Never Forget Page 18

  March 14, 1972

  Patient in complete psychotic breakdown. Violent. Restraints needed. Fresh delusions. Convinced he participated in deadly crimes.

  Victor entered the date in his notebook, then shook his head, suddenly discouraged. What could he hope to find in the psychiatric file of a patient who had been delusional for more than forty years?

  He picked up the stack and ran his thumb over the sheets. The file went on for hundreds of pages. He had neither the time nor the patience to look at every entry. Rather than try to analyze and understand all the details, he decided to look at the big picture.

  The first thing he noticed was that there were significant gaps in the timeline. Lortie hadn’t received psychiatric treatment between 1974 and 1979. What had happened to him during that period? Had he taken his medication regularly and stabilized his condition? Had he found work? Had he experienced moments of respite? Or had he swirled deeper into the vortex of his unbalanced mind and continued to deteriorate? Lortie had received treatment at Louis-H. once in 1980. Then, between 1981 and 1987, the revolving doors had begun to spin at a frenzied rate:

  August 12, 1981

  Patient arrested after a brawl among homeless individuals. Facial bruises. Manic phase. Delusions of grandeur and persecution. Bit a nurse who was trying to give him medication.

  August 16, 1981

  Patient decompensating. Deeply depressed. Lithium, Haldol.

  August 18, 1981

  Patient very distressed after learning about his behaviour toward the nurse. Intense despair, self-reproach, feelings of worthlessness. Suicidal ideation. I have requested 24-hour surveillance. Important that he not be left alone.

  Victor interrupted his reading to take the vibrating phone out of his pocket. Nadja’s name appeared on the caller ID. “Hello,” he said in a weary voice, but with a smile on his lips.

  “Detective Sergeant Lessard,” a mischievous voice said, “this is Mrs. Claus. I’m calling to remind you that Christmas is right around the corner. Have you bought presents for your kids?”

  An anxious sensation constricted him. Picking up his ballpoint, he wrote Presents on his hand. “Mrs. Claus, the number you have dialed is not in service. I repeat, the number you have dialed is not in service.”

  They both laughed.

  “No,” he said, in a more serious tone. “I haven’t bought anything yet. I still have time to rack my brain for ideas.”

  “Oh, come on, it’s super easy. Martin’s always talking about the Second World War. Buy him the box set of Band of Brothers. And Charlotte keeps borrowing my earrings. You know, the gold hoops.”

  Tears came to Victor’s eyes. What had he done to deserve such a woman? For a giddy moment, he thought of asking her to marry him then and there, but immediately he thought better of it. Marriages don’t last. He knew from experience. What they had right now felt like perfection — or close to it.

  But his pessimistic nature reasserted itself; the fear of losing everything rose up in him, followed by the conviction that he would wake up one day to find all his blessings destroyed and their love gone in a puff of smoke.

  “Vic?”

  “Sorry,” he said, shaking off his despondency.

  “How’s the investigation going?”

  Nadja knew all about the case. Or just about. In a few sentences, he brought her up to speed on the latest developments, describing his discussions with Berger and Adams.

  “Heretic’s fork, huh? Sounds interesting. I’ll look it up online.”

  “I’m not sure Adams is on the right track, though. For the device to work, the victims would have had to be suspended above the ground. But I just checked with forensics and Berger. That wasn’t the case.” He paused. “How about you? How’s it going?”

  “Tanguay’s on my ass.” She sighed. “Other than that, I’m okay.”

  Nadja was investigating a series of home invasions targeting upscale homes in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce. As always, Commander Tanguay wanted immediate results. He wasn’t giving the detectives at Station 11 time to do their jobs properly.

  “The guy’s an idiot,” Victor said, then added, laughing, “Mind you, considering the ass in question, I can hardly blame him.” He turned serious. “Still, you’re too talented to be stuck over there … Have you given any more thought to your talk with Delaney?”

  “I haven’t made up my mind yet.”

