River City (60 page)

“He’s blushing,” Anik pointed out. She enjoyed seeing that.

He’d only admitted it to himself, but he now wished he hadn’t been so impetuous. Why was he here? He could have had an arrest warrant issued—he didn’t need to become personally involved. He also could have not bothered and no one would have cared. Why on earth did this girl and her mother need to be on friendly terms with the most important detective on the force? He figured his career would survive the kerfuffle, but his prospects for advancement—in particular, his hope to join the Night Patrol under Captain Armand Touton himself—had seriously slumped. Cinq-Mars took a lesson to heart: being on the side of the angels, placing himself in a just position, did not automatically constitute being right. He had no business bothering with this arrest,
and that understanding fell like a stone dropping down through his gullet as the mythic senior officer climbed the outside stairs.

“Chin up,” the young woman told him. “He’s come alone. No firing squad.”

Her cheery words didn’t help.

Carole Clément was already on her way to answer the door when the detective rang the bell. Cinq-Mars jumped in his seat. He then noticed, glumly, that they greeted one another in a familiar manner, that they were indeed good friends. Entering with Touton was the family pet, but he appeared to be quite tuckered out, and after giving the young cop a sniff he plunked himself down on his sleeping cushion under a bench.

Cinq-Mars had chosen to stand upon the detective’s entry. Feeling at a loss, he saluted, and then felt exceptionally dumb.

“You military?” Touton asked him. He didn’t return the salute.

“Uh. No, sir.”

“Just graduated, huh?”

“Four months, sir.”

“Four months and you’re still saluting?”

“Sorry, sir. I, ah, forgot myself for a moment, sir. It won’t happen again.”

“It might. Cinq-Mars, is it? You’re gung ho, are you?”

Cinq-Mars caught the gist instantly, that there was no way he could respond to that query without appearing to be terribly foolish. He buttoned his lips.

The detective seemed to have made himself right at home. He plunked himself down beside Anik, so closely that she had to squeeze to one side to accommodate his bulk, then rest her weight against him. Cinq-Mars felt doomed. “I expect answers to my questions, Cinq-Mars.”

“Yes, sir,” he murmured.

“You’re gung ho?”

He hated to admit it, and knew how foolish he must sound. “Yes, sir.” “A little more gung-ish than ho-ish,” Anik added, then deliberately poked her cheek out with her tongue.

“Anik,” her mother censored her. “I’ve made an inquiry, Cinq-Mars.”

“Yes, sir?”

“You’re off duty.”

“He’s off duty!” Anik shot back. “I told you. He’s insane. I know what this is. I’m being stalked.”

“You’re off duty,” Touton repeated, not taking his eyes off the young cop.

“Yes, sir,” Cinq-Mars managed to squeak out.

“So what are you doing here?”

“I’m … trying to make an arrest, sir.”

“Off duty.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Because you’re gung ho.”

Cinq-Mars paused. He felt miserable. “Yes, sir.”

“How?”

“Sir?”

“I want to know how you’re planning to make this arrest, Officer Cinq-Mars. Did you steal a squad car?”

He knew he wouldn’t be let off the hook anytime soon.

“No, sir. I don’t have a squad car.”

“How do you plan to get your suspect downtown?”

“Well, sir, it’s a problem. I don’t have enough money for a cab—”

Anik interrupted, “A cab? I don’t want to be arrested in a cab! I want a squad car—you know, with a siren, flashing lights, all that.”

Her mother was chuckling away.

“The métro’s not running,” Touton pointed out to his officer. “Is it your intention to take a bus?”

“A bus. I won’t be taken to jail on a bus. Come on. This is humiliating.”

Cinq-Mars and Touton were locked in a visual hold, like a pair of wrestlers. “How?” the older man asked again.

“Sir,” Cinq-Mars began, and cleared his throat. “I was planning to walk.”

“Walk!” Anik hollered. “Walk?”

“Anik,” her mother said, but she was in the midst of a laughing fit herself.

“I’m sorry, but this is an indignity,” Anik proclaimed, milking the officer’s discomfort. “My first arrest, and I have to walk, for miles, to the police station. Uh-uh. No way. I’m not going.”

Cinq-Mars held his head down. He knew that he was at the mercy of his superior officer, who probably had more indignities in store for him.

