Until the Night (19 page)

“How do we know this white van wasn’t her one a.m. john?”

“Because that guy’s a repeat customer. She doesn’t know his real name—she calls him Tom—but she knows what he looks like and she knows his car. He’s maybe forty, got a beard and a crooked nose, and drives a Mazda3. This she remembers because she happens to drive a Mazda3 also. Now, she didn’t get a good look, but the guy she sees in the van is late fifties, maybe sixty, clean-shaven.”

“Still doesn’t rule out her john,” Chouinard pointed out. “He could have been in the back of the van. Or maybe he sent a friend as a proxy, so to speak. Bought someone a birthday present.”

“Really?” Loach said. “You do that a lot up here? Anyway, at this point, Millie is too pissed off to hang around and find out if Mr. White Van is hoping to meet her. Van goes into the lot, Millie hits the highway, and that’s the end of their brief encounter.”

“Delorme and I came up with a white van too,” Cardinal said. He told them about their interview with the serene Ms. Caffrey and held up his sketch for everyone to see. “She said it was a commercial van, no windows, some kind of logo painted out on the side. And from Toronto.”

“This is getting interesting,” Loach said. “Maybe we should get a police artist to interview these two ladies again.”

“I’m on it.” Paul Arsenault raised his coffee mug that said
Arsenault
in 20-point Helvetica. “I’ll be doing the Identi-Kit with Millie Pankowitz this morning. I’ll get more on the vehicle too.”

“In the meantime,” Loach said, “I want to look deeper into Mark Trent. I’m leaning toward the notion that he was the intended target and Ms. Lacroix, a.k.a. Ms. Rettig, may just have been in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“We have progress,” Chouinard noted as they wrapped things up. “Definite progress. But it would be nice to have an actual suspect.”

At the visitor check-in, Delorme had to hand over her Beretta, her bag and even her belt to the plump guard on the other side of the counter. He issued her a receipt for the items and said, “Welcome to Kingston Penitentiary Services.”

As she went through the security gate, the alarm went off.

A massive guard with no discernible emotional life raised a hand in a “halt” gesture. “Notebook.”

Delorme handed it to him.

A female guard stepped forward and patted her down with a thoroughness that in any other circumstances would have got her arrested.

“Hey,” Delorme said, and stepped back.

“You got a problem?”

“Who taught you to give a pat-down—Paul Bernardo?”

The woman stepped close and looked into Delorme’s eyes for a full fifteen seconds. Burnt coffee on her breath. “Undo your jacket.”

Delorme unbuttoned her blazer and opened it up. The guard reached for the inside pocket and removed a ballpoint pen.

“Uh-uh.”

“The prisoner will be manacled. They let me keep it at check-in.”

“Do I look like I care?”

“I’m investigating a murder. I need to take notes.”

“The pen stays at check-in or it goes back outside with you. Your choice.”

The male guard handed back the spiral notebook. “This too.”

Delorme returned to the check-in counter. The plump guard shook his head. “Sorry. Tear a few pages out of the notebook, and you can use this.” He handed her a library pencil.

Delorme returned to the security gate and went through.

“You’re lucky that ain’t a underwire bra you’re wearing,” the female guard said, “or I’d a taken that too.”

Yet another guard escorted her from security, unlocking and relocking each door as they went. The prison interior—this part of it, anyway—resembled a high school. Gleaming floor, the smell of cleaning products, and steel doors that almost looked like wood.

“How long have you worked here?”

“Too long.”

Another door, another corridor. Halfway along, he stopped at a door with a small square of thick Plexiglas. It had been spat on and inadequately cleaned.

The guard opened the door and held it. “I know they told you the rules and I know you signed the visitors’ agreement, but I will tell you again. You do not touch the prisoner. You do not give anything
to
the prisoner. You do not accept anything
from
the prisoner. Nothing. Do you understand?”

“I understand.”

“Sit in that chair over there. You will find a panic button under the edge of the table. It’s big enough you can operate it with your knee if need be. It rings an alarm out here that can’t be heard in there and will bring me pronto. You find it?”

