The First Sixteen: A Vigilante Series crime thriller novella - The Prequel (3 page)

In
no particular order, Gaston
Verville
had been a lover
and teacher of the arts, a dedicated husband and father, a keen environmentalist
and an avid health and fitness buff. Though he enjoyed a variety of sports
activities, his favourite was cycling which served both as physical training
and a means of transportation.

One
evening in September 1995, Gaston had been biking home after having taught his
first oil painting class of the autumn session at one of Montreal’s finer art
schools near the downtown area. He had been making his way through La Fontaine
Park when he had been literally batted off his bicycle into a tree sheltered
clearing where a couple of young men had greeted him with a volley of punches
and kicks as he crashed to the ground. Seconds later, the third assailant, the
one with the baseball bat, had joined in the beating, swinging his weapon at
Gaston with zeal as the others continued their kicking frenzy.

The
attack, which had ceased after another moment or two, had been followed by a
rapid but thorough search of Gaston’s motionless body during which he had been
relieved of any property of value including his wallet, keys and backpack. His
bike had been taken as well.

Gaston
had been found a couple of hours later by a local German shepherd taking his
people out for their late evening walk. Emergency services had been called and
Gaston had been taken to the hospital where he had remained in a coma for the
next four days before slowly beginning to return to a state of consciousness.

Though
initially plagued by some memory loss, he had progressively recovered and was
eventually able to recount what had happened to the police with a high degree
of certainty. However, some of the blows he had received, particularly those to
the head, had unfortunately left what doctors feared would be permanent
consequences.

Months
later, Gaston’s vision remained sufficiently blurred for him to qualify as
legally blind. In addition, his speech was now somewhat slurred and he had yet
to regain the coordination and dexterity he had lost in his right arm and hand.
His wife hoped, for the sake of the family, that Gaston would soon pull out of
his depressive state enough to begin exploring replacement possibilities for
the cycling, painting and teaching which he had so loved and enjoyed.

Police
had immediately suspected an informal gang of young hoodlums known for their
shady activities in the neighbourhood to be behind Gaston’s attack. In fact,
they had apprehended the gang’s unofficial leader in possession of Gaston’s
stolen bicycle though the young man had sworn he had found it abandoned in the
alley behind a local supermarket. However, though the police had narrowed down
the probable perpetrators to three specific individuals, they had been
unsuccessful in obtaining any concrete evidence. The only witness to the attack
had been Gaston and his vision remained sufficiently affected to render identification
of his attackers impossible.

I
had done some investigating of my own on the three alleged attackers and had
selected
Maxime
Leclerc, one of the leader’s regular
sidekicks, as my first point of contact. Leclerc lived near the north-west side
of the park where the attack had taken place and regularly cut through it on
his way to his part time job as a busboy in a bistro near the eastern tip of
the downtown area.

I
had parked the minivan on
Calixa
Lavalee
Avenue, right where it ends inside the park, knowing that Leclerc would come
strolling along soon enough to take the path which cut through
 
a wooded area toward his place of work. Luck
was on my side as he was working the seven to three shift – few if any people
were around in the park in the evening with the cold and dark of February in
Montreal.

Though
the trees bore no foliage this time of year, they were dense enough and
intermixed with enough conifers to provide me with sufficient concealment. I
saw
Maxime
approach, recognizing his gait as he drew
nearer, and waited, remaining motionless and being careful to avoid producing
any noticeable steam clouds as I exhaled.

He
plodded by me, perhaps a half dozen feet away from where I waited amidst the
trees, singing softly off-key as he went, clearly intent on the tune blasting
out of the earphones hidden by his parka hood. Thank you, Sony, for the
Walkman.

As
he moved past me, I took a quick look around to make sure nobody else was
coming along in either direction. Not a soul in sight.

I
stepped out from amongst the trees, glancing behind me one last time before
moving in on him. I had found a twenty-four inch, wooden tee-ball bat for the
occasion which I had felt was fitting, given the baseball bat attack on Gaston
Verville
several months earlier. One swing and Leclerc was
going down, clearly not simply knocked off balance but, more precisely, knocked
unconscious, or worse.

I
caught him before he hit the ground and laid him down, just long enough to
check if he was still alive. He was. Following another quick glance around, I
pulled him back up and slung him over my shoulder in a classic fireman’s carry,
he thankfully wasn’t a big man, then hustled over to the minivan parked about
fifteen feet away. I raised the back hatch, dropped him inside, yanked the earphones
off of him, and duct taped his wrists, ankles and mouth before closing the
hatch. Seconds later, I was in the driver’s seat, starting the engine and
pulling a U-turn to get the hell out of there.

As
I headed out of the dead-end where
Calixa
Lavalee
ended in the park, I saw a car turning in from
Rachel Street and heading toward me. We approached each other and, to my
dismay, the other car’s light bar blipped for a second or two, a brief flash of
red and blue to get my attention.

