Deja Dead Page 0,109
this guy. Didn’t do any good. They never found a clue. We can pinpoint the time he killed her to within an hour, you know. The coroner said she was still warm. This maniac kills my wife, walks out, and disappears without a trace.” He shook his head in disbelief. “Have you finally got something?”
His eyes held a mixture of anguish and hope. Guilt sliced to my core.
“No, Monsieur Champoux, not really.” Except four other women may have been killed by the same animal. “I just want to go over a few details, see if there’s anything we overlooked.”
The hope vanished and resignation surfaced. He leaned back in his chair and waited.
“Your wife was a nutritionist?”
He nodded.
“Where did she work?”
“All over, really. She was paid by the MAS, but on any given day she could have been anywhere.”
“The MAS?”
“Ministère des Affaires Sociales.”
“She moved around?”
“Her job was to advise food cooperatives, immigrant groups mostly, about how to buy stuff. She’d help them form these collective kitchens, then teach them how to make whatever it is they like to eat so it would be cheap, but still healthy. She’d help them get produce and meat and things. Usually in bulk. She was always visiting the kitchens to be sure they were running okay.”
“Where were these collectives?”
“All over the place. Parc Extension. Côte des Neiges. St. Henri. Little Burgundy.”
“How long had she been working for the MAS?”
“Maybe six, seven years. Before that she worked at the Montreal General. Had much better hours.”
“Did she enjoy her work?”
“Oh yeah. She loved it.” The words caught briefly in his throat.
“Were her hours irregular?”
“No, they were regular. She worked all the time. Mornings. Evenings. Weekends. There was always a problem and Francine was the one to fix it.” His jaw muscles clenched and unclenched.
“Had you and your wife disagreed about her work?”
He fell silent for a moment. Then, “I wanted to see more of her. I wished she was still at the hospital.”
“What do you do, Monsieur Champoux?”
“I’m an engineer. I build things. Only no one wants much built these days.” He gave a mirthless smile and tipped his head to one side. “I was downsized.” He used the English phrase.
“I’m sorry.”
“Do you know where your wife was going the day she was killed?”
He shook his head. “We’d hardly seen each other that week. There was a fire in one of her kitchens and she’d been there day and night. She may have been going back there, or she may have been heading for another one. She didn’t keep any kind of journal or log that I know of. They never found one in her office and I never saw one here. She’d been talking about getting her hair cut. Hell, she may have been going to do that.”
He looked at me, his eyes tortured.
“Do you know what that feels like? I don’t even know what my wife was planning to do on the day she died.”
The circulating water of the tanks murmured softly in the background.
“Had she spoken about anything unusual? Odd phone calls? A stranger at the door?” I thought of Gabby. “Someone on the street?”
Another head shake.
“Would she have?”
“Probably, if we’d spoken. We really hadn’t had time those last few days.”
I tried a new tack.
“It was January. Cold. The doors and windows would have been closed. Was your wife in the habit of keeping them locked?”
“Yes. She never liked living here, didn’t like being right on the street. I talked her into buying this place, but she preferred high-rise buildings with security systems or guards. We get some pretty seedy characters down here, and she was always on edge. That’s why we were leaving. She liked the extra space, and the little yard out back, but she never really got used to being here. Her work took her to some rough areas, and when she came home she wanted to feel safe. Untouchable. That’s what she said. Untouchable. You know?”
Yes. Oh yes.
“When was the last time you saw your wife, Monsieur Champoux?”
He breathed deeply, exhaled. “She got killed on a Thursday. She’d worked late the night before, because of the fire, so I’d already gone to bed when she got home.”
He dropped his head and talked again to the parquet. A patch of tiny vessels colored each of his cheeks.
“She came to bed full of her day, trying to tell me where she’d been and what she’d been doing. I didn’t want to hear it.”
I saw his chest rise and fall under the sweatshirt.
“The