Spectacle(12)

He took a drag of his cigarette and finally glanced up, smiling politely. “Ah, what do the bodies tell us today? That murder victim would shout it from a Notre-Dame tower if she could, I’m sure.”

If you only knew. Nathalie laughed uneasily and handed him the draft. As his eyes scurried across the text, she watched him for a reaction. His practiced passivity divulged nothing.

“This is good,” M. Patenaude said, taking another puff of his cigarette. His fingers were stained with tobacco and ink. “Except for one thing. Sit.”

He laid the article on his desk and smoothed it out.

“Yes?” She took a seat opposite and sat on her hands. Had she made a mistake? Written something poorly? She was shaken up when she wrote it, so it was possible that she—

“You mention the terror she suffered,” he said, interrupting her thoughts. His voice was even. “‘Her youthful features, sliced into horrible distortion, betrayed no sign of the terror she suffered before her untimely death.’”

“Indeed.”

“You don’t know that for certain,” he said. He took one quick drag of the cigarette and extinguished it, spending a bit more time crushing it than Nathalie thought necessary. “Do you?”

“I—” Nathalie stopped. She did know that for certain, if what she had seen was real. The girl’s cries still echoed in her memory. “I assume she did.”

“No doubt,” he said, gazing at her. Through her.

A fly landed on her arm. She flicked it off and stood up, breaking eye contact. “What does this have to do with the article?”

M. Patenaude rose from his chair, still staring. “No doubt.” He blinked as if just waking up, then gave her a friendly wink. “Add those two words to the article. Unless you were present for the autopsy or committed the murder yourself, you can’t know if she suffered in terror. He could have poisoned her. Put her to sleep and cut her later.”

“Explain my assumption. That’s all?” Nathalie said, annoyed. The newspaper was well-known for exaggeration, yet he’d made her nervous for nothing. For two words.

“That’s all.” He handed back the article. “Make the note, then give it to Arianne.”

Arianne, about a decade older than Nathalie, was the only other woman who worked at the paper. Among other clerical tasks, she collected articles and arranged them for the compositors.

“Merci.” She stood up straighter. Being the morgue reporter was a privilege. Before Nathalie started the job, Maman had warned her not to be too proud. Nevertheless, it was hard not to feel, well, special. And proud.

“I heard the queue was especially long—Kirouac!” M. Patenaude looked over her shoulder into the newsroom. “You’ve been talking to Theriot for a quarter of an hour. Do you think your chair even remembers who you are?” He turned to Nathalie again. “I swear, ever since I’ve promoted him he’s become ten times more sociable. Anyway, this victim will get plenty of attention, and so will the other one they pulled out of the river today.” He dropped his voice. “We don’t know for sure yet, but it looks like a second victim.”

“I knew it!”

“What?”

“I mean, I—I had a feeling.” She blushed, sorry she’d spoken up. She couldn’t very well tell him about the interrogation with M. Gagnon. “Just over an hour ago I saw a lot of activity near the door where they bring in the bodies and … I don’t know. Something made me think it could be another body.”

He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “Excellent journalistic instinct! I knew that curiosity would pay off when I hired you.”

She thanked him and smiled graciously.

“Between the autopsy and time required for it to chill adequately, the corpse won’t go out until tomorrow, I’m sure. Did you know the morgue often keeps murder victims on display longer than the rest? Sometimes they’ll even hold off on announcing an identification if the mobs are big enough.” He adjusted his glasses again. “The more dramatic the corpse, the greater the attraction, the longer they keep them on the slabs.”

“Don’t they start to…?” She finished the thought silently.

A smirk rolled across M. Patenaude’s lips. He paused, seemingly lost in thought. “No one in Europe relishes the morgue like Paris, flocking to see the daily dead.”

Something nipped at the edges of Nathalie’s mind. A vague, unformed discomfort. For two weeks she’d been meeting with M. Patenaude. Today was different. He was different.

She thanked him, excused herself, and left. As she descended the stairs, Nathalie thought about their conversation and realized what it was that bothered her.

It was that stare when he discussed the girl’s terror.

And the smirk when he discussed the morgue.



* * *



Despite what M. Patenaude said, she had to return to the morgue. She couldn’t simply go home without checking. Maybe he was wrong and the body would be out. Maybe they’d put it out so the public could see, then chill it overnight.

If the victim’s body was out, would she touch the viewing pane again?

She hadn’t decided yet.

Although the crowd outside the morgue was much smaller than it had been hours before, the wait was longer. That’s what the nervous energy traveling through Nathalie’s body insisted, unless it was lying. Which it might have been, because what could she trust in herself right now? Already everything that had happened this morning seemed remote and unreal, more dream than experience. Nathalie put her hands in her trouser pockets and clutched her vial of catacomb dirt.