A Little More Free Read online

  Someone in the tavern yelled, “Turn it off,” but the waiter turned up the volume and Dougherty heard the sportscaster say, “It’s official now, we have the official word. We just got the final word … you know, when I was a kid, my father used to say, ‘Our greatest hopes and our worst fears are seldom realized.’ Our worst fears have been realized tonight. They’ve now said that there were eleven hostages. Two were killed in their rooms yesterday morning; nine were killed at the airport tonight. They’re all gone.”

  There weren’t many guys in the tavern and there wasn’t much reaction. The waiter who’d turned on the TV was still standing on the chair and he said, “Câlisse.”

  Dougherty left thinking maybe Pete was right, maybe they would be busy in four years when the Olympics came to Montreal.

  The next morning when Dougherty got to Station Ten to start his day shifts Sergeant Delisle told him there was some undercover work if he wanted it and Dougherty said, “What’s it about?”

  “Call CIB.”

  * * *

  Dougherty stood at the front desk on the phone with a detective in the Criminal Investigation Bureau, being told there would be surveillance on some employees and a couple of art students who’d been working at the museum, when a woman came in to report a missing person.

  Delisle took down the woman’s information, and Dougherty was only half-listening, but when he hung up the phone, Delisle was saying, “Comme tous les autre hippies ici,” and Dougherty said to him, “Oui, mais nous en avons trouvé un,” and Delisle said, “Ah oui, je l’avair oublié lui.”

  The woman said, “What is it?”

  Dougherty said, “It might be bad news.”

  She frowned and nodded and Dougherty thought she looked like she’d gotten herself ready for it. Still, he knew when it actually sunk in it would be different.

  “I have to go to Bonsecours Street now anyway, I can give you a ride if you don’t have a car.”

  “What’s at Bonsecours Street?”

  “It’s police headquarters,” Dougherty said. “And the morgue.”

  CHAPTER

  FOUR

  Colleen said, “Yes, that’s him. That was him.”

  Then she looked at all the other stretchers, more than a dozen, each with a body covered with a white sheet and said, “It’s like on TV, except they’re not covered in flags.”

  “These are the last,” Dr. Michaelchuk said, “they’ll be moved to funeral homes today.”

  Dougherty said to Colleen, “If you’re okay, I can take you upstairs to talk to a detective.”

  In the police car on the drive over, after the awkward bit where she’d started to get into the back seat and Dougherty motioned to the front and she’d said that was usually how she rode in cop cars, she’d told him that she’d come to Canada with the guy they were likely going to see.

  Dougherty said, “Where are you from?” and she said, “Before here, Wisconsin, Madison, you know it?” and Dougherty shook his head. He knew she wanted to talk and had learned the best thing to do when someone wanted to talk was to let them. It took a few minutes but then she said, “Before that I lived all over. My father’s a professor. Well, he is now. David and I, we weren’t really a couple, not really, not for long. High school sweethearts, I guess. I moved to Madison my senior year, didn’t know anybody. David was nice to me. But by the time we got here, it was just, you know,” and Dougherty said, “Yeah.”

  Then she’d brightened and looked at Dougherty and said, “It might not be him,” and Dougherty’d said, “Yeah, might not be.”

  Now, in the elevator, she started to cry.

  When the doors opened on the third floor, Dougherty took her by the elbow and moved her down the hall and said, “There’s a washroom,” and she nodded a little and went in.

  Dougherty waited a minute and then lit a cigarette and leaned back against the wall.

  “Changer l’uniforme pour des jeans déchirés et voilà.”

  Dougherty said, “Detective Boisjoli.”

  The detective switched to English then, saying, “You look just like a student, standing around with nothing to do.”

  “I brought a woman from Station Ten to identify a body,” Dougherty said and motioned to the washroom door. “She knew him.”

  “Je suis désolé. Someone close to her?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right,” the detective said, and then, motioning down the hall, “Is it a homicide?”

  “Looks like it.”

  “Bon. Then come and see me.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Dougherty watched Boisjoli walk down the hall and into the CIB office. He’d known the detective when the guy was working out of Station Ten, before his promotion.

  When Colleen came out of the washroom she said, “Thank you,” and Dougherty nodded and led the way to the homicide office. He could tell she’d been crying but it looked like she’d pulled herself together.

  In the office Detective Carpentier stood up from his desk as they approached and Dougherty said, “Detective Carpentier, this is Colleen Whitehead, she just identified David Murray as the man who was found on Mount Royal.”

  Carpentier pulled a chair closer, saying, “Please, sit down.” Then he said, “Would you like a cup of coffee or tea or something?”

  Colleen said, “No, I’m fine.”

  Dougherty started to leave, but as Carpentier was sitting down he motioned for him to stay so Dougherty did, standing behind Colleen’s chair.

  “Bien,” Carpentier said, “I am very sorry for your loss, Miss Whitehead.”

  “Thank you.”

  “May I ask, what was your relationship with Mr. Murray?”

