Until the Night

2

ALL THROUGH THE MORNING MEETING, Detective Sergeant Chouinard sat on the edge of his seat, tapping his ballpoint on his legal pad. One by one the detectives summarized their interviews with the friends, relatives and co-workers of Laura Lacroix. McLeod and Szelagy had talked to people who knew Mark Trent. Cardinal had the impression Chouinard was only half listening, as if he had something he would much rather be talking about.

“Only thing we could find,” Szelagy said. “Mark Trent used to work for the We Are One charity foundation in Ottawa. Remember they had that scandal a couple of years ago? He was never charged, but people went to jail. There might be something there.”

“Let’s follow that up,” Loach said. “I can’t quite get a reading on Trent’s wife. She was so hysterical yesterday I couldn’t tell if she was faking or not. My impression is, she knew hubby was screwing around and she was none too happy about it. She’s got no alibi, and I’ll be talking to her some more. Standing on someone’s throat seems personal to me—doesn’t seem like something you do to someone involved in financial peccadilloes.”

“Is she heavy enough?” Delorme asked.

Loach nodded. “Lady’s huge.”

“Standing on the guy’s throat,” Cardinal said. “I’ve only heard of one case of that. Happened in the psychiatric hospital.”

“Good thinking.” Loach snapped his fingers. “McLeod, give ’em a call and see if anybody’s AWOL.”

“Already did,” McLeod said, and added, “Your Highness.”

“And?”

“All lunatics present and accounted for.”

“Fine. Lose the Your Highness shit.”

“Right away, Your Majesty.”

“I wasn’t thinking mental hospitals per se,” Cardinal put in. “I was thinking prisons. It’s the sort of murder you get when there are no weapons handy. Which would go against the idea it’s personal.”

Loach shrugged. “Possibly. I still like personal. Guy comes to do Trent. Woman is there and he takes advantage of the unexpected opportunity. At least then we have a motive for her.”

“It could be the other way around,” Cardinal said. “Guy is lusting after Laura Lacroix, is in the process of abducting her when Trent appears. Kills Trent and takes off.”

“Either way, someone had to be keeping a close eye on at least one of them,” Loach said. “We’ve still got lots of people to talk to, so keep going down your lists, and please—everyone—really lean on the idea of followers, stalkers, old boyfriends, girlfriends. Also strangers hanging around asking questions. Ident is still working the scene. With any luck, they’ll come up with something that gives us some traction.”

Szelagy and McLeod got up to leave.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Chouinard said. “Let’s not forget we have other cases to work on, people. Szelagy, you’ve got your construction site thefts. Nobody likes missing dynamite. McLeod, you’ve got the property damage over on Woodward. Delorme, what do you have on your battered woman?”

“Doesn’t want to press charges. Won’t tell me the guy’s name. Won’t even admit she’s getting beaten.”

“Talk to her again.”

“D.S., she doesn’t want to talk. You know how these women are.”

“Listen to her,” McLeod said. “If it was me said that, you’d be calling me a sexist pig.”

“For sure I would. And it would be true.”

“Enough,” Chouinard said. “And while we’re talking about battered or missing women, let’s not forget Marjorie Flint. The senator’s wife disappeared in Ottawa ten days ago and nobody has a clue where she is.” He held up an eight-by-ten photo. “You’ve all seen this. Last seen wearing a black cashmere coat, Hermès scarf, high-heel boots.”

“She have any connection to Algonquin Bay?” Loach asked.

“None. But she’s a senator’s wife. That makes her national. Keep your eyes open, people.”

As far as Lise Delorme was concerned, one of the most annoying things about Loach having been imported was that they really needed another woman in CID. Being the only female meant Delorme was automatically assigned all the sexual assaults and all the battered wife cases, and she was frankly sick of them.

When she first joined, she had looked forward to being a champion of victimized women, and indeed over the years she had had the satisfaction of locking up several abusive husbands and at least three rapists. But there had been two big shocks in store for Delorme. First was the number of cases where the woman (girl, more like it) was actually lying’ there was no assault, she was just angry and out for revenge. The saddest effect of this was that it tended to undermine the credibility of genuine victims.

The other shock was the number of women who chose not to press charges—and not only not press charges but to go back to the men who beat them, to go on living with them in the hope they would change. Delorme knew about the syndrome but she could not get over what a grip it had on women who in every other way seemed, well, rational.

Miranda Heap was forty-five and good-looking, and she ran a business services concern that so far had managed to thrive in a niche that was too small for the big-city competition to bother with. She did most of her work out of her home office, and that was where Delorme found her.

“Your face looks much better,” Delorme said.

“Yes, not so much like a raccoon now. Amazing what a little foundation can do. Would you like a coffee? I’m about due for a break.”

“No, that’s okay. I just stopped by to see how you were getting on.”

“I’m fine. Really, I think I kind of overreacted.”

“No, you didn’t. He hurt you. You should tell me his name so we can press charges.”

“He didn’t mean to hurt me. He’s just a passionate guy, that’s all. That’s part of the attraction, you know? A big part. It’s hard for you to understand because you’ve never met him.”

“Tell me his name, I’ll go meet him right now.”

Miranda laughed. “You’d probably get along great. You’re obviously passionate too.”

“Passionate is not the same as violent. Are you gonna let him keep hitting you just because he’s good in bed?”

“You’ve only seen the very worst of him. He hates that part of himself too. He’s so ashamed after. He purposely waits until he knows I’m out and then he leaves these incredibly long, heartfelt phone messages. Really. His apologies are masterpieces.”

“I imagine he gets a lot of practice.”

“You would never guess from meeting him that he could lose control that way. He’s so intelligent, so generous—a good, good man in lots of ways.”

