Twenty-Four

Monday morning

February 4, 2019

DANIELLE WAS TRYING TO FOCUS on the words coming out of the very bright and well-painted lips of the young woman sitting across from her, who was wearing a shocking amount of TV makeup. She was so utterly cheerful and earnest that Danielle felt like giggling. What did she just say? Danielle hadn’t slept much the night before, and when she didn’t get her six hours in, she couldn’t be fully functional, no matter how many espressos she poured down her throat. She had spent all weekend obsessively checking all the Montreal newspapers, French and English, looking for any information about the woman in the tunnel. It had been just over a week, and there was nothing. Nothing more about her. Like she had never existed. Had she hallucinated the whole report she’d seen in the first place? She’d had another nightmare so awful and terrifying that she was scared to fall asleep and experience anything like it again. She obsessively worried about CCTV cameras—like the ones she’d seen on British murder mysteries—where they can easily track the criminal on any street anywhere it seemed. She poured over the Ville de Montréal website and discovered that there was a camera at the exit of the tunnel, but at least a block away. Could they track her car coming out? Could they see her license plate? Was she on camera driving into the tunnel? Could they check her computer and see her search history looking for the fucking cameras? Every time her phone rang or buzzed she was terrified the police were calling. Did she kill that woman? She killed that woman. She killed that woman—

“Danielle Champagne, not only are you a lifestyle guru, a fashionista, and an entrepreneur who empowers women to be fearless and pursue their dreams, but you are also embarking on yet another project.” The interviewer’s tone changed completely. Now it was somber and sincere. She leaned in. “Tell us about this new, very important organization you have created,” she checked her notes, “called Ça Suffit?”

Danielle offered her a tight smile, uncrossed her legs and leaned closer. “As you know, Ça Suffit means That’s Enough.” And that is what our organization is saying—we have seen too many women fall victim to domestic, to conjugal violence, and it has to stop. The statistics are horrifying. Did you know that a woman or girl was killed every two-and-a-half days in Canada last year?” Danielle’s voice softened. “I have an eighteen-year-old daughter—my only child. Did you know that for women between eighteen and twenty-five, the leading cause of death is conjugal violence? Did you know that conjugal femicide is not treated as seriously by the authorities, because women killed by male partners are still seen as property? They call it the ‘intimacy discount.’ Can you imagine?” Danielle noticed the producer tapping his watch at the interviewer. Time was up. “Women are still most at risk with men they are intimate with or who they should be able to trust.”

The interviewer had to shift emotional gears quickly. “One last question, Danielle Champagne. How on earth do you do it all?” Danielle had answered this question so many times she was on verbal automatic pilot. “Good sex, good sleep, good coffee,” she paused for effect, “and although I am a woman, great big gonads.” The interviewer laughed a little too long and enthusiastically, and then kissed Danielle on both cheeks to thank her. Within seconds, she was on to her next guest.

Danielle decided to take a few minutes to check her emails in the lounge they provided for visitors, and sat down on a bright orange plastic chair. A young man already in the room—a later guest she presumed—was thumbing so madly on his phone he didn’t even look up when she came in.

Maybe someone else had hit the woman. Hers wasn’t the only car in the tunnel that night. There must have been dozens. Hundreds. But Danielle thought about the damage to her Lexus that she’d had fixed. Like a criminal, she went to a shop in St. Eustache far from her home, and the guy fixed it right then and there on the spot. She had paid him in cash. He folded the bills into his pocket without saying anything. But what was she expecting him to say? Did you just hit someone with this car and leave her there to die? Danielle wondered if he could identify her later. A ping from her phone pulled her out of her speculation, and she quickly tapped out a response to her assistant, Chloé. She had to focus on her work now.

At first she thought she’d turn herself in. Go to the police and tell them exactly what happened. There was a blizzard. She didn’t see her. She came out of nowhere. She thought it was a dog. Too scared to stop. It was wrong not to stop, she knew that, but she just couldn’t. It was an honest, a human mistake. But if she turned herself in, the press would go wild. Her reputation would be destroyed. So would her business and everything else she had. Because in the end, the product Danielle Champagne was selling so successfully in Canada and all over the world, was herself. What possible good would her confession do? It would not change anything. Except Julie’s life would be destroyed, her dream of the Sorbonne or Oxford shattered. Not to mention the hundreds—and soon, thousands—of people working for Danielle whose jobs would be on the line. Her confession would only destroy. It would not bring anyone back. It would not be just. It would not be right.

Danielle returned her phone to her purse and gathered her coat and gloves. As she headed for the door towards the elevators, she glanced up at one of the several large screens which were mounted on one wall of the lounge. At the bottom of the screen the caption read: Victim of Hit-and-Run Identified. On the screen was an out of focus picture of a young woman in a white parka, standing on a huge rock by a lake, smiling broadly at the photographer. She looked to be Indian. Or maybe Inuit. Twenty-six-year-old Rosie Nukilik. Danielle felt like someone had sucker punched her hard in the stomach. Now she had a name.