Monday Mourning

When it suited him, he took her out, hung her from pipes, stretched her on a rack, whipped her, shocked her with electrical wires, starved, raped, and terrorized her.”

Claudel picked a cat hair from his sleeve.

“Hooker’s wife ultimately set Stan free. Hooker was arrested in November 1984. The following fall he was convicted of kidnap, rape, sodomy, and a number of other charges. Media coverage turned into blood sport.”

“What is the relevance of this?” Claudel sighed.

“Colleen Stan’s ordeal took place in Red Bluff, California.

“Stephen Menard was a grad student in Chico in 1985,” Charbonneau said, reaching for his second doughnut.

I nodded.

Birdie sidled to the couch, arched, then brushed Claudel’s leg. Going bipedal, he placed both forepaws on Claudel’s knee.

Again apologizing, I scooped the cat up and secured him in my bedroom.

“But the mutt here in Montreal isn’t Menard,” Charbonneau said when I returned.

“I’m using the name for convenience.”

“So where’s the real Menard?”

“I don’t know.

“Go on,” Ryan urged.

“The Stan case was all over the news from the fall of eighty-four through the fall of eighty-five. The press loved it, called it the Girl in the Box Case. Then the Sex Slave Case.”

Claudel looked at his watch.

“In 1985 a fourteen-year-old girl named Angie Robinson disappeared from Corning, California. Corning is located between Chico and Red Bluff.

Charbonneau’s doughnut stopped in its trajectory to his mouth. “The kid in the leather shroud?”

“Yes.”

“The one with the broken wrist,” Claudel jumped in. “You were certain the ages are incompatible.”

“I said Angie Robinson was too young and too short to be a match with skeleton 38428. But if Angie lived for some time after her disappearance, that would account for the discrepancies.

“Explain the strontium and Carbon 14 results to Luc,” Ryan said.

I did.

“And explain the dental sealant again.”

I did.

“Holy shit,” said Charbonneau. “You think Menard followed the news coverage and was inspired by this head case Hooker?”

“Yes. But there’s more. Anique Pomerleau disappeared from Mascouche in 1990 at age fifteen. Friday, Ryan and I saw Pomerleau in Menard’s house.”

“Menard’s been here since eighty-eight,” Charbonneau said.