Black Rock (14 page)

Or maybe that's just what he wanted to see.

chapter

twelve

Rozovsky said, “You're banging a member of the tribe?”

“What?”

“Ruth Garber — she's Jewish, right?”

“I don't know, we didn't talk religion.”

Dougherty didn't want to tell Rozovsky that what they did talk about was murderers — multiple murderers — and that Ruth Garber knew a lot more about them than Dougherty did. Probably more than any of the cops on the force.

Rozovsky was pulling pictures out of the stack of files on the desk. “Trust me, it'll come up. So how far back are we going?”

“I don't know, five years?”

“Five years, you know how many cars that is?”

“We don't have to get every one. We can probably start with a few, narrow it down.”

“Why don't you go to some lots, get some brochures?”

“Yeah, I can do that, too,” Dougherty said, “but it could be a couple years old and these kids didn't see it in a showroom.”

Rozovsky sighed. “I've got a lot of work to do, you know. Don't you?”

“Here,” Dougherty said, holding up a picture, “anything that looks like this.”

“What's that?”

“Buick Skylark. No wait, Wildcat.”

“Oh yeah, that was used in a bank robbery at the Rockland Shopping Centre. See the scrape along the side? There was a chase on the Metropolitan Expressway, remember?”

“Vaguely. If it was white it would be a big white car with a black roof, wouldn't it?”

“Like this.” Rozovsky held up another picture, and Dougherty said, “What is it?”

“Chevy. Impala, I think.”

“Was it in a bank robbery, too?”

“No, it was broken into. It could take days to find pictures of all the possible cars.”

“Five or six will do. I just need to show the kids and see if they pick the same one.”

“Here,” Rozovsky said, “this one's even white.”

Dougherty took the picture. “Nice car, Galaxy.” He put the picture with the others they'd pulled from the files and said, “Two or three more should do it. Have you got any Pontiacs? Maybe a Grand Prix or a Ventura?”

“I told you,” Rozovsky said, “they're not in here by car. These are evidence photos.”

“But you can remember.”

“They're all over the place, they're not filed by car, they're filed by case.”

“So?”

“So, some of them are victim's cars like that one, cars that were broken into or vandalized, and some were used in crimes and some were stolen vehicles.”

Dougherty said, “Okay, but we don't need everything. I can start with a few and eliminate some, narrow it down. Have you got a Buick?”

“Somewhere.”

“That mobster on the Champlain bridge, he was driving a Cutlass, right?”

“I've got plenty of pictures of that one,” Rozovsky said, “but it was in about a hundred pieces.”

“But mobster cars, they're big. There must be plenty of pictures of them.”

Rozovsky said, “Not as many as you'd think,” but he was walking back to the row of filing cabinets. Dougherty started out of the office, saying, “Okay, this is a good start, thanks. I'll be back in a couple of hours.”

Dougherty could hear Rozovsky complaining about not having time for this, but he knew he'd get the pictures together.

Down the hall the homicide office was empty except for Carpentier sitting at his desk, going through notebooks. Dougherty stood at the door, watching as the detective flipped the pages and dropped notebook after notebook into a growing pile. The longer Dougherty stood there, the more awkward it got, but he didn't want to barge in on the detective. Then he saw Carpentier stop and reread a page of a notebook, nod and then write something down.

Carpentier looked up. “Constable Dougherty.”

Dougherty started into the office. “You find something?”

“Maybe, don't know yet.” Carpentier shrugged and leaned back, the wooden chair creaking as it tilted and rolled a few inches. He rubbed his eyes, then looked up at Dougherty. “Something some guy said three months ago, didn't seem like anything at the time, now maybe there's something to connect it to.”

“Working the informants.”

Carpentier nodded. “Now that we have the task force and a lot of money to spend everybody is selling something.”

“Some of it could be good.”

“Oh yes, some of it. A lot to go through.” Carpentier started to pick up another notebook but stopped and looked back at Dougherty. “What about your informant, the drug dealer in the Point, how is that going?”