  They’d looked at the matter from every angle. Though the idea of joining the Major Crimes Unit excited the young detective, the sacrifices that came with the job made her hesitate. Nadja felt that her career had progressed to a stage where she had a certain level of comfort in her work. If she went to Major Crimes, she’d have to start fresh and prove her value all over again.

  Whenever the subject came up, Victor said he understood. But in his heart, he believed she was making excuses. In truth, he suspected that Nadja wanted to get pregnant. And the thought made his head spin.

  They talked for another couple of minutes.

  Before hanging up, she said she loved him.

  Victor went out for a smoke, then returned to his desk and went back to work. After a moment, he noticed that from the early 1980s onward, the notes in the file weren’t typed on carbon paper anymore. They were handwritten on simple sheets of lined paper.

  A few pages later, he found another gap in the timeline, this one between 1988 and 1995. Lortie had once again dropped off the radar for several years. The detective sergeant recorded the gap in his notebook and resumed his progress through the file.

  The infernal round of psychiatric treatments picked up again in late 1996 and continued until the early 2000s. Lortie’s hospitalizations varied in duration from a few days to several weeks:

  October 8, 1996

  Former patient of Dr. Thériault. Long history of bipolar disorder. Alcohol abuse. Agoraphobia. No psychiatric treatment since 1987. Was brought in by police. Psychotic delusions. Confused. Claims he knows important secrets about a conspiracy related to the 1995 referendum on Quebec independence. Says he has information concerning the victims of the mass shooting at the Polytechnique and the multiple murders committed by Valery Fabrikant. I have decided to put him on Divalproex and Seroquel.

  Dr. Marina Lacasse, psychiatrist

  October 12, 1996

  Patient still delusional. Frequent references to ethnic plots and money. I am increasing the Seroquel dosage.

  Victor shook his head in disbelief.

  The referendum. The Polytechnique shooting. The Fabrikant murders.

  The only thing missing was an alien mothership at Roswell. If Ted Rutherford had been present, he would have laughed and trotted out his favourite saying: “Go any lower, you’ll strike oil.”

  39

  INVOLUNTARY COMMITMENT

  Victor sighed and elbowed a pile of papers to one side. The painstaking exercise he was engaged in had ended up depressing him. He searched in his pocket, found the prescription bottle, popped an anti-anxiety pill into his mouth and washed it down, grimacing, with cold coffee. After crushing the disposable cup, he tossed it at the wastebasket and missed. Rather than get up to correct the stray shot, he plunged back into his reading. There were entries in the file for the period from 2001 to 2010, including an eight-week stay that had started last April:

  April 5, 2010

  Former patient of Dr. Lacasse. Set a fire in the garbage cans across the street from his building. Manic phase. Profoundly delusional. Highly intoxicated. Alcohol and other substances? Confirms that he has not taken his medication in several years. Divalproex and Topamax.

  Dr. Marco Giroux, psychiatrist

  After that, the only other entries concerned the present year, covering the period from June to November. His hospitalization had lasted six months, Lortie’s longest stay at Louis-H. since the early 1970s.

  June 12, 2010

  Severe breakdown. Suicidal thoughts. Brought in by police. Wanted to throw himself off an overpass onto the Décarie Expressway
. Psychosis. Manic phase. Convinced someone is trying to kill him. Hallucinations. He sees the ghosts of people he believes he killed. Claims he woke up in possession of bloodstained clothes and wallets. Episodes of terror. Recurrent delusions. I am seeking a court order. Involuntary commitment and isolation. Divalproex and Lamictal.

  Dr. Marco Giroux, psychiatrist

  June 27, 2010

  Not responding to treatment. Persistent hallucinations and suicidal thoughts. Dosage increased.

  Victor wrote a reference to the wallets in his notebook, but he didn’t learn much else, apart from the fact that the attending physician had sought a court order to keep Lortie in the hospital for an extended period — a request that the court had granted on the basis of Lortie’s suicidal thoughts and failure to respond to treatment. His medication had been adjusted numerous times by Dr. Giroux before a satisfactory dosage was found:

  November 12, 2010

  Patient’s condition has been stable for several weeks. Responding well to medication. Court order will soon run out. Patient wants to leave. Recommend transitional housing.

