Seven Days Dead Part 18

"I'm hanging in. A tiny speck inside my brain wants to find out if this s.h.i.t will pa.s.s."

"Curiosity keeps you alive. Okay. As good a reason as any. Corporal, I know what the Mounties want from you. To stay on the job, get back in the saddle, ride that horse. It's all bulls.h.i.t, of course. They're Neanderthals that way and because you work for them, you have my sympathies."

At least Louwagie seems to cheer up a tad, hearing that.

"I won't ask you to take a full load. We'll keep you under wraps. We'll travel together, you can guide me around. You can give me access here and there and I'll give you the pleasure of my company. That's what you need right now, company. I'm not saying you want it, only that you need it. But I won't depend on you for much, so relax about it. Maybe we'll tweak your curiosity. Bolster your life force that way. Stay upright, Wade, see what tomorrow brings. Before this, you were okay. You can get back to that again. Maybe more easily this time than last. We'll see. Okay?"

Louwagie seems more present now. "So you're on the case? What changed your mind?"

"Your idiot partner. I'm going to brain him. He sent Maddy Orrock to see me. She was persuasive."

"You're working for her then. Everybody here works for the Orrocks, sooner or later."

"I'm on the side of truth, to see where that leads. As far as getting paid for my services goes, I'll figure that out later."

"I'm a wreck."

"I noticed. We've been through this."

"I'm s.p.a.ced-out. I feel strangely remote."

"Remote?"

"To myself. Somehow, I'm far away. From here. From now. I don't think I can help. I should stay out of your way."

"Yeah, that'll work. You'll be drunk by midnight or dead by morning. Look. First things first. Lescavage was killed. I need to visit his house, and I need to see the crime-scene photographs. I can't do either without you. Are you in?"

"Don't show me those photos again."

"Again? You were there. Almost first on the scene. You went back to the pictures after that?"

"You think that set me off? Maybe. I haven't been right since. I got through the scene, but not the pictures. Weird."

"Maybe not so much. One is actual, real. The photos aren't. They can get inside your head in strange ways. I've seen it before. Was that your vomit up on the ridge?"

Louwagie nods.

"You should've let yourself upchuck again, looking at the pictures. Don't hold that s.h.i.t in."

"You sound like my shrink."

"We're riding together now. So I am your shrink. Can we get going?"

"The manse first?"

"You got it."

"Sure. Why not?"

emile's not going to coddle this guy, but on the way out he permits himself to give Louwagie a double tap on the shoulder, to comfort him. To help buck him up. He likes the fight in his new partner. Not opening a bottle-that took some inner demon-fighting strength.

Louwagie drives in emile's Jeep. He's wearing casual civilian clothes anyway, and emile is just as happy that the man doesn't have a gun on his hip. They don't bother with his squad car, and stop at the police station to pick up the photographs and keys.

"House first," emile dictates. "If I look at those pictures now, they might affect my observations."

On the way over to the Reverend Lescavage's village manse, the younger man doesn't have a word to say, his eyes off to the side ditch, his mind probably further afield. emile has driven by the manse several times without realizing that it shares a connection to the small white church next door, the one with the bent steeple. Located far enough off the property it seems to be only a neighbor to the church and the tidy graveyard at the rear. emile notices how it differs from what's familiar to him back in Quebec. He's been inside a few rectories in his day. In every instance, there was no mistaking the home as being a priest's residence, often priests plural, whereas this one evokes the Protestant style to blend in with the community and not be segregated by any ecclesiastical countenance. Catholic to the core, he still isn't sure how he feels about that.

Louwagie unlocks the front door and they step inside. Light falling through the windows onto the lovely patina of the old and warped pine floors and onto the dusty wooden bookcases somehow accentuates the silence of the cottage. Compared to the Mountie's home, this one benefits from a charm the other dwelling can't imagine.

"Where'd you get the keys?" emile asks.

"Pardon me?"

"Did you take them off the minister's body?"

"Oh. No. He didn't have a set of keys on him."

"Seriously? Didn't that strike you as odd?"

"Lots of people don't lock their doors around here. The church lent me this set. The extras are for the church, the vestry, and the church hall."

"Trusting. If he left home without his keys, do you see them lying around here? His church keys, for instance? Did you see them before, up on the ridge?"

"Never did. Don't now."

"Which raises the possibility, no?"

Louwagie needs a moment to think about it, then nods. "Maybe somebody took his keys off him. Like I said, he might not have bothered with keys."

He's surprised that emile doesn't move much. He's been informed of the man's fame, his reputation as a phenomenal detective, one who's busted biker gangs and gone up against the Mafia and come out on top, intact anyway, and who was a.s.signed to felony crime through most of his career yet wound up solving murders on the side with a success rate rivaling anyone in Homicide. The Mounties who came out from the mainland warned that this guy was connected to police departments, including his own, at high levels, so no matter what-whether he got involved or not-he was to watch his step as long as emile Cinq-Mars was on the island. Which intrigues him, despite his misery and depression. He wants to see how a so-called great detective operates, and is surprised when the man scarcely moves.

