Montreal Noir Read online

  Instead, I scanned and clicked the various articles Ryan sent me. “This isn’t illegal, though, right?”

  He laughed. “How is information illegal?”

  Oh, Ryan. He was so innocent sometimes. I told him I couldn’t wait to see him on Sunday, and hung up the phone.

  Long-distance relationships officially suck.

  I’ve never been a huge computer person. I like them, I use them, but I can’t make them sit up and purr the way Ryan does. So I was pretty excited when I started tracking down Raymond’s locations—mostly downtown and East Montreal, a few in the Plateau. Never Côte-des-Neiges where I lived. Phew. Because of its three hospitals and one university, my neighborhood’s got a lot of students and immigrants, as Mireille, another resident, put it.

  I turned back to Raymond Pascal Gusarov’s social media accounts. I clicked on a few links he’d recommended, links that recommended other links, that recommended still more links, most of which were posts by users named TearsOfAClown and Heart’s Blood.

  TearsOfAClown had posted pictures of gerbils, hamsters, and other fuzzy animals. Strange. I would’ve guessed that Raymond Pascal Gusarov didn’t love other living things as much as himself. Maybe I was totally wrong about him. Except TearsOfAClown started posting more photos. One hamster was clearly dead, its little body lying stiffly on its side.

  In the next new photo, another hamster posed with a tiny chainsaw over the dead hamster.

  My heart thudded. What the heck? Was this Photoshop? I couldn’t tell. I’ve got no skills like that.

  In the third photo, the dead hamster was decapitated. Its small golden head was sitting on the ground, severed side down, eyes closed, while the chainsaw hamster stood above it, wearing a miniature face mask.

  More photos. More decapitated hamsters. The murdering hamster seemed to wink as it held its little chainsaw aloft.

  Some of those hamsters, I’m pretty sure, had been alive up until the moment their necks had been cut.

  Oh. Em. Gee.

  What could I do about this? I thought this guy was as nutballs as you could get, but could we arrest him for cruelty to animals?

  So far, I’d only put away people who’d killed other people. I could call the Humane Society, of course, but what if he said the animals were already dead? What if he claimed it was art? I felt sick.

  Before attending medical school, my undergraduate literature class had read “The Sin Eater” by Margaret Atwood. Atwood correlated modern doctors with eighteenth-century sin eaters, who used to consume food and drink placed on a deceased body, theoretically absorbing the dead’s sins so that he or she could ascend to heaven while the sin eater got a square meal. For a few days, I wandered around thinking, Atwood’s right; why am I applying to med school, anyway?

  Finally, I decided, So what. Sins are interesting. I made my peace with it. But sometimes I wondered, especially when I ended up confronting this level of insanity, if I had made the wrong choice. Not only was I absorbing the sins of the sick, but I was actively seeking out deranged murderers.

  I took a deep breath. My phone buzzed again. This time it was Dr. John Tucker: Yo yo yo, he wrote.

  Hi, I wrote back. If I ever needed Tucker’s silliness, it was now. Even though talking to him on this phone vaguely seemed like cheating. Again, maybe that was Ryan’s point, since there was little love lost between him and Tucker.

  What’s wrong?

  Again, Tucker seemed to know me too well. How could he tell, through a text? I’m looking at something disturbing.

  Ryan? JK.

  I rolled my eyes, as if he could see me in my white-walled apartment.

  Are you on another case?

  Slowly, I tapped out my response: Maybe.

  I’m coming over.

  You are not. I need to think. Bye

  I turned my phone to airplane mode, so that neither of my guys could distract me. I started googling animal cruelty in Montreal. Then I called the local Humane Society. They took my name and number, but when I said I was calling about photos online, I could feel the guy’s interest dimming. “Hamsters? In a picture? Okay.”

  “I know it doesn’t sound like much, but I really think we should look into this.”

  He sighed. “I would love to look into everything, Ms. Sze.” He pronounced it See, which was close enough. “But we just got a report of a guy beating his dog to death. We have to close down a puppy mill in another part of the city. And did you hear about le Berger de l’Étoile?”

  I hadn’t.

