Deja Dead Part 11

"Monsieur St. Jacques?"

Same answer.

Charbonneau raised a palm in my direction. I waited while the detectives entered, then followed, my heart pounding in my chest.

The room held little furniture. In the left-rear corner a pink plastic curtain hung by rusted rings from a semicircular rod, separating the area into a makeshift bathroom. Below the curtain I could see the base of a commode and a set of pipes that probably led to a sink. The pipes were badly rusted and supported a thriving colony of a soft, green life-form. To the right of the curtain, the back wall had been fitted with a Formica-topped counter. It held a hot plate, several plastic tumblers, and an unmatched collection of dishes and pans.

In front of the curtain, an unmade bed ran the length of the left wall. A table fashioned from a large plywood plank was placed along the right. Its base was formed by two sawhorses, each clearly stamped as property of the city of Montreal. The surface was heaped with books and papers. The wall above was covered with maps, photos, and newspaper articles, forming a cut-and-paste mosaic that extended the length of the table. A metal folding chair was tucked below. The room's only window was to the right of the front door, identical to that used by Madame Rochon. Two bare bulbs jutted from a hole in the ceiling.

"Nice place," said Charbonneau.

"Yeah. A thing of beauty. I'd rank it up there with herpes and Burt Reynolds's hairpiece."

Claudel moved to the toilet area, withdrew a pen from his pocket, and gingerly drew back the curtain.

"Defense Ministry might want to take sc.r.a.pings. This stuff may have potential for biological warfare." He dropped the curtain and moved toward the table.

"d.i.c.khead isn't even here," said Charbonneau, flipping a blanket edge onto the bed with the tip of his shoe.

I was surveying the kitchenware on the Formica counter. Two Expos beer tumblers. A dented saucepan encrusted with something resembling SpaghettiOs. A half-eaten chunk of cheese congealed in the same substance in a blue china bowl. A cup from Burger King. Several cellophane packages of saltine crackers.

It hit me when I leaned over the hot plate. The lingering warmth made my blood turn to ice, and I spun toward Charbonneau.

"He's here!"

My words. .h.i.t the air at the exact moment a door exploded open in the right-hand corner of the room. It slammed into Claudel, knocking him off balance and pinning his right arm and shoulder against the wall. A figure lunged across the room, body doubled over, legs thrusting toward the open front door. I could hear breath rasping in his throat.

For just an instant in his headlong plunge across the room, the fugitive raised his head, and two flat, dark eyes met mine, peering out from under the orange brim of a cap. In that brief flash I recognized the look of a terrified animal. Nothing more. Then he was gone.

Claudel regained his balance, unsnapped his gun, and bolted out the door. Charbonneau was right behind him. Without thinking, I plunged into the chase.

11.

WHEN I I SHOT ONTO THE STREET THE SUNLIGHT BLINDED ME SHOT ONTO THE STREET THE SUNLIGHT BLINDED ME. I squinted up Berger trying to locate Charbonneau and Claudel. The parade was over, and large numbers of people were drifting down from Sherbrooke. I spotted Claudel shouldering his way through the crowd, his face red and contorted as he demanded pa.s.sage through the sticky bodies. Charbonneau was close behind. He was holding his badge straight arm in front of him, using it like a chisel to gouge his way forward.

The throng partied on, unaware that anything unusual was taking place. A heavy blonde swayed on her boyfriend's shoulders, her head thrown back, her arms held high, wagging a bottle of Molson's at the sky. A drunken man wearing a Quebec flag like a Superman cape hung from a lamppost. He prompted the crowd in chanting, "Quebec pour les Quebecois!" I noticed the chorus had a stridence that hadn't been there earlier.

I veered into the vacant lot, climbed onto a cement block, and stood on tiptoe to scan the crowd. St. Jacques, if that's who it had been, was nowhere to be seen. He had the home-court advantage, and had used it to put as much geography as possible between himself and us.

I could see one of the backup team replacing his handset and joining the chase. He'd radioed for reinforcements, but I doubted a cruiser could penetrate the mob. He and his partner were elbowing their way toward Berger and Ste. Catherine, well behind Claudel and Charbonneau.

Then I spotted the orange baseball cap. It was ahead of Charbonneau, who had turned east on Ste. Catherine, unable to see it through the ma.s.s of bodies. St. Jacques was heading west. As quickly as I saw him, he disappeared. I waved my arms for attention, but it was useless. I'd lost sight of Claudel, and neither of the patrolmen could see me.

