Victorian novelist, how’s this? Pearson, Michael X., made love shortly before his death. Once again, that nasty habit of failing to wash up. A professor at McGill, too! You’d think he’d know better. The other fellow, MacHenry, John Albert, was an American up here on business. There is every reason to believe that he also made love shortly before contributing his personal dust to the Universal Dust. He washed up within an hour of his death. Not a full bath; just the crotch area. There’s the American businessman for you! Time is money.”
“Can I take these with me?” LaPointe asks rhetorically, already on his way out with the reports.
“But make sure you bring them back. I can’t stand having my files in disorder!” Bouvier calls after him.
Read and reread, Bouvier’s dossiers rest on LaPointe’s desk, covering the unfinished paper work. He links his fingers over his head and leans back in his swivel chair to look at the large-scale city plan of Montreal tacked up on his wall, finger-smudged only in the area of the Main. His eye picks up the places where the three men were found—stabbed, but not robbed. The Green kid… there. In that alley almost in the center of the Main district. The American businessman… there. On a narrow street off Chateaubriand between Rue Roy and Rue Bousquet, on what LaPointe would call the outer edge of his patch. And that professor from McGill… there. Well outside the Main, on Milton Street between Lorne and Shuter, normally a busy area, but probably deserted at… what was it?… estimated time of death: between 0200 and 0400 hours.
Probably the same killer. Probably the same woman. Jealousy? Over a period of six years? Hardly what you would call a flash of jealous anger. One woman. One killer. Perhaps the woman
The freshest of these old cases is thirty months old. All traces would be healed over by now.
He sighs and puts the files into a thick interdepartmental envelope to send them over to Gaspard in homicide. LaPointe can picture Gaspard’s anger when he discovers he has inherited a set of killings with a sex link. Just the kind of thing the newspapers salivate over. Unknown Knife Slayer Stalks… Police Baffled…
All the while he is eating in a cheap cafe, unaware of what is on his plate, all the while he walks slowly through the Main, putting the street to bed, LaPointe carries the details of the two files in the back of his mind, turning over the sparse references to personal life, looking for bits that match up with what he knows about Tony Green. But nothing. No links. He is standing outside his apartment on Esplanade, looking up at the dark windows of his second-story flat, when he decides to return to the Quartier General and muck around with late paper work, rather than face a night alone with his coffee and his Zola.
“What in hell are you doing here?”
“Jesus Christ! You startled me, sir.”
“You leave something behind?”
Guttmann has been sitting at LaPointe’s desk, his mind floating in a debris of problems and daydreams. “No. I just remembered that you have a map of the city on your wall, and I still had my key, so…”
“So?”
“It’s about that packet of files you left for Sergeant Gaspard.”
With a jerk of his thumb, LaPointe evicts Guttmann from his swivel chair and occupies it himself. “I’ll bet he was happy to find three closed cases suddenly reopened.”
“Oh, yes, sir. He could hardly contain his delight. He was particularly colorful on the subject of Dr. Bouvier. He said he needed that kind of help about as much as starving Pakistanis need Red Cross packages filled with menus.”
“Hm-m. But that still doesn’t explain what you’re doing in my office.”
Guttmann goes to the wall map and points out light pencil lines he has drawn on it. “I got this weird idea in the middle of the night.”
LaPointe is puddling about in his paper work. “Joans aren’t supposed to have ideas. It ruins their typing,” he says without looking up.
“As it turned out, it wasn’t much of an idea.”
“No kidding? Let’s hear it.”
Guttmann shrugs his shoulders, not eager to share his foolishness. “Oh, it was just grade-school geometry. It occurred to me that we know where each of the three men was killed, and we know where each was going at the time. So, if we extended the lines back on the map…”
LaPointe laughs. “The lines would meet on the doorstep of the killer?”
“Something like that. Or if not at the doorstep of the killer, at least on the doorstep of the woman they all made love with. I assume it was one woman, don’t you?”
“Either that or a whorehouse.”
“Well, either way, it would be one dwelling.”
LaPointe looks up at the map on which Guttmann’s three lines enclose a vast triangle including the east half of the Main district and a corner of Parc Fontaine. “Well, you’ve narrowed it down to eastern Canada.”
Guttmann realizes how stupid his idea sounds when said aloud. “It was just a wild shot. I knew that any two lines would have to meet somewhere. And I hoped that the third would zap right in there.”
“I see.” LaPointe moves aside the files Guttmann brought along with him and picks up a splay of unfinished reports. He wants the kid to see he came here to do some work. Not because he was lonely. Not because his bed was too big.
“Can I get you a cup of coffee, sir?”
“If you’re getting one for yourself.”
While Guttmann is at the machine down the hall, LaPointe’s eyes wander back to the wall map. He makes a nasal puff of derision at the idea that things get solved by geometry and deduction. What you need is an informer, a lot of pressure, a fist.
With a brimming paper cup in each hand, Guttmann has some trouble with the door; he slops some and burns his fingers. “Goddamn it!” He gives the door a kick.
LaPointe glances up. This kid is usually so controlled, so polite. As Guttmann sits in his old chair against the wall, his long legs stretched out in front of him, LaPointe sips his coffee.
“What’s your problem?”
“Sir?”
“Trouble with this girl of yours?”
“No, that isn’t it. That’s turning out to be a really fine thing.”
“Oh? How long have you known her? A week?”
“How long does it take?”
LaPointe nods. That is true. He had been sure he wanted to spend his life with Lucille after knowing her for two hours. Of course, it was a year before they had the money to get married.
“No, it isn’t the girl,” Guttmann continues, looking into his coffee. “It’s the force. I’m thinking pretty seriously about quitting.” He had wanted to talk to LaPointe about this that evening after they’d been at the go-go joint, but there hadn’t been an opportunity. He looks up to see how the Lieutenant is taking the news.
There is no response at all from LaPointe. Perhaps a slight shrug. He never gives advice in this kind of situation; he doesn’t want the responsibility.
There is an uncomfortable, interrogative quality to the silence, so LaPointe looks up at the wall map for something to fill it. “What’s that northwest-southeast line supposed to be?”
Guttmann understands. The Lieutenant doesn’t want to talk about it. Well… “Ah, let me see. Well, that X is the alley where we found Green.”
“I know that.”
“And the circle is his apartment—the rooming house with the concierge with the broken lip? So I just drew a line between them and continued it on southeast to see where it would lead. Just an approximation. It cuts through the middles of blocks and such, but it must have been the general direction he came from.”
“Yes, but he wasn’t going back to his rooming house.”
“Sir?”
“He was going to the Happy Hour Whisky a Go-Go, remember? He had a date with that dancer’s retarded kid.”
