Ice Lake (41 page)

Was she using a telephone, or, Heaven forbid, e-mail? “How are you trying to contact him, Mrs. Stettler?”

“I’m in touch with the dead on a regular basis. Seance. For me, it’s no different than picking up a phone to call someone in Manitoba.”

“I see,” the detective replied. At least now he had a grasp of what was going on here. He smiled to assure her that he meant no harm. “Before moving on, did Andrew live here a long time?”

“Who are you?”

“Sergeant-Detective Emile Cinq-Mars, Mrs. Stettler. I’m a police officer.”

She nodded. “Are you interested in his death?”

“Yes.”

“I am too. I’d like to know what happened. I’m going to ask him who did that terrible thing to him. If you give me your number, I’ll let you know what he says.”

“Thank you. I’d appreciate that. I’ll leave questions of his death to you and Andrew. But I was wondering, would it be possible for you to tell me about his life? I’d like to know more about him.”

She said that she did not know much, and would have little to tell him—a statement that proved untrue.
Mrs. Stettler rattled on for more than an hour about her son, about his problems with the law on one occasion, when he had been “wrongfully accused” and “picked up by the police” and “hustled off to prison like some no-account hooligan.” Her boy was a good boy, she explained to him, and she backed up that accreditation by telling Cinq-Mars how good her son had been to her. “He had a goofy mom, he was not advantaged in life,” she explained plainly and honestly. “He could have turned his back on me and no one would have said boo about that, including me.” Instead, Andrew had looked after her necessities, given her an allowance each month, made sure that she had everything that she needed in her apartment, and lived right above her so that she would not be afraid “when bad spirits ring the buzzer at night.”

Her voice was excitable, as if she was on the verge of being frantic, and her head wagged along with her vocal rhythms. How her son had earned his living she did not know, but it was clear to her that he had friends, or at least a lengthy list of acquaintances. In summer they would sometimes come by on their motorbikes, “And if you think I look silly, let me tell you about those men! With their tattoos! And their badges and crests! Hell’s Angels! Glory be! I have spent my life in communication with Heaven’s angels! I’ve barred the door to the Devil’s agents! You would think—wouldn’t you think?—that nobody in their right mind would want to attract an angel from
Hell?
If there are such things. I told Andrew often, devils are from Hell, angels from Heaven, but he’d only just laugh at me.”

So Andrew Stettler was connected. To the bad guys. This was news. Even if his mother failed to deliver the name of her son’s murderer straight from the lips of the deceased man himself, at least he had gleaned this tidbit. Cinq-Mars knew that the case had taken a deeper, menacing turn.

“Did Andrew ever mention the name Lucy to you, or Lucy Gabriel?”

She shook her head. “Who’s she?”

“She’s missing. I’m trying to find her.”

“When he checks in, I’ll ask him if he knows her. If he’s not too busy, maybe he can look around for her from up in Heaven. He probably has a view.”

Cinq-Mars gave her his card, patted her shoulder, and led her back to the front door. “I’ll look forward to hearing what he has to say on that subject, Mrs. Stet-der. Thanks.”

He wandered through the house some more after she’d gone downstairs. He found a writing pad inside a side table by Stettler’s bed. Three pages were covered with notations concerning bill payments and dates for credit cards and utilities. The amounts had been added up and ticked off as if they’d been double-checked. On the top page, the name
Jacques
was inscribed in the upper-left corner. On the next, again in the upper left, the author had written
Paramus, New Jersey,
in full. On the third sheet of domestic financial notes, Andy, presumably, had written,
lips lips lips,
and underlined the words three times.

Cinq-Mars stared at the writing for a while, then flipped the page. There were no more financial notes, but again there was writing in the top-left corner:
C-M.
Beside the letters was a tick mark.

The detective felt his hands go cold, as if the woman downstairs had summoned one of her ghosts. He put the notepad back in the drawer. Locking up, he left the building to its mysteries and ghosts, and to its last, sad inhabitant.

The signal was the most common of covert codes, generic to television and movies. A car drove into the parking lot and backed into a spot as far from the building as possible. The engine was shut down, the
lights turned off. The occupants waited awhile in the dark, then flashed their headlights at the building once, twice, a third time. Another pause. On the second floor in a darkened office window, a desk lamp was switched on and off twice in response.

The occupants of the car continued to wait. They remained silent. Watching. Suddenly, both front doors sprang open and a man, from the passenger side, and a woman, scrambled out. They moved with alacrity. The man wore a brown robe, each of his hands tucked in the sleeve of the opposite arm. The woman pulled her collar up as she walked, either to deflect the night’s cold air or to conceal her identity.

The pair did not enter the premises of Hillier-Largent Global by the front door, nor did they choose the loading ramp or the side access to the parking lot. Rather, they waited by a small fire door, which did not have a handle on the outside. In a minute, a young woman opened it from the inside, her form visible in the red glow of an exit lamp, and the visitors—Lucy Gabriel and Brother Tom—stepped inside.

Their accomplice eased the door shut, making sure that the latch did not click too loudly. The door was connected to an alarm, but the woman inside had the key, which she inserted into a wall device that armed the system again. She then placed the key in a gap under a built-in radiator and pointed at it.

Lucy understood. She was to replace the key in the same spot when she was done. Lucy touched her forearm lightly. “Thanks,” she whispered.

“Shhh,” the other woman dictated, putting a finger to her lips. “You’re on your own from now on, kiddo.”

“I owe you.”

