One or the Other (8 page)

Legault said, “Yes, sir,” and started out of the office.

Dougherty said, “Thank you, sir,” and followed Legault into the hall.

He wasn't sure what he'd expected, but now he felt like he was in charge of the investigation. It seemed sudden, and he felt unprepared even though it was something he'd wanted for a long time.

Catching up to Legault, he said, “Have you spoken to the family?”

“I'll call them, and we should go in person.”

Dougherty followed her into the detectives' office, a big open room with a few men working at their desks. None of them looked up as Legault walked to the farthest desk from the door and sat down.

There was a coffee machine, also about as far from Legault's desk as it could be, and Dougherty said, “How about a coffee?”

She had the phone in one hand and said, “I'm calling right now.”

“I know,” Dougherty said. “Do you want me to get you a coffee?”

“Oh, you go get it?” She looked at him, surprised, and said, “No, this will only take a minute and we'll go.”

Dougherty said, “Okay.”

Legault dialled the phone and waited longer than she really needed to and then hung up. “Mathieu's mother must still be at work.”

“Where is that?”

“Pratt & Whitney.”

Dougherty looked at his watch and said, “She finish at four?”

“Yes.”

“Half an hour. Maybe we should talk to the girl's family, let them know.”

Legault picked up the phone and dialled. This time it was answered right away and Legault spoke quietly for a few moments and then hung up.

“We can go see the Houles first,” Legault said. “The father is just getting up.” She stood up and started towards the door.

“Second shift,” Dougherty said. “Where does he work?”

“Stelco, the steel mill. He's a machinist.”

“I know it,” Dougherty said. It was near the Point, where he'd grown up. Some of the dads in the neighbourhood worked there.

They drove a few blocks and Legault stopped in front of a small bungalow barely ten years old and said, “Yesterday I brought them to identify the body of their daughter. We didn't know where Mathieu was so there was a lot of speculation.”

“Of course.” Dougherty figured the first thing they thought was that the other kid, Mathieu, had killed their daughter and then taken off. Then he said, “We still don't know anything, really.”

“We may never know anything,” Legault said. “Should we tell them that?”

Dougherty said, “Yes. We should be totally honest with them.”

Legault nodded.
“D'accord.”

Ginette Houle and her husband, Albert, were waiting by the door.

Legault stepped into the house and gave Ginette a hug, and Dougherty looked at Albert and tried for understanding and confidence.

“Voici le détective Dougherty de la police de Montréal.”

Albert held out his hand and Dougherty shook it, still looking him in the eye. Then Dougherty spoke French, saying, “I'm very sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you.”

They moved into the living room, and Legault sat on the couch beside Ginette and held her hands.

Albert said, “So, Mathieu is dead as well?”

Legault said, “Yes.”

“Did he kill Manon and then himself?”

“We don't know yet,” Legault said.

It was quiet for a moment, and then Dougherty said, “There was a rope around Mathieu's neck. It looks like someone strangled him.”

“There were marks on Manon's neck,” Albert said. “Someone strangled her, too. Not Mathieu?”

“We don't know yet,” Dougherty said.

Albert looked at him and said, “So, now it's the Montreal police?”

“Mathieu's body was found in Montreal,” Legault said. “We will work with the Montreal police.”

Albert was nodding. “You have done this before?”

“Yes. A few times.”

Dougherty heard a door open and footsteps, and a girl came into the living room. She looked like the picture of Manon he'd seen in the autopsy file but a couple of years younger. Her eyes were red from crying.

“Mathieu est mort aussi?”

Ginette nodded and the girl started crying. She sat on the couch beside her mother.

After a few minutes, Legault stood up and said they had to go. She said to Ginette, “Call me anytime you want, day or night. I'll tell you everything we know.”

Outside, Dougherty said, “How many kids do they have?”

“Just the two girls,” Legault said. “The one now.”

They got into the car, and Legault said, “Mathieu Simard lived with his mother not far from here.” She put the car in gear and pulled away from the curb.

“Just the two of them?”

Legault took a moment and then said, “As far as I know. There are two other kids, boy and a girl, older. The mother says they don't live with her, but I'm not sure.”

“She's not cooperative?”

“It may be she doesn't want people sticking their noses in her life.”

“That's going to be impossible to stop now,” Dougherty said. “There'll be reporters and maybe TV coverage and every neighbour will have something to say.”

They were on Chemin de Chambly then, and the bungalows had given way to fourplexes and small apartment buildings. Dougherty was thinking the neighbourhood wasn't exactly what Judy would call underprivileged, but it was getting there.

“Here we are.”

Legault parked in front of one of the three-storey red-brick apartment buildings.

The buzzer was answered right away, and Legault opened the door, saying, “She's home.”

On the third floor, Legault knocked at the door and a moment later it opened.

“Madame Simard, on a des nouvelles.”

She knew right away what news it was, of course, and backed into the apartment. Legault put an arm around the woman and led her to the couch.

Dougherty closed the door and followed them into the small living room just past the kitchenette.

Legault spoke quietly, telling the mother that her son was dead. She used the woman's first name, Paulette, a few times.

The apartment was untidy but clean. There were breakfast dishes on the drying rack beside the sink and a pile of paperback novels beside the couch. A couple of walls had framed prints, Quebec farms and countryside. The furniture was worn.

After a few minutes, Legault said, “This is Detective Dougherty from Montreal, he will be helping.”

Paulette looked up and said, “
T'es Anglais, toé? Doe-er-tee
?”

“Oui.”

“
C
'
es pas grave, y
'
a ben
des anglais au Pratt & Whitney.”

Dougherty continued in French: “I'm very sorry for your loss.”

“Who did it?”

“We don't know yet.”

“It was not Mathieu,” Paulette said. “He did not do this, to Manon or himself.”