  “We were friends. I was telling officer …” she looked up at him and Dougherty said, “Constable Dougherty. Édouard.” Then he smiled and said, “Eddie,” and she said, “I was telling Constable Dougherty here that David and I came to Montreal together from Wisconsin.”

  “When was that?”

  “Two years ago, November sixteenth, 1970.”

  “You remember the day?”

  “When you leave your country and you know you’re never going back, it’s a big day.”

  Carpentier nodded as he was getting out his notebook, but Dougherty didn’t really get it.

  Colleen pulled a pack of Du Mauriers out of her purse, and slid out a cigarette. Dougherty lit a match and held it for her as Carpentier said, “Mr. Murray was a draft dodger?”

  She tilted her head back a little and exhaled smoke at the ceiling. Then she said, “No, he was a deserter.”

  Carpentier wrote it down and Dougherty was a little shocked she could say something like that so easily.

  She took another drag on the cigarette and said, “It sounds awful, that word, deserter,” and Dougherty heard himself say, “Yeah.”

  She turned a little and looked at him and said, “It’s a lot more complicated than that.”

  Dougherty didn’t say anything. He was thinking, Yeah, it must be, but he didn’t really believe it.

  “When he enrolled at the University of Wisconsin he got an education deferral from the draft, but after a couple of years he dropped out and he got his notice.”

  Carpentier wasn’t writing anything down but he nodded and said, “That’s when you came here?”

  “No, David went to basic training. He could’ve registered at some other school, got another deferral, got a note from a friendly doctor, tried to fail his physical, claimed to be a homosexual — there are all kinds of ways.”

  She paused then and Dougherty watched her smoke and waited and then she said, “David said he didn’t want to lie.”

  Carpentier was nodding but Dougherty didn’t get it: why didn’t the guy just do his duty?

  “By then a couple of his friends from high school had gone and come back. W
ell, one of his friends, Stephen, didn’t come back, but the ones who did, they told him not to go.”

  She took another drag and leaned closer to Carpentier’s desk so she could reach the ashtray.

  Carpentier said, “He couldn’t be a conscientious objector?”

  “No,” Colleen said, “he’s Catholic. He was Catholic. The Church isn’t opposed to the war so the government wouldn’t grant him objector status. We were pretty deep into the anti-war movement by then, that’s why David dropped out of school — he was always organizing and going to demonstrations and marches.”

  “So he left his basic training and you came here?”

  “He was going to finish it,” Colleen said, “and do his tour and come back and join the VVAW, the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, or something like that, but he couldn’t do it.”

  “The training?”

  “Basic Killing, he called it. He said you really have to get kids young to train them for that. But he was really torn, he didn’t want to break the law but he didn’t think the government should be able to force him to go to another country and kill people.”

  “It’s good to have a country to come back to, though,” Dougherty said.

  Colleen turned a little to look at him and Dougherty realized she was probably about his own age, twenty-six, maybe a couple of years younger, and she said, “Do you feel threatened by some peasants in rice paddies ten thousand miles away?”

  “They’re communists,” Dougherty said, “and they’re getting a little backup from some bigger countries.”

  “Are they?” She turned back and looked at Carpentier and said, “Anyway, David said it was a matter of personal liberty, the government didn’t have the right to make him kill people.”

  Carpentier said, “We have had our issues with forced conscription here, too,” and he glanced at Dougherty and said, “Te souviens-tu des croix de guerre?”

  Dougherty had a vague memory of history class at Verdun High, something about conscription during the First World War and French-Canadian families, rural families, farmers, putting up crosses asking God to save their sons from the army recruiters, but he just shrugged and shook his head.

  Carpentier was already looking at Colleen and said, “But whatever his reasons, you came to Montreal.”

  “Yes. We weren’t a couple by then, we were just friends — close friends, part of the same group — and we felt the same way about the war and about our government and we decided to come here and protest the war from here.”

  “That was two years ago.”

  “Yes.” She paused and even Dougherty could tell there was something else that she didn’t want to say.

  Carpentier looked at Colleen and waited and finally she said, “David didn’t get his landed immigrant status.”

  Carpentier said, “He didn’t,” and Colleen said, “No.” She paused again and then she said, “We weren’t really sure how it worked — we just drove here. We told people we were going to Cape Cod and then when we got to Vermont we just crossed the border and came to Montreal. When David went to the Council, they told him he had to apply before he came into Canada.”

  “What council is this?” Now Carpentier was writing something in his notebook.

  “The Council to Aid War Resisters. This is before there even was the Deserters Committee.”

  Dougherty said, “The deserters have a committee?”

  Carpentier ignored him and said, “So what did you do?”

  “The Council has volunteers. I became one myself, so did David. We drive guys back over the border and they tell the truth.” She glanced at Dougherty and then looked back at Carpentier. “Each immigration official at each border crossing has their own discretion. There’s a point system they’re supposed to follow.”

