The next day, Wednesday, February 16, 1999
Dawn found Emile Cinq-Mars invigorated, driving eastbound toward the city, connecting with the early commuter traffic that flowed from the rural communities on either side of the Quebec-Ontario border. Like him, his fellow drivers had chosen life in the countryside while holding down city jobs, and the price to be paid was late nights, early risings, and hard drives in the winter’s dark along snowy highways. Frustrated by the slow pace, Cinq-Mars dug out his red cherry flasher from under the passenger seat, leaning way over and bobbing up again to check on the traffic until he’d rooted it out. He ran the wire to the cigarette lighter, opened his side window, and plopped it on the rooftop of his Pathfinder, where it would be held in place by magnets. That gave him some driving room, and he sped on through to downtown Montreal.
He had a jag on. His sleep had been beneficial, and now he felt that he was ready to take command of this case.
At Police Headquarters he primed himself with coffee. He had no room to stomp around in his cubicle, but when he stepped outside to the squad room he bumped into people and desks. So he invaded the lunch room and told the cops hanging around in there to get the hell out. By the time Bill Mathers arrived he was pacing, and taunting himself.
“Emile?” Mathers had had a bad night, beginning with his investigation of the car-bombing of Harry Hillier. When he had called his wife later, she’d been in a state, upset by the news that a cop had been beaten in his home and murdered.
Cinq-Mars stopped in his tracks, suddenly surprised to see him. “Bill.”
“What’s going on?”
“I have this case,” the older man said.
“What do you mean? What do you have?”
“Nothing. Nothing yet,” the senior cop admitted.
“You have this case, but you’ve got nothing. All right.” Mathers sat down, willing to give his partner the benefit of the doubt.
Cinq-Mars turned and faced him. “I can feel it, Bill. I know that I’ve seen something. My mind, in my sleep, somehow, my mind thought things through and understands everything, or understands enough of everything, and I can feel that I’ve got this made. I just don’t know what my mind knows. It’s all—right here!” Cinq-Mars exclaimed, and he held both his open hands a foot away from his eyes.
Mathers watched his partner stomp back and forth. “All right, Emile, I don’t quite know what you’re saying. I’ve never seen you like this before.”
Cinq-Mars stopped again, and sighed, and held out his open hands chest-high. “It’s inside me, Bill. All right? I don’t need more information. I don’t need to interview anyone. My brain either saw something, or figured something out, but that information hasn’t registered yet with me, you know? I don’t have it in my conscious mind, but I do believe, I feel, that it’s all inside me.” In his pent-up frustration, Cinq-Mars pushed a hand through his slightly graying hair. He looked up at the ceiling for a moment, then said, “When I talked to my father’s priest, Father Réjean, I told him that my job is to be ready. That sounded so foolish at the time. Except that a part of me believed it. And I still do. The only thing I can offer in this job is readiness. If something happens, I react, and I have to be ready to react. I woke up this morning, Bill, and I felt ready. I’ve trained myself for a case like this my entire adult life. I’m prepared, Bill. I just don’t have all the synapses firing and connecting, not yet.”
Mathers nodded sympathetically. “You’re wired, Emile. Maybe you should try calming down. If you’re waiting for something to float to the surface, you might want to relax.”
He was right, of course, and Cinq-Mars conceded as much with an odd grimace. He sat down. They were interrupted by a cop coming in for coffee, and he brayed at the intruder, “Get out! Get out now!” The rookie beat a retreat.
After awhile, Mathers tried to prime him. “You have this case.”
The senior detective nodded. “I saw something. That’s what I think, anyhow. It must have been at Painchaud’s house. I saw the answer, or the clue we need. In all that mess, something registered with me, but subconsciously. Damn it, Bill, what was it? I know it’s important. Why can’t I get at it?”
They were interrupted again, but this time, before he could yell, Cinq-Mars was informed that a call had come through to him from the Mohawk Peacekeepers. He and Mathers returned to his cubicle where he picked up his phone. “Cinq-Mars here.”
“It’s Roland Harvey.”
He sat in his swivel chair behind his desk. “It’s good to hear from you.”
“I set it up with Lucy for this afternoon. Anytime after one, she said.”
“I just show up at the monastery?”
“That’s it. It’s the wing on the west, the part that looks like a castle. Either Lucy or some monk will meet you, show you where to go.”
“Any restrictions?” He slouched down, stretching his neck and legs. As he spoke he surveyed his desk. The clutter of paper was getting out of hand.
“I wouldn’t bring in the SWAT. That might spook her.”
Cinq-Mars appreciated the humor, as it showed that they were getting along, a trust was forming. “Thanks for this, Roland. Will you be there yourself?’
“Lucy said no. It’ll be you and her.”
“All right then. Thanks again.”
He hung up, put his hands behind his head, and told Mathers the news.
“What’re you going to ask her?” Mathers wanted to know. He stood, thinking about going out for a coffee.
“To be decided.”
Mathers left and when he came back he was blowing the steam off the top of his mug. He put his coffee down to cool beside the computer—perpetually unused—and with his left hand played with the cord for the mouse, which hung off the edge of the desk. The day the department had furnished Cinq-Mars with a computer, the curmudgeon had installed an antique clock on a top shelf that tolled the hour and half-hour with a deep mellow chime. Most of the squad believed it was a message to the upper ranks to screw off. While the mouse dangled freely, advising anyone who entered not to ask for his e-mail address, the keyboard, Mathers noticed, lay buried under files on a side shelf.
“Spill the beans, Bill,” Cinq-Mars said, noticing a worried look on his partner’s face.
Mathers looked up at him briefly, but chose to remain silent.
“How’s Donna?”
Mathers sighed. “The cop we were working this case with is dead. She noticed that, Emile.”
Cinq-Mars nodded. “It is tragic. Today, every cop’s wife is rethinking.”
“I think Donna has done her thinking on this.”
“Really? And?” He felt like another coffee himself, but knew that he had better not indulge.
“She wants me and you to split up as partners.”
Cinq-Mars looked off to one side, taking that in, absorbing the sentiment on the chin. “Now?” he asked. “Today?”
“No,” Mathers shot back, as if that idea was ridiculous. “Not today.”
“When then?” Cinq-Mars kept his hands behind his head, taking his partner’s measure.
Mathers tried a sip of coffee, and he could just manage the temperature. He cocked his head first to one side, then the other. “Tomorrow,” he said. “Or maybe the next day.” He didn’t look at Cinq-Mars after that. He just stared into his mug.
