Ice Lake (35 page)

“What’s up?”

“Heard you were on a blood trail. Anything come of that?”

Cinq-Mars paused while Mathers undertook a high-speed, somewhat risky manoeuvre to duck in behind a Mercedes, pass two trucks on the right, then scoot back out to the fast lane. “Gone before we awoke. We found the rug from the girl’s place. It could use a dry cleaning. Interesting thing is, it looks like she received medical attention.”

“That’s great news! Sounds like she’s among the living. I re-interviewed Camille Choquette this morning.”

“Who?” He covered the mouthpiece and whispered to his partner, “Who’s Camille Choquette?” Mathers could only shrug.

“You know, the woman who rents the shack where the body was found,” Painchaud reminded him.

“Ah. Never did catch her name. What’s the story there?”

“She can’t explain what the body was doing there. Says she wasn’t there. Hadn’t been around for several days. Says the lock on her cabin was intact when she arrived, and nobody else has a key.”

“Hang on,” Cinq-Mars instructed the SQ, detective.
This time he buried the mouthpiece against his coat. “What’s wrong with this picture, Bill? The woman who rents the shack full-time where Stettler was found—”

“What about her?”

“—she told Painchaud she hadn’t been there for days.”

“Days?”

Cinq-Mars nodded.

Mathers caught on. “Then why wasn’t the ice thicker?”

“Charles,” Cinq-Mars said into the phone, “do you remember the heavy bar on the floor of that cabin? It looked like a railway lining-bar, some kind of crowbar.”

“She cracks the ice with it,” Painchaud explained.

“Sure she does—when the ice is thin!” Cinq-Mars roared back. He switched ears and spoke more softly. “When it’s thin she cracks the ice. When it’s thick, she uses an auger, like everybody else, or a chainsaw. If she hadn’t been there for days, how could she
crack
the ice?”

Painchaud went quiet a moment to contemplate the point. “I’ll have to re-interview. She’s gone to work. I’ll catch her there maybe.”

“One more thing. A minnow bucket was on site. Minnows were swimming beneath a thin layer of ice. Categorically, that shack was
not
unoccupied for days. Hang on a second,” the senior detective requested. The car was heading off the expressway, where the road diverged in different directions, and Mathers chose the quiet streets of Ville St. Laurent. Cinq-Mars needed a second to think this through. He asked Painchaud, “Where does she say she’s been lately?”

“Home alone,” the SQ, sergeant replied.

“This is what you do.” As Bill Mathers looked across at him, Cinq-Mars caught himself. “Sorry. This is what I’d do if I were you.”

“I’m open to suggestions,” Painchaud assured him.

“Talk to her husband.”

“She’s not married. She lives alone.”

“Better still. Find out who babysits her daughter. Talk to the sitter. See what that tells us about her schedule. Then do the re-interview. Compare her schedule with the babysitter’s version.”

“Good thought. I’ll take care of that. There’s something else that’ll interest you. The woman works at Hillier-Largent Global.”

“You’re kidding! Does she know Lucy Gabriel?”

“Yes. I told her about Lucy and the news upset her. Ms. Choquette used to work at BioLogika, also, but that was long before Andrew Stettler showed up.”

“She works at Hillier-Largent, and used to work at BioLogika,” Cinq-Mars repeated to Mathers, the phone in his lap. “I’m declaring a pattern as of right now.”

“What was your first clue?” Mathers asked, tacking on a grin.

“Do me a favour, Charles,” Cinq-Mars requested into the phone. “Delay your re-interview. Don’t talk to her inside Hillier-Largent. Keep it external.”

“You’re on. I’ll keep in touch.”

“I owe you, Sergeant.”

“Balances out.”

“All right. Thanks for all this.”

