Black Rock Page 7
Carpentier watched the people in the church, and Dougherty noticed him looking closely at Danny Buckley, who was sitting next to his mother. Then he realized Carpentier was actually looking at a couple of the Higgins brothers sitting behind Buckley, and Dougherty whispered that it didn’t look like they were buying their suits in Verdun.
Carpentier said, “No, they look Italian. Must have new friends.”
After the funeral most of the adults went downstairs to a reception while the teenagers left the church and went to the Boys & Girls Club for their own memorial.
Dougherty and Carpentier stood on Wellington just down from the doors and watched people leaving. Carpentier said it was a good service and Dougherty agreed. “Different from mass,” Carpentier said.
“Yeah,” Dougherty said, “they’re not the frozen chosen like we are. They get right in there and sing; they don’t leave that up to the choir.”
“You’re Catholic?”
“My mother is, so …” He shrugged. Then he saw Buckley and the Higgins brothers get into a Cadillac that had been idling by the curb, and he said to Carpentier, “Getting right back to work.”
“The wildcat is over, the ships are coming into the port.”
“I don’t think they unload ships.”
“No,” Carpentier said, “but the older Higgins still runs the Coopers and Checkers union. They’ll be getting something off the boats.”
“How do you know all this?”
Carpentier shrugged. “You work homicide, you work mob. It’s a lot of drug, a lot of extortion, a lot of homicide.” He motioned towards the doors of the church, Mr. and Mrs. Webber coming out now with Reverend Barker and behind them a couple guys in nice suits. “There, that’s Detective-Lieutenant Desjardins and the Chief.”
“Should we talk to the family?”
“No, we just needed to be here. Anybody look out of place?”
“Not that I can tell but I don’t know everybody.”
“There should have been more of us,” Carpentier said.
“More cops?”
“More from homicide, but we don’t have a full squad, less than half, really, so many working the anti-terrorist squad.”
“There’s been a lot of bombs.”
“Assholes with bombs,” Carpentier said, “Bon, look around a little, maybe take a walk, you never know.”
“I haven’t had a chance to talk to Detective Ste. Marie yet, about the hash. Do you want me to talk to Buck-Buck anyway?”
“Not yet, just look around.”
Dougherty said okay and walked back up Fortune Street, watching people come out through the side door of the church, mostly older people, women, used to being in the church, used to funerals.
Dougherty crossed the street and watched from the other side for a few minutes but it didn’t take long for the people who were leaving to be gone. Dougherty figured the ones who were in the church basement would be there for hours. Protestants, his mother would say, eating bologna sandwiches and squares.
He crossed Wellington and walked a block west towards St. Gabriel’s, the English Catholic school Dougherty had begged his mother to let him go to with no success, and then turned around to walk back and stopped suddenly, staring at Gail Murphy walking towards him. “Are you looking for me?”
She was wearing a white dress and had her hair in braids, looking a lot younger than she had when he and Carpentier questioned her outside Boss’s store, but she still crossed her arms and cocked her hip a little and said, “Maybe.”
“What is it?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know if it’s anything.”
“Why don’t you tell me and I’ll find out?”
Gail looked back towards the church and then to Dougherty and said, “You were asking about a car?”
“Yeah, that’s right.”
“I think I saw one.”
“Picking up Brenda?”
“I didn’t see Brenda near the car.”
“You saw the car the night Brenda disappeared?”
“Yeah.”
“What kind of car was it?”
“I don’t know, a big one.”
“What colour?”
“You have a cigarette?”
Dougherty looked past Gail towards the church and saw that pretty much everyone was gone. He got out his smokes and held open the pack for Gail. He went to light it for her at the same time she was reaching for the lighter. She pulled back, looking worried, until she figured out was he was doing and leaned back in towards his hand with the lighter.
Straightening up and exhaling a stream of smoke, she said, “It was white, a big white car with a black roof.”
“A convertible?”
She took another drag and shook her head. “No, I don’t think so.”
“New or old? Did it have any rust?”
“Jesus, I barely saw it.”
“But there was something about it you wanted to tell me?”
She shrugged, looked around, flicked ash off her smoke, folded her arms over her chest and said, “Maybe I’ve seen it before.”
“Did you see the driver?”
“It’s just not someone from around here, you know, but it’s been here sometimes.”
“Creep you out?”
She shrugged, took another drag, blew smoke. “I don’t know.”
“Did you talk to Brenda about it?”
“No,” Gail said, dragging out the word like it was the stupidest question she’d ever heard. “Nobody noticed it.”
“Except for you.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“Well this is good,” Dougherty said. “Thanks for telling me.”
For a second he thought he saw the hint of a smile from Gail, a little bit of being pleased with herself, but it disappeared as fast as it came and she said, “Well, I gotta go.” Dougherty said, “Yeah, I guess,” and watched her walk away, tossing the smoke to the sidewalk and turning down Fortune Street.