  Dr. Marco Giroux, psychiatrist

  Lortie had finally been released two weeks later. Looking through the file, Victor realized that Lortie had been kept against his will for a brief additional period because he had nowhere to go. In fact, as a result of his past episodes of misbehaviour, none of the regular community shelters would take him.

  They had considered him too hard to deal with, and feared that he’d upset the other residents. When the court order lapsed, the hospital had had no choice but to let him leave. Finally, with the help of the head nurse, Lortie got a space at the rooming house that Victor and his colleagues had searched.

  What had happened in the interval between his release and his death on December 17th?

  A shadow passed through Victor’s field of vision. He raised his eyes and nearly rubbed them to be sure he wasn’t seeing things. Jacinthe was standing in front of his workspace, looking almost friendly, holding out a Styrofoam cup.

  “My turn to make a peace offering.” She laughed. “It’s decaf.”

  The detective sergeant accepted the offering and took a sip. “We already buried the hatchet. But thanks.”

  “So?” she asked. “Have you found anything?”

  The two detectives briefly discussed Lortie’s psychiatric file. Victor went over the main points of what he’d read, but Jacinthe, moving toward the big Plexiglas board, wasn’t listening. Looking at the cardboard sheet bearing the four sentences that Mona Vézina had brought to their attention, Jacinthe shook her head and sighed loudly. “Gilles usually works magic when he searches the database. But this time, running those sentences through the system has turned up nothing.” Jacinthe looked at her partner. “Lortie was crazy. We need to stop trying to interpret what he wrote like it was holy fucking scripture.”

  Victor looked at the ceiling. “Where is Gilles, anyway?” he asked.

  “Don’t know. He left with Loïc, and he’s not answering his phone.” She shook her head, disgusted. “My ketchup uncle,” she muttered. “That shit won’t get us anywhere.”

  Jacinthe had just returned from a meeting with the legal expert at the Justice Ministry, a meeting that Victor had originally requested for himself, hoping to obtain information on Northern Industrial Textiles. Caught up in his examination of Lortie’s psychiatric file, he had asked his partner to fill in for him.

  “I know your friend over at Justice is a sweet person, but she’s totally useless. She doesn’t explain things in a normal way. She started out by saying there was nothing she could do if we didn’t have the date of … uhh” — she looked at the scrap of paper she’d taken notes on — “the date of incorporation or dissolution of the company. I mean, what the fuck?”

  “Jacinthe, don’t tell me you yelled at her,” Victor said, horrified.

  She made a gesture that was meant to be reassuring. “No, no. Let’s just say she and I had a constructive discussion. We’re not the Gestapo here, but at some point, you’ve gotta put your foot down!”

  Victor buried his face in his hands. When Jacinthe put her foot down, it was generally on someone’s throat.

  Questioning his partner in detail, Victor learned that the legal expert had indeed found an entry corresponding to Northern Industrial Textiles Ltd., a company incorporated on March 11th, 1959, and dissolved on December 17th, 1974, with a reference number.

  But in the information boxes reserved for the corporate address, names of board members and executives, nothing was written. Swamped with work and uncertain whether the entry she had found was the right company, the expert had opted to suspend her research until she received further instructions. She surely hadn’t anticipated having to answer to Taillon.

  “There must be a way to dig deeper,” Victor suggested.

  “That’s exactly what I said to her,” his partner bellowed.

  The detective sergeant hardly dared imagine what tone of voice she had said it in.

  From Jacinthe’s convoluted explanation, Victor understood that two options presented themselves: consult the archivists at the Central Enterprise Database, a sloth-like operation whose personnel didn’t even answer the telephone; or search directly in the collections of the Revised Statutes of Quebec, a task that might take hours of effort and would yield information only if the lawyer or accountant who’d been responsible for the publication of the statutes at the time had done their job properly.

