Monday Mourning

Shoving back from my desk, I hurried across the hall and unlocked the conference room. The tapes lay where Ryan and I had left them the previous afternoon. I hit PLAY and watched scene after scene of hooded young women with goth-white bodies.

By repeatedly rewinding and replaying in slow motion, I was able to distinguish what I thought were three victims. One woman had larger breasts. One had a mole to the left of her navel. One appeared taller in relation to background objects.

The setting never varied, though props came and went.

I was repulsed and sickened. These girls should have been worrying about algebra, falling in love, picking out china. Not hanging by their wrists in a stench-filled basement. This was Canada, not sixteenth-century Transylvania.

Rarely had I felt such overpowering anger.

Be objective, Brennan. Look for associations. Trends.

I began again with the tape marked “1.

The women appeared in sequence. The taller of the three could be seen only on the first half of the first tape. The larger-breasted woman showed up in later scenes on that tape, and continued into the tape marked “2.” By tape “3” the larger-breasted woman had been replaced by the woman with the mole.

No scene included audio.

Each scene started and ended abruptly.

Some scenes were smooth, recorded with the camera in a fixed position.

Suddenly it hit me."

"Was Catts ever in the frame when the footage was jumpy? If so, who was filming?

I’d been viewing tapes for almost three hours when I spotted the scene I was looking for.

The camera cut on and swept the room with a bobbing motion.

A girl lay stretched on Catts’s table, wrists and ankles bound by leather restraints. Behind her someone had placed a mirror, rectangular, approximately twelve by twenty-four inches.

Catts was in the frame, back to the lens.

My scalp tingled.

Rocketing to my feet, I hit REWIND, then PLAY.

As the lens crossed a point in its arc, I could see a murky figure reflected in the glass.

Menard?

Reversing again, I inched the tape forward in slo-mo, froze the frame.

My hopes plummeted.

“Shit!”

Though grainy and partially eclipsed, the mirror image of the face squinting into the viewfinder across the room was recognizable.

Anique Pomerleau.