Without thinking, I jumped from the block and plunged into the crowd. The smell of sweat, suntan lotion, and stale beer seemed to seep from the bodies around me, forming a bubble of human smog. I lowered my head and plowed through the swarm with less than my usual courtesy, bulldozing a path toward St. Jacques. I had no badge to excuse my roughness, so I pushed and shoved and avoided eye contact. Most people took the jostling with good humor, others paused to fling insults at my back. The majority were gender specific.

I tried to see St. Jacques's baseball cap through the hundreds of heads surrounding me, but it was impossible. I set a course toward the point where I'd spotted him, driving through the bodies like an icebreaker on the St. Lawrence.

It almost worked. I was close to Ste. Catherine when I was grabbed roughly from behind. A hand the size of a Prince tennis racket wrapped itself around my throat and my ponytail was yanked sharply downward. My chin shot up, and I felt, or heard, something snap in my neck. The hand jerked me backward, and pressed me flat against the chest of a Yeti construction worker. I could feel his heat and smell his perspiration as it soaked my hair and back. A face came close to my ear, and I was enveloped in the odor of sour wine, cigarette smoke, and stale nacho chips.

"Hey, plotte plotte, who the f.u.c.k you shoving?"

I could not have answered were I inclined. This seemed to anger him further and he released my hair and neck, placed both hands on my back, and shoved violently. My head snapped forward like a catapult launcher, and the force of the movement propelled me into a woman in short shorts and stiletto heels. She screamed, and the people around us separated slightly. I threw my hands out in an attempt to regain my balance, but it was too late. I went down, bouncing hard off someone's knee.

As I hit the pavement I slid and sc.r.a.ped my cheek and forehead, and threw my arms over my head in a reflex of self-preservation. The blood was pounding in my ears. I could feel surface gravel grinding into my right cheek, and knew I had lost some of the skin. As I attempted to push off the pavement with my hands, a boot came down hard on my fingers, mashing them. I could see nothing but knees, legs, and feet as the crowd rolled over me, seeming not to see me until the instant of tripping over me.

I rolled onto my side and tried again to come to my hands and knees. Unintended blows from feet and legs kept me from righting myself. No one stopped to shield me or help me up.

Then I heard an angry voice, and felt the crowd recede slightly. A small pocket of s.p.a.ce formed around me, and a hand appeared at my face, its fingers gesturing impatiently. I grasped it and pulled myself up, rising, unbelievably, to sunlight and oxygen.

The hand was attached to Claudel. He held back the crowd with his other arm as I got painfully to my feet. I saw his lips move but couldn't understand what he was saying. As usual, he seemed to be annoyed. Nonetheless, he'd never looked so good. He finished speaking, paused, and looked me over. He took in the jagged tear in my right knee and the abrasions on my elbows. His eyes came to rest on my right cheek. It was sc.r.a.ped and bleeding, and the eye on that side was beginning to swell shut.

Dropping my hand, he withdrew a handkerchief from his pocket and gestured at my face. When I reached for it my hand was trembling. I blotted away blood and gravel, refolded to a clean surface, and held the linen against my cheek.

Claudel leaned close and shouted in my ear, "Stay with me!"

I nodded.

He worked his way toward the west side of Berger, where the crowd was a little thinner. I followed on rubbery legs. Then he turned and began to worm his way in the direction of the car. I lunged and grabbed his arm. He stopped and looked a question at me. I shook my head vehemently, and his eyebrows went from a deep V to a Stan Laurel imitation.

"He's over there!" I screamed, pointing in the opposite direction. "I saw him."

A man in a Tweedledee costume brushed past me. He was eating a snow cone, and the drops from the melt-off were painting a red trail down his belly. It looked like a blood-spatter pattern.

Claudel's brows dived in the midline. "You are going to the car," he said.

"I saw him on Ste. Catherine!" I repeated, thinking perhaps he hadn't heard. "Outside Les Foufounes electriques! He was going toward St. Laurent!" Even to me, my voice was sounding a bit hysterical.

It got his attention. He hesitated a second, a.s.sessing the damage to my cheek and limbs.

"You're okay?"

"Yeah."

"You will go to the car?"

"Yes!" He turned to go. "Wait." One by one I lifted my trembling legs over a rusted metal cable that looped knee-high around the edge of the lot, crossed to another cement block, and stepped onto it. I scanned the sea of heads, looking for the orange baseball cap. Nothing. Claudel watched impatiently as I surveyed the crowd, shifting his eyes from me to the intersection then back again. He reminded me of a sled dog waiting for the gun.

Finally, I shook my head and raised my hands.

"Go. I'll keep looking."

