Asylum (25 page)

“You think someone from Lansbury…?”

“I mean, maybe.” I hesitated. “Oh, hell, Julian, it can’t be. There’s a limit to how committed anyone is to their company, right? Raping women, torturing them, posing them? Nobody would ever do that for an employer.”

“Exactly,” said Julian.

I ignored him. I was on a roll. “But what if it
is
Lansbury, and they hired someone to actually do the—you know, to do it for them? Think about it: if I’m right, then we’re hitting all the high notes. Everyone says that you’d have to be a psychopath to do this kind of violence, right?”

“Hmm.” There was still an undercurrent of objection in his voice.

“Well, so maybe Lansbury has a very rational reason to want the women out of the way, and it’s really just coincidence that it’s all women, but that works in Lansbury’s favor, because now they can hire this murderer-rapist-psychopath to carry it out. Just because a crazy person did it doesn’t mean that there’s not a sane reason
behind
it.” My words were all tumbling together and I wasn’t at all sure I was making myself clear.

“And Lansbury doesn’t want anyone to know about their role in MK-Ultra?” asked Julian. “Hate to tell you, but that ship has sailed. It’s pretty much common knowledge.”

“For anyone who knows about MK-Ultra,” I agreed. “But seriously, how many people do? Who cares anymore? Who’s even heard of it? I hadn’t, not before this all started. I’ll bet you hadn’t. Nobody who knows is talking, and every year it gets more and more remote, it’s ancient history, it’s over, we’ve all moved on. It’s of academic interest. And, anyway, that’s not the worst part, not from Lansbury’s PR point of view.” I knew a thing or two about PR myself: this was familiar territory. “There’s that crossover between MK-Ultra and the asylums, and that part’s trickier because there’s money involved. Restitution money. Money and reputation. Nobody wants the headlines to point out that the friendly company that makes your pain reliever also assisted in strapping down children and injecting them with drugs. The social networks would be all over this if it ever came out.”

“Perhaps,” Julian conceded. “But we’re getting ahead of ourselves here, Martine. If Lansbury’s really behind this, then why go to the risk of killing anyone? Why go to the risk of a court case? They could just pay everybody off and make it go away without publicity.”

“I don’t think Annie Desmarchais or Caroline Richards were looking to get paid off,” I said. “Oh, my God, Julian, that has to be it. Isn’t that how this all started? Remember what we said at the beginning, that
something
changed this summer, something that made it necessary to start killing now? The only reason that he had to make his move, whoever he is, was because something changed. And that’s what changed. It was all this interest from people who weren’t susceptible to getting paid off.”

“I still think it’s implausible that a corporation was willing to put out a hit,” he said.

“Maybe the corporation didn’t—put out the hit, as you say. Maybe just a couple of people knew. Maybe some others turned a blind eye. Or maybe they just said to shut the women up and didn’t care how it happened. We’ll have to find out.”

“Okay,” Julian said. “I give in. You’re right: we’ll have to find out. Who’s this guy you know?”

I’d been thinking about that. “Carrigan. Something Carrigan. Richard, was it?” I wondered out loud. “But I can’t talk to him. Not about this. He’s connected to my boss, and I’ll be called out before I’ve had time to ask one question.” It was an impasse. I swore eloquently in French.

“All right. Here’s what we’ll do. We’ll find out who’s in Lansbury’s Montréal office,” said Julian. “We’ll narrow it down from there. We’ll ask questions. We won’t give up.”

“Fine,” I said. “But I still don’t see it happening. You’re off the case, Julian, you can’t be asking official questions.”

“Leave that to me,” he said comfortably. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“When? What?” But he’d already hung up.

Huddled underneath our sheets that night, Marie-Rose and I consulted. “Sister Béatrice told me, the next time, to draw a line through the names where there’s a family,” I whispered into the darkness. “They’re only interested in children who don’t have anybody.”

Marie-Rose shivered. “What does that mean?”

I took a deep breath. “I think it means there’s nobody who will come and ask questions if something bad happens to them,” I said. I was scared out of my wits.

“What bad things will happen?”

I remembered that scene in the basement. “I’m scared,” I said instead of answering.