Emile Cinq-Mars shook his head as they turned down a residential street, a mix of parks, duplexes and individual homes. Snow clearance was usually tardy in this district, and the street had narrowed. Sidewalks were engulfed by snowbanks and parked cars intruded into the traffic lanes. Vehicles travelling in opposite directions had to wend their way around each other with care, the traction slippery. Although Bill Mathers drove with authority and ease, his older partner kept one hand on the dash as though a crash were imminent. Cinq-Mars was not distressed, merely distracted
by his fatigue and the intermittent churning of his digestive system.

“Go figure. Charles Painchaud is one cooperative cop. I wonder about him.”

“You two should partner up, Emile. Cross the great divide/Get married.”

“What’s with you?”

Mathers shrugged. He checked his mirror to make sure the car behind him was capable of stopping as he pulled up to a red light. He told Cinq-Mars, “Donna suggested that I cut you loose. You’re trouble, Emile.”

“Donna,” Cinq-Mars advised, “is a delight. Tell her we’ll talk things through as soon as we’re off this case. We’ll see what’s what. We just have to get out from under this one.”

“Nice try, Emile. I think that’s what I did say to her. She mentioned that that would be your usual line. I think she’s on to you, partner.”

Emile Cinq-Mars offered up a grunt, as though it expressed an opinion.

Hillier-Largent Global Incorporated was situated in an industrial park beyond a large shopping mall. The company did not occupy the vast space that its competitor, BioLogika, commanded, and managed as well to cope without fences, barbed wire or guards. Once inside, the detectives found that the building was more secure than at first glance, in the sense that any visitor entering the premises was prohibited from passing beyond the receptionist without an escort. All doors leading from the lobby were electronically locked. Employees had to show their identification or have their faces verified by the receptionist, then punch in a password, with the entire process recorded on videotape.

“You don’t carry a weapon?” Cinq-Mars asked as he displayed his badge and, for the first time in his lengthy career, had the information off his shield written down.
The receptionist was black, exceptionally attractive, and her voice carried a Caribbean lilt.

The woman appeared nonplussed and managed a smile without responding. “Whom do you wish to see, sir?” she asked sweetly, finally.

“Lucy Gabriel. I believe she works here.”

She checked her computer, then announced, “I’m sorry, sir. Miss Gabriel didn’t come in to work this morning.”

“That doesn’t surprise me somehow. Who else is here?” Cinq-Mars inquired.

“Excuse me?”

“Hillier? Largent? Either of those guys? What about Global? Is he around?”

“Both Mr. Hillier and Mr. Largent are in, sir. Whom would you prefer to see?” She was finally aware that she was dealing with an ornery caller who had not arrived on the friendliest of terms.

Cinq-Mars appeared to give weight to the question, rocking his head slightly. “Tell you what, set up a meet,” he decided. “I’ll talk to both of them at the same time.”

Mildly befuddled, the woman put in the call to Mr. Largent, notifying him of the policeman’s request. She was attentive to instructions. “If you’ll have a seat, sir,” she informed Cinq-Mars after hanging up, “someone will be down shortly to escort you upstairs.”

Comfortable on a pair of Naugahyde loveseats under flowering tropical plants, both detectives were tempted to nap. Cinq-Mars appeared to nod off for a second, only to be awakened by a random burp. Their escort arrived, a young, curly-headed, arrogant trainee with his sleeves rolled up and tie slackened. His glasses were thick. In one hand he carried a clipboard. In the other he drummed a pencil against the door he held open with his foot, with more than a hint of impatience, as though to suggest that he didn’t have all day, that this
interruption was probably retarding science. The hour was coming fast, he would have liked to announce, when he’d achieve a station in life that would allow him to speak his mind. In the meantime, he’d serve up fake smiles. “Follow me,” the young man instructed. He took them around the corner to an elevator, earning the ire of the senior cop.

“Is there any particular reason why we’re running?” Cinq-Mars asked him. On a good day he could keep up, but this was not a good day. His escort smiled at the rebuke. The youth struck him as bored, as if meeting someone from the outside world for the first time in months had proven, yet again, that the species remained as he remembered it—indolent, dull, dumb.

