The following weekend,
Saturday night into Sunday morning, February 12-13, 1999
Andrew Stettler believed that the meeting had gone well. At the squash club, he had let Werner Honigwachs know that his universe was to be guided differently from now on, that the planets would be altering their orbits. He had told him that the policeman would have to die.
“Look up,” he instructed Honigwachs in the change room.
Sitting with his pants off in front of his locker, the company president did so.
“No, sir,” Stettler corrected him. “That’s down for you. Now look down.”
Confused, Honigwachs stared at the patch of floor between his bare feet.
“Wrong again. That’s up for you now. Don’t worry. You’ll figure it out.”
Honigwachs phoned him later on. He invited him to come out to fishing shack on the lake, near BioLogika. Andy was both suspicious and wary. He had told Honigwachs that the meeting with the Montreal cop was to take place nearby the very next morning, and he questioned the wisdom of visiting the lake that night.
Honigwachs appealed to his sense of mystery. “There’s stuff you should know that you don’t know yet, and the best place to find it out is on the lake. You don’t want to meet that cop in that fishing shack without talking to me first.”
He didn’t like it, but he had to accept the terms. “All right.”
Honigwachs knew what he had to do. Had Stettler not betrayed them? He had told Lucy, through Luc, about the drug cocktails being lethal. Perhaps he could be forgiven for that, but there was no discounting his latest threat. Andrew Stettler had taunted him and promised the death of a policeman. He had vowed to turn his world upside down. When Honigwachs had reported that news to Camille, she’d told him, “He’s trying to scare you.”
“He succeeded.”
“No, you don’t get it. He’s trying to scare you once and for all. Why would he tell you about something like that ahead of time? He wants you in his pocket.”
“Oh, God, what a mess.”
Camille had tried to soothe him over the phone. Before long, they had agreed to meet at a bar halfway between BioLogika and Hillier-Largent.
The room was windowless, with a plethora of TV sets tuned to yesterday’s hockey games and six-month old golf, all that was being broadcast on a dull day. Camille was waiting for him when Honigwachs strode inside.
“I didn’t think it would come to this,” she said. She was declining to look at him, but he knew what she meant.
“It hasn’t,” Honigwachs said.
“Stettler has to go.”
“Don’t be a drama queen, Camille.”
She scooped up her purse then and started to slide out of the booth, but Honigwachs grabbed her wrist. “Sit down, Camille,” he said calmly.
She did. This time she stared at him across the table. “Stettler has to go,” she repeated.
“Why?”
“He’s part of the mob. Andy knows we’re sitting on a fortune. He knows about all the necessary stuff we had to go through to get where we are today. Killing a cop is stupid, unless you see it for what it is. He’s out to get you. Now that you’ve done your work and made your strike. As BioLogika stock rises he’ll own you, own us, own this operation. You have to strike first, Werner. I can’t believe it’s come to this point, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but there’s no alternative.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“He told you he’s killing the cop. What killer, what mob guy, would say that unless he had a reason to say that? What’s his reason, Werner. Damn it! Think!”
Honigwachs gazed at her awhile. Their waitress came and went and returned with their drinks, and he continued to stare.
They did not exchange another word at that meeting. He departed soon after finishing his drink, and they did not speak again until after Honigwachs had commanded Stettler to meet him in Camille’s shack. The next time they met was to concoct a plan for which everything was already in motion.
And now, after asking Andy to wait in the car, he was calling Camille to check that she was prepared and to build up his courage.
He dialled the company cell phone he had lent her.
“I’m bringing him over.”
“I’m ready,” Camille said. “Are you?”
The phone shook in his hand. “I’m ready,” he testified, sounding as though he was trying to convince himself.
“This is the only way we can go, Werner.”
“That’s what you keep telling me.”
“Werner, you have to be sure. You have to be absolutely certain.” I am.”
“Do you have the guts, Werner?” she asked him quietly.
“Watch me,” he whispered.
“Shoot straight.”
“He’ll be an inch away.”