“I am, too,” Marie-Rose whispered. “Jean-Loup works in the basement sometimes.”

Jean-Loup was another one of “our” orphans. “What does he do? What did he tell you?”

“He has to take dead kids to the morgue sometimes. They do operations, but a lot of times the little kids don’t survive. They die, and he takes them to the morgue, and sometimes he takes them out to the farm to bury them. Right turns his stomach, it does.”

I thought of Bobby, whose stomach didn’t turn anymore. He reassured the children, I remembered him telling me. He kept them calm.

I lived with the names, all the time, the names of children, some of them older than I was, many of them younger, and each name represented a person, someone like me, someone who breathed and thought and cried and felt things.

I swallowed hard against what was rising in my throat. “What are we going to do?” I asked her.

“I’m going to be good,” said Marie-Rose. “I’m going to be so good that they’ll never want to punish me. I’m going to make sure they never send me to the basement.”

“It’s not about being good,” I whispered. “It’s about no one knowing what happens here. Do you have family, Marie-Rose?”

“What?”

“Did anybody come to visit you at the orphanage? Do they send you cards for Christmas?”

I could feel rather than see her nod in the darkness. “I have my uncle Théophile,” she said. “Sister Louise used to read his letters to me. He lives on a big farm.”

“Then you’re safe,” I said. It was the first time I’d actually articulated what I knew in my heart to be true. I paused, the enormity of it crushing me. “I’m not.”

“Of course you are, Gaby! They need you, don’t they, to keep the records?”

“Only until they teach somebody else to do it.” I knew I wasn’t safe, yet something compelled me to ask questions. Jean-Loup was of little help, as horrified as he was about what he saw downstairs. “It’s not just the operations,” he said to me when I consulted him a few days later. “It’s the room where they’re in restraints.”

“Like we are, sometimes,” I said, nodding.

He gave me a somber look. “Nothing like us, Gabrielle,” he said. “They give the kids shots, with needles, and watch them to see what they do. Sometimes they put electricity through their bodies, and sometimes they do it too much and I have to take them to the morgue, too.”

Electricity through their bodies? “I don’t understand. How is it they let you see all this? They’re always careful when I go downstairs.”

“They know that I know I could be next,” he said simply. “Besides, who am I going to tell?
Qui
? I never see anyone from the outside, and everyone inside already knows.”

And that was the end of that.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

As it turned out, I was the one to get into Lansbury Pharmaceuticals first.

Sunday night we drove the kids to the airport, said good-bye, and watched them through the gate.

“It could be worse,” said Ivan philosophically. “Claudia could be vegan.”

“Funny man.”

“Glad you noticed,” he said. “Let’s get going.”

We got the car out of the airport’s short-term parking and weren’t going anywhere near home. “Um, Ivan, you do remember where we live, right?”

“Ah, but we’re not going there.”

My eyes widened as I saw the casino sign. “No. You’re not going to work. You’re not taking me to work with you.”

“Of course I am, my little butterfly. But observe how I’m not dressed as the director of poker tonight.” True enough: Ivan never went to work in jeans.

“I have a feeling I’m not going to like this.” I find gambling intensely boring, poker more so than anything else.

“Ah, but that’s where you’re wrong, love of my life,” he said. “This trip’s entirely for you.”

I was still grumbling when we got there. Montréal’s casino looks like a giant spaceship decked out in bright, colorful neon lights perched precariously on the edge of the St. Lawrence. I always felt I should be putting on dark glasses when I got there.

Ivan took my hand and we went, perhaps predictably, to his office. He shut the door behind us and offered me a seat. “The tapes?” I asked, trying to make some connection. “The guys in the suits from the funeral?” I’d completely dismissed them from my mind, as they didn’t fit in with our theory. I think Julian forgot about them, too.

“Don’t think they’re the problem,” Ivan said, his voice distracted. “They left for New York that afternoon. Nothing to do with you—but something for the casino to worry about. They were at the funeral because of me. Sorry for the dead end. But I think I can just about make it up to you here.”