Cinq-Mars sat straighter in his chair and clutched an armrest in each hand. He observed his partner a moment, then deliberately averted his gaze to spare him the severity of his disapproval. He wouldn’t tell him that his wife had to understand that she could not dictate how he did his job, that she just didn’t have the proper expertise. In the past he had been able to assure both of them that his notoriety gave them a kind of unofficial immunity—it was dangerous to kill a cop, extremely so if he happened to be famous. Recent events had pulled that argument out from under him. “Well,” he said quietly. “That’ll be a sad day. I don’t look forward to it.” He lowered his head a moment, as though to shift mental gears. “Bill, tell me about the car-bombing. What’s there to know?”
Mathers told him about the crime scene. He was glad to do that, to be on a different subject. Harry Hillier had been blown up in his car in the company parking lot upon his departure, after working long hours. The keys were in the ignition, and the bomb squad speculated that starting the car had ignited the explosion. The windows in Hillier-Largent were blown out, and residents for blocks around had been shaken off their favourite television sofas. Randall Largent, Mathers said, had arrived on the scene and was upset, even hysterical.
Cinq-Mars breathed deeply. “This is part of my problem. Maybe I can’t process my information because I don’t know what I’m trying to do. Am I after the people who killed AIDS sufferers in the States? Am I after Stettler’s killer? Or Charlie’s? What does this bombing have to do with any of that, or the attack on my house? How many people are we after? Deep down, I think it’s a house of cards. I have that impression. If we can get one answer, we’ll know them all. But which crime am I solving? I’m not even sure, and maybe that’s what’s gumming up my head. Partly.”
Glad that Cinq-Mars had not roasted him for his announcement, Mathers nodded. The case was a puzzle, and it was getting more complicated as time passed.
They sat in the cubicle awhile, then Cinq-Mars excused himself to go to the John. While he was gone his phone rang and Mathers answered it. He talked to Lieutenant-Detective Tremblay, and when his partner returned he delivered the bad news.
“Tremblay says we have to stay in. Two New York cops are coming at 12:30. He wants us to talk to them.”
“What for?”
“That he wouldn’t say.”
“Why not?”
Mathers took a swig of coffee before answering. “Emile. Guess what? The Lieutenant doesn’t explain himself to me.”
“We have to wait here?” He checked his watch. “That’s two hours! The hell I’m staying here!” Cinq-Mars stormed from his cubicle for a combative tête-à-tête with his commanding officer. This was supposed to be his day. He had the case inside him, waiting to burst forth in a wild moment of cognitive illumination. He was not supposed to be playing babysitter to visiting cops. Mathers knew that the tirade Tremblay was about to hear would have very little to do with the content of the order he had given, and more to do with his partner’s warring frustrations.
Camille Choquette kept her daughter, Carole, home from school. She didn’t want her blabbing anything she shouldn’t to a teacher or a friend, and word had probably gone around the community that the police had visited her the night before. Everybody would know by now that Charlie was dead.
While the child watched television by herself, Camille tossed and turned on her couch. She hadn’t slept at all through the night, although she had survived the interrogation all right. Sticking to her guns had been the right strategy. Somebody had called her house—according to the SQ officers, it had been Charlie—but no message had been left. No cop accused her. Instead they prowled around her house, apologizing for being thorough. While it was true that Charlie had dialled her place, it was considered understandable, and he had been beaten so badly that no woman would be under suspicion for his murder.
For a while, she answered repetitive questions about the timing. When did she get home? Was it dark? Was she sure it was dark? Where was she before that? At work. What did you do at home? Waited for Charlie. Did she ever leave? Yes. Why? To take my daughter to her friend’s. Why? Because Charlie was coming over.
In the midst of the Q& A merry-go-round, she had played the role of the stricken girlfriend, and eventually her misery had mitigated the police onslaught. She’d arranged to have Carole stay where she was, at her friend’s house, and after midnight she’d been left alone. Lying in her bed, she’d stared at the ceiling, praying that Honigwachs was having a miserable time also, in bed with his wife, fretting about the state of the universe.
The next morning she had picked Carole up early, as everyone in that household was going either to school or to work. Then shortly after noon, while she was serving Carole and herself lunch, Lucy called.
“Lucy! Lucy! Are you all right?” She couldn’t believe it!
“Camille, oh Camille. Charlie’s dead. Did you hear about Harry?”
“What about Harry?” At first, she couldn’t believe that Lucy had called, and then she moved the phone from one ear to the other and wondered if this was a trap.
“He’s dead too. He got blown up in his car. It’s on the radio.”
“Oh my God.”
Who had killed Harry? It couldn’t have been Honigwachs. He participated in murders but he didn’t plan them. Why would anyone want Harry dead? Then she felt suddenly exhilarated. All the fuss would only make it more difficult for anyone to suspect her.
“How are you?” Lucy asked.
Camille spontaneously burst into tears. She wept, and sputtered, and told Lucy that they might be next, that somebody was probably hunting them down.
“I’ve got a real good place to hide,” Lucy told her.
“You do?” She dried her eyes with the back of her hand.
“You could come here too.”
“I could? But, no. I can’t leave Carole.”
“What? Really? Where?” This could be a trap, or this could be the best thing possible, under the circumstances.
“I don’t know if the phones are safe, Camille.”
“Oh my God,” Camille moaned. “Oh my God. We’re not going to make it.”
“Camille. Listen. Drive toward my house. I’ll see you coming. I’ll jump out at you, show you where to go. Come now, Camille. Come right now. Bring Carole with you. I don’t want you to die too, Camille.”
She hesitated, panting into the receiver. Then she said, “All right.”
Camille put the receiver back down in its cradle. Then she went to work. She packed the kinds of clothes someone was likely to take into hiding, for herself and her daughter. The last thing that she tucked away into her overnight bag was Charlie Painchaud’s pistol.
Cinq-Mars alternated between time alone, in which he tried to cull from his memory the answers he was looking for, and time on the phone, in which he tried to learn as much about the death of Charlie Painchaud as the SQ, already knew, hoping that that information might help him.
“Maybe I have to think outside the box,” he told Mathers, who looked at him in surprise. “What? Do you think I’ve never heard current jargon? Isn’t that a new phrase, think outside the box?”
“Yeah,” Mathers assured him. “It is. But what do you mean?”
