Sixteen

ROMÉO RETURNED THE KEY to his pocket and closed the door quietly behind him. He knew there was nobody home, but he called out their names anyway. He was answered only by the hum of the refrigerator and a muffled ambulance siren from the street. The apartment was very small, but surprisingly tidy and clean. Maybe because there wasn’t much in it except a giant screen and what looked like video game controllers before it on a coffee table, as though they were waiting to come to life. A bookshelf with few books and a couple of cacti, an old sofa he recognized from his home with Elyse, a tiny galley kitchen with an empty fruit bowl on the counter. He didn’t go into the bedroom—that he did not want to see. When he heard the key in the door Roméo took a seat on the one listing armchair and waited. The boy didn’t see him at first, and nearly leapt out of his boots when he did.

“Tabernac! Tu m’as fait peur, ostie! You scared the shit out of me!” He removed his jacket and threw it on the sofa. “How did you get in here?”

“Sit down.”

The boy didn’t move. “Does Sophie know you’re here?”

Roméo crossed his long legs, placed his clasped hands on his lap, and then calmly asked, “Why did you push my daughter up against a wall?”

The boy started to swear at Roméo again, but cut himself off. “Is that what she told you?”

Roméo studied the boy’s narrow face, the sparse, scruffy beard, the lank hair tied into a man bun. This guy made her last boyfriend, the Anglo guy Trevor, look like a winner.

“She pushed me first. Really hard. And then she just started attacking me, slapping me and punching me. So, I pushed her back.”

Sophie was always what they called “headstrong.” As a little girl, she pretty much did what she wanted. If she was thwarted, she could pull a pretty frightening tantrum. Roméo and Elyse saw a therapist and tried to understand how to deal with her, how to “actively listen,” but Sophie often proved too much for them. It always seemed to Roméo that she would create these great big dramas—with her girlfriends or her mother, and then seem to enjoy watching them play out. But this was different. Completely different.

“You pushed her against the wall, and she hit her head.”

The boy was still standing his ground. “I’ve never done that before, I swear.” He swallowed hard. “She just provoked me until I couldn’t take it anymore.”

Roméo slowly got to his feet. The man towered over the boy. “In my experience, mon grand, by the time a woman first reports abuse, it’s happened many times before.”

The boy shook his head. “Not this time. Ask your daughter. Ask Sophie!” He ducked past Roméo and headed to the kitchen. In an effort to regain some control, he cracked open a bottle of beer and took a sip. “I love her. I do. Mais, elle est folle, okay? She’s crazy sometimes.”

Roméo walked over to the kitchen where the boy stood drinking his beer. He got very close to him without making any contact. “I have strongly recommended to Sophie that she not return here. But if she does, and you are again ‘provoked’ into touching her with any intention to hurt her, believe me, mon p’tit gars, you will live to regret it.”

Roméo pulled on his coat. “This is your first and last warning.”

The Cock and Bull pub was very appropriately named, Roméo thought. As he took a seat at the bar, he made sure to position himself so he could see what was coming. It had been a fixture on Ste. Catherine street near the Forum for at least forty years, as Roméo used to come here as an underage teenager to drink, strut, and play pool. The place hadn’t changed much. Same empty-eyed drunks clutching their sweating drinks. Same loquacious barflies talking up some bull. A couple of heavily tattooed women with peroxide-blond braids and tans so deep they looked like worn leather stared intently into twin VLT machines. Roméo wondered if they were twins as well. They both wore matching hot pants and high heels even though it was fifteen below zero outside. The hockey game was on a giant TV on one wall. Three younger guys in backwards ball caps were staring at it, mouths slightly open, clutching beers. The Canadiens were losing. Again. Even with that amazing Russian player, they were struggling to make the playoffs. The guy couldn’t do everything by himself.

Roméo ordered a beer and discreetly checked out the bartender as she poured it for him. Her hair was a two-tone mix of steel gray and bright auburn, and it almost matched her painted orange eyebrows, arched in what seemed like permanent surprise. Roméo thought that was particularly ironic as he imagined there wasn’t much that surprised this woman anymore. Sparkly gold eye shadow blossomed from her eyes outlined in thick black liner—she vaguely resembled Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra entering Rome in triumph. She had an enormous tattoo of a red and black snake coiling itself around her right arm from her shoulder to her wrist. Its head and fangs appeared poised to strike from her forearm. Once she served him his pint, she moved to the other end of her bar and started to check her stock. Roméo knew that she knew he was a cop. He would give it another minute or two.

“Madame?” he gestured her over to him.“My name is Roméo Leduc—”

She cut him off. “You’re not Montreal police.”

“No, I’m Sûreté du Québec. Detective Chief Inspector.” He quickly flashed his badge.

She would have raised an eyebrow if she could. “SQ?”

Roméo shifted in his chair and pulled out his phone from his coat pocket. “I’d like to know if you recognize this woman?”

The bartender peered at the image and then looked away. “What the hell happened to her?”

Roméo slid the phone closer on the bar. “She froze to death. We are trying to identify her to let her family know.”

She frowned for a moment, then ducked under the bar. When she came back up she was wearing eyeglasses, which in one gesture seemed to turn her into a kindly grandmother. She held the phone closer.

“Pauvre petite.” She returned the photo to Roméo. “I don’t know her. But it’s hard to tell them apart. Chuis pas raciste, moé. I’m not racist. It’s just that they all have black hair and brown eyes, and when I see them…Let’s just say they’re not at their best.”

“You seen anyone in the bar lately, any of these guys—been especially aggressive? Likes to prey on women? Especially Indigenous women?”

This time her eyebrows did actually lift. “You are kidding, right?”

Roméo didn’t respond.

“There’s always these slimy guys—almost always white—who just know how to get to them, you know? There’s one—I mean, I know he’s some kind of pimp. And the cops know about him, too. But no one does anything. Why didn’t they take him out years ago? I mean, what is wrong with you guys?”

A customer had joined them at the bar and was obviously trying to listen in.

The bartender removed her glasses, delivered a beer to him, and reminded him to mind his own business. Roméo scrolled through his phone to the photo of Hélène taken from the dead woman’s pocket.

“Do you know this woman? Her name is Hélène Cousineau.”

Once again, she took the phone and peered more closely. “Oui. I seen her. Maybe. three…No, maybe six months ago? It was like August, September maybe? She used to come in here once, maybe twice a week.”

“Are you sure? This woman?”

“I’m pretty sure.”

“Did you ever see her with the woman in the other photo?”

“No. Like I said, I never seen that one. But this one,” she tapped the photo with a very long, red index nail. “Not a big drinker, but she was a really good tipper. Which means she probably worked at a bar, too.”

Roméo pulled two twenties from his wallet and left them on the bar. “Listen. If you see her again, can you please let me know right away?” He placed his card by her hand.

“Can I give you a call even if I don’t see her again?”

Roméo smiled and took the last sip of beer. “Merci, Madame.” He put on his coat, turned up the collar and headed towards the door. It was time to call Ti-Coune Cousineau.