I was still not happy. When we drop the kids off at the airport on Sunday nights, all I can usually think of is a bubble bath and a brandy, and not necessarily in that order. “Ivan, what’s going on?”

He went to the wall and flicked on the monitor affixed to it: standard casino issue, views of the poker tables, the image alternating from one section to the next. He fiddled with the controls and zoomed in on one of the players. “He’s here,” he said with satisfaction, and pressed a button on his desk. A woman’s voice floated out of the intercom. “
Oui
?”

“Sylvie, would you ask Pierre Lambert to come see me when he has a minute, please?”

“
Bien sûr
,” the faceless Sylvie responded and clicked off.

Ivan grinned at me. “Don’t worry, I haven’t lost my mind. I thought of this today at the cemetery.”

“Uh-huh,” I said slowly.

He laughed. “Really. It’ll be worth it, I promise.”

We watched the monitor as a young blonde woman dressed in elegant casino black approached the table and murmured something in the ear of one of the poker players. He glanced up at the camera, so that it seemed he was looking directly at Ivan and me, and nodded. Almost immediately after that he put his cards in and stood up. “Who is this?” I asked Ivan.

“A regular.”

“Yeah, I kind of figured that out already. You knowing his name, and all.” I smiled to take the bite out of the sarcasm.

“Funny woman,” he said, not without appreciation.

The door opened and the man from the monitor appeared. In his thirties, I’d guess; well dressed in a city that prides itself on dressing well, with a Gallic hooked nose and dark hair, dark eyes. “
Salut
, Ivan,” he said easily.

“
Salut
, Pierre.” Ivan shook his hand perfunctorily and gestured in my direction. “This is my wife, Martine LeDuc. Martine, Pierre Lambert.”

We shook hands, and Pierre sat down on Ivan’s office sofa, crossing one leg over the other, elegantly, completely at ease. “How can I help you?” he asked in accented English; if his name hadn’t given him away as a Francophone, his voice certainly would have.

Ivan sat down also. “Martine is the
directrice de publicité
for the city. She has a project she’s working on, and she needs an introduction over at Lansbury Pharmaceuticals, and I remembered that your partner works there.”

“Ah, yes.” He nodded. “For almost ten years now.”

I was staring at Ivan. He’d pulled a rabbit out of a hat and was looking inordinately pleased with himself, though how he’d managed not to blurt it out and give the secret away was beyond me. Unplumbed depths, my husband has. Great self-restraint. He smiled innocently in my direction and addressed himself to Pierre. “So I was wondering…” He let his voice trail off expectantly.

Pierre nodded. “Nothing is easier. We will speak of it when I go home tonight, and perhaps a meeting can be arranged.”

I found my voice. “That would be most appreciated,” I said. “Um,
monsieur
—I need for it to be soon.”

“If time is of the essence, then of course,” he said, nodding. “Perhaps tomorrow. I will see.” He stood up. “If that is all…”

Ivan stood with him and held out his hand again. “
Merci
, Pierre.”

“
De rien, mon ami.”
He turned to me. “
Madame
,” he said formally, shaking my hand. “We will call you tomorrow.”

“Thank you very much,” I said again, and watched him exit and the door close behind him. “When were you going to tell me about Pierre?” I asked Ivan.

He laughed. “I wouldn’t have lasted much longer,” he confessed. “Honestly, I only started thinking about who I might know when we were at the cemetery, and Pierre’s name came to me on the way to the airport. Pierre’s only here on weekends, mostly, except in the summertime when it’s pretty much any night. He’s good at getting the tourist trade to share some of their vacation dollars with him.”

“He’s professional?”

“One of the best.” Ivan was unperturbed.

I knew about professionals. If you go to a casino and count cards at blackjack, you’ll be invited to leave pretty damned fast: you’re cheating the casino itself when you cheat at blackjack. But poker’s a different story. Poker is the only casino game where you don’t play against the house, so the house has no stakes in who wins and who loses. Professionals are ejected from every other game, but welcomed at the poker tables.

There were always a few who were there hour after hour, winning a little, losing a little, then waiting and winning big when they’d finally landed a whale. It looked to me like an infinitely boring way of making a living, but then again, I didn’t make nearly as much as they did.