  Carpentier said, “Supposed to?” and she said, “Well, they follow it for things like education level and work experience and that kind of thing, but there’s a lot of points at their discretion.”

  Dougherty said, “Do you lose a lot of points for being a deserter?” There was more of a sarcastic edge than he’d wanted and Colleen looked at him for a moment and then looked back at Carpentier and said, “No.”

  Then she took a last drag and stubbed out the cigarette in the ashtray and said, “Since Kent State and the invasion of Cambodia there’ve been so many more coming that the immigration guys at the borders have really tightened up.”

  Or, Dougherty thought, started doing their job.

  Carpentier said, “But regardless of his immigration status, David was in Montreal?”

  Colleen nodded. She looked around the office and then she said, “We crossed back into the States. I thought we’d go back to Wisconsin, but he didn’t want to go to jail. He said he wouldn’t be able to protest the war from a prison cell.”

  “So,” Carpentier said, “you snuck into Canada?”

  “I was accepted as a landed immigrant and finished my degree at McGill. David came in through the underground. There was talk about going to Sweden, but it seemed so far away. For a while David said he was going to go back to the U.S. and try to get in legally, but he was working for the Council and then the Deserters’ Committee, he was busy.”

  “How did he make money?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Carpentier said, “It could be important.”

  “I really don’t know.”

  “I understand you don’t want to get anyone in trouble but someone killed David and we need to find out who that was.”

  Colleen got out another cigarette, but this time Dougherty watched her get out her own matches and light up. She took a deep drag and exhaled and then said, “At first I worked, I got a job at McGill, in the library, and we lived with other people, other Americans.” She took another drag and said, “But after a while David started disappearing for days at a time. I don’t know what he was doing.”

  “Was he still living with you and the others?”

  “I moved out last year, but as far as I know David was still in the house.”

  Carpentier said, “When was the last time you saw him?” and Colleen said, “Before this morning?” Carpentier didn’t say anything and she said, “I don’t know the exact day, last week, before the fire at the club.”

  “What did you talk about?”

  “Nothing really.”

  “How did you know he was missing?”

  “Oh, well, he wasn’t there, at the house, on Sunday. It was a potluck, we were planning a rally for McGovern.”

  Carpentier said, “In Montreal?”

  Colleen blew out a long stream of smoke and said, “Yes, on the McGill campus. There are a lot of American students here who can vote.”

  “But David wasn’t at dinner?”

  “No.”

  “And,” Carpentier said, “none of his roommates reported him missing?”

  “Well, like I said, he disappeared for days at a time.”

  “But there was something about this time that was different?”

  “Just that,” she paused, started to lift the cigarette to her mouth and stopped and said, “just that he said he would be there and usually he was good for his word.”

  “But the roommates didn’t think it was unusual?”

  “We talked about it,” Colleen said, “but to be honest, they don’t trust the police. Any authority. There are FBI agents in town, CIA, that kind of thing.”

  “I don’t think the FBI can work in Canada,” Carpentier said and Colleen took a drag on her cigarette and blew out smoke saying, “Maybe not officially.”

  Carpentier nodded and said, “Bien. What is the address of the house and the names of people living there?”

  Dougherty watched Colleen, and he thought she looked like a suspect who didn’t want to give up an accomplice, and then Carpentier said, “We’re not interested i
n anyone’s immigration status, we’re homicide.”

  She nodded and smoked and then said okay and nodded again. “They really don’t like dealing with police.”

  She glanced at Dougherty and then Carpentier said, “We won’t wear uniforms when we visit the house.”

  Now Colleen was smiling and she said, “You think that’ll make a difference?”

  Carpentier smiled, too, and said, “I suppose not.”

  CHAPTER

  FIVE

  Dougherty figured there were probably three or four thousand people in the park and at least half of them were carrying candles. There was a stage set up at one end and serious-looking men were giving speeches.

  The guy Dougherty was following had left his basement apartment in a squat, three-storey red-brick building on St. Kevin near the corner of Côte-des-Neiges Road and walked a few blocks through the neighbourhood. Dougherty was sure the guy hadn’t seen him, hadn’t seen him since he’d left the museum a couple hours earlier. Now as they got to the park, the ceremony, or whatever it was, was already going and it took Dougherty a few minutes to realize it was a vigil for the athletes killed in Germany. He heard a man onstage saying, “… a senseless, barbaric massacre of innocents. Their only crime was to compete for their nation. What sort of victory is this, this slaughter?”

  Then he noticed the flags, Canada, Quebec and Israel, all over the crowd.

  When the guy had left his apartment, Dougherty’d hoped he was going to a bar to watch the hockey game, Canada and the Soviets in Winnipeg.

  Now there was a guy on the stage giving a much more fired-up speech, but the audience wasn’t really going for it. The guy ended by saying, “Never again, never again, never again,” but barely anyone clapped for him.

  Dougherty looked around, not sure exactly what was going on, and then he heard the click of a camera and saw Rozovsky coming up to him saying, “Nice you came, but you’re not JDL, are you?”