Death Du Jour (50 page)

He’s here to recover. That’s all.

I waved and called to him. He smiled and pointed to an athletic bag circling toward him on the carousel.

I nodded and began sorting my keys, deciding which should go to another chain.

“
Bonjour,
y’all.”

I gave him a minimal-contact hug, the kind people use when picking up in-laws. He stepped back, and the too-damn-blue eyes looked me up and down.

“Nice outfit.”

I was wearing jeans and a shirt that didn’t bunch too high with the crutches.

“How was your trip?”

“The flight attendant took pity and moved me up front.”

I’ll bet she did.

On the ride home I asked about the state of his injuries.

“Three fractured ribs and one perforated a lung. The other bullet preferred muscle. It was no big deal, except for some blood loss.”

The no big deal had taken four hours of surgery.

“Are you in pain?”

“Only when I breathe.”

*   *   *

When we got to the Annex, I showed Ryan the guest room and went to the kitchen to pour iced tea.

Minutes later he joined me on the patio. Sunlight was slanting through the magnolia, and a troupe of song sparrows had replaced the mockingbird.

“Nice outfit,” I said, handing him a glass.

Ryan had changed to shorts and a T-shirt. His legs were the color of uncooked cod, and athletic socks bagged around his ankles.

“Been wintering in Newfoundland?”

“Tanning causes melanoma.”

“I’ll need shades for the glare.”

Ryan and I had already reviewed the events in Ange Gardien. We’d discussed it at the hospital, then later by phone as more information came to light.

Ryan had used his cell phone to call the Rouville district SQ post while I was outside scraping the road sign. When we didn’t appear there the dispatcher sent a truck to clear the road so a unit could investigate. The officers found Ryan unconscious and called in backup and ambulances.

“So your sister is through with cosmic healing?”

“Yeah.” I smiled and shook my head. “She came down here for a few days, then headed back to Texas. It won’t be long before she becomes enthused by some other alternative agenda.”

We sipped our tea.

“Have you read the psychiatric stuff?”

“Delusional misidentification with significant components of grandiosity and paranoia. What the frig does that mean?”

That same question had already sent me to the psychiatric literature.

“The Antichrist delusion. People see themselves or others as demonic. In Elle’s case, she projected the delusion onto Heidi’s babies. She’d read about matter and antimatter, and believed everything has to be in balance. She said one of the babies was the Antichrist, the other some type of cosmic backup. Is she still talking?”

“Like a DJ on uppers. She admits to sending the hit team to St-Jovite to kill the kids. Simonnet tried to intervene, so they shot her. Then the killers downed the drugs and started the fire.”

I thought of the old lady whose bones I’d examined.

“Simonnet must have tried to protect Heidi and Brian. All those calls to Saint Helena, then the rescue mission to Texas after Daniel Jeannotte showed up at the Schneider home.” My fingers made oval prints in the condensation on my tea glass. “Why do you suppose Simonnet kept phoning after Heidi and Brian left Saint Helena?”

“Heidi kept in contact with Jennifer Cannon, and Simonnet phoned for reports. When Elle found out, she had Cannon killed.”

“The same exorcism by dogs, knives, and scalding liquid she’d ordered when Carole Comptois got pregnant.”

The image still made me shudder.

“Was Comptois still working as a hooker?”

“She’d given it up. Ironically, she was introduced to Elle by a former customer. Though Comptois lived with the group off and on, apparently she maintained outside interests, since her baby’s father was not a member and therefore not an approved sperm donor. That’s why Elle ordered the exorcism.”

“Why Amalie Provencher?”

“That’s unclear. Amalie may have gotten in the way of the elimination of Jennifer.”

“Elle believed she needed the psychic strength of fifty-six souls to muster the energy for the final crossing. She hadn’t counted on losing Comptois. That’s why she needed Harry.”

“Why fifty-six?”

“It has something to do with the fifty-six Aubrey holes at Stonehenge.”

