Blindshot Page 21

“I, uhm, can’t say more, Tom. I’m not authorized to say more. I don’t know.”

  “Okay, well here’s what, Bob. I’ll go find Claude Millet for the Mayor. When you get your head out of Mayor O’Neil’s ass, tell her the Deputy Chief of Police doesn’t give a fuck what she and her cronies decide. It’s my home they’re talking about, and I’ll do what the fuck I want with it. Did you get that?”

  Bob Korsky nodded uncomfortably.

  “Good boy,” said Tom, rising to leave.

  Intimidated by Tom’s physical presence, Bob moved out of his way, bumping into Councillor Edgar Roy so that a stack of legal papers in Roy’s arms went flying. Tom caught a few pages that drifted before him and handed them back to Councillor Roy. “Ever thought of going paperless?”

  Tom headed on his way, throwing a taunting wink to Mayor O’Neil, who tried not to lose her train of thought as she finished up her opening remarks.

  Bob Korsky helped Edgar Roy gather his scrambled legal papers while Elaine Rougeau, Beaufort’s Town Clerk, enumerated the first items of the city’s business.

  Claude Millet’s chair at the council table remained empty.

  Tom’s truck was parked on Rue Principale. He was about to get in when he caught sight of Anne Desaulniers, who was stepping out of her car. She waited there as Tom walked over to her.

  She was dressed sharply in a dark blue business suit and an ivory blouse. Her black hair was even longer than the last time Tom had seen her. A smile came and went on her face.

  “Hey,” said Tom, letting the silence that followed drift on. Finally, she broke it.

  “Hey,” she said. “How’ve you been?”

  “Haven’t seen much of you around.”

  “Been mostly in Montreal,” she told him.

  “You’re attending the council meeting?”

  “No, but I am meeting a councillor afterwards. Edgar Roy.”

  “Selling the Auberge, eh?”

  “How would you know that?”

  “I know everything that goes on in this town,” said Tom. “Besides, your buyer’s purchasing agreement is all over the floor of the council room as we speak,” explained Tom. Anne looked perplexed.

  “What brought you and your folks to that decision?” he asked before she could enquire.

  “It’s complicated,” said Anne. “Beaufort isn’t for me. Well, anyway, we’re intending to invest the revenue from the sale of Auberge du Lièvre in a condo development in Montreal. The numbers look good. We’ll also sell the farm outside Knowlton and use that for another project.”

  “In Montreal too?”

  She nodded. “That’s the plan.”

  “Sounds like a good plan. You know Catherine Martelle is an architect and project developer. Maybe she could help you?”

  “That wouldn’t be such a good idea. I don’t think.”

  Anne suddenly leaned over, took Tom by the collar, and kissed him. Tom kissed her back, and they pushed against one another for a long moment. Then, just as suddenly, Anne pulled back. They said nothing to each other, both taking deep breaths. Anne took her briefcase from the back seat, swung her car door shut, and moved off toward her meeting.

  Tom was left standing there, wondering what had just happened. His policeman’s instinct nagged him. She moved on quickly, he thought, like a bird scattering from a loud noise. He watched her go.

  Anne didn’t look back.

  Jack swung open the door of the microwave and took out a frozen dinner that billowed with steam through its punctured plastic seal. He stuck the black plastic plate of turkey slices, potatoes, and cranberry dessert onto a rectangular metal meal tray, then poured a plastic glass full of chocolate milk, put that on the tray, and dumped a handful of barbecue chips on the side of the plate along with a plastic fork and knife, and a fudge brownie.

  “How’s it going?” he asked Noah, who was concentrating on Millet’s cell phone at the kitchen table.

  “I think it’s going to work, if I can just finish testing something here,” Noah replied, as Jack walked by him with the tray.

  Zeph had loosened Millet’s ropes just enough to allow him to sit on the couch in the living room. Jack arrived with the tray and set it on his lap.

  Millet thanked him softly, then looked over the food. “I’m diabetic. I can’t eat this.”

  “Really?”

  “Guess some of this is okay. Is this chicken?”

