A Little More Free Page 8

  “It just made it difficult to find work for them, Detective.” Gardiner drank more coffee, smoked and then said, “And a lot of our volunteers who let young men stay in their homes until they get settled here are professors and other professionals and it could sometimes be … difficult with some of the deserters. And, of course, it’s harder for deserters to get landed immigrant status — it’s a point system, you know, and being a college graduate gets you quite a few points.”

  Dougherty nodded and hoped Carpentier wasn’t too upset with him for jumping in, but then Gardiner said, “Canada and the United States have a special agreement to return men who desert from ships or units stationed in each other’s country, but it doesn’t apply to men who enter the country in normal civilian ways.”

  A man came into the coffeehouse then and looked at Gardiner, looked like he wanted to come over to the table but stayed by the door.

  Gardiner said, “I’ll be with you in a minute,” and then looked at Carpentier. “I have a meeting. But look, David was very helpful when the two groups, the deserters and the resisters, merged into the Council. He was in some ways the ideal liaison: he had a couple of years of college and he’d been through basic training. He could talk to people, you know?”

  “Yes,” Carpentier said, “it can be valuable.”

  “But after the merger, and after the trip to Toronto where we met with the other groups and issued our statement, after all the press, David started to keep more to himself and we didn’t see him as much.”

  Carpentier said, “Do you know who he was associating with the most?”

  Gardiner stood up and said, “I’m sorry, I really don’t. Colleen knew him best. If she doesn’t know then I don’t think anyone else involved with the Council will know.”

  “And what about,” Carpentier said, “some of the donors whose houses David worked in? Can you give me their names?”

  “No, of course not. Look, Detective, you may very well be sincere in looking for whoever murdered David, but our experience with the police hasn’t been … well, it hasn’t been very good.”

  “I can get a court order.”

  “You can try,” Gardiner said.

  “All right, well, thank you for your time.” Carpentier stood up and shook Gardiner’s hand and watched him go back upstairs, followed by the guy who’d come into the coffeehouse and had been waiting by the door.

  Outside, as they were walking back to the car, Carpentier said, “It seems your theory may be correct,” and Dougherty was happy to hear it but he didn’t know what to say so he just said, “Oh?”

  “Mr. Murray may have been involved in criminal activity, possibly something to do with drugs. Smuggling, perhaps.”

  “It doesn’t look like he was killed over territory,” Dougherty said. “He wasn’t dumped anywhere, just left where he was killed.”

  “That may not mean anything.”

  “Right. So what now?”

  “Keep asking questions.”

  “Who do we ask?”

  Carpentier stopped beside his car and lit a cigarette. “Back to Colleen Whitehead, I suppose.”

  “Back to her?”

  “Yes. What’s the problem, you think we’re going in circles?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You want to be a detective,” Carpentier said, “this is it. Boring, isn’t it?”

  Dougherty wanted to say no, it’s not, it’s a lot better than wrestling with drunks in bars and fighting with drug dealers in parks in the middle of the night and shoving your face between raging pimps and their whores, but he just said, “It’s okay.”

  “Okay,” Carpentier said. “Yes, it’s okay. If we find the murderer.”

  CHAPTER

  SEVEN

  Her name was Judy MacIntyre.

  Dougherty had worked another shift doing surveillance on Mullins from the museum — watching him go home and fall asleep in front of the TV again — and then in the morning it was back to Station Ten for a day shift that he started by going through the files.

  Judy MacIntyre had been picked up as part of the St. Henri Workers’ Collective twice, once by Dougherty in an early morning raid looking for a couple of Americans who’d set off a bomb at the University of Wisconsin and once as part of a sit-in strike at a shoe factory. She’d also been picked up once as part of the Milton Park Defence Committee.

  The first two charges had been dropped before they got to court but the Milton Park charges were still pending and Dougherty noted the court date was set for October 2nd, a few weeks away.

  He also noticed her date of birth was November 2, 1948, so she was twenty-four, just a couple of years younger than he was, and she was born in the Reddy Memorial Hospital in Montreal. The address on the first two arrest reports was the house in St. Henri where Dougherty had picked her up in 1970 and for the third arrest it was the house he’d just been to on Hutchison, but he had a feeling Judy MacIntyre had grown up on the West Island: Dorval or Pierrefonds or farther out in the suburbs.

  Delisle came up behind him then and said, “’Eille, as-tu une minute?”

  “For you,” Dougherty closed the file, a little surprised that Delisle wasn’t even looking over his shoulder to see what it was, and said, “anytime.”

  “Ha ha.”

  Then Delisle stood there for a moment not saying anything and Dougherty said, “So, what is it? Un seau d’marde?”

  “Yeah, yeah, lots of problems I have, but that’s not it. Look, Dougherty, it pains me to say this.” He paused and Dougherty was thinking, Okay, so don’t say it.

  “The thing is,” Delisle said, “you’re good at this.”

  “What?”

  “I know, I know,” Delisle said, “I didn’t think you would be, either, but here we are, you’re one of the best patrolmen I have.”

  Dougherty nodded a little, still surprised, and didn’t say anything.

