Seven Days Dead (35 page)

“Here,” the young fish farmer answers.

“Who with?” Cinq-Mars fires back.

“Ora. We had a date. We arranged it, see.”

“Where was your dog all this time?”

This part hurts him. “I took Gadget in the dinghy. In the waves, in the storm, she put her paws up on the gunwales at the wrong time. She might’ve been able to stay in the boat, but she loved the water, and when she lost her balance, she kind of leaped. She half jumped, half fell into the waves. After that, I stayed out there looking for her.”

“Looking,” Cinq-Mars says.

“She was black, and there was no light in that storm. I saw her for like ten seconds then lost track. The waves moving me around, moved her around. We separated really quickly. I stayed out there looking for her, but I never saw her again until you showed up in your Jeep.”

Cinq-Mars crosses his arms, removes the fury of his gaze from Briscoe to give him some breathing room and enough latitude to fall overboard himself. “Why risk it, Pete? Coming ashore. Why bother anchoring your boat?”

At first, he shrugs. He doesn’t want to say. Then admits, “For sex. What else? Been a while. I was horny as—Ora was always with Orrock on account of he was sick all the time. She never got away. When she did, I was usually out at the fish farms. It was building up, you know? So we made a date. Then that damn storm blew up. That wasn’t going to stop me, was it? Ora wasn’t going to be stopped, either.”

“Why anchor off? Enter the harbor.”

He doesn’t want to say. Then relents. “I get paid by the hour. For the fish farm. If I get caught out in a storm, I get paid for that. If I’m seen in the harbor, no pay.”

“You quit trying to save your dog and came here instead, just to get laid.”

“No! It wasn’t like that. I came ashore. I was hoping Gadget would swim ashore. Or, if she was out there trying to get to me and the dinghy, and she could see me, then she’d follow me and come ashore. After I landed, I walked up and down the water’s edge looking for her. I don’t know for how long. For a long time.”

“Yeah, but Pete, you were on the radio.”

“That was later. I needed people to know I was out there. To get paid.”

“You’ve lied to me again. You told me you were here in your house. Now you say you weren’t here at all. You were all alone on the shore. Walking up and down where not a soul saw you. Not even your dead dog.”

“Yes. Okay? I lied. I told you the truth this time.”

“You didn’t see Ora that night,” he continues, and Briscoe responds with silence. “Why won’t you say so?”

“I’m not supposed to,” he replies, and at that Louwagie and Cinq-Mars share a glance. They’ve got him now. Cinq-Mars has been looking for men in the hire of a boss, and Briscoe has let on that he is one of them.

Very slowly, Cinq-Mars asks, “Pete, you’re not supposed to what?”

Briscoe dips those big eyebrows right down, so that his eyes are totally concealed. When he raises his head again, he chooses to cast his gaze out to sea. “I’m not supposed to say.”

“Where was Ora, Pete? As I’ve warned you, I am willing to take you in. We can go on all day and night like this and play by nobody’s rules except my own. You understand that, right? I’m not a cop. I don’t have to follow the law. I have no boss to keep me in line. Not a soul.”

Involuntarily, Briscoe checks with Louwagie, who makes a gesture with his lips as though to say that he doesn’t get it, either, but whatever the man is saying is how this will play out. Briscoe bites his lip a moment.

“You’re going to tell me anyway, Pete. I know that. Corporal Louwagie knows it. More important, even you know that. Tell me now rather than later, Pete. That’s my best advice. At this stage, you want to be helpful.”

The man seems to accept what he’s being told, but he attempts to lay out the ground rules for his capitulation. “It wasn’t Ora,” he contends.

If that’s what he needs to believe, Cinq-Mars will let him. “Of course not, Pete. Who could ever think such a thing? Where was she? If she’s innocent, and, like you, I presume that she is, the truth won’t hurt her. It’ll only protect her.”

Briscoe takes a deep breath. “She was here. Where she was supposed to be. Waiting for me. Except I let her down. I was looking for Gadget instead.”

“How do you know she was here if you weren’t?”

A simple man’s emphatic shrug. “She told me she was. We talked on our phones. And then, she was still here when I came by in the morning. Only she was asleep.”

“Then you had sex.” Cinq-Mars doesn’t believe that a man who’d just lost his dog would do that, but tests Briscoe anyway.

He’s shaking his head. “Too tired,” he says. Then he looks out to sea again. “Too upset. I forgot about sex. I just forgot.”