A car drove by then, a big one, a Cadillac, the same one that had picked up Danny Buckley and the Higgins brothers in front of the church, and Dougherty thought that a couple of years ago that car would have been out of place here. It would have been the one all the kids noticed but not now. Not driven by a Higgins.
He spent another hour walking around the Point but he didn’t talk to anyone else, and then it was time to get home and change into his uniform and get to work.
chapter
five
The minute Dougherty walked into Station Ten at four he got sent on a call. It was almost seven when he got back, stomping into the ground floor lobby of the old building and saying he was going to take a shower.
The desk sergeant, Delisle, said, “Was it bad?”
Dougherty stopped and looked at him sitting behind the desk. “That call came in at three, you could’ve sent the day shift.”
“Look, you’re just back now, that would have been at least three hours of overtime.”
“Maybe they wouldn’t have had to wait so long for the ident guys.”
Delisle stood up, trying to make nice now, saying, “It was really bad?”
“The landlord called because of the smell.”
“Sometimes it’s just garbage.”
“This wasn’t garbage,” Dougherty said, “this was a dead body. Probably been there for days.”
“Suicide?”
“Yeah, shot himself. Boisjoli thinks it was some kind of service revolver the British used. Looks like the guy’s from England.”
“He have any ID?”
Dougherty had calmed down, losing the tension and starting to feel the sadness of the situation, and he said, “Yeah, all kinds of ID: immigration papers, discharge papers, everything. Very neat, organized. He even left a note.”
“Câlisse, what it say?”
“Boisjoli’s bringing it in, you’ll see. The guy’s wife went back to England, he lost his job, having nightmares, drinking.”
“The usual.”
Dougherty said yeah, and went downstairs to the change room. He took a hot shower and then brushed his teeth but couldn’t get rid of the taste. He figured there probably wasn’t really a taste — it was just in his head. Still, he wished he’d known Rozovsky’s trick of putting the entire roll of spearmint Life Savers in his mouth before he went into the apartment. Well, like Rozovsky said, he’d know for next time.
Next time.
Back upstairs, in a fresh blue shirt and underwear but the same pants, Dougherty said to Delisle, “Boisjoli back yet?” Delisle shook his head, saying, “Someone here to see you,” and pointed to a woman standing at the end of the counter nearest the door, as if she didn’t want to come too far into the station.
Dougherty glanced back at Delisle and stepped towards the woman. “Can I help you?”
“Are you Constable Dougherty?” speaking English with no accent and pronouncing it correctly.
“Yeah.”
Just as Dougherty was saying it, Detective Boisjoli and his partner arrived along with a few constables, and the station filled with noise and activity as they started to tell Delisle all about the suicide, the note and how much blood had been on the walls of the apartment.
The woman said to Dougherty, “Can we talk somewhere quiet?” and he looked around and saw Delisle going into the detective’s offices with the rest of them. He turned back to the woman. “What’s this about?”
“Detective Carpentier said I should talk to you. It’s about Brenda Webber and …” She checked a small notebook but didn’t see what she was looking for, so Dougherty said, “Sylvie Berubé?”
“Yes, that’s it.”
More cops came into the station then and Dougherty said, “You want to get a cup of coffee?”
She said okay, so Dougherty led the way and they went around the corner and half a block down St. Matthew to the lunch counter across the street from the fire station. The place was empty so they sat on stools at the counter. From the kitchen a man called, “We close.”
Dougherty said, “Hey Pete, you going to be here for ten minutes? We just need coffee.”
From the kitchen they heard Pete say, “Take a piece a pie, too.”
Dougherty was already up and pouring the last of the coffee from the glass pot into a couple of mugs, and he motioned at the pies in their stacked display case, but the woman shook her head and said, “Just the coffee’s fine.”
“Well, I don’t know if it’s fine,” Dougherty said, “but it’s all we’ve got. What’s your name?”
“Oh, I’m sorry, Ruth Garber,” and she held out her hand, and Dougherty shook it.
“You were talking to Detective Carpentier?”
“Yes. We’ve been working with the CIB task force, what’s left of it.”
“Yeah, everybody’s gone to anti-terrorist, but who’s ‘we’? What are you working on?”
“Oh, Dr. Pendleton and myself, we’re working on the Bill murders. Some people call them the Vampire murders because of the … mutilations.”
Dougherty said, “Sure, but I don’t understand. What exactly are you doing?”
“Oh right, I should start from the beginning. I’ve been dealing with this for a while, since February anyway, and I forget not everyone’s up to speed.”
She stopped for a moment, took a sip of coffee and got right back into it. “I’m a graduate student at McGill. I’m doing my M.A. and I’m Dr. Pendleton’s research assistant … well, he has a couple but I’m the main one at the moment. We’re collecting information about the murders committed by Bill.”
Dougherty said, “Okay, sure. But why?”
Ruth Garber looked at him, and Dougherty realized that even though she said she was a student they were about the same age. He wondered how long she’d been at McGill but he didn’t say anything, he just listened as she told him about Dr. Pendleton being a sociology professor and how he was working on a theory about murder. “About murderers, really, multiple murderers.”