“So you must admit, Cinq-Mars, that this is a trifle …” He hesitated in his search for the appropriate word. “… unusual.”

“I suppose so, sir. Yes.”

“All right.” He looked at Anik, then back at the young man in uniform. “Now let’s consider what prompted this unusual behaviour.”

“There’re only two explanations,” Anik made known. “He’s insane—and man, I’ve got a lot of evidence to back that up—or—”

“Or?” Touton encouraged her.

“This is the argument I’m inclined to buy into myself,” Carole stated.

“Which is?” Touton pressed.

“He has a thing for me,” Anik revealed.

“I’m sorry?” Touton asked.

“He has a crush on me. He’s taken a tumble. He thinks he’s in love. He’s obsessed with me. It’s the only plausible explanation.”

The men shared a glance again. “There is another option,” Touton proposed.

Cinq-Mars lifted his head. He was encouraged by Touton’s tone, sensing that he might have a modicum of hope in this situation, yet at the same time he prepared himself for further defeats. “What’s that, sir?”

“Anik’s behaviour this evening may have justified your response.”

Swiftly, in a twinkling, the embattled young officer felt that he had finally come home. Life as a policeman had not lived up to his expectations. At the academy, he had found a surprising number of candidates to be dim-witted or sour, while others were susceptible to bullying or an antisocial manner. Still others he was tempted to arrest on the spot, as a precaution, for it was hard, coming from the country, to distinguish these ruffians from the ones he was expected to incarcerate. He had yearned to graduate, and had placed his hope on entry to the police department itself.

Being a cop had its moments. He enjoyed walking a beat, but he was still adjusting to older officers who seemed worn and bedraggled, and to the acrimony between men who wore the uniform and those in plain clothes. Officers
often deployed more energy screwing each other up than to investigating crimes, and he’d been deflated by duty officers who weren’t the least bit interested in the minor crimes he successfully addressed. Police work, he was discovering, was a bit like fishing. If the catch wasn’t big enough, throw it back in.

Suddenly, he was in a room with a real detective. He hadn’t had opportunity to be in the company of one before. More importantly, the man had demonstrated a talent for interrogation. He kept everyone on their toes, yet off guard at the same time. He had to watch himself here, track his own progress, but Cinq-Mars didn’t care. This man had displayed attributes that defined his notion of quality police work. Explore the possibilities. Get to the bottom of things. Gently allow the truth to surface. Cinq-Mars made a quick mental note to himself to be especially honest here, even if it cost him. He wanted to impress this man. He wanted to work with him someday. He wanted to prove himself worthy of that.

“I didn’t do so much,” Anik responded, suddenly put on the defensive. “It’s not like I was a factor, or anything.”

“But what did you do? Let’s start with that.”

She was saved by the bell, for the phone rang.

“It’s probably for me,” Armand Touton said quietly to Carole.

After responding, and listening, she held out the receiver to the detective.

He struggled up, feeling the pain from old wounds that had been aggravating him lately, and grunted into the mouthpiece, “Touton.” Momentarily, he said, “What?” indicating such surprise that he garnered the attention of those in the room. “Animal husbandry?” He hung up without another word, putting the phone down gently in the cradle, looking as though his mind was far away.

Turning, he gazed at Cinq-Mars and repeated, “Animal husbandry?”

“What?” asked Anik. She was thankful for the reprieve, the attention being taken off her.

Touton returned to the sofa where he’d been sitting and pulled a hand through his thinning hair. Normally, he worked until dawn, so the early-morning hour did not weary him, although the rioting, as always, had been exhausting in its way. Chaos in any form demanded an array of decisions amid
a bombardment of surprising information. He enjoyed being at the centre of big events, but after they concluded, an inevitable weariness caught up to him. More so these days, he thought, as he got older.

“Tell me what you did tonight, Anik. How did you break the law? Tell me why I shouldn’t allow this man to arrest you and walk you five miles to headquarters.”

“It’s farther than that. You wouldn’t let him—”

“Tell me what you did tonight, please.”

She fidgeted. Cinq-Mars noticed, for he’d only seen her as feisty and volatile. She turned sulky.

“I threw the first rock. Okay? Is that such a big deal? I threw it at Trudeau. Yes, the prime minister. So what? I missed, I’m sorry to say. I hit the steps. One rock. Which missed. So arrest me for that, for throwing a rock at a concrete building and causing no damage whatsoever.”