For his part, emile tends not to explain himself to anyone, but in this situation feels sympathetic to the man's plight, to his mental condition, and helps him out. "Get a feel for the place. That'll tell you about the life that was lived here. That'll tell you as much or more than any G.o.dd.a.m.n sc.r.a.p of evidence."

"A feel," Louwagie remarks. Neither a skeptical nor a trusting comment. He's willing to be educated.

Eventually, emile browses through the man's papers and books, with an emphasis on what he's been reading and writing lately. The Mountie sees him smile.

"What?" Louwagie asks.

"I know these books," emile reveals. "Read them myself. He took an amateur's interest in cosmology, in the origins of the universe."

"He was a minister. G.o.d created the universe in seven days."

"You believe that?"

"Not me," Louwagie states. "I think most clergymen know better, too. This other stuff is way over my head. The science. Religion or science, one or the other is the same mystery. Both are wasted on me. The world wasn't created in just seven days. Nor was that cliff at the end of this island. But they might as well have been, for all I know."

"If you take the time line as metaphoric-I've long a.s.sumed that you have to be an irrational dope not to take it that way-one becomes similar to the other." emile looks up. "His sermon for this Sunday. You caught me smiling when I was reading it. Let me run this through out loud. They might be his last words."

Cinq-Mars clears his throat and picks up the man's handwritten sheets.

"'Believe in G.o.d or don't believe in G.o.d,'" he quotes, "'but that's not the question. Whichever way you step out the door in the morning, start by believing in yourself.'"

emile smiles again. "He might've been addressing you, Officer Louwagie.

"Then our preacher adds, 'If you really understand what it took for you to come into being, for a visible universe to burst into creation, for ga.s.ses to coalesce and condense and stars to form and atoms with their protons and neutrons and electrons and dense nuclei-an atom, by the way, is composed mostly of s.p.a.ce-and those atoms fly through stars and s.p.a.ce and time that to our puny minds is endless, a length of time that might as well be eternal in terms of our ability to conceive of it, and through all that nothingness these stray wild atoms and their cohorts land on planet earth, to be vegetables and minerals, monkeys and fish, yes, fish, and spend time in the body of Christ and in Buddha and in the bodies of various village idiots and tyrants to arrive, for now, for a brief blink in time and s.p.a.ce, in your body and in mine-if you took into account merely the human cost, in disease and illness and the striving and migrations and war and building up and tearing down, and if you were to ruminate on the sheer accident of two people, one male, one female, abiding together at a fluke moment in time when conception is ready and able and willing to take place, then you might begin to grasp how impossible you are, and how silly you are to ever believe in yourself. But if you can believe in yourself, then you might begin to appreciate that belief in G.o.d is not so far-fetched after all, for we know nothing from nothing of dark energy and dark matter and what makes an atom tick or why two of them out of infinite billions partner up and travel together, along with countless billions of others-with these billions but not with those billions-so in the end all we have, all we can have, thanks to science, if I may say so-I, of all people, a man who stands before you stripped of his faith-thanks to science and thanks also to Scripture, ultimately, all we have is belief and nonbelief. Knowledge? Pursue it, by all means, with honesty and pa.s.sion. Know that knowledge is a mug's game, which is to say that it is forever boundless, like the faith of certain individuals, like the ignorance of others.'"

Enjoying the homily, his voice lowering as though he's starting to read it only to himself and not to his audience of one, Cinq-Mars takes a seat.

"'Ultimately, you will believe what you choose to believe or what you cannot help but believe, but if you believe in yourself, then know that that is ludicrous, and no less ludicrous than another man's belief in G.o.d. I believe in neither. Neither in myself nor in G.o.d, although I am an imperfect man, and in my weakness and decrepitude I confess before you that I have a belief, and my belief is in you. In all of you. In this cloud of life and humanity before me. People have come to this island in recent years who believe that one day they can leave by flying off it though a process of vigorously flapping their knees and thighs. Ah, you laugh, but don't you see? Your simple understanding that you must row, sail, or power a boat, or swim, or hire an airplane, or die in order to depart Grand Manan, is so elegant in its simplicity that I can only acknowledge that I believe in you. That belief, perhaps, dooms me, for out of it I may yet crumble and come to believe in myself, and out of that impossible and absurd error in judgment, I may yet believe in G.o.d again. Although I doubt it, pun intended.'

"In the margins," Cinq-Mars points out, "the preacher reminds himself to wait for a few chuckles to die down before proceeding. Then he continues, 'In the meantime, I pray for you, my dear congregation, to be safe upon the sea and safer still upon the waters of life, and I pray for you to be loving and caring, for nothing good ever arrives from a contrary direction. That alone makes me ask if G.o.d is not on one side, evil on another, but I'm having none of it. As your pastor, I can only say that my nonbelief may disturb us all, but out there in the universe, I sense indifference. And that is the crux-there's a word for you, with embedded meaning-the crux of the matter.'"