The elevator travelled just three floors to reach the top. Cinq-Mars and Mathers followed their guide to the office of the company’s Chief Executive Officer, where he scurried away to save the species.
Randall Largent,
said the imprint on the door opened in their honour. Inside, two men were waiting.

As Mathers quietly closed the door behind them, the impression he shared with his partner was that they had entered a photograph, a portrait of two gentlemen frozen in time. The man who posed at the side of the desk was strikingly bald, his pate made especially prominent by his thick, black side hair, which he combed straight down. Although he tried to carry himself erect, he stooped. His partner, who was seated, had wild, Einstein-like white hair. Both returned the gaze of the visitors, until the man who was standing announced, “I’m Harold Hillier, sir. To my friends, I’m Harry.”

“Randall Largent,” the seated man said. He did not extend an invitation to be called ‘Randy,’ and remained seated behind the desk.

“Gentlemen,” Cinq-Mars replied.

“Sir,” Randall Largent began, “what can we do for you?”

Cinq-Mars curtly introduced himself and Mathers, then demanded, “What positions do the two of you hold in the company, please?”

“Officially,” Largent explained from his leather chair, “I’m the
CEO
and Harry’s President. What the titles mean can change on a whim. Essentially, we’re equal partners. We’re both men of science, only Harry’s the genius. His bailiwick is the lab. I try to make myself useful in management. Now, what is this about?”

“One of your employees has been abducted from her home,” Cinq-Mars declared. “We’re here to investigate.”

Air rushed from Harry Hillier’s lungs. “What?”

“Who?” Randall Largent, still seated, managed.

“Lucy Gabriel.”

“My God,
Lucy?”
Hillier slowly drew a hand across his shiny pate, to mop sudden perspiration there, then ran it down the back of his black hair.

Largent moved his swivel chair closer to his desk, as though to signal a different stage in their discussion. “Please, gentlemen, be seated.”

“Lucy,” Hillier repeated. “I can’t believe it.”

“Well,” Largent declared, “I can.”

“Her abduction is understandable to you, Mr. Largent?” Cinq-Mars asked. He and Mathers helped themselves to the twin chairs facing the desk. Neither man wanted to be on his feet too much today.

“Don’t get me wrong, Lucy’s a fine young woman. Not that I know her well, but she’s upstanding, a good worker. You know how it is, she lives on a reserve. With Indians. Who knows what goes on out there? During the Oka crisis we lost her services for weeks. I’d go home at night and there she’d be—my employee—
on the evening news, taunting soldiers along the barricades, wearing feathers in her hair and war paint and those awful tie-dyed T-shirts. Can you imagine? Instead of being at her station and collecting a salary, she was behaving like a renegade. Okay, that’s Lucy. We’re tolerant. It’s the times. But things like that, kidnappings, abductions, I expect they happen out there as a matter of routine, am I right?”

“I doubt it,” Cinq-Mars told him, having stared at him throughout his discourse.

“She might have been shot as well,” Mathers added.

“Good night, don’t say
that!”
Harry Hillier stormed. He spun his body halfway around, then wound himself back again and shoved both hands down into his pants pockets and paced. “Coming on the heels of yesterday, this is
très
bizarre. I thought you’d come here to talk about Andrew Stettler.”

“Why would you think that?” Cinq-Mars inquired, finally breaking his eye contact with Largent.

“I watch the news. I heard your name mentioned. You found the body. When your arrival downstairs was announced, I assumed you’d come about Andrew.”

“Why would I?”

The partners looked at one another, as though they each needed the other to confirm their astonishment. “Sorry?” Largent asked. “Andrew was murdered. Doesn’t that interest the police?”

“That investigation is being conducted by the SQ. I’m city. But I meant something else by my question. I meant, why would the death of Andrew Stettler interest the police, any police,
in you?”