to find out who and we're going to arrest them. None of this other bullshit matters to us.”

Legault nodded slowly. Then she said, “Yes, you're right.”

Dougherty said, “Okay.”

And Legault said, “This time.”

He started to say something, and then he saw her sly smile and he said, “Yeah, this time.”

After a moment, Legault said, “And you're right, there is nothing. When this was missing persons two days ago, I spoke to their family and their friends, I asked at Place des Nations, there's nothing.”

“They were seen at the concert?”

“Yes, they left early, they didn't like it. They didn't make it home.”

“They took the Métro?”

Legault shrugged. “As far as I know.”

There was a commotion at the door, and then about ten guys came in, all in their twenties, rowdy and loud.

Dougherty said, “Hockey team.”

“Yes.”

“Okay, so no one saw them on the Métro at
Île Sainte
-Hélène — did anyone see them at the Longueuil station? Would they have taken a bus the rest of the way?”

“Yes,” Legault said. “But I haven't spoken to the bus drivers from that night yet.”

“I guess we'll have to start back at the concert, at Place des Nations.”

Legault nodded, drank a little of her beer and then said, “They may have walked across the bridge. Teenagers do that sometimes.”

Dougherty tried to picture his little brother Tommy walking across the Jacques Cartier, and he figured it was possible. Something he'd ask him about.

“So,” Legault said, “they may have gone off the bridge.”

“Two suicides?”

“I don't think so. The rope around Mathieu's neck, and Manon was raped.”

“They didn't just have sex with each other?”

“The coroner won't put it in the report because there was a lot of bruising and damage to the body that could have come from being in the river, bounced off rocks and so on,” Legault said. “But I saw Manon's neck and her wrists. She was raped.”

Dougherty nodded, waited a moment and said, “Okay, that's what we go with.” He drank a little beer and put down the glass. “When the detectives don't make any progress, if they don't get anything right away, they're going to start bringing in experts, psychologists and psychiatrists and criminologists, and they're going to have theories about water and heights and all kinds of stuff.”

“And we should ignore this bullshit?”

“It's not all bullshit,” Dougherty said.

“You have some experience with this?”

“I do, yeah,” Dougherty said. “I knew a researcher once, she made a lot of sense. But that's not really us, is it? We work the streets.”

“Yes.”

He held up his glass and Legault touched it with hers. Then they drank what they had left and put down the empty glasses.

Legault said, “You've worked a few homicides?”

“A few.”

“They turned out okay?”

“Homicides never turn out okay,” Dougherty said. “Someone's always dead. But we caught the guys.”

Legault said, “Good.”

Judy said, “Ulrike Meinhof killed herself.”

“Oh yeah, that's too bad.”

Judy got out of bed and walked to Dougherty's kitchenette. “Do you know who she is?”

Dougherty said, “No.”

“She was in the Baader-Meinhof gang.”

“Oh, that Ulrike Meinhof,” Dougherty said. “The terrorist.”

“She was found hanged in her cell in West Germany.”

“She busted the other one out of jail. They went to fight with the PLO.”

“Yeah, he's Baader. They're actually called the Red Army Faction.”

“I bet they can't play hockey like the Russian Red Army.”

Judy came back to the bed, drinking a glass of water, and then held it out for Dougherty. He liked the way she was so casually naked in his apartment after they'd made out, her hair falling loose and her face a little flushed.

She got back into bed, saying, “No, this Red Army doesn't play around at all. Lots of bombs.”

Dougherty lit a cigarette. “Terrorists love their bombs. And their kidnapping. Was she involved in the stuff with the Israeli athletes in Munich?”

“I don't think so, but I think at her trial she said she understood or supported the action, something like that.”

“Always so understanding.” He handed the cigarette to Judy and she took a drag and said, “Do you think there'll be anything like that during the Olympics here?”

“No, there haven't been any bombs or anything like that here in years.”

“But the Olympics bring in the whole world, everybody's watching, it could be anyone.”

“Security's pretty far up our ass,” Dougherty said. “Everybody's getting overtime.”

“So, people are worried something might happen.”

Judy blew a long line of smoke at the ceiling and handed the cigarette back to Dougherty.

“What's going to happen is people are going to get drunk and get into fights and car accidents. That's going to take up all the overtime. And crowd control.”

“So you'll be busy?”

“Yeah,” Dougherty said, “but I won't be on any of the Olympic stuff, I'll be working this homicide.”

Judy sat up and said, “What? Why didn't you tell me?”

“I just did.”

“Before, this is a big deal.”

“But it's not something to celebrate.”

“It's a promotion.”

“Another temporary assignment,” Dougherty said, “but it doesn't feel like a happy day. Couple of teenagers killed. I met their parents.”

Judy got on her side and pressed up against him and said, “No, I guess it's not a happy day.”

Dougherty had left Legault on the south shore and driven back over the Champlain Bridge — he liked that view of Montreal, all the buildings lit up at night clustered together with the mountain and the cross above them — and then was happily surprised to find Judy at his apartment.

Now Judy said, “Puts mine in perspective. After dinner he wanted to go for drinks.”

“Thursday's?”

“Some place like that, some place on Crescent. It's like he's trying to relive his youth, or have a youth, I guess. He got married and had me so young.”

“He say that?”

“Like that. He was wearing a sports coat and a turtleneck.”

“I can't picture that.”

“My father, it's unbelievable.”

“His new apartment around here?”

“On St. Marc. A lot nicer than this.”

Dougherty thought maybe that was a good lead-in to talking about moving in together, getting a nicer apartment, the two of them, but then Judy said, “I hope I get a job soon.”

“I was on the south shore today. Maybe they'll call you.”

“That's where these kids lived?”

“Yeah. It looks like they went into the river on their way home from a concert. They might have gone off the Jacques Cartier Bridge.”

“Oh my god, that's awful.”

“If they did, that's not what killed them — they had water in their lungs.” He felt Judy pressing harder against his side, and he thought for a moment he shouldn't give her all the details, but then he was thinking she was probably better with that kind of thing than he was. He said, “A boy and a girl. The girl was raped.”

“Awful.”

“People are worried the boy did it, of course, and then jumped himself.”

“That's possible, isn't it?”

“Oh yeah,” Dougherty said. “And if we don't find out something different happened, then that's what people are going to believe, that's what the families will live with.”

“Then you better find out,” Judy said.

Dougherty said, “Yeah.”

At five thirty Dougherty's beeper went off, and he called and the phone rang once and a man's voice said, “
Bureau des homicides
.”

It wasn't something to celebrate, but Dougherty did feel good. And he managed to get out of the apartment without waking Judy.