  “Turkey,” said Jack.

  “I love those!” said Zeph, busy with his laptop.

  “Yeah, I noticed,” said Jack to Zeph, “You had four of them today!”

  Zeph ignored him. “I’m all connected. Good to go! Hey, look, I can control your lights!” With a touch of a key, he made all the lights go black.

  “Hey!” shouted Noah from the darkened kitchen.

  “Oh, sorry, Noah!” Zeph turned the lights on again.

  Millet made a move with his knees that shifted the angle of the tray and sent the brownie and chips all over the couch.

  “Crap,” said Jack. “It’s okay. Just shift over a bit.”

  Millet tried his best.

  “We’ll clean it up after,” said Jack. “Eat what you can. If you’re still hungry after, we’ll fix you something with less sugar. Can you eat mac ’n’ cheese?”

  “Yeah.”

  Noah came to the living room with Millet’s cell phone and sat on the couch across from Millet. He and Jack watched Millet eat. His tied hands made this difficult, but the boys did not dare give him more latitude.

  “I don’t know what you kids expect from me,” Millet grumbled.

  “Why don’t you walk us through the night of September 23rd?” asked Jack.

  “Who do you think you are? I don’t owe you any explanations.”

  “The question deserves an answer and you know it. We need you to answer, Mr. Millet. That’s what we expect from you. Just give us that.”

  “There was a party at Brian Henley’s. It was Art Bernier’s birthday. There was food, beer, wine. A get-together. And we went into the woods for some fun, that’s all.”

  “That part we got. Go on. Where did you go?”

  “Just to Henley’s clearing, where he shoots guns all the time. It’s a range. It’s safe, really safe. We couldn’t have shot your father from there.”

  “I don’t believe you,” said Jack. “You were the closest ones to our house that night. Someone in your group knows.”

  “Well, it’s not me!” shouted Millet.

  “Did any of you go anywhere else?”

  Millet was quiet, thinking.

  “If you’ve seen all those movies and cop shows that you think we’re imitating, then you know this is when I tell you that holding out on us won’t help you. Not in the situation you’re in.”

  “Situation I’m in? What about the situation you’re in? You stupid kids!” Millet swung his tied hands as far as they could go, sending the tray of food to the floor, scattering bits of food across the living room.

  “Beauty,” said Zeph, sarcastically. “For the record, I’m not cleaning that up. I do security, that’s all.”

  Jack picked up the tray and moved next to Millet, holding the metal edge under his chin. Millet froze.

  “You should be scared of this stupid kid, because for this stupid kid there are no limits anymore. Do you get that, Mr. Millet? A year ago, my world was shattered. All the rules stopped applying to me, to my brother, because everyone, the smart adults who run this town, have been lying to us. No one cared enough to say, ‘This is wrong!’ Well, I care enough. I’m tired enough, lonely enough, desperate enough not to give a shit what happens to me. I haven’t slept a full night in a year. I’ve had nightmares every night for a year. Nothing I believed in is what it was. There’s no law, no repercussions, no accounting for our dad being gunned down.”

>   No one moved. Everyone was listening, riveted by Jack’s tirade. The veins on his forehead pulsed visibly.

  “What do we expect from you? Really? You have to ask that?” continued Jack. “I want someone, an adult who was present the night my father was shot, to come forward and tell us what happened. The truth. We are just kids, but we’re far from stupid, and we deserve the truth.”

  Jack threw the tray across the expanse of the living room. It careened off a table and lodged on a bookshelf.

  Noah looked Millet straight in the eyes. “Why don’t you just tell us everything you saw that night? So my brother and me can understand?” he said. “We know it had to be someone in your group. Ours is the third house from Henley’s range. If anyone walked off from the range, into the woods, they could easily have been in a position to shoot up here, where my father got hit. Nothing else makes sense. Like my brother said, Mr. Millet, we’re a long way from stupid.”

  Finally, Millet spoke. “After shooting at the range for a while, we broke up into groups and went into the forest to find ourselves a whitetail. It was a challenge. A bet!”