  “I send you out on a call you always stay with it till it’s finished.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You never call, say there’s nothing you can do, you never ask for help when you don’t need it.”

  Dougherty said, “Yeah,” still having no idea where Delisle was going with this.

  “So, the thing is, you have a future here.”

  “I do?”

  “Don’t give me that shit, you know you’re one of the best.”

  Dougherty started to say, Best of a bad bunch, but he stopped himself. He still didn’t know where Delisle was going, but now he wanted to find out.

  “Why you want to go running around playing detective?”

  So that was it. Dougherty said, “I’m not missing any shifts. I’m never late.”

  “Exactement,” Delisle said. “You’re good at this.”

  Dougherty said thanks, and Delisle shook his head and said, “As much as I hate to say it.”

  Dougherty thought he really did hate to say it. Well, not really, Delisle seemed to like the idea that one of the patrolmen in his station was good, he just wasn’t thrilled that it was Dougherty. Or maybe Delisle was okay with that, too — Dougherty couldn’t always tell when he was joking and when his hang-dog, put-upon look was serious.

  But Dougherty knew this wasn’t the time to say how every patrolman wanted to be a detective and how every detective wanted to work in homicide. It was the top of the heap, wasn’t it?

  No, this was the time to just shut up and listen. Maybe Dougherty was learning.

  “You keep working like you do,” Delisle said, “and it will go well for you.”

  Dougherty said, “Okay, thanks.”

  “Bien, now here’s a call for you, apartment building on Tupper, a car in the parking garage broken into.”

  “Again?”

  “She’s in the lobby.”

  Dougherty checked out a squad car a
nd drove the few blocks to Tupper, just below St. Catherine. The street was only a few blocks long and lined with mostly old two-storey stone walk-ups but a few tall steel and glass apartment buildings had gone up in the last couple of years and Dougherty found Debra Rankin in the lobby of the one at 2121.

  She was sitting on a couch smoking a cigarette and she stood up when he walked in and said, “Officer.”

  He held out his hand and said, “Dougherty.”

  “I guess you want to see the car?”

  Dougherty said sure and followed her through the lobby and past the elevators to a stairwell thinking it had been a couple years since he’d been disciplined for asking out a woman while he was on duty and if he was going to get written up for it again this Debra Rankin might be the one.

  And then he was thinking, Why did I look up the file on Judy MacIntyre? Some hippie in torn jeans and a peasant blouse, that wasn’t his type. Debra Rankin in her miniskirt and tight sweater, she was his type.

  “I thought it was safe down here: it’s always locked and you need a key to get in.”

  They came out of the stairwell into the underground parking, all concrete pillars and fluorescent lights.

  “No,” Dougherty said, “what happens is a guy waits outside the garage door and comes in after one of the building tenants drives in.”

  “But you need the key to get out, too.”

  “Same thing. After they get everything they can out of the cars they wait for someone to leave.”

  She stopped walking and said, “You mean they might have been down here while I was here?”

  “It’s possible.”

  “Oh my God, well, now I’m really glad I’m moving.” She started walking again and Dougherty was right beside her but he didn’t say anything.

  “Here it is, this is mine.” She stopped.

  Dougherty said, “What is it?”

  “It’s a Datsun, B210. It’s Japanese.”

  “Do you pedal it?”

  She twisted her red lips in a half-smirk, half-smile and raised an eyebrow. “These cars are all over Japan, they’re going to be big.”

  “They’re not big now.”

  “It’s brand new,” she said, “I just bought it.”

  It was the smallest, most orange car Dougherty had ever seen. A two-door sedan, it was practically square. “So,” he said, “what was stolen?”

  “A couple of boxes, all kinds of things. I’m moving.”

  “It’s not May move.”

  “I don’t have a lease,” she said. “I have roommates. I’m a stewardess with the Montreal-Vancouver-Tokyo run, that’s where I saw these cars.” She glanced at her little orange car and then looked back at Dougherty.

  “Now you’re getting your own place?” Dougherty thought they might have started flirting when he asked her about pedalling the car and now the way she was looking at him, blue eyes under blue eyeshadow, he was feeling pretty sure of it.

  “Now I’m getting different roommates. In the Swingles building.”

  “The what?”

  “‘When you get married, we’ll ask you to leave.’” She laughed a little, but Dougherty didn’t think she was nervous. “Have you seen their ads in the Gazette?”

  “No, I must have missed those.”

  “The Royal Dixie,” she said. “In Dorval. ‘The building where you must be single and like to swing.’”

  “Sounds like quite the place.”

  “So,” she said, “could you live there?”

  Dougherty said he could and wrote down the address and phone number, and then she said, “But I work odd hours,” and he said, “So do I.”

  She didn’t say anything and Dougherty said, “So we should probably pick a time for dinner right now, to avoid all those missed phone calls.”

  “You move pretty fast.”

  “Well, you know,” Dougherty said, “this is dangerous work, you never know what could happen.”

  “Taking reports about cars getting broken into?”

  “I just started this shift. You wait till tonight.”

  She was smiling a little. “Okay.”