“I keep thinking that I saw something at Charlie’s house that I passed over. I didn’t take proper note of it. Maybe that’s wrong. Maybe what I saw, or heard, or remembered has nothing to do with Charlie’s house.”
“Maybe. Try to relax about it, Emile.” He was trying to do something about the shambles on his own desk, or at least appear to be interested in his caseload.
“How can I relax? I’ve got two cops flying in from New York for no known purpose other than to waste my time.”
Tremblay had been emphatic. He had to wait for the New Yorkers.
Mathers grunted and didn’t go any further into that problem, not wanting to encovage his partner’s rant. He hadn’t told Cinq-Mars the worst of his own problems. Donna’s demands had some beyond Bill splitting with his partner. She was leaving him. The only thing that would make her stay would be the news that he had quit the department and was looking for another career. He had coaxed her into giving him more time, but first he had to quit the partnership with Cinq-Mars as an act of good faith. She hadn’t given him a couple of days. He had to be off the case and out of the partnership when he came home, or their marriage would be irreparable.
“I’ve made this case, Bill,” Cinq-Mars was muttering as he passed behind the room dividers into his office cubicle. “I know it’s inside me.”
Maybe Donna’s right, Mathers was thinking. The man seemed half mad.
“New York cops!” he was raving, as if the indignity was too much to bear. “I have to waste my time with New York cops! Doesn’t anybody around here know we’ve had a cop-killing?”
They were both quiet awhile, then Cinq-Mars blew up and shouted from behind his dividers, “They’d better show up on time! And if they do, they’d better have something interesting to tell me. Or else!”
Against his better judgment, Mathers replied, “Or else what?”
Cinq-Mars came to the entrance to his cubicle and stared down his lengthy nose at him.
“Sorry,” Mathers apologized. “I didn’t get much sleep last night.”
Another time he heard Cinq-Mars ranting and got up to calm him down. “Apparently, nobody cares if cops are being shot,” he was shouting, “or if key players are being blown up in their cars, or if witnesses are being stuffed under an ice cap or squirreled away from public view to keep them alive. I’m on assignment. I get to talk to New York cops. Whoopee!”
Mathers stood in the entrance and discovered that Cinq-Mars wasn’t ranting to himself but talking on the phone, to his dying father, as it turned out. The morning was shaping up to be a long one for everyone concerned. For his own sake, he hoped that the New York cops arrived on time.
The same day, Wednesday afternoon, February 16th, 1999
They arrived late, escorted by Lieutenant-Detective Remi Tremblay.
“Explain it to me, Bill,” Cinq-Mars whispered as, over the room dividers, he watched the men approach. “If the New York Police Department needs to communicate with us, if they have to do it in person, why are they sending two cops? Two plane tickets, two hotel rooms, double the meals. Either they don’t have a single cop smart enough to keep things straight, or this is a boondoggle. I’ll lay odds these guys brought their skis.”
Standing next to him, buttoning his jacket, Mathers mentioned, “They’re not wearing ski boots, Emile.”
Cinq-Mars wouldn’t be knocked off his soapbox easily. “They were lured here by the cheap Canadian dollar. They’ll want our opinion on restaurants.”
Three men entered the cubicle.
Tremblay undertook the introductions. Austere, he carried himself with a professorial countenance. Not a man displaced by the new wizardry of statistical analysis or computer-generated profiles of crime suspects, the lieutenant was a team player at heart, although for him that usually meant being the team leader. Before Christmas, Cinq-Mars had enjoyed ribbing Tremblay after the lieutenant had given an interview on television. “Crime is down except in certain pockets of the city where children are stealing automobile hood ornaments, which is a new fad, thereby creating a statistical anomaly.” In department meetings, Cinq-Mars had taken to asking if they were going to put together a major task force to crack down on the scurrilous, hood-ornament-stealing, statistic-busting twelve-year-olds before it was too late, before all hell broke loose.
“Detective First-Class Recchi, NYPD. His partner, Detective McGibbon,” Tremblay stated. “Gentlemen, may I introduce Sergeant-Detective Emile Cinq-Mars, the man I was telling you about. This is his partner, Detective William Mathers. You four have a lot to talk about. I have to run, so take care of our guests, Emile.” He gave a little questioning nod, as though to indicate to Cinq-Mars that his best behaviour was being solicited.
They shook hands. They were all large men, Cinq-Mars the tallest, but the new arrivals had broad shoulders and chests and the necks of football linebackers. A black man, McGibbon offered a relaxed and cordial smile. Recchi, olive-skinned, dark-haired, carried himself with the chiseled head and loping, worried stance of a pugilist. Both men held their overcoats slung across a forearm.
“Sit down,” Cinq-Mars invited. Mathers had already brought chairs in for the purpose. “What can I do for you?”
Seated, McGibbon straightened his tie. “I didn’t know for sure if you guys spoke English up here.” He smiled again.
“My partner’s English,” Cinq-Mars remarked. “He’s dragged me down to his level.” He wished they’d get on with it.
McGibbon braced his hands on his knees, his overcoat falling across his lap. “We have a situation in New York, sir. Men with AIDS have been dying prematurely. Unexpectedly. All at the same time. Before dying, a few talked about being on a secret drug therapy program—some kind of thing like that. They’d been undergoing treatment for years, that’s what they told people, but this time, when the program changed, they didn’t stay well or get better. They got worse. They slid downhill fast.”
Cinq-Mars and Mathers shared a glance. Chickens were coming home to roost. “The reason that my superior officer charged out of here so quickly—”
“He explained,” Recchi said.
“We have no jurisdiction on this case.”
“He said something about SQ,?”
“Za Sûreté du Québec, the provincial police.”
“Sir,” McGibbon stated, straightening somewhat and lowering his voice, as though to sound conspiratorial, “obviously, we don’t know the ins and outs of how things work up here.”
“Frankly, we don’t care,” Recchi put in.
“The lieutenant, he said even though you don’t have jurisdiction, the one person up here we got to talk to, that one person is you. To confer with anybody else would be a waste of our time. Maybe damaging. Would you disagree?”
Without committing himself, Cinq-Mars folded his arms across his chest. “What do you know?”
“One woman came to New York City and administered drug cocktails to AIDS patients,” McGibbon recited. “The patients thought they were getting the latest deal, experimental drugs on the leading edge, not yet approved. That woman’s name was Lucy. She’s native, attractive, long-legged, black hair. We have a decent description. A week later a second woman appeared on the scene. She checked on the health of those taking the first woman’s medication, to see how they were doing. She’s referred to as Camille. Her name, and especially her accent—people thought maybe she was French Canadian, which pointed an arrow up here. By the time the second woman had shown up, patients were dying, a few were already dead.”
