Deja Dead Page 0,113

room noise.

“Look.” Controlled. “Don’t get me wrong. I think you’re solid. But this isn’t a game. These people deserve better.” His words were hard as granite.

“Yes.”

“Trottier is my case.”

“What exactly is being done on your case?”

“Bren—”

“And what about the others? Where are they going?”

I was on a roll.

“These investigations aren’t exactly heading everyone’s agenda right now, Ryan. Francine Morisette-Champoux was killed over eighteen months ago. It’s been eight months since Trottier. I have this bizarre notion that whoever killed these women ought to be reeled in and locked up. So I take an interest. I ask a few questions. What happens? I’m told to butt out. And because Mr. Claudel thinks I’m about as helpful as a boil, these cases will drop lower and lower until they’re off the charts and out of everyone’s minds. Again.”

“I didn’t tell you to butt out.”

“What are you saying, Ryan?”

“I understand Claudel wants your ass in a sling. You want to fry his balls. I might too if he’d stonewalled me. I just don’t want you two screwing up my case.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

He took a long time to answer.

“I’m not saying I don’t want your input. I just want the priorities in this investigation perfectly clear.”

For a long time no one spoke. Anger rushed the line in both directions.

“I think I’ve found something.”

“What?” He hadn’t expected that.

“I may have a connection.”

“What do you mean?” A little of the edge was gone from his voice.

I wasn’t sure what I meant. Maybe I just wanted to derail him.

“Meet me for lunch.”

“This better be good, Brennan.” Pause. “I’ll see you at Antoine’s at noon.”

Fortunately I had no new cases, so I was able to get right to work. So far nothing had fit together. Maybe the Métro was the tie.

I opened the computer and pulled up the file to check addresses. Yes. I had the right stops. I dug out a map and plotted the stations, just as Ryan and I had done with the victims’ homes. The three pins formed a triangle, with Berri-UQAM in the center. Morisette-Champoux, Gagnon, and Adkins had each lived within six stops of the station. St. Jacques’s apartment was a short walk away.

Could that be it? Catch a train at Berri-UQAM. Pick a victim who gets off six stops away. Hadn’t I read about that type of behavior? Fixate on a color. A number. A series of actions. Follow a pattern. Never deviate. Be in control. Wasn’t careful planning characteristic of serial killers? Could our boy take it one step further? Could he be a serial killer with some sort of compulsive behavior pattern into which the killings fit?

But what about Trottier and Damas? They didn’t fit. It couldn’t be that simple. I stared at the map, willing an answer to materialize. The feeling that something lurked just over the wall of my conscious nagged stronger than ever. What? I hardly heard the tap.

“Dr. Brennan?”

Lucie Dumont stood in my doorway. That’s all it took. The wall was breached.

“Alsa!”

I’d forgotten all about the little monkey.

My outburst startled Lucie. She jerked, almost dropping her printout.

“Shall I come back?”

I was already digging for Lucie’s earlier printout. Yes. Of course. The bus terminal. It’s practically next to the Berri-UQAM station. I plotted Alsa. Her pin went right in the center of the triangle.

Was that it? The monkey? Did she tie in? If so, how? Another victim? An experiment? Alsa died two years before Grace Damas. Hadn’t I read about that pattern also? Teenage peeping and fantasy escalating to animal torture and, finally, human rape and murder? Wasn’t that Dahmer’s chilling progression?

I sighed and sat back. If that was the bulletin my subconscious was trying to post, Ryan wouldn’t be impressed.

Out the door and down to the central files. Lucie had vanished. I’d apologize later. I was doing that a lot lately. Back to my desk.

The Damas folder held little save my report. I opened the jacket marked Adkins and leafed through. The contents were beginning to look archival, I’d handled them so often. Nothing clicked. On to Gagnon. Morisette-Champoux. Trottier.

I spent an hour pouring over the files. Gran’s puzzle pieces again. Jumbled bits of information. Feed them in, let your mind rotate and arrange. It was the arranging that wasn’t going well. Coffee time.

I brought it back, along with the morning’s Journal. Sip and read. Regroup. The news varied little from the English language Gazette, the editorials enormously. What did Hugh MacLennan call it? The Two Solitudes.

I sat back. There it was again.