“I hope he’s against it.”
She looked right at Dougherty but she didn’t smile. He said, “A joke?” and she said, “Oh, okay, I see,” and Dougherty could hear his grandmother’s voice adding, “said the blind man, but he didn’t see at all.”
“Why do you want to talk to me?”
“You were first on the scene when the bodies were discovered, weren’t you?”
“Carpentier called me to identify Brenda Webber. I knew the family when I was growing up in the Point — well, I guess I still do, her older sister Arlene, couple of brothers.”
Ruth had her notebook out again and was writing something down, and then she looked up at Dougherty and said, “You mean Pointe St-Charles?”
“That’s right.”
She nodded and wrote that down and then said, “So you weren’t the first on the scene?”
“No.”
She looked disappointed. “What about Sylvie Berubé?”
“I was the first cop on that one. Some kids found her body, told one of their mothers and she called it in.”
“This was last year, April 9, 1969, is that right?”
“April, yeah, the ninth, I guess.”
She read something from her notebook and said, “Detective Carpentier said you had some information about similarities?”
“He did?”
“Something not in the file?”
“Oh,” Dougherty said, “the bedsheet.”
“What about it?”
“Brenda Webber had a bedsheet around her neck. So did Sylvie Berubé, but it’s not in any of the pictures and there’s no mention of it in the report.”
“And you’re sure it was there?”
“You don’t see a dead body very often,” Dougherty said, “you remember a lot of the details.”
“Why isn’t it in the pictures or the report?”
“I don’t know, I guess that’s my fault. When you’re the first on the scene you’re supposed to secure the area, make sure nothing gets touched, hold it till the detectives get there.”
“But you didn’t do that?”
Dougherty leaned back on the stool and looked at this Ruth Garber and really didn’t know what to think. She had long dark hair and wore glasses and from what he could tell no make-up, not even lipstick, and she looked very serious, nothing like the girls he knew. But then he figured he didn’t know any McGill students, though she also seemed different from the ones who were calling him pig the day before when he was looking for a bomb on campus.
“No, I guess I didn’t secure the scene well enough.”
She wrote something down and said, “But the bedsheet wasn’t what was used to strangle either victim?”
“I don’t know,” Dougherty said, “I don’t think so but you’ll have to ask the coroner about that.”
She nodded. “And both women were nude, or partially nude?”
“Yeah, but they were both wearing shoes. Well, Sylvie Berubé was wearing boots.”
“She was the one …” she flipped a page in her notebook, “in the east end, April 9, 1969?”
“Yeah.”
“She was a go-go dancer and possibly a prostitute, is that right?”
Dougherty looked at her and was thinking, How can she talk about this stuff, these naked, strangled women dumped in fields, so easily? “I don’t really know anything about her.”
Ruth nodded. “And Brenda Webber was wearing shoes, tennis shoes, right?”
“Runners, yeah.”
“Nothing else?”
Dougherty didn’t say anything for a moment, and Ruth looked up at him, waiting. “Just the sheet aroun
d her neck. It wasn’t tied tight, so at first we thought it was a scarf. I guess it was the same for Sylvie Berubé — the sheet wasn’t tied tight and it blew away or came off and got misplaced or something. It’s a tough thing to see a dead body, especially a young person. The sheets covered their faces so they didn’t look dead. They could have been sleeping.”
“There were no marks on their bodies, no blood?”
“Not on their bodies,” Dougherty said, “but the nose …”
“Yes?”
“Well,” Dougherty said, “they’d been strangled, you know, so there was blood coming out of their noses. Not much, just spots really, but even before you see that, when you get close you feel it, you know.”
“Feel what?”
“That they aren’t sleeping, that they aren’t breathing. It’s like … it’s cold, you know. You get close and even before you touch them and try to wake them up you can tell.”
“How?”
“You can feel it. I don’t know if I can explain it,” Dougherty said, and Ruth was looking at him, no expression, so he said, “The first time I was close to a dead person was when Gauthier and I — he was my first partner, he was training me but he retired. I was supposed to get another partner but we’re always so short. Anyway, we got a call about some rummies fighting and when we got there one of them had stabbed another one, slit his throat — guy was dead before he hit the ground. The other guy, the one who did it, he was already crying, moaning about how he killed his best friend and we all knew the guy was dead. Not because of the blood, it was still pumping, but you could just feel it.”
“Feel what?”
“Death.”
Ruth nodded a little and started writing in her notebook. Dougherty waited till she stopped writing and then said, “Is this helping?”
She shrugged a little and said, “I don’t know yet,” and he could tell she knew he didn’t understand. He watched her think about it for a few seconds and then she said, “I know most sociology departments are theoretical and speculative — armchair social science, they say, right? At McGill we’re a smaller department but we’re different, we put a lot more emphasis on empirical observation, much more intensive interviewing and field work.”