  He sighed again. He sounded pretty wrecked, so I just thanked him and hung up. Poor guy. It seemed like the animal welfare system was as underfunded as the Montreal medical system. Or worse.

  I looked up le Berger de l’Étoile, which turned out to be a for-profit shelter that killed eighty to two hundred animals a day. Instead of hiring a veterinarian or an animal health care technician, a maintenance worker used the outmoded technique of intracardiac injections, ineptly. So the worker would have to inject up to twelve times, and even then, they’d basically throw the animals in the garbage, still alive.

  I covered my eyes. I was heading down a rabbit hole here. I had to concentrate on Raymond Pascal Gusarov.

  I Skyped Ryan, who picked up right away. I smiled at his blurry, pixelated webcam photo before I got down to business.

  “Ry, I’ve got pictures, and I’m sending you the link. I need you to help me figure out if the pictures are real, who did them, and if we can sic the SPCA on him.” I figured I could bring Ryan into my private investigation because the pictures were public, and I didn’t know how to prove that they were from Raymond Pascal Gusarov.

  “On it . . . Ugh,” he said, clicking away, and then choked on his coffee.

  “Sorry, babe.” I hated to rope him into this too, making him into a sin eater when he could just work with nice, neat computers all day.

  He waved my words away. “Let me see. Okay. I need an IP address . . . Okay, that’s interesting.”

  “What?”

  “His IP is 1.2.3.4. Obviously a fake. There’s nothing there.”

  “He covered up his IP address?”

  “Pretty much. Let me see what I can do.”

  While he worked his techno-magic, I busied myself combing through what I assumed was Gusarov’s other alias, Heart’s Blood, where he wrote stories about screwing other guys, slitting their throats, and eating their hearts. Dear Lord. I rubbed my eyes.

  Ryan said, “Holy crap. He’s using proxies here, bouncing from China to Sweden. Do you have a video?”

  My heart was still pounding from Heart’s Blood. “Um, I’ll see if I can find one.”

  “Never mind, I’m on it. Videos are nice because they take up more bandwidth. YouTube won’t give out an IP without a police warrant.”

  I wondered how he knew that.

  “I pinged some of my friends. One of them commented on the background for the flying hamster. See how there’s a streetlamp outside? It’s got an unusual shape.”

  I squinted. It was especially blurry through Skype, but yes, one shot was of a hamster in a cape, in front of a window, with toothpicks through the eyes. I needed a drink of water. “How long’s it going to take you to find out more about this creep?”

  “It takes as long as it takes, Hope. It’s not like TV.”

  “Too bad,” I muttered.

  Ryan’s face stilled. “He’s in Montreal. My friend found a match on Mapzest.”

  “I know.”

  “Is it that patient you were talking about?”

  I didn’t answer, which was probably enough of an answer.

  “Be careful, Hope.”

  I heard a knock at my apartment door, and jumped. No one should be able to knock on my door since I moved into an apartment with a security guard.

  I stifled a scream.

  “Don’t answer it,” Ryan said.

  “I won’t.” I was truly freaked out. Was it possible that while we searched for Raymond Pascal Gusarov, he was
tracking us? Was that how he got money for plastic surgery, at the age of twenty-two? Was he some sort of hamster-killing, heart-eating computer genius?

  His before and after pictures weren’t too impressive, but what if he’d started out as someone who looked very different?

  “I’m going to stay on,” said Ryan. “If anyone breaks in, I’ll call the Montreal police.”

  Virtual backup. Good. Better than no backup.

  I’d put the chain on my door, but I called down to the security desk first. “Hi, this is Hope Sze, apartment 8828. Did you let someone in the building who came up to the eighth floor? I didn’t buzz anyone in.”

  “A man got buzzed into the twenty-third floor.”

  Shit. Of course, there was no stopping him from making his way to my apartment from another floor. Some idiot could have buzzed him in, and then Raymond Pascal Gusarov could decide, Nope, I’m heading over to kill the detective doctor instead. I’d gotten complacent, living in a prettier place. A killer is a killer is a killer.

  “What did the man look like?”