“Pretty good, I think. I bought some hash off him.”

“That's good. What did you do with it?”

Dougherty hadn't expected that. “I flushed it,” he said, and Carpentier said, “Good.”

“That's all I did, I didn't ask him about anything else.”

“No, you don't want to do that yet,” Carpentier said. “Buy a little more from him, get him to think he has a cop in his pocket. You may need to give him something.”

“Like what?”

That shrug again. “Maybe the next time we raid the bars you can tip him off, something like that.”

“Okay, yeah, sounds good.”

“This could be good for you,” Carpentier said, “if this guy is close to the Higginses. Does he seem close?”

Dougherty thought about it a little. “He seems close. I think he's a little brighter than the younger Higgins brothers.”

“If he can tie his own shoes that puts him ahead of those two. So, become his friend.”

“Okay.”

“Anything else?”

“I'm getting pictures of different kinds of cars to show the kids, see if they can recognize the make.”

“Why?”

Dougherty shrugged and was feeling out of his depth again.

Then Carpentier said, “Can't hurt, I suppose,” and Dougherty said yeah. He didn't want to leave the office on that so he said, “Hey, I was talking to Dr. Pendleton's assistant.”

“The girl with the glasses?”

Dougherty said yeah, and Carpentier said, “And the big tits under those sweaters she wears?”

“Yeah, right. Anyway, she asked me a lot of questions. That's okay, right?”

Carpentier nodded, “Dr. Pendleton has some connections.” He raised his eyebrows and motioned slightly upwards with his chin. “High up, you know?”

“It was just the usual stuff.”

“What else could it be?”

Dougherty said, “I don't know,” but he was thinking about the bed-wetting and wondered if Dr. Pendleton had told his connections about that.

Just then another detective came in, saying,
“Henri, viens ici, faut que tu entendes ça,”
and Carpentier said, “Okay,
j'arrive
,” and stood up to leave. He turned at the doorway, looked back and said, “Don't wait too long to buy more dope from your friend. Be a good customer.”

“Yeah, for sure,” Dougherty said and watched the two detectives leave.

Something was up. He could tell, he could feel it.

But as his father would say, that was above his pay grade, so Dougherty went to the big filing cabinet against the east wall of the office.

The first file Dougherty read was Shirley Audette's. She'd been murdered on October
3
,
1969
. Eight months ago, six months after Dougherty had been called to the scene and discovered the body of Sylvie Berubé on the other side of the city.

Looking at the picture of Shirley Audette, Dougherty saw the similarities to Sylvie Berubé right away: white women, early twenties, attractive. And strangled.

Shirley Audette's body was also found in a lane, this one right behind her apartment building on Dorchester, between St. Mark and St. Matthew, about four blocks from Station Ten. She was wearing red pants and a turtleneck sweater and a brown leather vest. She was twenty years old.

She was also five weeks pregnant. Dougherty was surprised to see that. He couldn't remember it from any of the press, although there had been very little press when Shirley Audette had been killed. There was also a note that said she had been treated at the Douglas, a psychiatric hospital in Verdun Dougherty only knew from all the jokes about the place he had heard growing up.

The file also included the transcript of an interview with Shirley Audette's boyfriend that said the two lived together in the apartment but the boyfriend was at work all night. He said she had called him at three in the morning and they spoke for a few minutes — she was scared being alone — and then he called her back at five and there was no answer. In the interview the boyfriend said Shirley sometimes took part in what he called “rough sex” with a man he didn't know. The detective interviewing him asked if she did it for money, but the boyfriend said no. In the margin someone had written,
drugs?

Dougherty looked at the pictures of Shirley Audette taken at the morgue, and other than the mark around her neck the only other mark on her body was where her breasts had been bitten. One of the pictures was a close-up and Dougherty could see distinct teeth marks around the nipple that went almost completely through the skin.

And that was pretty much it. The boyfriend's story about being at work checked out and there wasn't anything else.

