“Maybe. But pedophiles aren’t like your regular criminals for profit. They don’t play just for money. They play for product. It’s an obsession.”
“You think the little perv hooked up girls to grow his collection?”
I jumped in. “Cormier’s motive doesn’t matter. If we’re going to find out what happened to Sicard, or Quincy, or any of his other victims, it’s the buyer we need. The creep who’s producing this filth.”
Ryan and Hippo exchanged glances.
“Bastarache,” I said. “It’s got to be him.”
Hippo ran a hand across his chin.
“Could be she’s right. Bastarache makes his living in the skin trade. Massage parlors, strip joints, prostitution.”
“It’s a short hop into porn,” I said. “Then kiddie porn.”
“Bastarache is a flesh bandit,” Ryan said. “But we’ve got nothing to tie him to this.”
“The contact sheet,” I said.
“He’ll deny knowing anything about it,” Ryan said.
“Even if he does, it’s still kiddie porn.”
Ryan shook his head. “It’s too old.”
“Évangéline worked for him.”
“You’re like an old record.”
“What will it take?”
“A direct link.”
Frustrated, I slumped into my chair and hit Play.
The camera zooms out. Sicard straightens, turns her back, playfully crooks one finger. Follow me.
The camera trails Sicard’s languid stroll across the room.
Still holding the halter straps, Sicard lowers herself onto the mattress. Curls, catlike.
Watching, I wondered what dreams filled her head. Lighted runways? Glossy magazines and red carpet openings?
Sicard smiles conspiratorially. Allows one strap of the halter to fall. A man enters and moves to the bed. Sucking one finger, Sicard looks up and smiles. Rises to her knees, allowing the dress to slip to her waist.
It took until midafternoon. The folder was titled Vintage. The footage was old. Hairstyles and clothing in some scenes suggested the fifties and sixties.
Video file seven. The script was hardly original.
The girl is in her midteens, tall, with center-parted dark hair. She is wearing a black bustier, garter belt, and fish-net hose. She appears ill at ease.
The girl glances to her left. The camera follows as she crosses a room and sits on a bench below and to the right of a window. Again she looks to her left, as though seeking direction. Sunlight falls on her hair.
My eyes drifted to the window framing the girl. Scanned the drapes. The woodwork. The misty landscape beyond the glass.
It took a few moments to register.
Hitting Pause, I studied the screen. Studied the shape. The hazy contour below it.
Somewhere, a million miles away, voices were talking.
I hit Play. Stop. Play.
Rewound. Did it again. And again.
“I’ve got him.” Calm, though my heart was in my throat.
The voices stopped.
“I’ve got the wife-beating sonovabitch.”
32
H IPPO AND RYAN JOINED ME.
“This video was shot at Bastarache’s house in Tracadie.” I pointed at the image frozen on the monitor. “You can see totem poles through the window.”
Hippo leaned so close the toothpick jutting from his lips nearly grazed my cheek.
“Beside that funny-looking shed?”
“It’s a gazebo.”
“Why the tom-tom kitsch?”
“That’s not the point.”
Scowling, Hippo rolled the toothpick to the front of his mouth.
“You saw the poles and gazebo on Bastarache’s property?” Ryan asked.
“In the backyard.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes. I may have also seen the carved bench the girl’s sitting on.”
Straightening, Hippo pointed the toothpick at Ryan and spoke around it.
“Video’s old.”
“Kid’s not.”
“And she’s getting her ta-tas immortalized in Bastarache’s crib.”
“She is.”
“Enough to net him?”
“Enough for me.”
“Probable cause?”
“I think a judge will buy it.”
“I call Quebec City while you chase a warrant?”
Ryan nodded.
When Hippo left, Ryan turned to me.
“Good job, hawk eye.”
“Thanks.”
“You think you can stick with this a little while longer?” Ryan chin-cocked the monitor.
“Indubitably.”
“Good word, that.”
By four, Bastarache was in custody, and Ryan had warrants allowing searches of his apartment and bar in Quebec City. No go on Tracadie, since Bastarache wasn’t living in that house.