  “Caucasian, about five-nine, blond hair, slim build, jeans, navy jacket. Is there a problem? Do you need me to come upstairs?”

  Someone knocked on the door again, harder this time. I squeaked.

  The guard said, “I’ll need someone to man the front door. Let me call someone.”

  While he did that, Raymond Pascal Gusarov could smash his way in.

  “You want me to call the cops?” said Ryan.

  A man spoke through the door: “Hope, I know you’re in there. Let me in.”

  My heart seemed to pause for a moment. I recognized this voice, deep in my marrow. I unlocked my lips. “Tucker?”

  “Are you okay? You weren’t answering your phone, so I got Mireille to let me in. What’s going on?”

  I let my breath out slowly. He was talking loudly enough so that Ryan heard. “Is that Tucker?”

  I nodded. “You don’t need to call the police. But you may need to beat some manners into him.”

  “Will do,” said Ryan, his lips pressed into a grim line, visible through the webcam. He didn’t offer to hang up, and I didn’t ask him to. Tucker and I shouldn’t be doing anything that couldn’t be witnessed in public.

  I looked through the keyhole, and sure enough, Tucker stared back at me. Even through the fishbowl of the keyhole lens, distorting the sharp planes of his face, I couldn’t help admiring his intelligent brown eyes and, yep, that stupid blond hair that he likes to spike with hair gel. “Are you alone?” I said through the door.

  “No. I’m with you. There’s just this door between us.”

  I undid the chain and swung the door open. “You scared the hell out of me.”

  “You didn’t answer your phone or e-mail.”

  “I was busy.”

  He glanced behind me at my computer, and noticed Ryan. “I can see that. Hey, man.”

  They nodded at each other.

  I felt like stamping my feet. This was not the time for civility. I wanted to kick his ass, no matter how attractive he looked in his dark-wash jeans. He pulled off his jacket and threw it onto my futon, making himself at home. At least he didn’t try to kiss me hello on both cheeks in front of Ryan.

  “When I say don’t come, Tucker—”

  “You know that’s like waving a red flag in front of me. Strong like bull.”

  “That’s a myth, about bulls and red flags,” I said. “They’re colorblind. They just don’t like the movement, especially when the matador is spearing them.”

  “I know that,” Tucker responded, and added something in another language, which was another one of his quirks that I wasn’t going to respond to right now. “Talking about bulls is not the same thing as being in the bullring. What’s this case you got?”

  I realized that I might be able to share some details about Gusarov with Tucker that I couldn’t give Ryan, since Ryan was a civilian. But Tucker couldn’t do any of the computer wizardry. I needed both of them.

  Shoot.

  I ran my hands through my hair in irritation. It lay shoulder length; I hadn’t had time to get a haircut. It was starting to get that blobby look. I caught Tucker watching me, a speculative cast to his face, his eyes arrested by the movement of my hands in my hair.

  I lowered my arms and immediately glanced at Ryan, whose narrowed eyes shifted between Tucker and me.

  I cleared my throat and explained, as best I could, that I’d met a creepy patient who was probably posting pictures of decapitated hamsters online, but the animal welfare groups in Montreal were overwhelmed and wouldn’t do anything about it.

  “Dr. Hope to the rescue, champion of animals and small children,” said Tucker.

  I wasn’t in the mood for sarcasm. “You have a problem with that? Leave.”

  He seemed surprised. “No, I like animals. My family has a dog. And you know what they say is the hallmark of an antisocial personality: fire-setting, cruelty to animals, and bed-wetting. We’d better catch this guy before he hurts anyone else.”

  “Hang on a second,” said Ryan. “Bed-wetting?”

  I nodded. “I know it sounds weird, but when they researched sociopaths, they found that they had these three things in common. That’s just what the research shows. That and a lack of remorse. The average person does something wrong and feels bad. A sociopath might apologize because it’s politically expedient, but really, they don’t care.”

  Ryan cracked his knuckles. It startled me, even though I couldn’t hear the noise as well through Skype. He hadn’t done that in years. I guess the stress of detective work was getting to him too. “Okay. Let’s get this nut.”

