Deadly Jewels (39 page)

“Hans. I love you.”

“I love you.” He kissed her. “Now go quickly. Do you have a bag packed?” She nodded. “Then go. I will be there before three o'clock. Yes?”

She nodded again. “Yes.”

And, just like that, the world was right again.

Maurice was waiting at the side door. “Come on,” he said. “You're late, eh?”

Hans grinned. “No,” he said; “I'm right on time.”

“Come on.” In through a narrow passageway, and then down the stairs, two flights of them, deep underground.

The vault was a huge dark creature, lurking, waiting. “Stay here,” Hans instructed Maurice, taking the flashlight from him. Kurt had gotten the vault combination, God only knew how; Hans concentrated on it, turning the tumblers slowly. Every nerve told him to hurry; his brain counseled caution.

It was fast; it had to be fast—Livia was waiting. He grabbed the hatbox and pulled out the diamonds, slipping the substitutes Kurt had given him inside. He'd give the real ones to Kurt, but keep just enough out to pay for their new life. Three ought to do it, he thought, looking at their size, and held on to them tightly, sharp against his palm.

Kurt was going to be waiting outside; that was the plan. There wasn't time for much subterfuge. “There,” he said to himself, backing out and closing the vault, the diamonds in his hand.

“This way,” Maurice hissed, pulling him away from the passageway they'd come in through. “This is the way out.”

It was a locked room with a steel door—some other kind of vault, looked like—and as Hans stepped into the doorway, Maurice said, “That will do.”

Hans turned and his flashlight picked up the gun in Maurice's hand.

No. No, this wasn't happening. Not when everything was going to work out. Not when … He held the bag out to Maurice. “Take them,” he said, and with the other man's eyes on the bag and dazzled by the flashlight, he slipped the three diamonds into his mouth, swallowed hard. “Take the diamonds, and we're even,” he said.

“Drop the bag,” said Maurice, “and turn around.”

Hans obeyed. Maurice would take the jewels and leave him, and then all he'd have to do was get away, away from Maurice, away from Kurt, on to the bus station and his new life. To Livia, and their new life together.

He never even heard the shot.

 

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

October 1.

Fitting, in a way: October is, after all, an important month in Québec's history. If Gabrielle Brand was correct, the October Crisis had been the start of Aleister's disenfranchisement. And now perhaps he wanted to end it altogether.

Or perhaps it had started earlier, decades earlier, when a rotund man with deep-set eyes sat in an international court and heard the judges pronounce that he should die.

There was a note on the kitchen table from Ivan.

Have to run out to the casino for a few hours. Be back by noon at the latest. Claudia and Lukas, why don't you show your mom the Underground City?

No one else in the house seemed to be up. It was unfortunate: I could use a shot of ordinary life this morning.

Stop it, Martine. The world wasn't going to blow up. None of this “high-on-drugs astral-planing I just saved the universe” stuff. It was a police matter.

Right.

I dressed without thinking about my clothes: jeans, a pullover sweater, a warm scarf knotted around my neck, boots. Jean-Luc and his dress code could go to hell.

I called Richard while waiting for my coffee to steep in the French press. “I won't be in today,” I said.

“
Bien
.” He was never ruffled, my deputy. I could have said, I'm taking the shuttle to Mars today, and he'd just give me that same “very well” and carry on beautifully without me. “Jean-Luc will not be happy,” I predicted, “but you can tell him—”

“Yes?”

I took a deep breath. “Tell him that I am working on something, something that will help solve who planted the bombs at City Hall.” Best to leave it at that. Though I knew already who had planted the bombs, I wasn't about to go into that now. Not until we had him in custody, under whatever pretext we could manage.

“He will be pleased to hear it. He will be
very
pleased that it was not you.”

“He thinks it was me?” Momentarily distracted at the idea, I frowned. There were probably days when he wanted it to be me. Focus, Martine. “I'll—I'll call you later, Richard. And—Richard?”

