La Mort dans l'âme
Maxime Houde
(Chapter 6, p. 77-87)
Two days after Madame Lemaire's murder, all the people involved in the investigation gathered in the HQ big meeting room to discuss the situation. DeVries was there, with Néron and his men; Noël Ouellet, a physician at Saint-Jean-de-Dieu, who consulted for the police; Dr. Parent and Dr. Delphis, also at Saint-Jean, as well as the medical examiner. Meanwhile, other detectives in the homicide squad had joined the investigation. Louis Boileau was among them.
DeVries spoke first. They had no idea whatsoever of the murder's identity, but if they could establish a link between the victims, he thought things would get clearer. The victims were similar, everybody agreed on that. Women of a certain age, with their own businesses. Married, living quiet lives.
"And Corriveau, Rog?" Detective Bigras asked. "What do you make of her?"
"She's not like the other victims, you're right.
"Maybe the perp didn't know she was a whore," said the detective with the toothpick. "It wasn't written on her forehead."
"Even so," Bigras said, "she didn't look like the others. She lived in a dump near the red light district. The others weren't living in Outremont, but still..."
"When all's said and done, the victims are not that similar, when you think about it."
"What do you mean, Fred?" DeVries asked.
"They had their own businesses, okay, but the killer wouldn't have chosen them on that basis. It's not something obvious at first glance. He would have to know them to know that."
"You think we're dealing with more than one killer?"
"At this stage, we can't dismiss that possibility. It would explain why we didn't find identical fingerprints in the victims' houses or apartments."
Néron began talking. All heads turned towards him.
"I concur with Castonguay. The victims were leading similar lives, that's true. But above all, they were alone when they were murdered, and that may be the reason why the killer made his move. A woman alone is easy prey, it's as simple as that. You're going to tell me that they all died in horrible circumstances, and it's also true. Two of them were stabbed, one with a knife, the other with a broken bottle, and the others were strangled with bare hands or with a belt they were wearing at the time. But a knife is easily hidden, and the bottle and belts were already at the crime scene. Anybody could have used those objects to commit the murders."
"That's an interesting theory," DeVries said.
All eyes turned to him. He took a drag of his El Pietto, and exhaled the smoke through the side of his mouth.
"With what was written in the newspapers," Néron said, "it could give ideas to any sicko."
"As long as sickos read newspapers."
There was scattered laughter. Néron sat pokerfaced. DeVries smiled, proud of his joke. He was sitting at the head of the table like a king presiding over a banquet.
"But you're forgetting one detail, Néron, my man," he said.
"What would it be?"
"The victims were all burglarized, their homes were searched."
"So?"
"Do you think that's a coincidence?"
"No," Néron said, still impassive. "But obviously no one in a normal state of mind would attack people like this. Mad killers may act on the spur of the moment, they trash the place, then, when they come back to their senses, they decide to steal something to cover their tracks."
"Six killers behaving the same way? Two, okay, three at most. But six? I don't think so."
DeVries turned to Dr. Ouellet, a fiftyish man who seemed to watch the world with irony. He had hair like Einstein. He looked more like a deranged patient than a psychologist.
"What do you think of all this, Noël?"
"Hard to say. Usually, sexual crimes are committed on children by people close to them, relatives or friends of the family. And when a woman is attacked, it's also generally by someone she knows. A jilted lover, for instance."
"There's only one killer, according to you."
"It's not impossible."
"If so, there must be a link between the victims, isn't it?"
"I believe you're on a wrong track, there."
DeVries frowned. Néron was closely watching Dr. Ouellet.
"How so?"
"I don't think the killer is looking for a specific type of woman," the doctor explained. "He doesn't know beforehand whom he's going to kill. In fact, it's someone who is normal, who has normal activities. Most sexual perverts are normal people, if you put aside their genital fixation. But that's the point: this one is a sexual sadist. He takes pleasure in the pain of others. What he did to Madame Lemaire and to the other victims is good proof of that. When he acts out, it is because he suddenly feels the urge, and his mind is too weak for him to resist."
"Might he be a fetishist as well?"
"I don't think so. The victims didn't have the same hair color, they're not the same size or build. He could be, mind you. He could be fixated on shoes, for instance, but it would not push him to kill."
