The Twenty-Year Death (11 page)

To calm himself he started at the beginning and reviewed everything so far, but it didn’t help. He knew what had happened
in many instances, but he did not know why or how, and therefore he did not know who. He knew nothing.

The prison loomed before them. The taxi drove up to the gate, and Pelleter got out, instructing the driver to return in two hours and to wait if he was not yet ready. The chief inspector showed his documents to the guard at the outer gate, crossed the space where several cars were parked, moss and wild grass growing in places from between the cobbles, and then he showed his documents again at the inner door, where he was admitted to the prison.

“I hear there was more excitement in town last night,” Remy said.

“Any excitement out here?”

“Oh, it’s always exciting here.”

“That’s what I thought.”

Pelleter passed in to the administrative offices. The young woman at the first desk took one look at him and reached for the phone. She was a plain girl who would have been prettier if she had had the conviction to either cut her hair shorter or to grow it longer. Instead she had settled on an awkward style that paid homage to a bob without being one.

She whispered into the receiver with her head bowed, blocking her mouth with the closed fist of her free hand.

There was a kind of lethargy in the rest of the office that came perhaps from some of the men having been involved in the search the night before, but Pelleter had spent enough time in police stations, courts, and prisons to know that the usual situation in those places was of utter boredom.

He saw a desk towards the back of the room stacked with files. This, no doubt, was Officer Martin’s workspace. The prison
workers had been unsure if they were allowed to clean it up yet. Pelleter made a mental note to get Officer Martin back out here as soon as possible. Even if he found nothing, it was better to have someone on hand.

The young woman replaced the receiver of the phone, and sat up rod straight as though the phone cradle were a switch attached to her spine. She looked up at the chief inspector with pursed lips, took a breath, and said, “Monsieur Fournier is otherwise engaged at the moment, and does not know when he will be available to assist you. He suggests that you come back another time.”

She waited then, as if to see if she had passed some recitation exam.

Pelleter could not help but smile, and the girl slumped a little sensing that she had failed.

“That’s fine,” the chief inspector said. “I wasn’t here to see Monsieur Fournier anyway. I can just show myself around,” and he began to turn back to the door.

“But...”

“No need to bother,” Pelleter continued in his light tone. He pointed at the door. “I’m on my way to the infirmary. I know the way.”

The young woman looked around at her colleagues, imploring for help. They were paying attention now, but only with surreptitious glances that relieved them of any responsibility.

As Pelleter pushed open the office door, the young woman stood up behind her desk but did not move. He turned back. “You could do me one favor,” he said as though it were an afterthought. “I’ll need to see Mahossier again. Please have him brought down.”

The woman’s shoulders sank, but Pelleter did not wait for an answer. As he stepped back into the entry hall, he could only just see one of the other men stand behind her.

“Open this door for me, Remy. I’m going to the infirmary.” Pelleter tried to remember if there was another locked door between this one and the infirmary, but he thought it best to keep moving and worry about it when the time came. If the young woman had recovered herself, she no doubt was on the phone to Fournier once again, and it was only a matter of a few minutes before the assistant warden made an appearance.

As Remy unlocked the inner door, Pelleter said, “Could you be sure that they’re bringing Mahossier down to the interrogation room for me as well. There seemed to be some confusion about that in the office.”

“I’m sure there was,” Remy said, smiling. “There needs to be a paper for everything, and god forbid if you miss one little paper.” Remy pulled open the door, stepping aside to allow the chief inspector to pass.

Just as he was about to step into the hall, the office door jerked open and one of the clerks appeared. He pulled himself up short in an attempt to regain some composure, and then he said, “Right this way, Monsieur Pelleter.”

They must have decided that it was safest to have somebody accompany the chief inspector if he was going to force his way into the prison. Or perhaps Fournier had given the order that Pelleter was to be watched. In either case, the young man stepped ahead of Pelleter, and then led the way to the left towards the infirmary.

“Any more incidents since yesterday?” Pelleter asked the nervous young man from one step behind him.