“
Oui
?”

“Thank you. Thanks for thinking so quickly the other day. Thanks for—well, for everything.”

He sounded surprised. “It is nothing. It is my job.”

“Yes, well, thank you for that. I'll call you later.”

I would, too, I promised myself. No more taking Richard for granted. Or, I added as I took a last look at my husband's note, Ivan, either.

I pulled on my jacket, grabbed my bag, and five minutes later was risking my life yet another time in Julian's TT. He had the radio on and was tapping the steering wheel in time to it; nervous energy. “Is the RCMP there?”

He nodded. “And Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu local police, too. And,” he glanced at me to catch my reaction, “we've got military backup, too.”

“You're kidding.”

“Not a bit of it. Remember, there's a military barracks at Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu. And the military school's back there? Seems JTF East wants to make sure there's no spillover from what's happening at the warehouse.”

“Aren't they stationed in Montréal?” He was talking about the military's Joint Task Force, Canadian Armed Forces' response to any request for military intervention to provide emergency assistance or support in critical incidents. I wondered if part of Aleister's plan was to take over the military school and barracks. “We should've thought of that.”

“We did; who do you think called them in?” He sounded irritated.

“Okay, sorry.” I looked out the window; we were crossing the Jacques-Cartier Bridge now, massive over the St. Lawrence Seaway.

“No, it's me. Nerves.”

As we got closer, the atmosphere changed tangibly; I glanced across at Julian and saw that I wasn't imagining it. The barometer had to be plummeting. Air thick and somehow contaminated, a faint ringing in my ears.

Approaching the epicenter.

“It's going to happen,” said Julian. I didn't think that he really believed it until that moment. “It's going to happen.”

“Yes.” I wondered if we should have been better prepared: brought a Bible, or holy water, or—an exorcist. I thought back to my convent-school days, searching for the right prayer, I must have heard it sometime. But there was only cotton-ball opaqueness: something clogging the channels.

Two blocks from the warehouse, Julian pulled the TT over and cut the engine. “Here we are,” he said unnecessarily.

“Yes.” What did soldiers say when preparing for battle? What did the dying say when they saw the stairway of light? “Do you have a gun?” I asked.

“Yes.” He wasn't looking at me, his eyes moving restlessly around the car, the sidewalk, the street, cops' eyes are never still. I'd forgotten that about him. “Did you bring anything?”

Like what
, I wanted to ask. Lukas's confiscated water pistol, the one I'd never gotten rid of even though I'd taken it from him nearly four years ago? “Only my wits,” I said, a lame attempt at humor.

It fell on stony ground, all right. “Stay behind me,” said Julian.

“Fine with me.”

The building itself looked no different from the last time we'd been there, two days and a lifetime ago. No
Ghostbusters
green slime emanating from it, no spaceship hovering overhead. Cars parked nearby. “Where's all your police presence?”

“Here somewhere,” he said.

We were at an angle to the orange door, on the canal side of the building. A car engine was running someplace close; Julian caught it. “Wait here,” he said, and scurried off to talk to the guy who'd just driven up. There was a van behind him.

Breathe, I reminded myself. Best if you breathe.

Julian was back in a moment. “You're not going to believe this,” he said, and he wasn't keeping his voice down anymore.

“What?”

“Come on.” He marched across to the door. This wasn't the approach I'd envisioned, but what the hell; I stayed close behind him. “What
is
it?” I hissed.

The door was ajar; he pushed it the rest of the way open. Down the corridor there was light. Voices. “They're doing it!” I exclaimed.

“Not what you think,” Julian said.

I followed him down and into the doorway of a large space—the main warehouse floor, no doubt. Big, echoing area, perfect for drama. The place where the ritual was to take place, where the skinhead magicians were practicing chaos magic, were summoning Hitler back from the dead.

Except that the body lying in the middle of the floor surrounded by people wearing protective clothing wasn't Hitler's.

It was Aleister Brand.