“For all the difference it makes. Did you ever contact the therapist I recommended?”

“I did, I did. And she’s great. I’ve been seeing her twice a week. I know she’s doing me good, so I have to thank you for that. Really.”

“That’s the thing about women,” Delorme said when she met Cardinal at the coffee shop. “We have an endless capacity to fool ourselves. To see what we want to see—and nothing else—especially when it comes to men. I do it myself.”

“No, you don’t.” He might have said a little more on the subject, but he could see she was in no mood. “Listen, I had a very interesting name come up in one of my interviews.”

“Who’ve you got?”

“Were you going to order a coffee?”

“Lineup’s too long. Tell me on the way.”

They went outside and got in the car and Cardinal drove up toward Airport Hill. “I finally got to speak to Laura Lacroix’s best friend—Mia Neff? Hasn’t heard from her. Has no idea where she might be. She’s the most upset of anyone I’ve seen so far. Says this is totally out of character—the vanishing, that is, not the affair. Miss Neff knew all about the marriage breakup and the fling with Trent. Turns out that the love affair wasn’t so out of character.”

“Oh?”

“Apparently the former Mrs. Rettig had another love interest before she took up with Mark Trent.”

“That who we’re going to see?”

“Leonard Priest.”

“You’re kidding,” Delorme said. “Are you serious?”

“I’ve got no reason to doubt this woman. Everyone agrees she and Laura were best friends. She said right off no one else knew about it.”

“Leonard Priest,” Delorme said. “Wow. This just got a whole lot more interesting. Man, I would love to nail that bastard.”

“Tell me about it. I thought I had him for Choquette.”

Régine Choquette had been murdered in a boathouse on Trout Lake. She was found chained to an overhead beam, and nude, except for a zippered leather hood that covered her face. The weight of the evidence suggested that an evening of highly charged sadomasochism had got out of hand and ended in her being shot between the eyes with a Nazi-era Luger.

“I never understood why the Crown didn’t charge him. It was Garth Romney, wasn’t it?”

“Assistant Crown. Yeah, it was Garth.”

“I remember that picture of him holding up that mask. Fighting the forces of evil.”

“Don’t get me started. Take a look in that envelope on the back seat.”

Delorme undid her seatbelt and reached around. She opened the envelope and took out two eight-by-tens.

“See any resemblance?”

“Both long blond hair, wavy. Both have brown eyes, natural eyebrows, good cheekbones. Could both definitely appeal to the same guy.”

“Both small framed as well. Five-two for Régine, five-four for Laura Lacroix.”

“But I thought Priest sold his house up here—after all the trouble.”

“Nope. And apparently he was in town this weekend. Miss Neff saw him at the Quiet Pint on Friday night.”

“Leonard Priest,” Delorme said again. “Wow.”

They drove up Airport Road and then took a number of smaller streets until they got to a dead end called Crosier Place. There was only one house, a tall cedar A-frame that to Delorme’s eyes looked as if it belonged in Switzerland. A Jaguar X-Type gleamed in the drive.

Cardinal pulled in and parked behind the Jaguar and switched off the ignition. Usually the two of them would decide in the car who would do most of the talking, but she got out and went straight up to the side door and pushed the doorbell.

Cardinal came up behind. “You in a rush?”

“Aren’t you?”

The door opened and Leonard Priest was there, holding a cellphone to one ear and looking annoyed. He snapped the cellphone shut and slipped it into his shirt pocket. “Yes?”

Delorme started to introduce herself, but Priest recognized both of them before she finished.

“No, thank you,” he said. “Don’t want any.”

Delorme stopped the door with her foot. “We just need to ask you a few questions.”

“I don’t care. Move your foot, you’re freezing the place out.”

“About Laura Lacroix.”

“I still don’t care. Now do me a favour and fuck off out of it.” A dozen years back in Canada had done nothing to soften the London accent. Not to mention the rock-star attitude.

“Mr. Priest, it’s just a few questions. A woman has gone missing—under violent circumstances—and we’re talking to everyone who knows her. Why make it such a big deal?”

This time Priest spoke to Cardinal. “You tried to put me away. And now you come round here expecting me to be delighted to see you?”

“No, I expected you to behave like an asshole,” Cardinal said. “You’re not disappointing me.”

Priest took out the cellphone again and pressed a button. “I have my lawyer on speed-dial.”

“Really,” Delorme said. “You must be so proud.”

“We’ll never get a subpoena with what we’ve got at this point,” Cardinal said in the car. “A single person’s hearsay that he once went out with Laura Lacroix.”

“I know. He knows it too. He has a great accent, though, I’ll give him that.”

“You know he’s actually from here originally, right? Moved to England with his parents when he was a kid. Moved back here after his band broke up. It’s funny who moves back here. Guy like that, you’d think he’d stay in London or Los Angeles or somewhere.”

Cardinal made the turn and headed downhill. He had to stop again at the highway intersection. It was a long light and they sat there in silence. Then it was finally green and they were on Algonquin.

“I seem to remember Priest made a pass at you during the trial,” Cardinal said.

“More than one.”

“Yeah, I think you might be his type. Régine Choquette and Laura Lacroix? You have the same colour hair, same colour eyes, about the same height. Same age too, pretty much. And look at their last names.”

“Choquette. Lacroix. Bon, donc, nous sommes toutes les trois Canadiennes-françaises. Trois soeurs. All French Canadians look alike now?”

“No, but all three of you do look French-Canadian.”

“You think I should cozy up to him? Dinner and a movie and wearing a wire the whole time?”

“Hell, no. He’d find the wire too fast.”

“Very funny.”