32

Allan frowned when he walked into his office and saw the folded newspaper atop his desk with a yellow sticky note slapped on it. He peeled the note off, recognizing the handwriting as Captain Thorne’s: Thought you’d like to read this.

Allan crumpled the note into a ball and tossed it in the wastebasket. He took out Audra’s files from the briefcase and stacked them on his desk before finally having a look at the newspaper. It was Saturday’s edition of the Acresville Gazette. Slowly, he read over the front-page story.

The dairy farm belonging to serial killer Herbert Peter Matteau is the focus of another investigation. Police are on the scene today with earthmovers, dump trucks, and ground-penetrating radar amid concerns it might hide the remains of Matteau’s long-estranged father, Herbert George Matteau Sr.

A cousin of the family living in La Guadaloupe, Quebec, reported to authorities that she hadn’t heard from Matteau Sr. since late October 1991, shortly after his wife, Marilyn, passed away.

So where has he been for over nineteen years? Herb Matteau Jr. told family members his father’s drinking worsened after his mother’s death, and one day he just up and left. No prior notice. Nothing.

The cousin, who wishes to remain anonymous, said the family believed the story because Matteau Sr. had a temperamental personality, drank heavily, and talked about leaving the struggling dairy business behind. Now, after hearing of the murders committed by Herb Matteau Jr., the few surviving family members are questioning the story.

In a brief interview, Acresville Police Chief David Brantford said, “We explored the most obvious avenues first: a social security number trace and financial records. Mr. Matteau’s bank account hasn’t been touched, nor has he filed a tax return since 1991.

“We’ve been poring over unidentified bodies cases throughout Canada with no luck yet.”

When asked if he believes the farm could hide the remains of Matteau Sr., Brantford stated, “That would be speculation. At this point, we’re simply exploring all avenues as to his whereabouts. There’s no evidence that a crime was even committed. Though the circumstances are suspicious.”

Investigators reported weeks ago that some parts of the Matteau farmhouse were almost museum-like, not having been touched in years.

Born in 1938, Herbert George Matteau would be seventy-two now.

Allan folded up the newspaper and put it down, not knowing what to make of the story. Nineteen years was a long time to have dropped off the face of the earth. But there was a smattering of people who voluntarily walked away from their lives all the time for one reason or another and became lost among the population. Their disappearances were never reported, never missed.

On the flip side of that, Allan believed there must’ve been a confluence of social, psychological, and biological factors in Herb Matteau’s past fueling the bloodshed he unleashed. In a way, killing his father made sense. It hinted at abuse in his life, at an unstable environment that could plant the seeds for his antisocial and violent behavior in later years.

Against his will, Allan pictured Matteau standing on the back steps of his farmhouse, the revolver gripped tight in his hand and that eerie resignation about him. The image had invaded Allan’s dreams since the shooting had happened. Only in his dreams, the chain of events differed, became weird.

Matteau’s revolver is loaded, and he brings it up in front of him with lightning speed. Allan raises his own gun in response, but the trigger isn’t there. His index finger taps frantically at empty air as the madman in front of him opens fire. Allan hears the loud pops, sees the muzzle flashes, so bright they sear his eyes. He feels the fiery heat of the bullets rip through his flesh, shredding his organs to pieces. The blood sprays out of the wounds like a water pipe springing a leak and gathers around his feet in an expanding pool.

The dreams always ended with Herb Matteau glaring at him through ribbons of smoke curling up from the end of his revolver.

Allan wondered if the nightmares were the result of post-shooting trauma. Guilt might be eating away at his subconscious, even though on the surface he felt what he’d done was necessary and justified. After all, he’d thought the revolver was loaded, and Matteau had murdered four innocent people. Indirectly caused the death of Cathy Ambré. Had her sister, Trixy, not disappeared, Allan was convinced Cathy wouldn’t have taken her life. Trixy had been the pillar of support Cathy needed to lean on.

Strangely, Allan realized, he’d had no nightmares while in Toronto. He wondered if they would come back now that he was back in Halifax, back in this tiring job.

Allan sat down and rolled up his shirtsleeves, scooted his chair close to the desk. He started to review Audra’s files, searching for some loose piece of information that would help point him toward the path of a killer.

Audra and other officers had interviewed more than one hundred people during the initial canvass and recanvass of the area. Only one had seen a suspicious man in the neighborhood during the time of the murder. The same man as on the surveillance video.

Even if the murder had occurred in broad daylight with witnesses, Allan knew most of them wouldn’t say a word. Dory was a known member of the Black Scorpions, and they had a reputation around Halifax for violence. Two of their members—Jarret Shapiro and Sullivan McAda—had been sent to prison last fall for the murder of Ruben Gamble, a poor bystander cut down in a botched drive-by shooting of a rival gang member. The Black Scorpions were also suspects in several unsolved home invasions, break-ins, and assaults throughout the city over the past few years.

Dory’s murder came as no surprise to Allan. Those were the risks associated with that culture of violence and danger. What came as a surprise was the sheer brutality of the killing. One could assume it had been a gang-initiated murder or been done by a rival drug gang vying for territory. But why spend so much time with Dory? Why use an axe?

While uncommon, axes had certainly been used by gangs in the past. So had hammers, cleavers, and chains. They used almost anything they could get their hands on. But it was rare in Halifax. More often than not, gangs in the city used guns they stole from homes around the province. Sometimes black-market ones if they had those connections.

Allan read Audra’s list of criminals associated with Dory outside of those in his gang. There were nine of them, and Allan recognized each name. Four were back in jail. Two had moved away. One had died in a car accident. The remaining two had alibis.

Allan propped his elbows on top of the desk, lowered his face into his hands, and rubbed his temples. He felt exhausted, weighed down by the day. He needed a jolt of caffeine to keep him awake. There was still so much more work to do.

Rising from his chair, he left the office and went down to the lunchroom to grab a coffee.