Delorme felt under the table. “Got it.”

“All right, then.”

He closed the door and locked it. Delorme tried to pull her chair closer to the table, but it was bolted to the floor. She wrote several single-word reminders on a sheet of notepaper, the soft lead smearing her attempts at neat strokes and loops. The chair was too far from the table, and in no time at all her neck started to hurt.

The clack of the lock made her jump. The door opened and the guard steered Fritz Reicher inside. The prisoner was manacled at wrists and ankles, the two restraints connected by a short chain that kept his wrists low and before him in a monkish attitude. He was thirty years old, six-three, with enormous hands. The manacles did little to diminish the impression of physical power.

“Fritz, you’re gonna behave yourself, right?” the guard said.

“Yes, of course.” The German accent was still strong, but Reicher had a pleasant voice, melodious and surprisingly soft for a man of his size.

“You know what happens if you don’t, right?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Yes, of course. Yes, of course. You got a way with words, Fritz.” The guard had him lean against the wall. He knelt and unlocked the ankle manacles. He stood again and pulled the connecting chain through, turned the prisoner around, and unlocked the wrist restraints.

Delorme had expected the manacles to stay on. She thought about saying something.

“Sit.”

Reicher sat and folded his hands in his lap.

“You stay seated throughout, understand?”

“Yes, of course.”

“You don’t move out of that chair until I come get you, understand?”

“Yes, of course.”

“All right, then.” The guard put his key in the door and looked back at Delorme. “I’ll be right out here.”

“Okay. Thanks.” She wondered again if she should ask about the restraints, but the guard looked as if he knew what he was doing.

He went out and closed the door behind him. Bolts slid home. Then nothing. No sound of him walking away. No sound of anything at all from the corridor. From somewhere beyond the prison walls, a truck horn honked long and loud. Men’s voices echoed along distant corridors, involved in a game or a fight.

Reicher remained still, a mild expression on his face. Even sitting down, he looked extremely strong. Years ago, at the academy, Delorme’s instructor in hand-to-hand combat had stressed that physical power was not just a matter of muscle. “Big muscles are one thing, but they’re not everything. You can get these big-boned guys, tall, wide in the shoulders, even if they’re quite skinny—even if they never work out—with formidable advantages of reach, obviously, but also incredible grip, not to mention the kind of leverage that can snap a major bone like that.” The snap of his fingers had reverberated around the gym.

Delorme introduced herself and told Reicher the reason for her visit. Loose ends on the Choquette case. If he was helpful, she would ask that his co-operation be noted in his file.

He showed no sign that he remembered her. That was not surprising, as her own involvement in the Choquette case had been peripheral, her testimony confined to minor matters.

She expected a demand for a more exciting quid pro quo—cigarettes, more privileges, the usual barter. A note in the file was pretty cheap.

“It’s a mistake,” Reicher said. He turned his head and looked at the door.

“What’s a mistake?”

He turned his head back to look at her. “He should not have removed the manacles. This is not the way.”

“I’m sure we’ll manage.”

“It’s an error because of last week. My lawyer was here. For lawyers they remove restraints. It’s proper protocol. This is not. I worked in security. This is bad security.”

“Do you get the news in here, Fritz?”

“Ha ha. Yes, of course.”

“Then you know about Marjorie Flint? The senator’s wife?”

“Yes, of course. Poor woman, freezing to death like that.”

“Do you know anything about her—or about the senator—besides what you may have read in the news?”

“No, I’m afraid, nothing.”

“Are you sure? Her name never came up anywhere? Did you see her picture on the news?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Did you recognize her?”

“No, I don’t know her. Freezing to death like that, it’s no joke.”

“Would you actually tell me if you did know her?”

“Ha ha. Yes, of course.”

“Fritz, are you on a lot of medication?”

“Do you think I am?”

“You repeat yourself a lot. You say ‘Yes, of course’ a lot. And you laugh at weird times.”

