Ice Lake (20 page)

“How did that make you feel?” Camille asked him. Only after she had posed the question did she realize that it was inappropriate, given her position here. She was supposed to be one of them, not an agent for Honigwachs. She had wanted to know how he felt about the situation as a conspirator, but she was not supposed to have that information.

“What?”

She had to push on. “Luc being sick. How did that make you feel?”

“Listen,” he said, and he placed a hand over his heart in an overt gesture of sincerity, “I’ve been a lab rat myself. You don’t think that every time you inject somebody he doesn’t have a twinge of fear, a worry? In New York you told me that things were bad. Then I find out that a buddy of mine is really sick, and it makes me wonder. I called for your latest report. I was hoping you’d tell me that things were getting better. That it was a freak situation. But that wasn’t the answer you gave me. So I told Luc the bad news, then headed home, because this was a major security issue, and my job at BioLogika happens to be security.”

The response, as Camille analysed it, suited the discussion alive in the room. She knew that Andy had already known that men were dying. He had been in on it from the beginning. He was privy to whatever Honigwachs knew. But what had possessed him to contact her? If he had already anticipated the problems he was facing now, then he was just plain brilliant, a genius in matters of deception. She admired him, but at the same time her antennae warned her to be careful. His explanation, she noted, did serve to placate Lucy.

“What about you?” Andy asked Camille. “Weren’t you freaking out when you found people dead or dying? Didn’t you report back with that?”

“Who to, bozo? The people behind this don’t want to hear from us. Let’s say it’s Honigwachs. We can
assume it’s Honigwachs. But you know, he doesn’t ever come out and say so. Nobody ever comes out and says they’re doing it, or what we’re doing is for them. I get my marching orders on the sly, secretly, coded. When things go wrong, like they did this time, I don’t exactly have anybody to complain to, or to ask for advice. In this organization, you got to understand, the buck stops nowhere.”

“I don’t know, Camille,” Lucy interjected, “we’re talking about people dying.”

“No, no, listen to me, I did call Honigwachs. I did call Randall Largent. They didn’t want to hear from me. I kept trying to code it for them, to let them know that somehow they had to reach me and talk to me. When Andy showed up in New York, and then called from Baltimore, I figured that that was it. That was their way of getting in touch. Andy, I believed you were acting for the higher-ups, that that was my chance to let people know what was happening. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have told you everything I did.”

She thought that she was pretty brilliant, too—up there in the same league with Andrew Stettler—but Lucy did not seem to share the same impression.

“You set up the schedule, Camille, you could’ve found some way to track me down to stop me.”

A difficult point to counter. Camille knew right away that she was in trouble here. “The schedule had gone kaflooey, remember? Not to mention, do you have any idea what it was like for me? Lucy, how did you feel when you found out about it? And you only heard about it word of mouth, a rumour maybe, nothing confirmed. Me, everyday I had to go into the houses of people who had lost their loved ones. I had to ask them really personal questions about the progress of the disease. I had to find out what this was all about. I had to visit the dying. Do you know, can you imagine, the torment they were in? I was upset, I was scared, I was
trying to get in touch with Montreal and have them do something. I didn’t
believe
what was right in front of my eyes. I thought about trying to get in touch with you, but how easy was that? I was in a daze, Lucy.”

The speech was the best that she could do, but it didn’t really clear up all the issues regarding her behaviour.

Camille added, “I’m sorry. I guess I screwed up.” She kept her eyes downcast.

“It’s understandable,” Andy offered, “under the circumstances. It’s not like anybody was prepared for this. The question is, what are we going to do? The two of you are in trouble, no matter how you look at it, but laying the blame on each other—I don’t see how that works for anybody.”

Lucy was tense, taut. She was sitting with her legs apart and her elbows on her knees. She covered her face with her hands, as though to conceal or perhaps contain her fury. She felt confused, apologetic and accusatory, and certainly she did not know what to do and had no solutions to propose.

Across from her, in the deep cushions of a sofa, Camille opted to play her magic card. In a weak position here, she had not been able to properly explain an aspect of her behaviour. She needed to elevate her position, and she needed to be trusted. “I think,” she proposed, “that you guys should let me tell Charlie.”

The suggestion altered the current in the room.

“What the hell for?” Andy asked.

“What are you thinking, Camille? Go straight to jail? Do not pass Go?”

She raised her hands in an attitude of surrender, but forged on with her argument. “I know it sounds weird. But Charlie loves me. I can explain it to him. I can paint it so that he
has
to save me, and that means saving Lucy. He can help us through the legal stuff. He might be able to contribute with a side-investigation of his
own. At the same time, if we get into trouble, he can tip us off. I mean, it’s golden. My boyfriend’s a cop. Right now, that could be the motherlode.”

Lucy sighed and shifted her weight around. “He’s not exactly a big-shot cop.”

“He’s not exactly
big”
Andy put in, hoping to add a touch of levity.

Both Lucy and Camille did laugh, a little.

Camille took them up on their criticisms, using their points to her advantage. “That’s what I’m saying. He’s a cop, but not true blue. Nobody likes him on the force, they think he’s a little guy with family connections. So he’ll work on our side, I’m sure of it, because he doesn’t give a damn about other cops. He’s no hotshot, Lucy, but he has rank. He has—what’s the word?
Latitude,
you know? He can help.”

That night they couldn’t resolve the issue, despite talking it through repeatedly. A few days later, Lucy finally relented. She was willing to let Charlie Painchaud help them out, hoping that he would guide her through the legal entanglements and keep her out of trouble. Almost any gambit seemed worth a try—doing nothing irritated her the most. Andy hated the idea, but when he brought the notion on the sly to Werner Honigwachs his boss advised him to go along with it. He explained that they’d have an inside track on what the cops were thinking. Sooner or later, he forewarned, cops would be involved. In the long run, it was better to have one around that Andy could befriend. Reluctantly, Stettler agreed—he had little choice—and Charlie Painchaud became part of the counter-conspiracy.