They possessed a good overview.
“I’m aware of your situation,” Cinq-Mars revealed.
“You’re aware?” Recchi asked. “We could’ve used a heads-up. A consult.”
“As far as I know, every patient was contacted, told to cease their medication and seek treatment.”
“That’s another reason why we’re here. We heard about that. What does that do for us, Sergeant-Detective? It sorts out the medical side of things, maybe, but I don’t think it helps us out crime-wise, with the illegalities.” Recchi liked to gesture with one hand as he talked.
Cinq-Mars imagined that a few perpetrators had been swatted by that hand over the years. He tried to redirect the conversation. “I understand, sir, that we’re talking about two young, idealistic women, who thought they were helping. For years they were helping, before something went wrong. They never had any intent to do harm.”
“Sir,” McGibbon interrupted, “do you have any idea how many people ended up dead from their desire to do no harm?”
“Forty-two,” Cinq-Mars replied, which startled both visitors. Both their heads shifted back as if from a blow. ‘You didn’t know it was that many because we’re not only talking about New York.”
“We know about Jersey.”
“Add on Philadelphia.”
“Baltimore,” Cinq-Mars mentioned, “escaped by the skin of its teeth.”
“Forty-two dead by your count,” McGibbon summarized. “I think we have a crime here. I don’t think it matters how idealistic they were.”
“We have a crime,” Cinq-Mars concurred. “But—behind the crime are men, and syndicates, who knew exactly what they were doing. People who deliberately killed others to advance science. The mob’s involved. Around here, if something’s big, the mob’s always involved. They insist. Usually, all we have to do is figure out which gang. What I’m trying to say is, the women were pawns. If I’ve been protecting them, it might be because they’re the only hope I have left to nail the real criminals.”
This time, McGibbon and Recchi shared a covert communication. “We’d like to talk to them,” Recchi said.
“No can do.”
“Why not?”
“They’re in hiding.” Cinq-Mars saw no need to discriminate between Lucy and Camille. These men had no particular right to his knowledge.
“From who?”
“Not from me.”
McGibbon turned his head to one side and nodded while looking down at the desk. He finally understood that the meeting was adversarial. “Are they police informants?”
“Would I tell you if they were?”
“I don’t know why not.”
“Would you?”
“That would depend.” Under the stern gaze of Emile Cinq-Mars, McGibbon made a decision and spoke honestly. “Probably not.”
“I won’t tell you if they’re informants or not.”
“Yes, you are. With respect, sir, I don’t know you.”
Recchi brushed a hand through his hair and breathed out with apparent impatience. “Tiddlywinks. We’ve got—how many, you said?—forty-two dead. You want to screw us around here?”
“We’ve got an officer assigned to this investigation beaten to death,” Cinq-Mars told him. “We’ve got key witnesses blown up in their automobiles. I’ve had an assault upon my home and family. My partner’s family’s in hiding. I don’t know you, sir.” Cinq-Mars put both elbows on his desk and pointed a telling finger at the visitor. “I don’t know you.”
The four men were quiet awhile, each mulling avenues of possible reciprocity.
Recchi broke the silence. “Look, we’re on your turf. What you say goes. We can’t do anything here. We’d be lost. How can we make this work? How can we make this happen, Sergeant-Detective?”
Cinq-Mars leaned back in his swivel chair and issued a lengthy yawn. “All right,” he declared when he snapped forward again. “We’re driving out to a crime scene. If you want to tag along…?”
“What’s the crime?”
“A cop was beaten and shot to death in his home. I want to revisit the scene. We can start there. See how it goes.”
McGibbon checked with Recchi, who shrugged. “All right. Let’s go.”
Cinq-Mars jumped to his feet and grabbed his coat. “You guys armed?”
Reaching down, McGibbon retrieved the computer mouse that dangled just above his feet and put the object on the desk where he thought it belonged. The wee, plastic creature had obviously been irritating him. When he stood, he tapped his hip holster, and Recchi nodded.
“Good.I wouldn’t want you reading tourist brochures. I wouldn’t want you thinking you’ve crossed into a safe country. It’s not safe if you’re law enforcement. This time of year, especially. The gangs are bomb-happy. This time of year, they might blow a man up just for using a word like ‘tiddlywinks.’ That wouldn’t surprise me one bit. Show them your gold shields and tell them you’re from New York, they might not be impressed.”
“I got that message,” Recchi said.
“What’s so special about this time of year?” McGibbon asked.
“Boredom, maybe. Long winter nights.”
“The mob here kills cops?” Recchi asked Mathers, as they followed Cinq-Mars out of the cubicle.
“Somebody does,” Cinq-Mars told him over his shoulder.
“Cops. They kill cops?” Recchi, hurrying in pursuit, pressed the junior officer in a hushed tone, as if he wasn’t sure whether he could believe the older guy or not.
Bringing up the rear, bobbing as he picked up his rubber boots on the fly, then reaching out to grab his overcoat off a hook, Mathers confided, “Lately.”
Lucy Gabriel was standing by the highway, keeping an eye out for Camille’s car. She had stepped out when she saw her friend coming, but was taken aback by the smashed window. Camille had covered it with a plastic sheet and so had to open the door to talk to her.
“What happened?” Lucy asked.
“Long story. Are you getting in?”
“Nope. Keep going down the road until you see a monk. He’ll direct you.”
Lucy disappeared into the trees on foot.
Camille drove on, and eventually a monk stood on the highway pointing to the parking lot of the monastery. She drove down and waited for the man to join her. He didn’t say anything, but helped her unpack the car and guided the woman and her daughter to the ninth floor of the empty western wing.
Lucy came along quite awhile later, as though she’d been keeping watch, to confirm that Camille hadn’t been followed, and the two women hugged. They wept for Charlie and Andy.
“Cinq-Mars is coming this afternoon.”
“He is?”
“We’ll have to tell him everything.”
“We will,” Camille agreed. “Oh God, Lucy! You lost Andy. I’ve lost Charlie!”
“Baby.” They held one another again, and only the monk’s return helped them pull themselves together.
“Does he talk?” Camille asked about Brother Tom.
“Not a peep. We communicate though, in our own way. Come on, Camille, pick a room. You might as well make yourself at home.”
