The Dead of Winter

“Yes, sir.”

“Inspector Vanier, what the fuck are you doing to me?”

“Sir?”

“Where are you?”

“In the Squad Room, first floor.”

“My office. Now.”

The phone clicked off, and Vanier took the stairs up.

The Chief was sitting watching the door, probably counting how many seconds it took Vanier to mount the stairs. Vanier took a seat.

“So explain to me, we have a written confession from a suspect, but you still have close to 30 officers scouring the city looking for some guy who placed ads thanking St. Jude? Does that make sense, Luc?”

Vanier tried not to stare at the sweat that had accumulated in the fat jiggling over the Chief Inspector’s collar.

“I don’t think the priest killed himself, sir. I think he was murdered, like the others. It’s premature to name Drouin as the culprit. We don’t know that, we’d be guessing. I think we should wait.”

“Do you have any idea the pressure that I’m under? And the journalists are ahead of us at every step. What if the suicide note leaks out? What do we do then?”

“We tell the truth.” As he said it, he realized how stupid it must sound to Bedard, who dealt in messaging, not truth. If the message happened to be true, that was a bonus.

“The truth?”

“We tell them that we are not certain that the note is genuine.”

“Well if it wasn’t suicide, it was murder, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, sir. But we can’t announce it as murder if we don’t know. We do what we always do; we tell the press that we are investigating the circumstances.”

“Jesus, if the homeless didn’t set the city in a panic, a dead priest in a confessional box will. And in the Cathedral, of all places.”

“All I’m saying, sir, is that we still don’t know what’s going on, and we don’t want to put ourselves into a position where we have to backtrack. Can’t you just stall the press for a few days? At least till we get the results of the autopsy. We don’t have to mention the note.”

“All right, Sergeant Laflamme is doing a press conference. She’s good. I’ll tell her not to go any further than confirming the death of a priest. Because of the other deaths, and his work with the homeless, we are investigating it. She may be able to get away with that for a while.”

“I think that’s best, sir. We’ll have something concrete soon.”

“All right, get to it, Luc.”

Vanier rose to leave.

“And, Luc, and I’m telling you this as a friend, we go back a long time.”

“Yes, sir?”

“It wouldn’t hurt to make an effort. That suit, it looks like you slept in it, and it looks like you’ve been wearing that shirt for days. Luc, don’t let yourself go, you’ll lose the respect of your team.”

“Yes, sir.” Vanier felt like lashing out. His defenses were strong but sometimes, the occasional grenade managed to make it over the wall and cause damage inside. Fuck you, you fat bastard was all he could think of, but he said, “Yes, sir. I’ll see what I can do.”

“Luc, that’s from a friend, not your boss.”

Vanier was out the door before he finished. He had forgotten to tell Bedard that he had a sketch of John. If Bedard didn’t know there was a sketch, there wouldn’t be pressure to release it to the media.

He was watching the clock and waiting for a lead, any lead. Someone must recognize the sketch. The minutes dragged into hours, and he had a pizza delivered. He was on the second slice when Bedard burst into the room.

“Luc, what the fuck are you trying to do? I’ve just been told that we have a sketch of a suspect. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Chief Inspector, it’s one sketch from one witness, and I’m not sure it’s reliable — I’m not even sure the witness is reliable. We have officers showing it around at all the likely spots, and if it’s good, we should have a name to go with the sketch any moment.”

“That’s not the point. You didn’t tell me you even had a sketch.”

“Like I said, sir, I’m not convinced it’s reliable. I’m waiting for identification, and we’ll have it soon and will pick him up. If he’s gone missing we can release the sketch along with a name. You know what a defence lawyer can do with a sketch that‘s not a good likeness of the suspect. I don’t want to make a mistake. This way, if the sketch is any good, we get a name and we can nab him. If the sketch gets out, he disappears.”

“Well, it’s too late to worry about that. I just got a call from the Mayor’s office about the sketch. It’s on the Journal de Montreal’s website. The fucking Journal de Montreal publishes the sketch before I even know it exists. Luc, why are you doing this to me? Holding out is bad enough, but someone in your unit has a direct line to that piece of shit newspaper.”

“I’ve checked that, sir, and nobody from this squad is feeding the media,” said Vanier, trying to eliminate doubt from his voice. “The witness for the sketch works for the Journal de Montreal, and our people have been out all day with the sketch. There must have been hundreds of people who have seen it, and more than a few with copies. He’s not even a suspect right now; he’s just a loose end. Our suspect is dead.”

“Well, your plan to keep this quiet is flushed down the toilet.”

“We just have to deal with that. I hope to have something serious any moment now. If the sketch is a dead end, then we’ll know quickly enough. We’re hitting everyone who might have seen our guy. If nobody recognizes him, then the sketch is probably useless.”

“So I tell the Mayor’s office that a member of the public leaked it, and we didn’t release it because he’s only a person of interest, not a suspect.”

“That’s right. Go on the attack, Chief Inspector: irresponsible action by the Journal de Montreal endangering a material witness and jeopardizing a murder investigation. Tell them you can’t conduct a rigorous investigation if the media acts irresponsibly, putting the public in danger at the same time. You have enough experience, Chief Inspector, to know that publishing sketches is a last resort. And that’s how we were operating, until our investigation was sabotaged by irresponsible journalists.” Vanier was beginning to believe himself, and the Chief Inspector was beginning to see an alternative to admitting he wasn’t in control.

“I’m sure that you can put it much more convincingly than I could, Chief. It’s not a police failure, it’s irresponsible journalism aimed at undermining a serious inquiry.”

Bedard didn’t have an alternative, and there was a grain of truth in what Vanier was saying. There was enough to craft a message around; righteous indignation coupled with a chance to put the boot to the media at the same time. The Mayor might even like it.

“I’ll talk to Sergeant Laflamme about this — she’s the expert on communications — then we’ll pass it by the Mayor. Let’s hope that we get some leads from this. Otherwise, it could get very ugly.”

“Chief, I am certain we will have a target by tonight. I’ll call you as soon as I know.”

“Thank you, Luc. Thank you.” As the Chief rose to leave, he reached over for a slice of pizza. “Don’t mind?”

“Go ahead, take two.”

“One’s enough,” he said, before changing his mind, reaching for a second. “Thanks, Luc.”

Vanier watched him leave and went back to his pizza.

And the calls began to arrive. St. Jacques called from the Cathedral to say she had a name, John Collins, confirmed by two witnesses, but no address. But he fit the description, even down to dressing like a priest. Officers began running John Collins through databases, criminal records, people who had been arrested, suspects. Two officers were working on access to wider databases: passport, army, city and provincial employment, social security, and a host of other sources that collect information on citizens. In the electronic world, everyone is in a database. Just by living you leave traces everywhere. Nobody’s anonymous.

The last line of defence for the average citizen was the volume of information being collected and stored. The databases were like haystacks piled up in fields defying anyone to find the needle. But the tools to dig through