?What about security??
?Oh yeah. The guidelines are very specific.?
?What security measures did you follow??
?I?m working with sticklebacks right now. Fish.?
He swiveled and waved his pen at the fish on the wall.
?They don?t require a whole lot. Some of my colleagues keep lab rats. They don?t either. The animal activists don?t usually get wrought up over fish and rodents.?
His face did the World Cup of wry.
?Alsa was the only other mammal, so security wasn?t all that stringent. She had her own little room, which we kept locked. And, of course, we locked her cage. And the outer lab door.?
He stopped.
?I?ve gone over it in my mind. I can?t remember who was the last to leave that night. I know I didn?t have a night class, so I don?t think I was here late. Probably one of the grad students did the last check. The secretary won?t check those doors unless I specifically ask her to.?
He paused again.
?I suppose an outsider could have gotten in. It?s not impossible someone left the doors unlocked. Some of the students are less dependable than others.?
?What about the cage??
?The cage was certainly no big deal. Just a padlock. We never found it. I suppose it could have been cut.?
I tried to broach the next topic delicately. ?Were the missing parts ever found??
?Missing parts??
?Alsa had been?-now I groped for a word. KISS-?cut up. Parts of her weren?t in the bundle that was recovered. I wondered if anything showed up here.?
?Like what? What was missing?? His pastel face looked puzzled.
?Her right hand, Dr. Bailey. Her right hand had been severed at the wrist. It wasn?t there.?
There was no reason to tell him about the women who?d suffered the same violation, about the real reason I was there.
He was silent. Linking his fingers behind his head, he leaned back and focused on something above me. The raspberry in his cheeks moved toward rhubarb. A small clock radio hummed quietly on his file cabinet.
After a decade, I broke the silence.
?In retrospect, what do you think happened??
He didn?t answer right away. Then, when I was convinced he never would, ?I think it was probably one of the mutant life-forms that are spawned in the cesspool around this campus.?
I thought he?d finished. The source of his breathing seemed to have moved deeper into his chest. Then he added something, almost in a whisper. I didn?t catch it.
?Sorry?? I asked.
?Marie-Lise deserved better.?
I found it an odd thing to say. So did Alsa, I thought, but held my tongue. Without warning, a bell split the silence, firing a current through every nerve in my body. I looked at my watch-10:00 P.M.
Sidestepping his question about my interest in a monkey dead four years, I thanked him for his time and asked him to call me should he think of anything else. I left him sitting there, refocusing on whatever had floated above my head. I suspected he was gazing into time, not space.
Not too familiar with the territory, I?d parked in the same alley as the night I?d cruised the Main. Stick with what works. I?d come to think of that outing as the Great Gabby Grope. It seemed like eons ago. It had been two days.
Tonight was cooler, and a soft rain still fell. I zipped my jacket and started back to my car.
Leaving the university, I walked north on St. Denis, past a cavalcade of upscale boutiques and bistros. Though just a few blocks east, St. Denis is a galaxy away from St. Laurent. Frequented by the young and affluent, St. Denis is the place to go seeking-a dress, silver earrings, a mate, a one-night stand. The street of dreams. Most cities have one. Montreal has two: Crescent for the English, St. Denis for the French.
I thought about Alsa as I waited for the light at De Maisonneuve. Bailey was probably right. Ahead and to my right sat the bus station. Whoever had killed her hadn?t gone far to ditch the body. That suggested a local.
I watched a young couple emerge from the Berri-UQAM M #233;tro station. They ran through the rain, clinging together like socks just out of the dryer.
Or it could have been a commuter. Right, Brennan, grab a monkey, take the M #233;tro home, whack it, cut it up, then haul it back on the M #233;tro and leave it at the bus station. Great thinking.
The light turned green. I crossed St. Denis and walked west on De Maisonneuve, still thinking about my conversation with Bailey. What was it about him that bothered me? Did he show too much emotion for his student? Too little for the monkey? Why had he seemed so-what?-negative about the Alsa project? Why didn?t he know about the hand? Hadn?t Pelletier told me Bailey inspected the cadaver? Wouldn?t he have noticed the missing hand? The remains had been released to him, and he?d taken them from the lab.
?Shit,? I said aloud, mentally smacking my forehead.
A man in coveralls turned to look at me, registering apprehension. He wore no shirt or shoes and carried a shopping bag in both arms, its torn paper handles pointing at odd angles. I smiled to reassure him, and he shuffled on, shaking his head at the state of humanity and the universe.
You?re a regular Columbo, I berated myself. You didn?t even ask Bailey what he did with the body! Good job.
Having chastised myself, I made amends by proposing consumption of a hot dog.
Knowing I wouldn?t sleep anyway, I accepted. That way I could blame it on the food. I went into the Chien Chaud on St. Dominique, ordered a dog all dressed, fries, and a Diet Coke. ?No Coke, Pepsi,? I was told by a John Belushi look-alike with thick black hair and a heavy accent. Life really does imitate art.
I ate my food in a red-and-white plastic booth, contemplating travel posters peeling from the walls. That would do, I thought, gazing at the too blue skies and blindingly white buildings of Paros, Santorini, Mykonos. Yes. That would do nicely. Cars began to crowd the wet pavement outside. The Main was revving up.
A man arrived and engaged Belushi in loud conversation, presumably Greek. His clothes were damp and smelled of smoke and fat and a spice I didn?t recognize. Droplets sparkled in his thick hair. When I glanced over he smiled at me, cocked one bushy eyebrow and ran his tongue slowly along his upper lip. He might as well have shown me his hemorrhoid. Matching his maturity level, I showed him middle man, and turned my attention to the scene outside the window.
Through rain-streaked glass I could make out a row of shops across the street, dark and silent on the eve of a holiday. La Cordonnerie la Fleur. Why would a shoemaker call his shop ?The Flower??
La Boulangerie Nan. I wondered if that was the name of the bakery, the name of the owner, or just an ad for Indian bread. Through the windows I could see empty shelves, ready for the morning?s harvest. Do bakers bake on national holidays?
La Boucherie St. Dominique. Its windows were covered with news of weekly specials.
That?s it. You?re out of here. I wadded the wrapper into the paper tray that had held my hot dog. The things for which we kill trees. I added my Pepsi can, threw the whole mess into the trash, and left.
The car was where I?d left it and as I?d left it. Driving, my brain looped back to the murders.
Each slap of the wipers brought up a new image. Alsa?s truncated arm. Slap. Morisette-Champoux?s hand lying on her kitchen floor. Slap. Chantale Trottier?s tendons. Slap. Arm bones with cleanly cut lower ends. Slap.
Was it always the same hand? Couldn?t remember. Have to check. No human hand had been missing. Just coincidence? Was Claudel right? Was I getting paranoid? Maybe Alsa?s abductor collected animal paws. Was he just an over-zealous Poe fan? Slap. Or she?
At eleven-fifteen I pulled into my garage. Even my bone marrow was exhausted. I?d been up over eighteen hours. No hot dog would keep me awake tonight.