Camille put her things away in the simple room identical to Lucy’s across the hall. Carole insisted on her own room and chose one two doors down. The little girl was permitted to unpack her own bag, and Lucy and Camille left her alone. Camille filled the little drawers in her room with her underthings and stacked her pants and blouses on the desk. She hung one dress on a small rack intended for a monk’s robes. With Lucy’s help she made the bed with the sheets and blankets brought in by Brother Tom, then Camille flopped down for a bed test.
“It ain’t much, but it’s home.” Lucy tried to smile, but tears quickly sprang to her eyes instead. This time, Camille comforted her. “I guess if Cinq-Mars can’t help us,” Lucy said, dabbing her eyes, “he can always toss us in jail.”
“Cheery thought.”
“It keeps me going.” She stuffed a Kleenex into the tight front pocket of her jeans.
“What do you do for fun around here?” Camille called back over her shoulder as Lucy tagged along. They were off to check on Carole.
“Arm-wrestle Brother Tom. Yesterday I raced him down the hall after giving him a thirty-yard head start. I try to get him to talk, unsuccessfully so far. And I thought up a new game, where I give him a pat on the ass when he least expects it.”
“You don’t. Lucy! Poor Brother Tom!”
Camille was dragged away by Carole, who had taken it into her head that she wanted a bath. “I’m a guppy,” she called back to Lucy.
Her mother turned on the bathtub taps. The seven-year-old seemed amazed that the bathtub was in a room all by itself, with no toilet and no sink. While they waited for the slowly pouring water, Lucy showed them the washroom.
“No urinals,” Camille noted.
“Monks in robes, they’d rather sit, I guess,” Lucy explained, and the women’s laughter echoed off the tile walls and marble floor.
“Anyway, right now, only the fourth stall has paper, so that’s the one we use.”
“Gotcha.” Camille tested the water in the bath while Carole got out of her clothes.
“Brother Tom will bring you banana bread and chocolate milk after your bath, Carole!” Lucy said. She wanted to protect the child from the sorrow she was feeling. It was all so horrible. Charlie, dead. Harry, dead. What was going on? How could they escape? She desperately needed to talk to Cinq-Mars. She desperately needed to trust him.
“I’m going to have a bath of my own,” Camille decided. “There’s more than one tub, right?”
“Dozens,” Lucy confirmed. “Four on each floor.”
Lucy returned to her room and stood looking out overthelake. She had done the right thing, she believed, bringing Camille here. She didn’t want to lose another friend.
Mathers drove the police issue, their guests in the rear seat. They’d headed out to the ice-bridge with Cinq-Mars urging him to use a heavy foot. On the ice, though, he demanded that Mathers stop.
The officer braked the car slowly.
In the back, Detective McGibbon, seated directly behind Cinq-Mars, asked, “What’re we stopping here for?”
Mathers was looked intently at his partner, as though he had the same question on his mind, only he knew better than to ask.
“I’ve made this,” Cinq-Mars declared.
“What do you mean?” Recchi asked.
“I just have to figure it out.” He was hardly noticing the men with him. In his own world, Cinq-Mars stepped out of the car and walked a hundred feet across the ice and snow.
“What the fuck is going on?” Recchi demanded to know.
Mathers said, “You guys stay here, all right?” He climbed out from behind the driver’s seat.
“Is he nuts?” Recchi pestered him.
“Yeah,” Mathers said, before he closed the door. “He’s crazy.” He watched his partner stop and crouch down, then place his head in his hands. Mathers waited a minute, observing him, before he walked up behind him. When he got close, he moved to one side, and saw that Cinq-Mars was trying to wipe away a tear. “Emile?” he asked quietly.
The man was embarrassed and tried to turn his head away. When he felt that he had done all he could to dry his eyes, he stood. “My dad’s dying,” he explained. “It’s any day now. Maybe any hour.”
“I know, Emile. I’m sorry about that. You want to take some time?”
Cinq-Mars shook his head. “God! What—is—it?”
After that outburst, Mathers was afraid to speak again.
Then Cinq-Mars said, “It wasn’t Painchaud’s house, Bill, it was Camille’s!”
With his hands in his pockets, Mathers shrugged. “What was?”
“The clue I saw but missed.” Mathers seemed confused, and Cinq-Mars shook his hands at him. “Her driveway. I’m sure, I’m positive, was full of cop cars. But there’s no garage and her car was nowhere around.”
“So?”
Cinq-Mars was taking large breaths, as though he was winded by an acceleration to his thinking. “So, where was her car?”
Mathers continued to stare at him, without comprehension.
“But I need it all, Bill. I need it all and it’s coming. I tell you. I’ve prepared myself for this. I’m sorry if I don’t know how to handle it.”
“Émile—”
“Stettler wrote lips lips lips. He was concerned about lips, something about lips. Then Charlie has his lips sewn shut. You know I don’t believe in coincidence. Coincidence is the biggest fraud going. Everything in life is interwoven, everything’s connected. So Stettler knew about a problem with lips, something that confused him, upset him probably, so much so that a very secretive man wrote the words down and underlined them three times. As if he was trying to get his brain to figure it out. I know what that’s like.”
Cinq-Mars bent over at the waist, as if the adrenaline pumping through his system contorted him. “Stettler had some concern that he probably didn’t understand about lips.” He returned to an upright stance again. “And he bobs to the surface in Camille Choquette’s fishing hut. Charlie is killed and he has his lips sewn shut, and his telephone is an open line to Camille’s house. That’s no coincidence. Two bodies, both connected to some place where Camille sleeps. Fishing line, telephone line—it all connects.”
“All right,” Mathers said, “I see where you’re going. But we also have to deal with the small matter of proof.”
“Yes, yes,” Cinq-Mars agreed, impatiently. He had one hand in a pocket and the other he shook in midair, waist-high. “Let’s just say you’ve killed someone and you run outside and you find out you’ve locked your keys in the car. What do you do? Call a locksmith? An automobile club? Do you go looking for a coathanger to jimmy the lock? No! Bill! We’ve already seen the shards of glass. You smash the damn window and get the hell out of there. But after that—”
Mathers had it now. “After that you don’t park your car in the driveway, with the window out. It’s Camille. We haven’t even interviewed her yet, but we know now it’s Camille. For some reason she wanted her boyfriend dead.”
“Same reason that she wanted Andy dead,” Cinq-Mars said. “They carried information. In her business, that’s a deadly disease.”
