Bones to Ashes

While Bastarache locked glares with Ryan, I observed him covertly. The rolls in his neck and stomach looked hard and his arms were corded with muscle. The guy wasn’t the lardo I’d first taken him for.

Never breaking eye contact with Bastarache, Ryan reached into a pocket and withdrew one of several stills I’d printed from the video in Cormier’s Vintage folder. Wordlessly, he slid the print across the table.

Bastarache looked down at the girl on the bench. I watched his body language. Saw no tensing.

“You check this little girl’s ID?” Ryan asked.

“I never laid eyes on her.”

“What’s her name?”

“I told you.” The piggy eyes rolled up. “I never met the young lady.”

“You know a photographer named Stanislas Cormier?”

“Sorry.” Bastarache started running a thumbnail through a scratch on the tabletop.

Ryan pointed at the print. “Got this from Cormier’s computer. Part of a nasty little video. Drive holds quite a collection.”

“The world’s full of degenerates.”

“That your house?”

The thumbnail froze. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Nice landscaping.”

Bastarache squinted at the print, then flicked it toward Ryan with one meaty finger.

“What if it is? I was barely out of high school when this kid was playing Indian princess.”

A tiny bell pinged in my head. What was wrong there? I set it aside until later.

One by one, Ryan laid out the photos of Phoebe Quincy, Kelly Sicard, Claudine Cloquet, and the facial reconstruction of the girl from the Rivière des Mille Îles. Bastarache barely glanced at the faces.

“Sorry, pal. Wish I could help you.”

Ryan added autopsy shots of the Lac des Deux Montagnes floater and the girl from the Dorval shoreline.

“Jesus friggin’ Christ.” Bastarache blinked, but didn’t look away.

Ryan tapped the photos of Quincy and Sicard. “These girls also appear in Cormier’s collection.” Not exactly true for Quincy, but close enough. “They have now vanished. I want to know why.”

“I’ll say it one more time. I don’t know shit about porn flicks or missing kids.”

Bastarache glanced up at the ceiling. Seeking composure? Clever answers? When his face came down it was devoid of expression.

“You employ a pair of cretins named Babin and Mulally?” Ryan pulled another topical switch.

“I am now going to await the arrival of counsel. Much as I’m enjoying this, it’s time I roll outta here. Got a business to run.”

Ryan leaned back and folded his arms.

“You surprise me, Dave. Sensitive guy like you. I figured you’d still be in mourning for your wife.”

Was it my imagination, or did Bastarache tense at Ryan’s reference to Obéline?

“But then, hell, it’s been almost a week.”

Two beefy palms came up. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m not the coldhearted bastard you think I am. I feel it. But my wife’s passing was no shocker. The woman’s been suicidal for years.”

“That why you had to tune her up now and then? To reinvigorate her zest for life?”

Bastarache drilled Ryan with a porcine stare. Relaced his fingers. “My lawyer will have me out of here before you hit the on-ramp to the forty.”

I looked at Ryan, willing him to confront Bastarache with the contact sheet of Évangéline. He didn’t.

“Your lawyer has plenty of time.” Ryan held Bastarache’s stare. “CSU’s at your place right now. When I leave here, I’ll be helping them take your life apart, nail by nail.”

“Fuck you.”

“No, Dave.” Ryan spoke with a voice of pure steel. “We find one name, one phone number, one snapshot of a kid in a two-piece swimsuit, you’ll be so fucked you’ll wish your parents had decided on celibacy.”

Shoving back his chair, Ryan rose. I followed. We were at the door when Bastarache barked, “You haven’t a clue what’s going on.”

We both stopped and turned.

“How ’bout you tell me, then,” Ryan said.

“These girls call themselves performance artists. Every single one’s got dreams of being the next Madonna.” Bastarache shook his head. “Artists, my ass. They’re vipers. You block ’em, they’ll take you off at the dick.”

Though I’d promised to remain mute, the man was so repugnant I couldn’t hold myself back.

“How about Évangéline Landry? She ask to appear in one of your dirty little films?”

The sausage fingers went so tight the knuckles bulged yellow-white. Again, the lips crimped. After several wheezy nasal intakes, Bastarache replied to Ryan, “You’re way off base.”

“Really?” Loathing glazed my response

Still Bastarache ignored me. “You’re so far off base you might as well be in Botswana.”

“Where should we be looking, Mr. Bastarache?” I asked.

Finally, the response was directed at me.

“Not in my backyard, baby.” A serpentine vein pumped the midline of Bastarache’s forehead.

Ryan and I both turned our backs.

“Look in your own motherfucking backyard.”

33

Q UEBEC CITY IS SIMPLY QUÉBEC TO QUEBECKERS. IT IS THE provincial capital. And oh-so-very-thoroughly très French.