"You said it's someone normal..."
"Yes."
"After what he did to his victims, how could you say that?"
It was Dr. Antonin Parent's turn to speak. Round head, sagging lips, bald except for a crown around his pate. His eyebrows looked like circumflex accents and gave him a pained expression.
"I'm going to answer that question," he said timidly, "if my colleague permits."
"Please do," the other man said graciously.
"One of our former colleagues already suggested - Dr. Ouellet surely remembers it - that sexual offenses were basically an amplification of the sexual instinct. It's an interesting hypothesis. We all possess that instinct, you see, like the survival instinct. Its amplification could be linked to the individual, the individual's character, or it could be the result of a mental illness. In this case, the individual will not be completely sane, if you will."
"What kind of illness?" Néron asked.
"Paranoia, schizophrenia, epilepsy. We're not lacking in possibilities."
DeVries raised his hands with a discouraged look on his face.
"But just anyone in town could be the killer!"
"Still, we must not exaggerate," Dr. Ouellet said, with his amused expression. "The environment plays an important role. A man who lives in poverty, for instance, who is ill, can drink or do drugs to forget his problems. God knows, it's hardly rare nowadays. Well, that man, when he reaches a certain level of intoxication, will be capable of killing because he feels threatened, because he hears voices. When he comes to, he will remember nothing. It's been known to happen."
"And heredity also plays a role," added Dr. Delphis, a man with the serious face of a priest. "Someone whose father was violent with women can be violent too. It's not a scientific fact, but it has been observed."
"I see," DeVries said, flicking the ash from his cigar onto the floor.
I was listening to all those nice people talking, sitting on a narrow little chair as comfortable as a church pew, lost in my thoughts. It was worse than listening to a sermon. Louis, too, was only physically present. Mentally, he was kilometres away from this room.
"To come back to what you were saying earlier," Dr. Ouellet said, "that anybody could be the killer..."
"Yeah?" DeVries said.
"It's an interesting point to make. The killer can look like anybody, contrary to what was written in the newspapers. It won't be someone bedraggled, dishevelled, who just grunts to express himself. In fact, you could meet him in the street without ever realizing it.
"What is he suffering from, in your opinion? Antonin mentioned dementia, epilepsy..."
Dr. Ouellet smiled, raising a hand.
"What you are asking me here is to associate a type of crime with a specific illness."
"So? It's not possible?"
"One of my colleagues has examined the question. He studied patients suffering from schizophrenia, interned in Bordeaux. He noticed that many of them had a criminal record before being interned, that their victims came from their close circle and so on."
"What had they done?"
"It depended on the type of disorder diagnosed. The paranoid one, for instance, had physically assaulted people, had uttered threats, had tried to kill himself. The one with hebephreno-catatonic schizophrenia , on the other hand, had committed murders, hold-ups and gross indecency. But to come back to your killer, one thing is sure: it's impossible to establish a diagnosis without a mental examination. Maybe he has schizophrenia, or manic depression, or he presents various symptoms that have never happened together before, who knows?"
DeVries turned to Dr. Parent.
"I agree with what my colleague says," the doctor smiled ruefully. "The killer could suffer from a mental disorder or full-blown psychosis, it's hard to tell without an examination. But in my opinion, his condition is aggravated by alcohol. His mental illness, whatever it is, is latent when he is sober and it's when he's drunk that it comes to the fore and supersedes his will, pushing him to commit his crimes."
"All right," DeVries said.
He looked disappointed. He fidgeted in his chair.
"What we know of the killer," he said to the gathering, "is that he's somebody who looks normal. He's like anyone we might meet on a sidewalk. He commits his murders in the evening or in the morning, if the autopsy reports are to be believed. That's why no one suspects him. He's never absent from work. What kind of a job might he have, then? We know he manages to quickly overpower his victims, they never have time to scream. So he could be someone relatively strong, perhaps a labourer, a grocery clerk, a docker, a warehouseman in a big store..."
"You're forgetting one detail," Néron said.
"Oh? Which one?"
"The killer sometimes manages to get invited into the homes of his victims. There was no sign of forced entry, in any case. He could be a peddler or a travelling salesman, for instance."