“What are Aubrey holes?”

“Small pits that were dug and filled in immediately. They were probably used to predict lunar eclipses. Elle has woven all kinds of esoterica into her delusions.”

I took a sip of tea.

“She was obsessed with the idea of balance. Matter and antimatter. Controlled coupling. Exactly fifty-six people. She chose Ange Gardien not just because of the name, but because it’s equidistant from there to the communes in Texas and South Carolina. It’s an amazing coincidence, isn’t it?”

“What’s that?”

“My sister lives in Texas. I work in Quebec, and have lifelong ties to the Carolinas. Everywhere I turned, Elle’s influence was there. Her reach was awesome. How many lives do you suppose these cults affect?”

“There’s no telling.”

The sound of Vivaldi drifted from my neighbor’s patio.

“How did your friend Sam take the news that one of his employees brought bodies to Murtry?”

“He wasn’t thrilled.” I remembered Joey’s nervousness by the water truck when we emerged from the burial location. “Joey Espinoza had been working for Sam for almost two years.”

“Right. He was an Owens follower, but lived in his mother’s house. She’s the one who phoned Social Services.
Well, it turns out he’s also Carlie’s father. That’s why Kathryn fled to him when things got ugly. It seems she didn’t know anything about the murders.”

“Where are they now?”

“She and the baby are with some cousin of hers. Joey is discussing the recent past with Sheriff Baker.”

“Has anyone been charged?”

“Elle and Daniel have each been charged with three counts of first-degree murder for the deaths of Jennifer Cannon, Amalie Provencher, and Carole Comptois.”

Ryan picked up a magnolia leaf and trailed it across his thigh.

“What else was in the evaluation?”

“According to the court-appointed shrink Elle suffers from an elaborate multidelusional psychosis. She’s convinced that the apocalypse will occur soon in the form of a giant environmental disaster, and that she’s destined to preserve humanity by transporting followers away from the apocalypse.”

“Where were they going?”

“She’s not saying. But you aren’t on her manifest.”

“How do people buy into such crap?” Ryan echoed my question to Red Skyler.

“The group recruited people who were disillusioned with their lot and attracted by group acceptance, being accorded a sense of worth and importance, and being given simple answers to all questions, with a little drug therapy thrown in.”

A breeze lifted the branches of the magnolia, bringing with it the smell of wet grass. Ryan said nothing.

“Elle may be crazy, but she’s smart and extraordinarily persuasive. Even now her followers are loyal. While she’s pontificating, they’re not saying a word.”

“Yeah.” He stretched, raised his bandaged arm, and
repositioned it on his chest. “She’s cunning, all right. She was never after a huge following. She wanted a small but loyal band. That and Guillion’s money let her keep a low profile. Until it began to unravel, she made very few mistakes.”

“What about the cat? That was brutal but stupid.”

“That was Dom Owens. Elle ordered him to stop your meddling. He claims he was not into physically harming people, so he directed some student followers in Charlotte to do something to frighten you off. They devised the cat trick. Got the poor thing from the animal shelter.”

“How did they find me?”

“One of them took a bill or something from your office. It had your home address.”

Ryan sipped his tea.

“By the way, your St. Paddy’s Day adventure in Montreal was also student-inspired.”

“How did you know about that?”

He smiled and waggled the glass. “It seems the protective attitude went both ways between Jeannotte and her students. One of them saw that she was upset, and concluded your visits were the cause. He decided to freelance and deliver a personal message.”

I changed the subject. “Do you believe Owens was involved in killing Jennifer and Amalie?”

“He denies it. Claims that after he confronted Jennifer about the phone calls he reported to Elle. Says Elle told him she and Daniel were taking Jennifer and Amalie back to Canada.”

“Why was Owens not at Ange Gardien?”

