Deja Dead Page 0,156

Tanguay? Did he have her?

That’s impossible. He’s in jail.

The teacher is in jail. But he’s not the one. The teacher isn’t the one. Or is he? Did he keep the Rue Berger room? Did he bury the glove with Katy’s picture in Gabby’s grave?

The fear sent a wave of nausea rising up my esophagus. I swallowed and my swollen throat screamed in protest.

Check the facts, Brennan. They may have been holidays.

I booted the computer with shaking hands, my fingers barely able to work the keys. The spreadsheet filled the screen. Dates. Times.

Francine Morisette-Champoux was killed in January. She died between 10 A.M. and noon. It was a Thursday.

Isabelle Gagnon disappeared in April, between 1 and 4 P.M. It was a Friday.

Chantale Trottier disappeared on an afternoon in October. She was last seen at her school in Centre-ville, miles from the west island.

They died or disappeared during the week. During the day. The school day. Trottier may have been abducted after school hours. The other two were not.

I grabbed the phone.

Ryan was out.

I slammed the receiver. My head felt like lead and my thoughts were coming in slow motion.

I tried another number.

“Claudel.”

“Monsieur Claudel, this is Dr. Brennan.”

He didn’t answer.

“Where is St. Isidor’s?”

He hesitated, and I didn’t think he was going to answer.

“Beaconsfield.”

“That’s what, about thirty minutes from downtown?”

“Without traffic.”

“Do you know what the school hours are?”

“What’s this about?”

“Can I just have an answer?” I was pushing the envelope and about to crack. My voice must have told him.

“I can ask.”

“Also, find out if Tanguay ever missed any days, if he called in sick or took personal leave, particularly on the days Morisette-Champoux and Gagnon were killed. They’ll have a record. They’d have needed a substitute unless school was not in session for some reason.”

“I’m going out there tom—”

“Now. I need it now!” I was poised on the edge of hysteria, toes clutching the end of the board. Don’t make me jump.

I could hear his face muscles harden. Go ahead, Claudel. Hang up. I’ll have your ass.

“I’ll get back to you.”

I sat on the edge of the bed, staring numbly at dust playing tag in a shaft of sunlight.

Move.

I went to the bathroom and splashed cold water on my face. Then I fished a plastic square from my briefcase and returned to the computer. The case was labeled with the Rue Berger address and the date 94/06/24. I raised the lid, removed a CD-ROM disk, and set it in the drive.

I opened a program for image viewing, bringing up a row of icons. I chose Album then Open, and a single album name appeared in the window. Berger.abm. I double-clicked and three rows of pictures filled the screen, each displaying six still photos of St. Jacques’s apartment. A line at the bottom told me the album contained a hundred and twenty shots.

I clicked to maximize the first image. Rue Berger. The second and third showed the street from different angles. Next, the apartment building, front and back. Then the corridor leading to the St. Jacques apartment. Views of the apartment’s interior started with image twelve.

I moved through the pictures, scrutinizing every detail. My head pounded. My shoulder and back muscles were like high-tension wires. I was back there again. The suffocating heat. The fear. The odors of filth and corruption.

Image by image I searched. For what? I wasn’t sure. It was all there. The Hustler centerfolds. The newspapers. The city map. The staircase landing. The filthy toilet. The greasy countertop. The Burger King cup. The bowl of SpaghettiOs.

I stopped, stared at the still life. File 102. A grimy plastic bowl. Fatty white rings congealing in red sludge. A fly, front legs clasped as if in prayer. An orange boulder rising from the sauce and pasta.

I squinted, leaned in. Could I be seeing what I thought I was seeing? There. Coursing across the orange chunk. My heart pounded. It couldn’t be. We couldn’t be that lucky.

I double-clicked, and a dotted line appeared. I dragged the cursor, and the line became a rectangle, its borders a string of rotating dots. I positioned the rectangle directly over the orange blob and zoomed in, magnifying the image again and again. Double. Triple. Up to eight times its actual size. I watched as the faint parabola I had spotted became an arched trail of dots and dashes.

I zoomed out and examined the entire arc.

“Oh, Jesus.”

Using the image editor, I manipulated the brightness and contrast, modified the hue and saturation. I tried reversing the color, changing each pixel