Kathy Reichs - Monday Mourning

My own mind was a combat zone. Relief that Menard would hurt no one else. Anger that he’d escaped so easily. Pity for a life so grotesquely twisted. Anxiety for Anique Pomerleau.

Concern that we still did not have the answers.

This wasn’t Menard. Who was this guy? Where was Menard?

Fingers caressed my hair.

I looked up.

“You OK?”

I nodded, touched by the tenderness in Ryan’s expression. “Have you found Pomerleau?”

“House is empty.” Ryan’s voice was heavy as a coffin lid. “There are things here you might want to see.”

I followed him through a hallway, into a back room, and down a narrow stairway to a poorly lit cellar. The walls were brick and windowless, the floor cement. The air was damp and smelled of mold, dust, and dry rot.

Around me I could see the usual assortment of basement junk. A metal washtub. Garden implements. Stacks of cardboard boxes. An old sewing machine.

I heard voices, then a muffled expletive ahead and to my right.

Passing through an open door, Ryan led me into a second room. Though similar in construction to the outer basement, this one was smaller and brightly lit. Its walls and ceiling were covered with polyurethane panels.

Claudel and Charbonneau were standing by a counter that might once have served as a workbench. Both wore latex surgical gloves.

Hearing us enter, Charbonneau turned. His face looked like something in the claret family.

Ryan left to do another sweep of the basement.

“The little troll had himself a really special place down here.” Charbonneau swept a hand around the room. “Soundproofing and all.”

My eyes followed the arc of Charbonneau’s motion.

In one corner two sets of handcuffs dangled from a pair of rings imbedded in the ceiling. A crude table hugged the adjacent wall. I crossed to it, a cold numbness in my gut.

The table was sturdily built, of plywood and two-by-fours. Eye-hooks had been screwed into each corner, then a leather cuff attached to each hook. Four chains lay coiled beside the cuffs.

“This table isn’t old,” I said.

“Table?” Charbonneau’s voice trembled with anger. “It’s a goddamn rack!”

I walked to the workbench. Claudel looked at me, then shifted left, his face a shrink-wrapped mask of control.

The numbness made the rounds of my innards.

A bullwhip. A cat-o’-nine-tails. A riding crop. A hide-covered paddle. A noose with an enormous knot at midloop.

“All the tricks needed to show your slave who’s boss.” A vein throbbed in Charbonneau’s temple. I saw fury in his eyes.

“Calm-toi, Michel.” Claudel’s voice was a flat line.

“And this asshole was real creative.”

Charbonneau jabbed at a horse bit, a curling iron, a crudely made gag with a ball in the center.

“Check out his reading material.”

Charbonneau’s rage made him hyperactive. He snatched up a magazine, tossed it down. “Porn. Bondage. S and M.” He grabbed a videotape. The Story of O.

As the video hit the workbench, Ryan charged in, his jaw muscles tightened all the way to his sternum.

“I’ve found something.”

We moved as one, out the door, through the outer basement, around an ancient furnace, and into a chamber much like the one we’d just left.

Floor-to-ceiling shelves wrapped three sides of this room. A single bare bulb hung from its ceiling.

Ryan strode to the far wall. We followed. Behind the shelving I could see polyurethane similar to that lining the other room. The edge of one panel had been pried free.

“This wall isn’t brick. It’s plywood.”

Ryan ran his fingertips vertically along the newly exposed plywood, just beyond the shelving.

“There’s a discontinuity.”

Claudel removed one glove, mimicked Ryan’s move, then nodded.

Ryan pointed to the door through which we’d entered.

“Check out the lights.”

We all turned. One switch plate looked shiny and new, the other dingy and cracked.

“The older one works the overhead.”

He left the rest unsaid.

Claudel yanked off his remaining glove. Wordlessly, he and Ryan began ripping polyurethane.

Charbonneau hurried to the outer basement. I heard clattering and scraping, then he was back with a rusted crowbar.

Within minutes Ryan and Claudel had bared a six-inch swath. In it I could see a crack and two hinges. Through the crack, not a sliver of light.

Gauging door width, they attacked the other side of the shelving where two polyurethane panels met. Their efforts revealed another hairline fissure between sheets of plywood.

“Let me at it.” Charbonneau moved forward.

Ryan and Claudel stepped aside.

Charbonneau inserted the tip of the crowbar into the gap and levered.

A section of wall and shelving jigged forward.

Charbonneau slid the tip of the crowbar farther and heaved.

Plywood, batting, and shelving popped free.

Charbonneau grabbed a shelf and yanked. The false wall swung wide, revealing an opening approximately five by two feet.

The overhead bulb illuminated the first eighteen inches of the cavity behind the wall. Beyond that, the chamber was pitch-black.

Dashing to the door, I flicked the shiny switch, and spun.

My teeth clamped my lower lip as my throat clenched.

32

THE ROOM HAD BEGUN LIFE AS A FRUIT CELLAR OR STORAGE BIN. It was approximately eight by ten, and, like Menard’s little fun house, entirely soundproofed. The interior smelled of mold and old earth overlain by chemicals and something organic.

The furnishings were grimly stark. A naked bulb on a frayed wire. A portable camp toilet. A crudely built wooden platform. Two tattered blankets.

On the platform sat a pair of women, heads down, backs rounded against the polyurethane paneling. Each wore a studded leather collar. Nothing else.

The women’s skin looked bitter white, the shadows defining their ribs and vertebrae dark and sinuous. A long braid snaked from the nape of each neck.

Charbonneau let forth a curse charged with the full lexicon of anger and abhorrence.

One face snapped up. Haggard. Eyes like those of some wild creature startled in the night.

Anique Pomerleau.

Her companion remained motionless, head down, bony arms clutching her bony knees.

Claudel spun and disappeared into the outer basement. I heard boots cross cement then thunder up stairs.

“It’s all right, Anique,” I said, as gently as I knew how.

Pomerleau’s eyes flinched. The other woman hugged her legs harder to her chest.

“We’re here to help you.”

Pomerleau’s gaze darted between Ryan and Charbonneau.

Motioning the men back, I stepped into the chamber.

“These men are detectives.”

Pomerleau watched me, eyes wide black pools.

“It’s over now, Anique. It’s all over.”

Moving slowly, I crossed to the platform and laid a hand on Pomerleau’s shoulder. She recoiled from my touch.

“He can’t hurt you anymore, Anique.”

“Je m’appelle ‘Q.’” Pomerleau’s voice was flat and lifeless.

Removing my parka, I draped Pomerleau’s shoulders. She made no attempt to hold the garment in place.

“I’m ‘Q.’ She’s ‘D.’” Accented English. Pomerleau was Francophone.

Ryan shrugged off his jacket and handed it to me.

I took a cautious step toward “D,” gently touched her hair.

The woman tucked tighter and curled her hands into fists.

Enveloping “D” in Ryan’s jacket, I squatted to her level.

“He’s dead,” I said in French. “He can never harm you again.”

The woman rolled her head from side to side, not wanting to see me, not wanting to hear me.

I didn’t press. There would be time to talk.