At his first meeting, on the following Sunday night, again above Lucy’s garage, Charlie listened to their stories. He was appalled to find his girlfriend in such a serious jam, one with monumental repercussions. He assured both women that when the time came and they
cooperated with the authorities to bring the real culprits to justice, they could probably leverage their testimony and walk freely away. What counted most was making absolutely certain that the men behind the crime were brought to justice. Otherwise, their own necks were seriously on the line.

Lucy liked that. She appreciated the leadership role that Charlie assumed.

He went on to say that his own department was a morass, a cesspool, that he himself was not the most experienced detective in the world, certainly not with a crime of this magnitude. He suggested that they lure a frontline cop onto the case, that they get a major detective to snoop around, that that would go a long way toward getting the job done. He did not believe that they could go it alone.

Lucy was again impressed, although Andrew and Camille were fit to be tied.

“Who?” Lucy asked.

“Sergeant-Detective Emile Cinq-Mars, from the Montreal Police.”

They all knew the name. He was famous for both his integrity and his skill. His reputation was such that neither Andy nor Camille could object without generating suspicion.

“Let’s do it,” Lucy weighed in. A hesitation she had had with Charlie was his close association with Camille and his insignificance as a cop. Now he was offering a legendary detective independent of everyone in the room. “Let’s go for it.”

Neither Camille nor Charlie joined in her enthusiasm.

“We’ve got to be careful,” Charlie cautioned. “We’ll arouse his interest in the case. He won’t have jurisdiction. Give it to him piecemeal, educate him slowly, entice him. We need Cinq-Mars to learn to respect and trust Lucy and Camille. That’ll take time. Lucy, you’ll
call him. Camille, we’ll use your fishing hut on the lake for the meeting. No, better—we’ll ask him to rent his own fishing hut and meet him there.”

Camille could not sustain an objection, not when she’d been the one to invite Charlie into their group. Andy had nothing to say, except, “All right.”

“What’s your problem?” Lucy asked him. “Speak up.”

“He’s a cop. Cinq-Mars is a cop. It’s habit. I’m sorry, Charlie, but I don’t like cops. Hello! I’m an ex-con, remember? Cops come around, I feel queasy.”

He had no argument to defeat the suggestion, and after a discussion they agreed to set up a meeting with Cinq-Mars if they could for the following Sunday morning.

“How do we get him to come, without a reason?”

Charlie pondered the matter. “He fishes on the lake. I’ve seen him there a few times when I’ve been with Camille. As a matter of fact, his photograph is up at the diner for catching a big
doré.
That’ll interest him, being invited to his own fishing hole. That’s one reason why I chose the lake. Also, I can dig up his home phone. He’ll notice that, too. With those two curiosities, he’ll show.”

“Sunday,” Andy repeated.

“Sunday.”

“Finally,” Lucy enthused, “we’re doing something.”

Camille was not happy. The famous detective was not the timid lover she could control, and this hotshot cop was being invited practically next door to her fishing hut. But she was stuck. She couldn’t define her concerns without implicating herself. “All right,” she agreed. “Let’s do it.”

“Cops,” Andrew Stettler muttered, shaking his head. “First one. Now two. Any cop gives me the shivers. Even you, Charlie. I don’t know what it is.” He’d been outvoted. He had no way to put the brakes on this development. He wondered how Werner Honigwachs
would react. His employer had wanted the first cop around, would he also approve of the second? The others were gazing at him, wondering if he had a point to make. Andy shrugged. “Cops,” he repeated, as though that explained everything.

After dinner out, and a few drinks at a bar downtown, Andrew Stettler returned home. Along the way he parked the Chevy he was driving and picked up his regular Oldsmobile for the remainder of the trip. He entered his duplex as quietly as possible, hoping not to arouse the attention of his mother. Upstairs, he took off his shoes and walked softly on the carpeted floor.

He phoned Werner Honigwachs on his cellular.

“There’ve been some developments,” he told him.

“We should meet,” Honigwachs snapped. “No more phone calls.”

“When and where?”

“Tomorrow. At work. I’m free at eleven.”

“See you then.”

No sooner had he hung up than his mother’s coded knock thumped his door. The wonder of that woman. She should have been the spy, he thought.

Stettler went into the bathroom and turned on the shower, then answered the front door.

“Home alone?” she asked. His body blocked the doorway.

“Not exactly,” he lied.

“Andy.”

“What?”

“Is she someone special or just a floozy from the bar.”

“A bar-chick, Ma, and no, you can’t meet her. She’s in the shower.”

“At least she’s willing to wash. The two of you snuck in here like a couple of cat burglars, Andy. I thought you were a thief!”

“You thought no such thing. I didn’t want to disturb you, Ma, because I don’t want you coming up here bugging me.”

“Why, are you ashamed of her?”

“You could say that,” Stettler said.

His mother shook her head, smiled, then sighed heavily as she ventured downstairs. “The life you lead,” was her parting remark.

Andrew Stettler closed the door.

Yes,
he was thinking,
the life I lead.

The phone rang, disrupting that brief reverie. The call display did not reveal who was calling, indicating that it probably originated from a pay phone. Andy picked up. “Hello?”

Honigwachs. “Change of plans. I’m worried about security.”

“That’s my department.”

“Then get a handle on it, Andy! We’ll play squash. Talk there. I don’t want you showing up at the office for a while.”