PURRING THE INVESTIGATION TURNED OUT TO BE HARDER THAN I thought. Partly because of me.

By five-thirty on Friday afternoon my head and my stomach ached from the endless cups of machine coffee. We’d been discussing the files for hours. No one had turned up much, so we kept rehashing the same things over and over, sifting through the mountains of information, desperately searching for something new. There was little.

Bertrand was working the realtor angle. Morisette-Champoux and Adkins had listed their condos with ReMax. So had Gagnon’s neighbor. Huge firm, three different offices, three separate agents. None of them remembered the victims, or even the properties. Trottier’s father had used Royal Lepage.

Pitre’s former boyfriend was a doper who’d killed a prostitute in Winnipeg. Could be a break. Could be nothing. Claudel was on that.

The questioning of known sex offenders was continuing, coming up empty. Big surprise.

Teams of uniformed officers were canvassing the neighborhoods around the Adkins and Morisette-Champoux condos. Zero.

We had nowhere to turn so we were turning on one another. The mood was gloomy and patience was in short supply, so I bided my time, waiting for the right opening. They listened politely as I told them about the situation with Gabby, about the night in the car. I described the drawing, my conversation with J.S., and my surveillance of Julie.

When I finished, no one spoke. Seven women watched mutely from portable bulletin boards. Claudel’s pen wove complex webs and grids. He’d been silent and withdrawn all afternoon, as if disconnected from the rest of us. My account made him even more sullen. The sound of the large electric clock began to dominate the room.

Buzzzz.

“And you have no idea if this is the same sack of shit we chased from Berger?” Bertrand.

I shook my head.

Buzzzz.

“I say we bust the cocksucker.” Ketterling.

“For what?” Ryan.

Buzzzz.

“We could just be there for him, see how he deals with pressure.” Charbonneau.

“If he is our boy that might spook him. The last thing we want is for him to panic and blow town.” Rousseau.

“No. The last thing we want is for him to shove a plastic Jesus up someone else’s sweet spot.” Bertrand.

“The guy’s probably just a wienie wagger.”

“Or he could be Bundy with an underwear twist.”

Buzzzz.

Round and round it went like that, zigging and zagging from French to English. Eventually, everyone was drawing Claudel lines.

Buzzzz.

Then.

“How unreliable is this Gabby?” Charbonneau.

I hesitated. Somehow daylight colored things differently. I’d sent these men on a chase before, and we still didn’t know if it had been for wild geese.

Claudel looked up at me, eyes reptilian cold, and I felt the tightening in my stomach. This man despised me, wanted to destroy me. What was he doing behind my back? How far had his complaint gone? What if I was wrong?

And then I did something I would forever be unable to change. Deep down maybe I didn’t think anything bad would really happen to Gabby. She’d always landed on her feet before. Maybe I just took the safe path. Who knows? I did not elevate concern for my friend’s safety to the level of urgency. I backed off.

“She has taken off before.”

Buzzzz.

Buzzzz.

Buzzzz.

Ryan was the first to respond.

“Like this? Without a word?”

I nodded.

Buzzzz.

Buzzzz.

Buzzzz.

Ryan’s expression was grim. “All right. Let’s get a name, run a check. But we’ll keep it low profile for now. Without something else, we couldn’t get a warrant anyway.” He turned to Charbonneau. “Michel?”

Charbonneau nodded. We discussed a few other points, gathered our things, and broke.

In the many times I’d look back on that meeting, I’d always wonder if I could have altered later events. Why had I not sounded the cry over Gabby? Had the sight of Claudel dampened my resolve? Had I sacrificed the previous evening’s zeal on the altar of professional caution? Had I compromised Gabby’s survival rather than risk my professional standing? Would an all-out search begun that day have made any difference?

That night I went home and warmed a TV dinner. Swiss steak, I think. When the microwave beeped I removed the tray and peeled back the foil.

I stood there a moment, watching synthetic gravy congeal on synthetic mashed potatoes, feeling loneliness and frustration tune up for the overture. I could eat this and spend another night fighting back demons, with the cat and the sitcoms, or I could be the conductor of the evening’s performance.

“Fuck this. Maestro...?”

I threw the dinner into the trash and walked to Chez Katsura on Rue de la Montagne, where I treated myself to sushi and exchanged small talk with a card salesman from Sudbury. Then, declining his invitations, I moved on and caught the late showing of The Lion King at Le Faubourg.

It was ten-forty when I left the theater and took the escalator to the main level. The tiny mall was largely deserted, the vendors gone, their wares stowed and sealed in carts. I passed the bagel bakery, the frozen yogurt stand, the Japanese carry-out, their shelves and counters stripped and barricaded behind collapsible security gates. Knives and saws hung in neat rows behind the butcher’s empty cases.

The movie had been just what I needed. Singing hyenas, pounding African rhythms, and lion cub romance kept me from thinking of the murders for hours.

Well orchestrated, Brennan. Hakuna Matata.

I crossed Ste. Catherine and walked toward home. It was still hot and very humid. Mist haloed the streetlamps and hovered over the pavement, like steam from a hot tub on a cold winter night.

