Sanguine
Jacques Bissonnette
(Chapter 1, p. 1-8)
Julian Stifer entered the squat building of the Montreal Morgue. Nodding at the doorman, he walked along a deserted corridor and down the stairs leading to the basement. He passed empty gurneys lined up along the wall and arrived at a brightly lit booth. Throbbing disco music was coming from it, and a curly-haired young man sat inside reading. Julien Stifer knocked on the glass window,
The young man looked up and smiled sadly at him. He came out of his cubicle and pushed open a swinging door marked "AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY." Stifer followed him in. They walked along a series of refrigerated units and stopped at number twenty-seven.
The clerk turned a handle and pulled out the drawer. A shape appeared, covered in a white sheet. Julien swallowed, imagining the slim body lying on the steel surface.
The young man pulled gently on the sheet to uncover the head. Julien shut his eyes for an instant, then opened them again. The girl's eyes were closed, she had black hair, a flat nose, thin, tightly shut lips. Julien stared at her for a long time, as if to be sure of what he was seeing, then he felt a wave of relief, like a warm, slow tide.
The night was damp, cars were driving by fast, radios blaring rock music. Packs of excited teens were roaming the sidewalks. Back in his car, Julien turned on the two-way radio, which began to crackle. A squad car was reporting a drunken brawl, a foot patrol was reporting a fire hydrant that had been opened by party goers. Nothing special for a scorching hot July evening.
Stifer parked his car on Sainte-Catherine Street and walked into a restaurant. He sat in a booth facing the street. He wasn't hungry, but he would force himself to eat a little something. The waitress came to take his order and he chose the special, a cheeseburger with fries. First she brought him coffee, which he sipped slowly. After each of his visits to the morgue, it took him hours to recover.
On a September evening, two years earlier, Chloë had gone to the movies.
Julien had questioned at length her friend Mireille who had accompanied her that night. The girls had left the theatre at ten past nine p.m. They had taken the subway to Laurier Station. At half past nine, Chloë was taking the Boulevard Saint-Joseph bus, westbound. She'd waved to Mireille through the open window of the departing bus. No one ever saw her again. She'd just turned thirteen.
Mireille had noticed no one in particular among the people who had taken the bus at the same time as Chloë. The driver had not recognized the teenager in the picture Julien had shown him.
Julien had followed the bus route, metre by metre, he had interviewed all the people who were living along the way. No one remembered his daughter. For three weeks he'd travelled on that bus line, from six p.m. to three a.m., questioning all the passengers. He'd found no witnesses to Chloë's disappearance.
He'd taken a leave of absence, which he used to try to track her down. He'd at first considered the possibility that she'd run away. It seemed implausible to him, but maybe Chloë had personal problems she had hidden from him: a drug addiction, a secret love affair, a suicide pact. He'd questioned all her friends and teachers, but without finding any clues to confirm that hypothesis. They all assured him that Chloe seemed happy.
He'd then considered the possibility of a kidnapping. Perhaps she had been forced into prostitution. He went through all the pimps in the police computer files. He also spent long days spotting the pimps who were waiting for their young prey in bus stations and video arcades. He questioned them all, sometimes harshly, but without any results.
Finally, he had decided to look into the possibility of murder. He'd sifted through the files of criminals already convicted for the rape or murder of teenage girls. It took five months to track them all down. One of them dared to say rude things about Chloë. Julien beat him so badly the man had to be hospitalized.
Alerted by the man's lawyer, Julien's superiors summoned him. They understood his distress, but could not tolerate his behaviour. His leave was cancelled. He must abandon his investigations and come back to the force. Or he would be fired.
Julien nibbled his hamburger and a few fries. Then he pushed his plate away, got up listlessly, paid his bill and went back out. There were lots of people on the sidewalk. The heat got people excited and disturbed their sleeping habits. Gangs of tens were bickering with one another, laughing. Cars roared by. Next to Julien's car, a drunken beggar shouted obscenities at the passers-by who ignored the hand he was holding out.
On the front of a bank, the clock said ten p.m. Monelle would soon be home. Julien wondered if he ought to tell her about his visit to the morgue. But on second thought, he decided against it. His wife seemed resigned to Chloë's death.
His cell buzzed. He took the call. The dispatcher was reporting that two bodies had been discovered in an apartment of the Côte-des-Neiges district.***
Linton Street was nothing but a long line of apartment buildings in bad repair. Some people were out on the balconies, trying to escape the stifling heat. Most were dark-faced, or had Oriental eyes. The population of the neighbourhood was mostly recent immigrants. Julien found the building at last; a patrol car was parked in front. He showed his badge and entered. The basement corridor reeked of dead flesh and coagulated blood. Julien walked down the stairs.
