Deja Dead Page 0,49

convincing. The collagist was eclectic in his taste. He exhibited no preference as to body type, race, or hair color. I noted that the edges of each picture were carefully trimmed. Each was set equidistant from its neighbors and stapled in place.

A grouping of newspaper articles occupied the space to the left of the map. Although a few were in English, the majority were drawn from the French press. I noticed that those in English were always accompanied by pictures. I leaned close and read a few sentences about a groundbreaking at a church in Drummondville. I moved to a French article on a kidnapping in Senneville. My eyes shifted to an ad for Videodrome, claiming to be the largest distributor of pornographic films in Canada. There was a piece from Allo Police on a nude dance bar. It showed “Babette” dressed in leather cross garters and draped with chains. There was another on a break-in in St.-Paul-du-Nord in which the burglar had constructed a dummy of his victim’s nightclothes, stabbed it repeatedly, then left it on her bed. Then I spotted something that again turned my blood to ice.

In his collection St. Jacques had carefully clipped and stapled three articles side by side. Each described a serial killer. Unlike the others, these appeared to be photocopies. The first described Léopold Dion, “The Monster of Pont-Rouge.” In the spring of 1963 police had discovered him at home with the bodies of four young men. They had all been strangled.

The second recounted the exploits of Wayne Clifford Boden, who strangled and raped women in Montreal and Calgary beginning in 1969. When arrested in 1971, his final count was four. In the margin someone had written “Bill l’étrangleur.”

The third article covered the career of William Dean Christenson, alias Bill l’éventreur, Montreal’s own Ripper. He’d killed, decapitated, and dismembered two women in the early 1980s.

“Look at this,” I said to no one in particular. Though the room was stifling, I felt cold all over.

Charbonneau came up behind me. “Oh, baby, baby,” he intoned flatly, as his eyes swept over the arrangement to the right of the map. “Love in wide angle.”

“Here,” I said, pointing at the articles. “Look at these.”

Claudel joined us and the two men scanned them wordlessly. They smelled of sweat and laundered cotton and aftershave. Outside I could hear a woman calling to Sophie, and wondered briefly if she beckoned a pet or a child.

“Holy fuck,” breathed Charbonneau, as he grasped the theme of the stories.

“Doesn’t mean he’s Charlie Manson,” scoffed Claudel.

“No. He’s probably working on his senior thesis.”

For the first time I thought I detected a note of annoyance in Charbonneau’s voice.

“The guy could have delusions of grandeur,” Claudel went on. “Maybe he watched the Menendez brothers and thought they were keen. Maybe he thinks he’s Dudley DoRight and wants to fight evil. Maybe he’s practicing his French and finds this more interesting than Tin Tin. How the fuck do I know? But it doesn’t make him Jack the Ripper.” He glanced toward the door. “Where the hell is recovery?”

Sonofabitch, I thought, but held my tongue.

Charbonneau and I turned our attention to the desktop. A stack of newspapers leaned against the wall. Charbonneau used his pen to rifle through them, lifting the edges then allowing the sections to drop back into place. The stack contained only want ads, most from La Presse and the Gazette.

“Maybe the toad was looking for a job,” said Claudel sardonically. “Thought he’d use Boden as a reference.”

“What was that underneath?” I’d seen a flash of yellow as the bottom section was lifted briefly.

Charbonneau nudged the pen under the last section in the pile and levered it upward, tipping the stack toward the wall. A yellow tablet lay under it. I wondered briefly if pen manipulation was required training for detectives. He allowed the newspapers to drop back to the desktop, slid the pen to the back of the stack, and pushed at the tablet, sliding it forward and into view.

It was a lined yellow pad, the type favored by attorneys. We could see that the top page was partially filled with writing. Bracing the stack with the back of his hand, Charbonneau teased the tablet out and slid it into full view.

The impact of the serial killer stories was nothing compared to the jolt I felt on seeing what was scrawled there. The fear that I’d kept down deep in its lair lunged out and grabbed me in its teeth.

Isabelle Gagnon. Margaret Adkins. Their