“No,” Legault said, “he didn't.” She glanced up at Dougherty, willing him to stay silent, but he wasn't going to say anything. Maybe Mathieu killed the girl and then tried to hang himself and then jumped in the river, maybe he didn't. They'd find out soon enough.

Or never.

But now the mother would have to be taken to the morgue to identify the body of her youngest child.

Legault dropped Dougherty at the Longueuil police station, where he picked up his car. They agreed to meet there later, after Legault brought Paulette home. Dougherty decided not to go back over the bridge at rush hour, even if it was against the traffic, only to have to come back later, so he drove south on Taschereau Boulevard.

Six lanes of bright-coloured signs and neon lights, car dealerships, gas stations, restaurants and bars — not exactly the Berlin Wall but the boulevard separated French Longueuil and Laflèche on one side and English St. Lambert and Greenfield Park on the other. Even the streets changed names when they crossed Taschereau: Boulevard Édouard became Churchill Boulevard and Rue Georges became Gladstone Street. Two hundred years side by side and they were determined to remain two solitudes.

It was just before six when he pulled up in front of the house on Patricia, the corner lot on a block of identical houses — or what had started out as identical twenty years before. Now some had carports added or rooms off the kitchen or big decks in the backyards.

The house looked empty. Dougherty went in through the back door into the kitchen and heard the music coming from the basement. It was so loud Dougherty was surprised he hadn't seen the windows rattling from the outside.

Tommy was on his back on the floor in the middle of what their mother always called the rec room, with its knotty pine walls and indoor-outdoor carpeting. Tommy's eyes were closed, his hands were on his chest and he was so still he looked like a corpse.

The song ended suddenly, the singer yelling what sounded to Dougherty like “Suffragette,” and the basement was completely silent.

Dougherty said, “Hey,” and Tommy jumped like someone had hit him in the gut.

“Whoa.”

“You're not stoned, are you?” Dougherty said.

Tommy was getting up and he said, “No.”

The next song had started, guitar strumming steadily, and then the singer came in: “Time takes a cigarette.”

Tommy said, “What are you doing here?”

“Mom and Dad not home yet?”

“Any minute.” Tommy was at the stereo, then he lifted the needle off the record. “You staying for dinner?”

“Yeah, I was in the neighbourhood.”

“In this neighbourhood? Way out here? Why?”

“What do you mean, way out here?”

“Suburbs, boonies.” Tommy was putting the record in a paper sleeve and then he slid that into the cardboard cover. “One of my teachers, Mr. Mardinger, he said to us, ‘How can you live way out here?' Like we have some say in it.”

Dougherty was shaking his head. “It's nice here.”

Tommy wasn't buying it. He sat down on the couch.

“Hey,” Dougherty said, “did you hear anything about a couple of kids from around here who went missing a few days ago?”

“From Greenfield Park?”

“Longueuil.”

Tommy said, “No,” dragging it out like it was the craziest thing he could imagine.

Dougherty was thinking it was like a bubble, this little English town. Tommy was in his last year of high school; Dougherty couldn't imagine him sticking around much longer.

“They went to a concert at Place des Nations and never made it home.”

“Gentle Giant.”

“What?”

“That was the concert on Monday at Place des Nations, Gentle Giant and, I think, Harmonium.”

“Did you go?”

“No, but I know some people who did.”

“I guess these missing kids went to the French high school.”

Tommy shrugged. “If they were French, I guess so.”

“Anyway,” Dougherty said, starting to get annoyed and looking to shock his little brother, “they're not missing anymore, they were killed.”

Tommy said, “That's too bad,” with no emotion.

“Are you sure you're not stoned?”

“Why, you want some?”

Dougherty looked around the rec room and got the feeling Tommy was the only one who ever spent any time there. Their sister, Cheryl, had graduated high school and moved out a couple years before, and Tommy was the only kid left at home. The place felt cold.

“Okay, I'm going to wait upstairs.”

Tommy said, “Okay,” but didn't make a move to follow.

In the kitchen, Dougherty looked out the back window at the apple tree his mother had planted that never had any apples. He saw she hadn't started any work in the garden, but he wasn't sure if it was time for that yet or not.

Music started up in the basement again, loud and aggressive. When he could make out the words, Dougherty was pretty sure it was something about fly by night, away from here, and then something about my ship isn't coming and I just can't pretend.

Dougherty walked into the living room and looked out the big picture window onto Patricia Street. Both sides of the street were lined with the side-by-side two-storey red-brick houses with flat roofs, small front lawns and driveways. It did feel far from city life, Dougherty agreed with that, but that was the point. He watched a car drive along the street, stop at the corner and disappear up Fairfield, and he thought he could understand Tommy's feeling like he was ready to get out, but Dougherty was starting to think that he was ready to come back to a place like this.

He doubted it was something Judy was thinking about these days, though.

The back door opened then, and Dougherty's mother came in, saying, “Édouard, what are you doing here?”

“I was in the neighbourhood.”

Dougherty's father was coming in then, too, and he said, “Well, this is a nice surprise.”

“Supper in half an hour,” his mother said.

Dougherty's father made a couple of rum and Cokes, and they sat at the kitchen table while his mother put a ham in the oven and got the potatoes on to boil. They talked about work for a while, both his parents with the phone company, his mother working as a clerk in the east end and his father building switchboards and installing them in office buildings. His father complained about the traffic on the bridge and the possibility of another strike.

Dougherty said, “This summer?”

“Maybe in the fall,” his father said. “Seems like everybody's on strike. Nurses, teachers, post office.”

“Using the Olympics for pressure. I'm surprised you guys aren't talking about going out sooner.”

“Too much overtime getting ready for the games.” Then he said, “What brought you out here?”

“I'm working,” Dougherty said. “On a homicide.”