Shadow of Betrayal - Brett Battles

“I’ve got three dozen Dupuis right here. More than half are just initials. No first name. And you’ve got to believe there are at least as many other Dupuis unlisted.”

Quinn used the tips of his fingers to create a crease along the edge of the page near the binding, then tore it out of the book. He set it on the desk next to Orlando’s computer.

“Here,” he said. “In case you need to cross-reference.”

She glanced up at him. “Why don’t you get us some dinner?”

“Trying to get rid of me?”

“Yes.”

Quinn smiled, then nodded and started for the door.

As he was pulling it open, Orlando said, “Wait.”

He looked back. Her attention was still on the computer, but she was waving him to return with her left hand.

“I think I found something,” she said.

Quinn walked back and leaned over her shoulder. She had the website for the Montreal Gazette up on the screen. The specific page featured an article titled:

FAMILY TRAGEDY

NOT AN ACCIDENT

Before Quinn could read further, Orlando said, “This is from two days ago. An elderly couple and their daughter, also an adult, died from a gas leak in their house. Went to sleep, never woke up. At first it was thought to be a faulty gas line, but now the police are saying the gas line might have been tampered with.”

“Don’t tell me,” Quinn said. “The family’s name is Dupuis.”

“Yep.”

“Could be just a coincidence,” Quinn said.

“Could be,” Orlando said, but she didn’t sound like she believed that.

“An adult daughter.”

“Yeah. Maybe that’s who Peter was talking about.”

“Maybe,” Quinn said. “Anything else on the family?”

“Hold on,” she said.

She brought up a search engine, then typed in the names of the three people who had died. Martin Dupuis, Rose Dupuis, Emily Dupuis. Husband, wife, daughter. A list of several links appeared, most associated with people other than those who had died. Orlando clicked through several of them before stopping on one.

“Here we go,” she said.

The website was for another newspaper, this time in French. Le Journal de Montréal. While Quinn was well versed in several languages, French was not one of his strongest. The same wasn’t true for Orlando, though. She was fluent.

“What’s it say?” Quinn asked.

“It’s another article about the deaths, but it goes into more detail about the family. Martin Dupuis was a retired professor. Taught sociology at McGill University until two years ago. Rose was a teacher, too. Literature, but at a private high school. She was still working. Their daughter had apparently been living back at home following a recent divorce.” Orlando paused as she continued reading to herself. “Interesting.”

“What?”

“There’s another daughter. Younger than the one who died. Only says she no longer lives in Montreal. No name given.”

“Maybe they haven’t been able to reach her yet,” Quinn said.

“Maybe she’s the one who killed them,” Orlando suggested.

Quinn shrugged, then straightened up. There was no way to tell these were the Dupuises Peter wanted them to check out. Still, the potential was too large to ignore.

“Get an address,” Quinn said. “Let’s at least do a drive-by.”

“Already got it.”

They rousted Nate out of his room, then took the Jetta across the river into Montreal. They found the Dupuis house about forty minutes later on the northeast side of town. It was a neighborhood of single-family homes, on small economical lots that made it difficult for one neighbor not to know what the other was doing. Several had lights on in their windows, but many were already dark, the owners either settled in for the night or not home.

They passed the Dupuis home at a slow, steady pace. It was two stories tall, but narrow. Quinn guessed no more than twelve hundred square feet of living space. The windows were all dark, but a nearby streetlamp illuminated enough of the front to see a strip of yellow tape strung across the opening between two bushes that led to the front door. Police tape. There was also a makeshift memorial at the front of the lawn. Dozens of glass candle containers, half already burned out, and several bundles of flowers spilled over from the grass onto the sidewalk.

Other than that, it was just like any of the other houses on the street.

Quinn circled the block and came back down the road again. This time he pulled to the curb two houses before reaching the Dupuis’, taking one of the few remaining parking spots on either side of the street. He stared out the window at the house the three members of the Dupuis family had died in, and tried to imagine the gas filling the house, pushing the oxygen out. But he was having a hard time believing it. From all appearances the house looked well maintained. In fact it looked in better shape than most of those around it. Could it be possible that a family who took that good care of their home could be neglectful when it came to the maintenance of the house’s inner workings? Quinn didn’t think so.

“Are we going in?” Orlando asked.

Quinn thought for a moment, then nodded. “Nate, you stay here.”

“Why me?”

“Someone needs to stay with the car, in case we have to get out in a hurry,” Quinn said.

“That doesn’t answer my question,” Nate said.

Quinn’s eyes narrowed. “Because I told you to stay.”

“I can stay,” Orlando said.

“No,” Quinn said. “You’re coming with me.”

Orlando looked at Nate, but he shook his head and said, “It’s fine.”

Quinn opened the door and started to get out.

“Wait,” Orlando said. She reached into the small backpack she’d brought along, and pulled out three cloth packets. “Radios. Just in case.”

She handed them around.

Once they were out of the car, Quinn and Orlando did a quick visual check up and down the block. There were no other pedestrians. Not surprising for 10 p.m. on a residential street.

Satisfied, Quinn started walking toward the Dupuis home, Orlando falling into step behind him.

