There were nods of agreement from everyone but Hitch and Vince.
“Not that I don’t just live to see you guys,” Frank said, “but I was having an enjoyable Sunday morning until Pete called. Okay, so I came down here. But nothing you’ve told me is big news to me — except the part about Vince’s ex.”
Everyone but Vince laughed.
“The point,” Pete said, “is to let you know what this means to us. It’s going to be bad enough that the guy’s name is before the public again. This is going to rake up a lot of ill will. The department doesn’t need it.”
Frank eyed him skeptically. “There’s more to it than that.”
“No, there’s not. Look, Cliff said you didn’t find the payoff money, and he thought maybe you had some questions — were leaning toward trying to clear Lefebvre’s name.”
“Now we’re getting warmer.”
“So you haven’t recovered the money,” Hitch said. “That doesn’t mean he was innocent. Everything else pointed to him — the fact that he was the last one to see the kid, the fact that he was the last one to handle the evidence. Those two facts alone are enough to make it clear that he’s the killer. You don’t settle this quickly, you make life miserable for all of us. No one is going to be happy with you if you start making this out to be something more than it was. It will just give the Express an excuse to make us look bad.”
Vince, Pete, and Ned voiced their agreement at length. Jake and Reed stayed quiet.
“What if he was innocent?” Frank asked.
“He wasn’t,” Vince insisted. “Get that through your head, Harriman.”
Frank turned to Matsuda. “You feel that way, Jake?”
“I don’t think it’s at all likely that anyone other than Phil Lefebvre killed that boy, Frank. And I think Hitch is right — no good will come of bringing it all up again.”
Frank looked at Reed, who was resolutely staring into his coffee cup. “You, too, Reed?”
Reed shrugged, still not meeting his eyes.
Pete, on the other hand, returned his stare, reading him. “Aw, shit,” he said.
Frank smiled. “Thanks for your concern,” he said to the group.
“Shit,” Pete said again as Frank stood and dropped a couple of dollars on the table.
“You’re not going to—” Vince began, but fell silent when Pete grabbed his arm in warning.
“Not going to let you pressure me?” Frank said. “No, I’m not.”
“Look,” Ned Perry said, “no one wants you to compromise an investigation. We’re just asking you not to drag it out unnecessarily.”
“Believe me,” Frank said, “until this morning, I didn’t feel any particular urgency about this set of cases.”
He walked away. Behind him, he heard Pete say, “Shit.”
5
Monday, July 10, 10:00 A.M.
Las Piernas Police Department
Homicide Division
Frank looked through the file on Lefebvre until he found the phone number for Lefebvre’s parents, in Quebec. The coroner’s office had obtained dental records and identified the remains from the wreckage as those of Las Piernas Police Detective Philip Lefebvre, aka Philippe Jean-Michel Lefebvre, age forty-two. Cause of death to be determined, but preliminary findings indicated massive injuries received in the crash.
Frank hated this part of the job — notifying parents that their son was dead. That Lefebvre was an adult son who had been missing for ten years would not, he knew, make it any easier for them to hear of his death. He was further dismayed to read a note near the phone number: the Lefebvres refused to communicate in English.
He rubbed his forehead, feeling a headache coming on. He couldn’t use just anyone to translate the news of Phil Lefebvre’s death to his parents. It was hard enough to give someone that kind of news in a language you both knew. He looked for the number for Lefebvre’s sister, Yvette Nereault.
Same notation.
“Hey, Pete — we have any French speakers in the department?”
Pete shrugged and said nothing. Pete had been shrugging at him all morning. He was ready to shove Pete’s neck down into his shoulders to save him the effort for the next one. He sighed and said, “I’ve got to make a next-of-kin notification here. Lefebvre’s parents are French-Canadian.”
Pete stayed busy with some paperwork on his desk.
“Great. Very considerate of the family. Maybe someday someone will have to call your elderly mother in Rome, New York, and ask her to get one of her English-speaking neighbors to come over — so that we can tell her in Italian that we hated her son so much, we talked about pissing on his bones.”
Pete flushed red, but still said nothing.
Frank picked up the file and locked his desk, deciding he’d try calling Lefebvre’s sister anyway, and make the next-of-kin call from a more private phone. As he was leaving, Reed Collins called out, “Frank.”
It was the first time anyone had spoken to him all day. The others frowned at Collins for breaking the silence.
Reed ignored them. “Try Mike Tran in Gang Prevention.”
“Thanks,” Frank said.
“Don’t thank me yet. For all I know, Vietnamese French and Canadian French may not be anything alike.”
“Thanks, anyway.”
He suffered another setback when he learned that Tran was on vacation. He decided to go outside the department and called Guy St. Germain — a friend who had grown up in Montreal. Guy said he’d be glad to help and invited Frank to come to his downtown office.
A former pro hockey player, Guy had then followed a family tradition and gone to work in banking. Frank had met him through Irene — he dated Irene’s best friend, so the couples went out together fairly often. And Guy had been aiding Frank’s efforts to learn to play ice hockey — a game he’d been unaware of while growing up in Bakersfield.
“What a sad business you are in,” Guy said as Frank settled into a soft leather chair in the banker’s office.
“Notifying the families is one of the worst parts of the job,” Frank agreed.
Guy shut the office door and took a seat behind a large desk. “I’ll use the speakerphone — even though you may not understand the language, it’s better if you hear the tone of the other’s voice, I think.” He dialed the number. Three tones sounded, and even before the English explanation was spoken, Frank knew what they meant.
“Disconnected. Hell, I could have saved you the trouble.”
“You’ve had all the trouble,” Guy said. He tried the sister’s number.
A man answered. Frank heard Guy ask for Yvette Nereault. A rapid exchange occurred in which he thought he heard the word “California.” Then he heard Guy say something about the Las Piernas Police Department.
“The Las Piernas police?” he heard the man ask in English.
“Oui—” Guy answered, but before he could say more, the man hung up.
“What happened?” Frank asked.
“I asked for Yvette Nereault and was told that she was not at home, but the man who answered was her husband. I asked when she would be back and he said not for a week, that she was in California. I said that I was calling on behalf of a friend who was with the Las Piernas Police Department, who needed urgently to contact her. You heard what happened after that.”
Frank sighed. “This family is understandably upset with the department.”
“Why?”
“Strictly between us?”
“Of course.”
Frank gave him a brief summary of the case.
“Phew!” Guy said. “So they must believe in his innocence.”
“I’m not so sure their faith is misplaced. And the notes on the case indicate that persistent inquiries were made of the family during the first year or so after Lefebvre disappeared — some members of the department thought Lefebvre would hide out in Canada.”