Skirting the open lot, he began elbowing his way in the direction I'd indicated. The mob on Ste. Catherine was bigger than ever, and, in a few minutes, I watched his head disappear into it. The swarm seemed to absorb him, like an army of antibodies seeking out and surrounding a foreign protein. One moment he was an individual, the next a dot in the pattern.

I searched until my vision blurred, but hard as I tried I couldn't locate Charbonneau or St. Jacques. Beyond St. Urbain, I could see a squad car nibbling its way into the edge of the crowd, its lights flashing red and blue. The revelers ignored its whining insistence on right of way. Once I caught a flash of orange, but it turned out to be a tiger wearing tails and high-top sneakers. Moments later she pa.s.sed closer, carrying her costume head and drinking a Dr Pepper.

The sun was burning, and my head pounded. I could feel a crust hardening on my abraded cheek. I kept scanning and rescanning, sweeping the crowd. I refused to quit until Charbonneau and Claudel returned. But I knew it was farce. St. Jean and the day had smiled on our quarry, and he had escaped.

An hour later we were gathered around the car. Both detectives had removed their jackets and ties and tossed them in the backseat. Beads of sweat glistened on their faces and flowed into their collars. Their underarms and backs were saturated, and Charbonneau's face was the color of a raspberry tart. His hair stood on end in front, reminding me of a schnauzer with a bad clip. My T-shirt hung limp, and my spandex workout pants felt as if I'd put them on straight from the washer. Our breathing had slowed to normal, and "f.u.c.k" had been said at least a dozen times, with everyone contributing.

"Merde," said Claudel. It was an acceptable alternative.

Charbonneau leaned into the car and extracted a pack of Players from his jacket pocket. He slumped against a fender, lit up, and blew the smoke out the corner of his mouth.

"b.a.s.t.a.r.d can cut a crowd like a c.o.c.kroach through s.h.i.t."

"He knows his way around here," I said, resisting the urge to explore the damage to my cheek. "That helps him."

He smoked for a moment.

"Think it was our guy from the cash machine?"

"h.e.l.l, I don't know," I said. "I didn't get a look at his face."

Claudel snorted, then pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and began wiping the perspiration from the back of his neck.

I locked my one good eye on him. "Were you able to ID him?"

Another snort.

I looked at him shaking his head, and my plan of zero commentary evaporated.

"You're treating me like I'm not quite bright, Monsieur Claudel, and you're starting to p.i.s.s me off."

He gave another in his series of smirks.

"How's your face feel?" he asked.

"Peachy!" I shot back between clenched teeth. "At my age free dermabrasion is a bonus."

"Next time you decide to go on a wild-a.s.sed crime fighting spree, don't expect me to sc.r.a.pe you up."

"Next time do a better job of controlling an arrest scene and I won't have to." The blood was pounding in my temples, and my hands were clenched so tightly the nails were digging small crescents into the flesh of my palms.

"Okay. Knock this s.h.i.t off," said Charbonneau, flipping his cigarette in a wide arc. "Let's toss the apartment."

He turned to the patrolmen, who had been standing by quietly.

"Call in recovery."

"You got it," said the taller, moving toward the squad car.

Silently, the rest of us followed Charbonneau to the red-brick building and reentered the corridor. The other patrolman waited outside.

In our absence someone had closed the outer door, but the one leading to number 6 still stood wide. We entered the room and spread out as before, like characters in a stage play following directions for blocking.

I moved toward the back. The hot plate was cold now, and the SpaghettiOs had not improved with age. A fly danced on the edge of the pan, reminding me of other, grislier leftovers that may have been abandoned by the occupant. Nothing else had changed.

I walked over to the door in the far right corner of the room. Small chunks of plaster littered the floor, the result of a doork.n.o.b slammed against the wall with great force. The door was half open, revealing a wooden staircase descending to a lower floor. It dropped one step to a small landing, made a ninety-degree turn to the right, and disappeared into darkness. The landing was lined with tin cans where it met the back wall. Rusted hooks jutted from the wood at eye level. I could see a light switch on the wall to the left. The plate was missing, and the exposed wires looped around themselves like worms in a bait carton.

Charbonneau joined me and eased the door back with his pen. I indicated the switch, and he used the pen to flip it. A bulb went on somewhere below, casting the bottom steps into shadowy relief. We listened to the gloom. Silence. Claudel came up behind us.

Charbonneau stepped onto the landing, paused, and descended slowly. I followed, feeling each riser protest softly under my feet. My battered legs trembled as though I'd just run a marathon, but I resisted the temptation to touch the walls. The pa.s.sage was narrow, and all I could see were Charbonneau's shoulders ahead of me.