  “I’ve got a rare Saturday night off this weekend.”

  “I don’t fly out till noon on Sunday.”

  “There’s a steakhouse out on the Metropolitain, isn’t there?” Dougherty said. “Past the airport in Pointe Claire?”

  She said, “There sure is.”

  * * *

  The man was about the same age as Dougherty’s father, around the same age as Detective Carpentier.

  Dougherty watched them, both men looking up at the twin spires of Notre-Dame Basilica, and Chuck Murray said, “It looks just like the one in France.”

  Carpentier said, “Have you been?” and Murray said, “In the war.”

  Dougherty wondered if he went inside that time. They were standing across the street in Place D’Armes waiting for Murray’s wife to come out of the big church, and Dougherty was keeping quiet and watching Carpentier talk to the father of a murdered son.

  “I never made it overseas,” Carpentier said.

  Murray nodded a little and Dougherty got the feeling this guy didn’t talk much about his war years. Like Dougherty’s father, it was a big part of him but too personal. And then Dougherty wondered how the guy felt about his son running off to Canada.

  “You know,” Carpentier said, “the only man buried here in Notre-Dame is English. A protestant named O’Donnell, the architect who designed the building. He did convert on his deathbed.”

  Dougherty couldn’t tell if Carpentier was just making conversation or if brought up the idea of burial to get Murray talking about a funeral and then talking about his son. One thing Dougherty had noticed with Carpentier was that the line between what was work and what was personal was vague at best. The detective always seemed to be gathering information but he rarely made it seem that way, and now Dougherty was wondering if that was something he could learn just by watching. He didn’t like the idea of trial and error, that kind of error with a grieving relative seemed like too much.

  Chuck Murray said, “It’s a beautiful building, real workmanship.”

  “Are you a builder?”

  “Not really,” Murray said. “I’m a machinist, but I’ve done a little building, enough to appreciate it.”

  A few tourists were going in and out of the church but it was the middle of September and the summer crowds had thinned out.

  After taking the report from Debra Rankin, and making the date, Dougherty had gone back to Station Ten and got the call from Carpentier telling him that the parents of David Murray were in town. Carpentier asked Dougherty to come to Bonsecours Street and meet them, and by the time he’d got there they’d already arrived and walked the few blocks to Notre-Dame.

  Now Chuck Murray was saying “Here she is,” as a woman came out of the church and crossed the street.

  Carpentier said, “Mrs. Murray, this is Constable Dougherty,” catching him by surprise and Dougherty held out his hand.

  Mrs. Murray took Dougherty’s hand in both of hers and held on. She looked him in the eyes and said, “You found David.”

  Dougherty said, “I was first on the scene, yes.”

  “It must have been difficult for a young man like you — had that happened before? Had you been first on the scene before?”

  Dougherty said, “Yes.” He didn’t know what else to say. Mrs. Murray was still holding his hand, still looking at him. “The night before there was a fire,” Dougherty said. “Quite a few people were killed.”

  She grimaced. “We heard.” Then she glanced back at Notre-Dame and said, “People are lighting candles.” She still had kind of a dreamy look on her face but it started to fade as she said, “Oh my, were you on the scene there, Constable?”

  “Yes.”

 
“Such a terrible time.”

  “Yes.”

  No one said anything for a moment and then Carpentier cleared his throat and said, “Would you like to have some lunch?”

  Chuck Murray said, “Might as well,” at the same time his wife said, “Oh no, that’s all right,” and then they looked at each other and she said, “Maybe a little something.”

  Carpentier took them around the corner to a small restaurant that was almost empty now that the lunch hour was over.

  When they sat down Mrs. Murray looked at the menu and said, “What’s pâté Chinois?”

  Carpentier said, “It’s a kind of casserole with mash potato,” his French accent coming out just as his voice trailed off a little and Dougherty said, “It’s shepherd’s pie.”

  After they ordered, roast beef sandwiches for Chuck Murray and Dougherty, shepherd’s pie for Carpentier and Mrs. Murray, Murray said, “This fire, it was arson, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Carpentier said, “I’m afraid it was.”

  “And you caught them?”

  “One of them,” Carpentier said, “and we have identified two more.”

  “And you’re still looking for them?”

  “That’s right.”

  “So,” Murray said, “is anyone looking for the guy who killed my son?”

  Carpentier said, “Of course,” and Murray looked at Dougherty and then back to the detective and said, “Just you and a constable?”

  “We’ve interviewed your son’s roommates and a lawyer with the War Resisters Council,” Carpentier said. “Do you know anyone else he had been associating with?”

  Mrs. Murray said, “We didn’t talk much lately.”

  Murray said, “You talked to him.” He looked at his wife and she nodded a little.

  “I did. He phoned sometimes.”

  “And you phoned him.”

  Dougherty got the feeling this was something the Murrays fought about and he glanced at Carpentier to see if he was going to push it, maybe get them fighting now so they’d say more than they wanted to but it didn’t look like it.

  Mrs. Murray said, “I did, it’s true.” She looked at her husband and said, “I phoned my son.”