The man did not turn. “Incidents, sir?”

“What’s your name?”

“Monsieur Vittier.”

“Okay, Vittier. Fights, stabbings, murders. Incidents.”

“I’m sure I can’t say, sir.”

“I’m sure you can’t.”

They came to a steel partition with a door in it that divided the hall into equal intervals. Vittier fumbled with a ring of keys he produced from his pocket. So there
had
been another locked doorway before coming to the infirmary. Then Pelleter was glad for the chaperone.

Vittier managed to get the door open, and this time Pelleter stepped through first. The air in this stretch of the hallway had a bottled-up mustiness to it, cut with the ammoniac smell coming from the infirmary.

Pelleter strode along the hall, unconcerned as to whether Vittier was with him. The door to the infirmary stood open. Apparently it was assumed injured prisoners were in too much pain to try to escape.

In the infirmary, there was none of the hurried excitement from the day before. A guard sat in a straight-backed chair just inside the doorway. The stabbing victim was the only prisoner taking up one of the four cots. He was small, pale, and gaunt, as though he had been in hospital for weeks instead of twenty-four hours.

Pelleter crossed the room and set himself on the edge of the cot beside the prisoner. He saw that the prisoner was handcuffed to the bed.

Vittier came up beside him, standing at the foot of the bed.

Pelleter held out his papers, but the prisoner, whose eyes darted between Pelleter and Vittier, showed no inclination towards reading what was held before him.

“I am Chief Inspector Pelleter with the Central Bureau. I’ve come from the city to look into things here. I was hoping you could tell me something of what happened yesterday.”

The prisoner’s eyes again darted between Pelleter and Vittier. No other part of him moved. His face remained blank. He seemed unimpressed with Pelleter’s credentials.

“Do you know who it was who stabbed you?”

The man turned his head away from the chief inspector, wincing as he did.

Pelleter shifted his weight on the cot. The metal rod of the frame cut into the back of his thighs.

“Vittier!”

The young man jerked towards Pelleter. He had been lost in contemplation of the prisoner’s wasted form. Now he looked as though he were awaiting a sentence of his own. Was it the prison itself that made everyone here somber, or did Fournier have his men—both his staff and his prisoners—on edge at all times?

“Give us a moment,” Pelleter said, and he nodded his head in the direction of the door.

The young clerk went to the entrance and stood beside the guard. They did not speak to one another.

Pelleter leaned forward then, his elbows on his knees, and lowered his voice. “Can you tell me who stabbed you?”

For a moment it seemed as though the prisoner was going to act as though he had not heard the repeated question. But at last, without turning his head, he said just above a whisper, “I don’t know.”

“Do you know why you were stabbed?”

The prisoner closed his eyes and shook his head. He had been thinking about it, and he didn’t know. Prison gave a man
lots of time to think, but almost getting killed must make him think in new ways.

“What about the other men that were killed? Are people saying anything about them?”

There was another long pause, and Pelleter was worried that he would have to start from the beginning again. But at last the wounded man said, “No one’s saying anything.”

“If you say something,” Pelleter said, leaning even further forward until he felt the cot begin to tip beneath him, “then maybe I can help.”

Still there was no reaction.

“No one will know it was you. I’m going to talk to other prisoners as well.”

The man turned his head quickly towards Pelleter now, his eyes wide. “I don’t know anything. It was crowded in the yard. It could have been anyone who went for me. I had no beef. I don’t know nothing else.”

“Okay,” Pelleter said.

The whites of the man’s eyes showed around large pupils, his nostrils flared, the look of a man afraid and in pain and backed into a corner.

“Okay.” The chief inspector stood. He watched the man carefully. “But this will probably be the last chance I have to talk to you without Assistant Warden Fournier.”

There was no reaction. The man’s face remained the same, full of pain and indignation. Fournier’s name had changed nothing.

