Roxanne Bouchard - The Coral Bride

‘I should have told you, there’s no electricity at the cabin,’ Kimo said.

She had made some more cocktails while he sealed all the perishables in plastic bags and put them in the river to stay cool. She had pulled out the fly-fishing rods and shown him the ropes, but the alcohol soon went to their heads. Well, to his, at least. He had to admit, he hadn’t slept much the night before. He was exhausted from the jogging and the flood of emotions that morning, and he hadn’t eaten a thing all day.

Then, they had put the fishing rods away and she had demanded sex before supper. That much he remembered. She had even barked something assertive and slightly vulgar that had both caught him off guard and turned him on. She had made him strip off from the waist down, sat him on a little wooden chair in the kitchen and straddled him with nothing in the way of foreplay, simply helping herself to what she wanted. She had made them both come.

Only then did she light a fire in the woodstove. He had gone to fetch the food bags from the river and rustled up a bite to eat while she poured the wine. That had opened the door for their first real conversation. Sébastien felt a lump in his throat. What had they said to each other? They had talked about submissiveness. Who had broached the topic?

‘I always end up with dominant men.’

‘I think I’m more submissive with women.’

She had been chopping the vegetables while he seasoned the meat.

‘Not with me, you’re not.’

‘Oh come on. You’ve just played the dominatrix.’

‘Because you asked me to.’

‘I never asked for that…’

‘Yes, you did. You said you were fantasising about a kinky dominatrix having her wicked way with you in a cabin deep in the woods…’

‘I was only joking.’

‘You had this defiant, sarcastic look on your face and I don’t know … I didn’t feel I had to, but I suppose I’m so eager to please that I always end up taking that kind of thing as a challenge. Sometimes I think I picked that up from all my sports training. When my coach used to say things like “prove to me you’ve got what it takes”, I always felt I had to live up to the expectation…’

‘Stop it, Kimo. I’ve always been a submissive man.’ He had thrown the words in her face, adamant he was going to assert himself for once.

‘You’re deluding yourself, Sébastien. When I danced with you, you twirled me around like a puppet. And you’re the one who calls the shots in bed too.’

Suddenly, he felt a surge of anxiety. He took a deep breath and walked towards the bedroom door.

‘Sûreté du Québec, Gaspé police station.’

Thérèse Roch wasn’t the type to sugar-coat the simple answering of a telephone with cheery hellos and cursory how-are-yous. She had done a diploma in office administration, got her first aid and CPR certificate, taken fencing and self-defence lessons and completed a firearms safety course, but the powers that be had stuck her on the reception desk. She could be helping the detectives with real investigations. She would be a far better field officer than Constable Lefebvre and could make a real difference in law enforcement, but she was confined to a chair behind a bulletproof screen. Why? Male chauvinism, most likely. Didn’t they know it was illegal to discriminate against lesbians? She had filed an anonymous complaint, but no one had followed up on it. She’d have to write to the government about it. She’d been thinking about doing that for the last four years. One day she was going to report them all.

‘Ms Roch, it’s Detective Sergeant Joaquin Moralès.’

She wrote his name in big capital letters on her notepad. He was going to be one of the first she’d report.

‘Your friend, Dotrice Percy, has some important information about the murder of Angel Roberts. Now that I’ve finished interviewing the immediate family, I’d like to meet this key witness.’

Thérèse Roch was quick to object. ‘She came to see you at the hospital, but you sent her packing. Given how rude you were, she might not be inclined to talk to you anymore.’

‘First of all, I had just woken up with a concussion and I was heavily medicated.’

Thérèse Roch was reluctant to believe him.

‘Second, I would never have taken such an important statement in a public place. You’ve worked in law enforcement for long enough to know that if the identity of a key witness in a murder case were to be publicly known, it may put that person’s own life in danger.’

Thérèse Roch drew a question mark besides Moralès’s name. She hadn’t considered that might be a concern.

‘It was risky for her to even come to the hospital. You do know a police officer should never, ever put the life of a civilian in danger, don’t you?’

‘Yes.’ She admitted it with a sigh, embarrassed that this hadn’t occurred to her earlier.

‘Finally, she will tell you herself that it wasn’t me who strong-armed her out the door, because I was on my back in a hospital bed attached to an IV line.’

That was true, Thérèse had to admit. Dotrice had said it was a young man, perhaps a security guard, who had arrived at the same time as the nurse.

‘I’ll get straight to the point, Ms Roch. I need to know where I can find Dotrice Percy right now so I can take her statement.’

Thérèse Roch was more than just a receptionist stuck on the front desk. She had her CPR certificate, her firearms safety course and her self-defence training, and she had taken fencing lessons. The powers that be had entrusted her with this position because she could be counted on to act in the interests of public safety and relay confidential information between sergeants who respected her. She tore the top sheet off her notepad and raised her voice to cover the sound of the paper shredder as she gave the detective her home address.

Moralès hesitated for a moment when he got out of the car. As he walked up the steps to the front porch, he noticed his ribs were still aching and wondered if it was a wise idea to have come here alone. He thought about what Lefebvre had told him about slipping his handcuffs countless times onto consenting wrists, and shook his head with a smile as he rang the doorbell. Even in handcuffs, Dotrice Percy would be a dangerous woman. Plus, she’d probably refuse to talk to him.

She opened the door. Her shock of hair was held back by a bright-purple headband paired with a lilac, skin-tight bodysuit, over which she had slipped what looked like a yellow one-piece swimsuit and a neon orange belt. She wore a pair of leg warmers in just as loud a shade of orange, which were rumpled around her ankles and the tops of her high-heeled shoes. In spite of the gravity of the case and the seriousness of the situation, Moralès couldn’t help but think that Lefebvre would be cracking a joke that the seer must have really wanted to make sure she was seen.

‘Thérèse said you were on your way. Better late than never. What do you want?’

Thrown off by her clipped tone and the acute observation – he really should have made time to see her before now – Moralès was momentarily lost for words. He could hear the sound of a television coming from inside the house, the voice of a fitness trainer barking instructions for some sort of home workout. He hurriedly strung his question together.

‘The other day, at the hospital, you said that on the night Angel Roberts died, you had seen—’

She cut him off, impatient for him to finish the question. ‘A naked monster, with a transparent appendage and a shrivelled phallus. What’s it to you?’