Bones to Ashes Part 57

A woman spoke from just below the window. Her voice sounded wheezy and winded.

"If you hurt him, it harms us."

I strained to see the woman, but the chair back blocked her from view.

The sirens were now screaming down Rustique. Tires screeched, doors opened, feet pounded, radios sputtered. A man's voice called out, another answered.

Bastarache's eyes darted to the woman. In that instant, Ryan tossed the Winchester behind him and sprang.

The shotgun skidded across the floor and ricocheted off a baseboard. Malo spun and bolted from the room.

I turned and yelled, "Coming out the front!"

Three cops raced up the driveway. One shouted, "Arretez-vous! Freeze!" Freeze!"

Malo cut toward the garage. The cops overtook him, slammed his body to the brick, and cuffed his wrists.

Bounding into the house, I hooked a right through a set of double doors into the parlor. A cop followed close on my heels. I heard Ryan tell him to radio for an ambulance.

Bastarache was down on splayed knees, hands cuffed behind him. The woman crouched by his side. Her arm circled her waist. One hand lay on his shoulder. A hand that possessed only three k.n.o.bby fingers.

"I'm such a f.u.c.kup," Bastarache mumbled. "Such a f.u.c.kup."

"Shhh," the woman said. "I know you love me."

A shaft of fast-dropping sun flamed the dark curls framing the woman's head. Slowly, she raised her chin.

Agonizing realization curdled my innards.

The woman's cheeks and forehead were lumpy and hard. Her upper lip stretched to a nose that was asymmetrically concave.

"Evangeline," I said, overwhelmed with emotion.

The woman looked my way. Something flashed in her eyes.

"I've seen the Queen of England," she rasped, chest heaving, tears snaking serpentine trails through her flesh.

41.

A WEEK Pa.s.sED WEEK Pa.s.sED. SEVEN DAYS OF RECOVERY, CELEBRATION, PARTING, revelation, confession, and denial.

I slept for twelve hours following the incident at Malo's house, awoke rejuvenated and harboring no grudge against my sister. Harry had survived her escapade in the park. One Jimmy Choo leopard thong sandal had not. Gull guano.

Harry explained that she'd driven to see Flan O'Connor in Toronto. She wanted to surprise me with a scoop on Obeline and the poetry. Her big discovery was that O'Connor House had only operated from 1998 until 2003. Ironically, the information turned out to be merely c.u.mulative to what we already knew about time frames.

Harry flew home to file for divorce and sell her house in River Oaks. Having enjoyed downtown living, she'd decided to search for a condo that would allow her to live car-free. I suspected her plan was unworkable in a town like Houston. I kept it to myself.

The feast of Saint John the Baptist, la fete nationale du Quebec, came and went. City crews swept up, the fleur-de-lis flags came down, and Montreal's citizenry turned its attention to the annual rites of jazz.

Through conversations with Ryan and Hippo, I learned many things.

The man slumped by the tree was a Malo thug named Serge Sardou. When Sardou challenged Bastarache's charge up the driveway, Bastarache shot him. The wound caused a lot of bleeding but only minor muscle damage. Sardou started bartering as soon as the anesthesia wore off.

Turned out Mulally and Babin had been smitten with the Escalade, not with Harry and me. It was Sardou who'd threatened me by e-mail and phone. And, my personal favorite, thrown me down the stairs. Malo had asked him to recover the contact sheet of Evangeline, and to back me off. Sardou decided to double-task at Cormier's studio.

Bastarache and Malo both went directly from Rustique to jail. Bastarache claimed self-defense, saying Sardou had threatened him with the Winchester. A lawyer had him out on bail the next day.

Based on statements from Sardou and Kelly Sicard, Malo was charged with three counts of homicide and a zillion counts of offenses involving kids. Unlike Bastarache, Plucky Pierre was going nowhere soon.

Wednesday, June 27, I was in my lab at Wilfrid-Derome. Five boxes lined the side counter, remains packaged for release to next of kin.

Reading my handwritten labels, I felt a bittersweet sense of accomplishment. Genevieve Doucet. Anne Girardin. Claire Brideau. Maude Waters. LSJML-57748.

Cause of death would never be determined for Genevieve Doucet. No matter. Poor Theodore was beyond understanding. Or blaming. Maitre a.s.selin would be collecting her great-niece's bones.