*   *   *

“Not the same gun used on Patricia,” said Julian.

I was staring out at the canal. “Do you think it was Marcus?” I asked.

“It was a larger caliber than the other.” He sounded tired, and he wasn't answering my question.

I was feeling completely disoriented. It had never occurred to me that I could be wrong. Everything had pointed to Aleister being the one. Even his
mother
had pointed to him being the one. “Where's everyone else?” I asked.

“Who?”

“The boys in the band,” I said flippantly. “All those testosterone-driven skinheads who were going to play séance with Aleister. Where'd they go?”

“Would you stick around if you found a body and you're part of a group known for violence?” Now he was being flippant. We were both dealing with a severe case of anticlimax.

“I don't suppose they killed him,” I said.

“Can't rule it out.”

“Probably not, though.”

“Probably not,” he agreed. “You okay here? I have to go do the liaison thing for a while, then we can head back into the city.”

“Yes, of course.” I was still looking at the canal ten minutes later when my phone rang. I glanced at the screen: Ivan. “Hey, babe.”

“Hey, Martine. Listen, are the kids and Margery with you?”

“Who? The—kids?” It was so unexpected, I found myself stammering. “No—no, of course not. Weren't they all going to the Underground City?”

“Thought so, but Margery's not been answering her cell for a while. Neither are the kids.”

“Well,” I said, “it might not be anything, you know reception isn't always great down there.” I know I sounded lame—I'm not so advanced at this detective thing yet that seeing a dead body isn't upsetting, and I realized that my hand on my smartphone was shaking. I wasn't ready to talk about something as ordinary as losing cell-phone reception.

“Could be,” said Ivan, “but we were supposed to meet out at the casino, spend the afternoon at the Ronde.”

I felt my stomach lurch. Maybe this wasn't ordinary, after all. “There has to be an explanation,” I said. “Have you called the police?”

“Not yet. I wanted to check with you first. I'll keep calling them.” He sounded worried.

“I'll check with Julian,” I said, feeling my heart start to race. This was way too coincidental for me. “I'll call you back, Ivan.”

I tracked Julian down by the warehouse, where Aleister's body was being loaded onto a gurney. I wondered, fleetingly, how Gabrielle would take the news. He turned to me. “What's up?”

“The kids and Margery.” I took a deep breath. “They're missing.”

“They probably—”

“No,” I said, cutting him off. “They're missing. For real. No one's answering their phones, and those kids live with their phones glued to their bodies.” I looked at the big building behind us. “What if he took them? And then someone killed him? Maybe they killed the kids, too? Or maybe he hid them so we'll never find them?” I was sounding a little hysterical. I tried to get by Julian. “Maybe they're in here, somewhere, tied up or—”

“Stop.” He grabbed me. “This isn't helping.”

“Someone has my kids,” I said, the panic rising until I felt I was going to be sick. Everything about the day suddenly crystallized, clear and sharp, the canal, the impossibly blue sky above it, the people in uniform still moving about the property. The barometer was still playing with the pressure inside my head. I suddenly realized that my chest was hurting, that I couldn't breathe. “Julian, Julian—”

“Okay.” He was already on his cell phone. “And somebody get me a paper bag,
now
!”

A constable came trotting up with a bag and Julian stabbed me on the shoulder with his forefinger. “Sit down, LeDuc, and breathe into the bag.”

I grabbed it like it was a lifeline and a moment later, my head down, stopped hyperventilating. Lukas and Claudia. The kids I saw as a charming—or, sometimes, not-so-charming—interruption to my real life, my important life, my chosen life. How long had I been treating them as symbols instead of people? Claudia, pretending indifference, ostentatiously filing her nails and drawling affectedly in an effort to look and sound sophisticated and maybe even cutting herself when she was alone and scared. Lukas, organized and having OCD, but eager to please, eager to try new things, go new places, filled with an energy that I'd always allowed to sap my own.

Lukas and Claudia.