“Do we pick her up?”
Cinq-Mars nodded. “Let’s go to her house. See if she can produce that car.”
Camille undressed in private and donned her ankle-length bathrobe for the trek back down the hall. She organized her bathing items, her soaps and shampoo, cleansers and hairbrushes, and put them all in a pink toilet kit. Then she took Charlie Painchaud’s pistol out of her bag and put that in the kit as well.
She checked her bath. The hot was too hot, and she added a little cold to the mix, stirring the water with one hand until she got the temperature right. Then she stood and locked the door.
Camille Choquette examined the pistol. She examined it as a woman in a particular mood might explore a dildo. She had one more tangle to unravel, and this would be the best way. The only way. Cinq-Mars was coming. Lucy was going to talk to him. She didn’t know what Charlie had told him, but whatever it was, he was no longer alive to say it again. Lucy was a problem. Lucy connected her to the dead patients in the States. The dead patients in the States included two, one in New York and one in Paramus, New Jersey, whose lives she had taken and whose lips she had sewn. She had smothered Wendell in New York. She had slit the throat of the motel clerk in Paramus, then sewn the wound shut while he bled and died.
All night long, Camille had tossed and turned, knowing that she had made a mistake, that she should never have sewn Charlie’s lips. She just couldn’t help it at the time. She had wanted to do it so much. And now she had to kill the one person who could connect her to New York and New Jersey. One more death. She felt the weight of the gun in her hand and felt the urgency grow inside her. She wanted to do this. She wanted Lucy dead more than she had ever realized.
Camille turned off the taps, opened the door, and left the room. She moved down the hall with her right hand tucked inside her bathrobe, hearing her child splashing happily. That would be her next problem. Carole. She didn’t want to think about that. She carried the gun under her left breast. She did not bother to knock but walked straight into Lucy’s room, surprising her.
“Hey, girlfriend,” Camille said.
“That was quick.”
“The water’s too hot. I’m letting it cool.”
Lucy smiled slightly. “I was thinking about Harry Hillier.” She came away from the window and sat on her bed, curling her legs under her. “I don’t understand it.” She pulled a blanket over her lap to protect against the chill and damp.
Camille seated herself on a chair that had been pulled close to the window. She kept her arms crossed.
“I talked to him,” Lucy admitted.
Camille was surprised. “Harry? How come?”
“I found out that he was working for us after all, even though he didn’t know we existed.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I went to his office—”
“You, what?” Camille suddenly realized that if she kept Lucy talking she could learn a lot.
“Yeah, I went to his office to find out what he was doing, if anything, on our project. The data had to go through him, right? He’s the only great scientist we have. Was he with the bad guys, or was he being duped, like the rest of us? Get this. Harry was suspicious. He didn’t say anything, but he was beginning to figure out that the data had had to come from humans, not rodents, as he’d been told. I could tell from the file that he was working it out.”
They heard a sound in the corridor, which startled Camille.
“Relax, it’s only Brother Tom.”
The two women waited while the monk ponderously made his way to the room. He greeted them with a smile and put down a tray with the offerings that Lucy had predicted, including a fourth cup, one for himself. He poured the hot chocolate from a white enamel pitcher, served them each a cup, and seated himself in the small chair at the edge of the desk. “This is like summer camp,” Camille chuckled.
Lucy filled Brother Tom in.“I was just telling Camille about our foray over to Hillier-Largent. Anyway, I shook Harry up a little. I told him that I knew what he’d done, and that I knew whose side he was on. He probably didn’t know what I was talking about, he probably didn’t know there were sides. But I mentioned the file by its code name, Darkling Star. I remember you told me that name. But I figured if Harry was worried that he might be implicated in Darkling Star, he might cause a fuss around Hillier-Largent, or over at BioLogika. Maybe he did. Maybe that’s why somebody blew him up.”
“I didn’t hear about any fuss,” Camille mentioned.
“Would you have? I doubt if Harry and Randall Largent would’ve had a public shouting match over this one. I think they’d keep it pretty quiet, wouldn’t you?”
Camille nodded. She had made a mistake. If she had heard of a fuss it would have been through Honigwachs, but she wasn’t going to tell Lucy that. It doesn’t matter any more, does it? “It’s a mystery to me. I don’t know why Harry’s dead.”
“Or poor Charlie,” Lucy added.
“No, I know why Charlie’s dead. He’s dead because I shot him. I was aiming for his fucking eye but I missed, I think. I shot him in the head.” Camille smiled then, and held the icy grin frozen on her lips. She thought that the shock on Lucy’s face was a hoot. Slowly, she withdrew the pistol from under the shelter of her robe. “With this,” she told them both. “I shot him with this, his own gun.”
Brother Tom was rising from his chair.
“Stay where you are monk-face,” Camille told him. She aimed the pistol in his direction. “I’ll let you know when you can budge.”
Lucy and her guardian looked at one another, both stunned.
“Sit down, monk-face.”
Slowly, as though his weight was being lowered with the aid of a crane, as though he had lost the full use of his muscles, Brother Tom resumed his seat.
“That’s better.”
“Camille—” Lucy started to say.
“Ah, poor baby doesn’t understand? She gets lost in the ways of the world? Ah, poor little Indian girl.”
“What are you doing?” Lucy whispered, finding a portion of her voice. “This is insane.”
“Ah,” mused Camille, “no. Not a good word to use. I really object to that word. I mean, you’re the bitch who killed forty-two people. Well, forty, actually, because I took care of a couple of those myself, put them out of their misery, anyway. You killed forty people and you have the nerve to tell me that I’m insane? Nope, it won’t wash. Not with me, sister.”
Lucy’s eyes jumped around. The way her fear coiled and moved inside her, she was afraid she might retch. Her skin felt as if it would strip itself from her body and bolt. She had to fight to stay lucid, she was in a daze. She had faced military bayonets and boys in army boots who had looked as scared as she had been, boys who had been likely to do something rash at any moment and you just had to pray that they’d been well-trained. In that famous picture where she stood on an upturned police cruiser and taunted at the army with an automatic rifle in one hand, she had been feeling the fear of her men, the fear of the Warriors themselves, who had been willing to die and knew they might, but she had also understood that they were capable of humiliating themselves. As a woman, she could climb onto that car and screech at the army and no soldier would shoot her, she believed, because she was a woman. If one of the Warriors had done that, some giddy, schoolboy army sniper might have cut him down. And so, she had made a spectacle of herself. In a momentof panicandfright shehad followedan instinct. She had focused attention on herself, and in doing so had released the pressure on everyone else. Her ploy had worked. She’d made the news, but more importantly, there had been no battle that day, where there might have been. This was different, but she had operated under fire before, and a voice inside her was screaming at her to function again.