Ryan found me in the conference room still plodding through smut. Other than the times I’d stopped to check my home, office, and cell phones for input from Harry, I’d taken no breaks.
“Bastarache’s lawyer was at the jail before the door clanged shut. Outraged. Can you imagine?”
“Is he aware that his client is a child pornographer?”
“She. Isabelle Francoeur. According to Francoeur, Bastarache is about to be short-listed for the Order of Canada.”
“Did he walk?”
“Francoeur’s working on it. QC cops say they can hold him for twenty-four. Then it’s charge him or kick him.”
“What happens now?”
“Hippo paws through Bastarache’s shorts while I engage him in verbal discourse.”
“You’re going to Quebec City?”
“Hippo’s pulling the car around now.”
“I want to go with you.”
Ryan looked at me for a very long time, undoubtedly sensing my hidden agenda.
“If your friends are mentioned it’s because I bring them up.”
I started to protest, thought better of it. “It’s your bust.”
“What are their names?”
“Évangéline and Obéline.”
“You are strictly an observer.”
“I’ll observe my ass off.”
Ten minutes later we were motoring northeast on Highway 40, paralleling the shore of the St. Lawrence River. Hippo was at the wheel. Ryan was riding shotgun. I was in back, lurching and bouncing and trying not to barf.
On the way, Ryan explained the plan. I could barely hear him over the sputtering static from the radio. At my request, Hippo turned it off.
The strategy. Ryan and I would go to la prison d’Orsainville, where Bastarache was being held. Hippo would continue on into the city to oversee the tossing of Bastarache’s bar.
The drive from Montreal normally takes three hours. Hippo made it in a little over two. Throughout, I checked my phone. No Harry. I told myself she was always going AWOL. Nevertheless, my apprehension was growing. Why didn’t she phone?
Ryan called ahead as we approached the city’s outskirts. Hippo dropped us at the prison then gunned off. By the time we cleared security, Bastarache was already in an interrogation room. A guard stood by the door, looking like his feet hurt.
Perhaps I’d seen too many Sopranos episodes. I was expecting mode de mobster. Oiled hair. Gold chains. Steroid-swollen muscles. I got a beluga in polyester with small piggy eyes.
The room held the usual four chairs and a table. Ryan and I took seats on one side. Bastarache filled the other. I was surprised not to see Francoeur.
Ryan introduced himself, explained that he was SQ and that he’d come from Montreal.
The piggy eyes slid my way.
“Would you prefer to wait for your attorney?” Ryan asked, refusing to assuage Bastarache’s curiosity. Good. Let him wonder about me.
“Frippe-moi l’chu.” Roughly translated from chiac, “kiss my ass.” “I own lounges. I run ’em clean. When will you assholes figure that out?”
r /> “You own strip bars.”
“Last I checked, exotic dancing’s still legal in this country. Every one of my girls is over eighteen.” Bastarache spoke with a cadence similar to Hippo’s.
“You sure of that?”
“I check ID’s.”
“One or two manage to slip under your radar?”
Bastarache crimped his lips tightly and breathed through his nose. It made a wheezing sound.
“Way under. Sweet sixteen. I wonder. She have the braces off yet?”
A flush crept north from Bastarache’s collar. “The kid lied.”
Ryan clucked and gave a short wag of his head. “Kids today.”
“She wasn’t complaining.”
“You like the young stuff, Dave?”
“The kid swore she was twenty-three.”
“Age-appropriate for a guy like you.”
“Look, there’s two kinds of women in this world. Those you slip it to and those you take home to Sunday dinner. This chick wasn’t going to Grand-mère’s for pot roast, know what I’m saying?”
“You nailed the third type.”
Bastarache tipped his head.
“Jail bait.”
The flush spread upward to Bastarache’s face. “Same old recycled bullshit. She said she was legal. What you want me to do, check her teeth?”
“How about hooking? That legal?”
“A girl leaves the bar, we got no control over her personal life.”