I
slowed and so did the cop car, until we came to a stop, driver window to driver
window in opposite directions. I lowered my window and the officer at the wheel
did likewise. I noted he was alone on duty, presumably a good thing. On the
flip side, I had an unconscious man whom I’d just kidnapped a minute earlier
stored in the back of my vehicle. Even an encounter with a lone cop was likely
not a good thing.

“
Bonsoir
,” I said through the open
window.

“
Bonsoir
,” the officer replied then
continued in French. “Is everything alright?”

“Everything
is fine,” I said with a smile. “I’m heading downtown to meet some friends and
turned down here not realizing the street doesn’t cut through the park to
Sherbrooke
.”

“No,
you’re best to stick to the main streets on either side of the park,” the cop
replied as he smiled back. “You’re going downtown?”

“Yes,
Crescent Street,” I confirmed.

“Hang
a left at the corner,” the officer suggested. “Left again when the park ends at
Avenue du
Parc
La Fontaine. That will take you to
Sherbrooke
Street where you’ll turn right.”

I
nodded. “Got it. Thanks.”

“No
problem,” the cop replied. “Have a nice evening.”

“You
too,” I said with a wave.

The
cop laughed. “Yeah, right. I’m on until midnight. Have a good one.”

I
laughed back and drove off, turning left on Rachel as he had suggested and then
right on
Bréboeuf
to get away and out of sight just
in case he had turned around more quickly than expected. I certainly didn’t
want to attract his attention any further and I had some business to deal with
before going home for the weekend.

I
was starting to attract some attention, however minor, at this point. Ron
Henderson, a crime reporter with the Montreal
Gazette
, had noticed that four men with ties to criminal activities
had succumbed to similar yet unnatural causes in the last two months. Police
had not confirmed any belief that the deaths might be linked but Henderson had
suggested the four killings were being looked into by the
city’s
recently formed Special Homicide Task Force headed by a Lieutenant Dave McCall.
I had looked into the lieutenant’s records and he seemed like a sharp and
bright investigator so I knew I’d have to continue honing my skills if I
intended to stay a couple of steps ahead of the man.

My
encounter with the cop at La Fontaine Park had been my warning, my one ‘stay
out of jail’ card. Though I doubted any link had or would be made between my
chance meeting with the cop and Leclerc’s subsequent death elsewhere later that
night, it had certainly been a lesson to me about needing to be one hundred
percent accurate in my planning going forward.

My
lesson learned, I was extra careful as the time came to dealing with Gary O’Connor,
an ex-accountant with a mid-sized distribution company in east-end Montreal. O’Connor,
single and in his mid-forties, was a fairly likeable fellow and had been an
adequate enough bookkeeper to hang onto his job until his legal issues had
surfaced. As it turned out, O’Connor had a penchant for drinking somewhat
excessively.

If
that had been the extent of his faux-pas, with tying one on too many on
occasion, everyone might have looked the other way. However, O’Connor tended to
lose all reason when he got to drinking, the worst consequence of which was his
firm belief that he was fully capable of driving. Such thinking had resulted in
several prior arrests in the past which had led to driving permit suspensions,
vehicle impoundment, jail time and, consequently, loss of employment.

A
few months earlier, in an effort to raise his spirits during hard times, O’Connor
had decided to treat himself to a Saturday night on the town. Permit suspension
had never kept him from driving in the past and things had not been any
different that evening. He no longer had owned a vehicle but that hadn’t been
an issue since his sister, who lived close by, had gone out of town for the
weekend with friends and left her car behind.

All
had been fine until he had been driving back home. In his intoxicated state, O’Connor
failed to notice a red light and unfortunately hit a teenager who had been
crossing the street with friends. The young lady had died while O’Connor sped
onward, intent on returning the car where he had taken it before staggering
home.

None
of the eight witnesses present had been able to supply any information about
the driver of the killing machine which had sped by at two in the morning, not
even if it was a male or female. Descriptions of the car had been varied and
conflicting – a Toyota Corolla, Honda Civic or Nissan Sentra which was either
blue, grey, green or black – though all had agreed it wasn’t a recent model, at
least five or more years old. Only one had thought of trying to get the license
plate number but, as the car had retreated in the night, all she was
fairly sure
she had seen was a partial
580.

With
this limited information the police had gotten to work, slowly eliminating
possibilities until they had looked into a Cheryl O’Connor who owned a ten year
old, charcoal grey Honda Civic. Fully cooperating, O’Connor had quickly
established her innocence, providing names of friends, receipts and even photos
to show she had been out of town. However, through further questioning, the
police had determined that Cheryl’s brother, Gary, who had keys to her home,
might have used the car in her absence with a spare key she admitted keeping in
a kitchen drawer.

When
interviewed, one of Cheryl’s neighbours had stated noticing the car’s
disappearance for a few hours that fateful evening though he had not seen it
leave, return or who might have used it. A woman who lived in the same building
as Gary O’Connor had stated seeing him stagger down the sidewalk at two-thirty
in the morning on the same night when looking out the window after having used
the bathroom. The investigation had led to O’Connor’s arrest with a promise of
serious jail time, despite the fact he had vehemently denied responsibility,
claiming he had been home for the night, reading and watching movies from his
collection of video cassettes.