Honigwachs drove Stettler down to the lake and parked at the nearby strip mall, then the two men walked the short distance onto the ice. Under a full moon, the lake with its blanket of snow shone in the dark, the fishing huts gently emitting smoke from their tin chimneys in the snapping cold. Arriving at a hut, Honigwachs opened the door, his smile having expanded to a broad beam. As he stepped inside, Andy was in for a surprise, even while a lurking suspicion was being confirmed—the hut belonged to Camille Choquette, and she was there to greet him.
“Come on in, Andy. Take a load off.”
“What’s this about?”
“Come in first.”
There wasn’t all that much room for the two men to remove their outerwear without bumping into one another. When they sat down on opposite bunks, they found the cabin quite toasty.
“I’ve had a problem,” Werner Honigwachs announced. “This is my way to solve it.”
“What problem’s that?” The president had called him away from a quiet night at home. Andy’s shirt was an earth-tone green, something he usually put on only around the house. He’d dropped his good jeans into the laundry his mother had going and so had thrown on an old pair with frayed cuffs and holes worn in the hip pockets. The denim was thin for the cold, and he appreciated the stove’s heat.
“Tomorrow, you and Camille have a meeting with Sergeant-Detective Emile Cinq-Mars.”
“That’s right.”
“The two of you should go into that meeting with the knowledge that you’re on the same team. That’s what I think.” Honigwachs himself was casually dressed for this occasion, as if he had just come from putting his kids to bed. He wore a bulky wool sweater and corduroy pants.
“We are?”
“You are.”
Andy put a hand to the back of his neck and gave himself a gentle massage, as if he needed to relieve a pent-up tension. “Sir, I can see by your grin that you’re feeling pretty pleased with yourself. Like you just swallowed a canary.”
“I put one over on you, Andy. Admit it!”
“But anytime you want to compromise my identity to anyone, I might suggest that you check that out with me first. You told Camille about me?”
“Now listen, Andy—”
“No, asshole! You listen! Don’t go around telling people who I am or what I do! Is that absolutely crystal clear?”
“Andy—”
“Is it? Crystal?”
Unaccustomed to being dressed down, Werner Honigwachs needed time to come around. He sighed heavily and looked around the cabin, anywhere but at the two people in it, and finally he conceded that he had missed a step. “I’m sorry about that, Andy. You’re right. You’re right. I should have checked first.”
“Of all the harebrained—”
“I should have checked first. You’re absolutely right on that.”
“Okay. All right,” Andy said, tamping down his rage. “So. Camille. You’re in the loop.”
“You’re good, Andy. I’ll give you that. You’re really good.”
He accepted her compliment with a wry smile. “You’re not so bad yourself.”
“Tell me…” Camille asked. She closed her hands over her crossed knees, shaking the dangling foot.
“What?”
“Your thing with Lucy. Is that for real? Do you love her? Or are you just, you know, stringing her along?”
Andy laughed lightly. “As you said, I’m good at what I do. That’s the kind of detail that you will never know, Camille. You’ll have to guess.”
“You’re the master.”
“If you say so.” He turned to face Honigwachs again. “What’s this about?”
Honigwachs smiled and opened his hands in a gesture of conviviality. “I thought we’d fish, Andy. And, of course, discuss tomorrow’s meeting.”
“All right,” the younger man agreed. “We can do that.”
“Good. Camille? You’re the expert. Show us how it’s done.”
She opened the floorboards for the men and saw to it that they both had lines with hooks and bait. Andy insisted on hooking his own minnows.
“Tell me something, Camille,” Andy said. “I always wanted to ask you. I just never found the right … moment. You’re a scientist, right?”
“I know my way around a lab.”
“You’re educated?”
“Is that such a shock?”
“Not at all. I know you’re a bright woman. But, you know, you and me, we can both tell, we’re from the same kind of background. You know? More or less.” He paused to concentrate on hooking a minnow. “I think it’s great that you got an education, I’m just curious about it, that’s all. I don’t mean to insult you.”
The question struck a chord. Camille was interested in answering. “I liked science. That was one thing. When I was a kid. But probably I never would’ve gone to school, to university, if I hadn’t had a benefactor.”