Ryan responded with silence, knowing most interviewees feel compelled to fill it. Bastarache wasn’t one of them.
“We’ve got some girls missing down our way,” Ryan continued. “Some dead ones. You know anything about that?”
“Got no ties to Montreal.”
Ryan used another interrogation trick I’d seen him employ. Sudden switch of topic.
“You like movies, Dave?”
“What?”
“Lights! Camera! Action!”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Let me guess. You decided to branch out. Go Hollywood.”
Bastarache’s hands were resting on the table, fingers interlaced like short, fat sausages. At Ryan’s question, the sausages tightened.
“Bare tit on a pole. That’s pretty low-rent action.”
Bastarache glowered mutely.
“Motion pictures. That’s the big time.”
“You’re goddamn crazy.”
“Let’s just say, for argument’s sake, you got a kid eager to earn a few bucks. You propose a little poontang on camera. She goes along.”
“What?”
“Am I going too fast for you, Dave?”
“What are we talking about here?”
“You know what I’m talking about.”
“Porn flicks?”
“Of a very special genre.”
“You lost me, pal.”
Ryan’s voice turned glacial. “I’m talking kiddie porn, Dave. Children.”
Bastarache disengaged his hands and slapped them down on the table. “I. Don’t. Mess. With. Kids.”
The guard poked his head into the room. “We good here?”
“Jim dandy,” Ryan said.
While Bastarache locked glares with Ryan, I observed him covertly. The rolls in his neck and stomach looked hard and his arms were corded with muscle. The guy wasn’t the lardo I’d first taken him for.
Never breaking eye contact with Bastarache, Ryan reached into a pocket and withdrew one of several stills I’d printed from the video in Cormier’s Vintage folder. Wordlessly, he slid the print across the table.
Bastarache looked down at the girl on the bench. I watched his body language. Saw no tensing.
“You check this little girl’s ID?” Ryan asked.
“I never laid eyes on her.”
“What’s her name?”
“I told you.” The piggy eyes rolled up. “I never met the young lady.”
“You know a photographer named Stanislas Cormier?”
“Sorry.” Bastarache started running a thumbnail through a scratch on the tabletop.
Ryan pointed at the print. “Got this from Cormier’s computer. Part of a nasty little video. Drive holds quite a collection.”
“The world’s full of degenerates.”
“That your house?”
The thumbnail froze. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Nice landscaping.”
Bastarache squinted at the print, then flicked it toward Ryan with one meaty finger.
“What if it is? I was barely out of high school when this kid was playing Indian princess.”
A tiny bell pinged in my head. What was wrong there? I set it aside until later.
One by one, Ryan laid out the photos of Phoebe Quincy, Kelly Sicard, Claudine Cloquet, and the facial reconstruction of the girl from the Rivière des Mille Îles. Bastarache barely glanced at the faces.
“Sorry, pal. Wish I could help you.”
Ryan added autopsy shots of the Lac des Deux Montagnes floater and the girl from the Dorval shoreline.
“Jesus friggin’ Christ.” Bastarache blinked, but didn’t look away.
Ryan tapped the photos of Quincy and Sicard. “These girls also appear in Cormier’s collection.” Not exactly true for Quincy, but close enough. “They have now vanished. I want to know why.”
“I’ll say it one more time. I don’t know shit about porn flicks or missing kids.”
Bastarache glanced up at the ceiling. Seeking composure? Clever answers? When his face came down it was devoid of expression.
“You employ a pair of cretins named Babin and Mulally?” Ryan pulled another topical switch.
“I am now going to await the arrival of counsel. Much as I’m enjoying this, it’s time I roll outta here. Got a business to run.”
Ryan leaned back and folded his arms.
“You surprise me, Dave. Sensitive guy like you. I figured you’d still be in mourning for your wife.”
Was it my imagination, or did Bastarache tense at Ryan’s reference to Obéline?
“But then, hell, it’s been almost a week.”