While listening, Louwagie wandered somewhat aimlessly around the room, idly glancing at objects and artifacts from the man's life. He manages his first faint smile as emile concludes the completed portion of the sermon. "They say he's been packing them in lately. I don't attend his church, but some who go to mine have slipped off to hear him talk. Kind of ironic that talking about losing one's faith from a pulpit puts more people in the pews."

"Curiosity for some," Cinq-Mars acknowledges. "You can always draw people out for a crash. For others, perhaps they relate."

They carry on through the rooms without conversing, Louwagie a.s.sessing the other man. emile asks him about dulse, which he's coming across in various packaging in the house, as chips, as flakes, as a powder, and in a sundried form.

"What does this stuff taste like anyway?" emile asks.

"Try it. You probably won't like it."

"Really?"

"An acquired taste."

emile nibbles on a chip.

"So?" Louwagie asks him. "What does it taste like?"

He thinks it over, nibbles some more, and concludes, "Iron."

"Loaded with the stuff."

"Rusty iron," Cinq-Mars adds. "You're right. I don't like it."

When they return to the front door to leave, the younger man sums up, "I guess we got nothing here."

"Not true," emile contradicts him.

"How so?"

"I've discovered that Lescavage was popular through delivering an unpopular point of view. He made fun of the meditating flyboys and girls. He lived an uncomplicated life, yet he was a curious fellow and a thinker. He was clearly modest when it came to material possessions, always a good sign for a man of the cloth. And one more thing that a good detective might bring forward as raw evidence."

"What's that?"

"That," emile says, and points.

Louwagie takes a look, then steps across the vestibule and lifts up a pair of rain pants tossed into a corner of the entry closet.

"The water stains on the floor look fresh enough," Cinq-Mars explains. "Most likely, he went out in the storm wearing rain pants. To go over to Orrock's place, perhaps? Then he came home and tossed them. But when he departed again, he left them behind. What does that tell you?"

The Mountie does find this curious.

"It was still raining. It poured the whole night through," Louwagie recalls.

"First, it tells us that he came home. Then he left and did not expect to go far, so he dispensed with the rain pants. Nothing nearby is all that nearby, so if he was going back out into the rain, it was to go no farther than a car. His car-I presume the Jetta outside is his-is still here, so he was being picked up. Someone he knew, a friend perhaps, took him away and he ended up rather dead."

"In slices," Louwagie adds. He feels a change in himself, a charge, a movement away from depression and a budding excitement coming on. He speaks quietly, but nonetheless remarks, "Interesting."

Progress. emile catches the return of a smidgen of the man's life force.

"Now let's find a place to study those pictures," emile suggests.

"Don't say us," Louwagie reminds him. "Whatever you do, keep them out of my sight."

NINETEEN.

The day's been long, and emile feels a comfortable fatigue wash over him on the precipice of evening. Or is it the alcohol? Drinks with Sandra take an edge off, and they dine out in Whale Cove, a short jaunt from home, enjoying a meal worthy of a fine restaurant in any world capital. Out of respect for where they are, both opt for the halibut, and following a sh.o.r.e walk afterward they return to their cabin arm in arm. The gulls salute, rather than serenade, their stroll.

emile decides to go up to the Whistle to check the place out.

"I want names," Sandra decrees. "Full names. And birth dates."

She means for her new hobby, her interest in learning numerology. emile notes that she doesn't ask to go, too. Either she has surmised that he wants to do this on his own or that she's too tired. His wife seems perfectly at ease-and looks so beautiful and content in the dimming light on the porch-that emile feels no guilt for this momentary abandonment. He has work to do. He decides to walk up the hill. The talk of drinking at the meeting place, and given that he's already had a few, squelches any impulse to drive, and Sandra may want the car. An effort is demanded, and he arrives looking forward to the downhill trek in the dark later on, when he's done here.

He's early, but not the first to show up. That designation falls to a white-haired couple from Delaware, according to their plates. Cinq-Mars and the couple stand at a height, the drop before them steep and dramatic. They exchange smiles, content to stand by for a sunset that promises to be spectacular. In the interim, whales swim by the island on their way deeper into the Bay of Fundy, and the three are thrilled when the great mammals break the surface before deep dives.

"There's some dispute," the man from Delaware contends, and he has a way of twitching his cheeks as he speaks that's alarming, "about whether it is correct to call a group of fish a school."

"I've always used a school of fish," Cinq-Mars tells him, not sure that he wants to be a party to this conversation. He was enjoying the peace of the Whistle. "I like it. All those studious minnows wearing gla.s.ses and reading books. I suppose they have computers now, too."

The man doesn't seem to notice his whimsy. At least the woman smiles. "Some contend that school is a corruption of shoal, that really it's a shoal of fish."

"I prefer school," Cinq-Mars maintains, deliberately cross now.

"Whales as a collective can be a shoal, or a fleet, or a gam, a pod or a school even, or a mob. I like mob, myself."

Cinq-Mars has his back up without much cause-tourists!-forgetting that he's a visitor himself. He isn't going to agree with this man on anything. "I prefer herd."