  “So Little Miss Legal Eagle is going to figure out which option is fastest. She’ll get back to us when she finds something,” Jacinthe proclaimed triumphantly. “It’s a long shot, but you never know.”

  Preserving good relations with the staffers at Justice was crucial. It had been a mistake, Victor now realized, to send Taillon in his place. He would ask Gilles Lemaire to step in and handle the follow-up.

  Hearing voices in the corridor, he and Jacinthe both turned. The door opened, and Victor saw Lemaire come in. He was wearing a hard expression. Then Victor noticed that Lemaire’s suit and shirt were splattered with blood. Lemaire walked past without seeming to notice them.

  A few paces behind him, Loïc stopped chewing his gum long enough to bring Victor and Jacinthe up to speed. “We reached Bennett too late. He’s in a coma. He tried to kill himself …”

  OCTOBER 26TH, 1992

  MEECH LAKE AND CHARLOTTETOWN

  The game of musical chairs goes on. Only the players are different.

  On the federal side, Pierre Elliott Trudeau has been replaced by Brian Mulroney. Now that René is gone, Robert Bourassa represents Quebec.

  But the delusions … the delusions never change.

  The Meech Lake Accord, the Charlottetown Accord.

  In the end, we agree to disagree. The supporters of one side become the enemies of the other, a laughable masquerade pitting good guys against bad guys in a manner sadly reminiscent of All-Star Wrestling.

  Federalist conspiracies? Strike up the band, toss the confetti — I don’t believe a word of it!

  After the failure of the Meech Lake deal, Robert Bourassa declared, “English Canada must clearly understand that whatever people may say, whatever they may do, Quebec is and will always be a distinct society, with the freedom and capacity to determine its own fate and future development.”

  With these declarations, we try to convince ourselves that we have the ability to move forward.

  Someday, we’ll have to sweep away the past, stop talking, and act.

  That is what I aspire to do.

  MEMORY THIEVES

  40

  MY KETCHUP UNCLE LARRY TRUMAN RELISHES APPLES

  The sink’s blackened enamel resembled a decaying tooth. The stream of water bounced off it and ran down the drain. With reddened features, Gilles Lemaire didn’t flinch when Victor pushed open the washroom door and approached him.

  The little man broke the silence. “There was blood everywhere. Bennett slit his throat …” His gaze drifted e
mptily for a moment before returning to his hands, which, though immaculate, he couldn’t stop washing. “When I see someone do that in a movie, I think, What a cliché …”

  Victor touched his shoulder. “It’s a cliché until it actually happens. You should take the rest of the day off.”

  Jacinthe got up and turned the knob on the thermostat.

  If she’d been able to lower the temperature in the conference room below the freezing point, she’d have done it. Her family doctor had already warned her: these hot flashes were quite possibly a precursor to menopause. Which did nothing to improve her humour.

  Loïc explained to his fellow detectives that the doorman of Will Bennett’s building had advised them of Bennett’s presence in his apartment, as requested by Gilles Lemaire. The kid then summarized the intervention that he and the Gnome had carried out at the home of Judith Harper’s lover, and he noted that the forensics team was now going over the place. Blouin-Dubois also mentioned that among the man’s possessions, they had seen a wide variety of sex toys, including a rawhide collar.

  By now, the collar would have been delivered to Berger, who, after examining it, should be able to determine whether it had left the marks found on the necks of Harper and Lawson. The kid concluded by pointing out that Lemaire had saved Bennett’s life by maintaining a constant pressure on his throat until the ambulance attendants arrived.

  As soon as Loïc finished speaking, he resumed chewing.

  “He seemed pretty shaken up,” Taillon observed. “Did he go home?”

  Just then, the door opened, revealing the Gnome’s diminutive form. Despite his waxy complexion, he managed a smile. “You won’t get rid of me that easily, Jacinthe.”