“Owens had decided to bail. He either became afraid over what Elle might do because he had lost track of Joey, Kathryn, and Carlie, or he didn’t have confidence in
the cosmic crossover. Either way, he had over two hundred thousand dollars of Guillion’s money left, so he gathered it up and went west as everyone else headed north. The American feds caught up with him at a naturalist commune in Arizona. Elle would not have had her fifty-six souls even with Harry.”

“Hungry?”

“Let’s eat.”

We made salad, then skewered chicken and vegetables for shish kebabs. Outside the sun had dropped below the horizon, and the deepening dusk filled the trees and grounds with dark shadows. We ate on the patio, talking and watching night settle in. Inevitably, the conversation drifted back to Elle and the murders.

“I guess Daisy Jeannotte felt she could confront her brother and force him to stop the madness.”

“Yeah, but Elle spotted Daisy first and had Daniel eliminate her and throw her into the crawl space where they later stashed you. You had been perceived as a lesser threat and had simply been rapped over the head and stuck in the hole. When you responded by getting free and causing more trouble, Elle was outraged and committed you to the same murder-exorcism that she had lavished on Jennifer and Amalie.”

“Daniel helped Elle kill Jennifer and Amalie, and he’s the main suspect in the Carole Comptois murder. Who were the assassins in St-Jovite?”

“We may never know. No one has told that story yet.”

Ryan finished his tea and leaned back. Crickets had taken over for birds. Far off a siren moaned in the night. For a long time we didn’t speak.

“Do you remember the exhumation I did in Lac Memphrémagog?”

“The saint.”

“One of the nuns in that order is Anna Goyette’s aunt.”

“Thanks to nuns I still have limited use of my knuckles.”

I smiled. Another gender inequality.

I told him about Élisabeth Nicolet.

“They were all captives in one way or another. Harry. Kathryn. Élisabeth.”

“Elle. Anna. Prisons take many forms.”

“Sister Julienne shared a quote with me. In
Les Misérables
Victor Hugo refers to the convent as an optical device whereby man gains a glimpse of infinity.”

The crickets chirped.

“It’s not infinity, Ryan, but we’re barreling toward the end of a millennium. Do you suppose there are others out there preaching Armageddon and orchestrating rituals of group death?”

For a moment he didn’t answer. The magnolia rustled overhead.

“There will always be mystic hustlers who will play upon disillusionment, despair, low self-esteem, or fear to promote their own agendas. But if any of these psycho charlatans get off the bus in my town the reckoning will be swift and certain. Revelation according to Ryan.”

I watched a leaf tumble across the brick.

“What about you, Brennan? Will you be there to help me?”

Ryan’s form was black against the night sky. I couldn’t see his eyes, but I knew they were looking straight toward mine.

I reached over and took his hand.

Pocket Books Proudly Presents

DEADLY
DÉCISIONS

K
ATHY
R
EICHS

Available now in hardcover from Scribner

The following is a preview of
Deadly Décisions. . . .

H
ER NAME WAS E
MILY
A
NNE
. S
HE
WAS NINE
years old, with black ringlets, long lashes, and caramel-colored skin. Her ears were pierced with tiny gold loops. Her forehead was pierced by two slugs from a Cobra 9-mm semiautomatic.

*   *   *

It was a Saturday, and I was working by special request of my boss, Pierre LaManche. I’d been at the lab for four hours, sorting badly mangled tissue, when the door to the large autopsy room opened and Sergeant-Detective Luc Claudel came striding in.

Claudel and I had worked together in the past, and though he’d come to tolerate, perhaps even appreciate me, one would not infer that from his brusque manner.

“Where’s LaManche?” he demanded, glancing at the gurney in front of me, then quickly away.

I said nothing. When Claudel was in one of his moods, I ignored him.

“Has Dr. LaManche arrived?” The detective avoided looking at my greasy gloves.

“It’s Saturday, Monsieur Claudel. He doesn’t wo—”

At that moment Michel Charbonneau stuck his head
into the room. Through the opening I could hear the whir and clank of the electric door at the back of the building.