The Dead of Winter (7 page)

Vanier barely stirred. “I'm tired. Maybe it's the season,” he said, almost to himself. “This time of the year is difficult for many people, isn't it, Father?”

Drouin was lost in thought and didn't respond immediately. Finally he said, “It should be a time of rejoicing.”

“I haven't been rejoicing. You know what I have been doing? I've been pulling corpses out of holes. At this time of year, who wants to do that? But you know what keeps me going? These people were daughters and sons, maybe sisters or brothers. Maybe they even had children, grown children. Grown children celebrating Christmas in their own families while their mother or father slept on the street. Did anyone spend a few seconds this Christmas wondering where any of these people were? Christmas is a time for families isn't it, Father Drouin? No matter how dysfunctional. And yet they all died alone. I suppose that's what hit me the most. Five deaths in one night, and they all died alone. That shouldn't happen at Christmas.”

Vanier sat up and pulled the pack of photographs out of the envelope. He laid each of them out on the table in front of Drouin.

“Do you recognize any of these people?”

Drouin leaned over and examined each photo carefully. “Yes, Inspector. I know all of them.” He began pointing to each photograph. “Céline, Joe Yeoman, Madame Latendresse, Pierre Brun, and George Morissette. They were all what we call clients. I ministered to them. It's hard to believe they are all dead in one night.”

“You don't seem shocked.”

“I am beyond shock, Inspector. When I saw the reports in the newspapers I knew that I would probably know some of them. I don't know what's happening. I have to believe that God is at work. But He knows so many ways to test us poor humans.”

Vanier pulled a pen out of his pocket and began writing as Drouin talked, scribbling bits and pieces of information of the lives of the unknown. Even though the interview was being taped, he felt compelled to take notes, to write things down. Scribbling scraps of information in an effort to create individuals where before there had been only empty space, to make people out of corpses.

Laurent watched through the two-way mirror as Drouin released every scrap of information he had on the five. Vanier slouched in his chair but he was listening intently, for similarities and for differences, to hear what connected them, other than their common status at the bottom of the pile. Drouin talked of people who used drugs and alcohol to feel nothing, and of the more effective disconnection of mental illness. He talked of diets of hostel meals and rotten food scavenged from dumpsters at the back of restaurants, clothes picked from piles of cast-offs with nothing ever fitting or doing the job of keeping you warm or your feet dry. And he talked of the terror of street life in the winter, when the choice was between a quiet, dark corner where you might never wake up or a single bed in a warehouse of coughing, ranting, fighting, and crying outcasts like yourself. Each of the victims was a walking encyclopedia of medical disorders: scabs and sores that never healed on the outside, and fevers, diseases, and delusions that ate away the inside.

Drouin's streets were full of thieves, con men, liars, murderers, and bullies, people who were by turn predators and victims, depending on circumstances and opportunity. Alcoholics who craved nothing but a deadening slumber. Young girls taking their first hit in a desperate search for happiness. And end-of-the-road junkies secretly hoping the next trip would be their last. Men, women and children selling their bodies because that was all they had left to sell. Children running from abuse. The depressed, the schizophrenics, the paranoid, the delusional who don't know what planet they're on, and the just plain unlucky souls life has decided to torture. A population of modern-day Jobs, invisible to all, including Vanier.

He learned about the individuals.

Pierre Brun, who appeared every winter and disappeared again in the late spring, nobody knew where. Some said to a farm in the country, others that he walked to the Maritimes and back. He never said. He just disappeared every June to reappear in October. Nobody remembers seeing Brun in Montreal in the summer.

The completely and irredeemably mad Madame Latendresse, who had more interaction with the voices in her head in one hour than she had in a week with any human. If you got her to speak, she was disappointed to have been dragged away from her imaginary friends and impatient to return to them.

Céline Plante, an alcoholic prostitute who knew nothing but life on the street from the time she was 12 years old. When Vanier suggested that, given her state, she might have been a former prostitute, Drouin disagreed; there was always a market, no matter how rotten the fruit. From time to time she would show up at the various missions and shelters, and most times she would be refused because she was drunk. She worried about her diminishing client base but couldn't imagine any way out.

George Morissette, a notary whose wife and only child died 30 years ago in a fire in their cottage up north. That was at the end of the summer he had skipped cleaning the chimney to save $50. He had spent thirty years dying with them. It took him twenty years to descend from notary to bum, but he had managed it with the help of the bottle and a broken spirit. It took ten years to descend from bum to corpse.

Finally, there was Joe Yeoman, a Mohawk whose life was a progression in and out of prison; who used anything, drugs, alcohol, sex, or violence, to numb whatever pain he felt.

“Father Drouin, can you think of a link between these five people? A person, maybe, or even a place? Did they know one another?”

“Inspector, the homeless live in a small world. They know everyone in their brutal village. Their world is so small that what connects them is trivial compared to what keeps them separate. All paths cross. From what I read in the papers, these people were found where they were sleeping for the night. It may be hard for you to imagine, Inspector, but if you have a place to sleep for the night, you have a sanctuary. These people were found dead in their sanctuaries. For people like this, a place where you can be alone and safe is a prize, and there are only a limited number of such places in any city. What the human spirit needs, even the homeless, is privacy. When you go home at night and close your door, I assume you can be alone, even when you live with someone you love. Imagine never being able to do that. Imagine never having a private moment. That's why for some lucky ones, there is a secret place where they can stay warm and unmolested for a whole night, perhaps longer. When a street person finds such a place, it must be protected. It must be approached with caution, for fear that others will discover it. Imagine, Inspector, if you haven't slept warmly or with any privacy for months, what it would mean to find one space where you could lie down and sleep undisturbed for an entire night. It would be a dream. These people seemed to have found their private space. Where they were found may have been their sanctuary.