“I see. Possibly I am being medicated without my knowledge.” He pronounced it
nollich
. “They could give me things, I wouldn’t know. I have to eat what they give me. Ha ha, you think I’m on medication. Interesting. Did someone inform you of this?”

“No. What about Laura Lacroix—does that name ring a bell?”

“Who?”

“Laura Lacroix.”

He shook his head. “I don’t know this name.”

“You’re sure?”

Reicher seemed to throw off his lethargy. He sat up and leaned on the table, the change in posture doubling his size.

“Do you half a dog, Detective? Did I already ask you this?”

“I don’t.”

“Damn. It’s too bad.”

“Laura Lacroix was Leonard Priest’s girlfriend. Briefly.”

“Ha ha. Leonard.”
Lennet
. “Yes, of course. You know I can tell you nothing about Leonard. Some people, yes. Ha ha. Not Leonard.”

“He claims she came to Club Risqué. I thought perhaps you might remember her.”

Delorme pulled the photo from the file. Reicher reached for it but she pulled it back.

“Ha ha. I’m just trying to see.”

“You can see.” She tilted it to counter the glare.

“Pretty.”

“Do you recognize her?”

“Not really. But she is Leonard’s type. They all look the same, Leonard’s girlfriends. The ones he really likes. She looks like you. Ha ha.”

Garth Romney’s position was beginning to make more sense. Whatever else Fritz Reicher might be, he was not a great witness, drifting in and out like a faint signal. Then there was his size, his accent, his air of aggressive indifference. Not to mention the stupid laugh. You might not automatically brand him as a murderer, but it was easy to imagine him standing by while someone else did the murdering. “Yes, of course,” he would say. “Kill the lady, yes, of course.”

Delorme started to ask him about the night of the murder, but Reicher’s mind was elsewhere. “You don’t half a dog, okay, it’s fine. But perhaps you are knowing some veterinarian? Or the—what do you call it—the animal authorities. The shelter people? I want to walk dogs. It’s my plan. For when I’m getting out. Leonard says he will help me do it. I want to be a dog walker. I lift for a time in New York City. There they half many dog walkers. Five on a leash—six sometimes—you should see. So funny.”

“The night of the murder. In your initial statement, you said you drove Leonard Priest to Algonquin Bay to—as you put it—’play some games.’ That it was Priest’s idea. That you were just there to role-play.”

“Yes, but I was confused. I was high, you know, when I was arrested. I was confusing it with another time. Many times. Leonard was wanting me to play Nazi always. With people who like to be scared and so on. I didn’t like to do it myself. I didn’t like people thinking always Germans are Nazis. But Leonard luft it and so did many customers also. To me it was acting. Performing a part. Pretty convincing, too, I would say. You know, I studied acting.”

“In fact, you terrorized people.”

“Only people who wanted it so. Nobody was calling the police, something like that.”

“Because they were terrified.”

“Yes, of course—but like at the movies you’re terrified. Frightened because you want to be frightened.” He half rose from the chair and flashed his enormous hands. “
Boo!
Ha ha, you jumped.” He sat back down. “But it’s not like you’re having a heart attack, something like that.”

Delorme glanced at the door.

“He’s not there probably. I think so.”

“You can hardly call it a game, Fritz. The gun was loaded.”

“Yes, of course. It’s more frightening. Shoot a hole in the wall, shoot a tree.
Boom!
Then you are convincing people. When I was studying acting in New York, they used to say, ‘Ya gotta sell da line.’ Just like that, they would say. ‘Ya gotta sell da line.’ We were selling the gun, in that sense. Not really selling it, of course. Ha ha. Not gun-running.”

“Do yourself a favour, Fritz. Tell me something I can use. There’s no mention of you being high when you were arrested. You were a bartender, sometimes a bouncer—how would you get to know a customer so well that you could drive up to Algonquin Bay on your own for an encounter with her—let alone take her out to an abandoned boathouse for sex? It doesn’t make sense.”