He walked through the door, identified himself for the officer on duty, who brought him up to speed on the dramatic events. A neighbour had complained to the super about the constant noise of running water coming from the apartment. The super had rung the bell, but no one answered. Worried about water damage, he'd used his master key. He'd first seen the blood on the corridor's wall, then the tenant lying on the floor. He'd at once gone and called the police.
"It's a job done by raving lunatics. The man is behind you. The girl's in the bedroom. I can't even bring myself to tell you about her."
Julien crossed the corridor to enter the living room. A man was lying on his back. His nose had been half torn off and he had two bloody holes where his eyes should have been. Julien bent down to look at the cadaver. The face looked as if it had been ripped off by an animal's claws.
The man wore a T-shirt and a pair of jeans. His feet were bare. Julien searched the clothes, found the keys for a Camaro, but no wallet and no ID. The man was lying close to the corridor, as though he had been attacked by someone coming through the front door. Julien went back there. The officer on duty looked at him with a bored expression.
The walls of the corridor were smeared with thick trails of blood that stretched all the way to the body in the living room. Julien tried to reconstruct the sequence of events. The man had opened the door and something awful had jumped in his face. He'd stepped back toward the living room, where he'd slumped on the floor. Julien felt the man's arms and legs to check for rigor mortis. Dead about twenty-four hours.
He opened the bedroom door and recoiled in shock. A young girl was lying on the bed. He pulled himself together and approached slowly, terrified. The girl's eyes were missing but her face was intact. Thank God, it wasn't Chloë.
Stepping back, he reflexively looked for cigarettes in the pocket of his jacket. Didn't find any. He'd stopped smoking a few years back, giving in to his wife's entreaties. His hands were shaking. For a moment, he'd thought he was facing his greatest terror: being the one who discovered his daughter's body.
After getting a grip on himself, he approached the bed again. The girl was dressed in a skirt and blouse. He examined her face. Claw marks surrounded the holes where a young girl's eyes had once sparkled. Her lips were painted a bright red. The nails of fingers and toes were painted red too. The body was very slender. She could be between fifteen and seventeen years old. Russet hair framed her head. The empty orbs of her eyes transformed her face into a terrifyingly beautiful death mask.
Rumpled covers around her suggested a struggle. Splatter formed a half-circle, as though a bloody geyser had exploded above the pillows.
There were a woman's shoes and purse on the floor. Julien searched the purse. He found a letter addressed to someone bearing the odd name of "Sanguine," a round contraceptive pill dispenser and a pack of cigarettes. No ID and no wallet here either. He rapidly read the letter, signed by some guy named "Aurèle":Beautiful Sanguine
You are dead
A hundred times
Beautiful Sanguine
My love will resurrect you
One time only
Beautiful Sanguine
I love youWith a sinking feeling, Julien thought that the girl had scant chances of being resurrected by the love of the disfigured lover who was lying in the living room. He thought of her parents, who would have to be informed. What would he tell them?
He bent over to examine her wounds. The fact that her eyes had been torn out did not account for the amount of blood on the sheets. He turned her over gently to look at her body. No other wounds. The clawing must have reached the brain, which would explain the spurt of blood and the victim's death.
Julien then examined the room. He found a revolver in a drawer of the bedside table. In the bathroom, the floor was streaked with lines of dried blood. The murderer had washed off his victims' blood before leaving. A loud whistling sound was coming from the toilet tank. Julien lifted the cover. The stopper was not in place and water kept flowing. That was the noise that had alerted the concierge.
Julian went back into the living room and examined it carefully, but without discovering anything interesting. In the kitchen, he searched the cupboards, the trash can. Still nothing. He opened the fridge, which was stocked with a few beers and a carton of milk. The freezer contained packages of frozen food and a tub of ice cream. Julien opened the packages one by one. He found fourteen grams of cocaine in one Beef Stroganoff and eleven thousand dollar bills in a lasagne. Apparently, the tenant was a drug dealer.
He heard bored-sounding voices in the hallway. Two forensics technicians appeared, dressed in T-shirts and jeans and wearing sneakers. They made an annoyed face at the man's corpse, put down their briefcases and put on latex gloves.
"Good evening, Lieutenant. What are your orders?"
Julien had worked several times with Larin and Miron. He asked them to look for prints everywhere in the apartment.
"And don't forget the bathroom. The killer washed himself. Afterwards, try to find a murder weapon or any trace of the animal who could have done this."
He was pointing at the man's face, which was now nothing but a crusted wound with occasional ridges of hardened flesh. The investigation would have to be extended to the outside of the building, where Julien had noticed piles of trash.
"We'll need reinforcements, Lieutenant."
Impossible to get a full team of technicians in the middle of the night. It would cost too much in overtime...
© 2002 Éditions Alire
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