Having stepped away from him to give him a sense of space, Cinq-Mars now moves closer to him to choke off whatever his exit plan might be, and asks in a low, commanding voice, “Okay, Pete, tell me, who asked you to fetch the shovel?”

He can almost hear the man ask “What shovel?” Briscoe has learned to swallow that response. Now whenever he’s confused or needs time, rather than ask a question, he opts for silence.

“Who was it, Pete?” Cinq-Mars presses him, no longer permitting any maneuvers. “Who wouldn’t risk going up to Seven Days Work to fetch it herself?”

His eyes go wide when Cinq-Mars infers that it’s a woman, and he insists more vehemently than ever, “It wasn’t Ora.”

“I didn’t think so, Pete. I still don’t think so. But you need to tell me what I already know. Who was it, Pete, who sent you for the shovel?”

Louwagie stands again, and also comes closer. The two men, both much taller than the fisherman, stand firm against his desire to elude them somehow.

“Pete, I’ve seen the photographs of the crime scene, of Reverend Lescavage’s body. He was a nice guy, wasn’t he? Were you a member of his church?”

Briscoe wags his head no.

“You bumped into him from time to time. In the winter, everybody bumps into everybody else, right?”

He nods yes.

“Quite a guy, by all accounts. Terrible what was done to him. Precise parallel incisions, like this.” Cinq-Mars traces two lines over Pete Briscoe’s stomach to form the top of a triangle meeting just under the base of his sternum. “Most likely cut with a sharp knife. A knife anyone who cuts fish would use. Or anyone who cuts dulse for a living would carry with him. Then the bottom of those two lines are connected by another slice of a knife.”

Briscoe nods to indicate that he understands.

“The thing is, Pete, the center portion of that bottom slice, right here”—and Émile shows on the man’s own stomach a slice the length of his hand that cuts below the belly button—“was messy. From a more blunt instrument. Something less sharp. Corporal Louwagie didn’t notice this detail because he’s a sensitive soul, and such an ugly scene, that kind of horror, doesn’t interest him at all.” Briscoe looks at the Mountie as though he’s willing to sympathize. “I, on the other hand, studied the photographs. The middle part of the lower incision wasn’t inflicted by a sharp knife, but by a dull blade, and the shape of it, and the fact that it was rammed into the body several times in the violence of the moment, suggests the business end of a spade. Possibly a long-handled spade. Whoever sent you up to the ridge, Pete, sent you there to retrieve the murder weapon. The person couldn’t find it in the dark on the night in question, couldn’t risk hunting for it later. Whatever sick story you were told—and you’re gullible enough to believe it, aren’t you?—that story was a fib. Tell me who, Pete.”

While his eyes dart between the two men, they also seem to bear inward, and he’s rabbit-like now beneath his furry unibrow, trapped and panicky.

“Name her, Pete. Tell me what I already know. Name her.”

“You keep saying ‘her’. But I keep telling you, it wasn’t Ora. No way.”

“I know that, Pete. So name her. Name who it really was. Remember? You didn’t want to tell me that you didn’t see Ora until the morning. Because, you said, you weren’t supposed to tell me that. Somebody wants you to tell the other story, that you were home with your girl. I know you’re supposed to be Ora’s alibi. Who says she needs one? If you want, if it helps you, it’s the same person anyway, just tell me who coached you on what to say or not say. Who told you to lie? Who sent you for the shovel? Pete?”

TWENTY-FIVE

“Head to Ora’s house,” Cinq-Mars instructs the Mountie as they buckle up inside the RCMP cruiser. His voice is sharp, not tense, but directed, on edge, as though he’s ready to pounce.

“Shouldn’t we bring him in? Petey boy’s involved.”

“A lot of people are involved. That’s the kicker. Someone has control over them. Someone is in charge now that Orrock’s dead. Leave Pete to marinate awhile. That’ll only help us later.”

“You have strange methods.”

“Notice the results.”

“Trust me. I’m taking notes.”

“You’re a good cop, Wade. I’ve found that out.”

“When I’m not planning on shooting myself.” Something’s on his mind and Cinq-Mars lets him take his time. “I don’t believe my superiors are even close to being right, the way they treat PTSD.”

“But?”

“But today, I don’t know what it is, I’m glad to be busy.”