  Music to my ears.

  Ryan doubled down on the computer side. Tucker asked me a few more questions about the patient, and I remembered that he’d considered doing psychiatry before he decided on family medicine. That could come in handy.

  “It sounds like he could have body dysmorphic disorder. It’s unusual for a man to get plastic surgery on his face at any age, let alone twenty-two,” Tucker said, his brow pleated in thought. I tried not to register how yummy he looked when he was thinking. What can I say? Intelligence is a turn-on, even though he was stating something fairly obvious. “Maybe he doesn’t like the way he looks. Maybe he’s trying to change himself.”

  That was speculative, but I didn’t want to interrupt his chain of thought.

  “Maybe he’s trying to hide himself.”

  Now he was getting into woo-woo territory, so I was relieved when Ryan said, “Got him. He’s online right now, just posted another picture. He didn’t manage to cover his IP in time. He’s close to Saint Marc’s Hospital, on Cote-des-Neiges.”

  I stiffened. Saint Joseph’s Hospital, the Jewish Hospital, and Saint Marc’s, the francophone children’s hospital, are all within a twenty-minute walk of each other. My old apartment, Mimosa Manor, was basically next door to Saint Marc’s, as well as the Université de Québec à Montréal. Fortunately, Saint Marc’s was now a forty-minute walk from my new apartment. I licked my lips. “Can you give me his address?”

  “I can give you his router address.”

  “Done.” I wrote down the numbers and letters on a sheet of paper, then held them up for him to read and double-check.

  Ryan nodded. “Now what are you going to do?”

  “For once, I’m calling the police.”

  He sighed in relief. Even Tucker nodded. “I wouldn’t go near this guy if I could help it. Are you doing plastics again tomorrow?”

  “No. It was a one-time thing.” I glanced at the IP address again. “Thanks, Ryan. I—” Yikes. I almost told him I loved him, right in front of Tucker, whose dark eyes silently bore into me. “I mean, thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.” Ryan grinned at my slip-up—he knew exactly what I was about to say. “You’re calling the police right now, right?”

  “Yup. Officer Visser. She’s cool.”

  “You’ll call me back after you’re done?” />
  “Yeah. She’ll probably need to talk to you anyway, since you’re the brains behind the operation.”

  Miracle of miracles, Officer Visser was on that night, but she wasn’t in the office. I tried to explain my investigation to one of her colleagues, who obviously wasn’t interested. He said he’d give Visser the message.

  I was dejected. I wanted to move on this guy—now. I Skyped Ryan to update him, while pacing back and forth in front of the screen.

  “You did all you could, right?” said Ryan.

  “Sure.” I was thinking about that IP address. Could I use it to look up the guy? I know I said I’d never climb back into danger, but . . .

  Ryan’s mouth clamped together. “Don’t go there.”

  I nodded.

  “I mean it, Hope. I’ll never help you again if you keep endangering yourself. This is enough. Right?” His tone changed, and I realized that he was looking at Tucker now.

  Tucker nodded. “I’ll keep her on lockdown.”

  “You will not,” I said, hands on my hips.

  They both looked at me.

  “You got a death wish?” said Ryan. “How many times do you have to run after killers, bare-handed?”

  “I’m not. But I can’t just sit here and do nothing.”

  “Sure you can,” said Tucker, grabbing my hand a little too firmly.

  Ryan watched us, eyebrows raised.

  “Don’t worry,” I told Ryan. “I’m not going to screw Tucker while he’s holding me prisoner.”

  “Pity,” said Tucker in a fake British accent that made me laugh.

  “Maybe I’ll just hang out with you guys for a while,” said Ryan. “Tucker? You following hockey?”

  Tucker grinned. “The Habs just killed Phoenix.”

  Ryan scoffed. “I wouldn’t call 3–2 killing them. They had to go to overtime.”

  “That’s part of their charm!”

  I glanced between the two and said, in French, “T’es pas serieux.”

  “Crazy like a Coyote!” said Tucker, which I didn’t understand at all, but it must have been a hockey reference, because Ryan responded, “Let’s see how they do with the Predators.”