“A benefactor?”
“Yeah.”
“Now be careful, Camille.” He lowered his hook through the ice into the water. “You know what some people would call a benefactor.”
“No. What?”
“A sugar daddy.”
Having gotten the men settled away, she spooned coffee into a pot for perking over the stove. Camille laughed lightly. “Nothing like that. I never actually met our benefactor.”
“What do you mean, Our’?” Honigwachs asked, getting interested in the story himself.
“My dad and me.”
“Why did you and your dad have a benefactor, Camille?”
The way Andy posed the question startled her. She stopped what she was doing in mid-motion and stared at him, her spoon hovering above the pot. “You’re kidding me,” she said.
“How’s that?” Andrew Stettler bobbed his line in the water, as though nothing else could interest him at the moment.
“You know. You bastard. You know.”
Honigwachs looked from one to the other and back again. “What are you talking about?” he asked finally. “What does Andy know?”
Camille continued to wait, and stare. Abruptly, she broke off her gaze and finished what she was doing.
“What do you know?” Honigwachs asked Andy.
“Camille had a brother.” Andy looked at her at last to gauge her reaction. “He was killed in his youth. Gunshot. Tragic. Wrong place, wrong time, that sort of thing. Well, associates of mine—”
“Hell’s Angels?” Honigwachs wondered out loud.
Andy shot him a stern glance. “You can’t expect me to answer that.”
“I understand. I’m sorry. Go on. Your associates—”
“—felt sympathetic.”
Camille made an odd sound, a kind of snort.
“You don’t agree?” Andy asked her.
“Guilty, I would say. They felt guilty.”
Andrew Stettler stared down at his fishing hole for a few moments, and then began to nod. “You could be right about that. Associates of mine—I mean the older crew, you know?—they felt some guilt for the incident. Nobody wants to see the innocent die. It’s bad public relations. They contacted the dead boy’s father and, as I understand it, offered to pay for the education of the family’s remaining child.”
Again, Honigwachs looked from one young person to the next. “That other child,” he asked finally, “that would be Camille?”
“That would be me,” Camille concurred. After putting the coffeepot on the stove, she stood with her hands on her hips. “Did you bring a bottle, Werner?”
“Oh, shit.” He slapped his forehead. “I left it in the car.”
“I don’t need a drink,” Andy said.
“I do,” Camille barked out.
“All right,” Honigwachs offered. “I’ll walk back and get it. It was my own fault.”
“Just give me your car keys. I’ll take the Ski-Doo. Be back in a second.”
Honigwachs put the little stick-holder for his fishing line down, stood, and went through his coat pockets in search of his keys. Camille put on her one-piece snowmobile outfit.
She was going out the door when she paused and shut it tightly again. “We don’t agree with you,” she said, “about the cop thingamajigger.”
“Camille,” Honigwachs protested. He put his coat back down but remained standing.
“What thingamajigger?” Stettler asked.
“You know,” Honigwachs said.
Stettler glanced between the two of them.
“The murder thing,” Camille specified.
“You told her?” Stettler was clearly angry again.
“She’s in the loop.”
“Not my loop, she isn’t. You told her about a cop-killing? Are you crazy?”
“I wanted her advice,” Honigwachs demurred.
“Here’s my advice. Shut the fuck up. Now I’ll have to rethink. Too bad I already gave that order.”
Honigwachs was mortified. “You did?”
“Call it off,” Camille suggested.
“Yeah?” Stettler asked her. “That helps you out how?”
“We’re all in this together.”
“No we’re not. I’m not in this with you. I didn’t ask this asshole to blab to the whole world about my plans.”
Honigwachs appeared offended. “It wasn’t the whole world—”
“It was a big enough chunk!” Stettler told him. “Jesus H. Christ!”
Camille had said her piece, and so she went outside in search of alcohol. The two men who remained behind sat in a glum mood.
“Un-freaking-believable,” Stettler mumbled.
Honigwachs took a stab at changing the mood. “That’s quite a story,” he said, while he continued to search through his pockets for something. “About Camille. I guess that’s one way to get an education.”
