Black Rock (13 page)

But now, for the first time, the number hit him — six thousand immigrants. Dead.

He'd heard the story from his father, how during the famine in Ireland the ships were coming over steady, and by the time they got here the people were sick. Ship fever they called it. Typhus. Two huge sheds were built down here by the river and people coming off the ships were quarantined. If they didn't have typhoid when they got to Montreal, they did after a few hours in the sheds.

Six thousand immigrants died of ship fever and were buried right here. And forgotten.

Then, only a dozen years later, new Irish immigrants showed up and didn't know anything about the ones who'd come before. The new immigrants went to work digging and found the bodies.

Dougherty stood there on Bridge Street, practically in the shadow of the Autostade, cars coming and going from the city, and tried to imagine what it was like for those Irish workmen — men and probably boys, who probably looked like he did and like his father and his little brother Tommy and every other man in his family — when their shovels hit the first bones.

Then more bones and more, until they realized there were thousands of skeletons.

How could they have not known? How could no one have told them, oh yeah, when you start digging there you're going to hit a mass grave? The bodies hadn't been buried for a hundred years or a thousand, they'd only been there twelve. If it was today, Dougherty thought, it would mean that the bodies had been buried in
1958
. He would have been in Mademoiselle Gratton's class, grade six at Jeanne-LeBer school, less than two miles from the Black Rock.

Six thousand bodies in an unmarked grave. Well, it was marked now. Good thing the railway decided to build the bridge and good thing the workmen for Messrs. Peto., Brassy & Betts dug up the rock.

And, Dougherty figured, good thing those workmen put up enough of a fuss to have the rock inscribed and stood up here. They probably got docked a day's pay to get it done.

He crossed the street then and got into his car and started it. The radio was playing a new one from The Beatles, “Let It Be,” and it was the right mood for the way Dougherty was feeling as he drove back through the Point, thinking about Brenda Webber.

Not six thousand bodies, just one.

One he wasn't going to let be forgotten.

part two

chapter

eleven

“Is it true cops get all the best dope?” Ruth said, and Dougherty took out the little tinfoil ball he still had in his pocket and dropped it on the coffee table. “Oh my god, I was kidding.”

He said, “Well, if you don't want it,” and started to pick it up but she got to it first saying, “I didn't say that,” and kind of danced away to the kitchenette at the end of the living room in her small apartment.

When they'd got to the Mazurka a few hours earlier, Ruth didn't want to talk about the Bill case, she wanted to talk about the Manson murders. The trial had just started in California, nothing was happening, really, still in jury selection, but she said she'd been following the case since the arrests last year and said, “Dr. Pendleton may be called as an expert witness.”

“Expert in what?”

“Multiple murders, but maybe also brainwashing — he worked a little with Dr. Cameron.”

“Brainwashing?” Dougherty said, and Ruth nodded, quite seriously. “But it looks like Dr. Singer will be the expert on that,” and before Dougherty could say anything she explained, “Dr. Margaret Singer. She's at Berkeley and she's done some amazing research on coercive persuasion and brainwashing.”

“That's what they're going to claim, these kids?” Dougherty said. “That they were brainwashed by Charlie Manson?”

“If that's what happened.”

At that moment in the date, which neither was really treating like a date, Dougherty felt it could have gone completely off the rails, but Ruth didn't seem to notice. She'd started talking about Dr. Pendleton and she talked about him for a long time, explaining his theories about multiple murderers and Dougherty remembered something she'd said the first time they talked, so he asked her about the MacDonald Triad. Without skipping a beat she told him all about John Marshall MacDonald, a psychiatrist from New Zealand and his theory — not a theory, she'd said, “a finding” — MacDonald first proposed in a
1963
paper that showed, she said, “Three behavioural characteristics that, if presented together, will be associated with later violent tendencies.”

Dougherty nodded and was finding himself paying a lot more attention. He'd never heard anyone talking about this kind of thing before.

“The three behavioural characteristics are bed-wetting, setting fires and cruelty to animals.”

“Bed-wetting?” Dougherty said and imagined what the detectives and inspectors in the homicide office would say if someone told them to look for bed-wetters.

“Persistent bed-wetting, past the age of five.”

Dougherty said, “Oh well, then.” Ruth ignored that and said, “And obsessive fire-setting and extreme cruelty to animals, killing animals.” Dougherty asked if any of the kids in the Manson trial had any of those traits, and Ruth said that Dr. Pendleton was hoping to talk to them. “Maybe I'll get to go along.”