The chief inspector considered the man for another moment, frustrated that he had not learned anything more from him. With each new incident, Pelleter seemed to know less, and even the victims were ignorant. Sometimes there was nothing that could be done on a case—it was just a matter of waiting—
but Pelleter was unwilling to believe that was true here. Too many things were happening, and somebody knew why. It was just a matter of asking the right person the questions in the right way.

Pelleter turned away from the man on the cot.

“Vittier,” he called. “Take me to Mahossier.”

Mahossier was already in the examination room, his hands and legs once again chained. To Pelleter’s surprise, Monsieur le Directeur Adjoint Fournier had still not made an appearance. Pelleter left Vittier with the guard outside the door, and took up a position behind Mahossier and just to the side.

“Why did you stab the man in the yard?” Pelleter said.

Mahossier made no attempt to turn around. “Why, Inspector! I’m surprised at you. Surely you know that I didn’t have yard privileges yesterday. Some days I do, some days I don’t. Monsieur Fournier sees to that. It’s for my own protection, you see. Some of the boys here don’t like me very much. I couldn’t say why.”

Pelleter could hear the hilarity in Mahossier’s voice. The criminal did not seem put out to have Pelleter behind him. Pelleter was in no mood to be toyed with. He tried to keep his voice calm. “What do you do those days for meals? Are you allowed in the mess?”

“One of the good boys brings it to me in my cell, but assistant warden’s careful for it to be a different one as often as possible. What’s the matter? He didn’t tell you any of this? Is he not being helpful?”

Pelleter would not be drawn in.

Mahossier put on a tone of absolute concern. “Have they found those two little boys yet? I’ve been so worried about them.”

“And how do you know about the missing children?”

“How is Madame Pelleter by the way? Well, I trust. But why wouldn’t she be?”

Pelleter grabbed Mahossier by the shoulders then, and threw him to the side, causing the prisoner to fall heavily to the floor, his head knocking the stone with a dull thump, followed a second after by the clatter of the chair falling to the ground. With his hands chained to his legs, Mahossier was forced to remain in a fetal position in the shadow of the table, a small old man, unable to even raise himself.

Pelleter kicked the chair, which had settled partially on Mahossier, into the corner.

The old man was shaking, laughing soundlessly.

Pelleter circled the table to prevent himself from kicking the downed man. He thought of Servières asking him that first night how he could be in the same room with this monster and not kill him. The thought cooled his anger. The play had been made, and it was not a bad one. He would see what effect it had.

He came around so that he was standing in front of Mahossier’s face. The murderer, still laughing, was straining to see the floor beneath his head.

“Very good,” he said. “I think I’m bleeding.” He licked the cold stone, and his grin spread even wider. “I am bleeding! Very good.” And he laughed some more.

Pelleter squatted before Mahossier and said the one thing he thought might force a straight answer out of the man. “I will leave on tonight’s train. I don’t have to be a part of any of this.”

“I suppose you could,” Mahossier said from his place on the floor. “Whether you have to be a part of it...that depends on what the press thinks and what the Central Bureau thinks
about what the press thinks when Le Maire and Letreau and Le Directeur decide that it would be nice if it was the fault of that detective from the city that several dead bodies turned up and several people went missing. It’s true you have no obligation to me.”

Mahossier thought he had Pelleter in his control and the chief inspector bristled at the notion.

“But you know these small towns...It never seems to be the people in charge, just people drifting through.”

“Now you’re a political activist? Or is it a social reformer?”

“I prefer concerned citizen.” The shadows on his cheek deepened as a grin spread. “I love the word concerned. It’s so... useful.”

Pelleter stood to relieve the ache that had begun to burn in his thighs from squatting. He pulled out the still-standing chair, the one that he had sat in two days prior, and sat down. From there he could not see Mahossier, but instead, looked across the table at the sweating stone wall across from him. The rough-hewn faces of the stones were a miniature topography in which an ant could be lost forever. From his point of view, able to take in the whole wall’s surface, Pelleter did not think it made any more sense to him than it would to the ant.

Mahossier filled the silence. His one weakness when he felt as though he had a worthy conversationalist. “I don’t know anything about those missing boys. They have nothing to do with this.”