  “To see who could get a whitetail?” asked Jack.

  “Yeah, but not just that. We’re all pros. We knew any one of us could get a whitetail, easy. It was whoever could get one fastest and the best one, the most points.”

  “Points? He means the antlers?” asked Zeph.

  Noah nodded.

  Jack pointed to the big screen television. “Zeph, pop open a notepad on the screen.” Zeph tapped away on his laptop. The television screen lit up white and the cursor appeared.

  “How many groups and who was in each group?” asked Jack. “Zeph, you write the names.”

  Millet thought it over. “It’s a long time ago. I’m not sure now.”

  “Think,” encouraged Jack. “There were only a few people. Robert Morrison, Jeff Lennox, Brian Henley.”

  “I know, I know! Let me think.”

  The boys waited silently, cautiously excited by this first breakthrough. “There was me and Keith—Keith Davis—in one group, for a while. Then Keith went off, I’m not sure who he joined up with, if anybody. He could have ended up alone, but I’m not sure. Um, then there was another group—Rob Morrison, Arthur and Lars, but they’re police officers for God’s sake! And Morrison, he’s famous, he’s the rifle king—come on, he didn’t shoot your father! And then there was Jeffrey. I think he was on his own. I don’t know if maybe Keith found him.”

  Jack turned to the screen. Zeph had created three groups and a line joining two of them, representing Keith Davis’s possible move from one group to another. Jack and Noah looked at each other and almost smiled.

  “Okay, the second group, yours, what happened? What did you see? What did you hear, even?”

  “Nothing. We scoped the woods for a buck.”

  “You didn’t see anyone shoot? Didn’t hear anything?”

  “No, well, there was the sound of other guys scraping a tree. You know, to attract a buck. The sound of wood against wood.”

  “No shot all night, the whole time you were out there?”

  “We never saw a buck. Our group lost the challenge.”

  Jack froze in his step, staring at Millet, then giving a look to Noah. He looked excited.

  “Who did win the challenge?”

  There was silence as they waited for Millet’s answer.

  “Jeff Lennox.”

  Melanie Brassard, recently turned nineteen, got the shivers whenever Jeffrey Lennox came into Beaufort’s general store, and he came in often. Mostly, he came to buy cigarettes, but he also came to schmooze and ogle Melanie. She wanted nothing to do with this rough forty-year-old, but it was her job to be nice to patrons. As he swaggered in, he offered a crooked smile that creeped her out. He walked to the rack of booze, but she sensed he was looking at her, looking at her body, her bare arms. She reached for her sweater and slipped it on. He brought two bottles to the counter and waited his turn, as Melanie served another customer, but she could smell his musty odour. He came closer and slid the bottles together in front of her.

  She had made the mistake long ago of telling him her name. “Hi there, gorgeous Melanie,” he said. “How are you today?”

  “Fine. You?”

  “Keep’n it loose,” he said.

  She had no idea what that meant. What a creep, she thought. Go away. “Is that all for today?” she asked.

  “Two packs. You know what I smoke.”

  “Yep. These ones, right?”

  “That’s my Melanie. Hey, nice tattoo. Didn’t notice it before.” He pointed to her now-covered upper arm.

  “It’s new. Couple months back. Thanks.” She smiled back uncomfortably.

  “Dolphin, isn’t it?

  “Yep,” said Melanie. Trying to get this over with as soon as possible, she processed the transaction fast and handed him his change in record time.

  “You like dolphins, eh?”

  “Yep, I do.”

  “Ever swim with one?”

  “Yeah, twice, with several of them. In the Dominican Republic, on vacation with my parents. Was great.”

  Lennox’s cell phone rang.

  Melanie felt saved. God, thank you!

  Lennox shoved his change away, grabbed his cigarettes and bottles and snapped the phone to his ear, all while smiling some more at her.

  Does he really think there’s something between us? Go! Go take your call!

  “Jeff, here,” said Lennox into his phone, then realized it wasn’t a call but a text message. It was from his buddy Claude Millet.