That was about the most excited she'd looked in the restaurant and now, back at her apartment, Dougherty was thinking how he couldn't figure this Ruth Garber at all. She wasn't anything like his sister and the other kids at the pop festivals where he worked security. She also wasn't anything like the secretaries in the offices they cleared out during bomb scares and got together with later in the bars. Ruth was serious and straightforward, even now as she was sitting back down on the couch and unwrapping the tinfoil ball. She set it down on the coffee table, squeezed some tobacco out of a cigarette onto a rolling paper and then picked up a penknife that was already blackened at the tip and started to slice off a piece of the hash. But she had to really put some pressure on it and the hash went flying off the table in two directions.

“Shit,” Ruth said, and Dougherty laughed.

“It's a little brittle,” she said, getting down on her knees on the orange shag carpet and digging around. “What is it?”

Dougherty saw the other half of the hash sitting on top of a carpet shag and picked it up. “He said Green Morrocan but I'm not sure he's reliable,” and put it on the tinfoil.

Ruth sat back on the couch, holding the penknife stuck into the other piece of hash, and picked up a book of matches. Before it got awkward, with her trying to light one with one hand while holding the penknife in the other, Dougherty fired up his Zippo and she met his eyes as she held the hash over the flame.

Once she had it warmed up she crumpled it over top of the tobacco and Dougherty watched her tongue slip out between her lips and lick the glue on the rolling paper. The only other person he'd ever seen roll a spliff was a construction worker at Expo and that certainly wasn't sexy.

Ruth was, raising her eyebrows at him over the ­rising smoke as she inhaled and held it while she passed the joint. Dougherty took a deep drag and held it himself, waiting until Ruth slowly exhaled, her lips in a crinkled
O
.

“It is pretty good,” she said, and Dougherty exhaled and said, “It is?”

“You can't tell?”

“I've never done this before.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

Ruth took another hit, held it, and then let it out. “But there's probably a lot of other stuff you have done.”

“A few things, yeah.” He took the joint from her, looking into her dark eyes, still so serious.

Later, in the bedroom, she whispered in his ear, “It's okay, I'm on the pill,” and Dougherty didn't say ­anything. It was the first time he'd heard that since the hostess from the stock exchange, but he figured it was being said a lot these days.

They kissed and Ruth pulled away and started to unbutton her blouse. Dougherty took hold of her hands and moved them away, but she said, “I can undo my own buttons,” and Dougherty was kissing her neck then and said, “But what's the fun in that?” and kissed his way to her breasts.

She stayed serious for a long time and only really let go near the end, digging her fingers into his back and pulling him down on her as hard as she could.

Then, almost as soon as Dougherty flopped back on the bed, she got up and walked into the living room.

Dougherty thought about getting up to see what she was doing but instead he lay there listening to her, thinking about her walking around naked. He could hear ashtrays being moved and his lighter being flicked, and a minute later Ruth came back with a pack of Peter Jacksons in one hand and a joint in the other. She climbed back onto the bed, inhaling deep, and handed the joint to Dougherty. “I didn't see your cigarettes; you'll have to smoke mine.”

He said, “Sure,” and took the joint. Ruth sat cross-legged on the bed and took back the joint when he handed it to her, and Dougherty was thinking how he really couldn't figure her at all.

When the joint was done she picked up her smokes and waved the pack at him but he shook his head. “Not right now.”

“Okay, fine,” she said and put the pack on the bedside table.

It had been awkward like this after sex for Dougherty before, but usually that was when all he could think about was getting out of there. He didn't want to get away from Ruth, and then he thought maybe it was because he wasn't feeling all that close to her.

And maybe he wanted to.

So he said, “Where are you from?”

“How do you know I'm not from here?”

“Well, you're not living at home, you're paying rent, and you're not living in the McGill ghetto and you're not living up on St. Urbain — you're way out here in the east end.”

“It's not way out.”

He looked at her sideways and said, “Does anybody else in this building speak English?”

“I'm not sure.”

“Are there any other McGill students around here?”

“I'm not some undergrad,” she said. “I'm finishing my Master's.”

“English Montrealers don't move into the east end,” Dougherty said. “It's that two solitudes thing, remember?”

“What about a guy like you who's both?”

“I think my name's a bit of a giveaway.”

“You think you have to choose to be one or the other?”

Dougherty shrugged. It wasn't something he'd thought about and not something he wanted to be thinking about at that moment. He really wanted to know more about Ruth and then it hit him. “You're American.”

“So, what's that supposed to mean?”

“It's not supposed to mean anything, it's just most of the Americans I meet these days are men. You know, draft dodgers.”