There would be no justice for little Anne Girardin, Ryan's MP number three. Daddy had died of a self-inflicted bullet to the brain. But Adelaide had been located and could now bury her daughter.

From age seventeen to nineteen, Claire Brideau had starred in dozens of Peter Bad Productions. Pierre Malo. Peter Bad. Pure poetry.

We'd guessed right about Cormier. The photographer had funneled girls to Malo in exchange for a few bucks and a steady supply of pedophile s.m.u.t. Kelly Sicard had been one. Claire Brideau had been another. There would be no more. Fearing Cormier might roll to save himself, Malo had killed him.

According to Sardou, in 1999, Malo strangled Brideau in a rage for lifting money from a nightstand in the house on Rustique. Ordered to dispose of the body, he'd offloaded Brideau from a buddy's boat into the Riviere des Mille iles. She became Ryan's DOA number one.

Ryan's DOA number three, the Lac des Deux Montagnes floater, was identified as sixteen-year-old Maude Waters. The previous year, Maude had left her home on the Kahnawake Mohawk Reserve hoping to make her way to Hollywood and a star on the Walk of Fame. Instead, she ended up with Malo doing p.o.r.n.

Malo was claiming Maude OD'd while living in his house. Sardou's version had Malo strangling Maude because she'd threatened to leave. As with Brideau eight years earlier, Sardou was ordered to dump the corpse. Feeling invincible, the loyal employee simply drove a few blocks and tossed Maude from the Bois-de-L'ile-Bizard boat ramp.

LSJML-57748. Hippo's girl. For now, the Sheldrake Island skeleton would lie under an anonymous iron cross in the lepers' cemetery in Tracadie. But I was working with an Acadian historian. With luck, and hard work, we hoped to learn who she was. The lab in Virginia had sequenced DNA from her bones. Perhaps someday we might even find a relative.

The lab door opened, breaking my reverie. Hippo entered, carrying coffee and a bag of St. Viateur Bagels. As we spread cream cheese with little plastic knives, I considered what I'd learned of the saga of Evangeline.

I'd been right. Laurette Landry had worked at the lazaretto, and had lost her job upon its closing in '65. Years later, she developed leprosy. So great was the family's distrust of government, Laurette was hidden away with Grand-pere Landry. At fourteen, Evangeline became the family's primary breadwinner and nurse.

While Laurette was alive, Evangeline lived at home and worked days for David's father, Hilaire Bastarache. Upon her mother's death, she a.s.sumed the position of resident housekeeper.

At that time Pierre Malo, Hilaire's illegitimate son, was also living in the Bastarache house. Malo pressed Evangeline into posing for him, threatening her with loss of her job. David Bastarache had fallen in love with Evangeline. Appalled by his half-brother's activities, he vowed to sack and boot Malo as soon as control fell to him, as Hilaire had told him it would.

Though I'd gained some insight into Bastarache's character, the man still mystified me.

"Explain it to me, Hippo. How could such thinking exist today?"

Hippo chewed as he gave my question thought.

"Every Acadian kid grows up on tales of ancestors being hunted down and deported. Le Grand Derangement still haunts us as a people. And it's not just ancient history. Acadians see their culture as constantly threatened by a hostile, Anglo-dominated world."

I let him go on.

"How do you keep alive your customs and language while your kids are watching Seinfeld Seinfeld and listening to the Stones? While their city cousins can barely and listening to the Stones? While their city cousins can barely parler parler a few words of French?" a few words of French?"

I took the questions as rhetorical, and didn't answer.

"We Acadians have learned to hold on to our ident.i.ty no matter what life throws at us. How? Partly through sheer obstinacy. Partly by making everything larger than life. Our music. Our food. Our festivals. Even our fears."

"But it's not the 1800s," I said. "Or even the 1960s. How can Bastarache distrust hospitals and government that much?"

"Bastarache is Acadian by nature. He also operates businesses that run close to the line. On top of all that, he's got personal baggage. Vile father. Deviate brother. Mother shot. Homeschooled." Hippo shrugged. "The guy seems to genuinely love your pal. Didn't want her harmed. Did what he thought was best to protect her."

Malo had been right about one thing. Obeline and Bastarache were living in the dark ages with regard to their att.i.tude toward Evangeline's disease. Like the nursing nuns of a century before, Obeline had sacrificed for leprosy, committing to a loveless marriage in order to care for her sister. Bastarache had been complicit in hiding Evangeline away.

