Bones to Ashes

“I don’t know.”

“Then don’t lose her.”

“I won’t.”

We were on the outskirts of centre-ville when the Mercedes flashed a turn signal.

“She’s going right,” I said.

Ryan slid into the turning lane several cars back.

Two more signals. Two more turns. I watched, chewing the cuticle of my right thumb.

“Safe driver,” I said.

“Makes my job easier.”

“Just don’t—”

“Lose her. I’ve thought of that.”

The Mercedes made one more turn, then pulled over on Boulevard Lebourgneuf. Ryan continued past and slid to the curb a half block down. I watched in the side mirror while Ryan used the rearview.

Francoeur placed something on the dashboard, then she and Bastarache got out, crossed the sidewalk, and entered a gray stone building.

“Probably going to her office,” I said.

“She stuck some sort of parking pass in the windshield,” Ryan said. “If this is her office, she must have a regular spot. Why not use it?”

“Maybe it’s a brief stop,” I said.

Whatever Bastarache and Francoeur were up to, it lasted long enough for me to grow bored with surveillance. I watched office workers hurrying with lidded cups of Starbucks. A mother with a stroller. Two blue-haired punks with arm-tucked skateboards. A spray-painted busker carrying stilts.

The Impala grew hot and stuffy. I rolled down my window. City smells drifted in. Cement. Garbage. Salt and petrol off the river.

I was fighting drowsiness when Ryan cranked the ignition.

I looked toward the building Bastarache and Francoeur had entered. Our boy was coming through the door.

Bastarache pointed a remote at the Mercedes. The car broop-brooped and the lights flashed. Yanking the door, he threw himself behind the wheel and lurched into traffic. When the Mercedes passed us, Ryan let several cars go by, then followed.

Bastarache wound through surface streets onto Boulevard Sainte-Anne, seemingly unaware of our presence. His head kept bobbing, and I assumed he was playing with the radio or inserting a CD.

Several miles out of town, Bastarache turned right onto a bridge spanning the St. Lawrence River.

“He’s going to Ile d’Orleans,” Ryan said.

“What’s out there?” I asked.

“Farms, a few summer homes and B and B’s, a handful of tiny towns.”

Bastarache cut across the island on Route Prevost then turned left onto Chemin Royal, a two-lane blacktop that skimmed the far shore. Out my window, the water glistened blue-gray in the early morning sun.

Traffic was light now, forcing Ryan to widen the gap between us and the Mercedes. Past the hamlet of Saint- Jean, Bastarache hooked a right and disappeared from view.

When Ryan rounded the corner, Bastarache was nowhere to be seen. Instead of commenting, I worked the cuticle. It was now an angry bright red.

As we rolled down the blacktop, my eyes swept the landscape. A vineyard spread from both shoulders. That was it. Vines for acres, heavy and green.

In a quarter mile the road ended at a T intersection. The river lay dead ahead, behind a trio of quintessentially Quebecois homes. Gray stone walls, wood-beamed porches, high-pitched roofs, dormer windows up, window boxes down. The Mercedes was parked in a driveway beside the easternmost bungalow.

The river road continued to the left, but died ten yards to the right. Ryan drove to that end, made a one- eighty, and killed the engine.

“Now what?” I was saying that a lot lately.

“Now we watch.”

“We’re not going in?”

“First we get the lay of the land.”

“Did you really say lay of the land?”

“We sit code six on the dirtbag skel.” Ryan responded to my ribbing with even more TV cop lingo.

“You’re a scream.” I refused to ask what a code six was.

Forty minutes later, the door opened and the dirtbag skel hurried down the steps and crossed to the Mercedes. His hair was wet and he’d changed to an apricot shirt.