At home, ready to collapse from the excruciating drive in the rain and fog, Rath spread the contents of the Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu police file out on his kitchen table.
Outside in the dark night, coyotes yowled.
Rath scoured Lucille Forte’s short file and biography. A decent student, the U.S. equivalent of a B- average. No siblings. Parents made comfortable money. A four-bedroom home at the end of a cul-de-sac. No friends or teachers witnessed or sensed anything amiss the day of her disappearance and death. She had gone to after-school tryouts until 4 p.m., then headed for the bus stop to catch a bus to bring her a few blocks from her home. A CCTV camera picked her image up when she got off the bus at her stop. It captured no one else. After that, she was out of CCTV range. She seemed to be a social, upbeat teen, active in sports. Friends said, in part: “She was her usual bubbly self at tryouts. She looked forward to the dance Friday, and more tryouts Saturday and Sunday.”
Rath made a note to find out what sports she played. Being November, it might be basketball or skiing. Perhaps a girls’ hockey team. Whatever it was, sports meant travel to other schools. Opportunity for predators.
He picked up the file photo of her. She was, or had been, a cute girl, in a plain way. Curly black hair, feathered with bangs that reminded Rath of the ’80s. Her skin pale, her smile gargantuan, an irrepressible shine to her brown eyes. The translator had neglected to change the metric system to the U.S. system and had the girl down as weighing 45 kilos and standing at 152 centimeters. Rath figured the conversion. The girl stood about five feet even and weighed a hair under a hundred pounds. Petite. Perhaps her sport was gymnastics, or figure skating. Canadians cherished their ice skating.
Rath returned to the same question. Why would a killer risk going over the border, ensuring that a vehicle’s make and license plate number were caught clearly on camera? Of course it was only a risk if the murders were put together. Those odds were slim. Perhaps Quebec provided new hunting grounds, close to home, but off the radar of law enforcement and media.
He could not get his head around it. He needed another perspective. Test’s. He’d put off looping her in on the Quebec lead long enough.
Rath phoned her work cell.
“Hey,” Test said upon answering.
“I have a lead, in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu. There’s another—”
“Wait, what?”
“A Quebecois inspector approached me, so I ventured up to see if—”
“You went to Canada without saying a single word to me?”
“I wanted to see if anything was there before I wasted your time. They have a murdered girl. Hanged. Tortured. The MO is exact except their girl was killed indoors.”
“What’s her name?”
“Lucille Forte. I wonder if she knew our girl down here, somehow. But I can’t figure how.”
“Social media. Facebook. Instagram. Mutual friends.”
Rath knew as much about social media as he did about needlepoint.
“The Quebecois girl. She’s into sports. Maybe our hanged girl was too, as well as acting. Look into it. Quebec has prints from her murder and from a victim from the nineties. They match. No match to a database though.”
“There are other victims? From the nineties? Are we talking the CRVK? How the hell am I just hearing this?”
“Because I just got back from a long, long day and was processing before bringing you in on it tomorrow. Saint-Jean sent the prints electronically, and I had Larkin log them into IAFIS to see if we get a hit for priors down here. Should hear back soon.”
“Both sides of the border,” Test said. “Nearly twenty years apart.”
“Check social media for Lucille Forte. See if there is any link, however slight, to our girl, or to Vermont.” Rath’s phone buzzed. “That’s Saint-Jean. I’ll call you back.” He killed the call with Test and took the call from Inspector Hubert.
“Bonjour,” Rath said, feeling foolish for using one of about nine French words he knew offhand.
“Hello,” the inspector said. “I am calling to see if you have run our prints in your FBI’s fingerprint system.” He sounded anxious.
“I should know any time. I haven’t gotten into the files as deep as I want yet. I have a question. What kind of sports was Forte into?”
“Sports? Non. She does not participate into the sports.”
“Her file says she was at tryouts, practice.”
Rath heard a shuffling of papers. “Mais non. Tryouts. This means for us, uh, rehearsal. For a play. She was in the plays. Very good at it. A very good young actress.”
“I need to make a call.” Rath hung up and phoned Test.
“She was an actress. Lucille Forte.”
“That’s not coincidence. Not a third girl. Maybe there’s a production they were all in, or an international program for theater, like with sports, the Burlington International Games. Something to bring kids from Canada and the States together. I’ll ask the Drakes.”
“The acting ties them together. But how does Preacher tie in? How does he know Drake was hanged? And the time? He had to have something to do with it. Except how would he get into Canada as a felon?”
“The state police are scouring Jamie Drake’s computer and phone. I’ll get a full report on her texts and e-mails, social media. If Forte is in there, I’ll find out.”
“If you still have those lists from the Double Black Diamond Resort, sign-ups for the acting auditions, look into them, I was talking to Grout and—”
“Grout? Why?”
“I was telling him your theory about Land and Drake and Wilks and the acting connection. Grout reminded me of the list of names for wannabe actors who attended the auditions at the resort.”
“You shouldn’t be talking to a civilian about open murder cases.”
“He’s hardly a civilian. And we talk to civilians all the time.”
“Not about tenuous links or information not made public.”
Rath wasn’t going to debate how he got information. “It’s your lead, the acting angle. Grout gave it merit.”
“It had merit before.”
“It gives you something concrete to search,” Rath said. “Check it.”
“Soon as this call ends,” Test said and ended it.