"Obeline lied about seeing Evangeline murdered," I said. "To throw me off. She also let everyone believe Bastarache was responsible for the broken arm and the fire."

"He wasn't?" Hippo was thumbnailing something from a molar.

I shook my head. "Because of the leprosy, Evangeline had little feeling in her hands and feet. Obeline cracked her ulna attempting to stop Evangeline from falling downstairs. It was also Evangeline who accidentally set the house on fire.

"She also lied about the poetry book. Obeline had it published as a birthday gift for Evangeline. Anonymously, since no one was to know her sister was alive."

Having achieved success with the molar, Hippo was cream-cheesing a second bagel. I continued talking.

"The great tragedy is that Evangeline could have led a relatively normal life. Multidrug therapies are readily available and patients usually show improvement in two to three months. Fewer than one tenth of one percent of those treated fail to be cured."

"There still much leprosy around?"

I'd done some research on that.

"The global registered prevalence of leprosy at the beginning of 2006 was almost two hundred and twenty thousand cases. And it's not just Africa and Southeast Asia. Thirty-two thousand of those cases are right here in the Americas. Over six thousand in the United States. Two hundred to two hundred and fifty new cases are diagnosed each year."

"I'll be d.a.m.ned."

"Bastarache and Obeline did for Evangeline exactly what had been done for her mother, never realizing the enormity of the mistake."

"One thing I don't get. Bastarache hated Malo. Why stash her with him?"

"Evangeline had only been at Malo's house a short time. When Harry and I dropped in on Obeline, Bastarache freaked. Figured if we found the house in Tracadie there was a possibility we could also find the one on ile d'Orleans. When Ryan and I actually did show up there, he panicked and raced back to move her again."

My eyes drifted to the row of neatly labeled boxes. Genevieve Doucet, left to mummify in her bed by poor deranged Theodore. Anne Girardin, killed by her father.

I thought of others. Ryan's MP number two, Claudine Cloquet, sold to Malo by her father. Evangeline, locked away by her would-be husband and her sister, though undoubtedly with her own consent.

"You know, Hippo, the bogeyman's not always hanging out in the school yard or at the bus depot. He can be the guy in your parlor hogging the remote."

Hippo stared at me as though I'd spoken Swahili.

"Someone right there in your own family. That's often where the threat is."

"Yeah," Hippo said softly.

My eyes settled on the name now attached to the girl from Lac des Deux Montagnes. Maude Waters. Maude had also had movie star dreams. Was dead at sixteen.

My thoughts veered to Malo. He'd claimed no knowledge of Phoebe Quincy. Again, his employee had told a different tale. Sardou stated that he'd seen Phoebe at the house on Rustique. But only briefly.

Phoebe remained missing.

Ryan's DOA number two, the girl from the Dorval sh.o.r.eline, remained unidentified.

Symbolic, I thought, of the many children who are murdered each year, or those who simply vanish, never to be found.

"Back to the streets," Hippo said, pushing to his feet.

I rose, too. "You did a crack job on these cases, Hippo."

"Got two more to close."

"Do you think Phoebe Quincy has been piped into some underground p.o.r.nography pipeline?"

"I prefer to think she's alive, but, one way or another, I won't quit looking until I know. Every day I'll come to work and every day I'll keep searching for these kids."

I managed a smile. "I bet you will, Hippo. I bet you will."

Hippo's eyes bore into mine. "Sooner or later I will have answers."

Friday morning, I boarded a flight to Moncton, rented a car, and drove to Tracadie. This time Bastarache answered the door.

"How is she?" I asked.

Bastarche did a "so-so" waggle of one hand.

"Is she taking her meds?"

"Obeline's giving her no choice."

Bastarache led me to the room at the back of the house, excused himself, and withdrew. I thought about him as he walked away. Strip clubs, cat houses, and adultery, but the guy drew the line at child p.o.r.nography. And loved Evangeline. Go figure human nature.

Evangeline sat in an armchair gazing out at the water.

Crossing to her, I wrapped my arms around her shoulders and drew her close. She resisted at first, then relaxed against me.

I held my old friend as tight as I dared for as long as I dared. Then I released her and looked into her eyes.

"Evangeline, I-"