Two beefy palms came up. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m not the coldhearted bastard you think I am. I feel it. But my wife’s passing was no shocker. The woman’s been suicidal for years.”
“That why you had to tune her up now and then? To reinvigorate her zest for life?”
Bastarache drilled Ryan with a porcine stare. Relaced his fingers. “My lawyer will have me out of here before you hit the on-ramp to the forty.”
I looked at Ryan, willing him to confront Bastarache with the contact sheet of Évangéline. He didn’t.
“Your lawyer has plenty of time.” Ryan held Bastarache’s stare. “CSU’s at your place right now. When I leave here, I’ll be helping them take your life apart, nail by nail.”
“Fuck you.”
“No, Dave.” Ryan spoke with a voice of pure steel. “We find one name, one phone number, one snapshot of a kid in a two-piece swimsuit, you’ll be so fucked you’ll wish your parents had decided on celibacy.”
Shoving back his chair, Ryan rose. I followed. We were at the door when Bastarache barked, “You haven’t a clue what’s going on.”
We both stopped and turned.
“How ’bout you tell me, then,” Ryan said.
“These girls call themselves performance artists. Every single one’s got dreams of being the next Madonna.” Bastarache shook his head. “Artists, my ass. They’re vipers. You block ’em, they’ll take you off at the dick.”
Though I’d promised to remain mute, the man was so repugnant I couldn’t hold myself back.
“How about Évangéline Landry? She ask to appear in one of your dirty little films?”
The sausage fingers went so tight the knuckles bulged yellow-white. Again, the lips crimped. After several wheezy nasal intakes, Bastarache replied to Ryan, “You’re way off base.”
“Really?” Loathing glazed my response
>
Still Bastarache ignored me. “You’re so far off base you might as well be in Botswana.”
“Where should we be looking, Mr. Bastarache?” I asked.
Finally, the response was directed at me.
“Not in my backyard, baby.” A serpentine vein pumped the midline of Bastarache’s forehead.
Ryan and I both turned our backs.
“Look in your own motherfucking backyard.”
33
Q UEBEC CITY IS SIMPLY QUÉBEC TO QUEBECKERS. IT IS THE provincial capital. And oh-so-very-thoroughly très French.
The Vieux-Québec, the old quarter, is the only fortified town in North America up latitude from Mexico. The same zip code boasts the Château Frontenac, the Assemblée nationale, and the Musée national des beaux-arts. Hotel, parliament, and fine arts museum to us Anglophones. Quaint and cobbled, the Vieux-Québec is a world heritage site.
Bastarache’s small corner of the ville definitely was not.
Located on a seedy street off Chemin Sainte-Foy, Le Passage Noir was a dive in a row of dives featuring women taking off their clothes. Short on charm, the neighborhood filled a niche in Quebec City’s urban ecosystem. In addition to strippers flaunting T and A on runways, dealers hawked drugs on street corners, and hookers sold sex out of flophouses and taxis.
An SQ cop drove us to the address on Ryan’s warrant. Hippo’s car was at the curb along with a CSU van and a cruiser with Service de police de la Ville de Québec on its side panel.
When Ryan and I pushed through Le Passage’s heavy wooden door, the air was thick with the smell of stale beer and dried sweat. The place was as small as a bar can be without becoming a kiosk. It was clear Bastarache didn’t spend a lot on lighting.
A bar shot the center of the room. A crude platform spanned its rear wall. At stage right glowed a Rock-Ola jukebox straight out of the for ties. At stage left was a pool table helter-skelter with balls and cues abandoned by hastily departing patrons.
A uniformed cop stood by the entrance, feet spread, thumbs hooking his belt. His badge said C. Deschênes, SPVQ.
A man slouched on one of the eight stools at the bar, heels catching one rung. He wore a white shirt, razor-creased black pants, and shined black loafers. Gold cuff links. Gold watch. Gold neck chain. No name tag. I assumed Mr. Sharp was the abruptly idled bartender.
A pair of women smoked and talked at one of a dozen tables facing the stage. Both wore shocking pink polyester kimonos.