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  And Sunday night when they got home from Judy’s mother’s house the phone was ringing. Dougherty answered it and Legault said, “I found Louise Tremblay. Marc-André found her first.”

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY

  Legault got into Dougherty’s car and he said, “When do you get the casts off?”

  “Two more weeks.”

  Dougherty backed out of the driveway and said, “So, we’re going to Sorel?”

  “Yes, I have directions, it should take about an hour.”

  If it wasn’t police business it would have been a nice summer drive along the St. Lawrence River passing through some beautiful countryside. Another month or so and people would be doing it to see the spectacular fall colours.

  As they approached the town of Sorel, Legault said, “Do you know it at all?”

  Dougherty said, “No. I played hockey here a few times, but I don’t think I could even find the arena.”

  Legault gave directions that took them through the centre of the city and over the bridge where the Richelieu River joined the St. Lawrence. There were a couple of big ships docked at a steel foundry that looked to Dougherty like it was a hundred years old.

  On the other side of the river was the town of Tracy. Legault said, “Turn right here,” and they drove past some old industrial buildings, and after a couple more turns they were on Adélaide, and she said, “This is it, number forty-nine.” The house was one in a row of two-storey clapboard houses. Number forty-nine, in Quebec style, had a wrought iron staircase winding down the front. “Top floor.”

  Dougherty said, “Of course it is,” and followed Legault as she made her way up the stairs, the cast on her foot banging on the iron steps. She knocked on the door and it opened right away.

  “Entrez.”

  Legault went in and Dougherty followed, nodding at the young woman who quickly closed the door. He figured she was Louise Tremblay. The black eye and bruises on her face a real giveaway.

  In the small kitchen she said, “Voulez-vous un café?”

  Legault said no, but Dougherty had the feeling that Louise wanted to be doing something so he said, “Oui, merci.”

  Louise filled a kettle with water and put it on the stove. Then she said, still speaking French, “My mother is out, she won’t be back until this afternoon.”

  “We thank you for talking to us,” Legault said.

  Louise shrugged.

  Dougherty sat down at the table with his back to the wall, trying to take up as little space as possible.

  Legault said, “Are you okay?”

  Louise put a couple of fingers to her face and said, “Yes.” Then she shrugged and said, “It’s happened before.”

  “That’s why your mother is upset?”

  “She didn’t know that I was back with Marc-André. She didn’t approve.”

  Dougherty said, “No kidding.”

  Legault gave him a look, then said to Louise, “You knew Marc-André before he went to jail?”

  “Yes. He wasn’t like that, he wasn’t . . .”

  Dougherty exhaled a little too loudly. He’d seen this so many times since he’d become a cop, so many women who said the man wasn’t really like that. The man was always like that.

  The kettle whistled and Louise turned off the heat and said over her shoulder to Legault, “You don’t want one?”

  “No, thanks.”

  Louise got two mugs from the drying rack next to the sink and a jar of instant coffee from the cupboard. She made two cups and brought one to Dougherty saying, “Would you like milk and sugar?”

  “No, thanks, this is fine.”

  Louise got the milk out of the fridge and poured some into her mug then added a generous spoonful of sugar. She sat at the table holding the mug in both hands and said, “He was different when he came out of jail.”

  “His mother told us she didn’t see much of him then.”

  “No? I don’t know about that,” Louise said. “I don’t know where he went. He wasn’t . . . perfect, before he went to jail, you know?”

  Dougherty said, “Yeah,” and Legault looked at him again, making a motion for him to be quiet.

  Then she looked back at Louise and said, “I know, but jail is hard.”

  Louise nodded.

  “Was Marc-André involved with drugs before he went to jail?”

  Louise was looking down at her mug and she nodded. She spoke quietly, saying, “Yes, we both were.”

  “You were both selling drugs?”

  “A little. We were both using drugs.”

  “He was selling drugs?”

  “Yes. That’s why he went to jail.”

  “Do you know where Marc-André is now?”

  Louise shook her head. Still staring at the mug.

  “There is no way he will ever find out that we talked to you,” Legault said. “You don’t have to worry about that.”

  “I don’t know where he is.”

  “When was the last time you saw him?”

  “On the day . . . the day I was supposed to see you.” She looked at Legault.

  Dougherty squeezed his mug and took a drink to keep from saying anything.

  Legault said, “What happened?”

  “I was leaving for work, going to the bus stop. A car stopped and Marc-André got out.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said, ‘Here I am.’”

  “Why would he say that?”

  “Because!” Louise slammed the mug down on the table, spilling coffee. “Because I was looking for him. Because you asked me to!”

  Dougherty was still and so was Legault. The yelling and the banging was startling but the silence that followed was, too.

  After a moment Legault said, “I’m sorry, Louise.”

  “I . . . I wanted to see him, but I didn’t think . . .”

  “What happened?”

  “He told me to get in the car.”

  “Was he driving?”

  “No, it was someone else I don’t know, I never saw him before.”

