Newcomers acquired it quickly through osmosis.
If life was difficult, as it was for even the strongest, fleetest and most attractive, then for Paul Boisvert it was a nightmare.
On some obscure twig of some long-forgotten branch of his ancestral tree, a gene had gone awry; recessive for generations, but ever-present. It lurked, lying in wait for the opportune moment to pounce, needing only to mate with a comparable genetic misprint to initiate an ambush of the innocent. Or, as a family friend reputed to possess powerful psychic abilities claimed, maybe it was only because his mother had eaten chokecherries the day she conceived him!
Errant genes or chokecherry consumption, Paul Boisvert had been born with a face which looked as though someone had taken forceps and yanked his nose so violently forward it hadn’t been able to snap back, but remained frozen there; a large and pointed beak, spliced onto his face.
Paul had no idea there was anything different or odd about him until, at the age of four, a group of young children, all speaking English, passed him and his mother on the street. One of the children turned suddenly and pointed to Paul, shrieking in badly accented French, “La petite poule, la petite poule.” It was a name he had to endure, usually accompanied by loud clucking noises and the flapping of elbows, well into adolescence. It ended only after he was rescued by a sympathetic Montreal cop from a frightful beating at the hands of a gang of English speaking ruffians. It was the cop who introduced him to the St. Hubert Boxing Club.
Paul’s small size was more than compensated for by a deep seated rage, which within a few weeks had so frightened most of the young fighters at the club, that only a few, more experienced and stronger than he, dared enter the ring with him. Within a year he had won the Montreal championship in his weight class and had offers to turn professional. The little chicken had become a fighting cock!
All but the most foolhardy of St. Leonard’s dwindling English-speaking population now gave him a wide birth. Any who dared offer a challenge were savagely beaten.
Paul’s technique was to poke and jab, bruise and cut. In and out like lightning. To the eye, the nose, the cheek, the ear. Hardly ever to the body. “Makes them quit too soon,” he sometimes explained to the crowds that gathered to watch and applaud English defeat. “There’s nothing I enjoy more than blood on an English face.”
He was tempted to turn professional but could see no real future in it.
One of the few acts of kindness he had experienced from a stranger was his rescue by a Montreal cop in that alley off Jean Talon Street, so the day after he graduated from high school, he applied to join Quebec’s Provincial Police force. Having no inkling of the rage, which boiled just beneath the surface, they accepted him.
6:13 AM • DAY ONE
At first light, Charron’s men cordoned off the areas immediately surrounding the “chateau” and the scene of the early morning gunfire. Charron removed the dog’s corpse from the gate as Boisvert watched silently. Grant had been instructed to remain inside the house on the pretext of assisting in the search for clues there. Jake offered to join in the inch-by-inch search of the knoll from where the rifle had been fired, but was coolly rebuffed by both Charron and Boisvert. All he could do was watch, curious that Boisvert seemed intent on searching the ground around where Grant’s car had been parked, despite the fact the rain had obliterated even the tire marks.
Their first success was discovering the spent rifle bullet buried in a dead elm tree, at least five metres from where Jake had spilled from his car.
Boisvert was visibly puzzled by the discovery. He motioned to Jake. “Constable Barr,” he said, “would you come here? I need some help with this.” Jake ambled over to the detective. “Yes, yes, that’s fine,” said Boisvert, giving Jake a strange look. “Now then, would you please show us exactly where you were this morning when the shots were fired? If you don’t mind please re-enact for us everything you did. Make sure you are exactly where you were this morning when all this happened.” When Jake complied he repeated, “You’re absolutely sure, Mr. Barr, this is where you were lying when the shot was fired?”
Jake had little difficulty in pinpointing the spot some two-car lengths from the now shattered gate. Finally satisfied, Boisvert and Charron walked to the base of the tree struck by the bullet and conversed briefly with each other in French. Both nodded several times in apparent agreement.
It was Charron who now approached Jake. Boisvert, his hands plunged deeply into his pockets, was a half step behind, listening intently.
“Mr. Barr, how long was it, would you say, from the time the shot was fired until you heard Mr. Henry shouting? Are you absolutely sure the shouting came from the house?”
A bolt of alarm raced up Jake’s spine.
“Now wait a minute, what the hell are you guys getting at? I heard Grant shouting only a few seconds after the shot was fired and there’s absolutely no question he was inside the house or certainly very close to it when he yelled at me. And, as you can plainly see, that house is a hell of a long way from where that shot was fired. Geez Murphy, what are you thinking? Grant’s dog has been killed, his daughter, whom I assure you he loves deeply, has been abducted, their housekeeper, who’s a very good friend, is missing, and you’re standing there, hinting all over the place that maybe he had something to do with it! Kidnapping his own daughter! Killing his own dog! Is that really what you guys are thinking? Come on. Get serious!”
Charron paused for a moment, collecting his thoughts, glancing briefly at Boisvert. “Oui, oui,” he muttered to himself in French, then said in English. “You are probably right, but then again some things puzzle us. You are police, you put some pieces together for us.” He stopped, waiting for a response, then continued when there was none. “Okay, first off, by the time you heard that car pull away, we had already been alerted and were setting up road blocks. We figure the one at Ste Rose de Peche went up no more than twenty minutes after the shots were fired and probably only about fifteen minutes after you heard the car drive away. Speeding like a crazy man, you could clear Ste Rose in less time than that, but ten minutes later we had another roadblock at Domville. That’s a good forty-five kilometres to the north of Ste Rose. The kidnapper’s car couldn’t possibly have made it that far in that time.
“That’s to the north. To the south, we had a roadblock up at the Meech Road intersection long before any car could have made it from here according to your timetable. There’s only one road, as you know, up through these hills, which means they’re either still in this area or a helicopter popped down and lifted them out. That’s possible I suppose, but dangerous as hell in these mountains in the dark. The other thing is, we’ve checked, and Air Traffic Control, both at Macdonald Cartier International in Ottawa and the local airport at Gatineau report nothing. The Macdonald Cartier radar definitely would have spotted a helicopter.”
“They could have parked a car on this side of a roadblock,” said Jake, “walked around it through the hills, then been picked up by another car on the other side. Hell, they could be holed up someplace right around here.”
It was Boisvert who responded. “Yes they could have stayed in this area, although it’s not likely, but as for walking around the roadblocks, where’s the car? Our men have checked every side road and every field large enough to park a car within walking distance of the roadblocks and have found nothing, but even so, if that’s all that was puzzling about this we wouldn’t be as concerned. The fact is, there are a few other things hard to explain. The hair in Mr. Henry’s car. That means someone...excuse me...whoever kidnapped the daughter must have hung around waiting until the father arrived...knowing he would abandon his car and run to the house!” The little detective shot both eyebrows skyward, dangerously close to his hairline. “And...you really have to ask yourself, why would anyone leave a car and run a good half kilometre instead of drive? And how could the kidnappers have possibly known he was going to do that? Getting back to your friend’s little jog down the laneway, you must have asked yourself why he would leave his car here at the gate and run all the way to the house, keeping in mind, of course, he was in a great hurry.”