  “Need your help, J! Trouble @ Carignan house! Please!” it said.

  Lennox pocketed his phone and raced out of the store. Melanie watched with relief. Lennox got to his truck, parked out front. He had left it running. He jumped in, dumped the bottles on the seat beside him, and drove off.

  Never having to slow down, either to avoid deer or because of oncoming traffic, Lennox arrived at the Carignan house in record time. He left his truck on the road, shutting the engine this time, and walked up the driveway. Lennox expected to find a vehicle of some kind, either Millet’s red ATV or his black BMW 328i, but neither was there. He saw no sign of anyone. From the main entrance, the house looked closed up and silent. Lennox thought it best to circle the house for a sign of Millet, but first he took out his phone and keyed in a message back to Millet.

  “Where r u?” he typed. No response. He pocketed the phone and walked around the house. He walked up the sloping gardens, circling through them to reach the side entrance where the glass wall began. He tried peering through the glass, but saw nothing. Everything was darkened. He knocked on the door and waited. Nothing. He rang the doorbell and waited. Nothing again. His phone rang.

  “Inside,” it said.

  Lennox pocketed the phone and tried the door. It was unlocked. He walked in and took steps through the vestibule. There was some kind of mess in the kitchen. He walked through, knowing the layout of the place, and turned to the enormous living room. As he entered, he saw Claude Millet from behind, past a set of couches, sitting in a chair, looking outward to the valley through the great windows.

  “Claude?” he shouted. “What’s going on?”

  Lennox saw the ropes around Millet and the chair. Millet turned to him, wild-eyed, duct tape across his mouth.

  “What the!” Lennox started to say, but he didn’t have time to complete the thought before sensing motion behind him. He was right. He tried to turn, but before he could do so, Jack appeared holding Millet’s rifle by the barrel and swinging it high up at his head, connecting incredibly hard. Whack!

  Lennox’s muscled body fell to the floor.

  “We don’t have much time,” said Jack, “Let’s tie him up!”

  Catherine was showing the aging billionaire and his wife the
scale model of the Larivée Technology Park project in the Mulroy Arsenault workshop.

  “How far along is this wonderful thing?” asked Saul Vineberg, making his way around the eastern corner of the massive display. Another thought occurred to him, and he turned to his wife Nora, just behind him. “It’s so white, isn’t it? Makes it hard to look at,” he exclaimed.

  He turned back toward the model, revealing his age in every deliberate move. “Why do they make it so white? I’ve seen a few of these in the last years and they always make them that way. Why is that?”

  Catherine smiled at Mr. Vineberg. “That’s in order to abstract the details and show off the forms and volumes of the architecture and urban planning.”

  “What does that mean? It’s too white!” said Mr. Vineberg. “I prefer those new 3D fly-throughs, with colour and all the details, even the little cars and people. So real!”

  “We have those too,” said Catherine, “if you want to see them.”

  “No, no, no, we’ll settle for this snow sculpture,” said Saul. “Guess we’re not important enough to see the cool stuff.”

  “I can arrange it anytime, even right now if you want to follow me up to our studios.”

  “Maybe later, Catherine. Saul, be nice!” said Mrs. Vineberg.

  “I am nice! I’m always nice!” Mr. Vineberg smiled at Catherine. She was close enough for him to take her hand, lightly, beckoning her to halt and pay attention. “I’m just teasing her!”

  “Well that’s no way to be,” said Mrs. Vineberg.

  Saul winked at Catherine. “You know I’m just teasing, don’t you, dear?” he said. Catherine smiled and nodded. Saul was very likeable. Then, suddenly, a new light came into his eyes. It was the kind of sparkle that came with a tremendously cunning mind, vast experience and a personality that—however gentle—demanded excellence from everyone in his path.

  “I know you’re very busy, Catherine, very, very busy. So, I’ll get right to it. I understand the goal of this stunning complex and you know I’m interested, or I wouldn’t have dragged myself out here on my old legs. Nor would I have brought the President of our foundation, for that matter. Nora’s the final decision-maker, in case you didn’t know.”