A
court date had been set and O’Connor, unable to afford representation, had been
provided with an attorney from the public defender’s office. Into the trial,
the young, unknown defence lawyer had demonstrated how one should defend one’s
client by ripping the prosecution’s case against O’Connor to shreds.

How
many dark Civics,
Sentras
and Corollas aged five to
ten years old actually existed in the city, the province,
the
country? How many license plate numbers included the 580 sequence the witness
had fairly surely seen? It might have been 5B0, SBO, S8O, S80, etc. Had Cheryl’s
car really disappeared that evening or was it parked elsewhere on the street?
After all, she had no reserved parking spot. Did the woman who saw Gary
staggering outside at two-thirty in the morning wear glasses? Yes. Was she
wearing them when she had looked out the window for a few seconds that night?
No.

And
so on. Cheryl O’Connor’s Civic had been carefully examined for evidence of the
hit and run. However, since automobiles tend to be more robust than one hundred
pound teenagers, insufficient incriminating damage had been found to weigh in
the prosecution’s favour, particularly off the ten year old dinged and
scratched vehicle.

In
the end, although everyone in the courtroom knew that Gary O’Connor had been
responsible for the death of seventeen year old Amelie
Toupin
,
a non-guilty verdict had been rendered due to insufficient proof. O’Connor had
gone home, a free man, an unemployed drunk, a murderer who felt sorry for
himself and blamed society for his misfortune while an innocent young woman,
not even of legal drinking age, slowly rotted in her casket because of his
actions.

I
had taken the afternoon off, I could afford to with the time I put in, and
followed O’Connor through his usual ritual of going for a late breakfast at a
small greasy spoon near the basement condominium he lived in, courtesy of his
mother, deceased a year earlier. The remainder of the afternoon had dwindled
away with O’Connor slowly sucking down his usual quota of four pints of beer on
tap at a local pub, paid from his rapidly diminishing share of the inheritance
his mother had left.

As
expected, he had next visited the liquor store at the nearby shopping mall for
a twenty-six ounce bottle of obscure brandy, his cheap evening companion of
late then gone on to the supermarket to buy dinner, a can of no-name pasta in
tomato sauce. Keeping with his schedule, he had headed home where he had dumped
the contents of the pasta can into a dirty pot recouped from the sink and set
it on the burner to heat while he knocked back two hefty shots of brandy – aperitifs
before the evening meal.

I
watched him as he went through the usual routine, first from a distance and as
the evening wore on, from inside his basement dwelling, the lock on his patio
door nowhere near a challenge for one intent on entering. He’d finished his
dinner, slurping the soggy pasta right out of the pot with a soup spoon – bachelor-style,
some might argue – before settling down on the couch, mumbling to himself in
the diminishing light as he poured shot after shot of cheap brandy into the
juice glass which served as his drinking vessel of choice.

“How’s
it going, Gary?” I asked, stepping from the darkness of his bedroom and into
the tiny living room/dining room adjacent to the even tinier kitchen.

“Who
are you?” he slurred, the curiosity in his question a barely distinguishable
factor.

“I’m
here about Amelie,” I replied.

“Amelie?”
O’Connor questioned before the synapses clicked into place. “Oh, the girl they
say I ran down.”

“She’s
the one,” I confirmed. “You hit her with your sister’s car.”

O’Connor
shrugged, his look morose then nodded. “Yeah, whatever… but it all worked out
for my sister and her car… and they said it was okay in court… now, I just have
to find another job… I’m an accountant, you know.”

“Yes,
I read about that, Gary,” I replied.

“Lost
my job though,” O’Connor continued, adopting a depressed expression once more. “Wasn’t
even drinking on the job, or barely. They fired me anyway. Said it was because
of the legal problems I was having. Not sure they can do that but maybe they
can. Big companies have lawyers to deal with that kind of thing. Make it
difficult for little guys like me, just trying to do my job and earn a living.”

“Yeah,
life’s a bitch, Gary,” I agreed, “But what about Amelie? Don’t you think that
sucks? She was only seventeen. Never had a chance to live life and now she’s
gone.”

O’Connor
leaned over and carefully refilled his juice glass from the now nearly empty
bottle. Once done, he placed the bottle back down and raised his glass to me.

“Here’s
to Amelie,” he said with tears in his eyes. “Poor kid was at the wrong place at
the wrong time… or I was.”

I
sat where I was quietly for a while, watching Gary as he dozed off, drunk in
his personal hell, perhaps oblivious of the life he had taken or maybe, just
maybe, battling his demons for the pain he had caused and the sorrow he would
have to deal with for the rest of his life. After some fifteen minutes or so, I
got up, pulled out my knife and ended the sorrow which ravaged us both.