After half an hour on the scene, old Vaillancourt gave Max a grim preliminary report. He made it clear how much violence had rained down on Irene.
Max couldn’t say offhand the number of dead bodies he had seen. Most of them stayed in his memory, which was considerable by both nature and training. He certainly remembered the first — a fifteen-year-old girl who drowned in the Lachine Canal back when he was a rookie patrolman. She got tangled in long weeds and only bobbed up when her body was bloated with gas.
Max had seen exactly nine dead children in his life, and could recall every detail about their crime scenes, autopsies, and investigations. Once he had caught the person responsible — and he had caught them all, six men and three women — he could tell you what they looked and smelled like; what they wore when they were caught and what they wore to court; the look in their eyes when they contradicted their own lie.
Irene Czerny had been in the hot, damp dirt long enough for significant decomposition, but not quite long enough to mask her youthful beauty. As Max gently felt Irene’s head and bones, noting to himself the fractures, Vaillancourt smoked a steady line of Player’s Plain, careful to flick his butts into the dirt and away from the body. Everybody was smoking to keep the smell out of their noses and give themselves something to look at besides the girl.
“I’m glad you’re leading this case,” Vaillancourt said, once the small body had been bagged and loaded into a morgue wagon. “You had to work harder than most to make homicide.”
“I guess,” Max said.
“When you find who did this, give him some of the pain he gave her.”
“Whatever I can.”
“Tell me about the guy who found her.”
Marois pulled a notebook from his breast pocket and thumbed it open to a page in the middle. “Roméo Leblanc, thirty-six, married, four kids ages two to eight. Works as a baker on Rue Saint-Hubert. Leaves his house at five in the morning. Works twelve-hour shifts.”
“So he’d get off at five o’clock at night, around the time she went missing. And he might have passed her street, depending on his route home.”
“I think he’s clean,” Marois said.
“Based on what?”
“He looked me in the eye. He shook my hand. He spoke in a steady voice. Besides, he has kids of his own.”
How did this man make homicide? Max wondered. Marois read crime scene details out of a notebook — Max had never carried a notebook in his entire career. If you couldn’t commit a scene to memory, couldn’t recall the details of an interrogation, what good were you?
Dead children. They could make a man fucking crazy.
Max left Marois at the scene to oversee the canvass and drove to Station 4, where Irene’s disappearance had first been reported. He talked to a detective named Dagenais, and went through the statements he and his team had taken from the parents and neighbors.
“The mother says she was a good kid, good head on her shoulders,” Dagenais said. “Swears she wouldn’t have run away.”
“And the father?” Max asked.
Dagenais shrugged. “Doesn’t speak a word of English or French. Been here since the end of the war and can’t be bothered, the dumb hunky.”
“He strike you as off?”
“A perv, you mean? Christ, I don’t know. He seemed broken up enough.”
“They always do,” Max said. “Even after they confess.”
“Talk to him yourself.”
“I’ll do that. What about the neighbors?”
“Not much help. One of them told us the guy upstairs from her had a thing for young girls but he had the best alibi money can buy.”
“He was in the can?”
“Yup. Drunk tank. Turns out the lady just doesn’t like the guy. He plays his radio loud at night.”
“Nothing else?”
“We got a call from a woman who said she saw a girl matching Irene’s description walking on Rue Rachel with a boy around the time she disappeared. Five fifteen or five thirty.”
“Rachel where?”
“Around Saint-Christophe.”
“That’s only two blocks from Mentana. Any description of the boy?”
“About Irene’s age, maybe a little younger. Shorter, anyway. Wore a brown-and-white checked cap. Curly brown hair poking out.”
“That’s it?”
“It’s all she could see.”
“You ask the mother about boys?”
“Of course. She said Irene didn’t play with the boys on the street. They mostly play hockey and stickball in the lane. She couldn’t think of anyone who matched that description.”
“I don’t think a kid her age could have hurt her like that. You got anything else?”
“Another neighbor said she saw a guy out on the street the morning Irene disappeared. Thin, pale, thirties. Gave her the creeps.”
“Why?”
“She wasn’t sure. Said he stood across the street doing nothing.”
“Nothing.”
“That’s what bothered her, she said. He was doing nothing.”
“But this was in the morning and she didn’t go missing until the afternoon.”
“Right.”
“Probably no connection.”
“That’s what we thought.”
“She’d never seen him before?”
“No.”
“You have her name?”
Dagenais thumbed through a spiral notebook and gave Max the woman’s name and address.
“All right. Ask your constables if they know anyone matching that description in the quarter.”
“Already did. Nothing.”
Sonja Czerny sat at her kitchen table, covering her eyes as if a bright light were searching her out — only her hands could keep her from being blinded. Her husband sat next to her, elbows on the table, head in his hands. Every few seconds, Sonja would take in a sharp breath and make a barking sound. Max wondered why the husband didn’t get up and comfort his wife. Put his hands on her shoulders, rub them when they shook.
He started with a few questions about Irene’s routine on summer days, the friends she hung around with, the places she went. All things he already knew from reading statements at Station 4.
Sonja answered all the questions. Her brown eyes reminded Max of Stella’s. They had the same sad, searching look. A few times she hesitated and looked at her husband, Tibor. He wore a white undershirt and green pants that were the bottom half of a workman’s uniform.
“Ask him if he saw her when he left for work Tuesday morning,” Max said. He didn’t care what the answer was. He just wanted Tibor to lift his head. He wanted to watch the man’s eyes move, hear the timbre of his voice as he spoke about his daughter.
“He says no, he did not see her,” Sonja said. “He must leave before seven.”
Max wanted to hear more. “Ask him if they spoke the night before.”
She put the question to her husband; his answer came back in a rasp. Tears ran from his eyes and choked his voice. Her own eyes welled up as she translated: “He says yes, they spoke about Nadja. She is the younger daughter and she and Irene had a fight on Monday and Irene slapped her. He told her she must not to do this, even when Nadja is starting the fight, because she is older and stronger.”
Max had seen and heard enough. In his mind the father was clean. “Please show me where she sleeps.” He’d almost said where she slept, but had caught himself just in time.