I reversed the photo and stared into the face of Martin "Deluxe" DeLuccio, immortalized on July 23, 1992, during a run to Wilmington, North Carolina.
The subject's eyes were hidden by dark lenses the size of quarters, and a twisted bandanna circled his head. His sleeveless denim jacket bore the grinning skull and crossed pistons of the Outlaws motorcycle club. The bottom rocker identified its owner as a member of the Lexington chapter.
The biker's flesh appeared puffy, his jawline slack, and a large gut bulged below the jacket. The camera had caught him straddling a powerful hog, a Michelob in his left hand, a vacuous expression on his face. Deluxe looked as if he'd need instructions to use toilet paper.
I was moving on when the telephone rang. I laid Eli "Robin" Hood next to Deluxe and picked up, hoping it was Roy.
It wasn't.
A gravelly voice asked for me, dropping the final long e from my first name, but correctly pronouncing the second. The man was a stranger, and obviously an Anglophone. I answered in English.
"This is Dr Brennan."
There was a long pause during which I could hear clanging, and what sounded like a public address system.
"This is Dr Brennan," I repeated.
I heard a throat cleared, then breathing. Finally a voice said, "This is George Dorsey."
"Yes?" My mind scanned, but got no hits.
"You're the one dug up those stiffs?"
The air had gone hollow as if George Dorsey had cupped his hand around the mouthpiece.
"Yes." Here we go.
"I saw your name in today's pap-"
"Mr Dorsey, if you have information about those individuals you should speak with one of the investigating officers."
Let Claudel or Quickwater deal with the postmedia circus parade.
'Ain't you with Carcajou?"
"Not in the sense you mean. The investigating officer-"
"That fuck has his head so far up his ass he's going to need sonar just to find it."
That got my attention.
"Have you spoken with Constable Quickwater?"
"I can't speak with fuck-all while this moron Claudel is squeezing my nuts."
"Excuse me?"
"This ass wipe has aspirations to higher rank, so I sit here sucking shit."
For a moment no one spoke. The call sounded like it was coming from a bathysphere.
"He's probably putting something together for CNN." I was growing impatient, but didn't want to risk losing information that might be useful.
"Are you calling about the skeletons unearthed in St-Basile?" I heard choking noises, then, "Shit, no."
It was then that my brain locked on to the name. George Dorsey was the suspect Claudel had locked up.
"Have you been charged, Mr Dorsey?" "Fuck, no.
"Why are they holding you?"
"When they popped mel was holding six bumps of meth."
"Why are you calling me?"
"Because none of these other fucks will listen. I didn't whack Cherokee. That was unskilled labor"
I felt my pulse increase.
"What do you mean?"
"That ain't how brothers take care of business."
"Are you saying Cherokee's murder wasn't gang-related?" "Fuckin' A."
"Then who killed him?"
"Get your ass over here and I'll lay it all out." I said nothing. Dorsey's breath was loud in the silence. "But this ain't going to be a one-sided shuck." "I've got no reason to trust you.
"And you ain't my choice for Woman of the Year, but none of these jag-offs will listen. They've launched the D day of police fuck-ups and parked me right on Omaha Beach."
"I'm impressed with your knowledge of history, Mr Dorsey, but why should I believe you?"
"Got a better lead?"
I let the question dangle a moment. Loser though he was, George Dorsey had a point. And no one else appeared inclined to talk to me today.
I looked at my watch. Eleven-twenty
"I'll be there in an hour."
Chapter 21
For policing purposes, the Communaute Urbatne De Montreal is divided into four sections, each with a headquarters housing intervention, analysis and investigation divisions, and a detention center. Suspects arrested for murder or sexual assault are held at a facility near place Versailles, in the far eastern end of the city All others await arraignment at one of the four sectional jails. For possession of methamphetamine, Dorsey went to his local facility, Op South.
The Op South headquarters is located at rue Guy and boulevard René Lévesque, on the outskirts of Centre-ville. This section is predominantly French and English, but it is also Mandarin, Estonian, Arabic, and Greek. It is separatist and federalist. It holds the vagrant and the affluent, the student and the stockbroker, the immigrant and the "pta Liner québecois.
The Op South is churches and bars, boutiques and sex shops, sprawling homes and walk-up flats. The murders of Emily Anne Toussaint and Yves Cherokee Desjardins had taken place within its borders.
As I turned off Guy into the lot, I passed through a group carrying placards and wearing signs. They'd spread down the sidewalk from the building next door, blue-coliar workers picketing for higher pay. Good luck, I thought. Perhaps it was the political instability, perhaps the Canadian economy in general, but Quebec Province was in a financial squeeze. Budgets were being cut, services curtailed. I hadn't had a raise in seven years.
I entered at the main door and stepped to a counter to my right.
"I'm here to see George Dorsey," I said to the guard on duty. She put down her snack cake and eyed me with boredom.
"Are you on the list?"
"Temperance Brennan. The prisoner asked to see me.
She brushed chubby hands together, checked for crumbs, then entered something into a keyboard. Light reflected off her glasses as she leaned forward to read the monitor. Text scrolled down each lens, froze, then she spoke again without raising her eyes.
"Carcajou?" Ralph Nader couldn't have sounded more dubious.
"Mm." LeJournal thought so.
"Got an ID?"
She looked up and I showed her my security pass for the SQ building.
"No badge?"
"This was handy."
"You'll have to sign in and leave your things here."
She flipped pages in a ledger, wrote something, then handed me the pen. I scribbled the time and my name. Then I slipped my purse off my shoulder and handed it across the counter.
"It'll be a minute."
Ms. Cupcake secured my bag in a metal locker, then picked up a phone and spoke a few words. Ten minutes later a key turned in a green metal door to my left, then it opened and a guard waved me in. He was skelatal, his uniform drooping from his bones like clothes on a hanger
Guard number two swept me with a handheld metal detector, then indicated I should follow. Keys jangled on his belt as we turned right and headed down a corridor lighted by fluorescents and surveilicd by wall and ceiling cameras. Straight ahead I could see a large holding cell, with a window facing the hall I was in, green bars facing the other. Inside, a half-dozen men lounged on wooden benches, sat or slept on the floor, or clung to the bars like captive primates.
Beyond the drunk tank was another green metal door, the words Bloc Celltilaire in bold white to its right, beside that another counter A guard was placing a bundle in one of a grid of cubicles, this one marked XYZ. I suspected a Mr. Xavier was arnvtng. He would not see his belt, shoelaces, jewelry, glasses, or other personal possessions until checkout.
"Man's in here," said the guard, thrusting his chin toward a door marked Entrevzte avocat, the door attorneys used. I knew Dorsey would pass through an identical door marked Entrevue detenu, for the prisoners.