Start with Chapter 1
CHAPTER 15
Over burgers and fries at Burger Palace at the edge of town heading west, Dean and Guthrie reviewed their interview with Sarah.
“What do you think?” asked Dean before dragging two crinkle-cut fries through a dollop of ketchup in a small plastic cup.
Guthrie shrugged. “Now Billy’s buying back pawned jewelry. Seven hundred worth. I don’t know where he’s getting his money.” He scratched his cheek with the backside of his thumb. “But she seemed to care for him. Young love and all.”
Dean let half a smile cross his face before dropping it. “Something’s bothering me. She protested about Alex too much. Too quick to call him an asshole. The photo on the bookshelf—well—it was off. I don’t know. But you’re right. Where’s this money coming from?”
“The way I see it, we’ve got more motives now.” Guthrie raised his index finger. “He’s doing something illegal to get the money.Taking it from Charlie maybe. He’s crossed somebody. Bam.” He raised his middle finger alongside his index finger. “There’s also something going on in that circle of friends. Seems you’re implying an affair. Perhaps Alex and Billy had it out and Billy came up short.” He lifted a third finger. “You keep bringing up his politics. Maybe someone didn’t like them.”
Dean nodded. They finished their lunches, paid the waitress, and went back to the station. He had just taken off his coat, sat down, and slid a standard interview form into his typewriter when the phone rang. He picked it up to hear, “Bonjour, this is Lieutenant Renard Desplains of Sûreté du Québec.”
“Renard, yes, this is Dean.”
“Oui. So I’m calling about this case you, uh, called about yesterday. Something about a murder case, oui?”
“Yes. A young man, Billy Nimitz was murdered, and we think the killer might have come or went to or both from Canada. The scene was a half mile from the border.”
“Oui. Usually your FBI handles these so I recommended them and that was that. I was not expecting to, ah, hear anything but it seems we do have something. Eh?”
“What’ve you got?”
“We got a call a yesterday ago. A man was shot and killed in a flat in Montreal. He had, ah, a collection of passports and cash. Seems he was going back and forth across the border.”
“Okay, and where’s the connection.”
“Ah, oui, the connection is he had several passports for this William Nimitz. Among many others, but him. I thought I recognized the name.”
“What do you mean several?”
“Un moment.” Renard set the phone down and grabbed a folder, which he opened, flipped a few pages, and found what he wanted. He picked up the phone and held it against his ear with his shoulder. “We found four total. One Canadian, one French, one Spanish, and one Swiss.”
“Why did he have them?”
“I do not have that information yet.”
“Can I see these?”
“Oui. You can come up and look at the case file, if you would like.”
“Very much.”
Dean hung up the phone and walked to Guthrie’s desk. He told him Josh would have to wait until tomorrow. Instead, he told Guthrie to drive to Plattsburgh and verify Sarah’s story about the necklace and bracelet. “Take a picture of both of them and show it to the clerks. Leave copies if you have to. I want to know that the real Sarah and William were there.”
* * *
With the traffic, it took almost two hours to get to the Sûreté du Québec’s station in Montreal. Despite the relatively short distance between Zion and Montreal, Dean had rarely ventured there. The big metropolis felt like a foreign country with so much in French.
The headquarters was a fourteen-story T-shaped building, just across the St. Lawrence Seaway on rue Parthenais. Dean parked in the visitor’s parking lot and walked through the glass door main entrance and into the wide, sunlit lobby. At the main desk, he asked a uniformed officer where to find Renard Desplains. She looked up his name and directed Dean to the third floor.
The elevator dinged open, and he and a couple of other officers stepped onto the third floor, its light brown carpet and beige walls drove home the institutional feel. A string of like desks—silver legs and dark brown tops—stood in two rows down a lengthy part of the building. Dean paused and looked around, confused. A man spun in his chair next to him. “Puis-je vous aider?” But he said it so fast, Dean was not able to even begin to understand what he said. The man asked again: “Puis-je vous aider?”
Dean nodded and said, “Renard Desplains?”
The man squinted at him. “Pourquois?”
Dean reached into his sport coat inside pocket and pulled out his Zion Police badge. The man looked it over and pointed in the direction Dean had been walking. He rattled off a couple of sentences that Dean could not comprehend. When the man had finished, Dean had the good sense to say, “Merci,” and walk in what he believed to be the direction the officer had given him.
The place hummed with activity. People talking, phones ringing, walking to and from. It all reminded him of his days in the NYPD and that itch for that buzz crept into him. He had loved being an NYPD officer and then detective.
He reached the end of the desks and at a set of offices divided by a narrow hall. He walked down it, looking at the name plates, and passed a turn. When none of the rest had Renard’s name, he went back to the turn and walked down it. On the fifth one down, he found Lieutenant Renard Desplains. The door was slightly ajar, so he knocked.
“Entrez.”