The Marielle Archambeault file was just as thin, and the little information in it was starting to look familiar. Also twenty years old, she worked in a jewellery store in the mall under Place Ville-Marie and she was strangled on November
23
, barely two months after Shirley Audette. The next day when Marielle didn't show up for work, her boss went to her apartment and got the landlady to let him in. The apartment was neat; there was a typewriter on a small desk and a novel by Françoise Sagan on an end table. Marielle was found on the couch and she was wearing brown pants and a green blouse with three buttons missing. Her bra had been ripped apart but put back on her body. There were no signs of a struggle or forced entry.

She'd also been strangled. And her breast had been bitten.

This time there was no boyfriend to talk to and the other women at the jewellery store didn't seem to know much about Marielle's personal life. Like Sylvie Berubé, she had only moved to Montreal a few months earlier. The only thing coming out of the interviews was that one of the women thought she'd heard Marielle say she was meeting a man named Bill after work.

The first detective on the scene had recognized the similarities to Shirley Audette — right away they knew they were dealing with the same murderer.

But they didn't go public with that information until after another woman was killed.

Dougherty couldn't figure out why he hadn't heard about these murders, right downtown, last October and November, six months ago.

Then he remembered that was during the massive police prep for the Grey Cup game, everybody so worried it would be such a great target for bombs, the city full of English from across Canada. People were worried; it was all they talked about. Trudeau was at the game, there were lots of threats against him and the more threats there were the more he insisted on going and not being surrounded by security, so there were hundreds of cops in plainclothes in attendance.

The prep had gone on for weeks, Dougherty'd logged lots of overtime then — around-the-clock watches on the Autostade, guarding the parade floats after the bomb squad cleared them, sweeping the hotels, escorting the Miss Grey Cup contestants. Anything that should normally have taken two cops had six.

The Grey Cup being the national championship, the only really Canadian championship, not like hockey with American teams in it, did seem like it could be a real target. The game hadn't been held in Montreal since before the war, more than thirty years ago. There'd been talk of cancelling it, or at least some of the events. Dougherty remembered the Santa Claus Parade was cancelled.

But the game was played. And all the events went on as usual, just with massive security. People did come from all over the country, the Calgary fans set up their pancake breakfasts on the sidewalks and took their horse into the hotel like they did at every Grey Cup, the Ottawa fans were everywhere, the Saskatchewan fans in green were out in force.

And nothing happened.

It was only after the game when everybody started to relax that they found a bomb, a big one, ten sticks of dynamite, in Eaton's department store. Dougherty remembered the Christmas decorations were up and they emptied the place, thousands of people spilling out onto St. Catherine Street, and when Vachon came out with the device — still in the shoebox he'd found it in under a counter in the jewellery department on the fourth floor — the Sally Ann Santa rang his bell and everybody — French and English — cheered. Dougherty remembered Vachon telling people it was the first time he'd ever had a crowd cheer for him.

The next murder came in January
1970
.

Dougherty picked up the Jean Way file and read it, and as he did the sadness passed and he started to get angry. He read the same details again. Jean Way was twenty-four years old and had been strangled, but her breasts had not been mutilated. Dougherty read on and found out that Jean Way had a boyfriend who had come to her apartment on Lincoln, also a few blocks from Station Ten, to pick her up for a date but there was no answer. The boyfriend left, but when he came back a couple of hours later, he found the apartment door slightly open. He went in and found Jean naked on her bed.

The detective's theory was that the first time the boyfriend came to the apartment the killer, Bill, was still inside. When the boyfriend left, Bill took off and didn't bite her breasts and put Jean's clothes back on as he had the other victims.

Other than the boyfriend's claim about rough sex and the question about drugs in Shirley Audette's file, there wasn't any mention of “crazy sex stuff” anywhere else, but now Dougherty was starting to understand what Ruth was talking about when she'd said Dr. Pendleton might be called as an expert about brainwashing in the Manson trial. The detectives believed the women had been charmed by Bill and were willing participants right up till the end.