“There was more to it than that.”
“Oh? Hey, just grab hold of my line there, Andy. Thanks. I wouldn’t want a big one to slip away.”
Outside, the snowmobile sputtered, then roared.
Andrew Stettler leaned across the hole in the water to retrieve the other line. From the pocket of his winter coat, Honigwachs pulled out a pistol.
The Ski-Doo revved louder.
The barrel of the gun grazed the back of the young man’s neck and the older man’s hands shook and Stettler jerked slightly.
“Oh shit,” Stettler said under his breath. He bolted up.
Honigwachs fired.
He shot him through the neck.
Stettler fell face forward. His body continued to flex and thrash. Honigwachs slumped down onto the floor, suddenly unable to stand. He was breathing heavily and erratically, and outside the snowmobile continued to roar. Stettler’s feet started kicking.
“Oh God, oh God,” Honigwachs said.
Suddenly his voice was loud as the snowmobile was shut down.
The door opened, and Camille Choquette stepped back inside.
“Oh God. Oh God.”
“What? Werner, what’s wrong?”
“He’s not dead. He’s not dead yet!”
His head at the rim of the fishing hole, Andrew Stettler flopped like a hooked walleye.
Camille Choquette shut the door quickly.
“Damn it! Did you miss? How could you miss?”
“He’s not dead,” Honigwachs said.
Stettler’s legs trembled and kicked, but there was little life in him.
“You missed? From an inch away?”
“Start your Ski-Doo again,” Honigwachs ordered, getting a grip on himself and breathing deeply. He struggled up to his knees. “I was nervous, all right? I’ll shoot him a second time.”
“Don’t be an idiot!” Camille scolded him. “You can’t attract attention. Do something else. Drown him. Drown him like a kitten. Do something, Werner!”
“Camille, my God.”
She shook him. “You have to do it! You can’t stop now!”
He took a deep breath, then stood and moved above the trapdoor, stepped down onto the ice, and, without any further hesitation, pressed his boot onto the back of Stettler’s head. He shoved his face into the water where it flooded up into the ice-hole, and he held him there while his arms flapped and his legs trembled. All the while, Honigwachs just looked up at the ceiling. He held him there until the young man moved no more, and after that continued to keep his face buried underwater.
Camille held her chin in her hand and stared.
Then Honigwachs raised his boot and the body below him remained motionless.
“He’s done,” Camille said, and Honigwachs finally looked over at her. He still held his gun.
“Shit,” he said. “Ah, shit, he didn’t die.”
“What’s your problem?”
“Camille!”
“Werner, pull yourself together. We have work to do.”
He stared at the body awhile, then nodded. He stepped out of the hole onto the floor of the cabin, drawing himself up to his full height, as though assuming his place in all of this and shaking off the shock of his own action. “All right,” he said. “Let’s get it done.”
Together they pulled Stettler’s face out of the water and turned him over onto his back. He lay on the ice with his knees and lower legs perched on the cabin floor. They dragged him to one side of the ice-fishing hole and arranged him out of their way, then Camille went outside and fetched a few tools.
She carried in a block-and-tackle attached to a hook and a length of chain.
She went out again and returned with an ice-block carrier.
Then she closed and locked the door.
By the light of the full moon and a single candle the two applied themselves to the task at hand. First Honigwachs, then Camille, chipped away at a crack in the ice. They had previously sawn out a block around the ice-hole with a chainsaw, which, as they had anticipated, had refrozen to the lake’s ice. They laboured to break it free once again. Camille always kept a crowbar handy to shatter ice, and she used it now to attack the fault lines around the block, and it was partially freed.
They worked steadily, methodically, calmly. Honigwachs utilized his strength and conditioning as both a squash player and a horseman, pacing himself but refusing to rest. He needed another hour to separate the block from the frozen lake.
On his back on the ice, Andrew Stettler’s body froze. The cabin went cold.