“If these people were murdered, it wasn't random, it was by someone that knew where they slept, and I can't think of anyone they would have trusted with that knowledge.”

“That's an interesting point, Father. If I wanted to learn more about who these people were and who knew them, what should I do?”

“You could start with the shelters. They're the great centres of traffic for the displaced. Some are exclusively for men and others take only women; some take both, but in different facilities. And it's not just for the overnight stays, it's for the lunches or dinners. These five would have used several different shelters. If you use one shelter too much, you get pressured to begin a program, and none of these would have started a program. After the shelters, there are the drop-in centres, usually in church basements. In the drop-in centres, street people can escape the cold by paying the modest price of exposing themselves to volunteers who want to save their souls. Then there are the meeting points, the low traffic corners of the city that street people have made their own. You would be amazed how many such spots there are, Inspector.”

“These people would have a fairly regular existence?

“Of course, they are human beings like you and me, Inspector. We all have routines and follow them. The homeless have routines, too. You just have to be able to see them. Haven't you ever seen the same person every day at a particular spot? With each of these five, if I wanted to find them on a particular day, it wouldn't be too hard. They all had more or less regular routines; areas of the city where they hung around, shelters they frequented, parks or lost corners of the city where they rested during the day.”

“And who are the people that connect these five?”

“Well, to start with, me, I suppose. I ministered to them all. But there are many others, Inspector. The people who work at the shelters and the drop-in centres, the social workers, the doctors, the nurses. That may seem like a lot, but think about all of the people you have contact with every day. With these people, it's possible to name everyone who might have had some real contact with them. I doubt you could say that about you or even me.”

Vanier resisted the urge to tell him that he knew what it was like to go an entire weekend without talking to anyone other than clerks at the supermarket and the liquor store.

“How did you minister to them, Father Drouin?” asked Vanier.

“I talked to them. No, more importantly, I listened to them. I got to know them. And I'll tell you something, Inspector, I loved each one of them. If these people were murdered, you must find the person who did that. These people were children of God, not garbage. Society would like to ignore them. But remember, Jesus said,
Whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers, you do unto me
.”

Vanier tried to look beyond all the priests he had known, and tried to understand the man in front of him.

“So what were you doing on Christmas Eve, Father?”

“I've told you. Christmas is a very difficult time for me. I battle resentment. I resent all those people who show up in church only at Christmas, all those seasonal Christians. God's house is full one or two days a year and empty all of the others. I can't understand that. I want to tell these people if you don't believe, don't come, don't waste your time and mine. And yet I have to welcome them. And I have to work very hard at being welcoming.”

“So where were you on Christmas Eve?”

“I was free until Midnight Mass when I was needed for the big show with all the costumes. I skipped supper. I went for a walk at about 4.30 and didn't come back to the Cathedral until about an hour before Mass. About 10.30, I suppose.”

“Where did you go?”

“I walked, Inspector. There was a snowstorm. It was like being in one of those glass souvenir balls that you shake to make the snowflakes float all around. It was beautiful. The city was silent and I felt God's presence. Perhaps that's an occupational hazard, but it was peaceful in the storm. I felt like I was walking with God. I walked for hours.”

“You walked for six hours?”

“I suppose so. Is that odd?”

“Did you meet anyone, talk to anyone?”

“No. I avoided contact. If I saw someone approaching, I crossed the street. Sometimes I would turn into a side street and walk the other way to avoid contact. I craved solitude. Well, not solitude exactly. I just didn't want to share the experience. As I said, I felt like I was walking with God and I didn't want to share that with anyone.”

“And what time did you get back?”

“I told you. I got back to the Cathedral at 10.30.

“Who was the first person you saw when you got back?”

“Monsignor Forlini, when I presented myself for duty. That would have been about 11.”

“So, just so that I can get this clear, between 4.30 p.m. and 11 p.m. on Christmas Eve, there is nobody who can confirm where you were?”

“That's correct, Inspector. I suppose you could say I was missing in action during that period.”

“Father Drouin, do you own a Santa suit?”

Drouin looked at Vanier as though he had asked if he wore a yarmulke.

“That's what's wrong with Christmas. Christmas is about Jesus Christ, not Santa Claus. Christmas is the celebration of the birth of humanity's Savior. And Santa Claus is the last thing that Christians should be thinking about. So, to answer your question, Inspector, no, I don't have a Santa Claus costume.”

“I need to ask these questions, Father,” said Vanier.

“I understand, Inspector. If someone killed these poor people, you must find him.”

“I intend to,” said Vanier. “I will probably have more questions for you. But that's it for now.”

“Anything I can do to help, just ask me. You know where I am.”

“I do, Father.”

Through the two-way mirror, Laurent watched both men rise from the table. Vanier led Drouin out and walked him down to the main entrance, and waited in the cold while he went to his car. The priest didn't look back.

Vanier returned and joined Laurent in the viewing room.

“What do you think, sir?” asked Laurent.

“I don't know. I'm struggling to get over my prejudices against the Church, trying to see him simply as a man with a mission to love his fellow man. I have no problem understanding people who dedicate their lives to others. But I don't get the inner joy from him. People who do this type of work, the ones I've seen exude goodwill, they're happy. Drouin is angry, not joyful. Maybe he was shocked by the deaths. Who knows? But he was missing when Santa was giving out his gifts.”