The two men stared at one another.
"Peddler, salesman, docker, all that is possible," DeVries finally said, chomping on his El Pietto. "Okay. Here is what we're going to do. I want policemen in civilian clothes in the tramways used by the victims, or in the places they usually went to. Let them watch people, faces. And I want all the residents of the neighbourhoods where the murders were committed to be questioned or questioned again. Maybe they remembered something, a detail, you never know. We're not going to wait for the killer to jump into our arms, certainly not! Everybody got it?"
Murmured approval came from the group.
"Perfect. Néron and I will assign you your tasks, with. The meeting is over, go in peace."
Chair legs grated against the linoleum, and the room slowly emptied. Louis had disappeared when I went into the corridor. But DeVries was there.
"You okay? I was looking at you, earlier, you looked weird."
"I'm okay."
"Listen, I have two tickets for the Royals game, tonight. It would take our minds off this thing, what do you think?"
The suggestion made me think of Émile, of Emma, in my office. What in hell was I doing in this mess?"
"I can't. There something I have to do."
"What something?"
"It's personal."I drove past the Bell building, a few minutes before the offices closed. I parked at the bottom of the hill and got out of the car. I leaned against the fender of the Studebaker, and lit up a Grads. From where I stood, I could watch the entry doors at leisure. While I was waiting for them to open, two women walked down Beaver Hall Hill towards me, their high heels clicking in unison on the sidewalk. They passed me without deigning to look at me.
The doors finally opened. I had no problem recognizing Kathryn in the throng. She was wearing a dress that fluttered around her ankles and she was carrying her wool jacket on one arm.
She began walking up the hill. I threw my cigarette stub away and slipped behind the wheel of the Studebaker. After waiting for a little while, I started the car. Kathryn was close to the top of the hill. I speeded up and followed her, always staying two or three car lengths behind her. At Sainte-Catherine Street, she turned left to walk along the storefronts. I turned too, slipped the Studebaker into the first parking space I found and kept on shadowing her on foot.
I had to push my way through the pedestrians crowding the sidewalk to catch up with Kathryn. At the last minute I saw her entering a small restaurant. I was hungry too so I crossed to go into another restaurant on the other side of the street. It was early, there was next to no one there. I sat at the counter. The only waitress placed a mat and utensils in front of me. I ordered a club sandwich and a serving of the apple pie that was slumbering under its dome at the other end of the counter. The waitress shouted my order to the cook.
The chicken was dry and as for the pie, it is best not to comment. I was trying to dislodge a bit of apple skin stuck between two molars with a toothpick, when Kathryn came out. I left two dimes beside my plate and stepped outside too. The sun was setting and it was cooler. Kathryn had put on her wool jacket.
She headed towards the tram stop. I followed her on my side of the street. When she got to the stop, I went into a small shop close by. It was an antiques shop, selling odds and ends. An old man whose head looked like it belonged to a featherless bird came up to me. He said we could negotiate if something interested me. Thanking him, I pretended to look at the trinkets on display in the window. Nothing interesting. The knick-knacks were the kind of stuff people put in their attic because they didn't have the heart to throw them away.
The tram finally came. Kathryn got on. I left the shop, went back to my car and caught up with the tram. It was not very hard, it could not slip into side streets to lose me. On each side of Sainte-Catherine the nightclub signs were shining like beacons to guide revellers to harbour. It was working, the sidewalks were swarming with people.
When Kathryn got off the tram, the moon had replaced the sun in the sky. It had been a long ride. She went up a dark street with small houses on both sides. I recognized the place, the rooming house where she lived was among them. Yellow squares were illuminated here and there.
I waited for a moment. When the click-clack of her feet fell silent, I turned up the street and slowly drove up to the building, parking by the sidewalk, a few metres from there, just as Kathryn was pushing the door open. After a while, a window lit up on the second floor and her silhouette appeared when she lowered the window shade halfway. I cut the engine. At about ten o'clock, the light went out in the room. Kathryn would not see her manager this evening. I turned the key in the ignition, turn around and headed home.
I spent part of the night staring at the ceiling. My club sandwich was giving me a stomach ache...
© 2002 Éditions Alire & Maxime Houde
To find out what happens next...