“Would you go to Vietnam?”

Dougherty shook his head a little and said, “To tell you the truth, I don't know. My dad joined the navy in
1938
but when I said something about joining the army he wasn't too keen on it.”

Ruth was still sitting cross-legged and looking at him. “Why was it okay for him but not you?”

“I asked him that and he just said, ‘Nazis.'”

“Not much you can say to that.”

They were quiet for a minute and then Dougherty said, “Marielle Archambeault was killed a few blocks from here.”

“I know,” Ruth said.

“Is that what got you interested in this neighbourhood?”

“No, I was already working for Dr. Pendleton.”

“Studying murderers?”

“Yes. I started here last September. I came here to work with him. I'd read all his papers and I saw a talk he gave at Columbia.”

“Is that where you went?”

He thought he saw the beginning of a smile and she said, “NYU.”

It was quiet then, but Dougherty wanted to keep listening to Ruth talk.

“Why do you want study murderers?”

She looked at him and for a moment he thought she wasn't going to answer but then she turned sideways and picked up her pack of smokes from the bedside table and said, “Kitty Genovese.”

Dougherty shrugged and Ruth lit her cigarette and blew out the match, then said, “ ‘Thirty-Seven Who Saw Murder Didn't Call the Police.' That was the headline.”

“Oh yeah, I remember now. New York, right?”

“Yeah, Queens.”

“Is that where you're from?”

“No, the Bronx, Christopher Columbus High. I was a junior — we talked about Kitty Genovese a lot.”

“That no one called?” Dougherty shrugged. “People get scared.”

“No, it wasn't that no one called the police, that's what all the newspapers were talking about, that's what all my friends were talking about. What I remember is that when they caught the guy, when he went to trial, the only reason he had for doing it, the only motive he said he had was that he wanted to kill a woman. That's all he had to say. He drove around for hours that night looking for a woman to kill and found Kitty Genovese.”

She took a drag on her cigarette, and Dougherty held up his hand and she handed it to him and he said, “That's strange.”

“What's strange?” She held out her hand for the cigarette.

“The driving around all night.”

“What do you mean, did you find something?”

“Maybe, I don't know.”

“What is it?”

“Maybe a car, we don't know if it's anything.”

“What do you think it is?”

“It was just when you said driving around all night. I've been looking for a car because a girl in the Point said she saw one and then a kid in LaSalle said he saw one that could be the same one, but it was when you said driving around looking for a woman I realized Sylvie Berubé was found right by the entrance to the Ville-Marie Tunnel and where Brenda Webber was found you can see the expressway, the
2
-
20
, and that's actually the same road.”

“So he was driving back and forth?”

“It's probably nothing. The reason the car stood out a little in the Point is the place isn't really somewhere you pass through, you know? Even if you're taking the Victoria Bridge you don't really go into the Point.”

“And the other three women were all killed downtown.”

“Shirley Audette was killed on Dorchester. There's an on-ramp to the expressway right there and Jean Way's apartment was on Lincoln — you can take Guy or Atwater.”

“Well sure,” Ruth said, “you can drive anywhere.”

“Yeah, I guess that's what he did.”

“What he's
doing
.”

Dougherty said yeah, thinking, Right, this guy has killed five women, why would he stop now? “They were all downtown, right? Even Marielle Archambeault, who lived around the corner here, he met her at Place Ville-Marie, didn't he?”

“She worked in a jewellery store,” Ruth said. “He picked her up there. That's how we know his name is Bill — she mentioned it to one of the other women at the store.”

“So he killed those three in their own apartments but Sylvie Berubé and Brenda Webber he didn't.”

“Brenda Webber lived at home, didn't she?”

“Yeah, and she was a lot younger than the other girls.”

Ruth slid off the bed then and picked up her glasses as she walked back into the living room. “I'm just going to write some of this down.” She came back with a notebook and a pen. Still naked.

Dougherty was going to say something about how good she looked under the jeans and loose blouses she wore, like a
Playboy
centrefold, but it didn't seem like the time. And it didn't seem like the kind of thing Ruth Garber cared about.

She wrote a few things down in the notebook and then said, “Also there were no mutilations on Brenda Webber's body, were there? He didn't bite her breasts?”

“No, he didn't.”

She nodded, wrote a few words on the notepad and then flipped it shut like a stenographer.

Then she took off her glasses and looked at Dougherty. “Are you going to stay the night?”

He couldn't tell if she wanted him to or not, if it made a difference to her one way or the other but then without really thinking about it he said, “Of course,” and thought he saw her start to smile.