Chapter 32 Kobe
Kobe
Laurent St. Pierre exuded a calm vibe the following morning as he sat at the table across from me in the same interview room where I’d chatted with Fatemeh the previous day.
Hands folded in front of him, St. Pierre wore slacks, a long-sleeved button-down under a knitted vest, and no tie.
His exposed throat showed a prominent Adam’s apple, and a nick from a recent shave highlighted his jaw.
Gray from her bout of food poisoning, Rue managed to drag herself into the office first thing to accompany me in the interview room.
She assigned me the task of running things while she faded into the background and observed.
Having proclaimed that she hadn’t eaten in two days, I suspected she was too weak and groggy for a task that required a sharp intellect.
“Thank you for coming, Mr. St. Pierre.”
“Laurent, please.”
I took him through the preliminaries, indicating that our session would be recorded, and started by confirming his whereabouts at the time of all four murders.
His story hadn’t changed. St. Pierre had gone for drinks with a colleague on the night of Ford’s murder—which we had confirmed—and was home in bed during Jesse’s and Navid’s.
No one could back up those claims since his daughters didn’t live at home, and his wife worked shift work and didn’t get in until the sun came up, long past our time frame.
The window for Malik’s murder proved trickier.
“I was with my family on Christmas Eve through Boxing Day. Both girls were home. As was my wife. My parents stayed with us, too.”
“Did you leave the house at any point?”
“I drove to Arnprior to pick up my parents on Christmas Eve. It’s roughly an hour west along the river.”
“How long were you gone?”
St. Pierre absently fingered the cut on his jaw while he thought. “I left around six thirty and got back close to nine. Might have been nine thirty.”
I jotted a note and tapped my pen on the pad of paper. “Talk to me about Jesse Vargas.”
St. Pierre made a face. “What should I say? I don’t understand what you’re looking for.”
“Last we spoke, you gave the impression he was not a person of good character. Can you elaborate on those feelings?”
“I’m not sure you can find a single person on campus, apart from his close friends, who wouldn’t agree that he was severely disturbed.”
“Are you suggesting he had a reputation?”
“Yes, but don’t get on my case about why nothing was done. Like I told you last time. It was out of my hands.”
“Your daughter, Jenny, left the university immediately after her sister graduated, isn’t that right?”
St. Pierre’s spine stiffened, and he glanced at Rue, who remained a silent observer. “She transferred to Laurier.”
“Why is that?”
“I told you. I don’t know.”
“I don’t believe you. I did some research and learned that it was you who pulled strings at Laurier to get her that transfer. There must have been a reason, or else why go to such trouble?”
St. Pierre clenched his jaw. “I wanted her away from that boy.”
“That boy?”
“Jesse Vargas. Don’t play dumb. It’s why I’m here.”
“Why did you want her away from him?”
“Aren’t you paying attention? Because he preys on young, innocent women.
Because no one in authority stopped him.
Because he’d approached my daughter more than once, and Abigail was graduating and wouldn’t be around anymore to keep her sister safe.
Jenny is soft, gullible, and shy. She was never popular in high school and didn’t understand the danger of drawing the attention of men like Jesse and his friends. She was a target.”
His chin wobbled, and he visibly strained to control it.
“Did he touch her?”
Another uncontrolled wobble. A shimmer of tears coated the surface of his eyes.
“Mr. St. Pierre?”
“She says not.”
“You don’t believe her?”
Something hardened in the older man. “No. A father can tell when something happens to their child. Their demeanor changes. They become someone you don’t recognize.
My girls stopped sharing their personal lives with me during their adolescence.
My wife assured me it was a normal transition.
I could see that. They were still themselves but more private. ”
He shook his head and stared into the middle distance. “Jenny lost her spark in that last year before she transferred. Abigail grew uncharacteristically defensive of her sister. Neither of them would admit to anything, but I knew…”
He stopped speaking. I let the silence settle around us, heavy with the assumptions of things left unsaid. St. Pierre vibrated with a father’s rage.
After a time, St. Pierre cracked his knuckles and sat straighter. His red-rimmed eyes seemed eternally exhausted. “I don’t mourn Jesse or his friends, but I didn’t kill them, Detective. May I go home? I’m not feeling well.”
The following few days passed in a blur of quiet tension. Malik’s death hit the media, and the phones rang off the hook. When Monday arrived, so too did an uproar of activity in the once peaceful bullpen.