“Officer Cinq-Mars will be the one to determine the charges. Why did you throw the rock?”

“Trudeau’s a bastard.”

“Why is Trudeau a bastard?”

She dropped her jaw as she threw him a look.

“If you’re arrested, you’ll have to answer these kinds of questions.”

She threw up her hands. “He’s a bastard.”

Touton sighed, and wrung his hands for a brief moment. “What else did you do? What else, that could be of interest to the police?”

“Somebody unlocked the police van. How that happened, I don’t know—it just did. Don’t blame me for that—I wasn’t involved, all right? I just happened to be in the van. Anyway, it was so fucking crowded in there. I’m claustrophobic. I couldn’t take it. I told
him
that. He didn’t believe me—”

“I believed you, actually.”

“You still put me in there, didn’t you? You bastard.”

“So he’s a bastard, too? Is everyone a bastard now, Anik?”

“Fuck you.”

Everyone in the room felt a shock and lowered their heads. They could hear a clock ponderously ticking.

Cinq-Mars shot a glance at the mother, wondering how she felt about her child’s antics. She did seem to be in some distress, but she offered no counsel or censure. He thought she might be stunned.

Squirming, Anik wiped away a tear. “Sorry. I didn’t mean that,” she said.

A more complicated person than he’d first imagined, Cinq-Mars was thinking. Touton was trying to catch his eye. The detective gestured with his chin, and the two men stood and went outside.

“Let Ranger out,” Carole Clément directed, so they did.

Touton guided the younger man farther away from the house, to keep their conversation private in the quiet air. “This is a difficult situation,” the detective mused. The dog kept tabs on them, staying about fifteen feet ahead, wagging its tail and voraciously sniffing the ground and the tires of parked cars.

“How’s that?” Cinq-Mars was already preparing himself for disappointment. He expected that the captain of the Night Patrol wanted him to stand down from this arrest, to let it slide.

“I’ve been carrying out an investigation for some time.”

“Oh?” They were ambling away from the house, more slowly than either man’s usual pace. Normally, Cinq-Mars liked to take long strides and travel quickly on foot, while Touton had shortened his gait in recent years, thanks to old injuries that were acting up. The two had nowhere to go, and so made prodigious progress up the block.

“A murder investigation,” Touton told him.

“When did this take place?” Just to hear a murder investigation mentioned thrilled the rookie.

“I like how you talk, Cinq-Mars,” Touton told him. “You don’t say to me, ‘When did the guy get drubbed out?’ You say, ‘When did this take place?’ That’s very civilized.”

Was the older man mocking him? “Thank you, sir,” he said. “I guess.” “I should expect nothing less, no?”

He was lost again. Touton had that ability to let him think he knew what was going on, then give him an indiscriminate spin. “Sir?”

“That kind of educated language, let’s call it. You’re an officer with a university education.”

“Yes, sir, I am.” Advanced education remained rare in the department, although it was becoming more common. For the older officers, his background was an odd one, and for some of them to have a rookie around who had a degree felt vaguely suspect, as if their own authority and experience were being undermined by the newcomer’s apparent intelligence. The old guys resented the development within their familiar culture, and Cinq-Mars had found that the initial reaction to his education usually gave way to curiosity about his choice of program.

“Animal husbandry,” Touton stated, proving that he would not be an exception to the rule. “Why would you get a degree in animal husbandry if you wanted to be a cop?”

“I didn’t actually do it to become a cop, sir.”

“I think I believe you.”

“First, I got the degree—my father was pretty adamant that I have an education—and then I decided to become a cop. I didn’t make it into veterinary school, you see, which was one of my options, when I was younger.”

“I suppose that happens. First choice, I want to be a vet. Second choice, a cop. Either way, you get to spend your life with animals. Or did you want to be a Mountie—join the Musical Ride? Did they turn you down, too?”

“I wanted to work in the city, sir. The job I have now is the job I wanted.”

They walked on quietly. Cinq-Mars took out his cigarettes and offered one to Touton. “I don’t usually,” Touton said, then took one anyway. They lit up and smoked under a street lamp. Walked on a little farther. “So you want to be a cop in this city?” Touton pressed him.