The huts were constructed of debris taken from job sites, and for this one a hefty frame supported a stout roof beam. Camille wound the heavy chain around the beam. She attached the block-and-tackle to the chain and placed the ice-carrier on the hook, lowering it to the water. She had to fuss with it, but eventually they managed to grip the block of ice with the carrier and raise it higher, with Honigwachs pulling on the rope and Camille working the crowbar to good advantage. When the block dangled above the lake, swinging slightly on its apparatus as the old timbers creaked with the strain, Honigwachs spun a knot and the two sat down to rest.
“The fire’s gone out,” Honigwachs noted.
“Nobody needs to see our smoke.”
“Let’s move the body a bit. I don’t want him freezing to the ice.”
“Right.”
They shifted Stettler a little, until they were certain that he wasn’t stuck.
“Bastard,” Honigwachs said, still emotional. “He blew the whistle on us.”
“Organized crime, my ass. He was weak. He found out his friend was being treated so he blew the whole operation, then tried to finesse his way out. I still say the dumb prick fell in love.”
“Don’t take that organized crime thing too lightly, Camille. The last thing we want is to have those guys breathing down our necks.”
“It’s the perfect crime, Werner. Nobody can look at you for this.”
“Hope so.”
Camille stood and picked up the bait bucket half-filled with water. Ice had frozen on the water’s surface and she broke through it with several light taps of the crowbar, then slid the minnows into a bowl. She stood the candle alongside the bowl to help keep the water warm.
“What did you do that for?” Honigwachs asked.
“I need the bucket.”
“What for?”
“Wait and see.”
The cold had penetrated the cabin, and it was colder still beneath the floorboards, where the ice in the ears, mouth, nostrils and lungs of Andrew Stettler continued to expand. Scant blood was evident, and what there was had congealed in the frigid temperature.
“All right,” Honigwachs announced. “Let’s get it done.”
Together they hoisted the dead man up, and dropped him feet first into the lake, through the hole they’d cleared by removing the block of ice. His head bobbed in the opening. Using a plastic serving spoon, Camille held his hair and the top of his coat against the bottom of the ice, long enough for him to freeze in place.
“This way,” she said, although they had already been through this, and she was merely confirming their agreement, “nobody will suspect I did it, not in my own shack. But that tramp Lucy will fear this. Fear she’s next. That fancy cop they’re bringing in, he’ll have his hands full with this. He won’t get around to much else.”
“Imagine. Andy ordered him killed. A cop! He never consulted me. Wouldn’t even listen to me when he told me about it.”
“The cop might die anyway,” Camille reminded him. “Andy being dead might not stop that. Not that I mind.”
“Who knows? But we’re not connected to it and we don’t care. Not any more, that’s for sure.”
“Only Andy could betray us.”
“He can’t now,” Honigwachs brayed.
“That’s right.” She stood beside him, holding his arm. She whispered, “We had to do this, Werner. You gave Andy the extra drugs for Lucy. He tied you to this. He was going to kill that cop and lord it over you. He was going to make your life miserable, squeeze the life’s blood out of your company. What did he say to you about that?”
“ ‘Get it straight.’ That’s what he told me. ‘Remember who’s really in charge.’”
“Intimidation.” She tugged his arm. “Who did he think he was? He was a sexy guy but, come on, he was a punk. Everything you’ve worked for should go to him? You’re supposed to charge him an administration fee and be happy with that? That’s a shakedown. That’s not right, Werner. We had to do this. We had to test enzyme accelerators in order to discover their preferred script, and we had to do this.”
Honigwachs nodded. “Funny. His last words were about you.”
“Oh yeah? How romantic. What were they?”
“I can’t remember. Something … I don’t know.”
“Come on. Relax. Think.”
Honigwachs moved his arm around her shoulders and pressed her against his side. “Something about … that … there’s more to your story than you told us. About your brother and your benefactor and all that. Something like that.”
Camille put her arms around his waist. “I don’t know what he meant.”
Honigwachs sighed. “Andy could’ve made a link,” he said, as though he still needed to justify the deed once again. This event put him close to the action. He was no longer safely ensconced in his suite while others performed his handiwork. “You know how cops make crooks talk. They threaten them with more jail time and the dickheads cough up everything they know.