“Big time.” The woman opened the door to the lower floor, listened a moment, then went through it.

“This way,” Lucy whispered, and she led Brother Tom up the stairwell.

Whenever they passed a window, Lucy insisted that they duck. They moved at a pace Brother Tom could manage, and, accustomed to climbing stairs, he diligently kept going. At the third floor they paused while he caught his breath, then Lucy opened the door and listened to the hush of the nearly vacant building.

An empty building at night is never quiet. The thrum of its heating and air-filtering systems, the underlying hint of electrical buzz, can be boisterous. Furniture and doors might squeak, or shift, or sigh, or suddenly release a
crack.

There’d be security guards. The possibility of scientists or managers working late could not be discounted.

Brother Tom was breathing like a violent locomotive, every little sound exaggerated.

Lucy heard her first step out onto the corridor carpet and was terrified. The carpet was an industrial, heavy-duty fibre with a bland checked design of browns, yellows and pale reds. The material was so thin that their steps were not muffled unless they stepped lightly, and what sound they made echoed along the empty corridor. Lucy crept alongside the wall, Brother Tom following, until he clutched her wrist suddenly and made her start.

“What!” she whispered hotly. “What!”

He could not explain except in sign language.

“You want us to walk down the centre? Why?”

He put his hands out as if the answer was obvious, but Lucy wasn’t getting it. She acquiesced only because she wanted to get on with this and not waste her time arguing with a mute.

She understood before long. Creeping along the walls was suspicious and made them no less visible. Walking naturally, as if they were going about their business, would not immediately give them away if they were spotted by a security camera or by a guard.

They walked on.

The lighting was dimmer in the executive area. Lucy guided her companion to an office where the name
Harold Hillier
was imprinted on the door.

The door was locked when she tried it.

She crooked her finger and signalled Brother Tom to keep following her.

The next door down opened, and they entered the office for Harry Hillier’s secretary and clerks. A door led from that office into Hillier’s, and in a secretary’s desk she found the door key in the top left-hand drawer, her hand going to the correct spot immediately. Harry himself had told her where to find it, but that had been a long time ago, when they had worked together on a different project.

He was such a cute little man, with his shiny head and big smile, and he had always been so fond of her. Harry was also brilliant. They’d had fun in the past whenever she had assisted him on his research. She’d known why she had been chosen for certain tasks. She never complained about the long hours, but mainly she was pretty and she could be good company. Her job had been to keep Harry entertained, to keep him in good humour and thereby keep him awake and working, and she really hadn’t minded doing that at all, especially as she had learned so much and become a better technician because of it.

She opened the door to his office, entered, and she and Brother Tom shut it behind themselves.

Brother Tom turned the lever on the vertical blinds to close them, and only then did Lucy switch on a table lamp. In the large maple executive desk, Lucy quickly located a key to a filing cabinet. To her surprise, however, she found that the cabinet had been left unlocked. Opening it, she went straight to the files under “D” and sorted through them. Almost immediately she came across a file marked
“Darkling Star.”
Camille Choquette had told her the name, and here it was. Pulling it out, she stood bent over the drawer, reading intently.

The file contained a typed report, a series of notes in Hillier’s outlandish handwriting and tossed in at random—a filing procedure that had always given her headaches—and a collection of material photocopied from scientific journals and added to the hodgepodge. This was Harry’s way of working—to bring intuition and evidence and experiments together, throw everything into the mental mix and see what jelled.

Lucy wanted to exploit any advantage she might have. Her friendship with Harry Hillier, and her belief that he was a good guy, were avenues she wanted to investigate. She did not believe that Harry could knowingly be involved with the deadly aspects of
Darkling Star.
She had always been told not to mention anything about it, or their other illegal experiments, around him, but she also knew that whatever was learned from their covert work eventually had to be sifted through him. He was the bright one, the affable, unassuming genius. Sooner or later, in some disguised way, the knowledge had to be passed to Harry.

Lucy did not know what she was looking for, but she found it anyway. In the formal report, certain passages had been highlighted by a yellow marker. In the margins next to these sections was scribbled the word “human,” followed either by a question mark or a frantic series of exclamation marks. Lucy picked up the telephone receiver.

Dialled.

A woman answered.

“Good evening. Is Mr. Hillier there, please?” she asked.

“One moment, please.”

In a moment she heard Harry’s voice. “Hello?”

“Harry? It’s me. Lucy.”

“Lucy! My God! I’ve been worried sick! Where are you?”

“I’m in your office, Harry.”

“What! What do you mean? What are you saying?”

“I’m in your office, Harry, and guess what? I’ve found the file.
Darkling Star.
I know what you’ve done, Harry. Harry? Harry? Are you listening to me? I know what you’ve done. I know whose side you’re on. I’ll be in touch.”

She hung up, tucked the file under her arms, and switched off the light. “Let’s go,” she said to Brother Tom.

At the door from the secretary’s office she froze—a cleaning lady was coming down the corridor. They waited, wondering where they could hide. The woman opened a door a good distance from them and went inside another room. Still, they were no longer alone on the floor and would have to move carefully. They would also have to pass the room where she was working.

Lucy indicated that it was time to move. They crept away, and this time they did cling to a wall and work their way down, as if somehow that made them invisible. At the room where the woman laboured, Lucy stole a glance inside, then skipped across the open space. She took another look, and signalled to Brother Tom to jump across as well.
How,
she wondered,
do I explain the monk if we get caught?
But she didn’t want to have to do that, she didn’t want to get caught.