As Ryan and I settled on opposite ends of the couch, a woman materialized in a doorway to our left. Her hair, once brown, was fast going gray. She was doing nothing to hide it. I liked her for that.
André’s eyes cut to his wife. “Is it all right—?” she started.
André flicked an impatient hand. The woman scuttled to a chair, hands clutched to her chest.
I’d never met Marguerite Violette. Back in ’04, André had been my sole point of contact. It was André who’d delivered antemortem records. André to whom I’d reported the ID.
I recalled his odd reaction. He hadn’t cried, hadn’t questioned, hadn’t lashed out. He’d pulled a Mr. Goodbar from his pocket, eaten half the chocolate, risen, and walked from my office.
Seeing the Violettes together, I understood the dynamic.
“Would anyone like—?” Marguerite began.
“This ain’t a social visit.” To Ryan, “So, what? You finally caught this freak?”
“I’m sorry I can’t report that. Yet. But there are new leads.”
André shook his head. Marguerite slumped visibly.
“We have reason to believe that the woman involved in your daughter’s abduction—”
“My daughter’s murder.” André’s foot began winging on his knee.
“Yes, sir. We believe your daughter’s abductor is now in the U.S.”
“Anique Pomerleau.” Marguerite’s whisper was barely audible.
Ryan nodded. “Recently discovered evidence places Pomerleau in Vermont in ’07, and in North Carolina this year.”
“What evidence?” André asked.
“DNA.”
Marguerite’s eyes went wide. The irises were blue and flecked with caramel-colored points. “Has she hurt another child?”
“I’m sorry,” Ryan said softly. “I can’t discuss details of the investigation.”
“So arrest the bitch,” André snapped. “It’s good she’s in America. They can put her down.”
“We are using every resource at our disposal to find her.”
“That’s it? Ten years and you tell us our kid’s killer maybe left her spit in one place or another? Whoop-de-fucking-do.” The last was delivered in English. “You guys are worthless. Next you’ll say it’s bonhomme Sept-Heures done it.”
“You’ve had a lot of time to think,” I said gently. “Perhaps one of you has remembered a detail that hadn’t occurred to you back when Manon went missing. Or hadn’t seemed important. Any bit of information could prove useful.”
“Remember? Yeah, I remember. Every day.” His face hardened, and venom infiltrated his voice. “I remember how my baby kicked off the covers and slept sideways on her bed. How she loved rainbow sherbet. How I patched up her knee when she fell off her bike. How her hair smelled like oranges after she washed it. How she got on the fucking Métro and never came home.”
André’s jaw clamped suddenly. His cheeks were aflame with ragged patches of red.
Ryan caught my eye. I got the message and didn’t reply.
But neither Violette seemed compelled to fill the awkward silence that followed the outburst. André remained mute. Marguerite’s breathing went faster and shallower as a thousand emotions clearly vied for control of her face.
I studied André’s eyes, his body language. Saw a man hiding pain behind macho bluster.
A full minute passed. Ryan spoke first. “Those are precisely the types of recollections that might prove useful.”
“I got a recollection. I recall my knitting club meets today.” André’s foot was again dancing on his knee. “We’re done.”
“Mr. Violette—”
“I got a right to remain silent, yeah?”
“You are not a suspect, sir.”
“I’m gonna do that anyway.”
“Thank you for your time.” Ryan rose. I followed. “And again, we are so sorry for your loss.”
André remained seated, his thoughts obviously fixed on things other than needles and yarn.
Marguerite led us down the hall. At the door, she placed a hand on my shoulder. “Don’t judge my husband harshly. He’s a good man.”
The sadness in the caramel-blue eyes seemed bottomless.
CHAPTER 17
“WHAT’S BONHOMME SEPT-HEURES?” I asked Ryan when we were back in the Jeep.
“Excuse-moi?”
“André used the phrase.”
“Right. Bonhomme Sept-Heures is a Quebecois bogeyman who kidnaps kids up after seven P.M.”
“What’s his MO?”
Ryan snorted, sending vapor coning from each nostril. “He wears a mask, carries a bag, and hides under the balcony until the clock strikes seven.”
“A myth to scare the kids into bed.”
“Frightening when the myth hits home.”
“Yes.”
“This was a waste of time.” Ryan slipped aviator shades onto his nose.
“At least the Violettes know we’re not giving up.”
“I’m sure they’re popping the bubbly even as we speak.”
“Did you have a bad night?”
Ryan activated his turn indicator.
“You look like you spent it somewhere dark and dank.”
My attempt at humor drew no response. Ryan made a right, another, then a left. Loud and clear. The boy wanted distance.
Using a mitten to clear condensation from the glass, I looked out my window. Pedestrians streamed the sidewalks flanking Queen Mary and bunched at the intersections, impatient to cross. Students with backpacks. Shoppers with plastic or string-handled bags. Mothers with strollers. All wore clothing suited for Antarctica.
Undaunted, I tried again. “Did you locate Tawny McGee?”
“Working on it.”
“Is her family still in Maniwaki?”
“No.”
“The mother was on her own, right? Two kids?”
“Yes.”
“Wasn’t the sister somewhere out west?”
“Sandra Catherine. In Alberta.”
“She still there?”
“No.”
“What next?” When Ryan didn’t elaborate.
“Sabine Pomerleau.”
“Anique’s mother is still alive?” Whipping sideways to look at him.
Sun glinted from the aviators as they swiveled my way, then recentered on the road.
I settled back. Of course my question was stupid. Though desperate, we obviously couldn’t interview a corpse.
But Ryan’s words surprised me. The Pomerleaus had married late, tried for years to conceive. After prolonged anguish and much priestly counsel, Anique, their miracle child, finally had been sent by God in 1975, when Mama was forty-three and Papa was forty-eight. Thus Sabine told the story of her daughter’s birth.
I did the math. Sabine would be eighty-two now, her husband eighty-seven.
“Is Jacques still alive?”
“Kicked in ’06.”
I wondered if the miracle child’s infamy had contributed to her daddy’s demise. Kept the thought to myself.
We’d just parked in front of a two-story gray stone semi-detached in the Notre-Dame-de-Grâce neighborhood when my iPhone buzzed. As I dug it from my purse, Ryan pantomimed smoking by placing two fingers to his lips. He got out of the Jeep, and I clicked on. “Brennan.”
“I coulda better spent the time flossing.”
An image of Slidell working his teeth at a mirror was not one I welcomed. “You talked to Tehama County?”
“The high sheriff himself. Willis Trout. The guy’s got the brainpower—”
“Did Trout remember Angela Robinson?”
“I doubt he’d remember how to sneeze without prompting.” I waited.
“No. But once I convinced fish boy I wasn’t a crank, he agreed to look for the file. I just got a callback. You’re gonna love this.” Slidell allowed another theatrical pause. “It’s gone.”
“Gone?”
“Robinson disappeared in ’85. In those days everything was still on paper. When the case chilled, the file ended up in a basement. Which turns out to be real bad planning, since the Sacramento River gets frisky every few years and floods the whole friggin’ county.”
“The file was destroyed?”
“The basement took hits in ’99 and ’04.”
“Did you ask Trout about Menard and Catts?”
“Let’s see. How’d he put it? Given that both are dead, have been for years, and will remain so in the future, he couldn’t waste time researching their bios.”