At the bottom, the air was dank and smelled of mildew. Already my cheek felt like molten lava, and the coolness was a welcome relief. I looked around. It was a standard bas.e.m.e.nt, roughly half the size of the building. The back wall was constructed of unfinished cinder blocks, and must have been added later to subdivide a larger area. A metal washtub stood ahead and to the right, with a long wooden workbench snugged up against it. Pink paint was peeling from the bench. Below it lay a collection of cleaning brushes, their bristles yellowed and covered in cobwebs. A black garden hose was coiled neatly on the wall.

A behemoth furnace filled the s.p.a.ce to the right, its round metal ducts branching and rising like the limbs of an oak. A midden of trash circled its base. In the dim light I could identify broken picture frames, bicycle wheels, bent and twisted lawn chairs, empty paint cans, and a commode. The castoffs looked like offerings to a Druid G.o.d.

A bare bulb hung in the middle of the room, throwing about one watt of light. That was it. The rest of the cellar was empty.

"Sonofab.i.t.c.h must've been waiting at the top," said Charbonneau, gazing up the stairs, hands on his hips.

"Madame Fata.s.s might have told us the guy had this little hidey-hole," said Claudel, teasing at the trash pile with the tip of his shoe. "Regular Salman Rushdie down here."

I was impressed by the literary reference, but having returned to my original plan of neutral observation, said nothing. My legs were beginning to ache, and something was very wrong in my neck.

"f.u.c.ker could've scrambled us from behind that door."

Charbonneau and I didn't reply. We'd had the same thought.

Dropping his hands, Charbonneau crossed to the stairs and started up. I followed, beginning to feel a bit like Tonto. When I emerged into the room, the heat rolled over me. I crossed to the makeshift table and started examining the collage on the wall above.

The central piece was a large map of the Montreal area. Cutouts from magazines and newspapers surrounded it. Those on the right were standard issue p.o.r.nography shots, the progeny of Playboy Playboy and and Hustler Hustler. Young women stared from them, their bodies in distorted positions, their clothes absent or in disarray. Some pouted, some invited, and some feigned looks of o.r.g.a.s.mic bliss. None was very convincing. The collagist was eclectic in his taste. He exhibited no preference as to body type, race, or hair color. I noted that the edges of each picture were carefully trimmed. Each was set equidistant from its neighbors and stapled in place.

A grouping of newspaper articles occupied the s.p.a.ce to the left of the map. Although a few were in English, the majority were drawn from the French press. I noticed that those in English were always accompanied by pictures. I leaned close and read a few sentences about a groundbreaking at a church in Drummondville. I moved to a French article on a kidnapping in Senneville. My eyes shifted to an ad for Videodrome, claiming to be the largest distributor of p.o.r.nographic films in Canada. There was a piece from Allo Police Allo Police on a nude dance bar. It showed "Babette" dressed in leather cross garters and draped with chains. There was another on a break-in in St.-Paul-du-Nord in which the burglar had constructed a dummy of his victim's nightclothes, stabbed it repeatedly, then left it on her bed. Then I spotted something that again turned my blood to ice. on a nude dance bar. It showed "Babette" dressed in leather cross garters and draped with chains. There was another on a break-in in St.-Paul-du-Nord in which the burglar had constructed a dummy of his victim's nightclothes, stabbed it repeatedly, then left it on her bed. Then I spotted something that again turned my blood to ice.

In his collection St. Jacques had carefully clipped and stapled three articles side by side. Each described a serial killer. Unlike the others, these appeared to be photocopies. The first described Leopold Dion, "The Monster of Pont-Rouge." In the spring of 1963 police had discovered him at home with the bodies of four young men. They had all been strangled.

The second recounted the exploits of Wayne Clifford Boden, who strangled and raped women in Montreal and Calgary beginning in 1969. When arrested in 1971, his final count was four. In the margin someone had written "Bill l'etrangleur l'etrangleur."

The third article covered the career of William Dean Christenson, alias Bill l'eventreur l'eventreur, Montreal's own Ripper. He'd killed, decapitated, and dismembered two women in the early 1980s.

"Look at this," I said to no one in particular. Though the room was stifling, I felt cold all over.

Charbonneau came up behind me. "Oh, baby, baby," he intoned flatly, as his eyes swept over the arrangement to the right of the map. "Love in wide angle."

"Here," I said, pointing at the articles. "Look at these."

Claudel joined us and the two men scanned them wordlessly. They smelled of sweat and laundered cotton and aftershave. Outside I could hear a woman calling to Sophie, and wondered briefly if she beckoned a pet or a child.