Cinq-Mars dwells on that awhile. “It’s like the work we do,” he postulates. “No such thing as one size fits all. You can follow a procedure, you can go down a checklist, but if you’re going to catch the bad guys, you will have to break from procedure. Even break from what you think. Sometimes you have to escape your premonitions, even your faith. You need to get at things a different way each time if you’re going to do it right. I should write a book.”

“You think it’s the same with PTSD?”

“In a way. Never mind different strokes for different folks, even the
same
person might need a new approach for no other reason than it’s a new day. It’s all tricky business.”

“That’s what makes it so tough maybe.” He’s not driving with any urgency, sticking to the speed limit. Émile would prefer that Louwagie pass the guy ahead of them, but supposes he wants to set a good example for the tourists. They take his picture so often, being a Mountie, he probably doesn’t want to burst their bubble with bad behavior on the roads.

“Everything’s a challenge, Wade. This case is a challenge. In the end, you just have to believe.”

As they arrive in North Head, a wrecker is pulling Émile’s burned-out Jeep into town. To think that he gave it a fresh coat of wax before embarking on this trip.

“Now that’s one sad and sorry sight,” the Mountie observes.

“Pull up beside him,” Cinq-Mars requests, and the officer does so at the next stop.

Cinq-Mars rolls his window down and informs the other driver, “That’s my car.”

“Too bad for you. I’m glad it’s not mine anyway.” He’s a jolly-looking fellow with an impressive handlebar mustache. His hair and whiskers are a shiny gray.

“Hide it.”

“Excuse me?” Someone behind honks, with a rather extreme gentleness in deference to the police cruiser, but both drivers ignore him for the moment.

“Whatever garage you’re taking it to, stick it behind a building, or a school bus. I don’t want it visible.”

Given that he’s hearing this from a man in the front seat of a Mountie’s cruiser, the tow truck driver agrees.

Quietly, Cinq-Mars remarks to Louwagie as they start off again, “I don’t want Sandra to see it. The shock. I’ll tell her later.”

“Good plan,” Louwagie concurs. “But Sandra’s tough.” He’s driving on when his fellow Mountie raises him over the two-way. The lad’s been hustling, having completed the hike off the ridge and tracked down the lawyer responsible for Orrock’s will, as he was instructed to do.

“Ask him how,” Cinq-Mars directs.

Louwagie does so, and the man replies over the airwaves, “His daughter told me who his lawyer was. Orrock chose a woman in Blacks.”

Typical of the man that he trusted no one on the island, and possibly no man anywhere, with his final instructions. Cinq-Mars is a little miffed with himself that Maddy will have discovered a police interest in her father’s will. He should have advised the Mountie to exercise greater caution.

“Pull over,” Cinq-Mars tells Louwagie. “Let’s hear this first.”

His partner’s information sounds like gibberish to the Mountie, and he doubts that Orrock was in his right mind when writing his will. Thoughtful, Cinq-Mars declines to speak on the matter. “Drive on,” he says instead. “Let’s go.”

They wait while three cars in a row pass them by going in the opposite direction, their turn signals blinking away, then the Mountie makes an aggressive left onto Ora Matheson’s property. A police car showing up on anyone’s lot creates a stir, and Ora, on her front porch, ceases taking in the wash. While it may or may not be dry yet, she’s hurrying to beat the rain, and the moment that Cinq-Mars clamors out of the car, a thunderclap rumbles both near and loud. Her mother is across the yard—to call it a lawn gives it too much credit and usually results in a chuckle, so her mother often will call it a lawn just to draw down the laugh. Grass is less apparent than weeds. Bare patches abound. Mrs. Matheson rushes to pack the dulse she’s hung out to dry in the sun, and she finishes up her work before seeing to the arrivals. At this stage, she can’t afford to let her product get wet.

Louwagie signals Ora to carry on with hauling her laundry off the line, and she smiles. Her mother, then, is the first person to go over to greet the men.

“Are you here to buy dulse?” Hers is a husky voice, a match for her stocky form. An immense handwritten sign by the road advertises dulse chips by the pouch or the pound, and invites tourists to take a kilo of “pure dulse” home. “Do your blood a favor. Add some flavor.” The line might have originated as a jingle.

Émile declines, and smiles. “I’ve tried it once and didn’t take to the stuff.”

“It’s an acquired taste. Try again.” She has an open bag in the pocket of her navy hoodie, and offers him a chip. She beams while he savors the crunch and evaluates the strange taste.

“Well?”

“Still tastes like rust to me,” Cinq-Mars says, but the remark fails to throw her off her game, and she continues to beam.