Monday Mourning

“Pomerleau was tortured, tried to please Catts, maybe suggested another victim.”

“Or maybe new meat was Catts’s idea. Maybe he got greedy and decided to expand his collection,” Charbonneau picked up. “Pomerleau saw the newcomer as a step up the food chain: by abusing McGee she pleased Catts. Eventually she started getting her own rocks off.”

“The controlled became the controller,” I said. “Or Pomerleau and Catts just melded.”

Like Homolka and Bernardo, I thought.

“Catts took at least two more captives between Pomerleau and McGee,” I reminded.

“We will find out who these girls were.” Claudel’s jaw muscles bunched, relaxed. “You can take that to the bank.”

“I’ve got a question, Doc.” Charbonneau again leaned onto the table. “Angie Robinson was Catts’s earliest capture. Why were hers the only bones with that grave wax stuff?”

I’d posed that question to myself.

“The tannic acid in leather acts as a preservative, altering the rate of decomposition.

“That’s our thinking.” Charbonneau cocked his chin at Claudel. “We figure the kid died in Vermont, Catts buried her there, later went back for her corpse. But we’ve been busting our brains trying to figure out why he’d bother. Your ear thing may be the missing piece.”

“Catts went back for the ear, but ended up bringing the whole body to Montreal? Why?”

“Maybe he felt safer having her right underfoot.

“But Cyr gave Catts the boot in ninety-eight. If he’d already dug up and moved Angie Robinson once, why leave her and two others behind in that building?”

Charbonneau shrugged. “Catts’s had been skating since he grabbed Robinson in eighty-five. Maybe he’d come to feel invincible. Besides, where else could he bury bodies? He couldn’t dig graves in the Corneaus’ front yard.”

“And the cellar was otherwise committed,” I said bitterly.

There was a moment of silence as we thought about that.

“Who do you suppose Louise Parent saw?”

“Perhaps Pomerleau. Perhaps one of the others. Catts may have kept girls under the pawnshop while preparing his little welcome wagon over in the Point,” Charbonneau said.

“Pomerleau admitted that she’d killed Parent,” I said.

“No doubt she was in it up to her eyeballs. SIJ found Rose Fisher’s address in the de Sébastopol basement. But the Parent murder may have gone down at Catts’s instigation.