Charbonneau nodded.
“Your place or ours?”
“Our unit’s piece-of-crap VCR is busted again.” Charbonneau wadded his napkin and chucked it onto his plate.
“There’s a setup in our conference room,” I said.
“Let’s do it.” Ryan scooped up the bill.
“Bring some sunshine into my day.” Charbonneau pushed back his chair.
My sandwich lay untouched on my plate.
It was worse than I could have imagined. Girls suspended by their arms. Bound wrist to ankle. Spread-eagle. Always hooded. Always passive.
Ryan, Charbonneau, and I watched in silence. Now and then Charbonneau would clear his throat, shift his feet, recross his arms. Now and then Ryan would reach for a smoke, remember, finger-drum the table.
Some footage was jerky, as though taken with a handheld. Some was steady, probably shot from a tripod or some other fixed position.
The tapes were numbered one through six. We’d gotten through most of the first when Claudel walked in.
Three heads swiveled.
“Tawny McGee.” Claudel looked like he’d sucked on a lime.
I hit PAUSE.
“‘D’?” I asked.
Curt nod. “Reported missing by the parents in ninety-nine.”
“Where?” Ryan asked.
“Maniwaki.”
Claudel slid a fax across the table. Charbonneau glanced at it, then handed it to Ryan, who handed it to me.
My scalp prickled.
I was looking at the face of a child. Round cheeks. Braids. Eyes that were eager, curious, always up to something.
I scanned the descriptors.
Tawny McGee disappeared when she was twelve years old.
I swallowed.
“Are you sure this is ‘D’?”
Claudel slid another fax across the table. I picked it up. On it was the inquiry he’d circulated.
The face in the photo was an Auschwitz version of the one I’d just viewed. Older. Thinner. A hope-lost expression.
No. That was wrong. Tawny McGee’s face showed nothing at all.
“Have you gotten anything on the bastard that had her?” I asked, my voice taut with anger.
“I’m working on it.”
“Have you called the McGee family?”
“Maniwaki’s handling that.”
“Where the hell’s Stephen Menard?” My pitch was rising with each question. “Could Menard be in on this? Could Menard and this guy have been working a tag team? Did SIJ find other prints in that house?”
Claudel tipped back his head and slid a look down his nose.
Charbonneau got to his feet. “I’m on Menard.”
When they left I punched PLAY, biting a knuckle to maintain control.
We were twenty minutes into the second tape when the phone rang. The receptionist announced Dr. Feldman. I mouthed the name to Ryan as I waited for the connection.
“Dr. Brennan.”
“Penny Feldman at Montreal General.”
“How are they?”
“The kid’s awake and hysterical. Won’t let anyone touch her. Says someone’s going to kill her.”
“Anglophone or Francophone?”