  “You got in the car?”

  “Yes. We drove somewhere, I don’t know where. Behind a warehouse.”

  “And he hit you?”

  Louise nodded. She put a hand on her throat and said, “He choked me. He told me to stop looking for him, stop asking people about him.”

  Legault said, “I’m sorry, Louise.”

  “We’re going to catch him,” Dougherty said. “You can make a complaint against him.”

  “Oh, no,” Louise said, “I don’t want to do that.”

  Dougherty said, “Course not.”

  Legault turned on him and said in English, “Enough.” She looked back to Louise and spoke French, “We really appreciate you trying to help us. And we will arrest him. It’s for something else, you don’t have to make a complaint if you don’t want to.”

  “Thank you.”

  Dougherty shook his head, sighed heavily.

  Legault said, “Do you have any idea who he would be with?”

  “No.”

  Dougherty said, “Do you know Martin Comptois?”

  “No.”

  “You sure? He lives downtown, near the Lucien-L’Allier Métro station.”

  Louise was looking into her coffee mug, she hadn’t drank any of it. “No.”

  Legault said, “That’s okay, Louise.”

  “What about the car,” Dougherty said. “What kind was it?”

  Louise shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “Was it a four-door or a two-door?” Dougherty asked. “When you got in the back, was there a back door or did they push the seat forward?”

  Louise looked up and stared at Dougherty and said, “I didn’t get in, he pushed me in. He grabbed me by the throat and pu
shed me onto the back seat, pushed my face into the seat. I thought he was going to kill me.”

  “So a four-door,” Dougherty said.

  Legault turned to Dougherty and said, “Would you be quiet.” Then she turned back to Louise and said, “When you and I spoke on the phone, and you agreed to meet with me after work at UPS, at the Lafleur Hot Dog, do you remember?”

  Louise nodded.

  “What were you going to tell me then?”

  It took a moment and then Louise said, “It doesn’t matter now. That was before I saw Marc-André.”

  Legault spoke like she was just making conversation, like it wasn’t important, saying, “I’m just curious, what were you going to tell me?”

  “Not much, I had been asking around about Marc-André, calling some people we knew. No one knew where he was, he was gone.” She shrugged and drank some coffee. “He always talked about going out west, maybe to California.”

  Legault nodded and waited for Louise to continue.

  Dougherty wanted to jump in and say something but he didn’t. He realized where Legault was going: Louise wouldn’t have agreed to meet if she had nothing to say and now she was even more scared. He waited.

  Legault said, “Did he go to California?”

  Louise shook her head no. “I think he went to Toronto. I think he took drugs to sell there.”

  “Is that what you were going to tell me, that he’d gone to Toronto?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is that all you were going to tell me?”

  It took another minute and then Louise said, “I was going to tell you that Marc-André was not a bad guy.”

  Dougherty leaned forward and almost said something but stopped himself.

  Legault said, “But now?”

  “I don’t know now.” Louise stood up and paced in the small kitchen. “He wasn’t . . . like this. His mother threw him out when he was young, a kid. He had no father, you know?” She looked at Dougherty and he managed to nod. He thought it looked sympathetic.

  Louise said, “It’s hard, you know, there’s no work. He met some guys.”

  Legault said, “In jail?”

  “He sold a little hash,” Louise said. “It was nothing. But then he went to jail. When he got out he was different.”

  Dougherty said, “And he had new friends?”

  “Yes.” Louise looked at him. She wasn’t angry, she was hoping he understood and she looked doubtful.

  Dougherty said, “I’ve seen it before.”

  “I was going to tell you that, I was going to tell you he wasn’t bad.”

  Legault said, “I understand. Did you know where he was?”

  Louise shook her head. “Some people I talked to said they had seen him so I knew he was back. I thought if you found him you should know.”

  “Thank you.” Legault stood up and was close to Louise. “We’re still going to find him so this is good to know for when we talk to him.”

  Louise was nodding. “I don’t think he’s here,” she said. “I think he went back to Toronto or out west.”

  Dougherty said, “Who did you talk to that had seen him?”

  Louise looked up sharply and said, “I don’t know exactly, just some people.”

  “You don’t know their names?”

  “I spoke to a lot of people.” She looked at Legault, glared at her and then at Dougherty. “I don’t remember who said what.”

  Legault said, “Okay, Louise, thank you.”

  As they were walking out the front door and starting down the stairs to the street Dougherty turned back and said, “If you do hear from him again, call us right away, okay?”

  Louise was looking down at him and she said, “Yes.”

  “Or if you remember who you talked to who saw him.”

  Louise nodded and Legault pulled Dougherty by the arm and said, “Come on.”

  In the car on the way back to Montreal, Legault said, “You pushed her too hard.”

  “You didn’t push her hard enough.”

  “Now she won’t tell us anything.”

  “She will if we keep asking.”

  “She doesn’t know anything.”

  “She knows he’s a good guy.”

  Legault lit a cigarette and rolled down the window a little.