I saw the envelope as soon as I left the lobby and turned down my hall. It was wedged between the brass knob and the doorjamb. My first thought was Winston. Perhaps he needed to fix something and would be turning off the power or the water. No. He’d post a notice. A complaint about Birdie? A note from Gabby?

It wasn’t. In fact, it wasn’t a note at all. The envelope held two items, which lay on the table now, silent and terrible. I stared at them, heart pounding, hands trembling, knowing, yet refusing to admit their meaning.

The envelope contained a plastic ID. Gabby’s name, date of birth, and numéro d’assurance maladie appeared in raised white letters below a red sunset on the left-hand side of the card. Her image was at the upper right, dreadlocks winging, something silver dangling from each ear.

The other item was a two-inch square cut from a large-scale city map. The map was in French, and showed streets and green spaces in an agonizingly familiar color code. I looked for landmarks or names that would help me pinpoint the neighborhood. Rue Ste. Hélène. Rue Beauchamp. Rue Champlain. I didn’t know those streets. Could be Montreal, could be a score of other cities. I hadn’t lived in Quebec long enough to know. The map contained no highways or features I could identify. Except one. A large black X covered the center of the map.

I stared numbly at the X. Terrible images formed in my mind but I fought them off, denying the one acceptable conclusion. It was a bluff. It was like the skull in the garden. This maniac was toying with me. Seeing how frightened he could make me.

I don’t know how long I looked at Gabby’s face, remembering it in other places, other times. A happy face in a clown hat at Katy’s third birthday party. A face bathed in tears as she told me of her brother’s suicide.

The house was silent around me, the universe at a standstill. Then horrible certainty overtook me.

It wasn’t a bluff. Dear God, dear God, dear Gabby. I’m so very, terribly sorry.

Ryan picked up on the third ring.

“He’s got Gabby,” I whispered, knuckles white on the receiver, voice steady by sheer strength of will.

He wasn’t fooled.

“Who?” he asked, sensing the underlying terror and going straight to the crux.

“I don’t know.”

“Where are they?”

“I—I don’t know.”

I heard the sound of a hand passing over a face.

“What do you have?”

He heard me out without interrupting.

“Shit.”

Pause.

“Okay. I’ll take the map in so ident can pinpoint the location, then we’ll get a team out there.”

“I can take the map in,” I said.

“I think you should stay there. And I want a surveillance unit back on your building.”

“I’m not the one in danger,” I snapped. “This bastard’s got Gabby! He’s probably killed her already!”

My mask was crumbling. I fought to control the trembling in my hands.

“Brennan, I feel sick about your friend. I would help her in any way I could. Believe that. But you have to use your head. If this psychopath only got her purse but not her, she’s probably okay, wherever she is. If he has her and has shown us where to find her, he will have left her in whatever state he wants her found. We can’t change that. Meanwhile, someone put a note on your door, Brennan. The sonofabitch was in your building. He knows your car. If this guy is the killer, he won’t hesitate to add you to his list. Respect for life is not among his personality traits, and he seems to have focused on yours right now.”

He had a point.

“And I’ll get somebody on the guy you followed.”

I spoke slowly and softly. “I want ident to call me as soon as they pull up the location.”

“Bren—”

“Is that a problem?” Not so softly.

It was irrational and I knew it, but Ryan was sensitive to my growing hysteria, or was it rage? Maybe he just didn’t want to deal with me.

“No.”

Ryan got the envelope around midnight, and the ident unit called an hour later. They lifted one print from the card. Mine. The X marked an abandoned lot in St. Lambert. An hour later I got a second call from Ryan. A patrol unit had checked the lot and all surrounding buildings. Nothing. Ryan had arranged for recovery in the morning. Including dogs. We were going back to the south shore.

“What time tomorrow?” I said, my voice shaking, my grief for Gabby already too dreadful to bear.

“I’ll set it up for seven.”

“Six.”

“Six. Want a ride?”

“Thanks.”

He hesitated. “She may be fine.”

“Yeah.”

I went through the normal bedtime motions, though I knew I wouldn’t sleep. Teeth. Face. Hand lotion. Nightshirt. Then I wandered from room to room, trying not to think about the women on the bulletin boards. Murder scene photos. Autopsy descriptions. Gabby.

I adjusted a picture, repositioned a vase, picked fluff from the carpet. I felt cold, made myself a cup of tea, and turned down the air-conditioning. Minutes later, I shot it back up. Birdie withdrew to the bedroom, fed up with the pointless movement, but I couldn’t stop myself. The feeling of helplessness in the face of impending horror was unbearable.

Around two, I stretched out on the couch, closed my eyes, and tried to will myself to relax. Concentrate on night sounds. AC compressor. Ambulance. Trickle of taps on the floor above. Water flowing through a pipe. Wood creaking. Walls settling.

My mind drifted to a visual mode. Images floated past, spinning and tumbling like parts of a Hollywood dream sequence. I saw Chantale Trottier’s plaid jumper. Morisette-Champoux’s gutted belly. The putrefied head that was Isabelle Gagnon. A severed hand. A mangled breast cupped in bone-white lips. A lifeless monkey. A statue. A plunger. A knife.

I couldn’t help myself. I produced a cinema of death, tortured by the thought that Gabby had joined the cast. Darkness was fading into light when I got up to dress.