Dean pushed on the door until it was fully open. The space was small and had no exterior windows and thus bathed in the bluish fluorescent light. A small desk that matched the ones in the open area, two chairs with a leather seat in front of that, and a short bookshelf with binders. A small green cactus sat on top of the shelf alongside a photograph of Renard and a young woman. On the wall, a certificate of some sort in French, an official portrait of Renard in dress uniform, and a photograph of Renard, the same young woman, and an woman nearer Renard’s age, which seemed to be in the mid-fifties.
Renard stood up, setting his black-framed reading glasses on the papers in front of him on the desk. He had a full head of grey hair with wisps of the former dark brown color, a matching thick mustache that ended at the corners of the mouth, and a deeply lined face, the results of years of tireless work and gravity and time. He wore a pair of light red and yellow plaid slacks, a blue jacket, a light blue shirt with a long, thin collar, and a thick red tie loosened at the neck. “Bonjour, Detective.”
Dean shook his hand. “Bonjour.”
Renard gestured to Dean to sit and closed the door behind them. He then walked back to the desk, leaned down, and picked up a box, which he put on the desk close to Dean. “The case file and evidence. We processed everything, so ah, you can look at it.”
Dean opened the box and found a manila folder, thick with papers.
“May I offer you café?”
“Yes, please.”
Renard stepped out and closed the door behind him. Dean pulled out the folder and flipped it open. He looked at the blocks of French. No English translations. The evidence bag contained a variety of IDs, including passports, New York State driver’s licenses, and Quebec driver’s licenses. As Renard indicated, several of the passports were made out for William Nimitz. Several included his photograph and real name. Others had his photograph but listed him as William Conroy or William Sutton. The details of Billy’s birth were accurate as well. All indicated different places of birth that conformed with the country of the passport. All also had the exact same issue date: 1 December 1978. Just a few weeks before his death. Passports and IDs for Julie Clarendon and Stephen Valosz were also in the box. He did not recognize the people in those photos.
Renard opened the door, set a cup of coffee in a paper cup in front of Dean, closed the door, and sat behind his desk, holding a steaming cup himself.
“This Julie and Stephen,” said Dean.
“Oui?”
“Are they real people like my victim?”
Renard shrugged. “The Mounties are not telling us anything. We had to fight to keep that evidence, though they could swipe it up.”
“Why are the Mounties interested? I thought this was a murder case.”
“Oui, it is. They have not told us why they are interested. But with passports and IDs, we think—I think—they are doing counterintelligence work.”
“Spies?”
“Perhaps. Or the Quebecois. But, ah, the FLQ is long gone.” Noticing the puzzled look on Dean’s face, Renard continued, “The Front de libération du Québec. The October Crisis?” Still not seeing recognition pass across Dean’s face, he clarified more. “The kidnapping of James Cross and the murder of Pierre Laporte. These happened in 1970.”
“Sorry, Renard. I don’t remember. I was still in New York at the time trying to be a good cop.”
“Trying?”
“Um, working at doing a good job.”
“Ah. Oui. New York City?”
“Yes. I was an officer and detective there.”
“And now in Zion?”
“Yes.” Dean saw that Renard wanted more of an explanation, but he ignored it. “My apologies, I don’t read French.”
Renard said, “Bien sûr.” He gestured for the report.
Dean handed it to him.
Renard flipped it open and pulled out the photographs, which he handed to Dean.
The first showed a man, dressed in light blue pajamas sitting in a chair, his head slumped forward, but his body held in place by duct tape wrapped around his chest, wrists, and ankles. Blood down the front of his pajamas and pooled at the base of the chair. Another photo of blood splatter on the wall behind the chair.
Renard licked his thumb and flipped a page. “The victim is Marcel Lorrain. Aged fifty. Former FLQ member. Ah, see? Eh? Neighbor reported the gun shot. Found Monsieur Lorrain twenty minutes later. The passports and IDs were found in his closet. Witnesses recall a light tan or white or yellow sedan or sports car leaving the scene around the time the gun shot was reported. Eh?” He shrugged. “The Mounties showed up the day after. Since then, it is their case.”
“You said cash was in the closet as well.”
“Oui.” Renard flipped more pages. Licked his thumb. Flipped more. “Here. Passports. IDs. Cash in American dollars and Canadian dollars. American was fifty thousand. Canadian was thirty thousand. And copies of The Communist Manifesto.”
“What?”
“American dollars was fifty thousand.”
Dean waved his hand. “No not that. The Communist Manifesto?”
“Oui. Found eighteen copies of it. There was other literature also. Pamphlets, ah, brochures. Some in French. Most in English.”
Dean shook his head.
“Is something wrong?” asked Renard, setting the folder down on his desk, open.
“My vic had a load of cash and a copy of that book in his closet.”
“Perhaps, he was a spy, oui?”