Golding returned a hundred inquiring and prying phone calls, shouted orders, and made unreasonable demands.
Rue stewed and cursed over the scant evidence we’d collected, and I ran around the city on a personal mission to be the first to uncover the killer, working hunches and theories I couldn’t back up.
My to-do list had grown and included visiting Dominique at work, hunting down the owner of Iron Pumphouse, and finding Constable Yates.
No matter what anyone said, I couldn’t dismiss the teens who had approached him three years ago.
It was the tie to Jesse and his friends that I needed. It fit. They fit.
Considering that two of our victims had left university a couple of years ago, these girls and their story were the piece that matched my theory of revenge from a sexual assault.
The problem was, I had no proof because Yates had let them walk away.
I needed him to recall every detail of the conversation he’d had three years ago.
I wanted the best physical descriptions he could give me of all three teens.
At a guess, the girls would be about seventeen. The boy nineteen-ish. How had this incident affected them? Were they on a quest for revenge? Had the past trauma finally caught up with them?
The conversation I’d had previously with Yates was cut short thanks to Golding, but I suspected he knew more than he’d shared.
The manager at the gym, Matt Menard, a steroid-jacked guy in his fifties with a tank top that looked painted on, refused to answer my questions or provide me with access to logs or videos until I provided a warrant.
“You know the rules.”
“I don’t have to see anything. Look at your list for Christmas morning and tell me if she’s on it. That’s all.”
“Not happening.”
With barely a handful of days before another holiday was upon us, the best I could do was leave the warrant with a secretary at the courthouse to be signed by the working judge. He was swamped and unavailable, she told me. I would get it when I would get it.
Eager for answers, I had delivered Fatemeh’s hair to Dominique on Sunday afternoon. He informed me he wasn’t going into the office until this morning. So even my boyfriend had put me off.
Leaving the courthouse, I placed a call to the forensic lab, hoping Dominique wasn’t busy. He answered right away.
“It’s me.”
“I’m working on your report right now.”
“Excellent. Have you had a chance to compare the hair?”
“No. We’re backed up and working half-staffed. I had an autopsy this morning and another later this afternoon. I’ll try to get to it in an hour or so. I have a meeting in ten minutes and a report to finish. You want this report, right?”
“Yes. Sorry. I don’t mean to be impatient.”
“Come by around one. I planned a lunch break at that time. We can slip down to the lab.”
“I’ll be there.”
Locating Yates took a song and dance. I called dispatch to find out if he was on the schedule and where I might find him. Carrie Lumley, a semi-retired veteran officer who had made the shift to switchboard a year ago, kindly gave me Yates’s number.
“Is he with a partner?” I asked, concerned I may have trouble getting him alone.
“Not today. Reduced staffing with the holiday. Too many people wanted a vacation.”
Yates might not be a rookie anymore, but he had far less seniority than most people in the department. His partner included.
I called the constable and arranged to meet him at a Subway in the neighborhood he patrolled. He was happy to take a modified lunch break.
I rolled up a few minutes shy of noon and spotted his patrol car in the lot. The fast-food joint didn’t have a huge eat-in area, but most people ordered sandwiches and left. The staff consisted of bored-looking high school students.
Yates had secured a table in a back corner, for which I was grateful, considering what I wanted to discuss. I joined him, not bothering to order food. Yates had a loaded footlong and a fountain drink, so it gave us an excuse to linger.
“Hey,” I said, dropping into the seat across from him.
He quickly chewed the massive bite he’d taken before swiping a napkin over his mouth. “Kobe. What’s up?”
The man seemed thrilled to see me, and I hated that the only reason I’d contacted him was because I needed something and not because I sought to rekindle a nonexistent friendship.
“Not too much. I want to chat about that case. Those girls you were telling me about. You know, the ones from three years ago.”
Yates’s smile evaporated. A defensiveness sharpened his gaze and stiffened his shoulders. “Why? I told you I didn’t handle it well. I’m not proud, but I’ve been doing all I can to make up for my mistakes.”
“I know. I’m the last person to judge you. Believe me. I make plenty of my own mistakes. I wanted to chat because I’m starting to think those girls may be tied to my case.”
Yates’s brow furrowed as he plucked a fallen curl of lettuce off the paper wrap and popped it into his mouth. “Your serial?”