“Camille, tell me. What’s going on? What are you going to do?” She opted for a calming tone, but she heard the fear in her voice as well.
With her gun held up, Camille smiled more widely. Then suddenly she frowned. She spoke in a voice not much louder than Lucy’s. “I’m going to shoot you, bitch. Do you know what a bitch you’ve been? I’m going to shoot you.”
“Why? You won’t get away with it.” Lucy looked over at Brother Tom, whose wide-eyed gaze was fixed on Camille, his mouth open, drooling slightly. He seemed to be in shock.
“Sure I will, Luce. I’ll say that I was in the bath when a killer attacked. I heard what I thought were gunshots and just stayed quiet, with the door locked. That’s where I’ll be when the cops arrive. In the bath. I’ll be hysterical for them. My little girl will be weeping in my arms. She’ll be my witness. I was taking a bath. The gun I’ll drop here, it’ll be identified as Charlie’s, the same gun I used to shoot him. Clean the prints off, which any killer would do. If little bits of you land on me, I’ll wash them off in the bath, then run fresh water. It’s perfect. I’ll get away with it, Lucy. I know that rots your socks, but I’ll get away with it pretty easily. It won’t even be hard.”
“Camille, you can’t do this.”
“Sure I can.”
“Why? Oh, God, Camille! What’s the matter with you? What’s happening?”
“Getting scared, are we? The bad news is sinking in. Hang on a second, Luce. I need to have a word with monk-face first. Brother Tom,” she told him in a hectoring voice, “you move that arm again, you shift that leg again, you wiggle around on your ass again, and it will be the last second of your life, understand me? Now I’m going to explain a few things to Indian-girl here, and I expect your full attention. Got me?”
The monk solemnly nodded.
Camille sneered at him. “Hey, maybe before the day is out I’ll get Brother Tom to say a few words. What do you think? Would you like to live to hear that Lucy? Do you think he’ll sit up and beg for us, if we give him the right encouragement?”
The squad car was speeding by the monastery when Cinq-Mars said, “Stop.”
“What?” Mathers asked.
“Stooopppp!” the senior detective shouted, and Mathers jammed on the brakes, fighting hard with the steering wheel to stay out of a spin. Each man was jostled and bruised by the car’s swift halt.
“What, Emile, what?” Mathers demanded, recovering.
“It’s a car. The monastery parking lot. I don’t know. But it could be Camille’s!”
“What the fuck’s going on?” Recchi blustered in the back seat, but his words were no sooner spoken then Mathers was accelerating and turning the car on a dime, tires squealing, heading back the way they’d come. He bounded down the drive to the monastery, and every officer’s head banged against the roof. He skidded to a stop next to the Mazda. Cinq-Mars and Mathers both stared at the window, which had been punched out and replaced with a sheet of plastic. Then Cinq-Mars and Mathers jumped from the car and drew their weapons.
At the sight of the guns, the New York cops suddenly sprang into action themselves.
“Big place,” Cinq-Mars said. “We need to cover some ground. Everybody goes inside. Trust no one. Especially don’t trust any women you meet who are armed.”
They ran down to the nearest door. Mathers opened it, and the four cops burst inside.
“So, Brother Tom, you may want to shut your eyes, or maybe you prefer to die happy. Whatever. That’s up to you.” Camille stood. “I’m taking my robe off, in case I get any messy bits on myself.”
She was careful, removing her robe, to move the pistol from one hand to the other so that it was trained continuously on Lucy Gabriel. The monk did not avert his eyes, nor did he seem either offended or interested by her nudity.
“This way, I can wash off easily,” she said. Between the slight slump to her breasts and her sharply poking hip-bones, her ribs were obvious, and winter’s pale progress showed on white skin, with only her face and hands weathered by the wind and sun.
Carole called from down the hall. “Mommy! I want to get out now!”
Camille returned to the door, keeping her eyes and the aim of the pistol on her captives. She shouted, “Stay there! Don’t you dare move until Mommy comes back!”
“I want to get out noooowwww!”
“Stay—the fuck—there!”
Her voice echoed down the hall.
“What?” she asked Lucy, noting her appalled expression and lifting her head to demean her with her look. “You don’t like how I talk to my kid?”
“You need help, Camille.”
“Nope! Wrong! Wrong thing to say! I don’t like that, Luce, not one bit. And I don’t take that shit from nobody. Now you take it back or I’ll be mean to you. I’ll sew up your lips. Monk-face, you must have a needle and thread.”
Lucy’s face was quivering now, her lips trembling. Her hands also shook and her breathing caught in her throat.
“No, Camille, please, what’s wrong with you—don’t,” Lucy implored her, and inched her way back on the bed, against the wall. “Please.”
“Aw, Lucy, getting scared? I like that. Especially from you. Little Indian warrior! Brave little red-hearted girl with the rifle stuck above her head.” She walked back and forth in front of her now, taunting her with her words and the pistol. “I always thought that was bogus. Who’d you kill, Lucy? Who’d you kill with that thing? You wouldn’t have the guts.”
“Mommy!” her daughter called from down the hall.
“Stay there, Carole!”
“Who’d you kill, Camille?” Lucy asked, turning the question on her. “Did you kill Andy?” Her mind raced. She had to buy time. She hadn’t seen anyone except Brother Tom since her arrival. This wing of the monastery had truly been abandoned, and from what she understood there were hardly any monks in the main building either. Men just didn’t become monks any more. Apparently, Camille wanted to talk about murder and Lucy held onto a single thread of hope. Cinq-Mars was supposed to visit her this afternoon. At no specific time. He was her only hope, and she had to keep Camille talking in the meantime.
“Andy was Wiener’s big day,” Camille revealed. “He botched it. Typical.” She paraded in front of them, an arrogant swing to her hips accompanied her slow steps, her gun slightly upraised. “I don’t know what’s the big deal about killing somebody else. I was only doing humanity a favor. After Wiener shot him, Andy had to be drowned like a rat, and I had to tell Wiener to do it. He stepped on his head until the life went out of him. Sorry about that, Lucy, I know you liked the guy. After that I helped put him under the ice and stuff.”