“Once upon a time,” Camille assured him. “Not any more. He’s dead. He got what he deserved.”
“He’s out of the picture, that’s the main thing. The one person nobody could trust is gone. We’re in the clear.”
“All the way, baby.”
Satisfied that Andrew Stettler’s corpse would not be floating away, Camille turned around. In a drawer she kept a hammer and chisel that she often used to chip away at the ice, and she did so now, down on her knees, this time to remove a coating of blood, hair, and frozen flesh. She gathered the contaminated shards of ice together in a heap, and used a cup to pick them up and drop them into the lake. Using the serving spoon again, she guided them under the ice-pack, away from the body.
She decided that the bullet must have gone straight down the ice-hole, as it was nowhere in evidence. Good. Standing again, Camille worked on the block of ice dangling above the cabin floor, cleaning it of incriminating material and removing the shards. Then, with Honigwachs, she lowered the block back into place.
They sat on the benches, admiring their achievement.
Stettler’s head bobbed in the dark aperture.
Camille stood at last and visited the minnows again. “I can use these tomorrow, make it look like I came here to fish. It’s okay if they freeze. Once I put the stove on they’ll thaw out.” She slid them from one bowl into another, moving the water to stop it from icing just yet. Then she retrieved the bucket and leaned over the hole in the ice and, edging Stettler’s head aside, filled it about a third full of water. She slowly poured the cold water over the old ice, filling the gouges she’d created to clean the surface of blood. She dug snow out from under the cabin floor and pressed that into the cracks as well, creating an old-looking patina. The fresh surface was smooth and quick to freeze. She and Honigwachs pulled the boards back into place and covered the corpse.
“That’ll be some meeting tomorrow,” Honigwachs imagined.
She kissed him.
Residual warmth continued to emanate from the stove, so Camille returned the minnows to the pail, which she then left on the stovetop. She’d let the candle burn itself out.
She took down the chain and packed the tools.
Having walked onto the ice, Honigwachs intended to walk off. First he’d mix his steps with hundreds of others. Camille would leave by snowmobile, so that neither person’s identity or presence—nor Stettler’s absence—would be noted by anyone, not in the dark, not out on the lake.
The last job in the cabin for Werner Honigwachs was to take the pistol that he had used to shoot Andrew Stettler and wipe it clean of prints on a hand towel. When he was done, Camille, wearing her snowmobile mitts, took it from him. “They’ll look for it underwater. I’ll take it away from here.”
She started up her Ski-Doo and roared off into the night, heading across the lake toward home. Knowing that she was defeating others—Lucy and Charlie and this new cop coming on the scene—gave her a sense of achievement, as though outwitting her foes was justification in itself. Charging across the lake under the bright winter moon she raised a fist in the air, shaking it with savage fury.
Approaching the far shore, in a part of the lake where the current was strong and where the ice broke up first every spring, she stopped her machine and buried the pistol deep in the snow. When the ice melted, the weapon would sink to the bottom of the lake. Until then, it would be well hidden.
Driving on, her satisfaction immense, and yet assailed by quirky spasms of guilt, Camille Choquette knew enough to kick off the negative feelings. She had planned a perfect murder. Honigwachs had done his job, even if he had missed slightly. At least he had pulled the trigger. Even better, Andrew Stettler had confessed to knowing associates familiar with the situation concerning her father and dead brother. That alone made her happy he was dead. He had said there was more to her story. Well, death had shut him up. “Yes!” she shouted under the roar of her engine. “There’s more! You bastard! There’s more!” Upon the pristine white of the frozen lake she was riding freely under an immaculate sky, observed only by the moon and stars.
Rather than dealing with the complication of hiring a babysitter, she had given her child a mild sedative and put her to bed with a brood of dolls, many of which were aged, raggedy and patched, left over from her own childhood and sewn together. Arriving home, Camille would have nothing more to do than tuck herself into bed and dream the dreams of the blessed. She was, she believed, home free.
She roared on.