  Dougherty said, “He’ll get picked up again, we’ll get him.”

  “How will we know?” Legault said. “This case is closed, remember? If he gets picked up he’ll get processed and we’ll never know, you and me.”

  The highway was flat and straight along the St. Lawrence River and Dougherty drove too fast. He said, “You think the other guy was Martin Comptois?”

  Legault shrugged. “Could be anybody.”

  “Yeah, but what do you think? They met in jail?”

  “Is Comptois in jail now?”

  “He’s out on bail,” Dougherty said. “I have the address he gave the cops in Cornwall, you want to go see?”

  “Sure, why not?”

  Dougherty was thinking, Because we could both get fired for it, but he didn’t say anything, he just drove even faster. He took the Jacques Cartier Bridge into the city and they were both quiet driving past the exit to Île Sainte-Hélène, both of them looking at the spot where Mathieu and Manon probably went over the guardrail.

  In the city Dougherty took Dorchester Boulevard and headed towards downtown, past the big office buildings of Hydro-Québec and Place Ville Marie. Overdale Avenue was a one-block street wedged in between Dorchester and the Ville-Marie Expressway. At one end was the Guaranteed Milk building, with a big milk bottle on the roof, and at the other end an old hotel that Dougherty had been to plenty of times breaking up fights and throwing out drunks since it’d become a gay bathhouse. The owners were decent guys.

  One side of Overdale was taken up by a few old solid stone apartment buildings, and on the corner of Lucien L’Allier was the Lafontaine mansion, once a stately home, now divided into a dozen or more units, not very well kept. The other side of the street had a row of two-storey homes and a big warehouse building. Dougherty parked in front of the warehouse.

  Legault said, “How did you even find this street?”

  “Yeah, it’s a little hidden,” Dougherty said. “But it’s on my beat.”

  They walked along the row of houses to 1388, and when Dougherty knocked on the front door it pushed open a little. He said, “Okay,” and pushed the door wide open. Directly ahead was a short hallway with two doors on the right and on the left were stairs going up to the second floor.

  Dougherty knocked on the first door but the second one opened. A young guy, maybe twenty years old, stuck his head into the hall and said, “Yeah?”

  Dougherty took a couple steps towards the guy and said, “I’m looking for a guy named Martin Comptois.”

  The young guy shrugged and said, “Don’t know him.”

  “Maybe he lives there?” Dougherty pointed to the door he’d knocked on.

  “No, it’s the same place.” The young guy stepped back from the door and motioned inside his apartment.

  Dougherty looked inside and saw it was all one room. There was a kitchen — or at least a fridge and stove and sink — at one end and windows looking onto Overdale at the other. And in between were both doors to the hall.

  “Why does it have two doors?”

  “I don’t know. I think it used to be a rooming house or something. I think it’s been a few things over the years.”

  Dougherty noticed the maroon and yellow flag on the wall and said, “Do you go to Sir George?”

  “Concordia, yeah.”

  “Right.” Dougherty always forgot the new name since Sir George had merged with Loyola College out in NDG. “Have you lived here long?”

  “I’m in my third year,” the guy said. “I’ve been in th
is place for two.”

  “And no Martin Comptois?”

  “I don’t know him. Maybe he’s in the basement, I never see them.”

  “What about upstairs?”

  “They’re from India,” the guy said. “There are quite a few different guys but I don’t think any of them are named Martin.”

  Dougherty said, “Okay, thanks.”

  He stepped back into the hall and walked towards the stairs, saying to Legault, “You might as well wait here.”

  She said, “That was my plan.” She tapped her foot, the one with the cast, on the floor but even without it she may have stayed by the front door. The building wasn’t a slum, exactly, but the light bulbs hanging by wires from the ceiling above the stairs looked to have burned out years ago.

  Dougherty felt like he was going into a cave. He went down the stairs and banged on the door. Nothing. He banged again and listened but there was no sound coming from inside.

  When Dougherty got to the top of the stairs Legault said, “What now?”

  “We could talk to the landlord.”

  “What are the chances Martin Comptois is the name on the lease?”

  “Slim to none,” Dougherty said. “He may never have lived here, he may have lived here years ago and given this address to the cops in Cornwall.”

  “Right.”

  “Or he may actually live here,” Dougherty said.

  They were walking back to Dougherty’s car.

  “This is pointless,” Legault said.

  “This is police work.”

  Legault slapped her hand down on the roof of the car, making a loud bang. “It’s bullshit.”

  “What do you think we should do?”

  “What should we do?” She banged on the roof of the car again. “We should be pulling these guys in, we should have every cop going after them, after everyone they know, we should find them!”

  Dougherty waited a moment and then opened the car door. He started to get in but he stopped and looked back along the street. “And what do we do if we find them? We don’t have any evidence.”

  Legault said, “They will confess.”

  Dougherty nodded. Then he said, “Then we’ll have to find them.”

  Legault said, “Yes,” and got in the car.