“Who’s Wiener?” Brother Tom asked.
Neither woman turned her head, but both shifted their eyes to look at him.
“Monk-face is talking!” Camille sneered. “Your big chance to get into Heaven as a perfect, dutiful monk, Tommy. You blew it. Now I’ll have to sew your lips to keep your mouth shut in Hell. Why not? I sewed Charlie up. It’ll show we got the same killer here, which we do. I’ll sew you up nice and tight, Brother Tom. You won’t be babbling away throughout eternity. You too, Lucy. I’ll sew up your lips. I’m sick to death of what comes out of your prying mouth. I’d love to do that.”
“Mommy! Mommy!” Carole was screeching from her cooling bath.
“Oh, God!” Camille complained. “I’m going to have to snuff that child, too. Put her out of her misery.”
Lucy pushed herself back against the wall, despairing now, convinced now that Camille was cracked, that she wasn’t remotely sane. She was panting, afraid of dying here, but if she was going to die she wanted to be brave, at least.
“Who’s Wiener?” Brother Tom asked again. He had a guttural voice, and he never looked directly at the woman with the gun.
Her pistol aimed at her old friend, Camille looked sideways at the monk. “Wiener is Werner Honigwachs, Tommy. Sorry, Brother Tommy. He killed Andy Stettler, an old friend of mine. I just helped him out a little. When the going got tough, the tough had to stand up and get the job done, you know? Yeah,” she said, and she held her pistol with two hands and shifted her aim from Lucy’s chest to her face, sighting down the lonely barrel and declaring with finality, “Now it’s your turn, little Indian girl.”
“Oh, yes,” Camille taunted, her face crooked in a manic grin.
“Camille!”
“Mommy! I’m cooold!”
“For you, Lucy, right between the eyes.”
“Oh God,” Lucy whispered, and she turned her face away.
“Show me the whites of your eyes, Lucy. Come on. Come on. Don’t be a baby. Turn to face me. That’s it, honey. Turn. A little more. Come on.”
Slowly, in increments, weeping, breathing in rapid gulps, Lucy Gabriel turned to face her.
“Open your eyes now. That’s a brave little Indian girl.”
She opened her eyes.
The blast of the gunshot exploded in the monk’s cell, echoed down the corridor and through the wing of the monastery. A sound that was slow to decay, moving along the old stones and marble floors, resonant and shocking. As it struck the four detectives climbing the stairs, moving hurriedly with their weapons drawn, they stopped for an instant, then rushed on up.
Her body, contorting, convulsed, then collapsed onto the floor, the sound a mere thump, muffled, a life rapidly expiring.
Brother Tom stood up.
The bullet had passed through the fabric of his robe into the heart of Camille Choquette. He looked across at Lucy Gabriel, who had crumpled with shock and fright against the wall. He crossed the room quickly, stepping over the body, and pulled a file folder off the windowsill. Then he snatched up Lucy’s car keys.
Lucy couldn’t take her eyes off Camille’s broken corpse, silent on the floor. The shock was welling through her. She felt dizzy, then frantic, then calm, then she she’d go through the spectrum once more. She couldn’t believe it. I’m alive! Alive/
Brother Tom put his gun down on the desk and peeled his robe off over his head. She looked at him with a sudden overwhelming confusion and curiosity. He was wearing a mauve shirt and blue jeans, with a gun-belt around his waist.
“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t understand you about that other guy.”
She was breathing heavily again, but more regularly. “What guy?”
“Hillier. That Harry Hillier guy.”
For a big man, he seemed light on his feet as he fled the room. He was carrying the file folder. Lucy heard him running down the hall. She tried to get up, but fell back. Her legs were wobbly and loose. She looked down at herself. She had peed. She saw Camille’s open, dead eyes then, and uttered a sharp cry.
She heard other sounds, noises. Feet.
She forced herself up abruptly, wanting out of there. Lucy staggered against a chair and used it to steady herself, then stumbled on her way out to the corridor, where she slumped against the wall. Slowly at first, her body slid to the floor. Lucy sat there, her head in her hands, weeping, awaiting rescue. She was alive, she knew that, but for moments at a time the thought seemed to be more than she could bear.
She was surprised to hear footsteps again. So soon. She didn’t know how much time had passed. Had monks come running? She’d thought they might. Looking up, she saw four men charge through the doors at the far end to her right.
The cops divided into pairs and each ran down a side of the corridor, checking the rooms as they made their way toward the weeping woman. They all heard a child’s voice and moved as quickly as possible toward it, with all due caution. Cinq-Mars came upon a little girl, who had managed to crawl out of the hefty, cast-iron enamel tub and wrap herself in a towel, and when she saw the man with a gun she whimpered, “I’m cold. I’m cold. I’m cooold!” Mathers moved past his partner, tucked his gun away and wrapped the girl in his arms, but she would not stop reciting, “I’m cold. I’m cold. I’m cold. I’m cold.” Her teeth were chattering.
McGibbon and Recchi made it all the way to Lucy Gabriel and knelt beside her. She was sobbing now and uttering plaintive cries, overcome with rage and sorrow and the miracle of her release. The two New York cops glanced inside the room and issued a precaution to Cinq-Mars. The detective crossed the doorway and saw the body on the floor in there. He pressed himself against the wall and crept toward the doorframe. Then he ducked his head inside and pulled it back out again. He took a second to process what he’d seen, then indicated to the other two that he was going in.
Cinq-Mars jumped into the room, finding it empty, save for the body of Camille Choquette.
He came back out to the corridor and knelt beside Lucy Gabriel. He held her upper arms in his hands. “You’re Lucy? You must be Lucy.” He pushed her hair back from her face. She was squirming around and moaning, and he caressed the side of her head gently.
Lucy nodded.
“Who did that, Lucy?” Cinq-Mars inquired. “In there. Did you do that?”
“Brother Tom,” she managed to whisper.
“A monk?”
Lucy shook her head slowly. “That was no monk. He was no monk. Oh God. Ok God!”
“It’s okay, Lucy,” Cinq-Mars soothed her. “It’s okay now.”
“No,” Lucy moaned. “You don’t understand. He took it. He took it.”
“What?” Cinq-Mars asked her quietly. “Who? He took what?”
“Brother Tom. He took Darkling Star. Oh God,” she wailed, and Lucy clutched the detective’s lapels. “Don’t you understand? It’ll happen again! He was no monk! He’s a criminal! A killer. He took Darkling Star!”