“You could have handled that better,” she whispered.

“Not now,” he said. But she was right, and he’d known it the moment he’d told Nate to stay in the car. He was just trying to protect Nate, but everything he did made him look like an asshole.

A dog barked from across the street. Two yips, then nothing. A warning to not even think about crossing the road. In the house next door to the Dupuis’, someone was watching a TV with the volume up much too loud. The blue flicker of the screen spilled through the second-floor window. The bedroom of an older resident, perhaps.

Quinn took one last look around before they reached the corner of the Dupuis’ property. They still seemed to be the only people out. The memorial in the front yard was down to one burning candle that looked like it wouldn’t last much longer.

“Let’s do it,” Quinn said.

They turned up the short walkway like they lived there. At the end of the concrete path, a short two-step staircase led up to the door. But instead of ascending, they paused at the bottom. As Quinn had noted when they drove by, there was police tape across the walkway to the door. On the tape, bold black letters spelling out in both French and English:

BARRAGE DE POLICE PASSAGE INTERDIT • POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS

Passage prohibited by the police. It was, after all, a potential crime scene now.

Quinn still wasn’t sure if they should try and get inside, but he did know that using the front door was out of the question. The same streetlamp that had provided the good view of the house when they drove by now lit their every move.

“Around the side,” he whispered.

Orlando nodded.

“Anything?” Nate asked.

“Nothing yet,” Quinn said.

As they moved down the side of the house, Quinn glanced more than once at the home next door where the TV blared upstairs. He wanted to be able to get the hell out of there if he saw someone staring back at him. But there was no one.

When they reached the rear corner of the house, they stopped. Quinn pulled out two pairs of disposable rubber gloves, and handed a set to Orlando. Once his were on, he retrieved his gun from under his jacket. He then peered around the edge, but pulled back immediately.

“What is it?” Orlando asked.

“Back door’s open,” he said.

“I don’t hear anything from inside. Do you?”

Quinn listened for a moment, then shook his head.

“Come on.”

He led them around the corner, and over to the door. Leaning forward, he listened again to see if he could hear anyone moving around. Still nothing. Then why was it open? Couldn’t have been the cops. Quinn had been one himself before Durrie had recruited him to be a cleaner. He knew the training, and the precautions taken at crime scenes. Leaving doors open just wasn’t done.

He moved his head a few inches so he could look at the door itself. It had been swung open about halfway. The darkness made it hard to see anything for sure, but there were no obvious marks near the lock that would have indicated someone had broken in.

A friend with a spare key? A killer who picked up a key on his way out? Or maybe had one all along? A neighbor kid who did the yard work and knew where an emergency key was hidden? It was human nature, after all, to be drawn to the pain and the horror life sometimes served up.

But at the moment, it didn’t matter who had left the door open. The question was, was anyone still inside?

Quinn looked back at Orlando.

“Anything?” she mouthed.

He shook his head, then indicated he was going in and wanted her to cover him. Once Orlando gave him a nod, Quinn leaned toward his mic and whispered, “We’re going in.”

“Copy that,” Nate said over the receiver.

Quinn put both hands on his gun, and aimed it like he’d been trained to do in dangerous situations as a rookie police cadet back in Phoenix. Behind him, he could sense Orlando moving into position.

He silently counted to three, then stepped around the edge of the building and into the open doorway, his gun moving left, right, down, up, looking for targets. But the room was empty.

It was a kitchen, lived in but neat. The semidarkness of the evening was cut only by the light filtering back from the lamps on the street, turning the interior into shades of gray Everything one would expect to be there was—refrigerator, dishwasher, sink. On the counter were several cookbooks, a toaster, a ceramic jar full of utensils, and a blender, all ready and waiting. And to the left, a small table was set against the wall wide enough only for one chair per each of the three remaining sides. One for Mrs. Dupuis and one for her husband, Quinn guessed. And the non-matching third chair that stuck out into the room? That had to be for the recently returned daughter.

The only thing that was unusual was the stand-alone stovetop range. It had been pulled away from the wall, and turned at an angle so someone could get behind it. One of the first places checked for the gas leak, Quinn guessed.

All in all, it could have been the kitchen of the house Quinn grew up in. All the similarities were there. Even the layout was basically the same. He stepped over the threshold, looking to his immediate left, then moved the door enough so he could look behind it and make sure no one was there.

“Clear,” he mouthed to Orlando.

He continued across the kitchen, and stopped just shy of the doorway that led into the rest of the house. There was a solitary creak behind him as Orlando stepped inside.

“Everything all right?” Nate asked.

“Fine,” Quinn whispered.

On the other side of the doorway was the dining room. An oval dining table surrounded by five chairs filled half the space. The chairs were all perfect matches to the orphan chair in the kitchen. Along the wall to Quinn’s right was a wooden buffet cabinet. The bottom portion had two doors that would swing open to access whatever was stored inside. On the hutch above were three shelves. Instead of plates or other serving dishes, there were dozens of framed photos.

Enough light came in through the window for Quinn to make out the faces. A mixture of shots, but all had at least one of four people in them. The older man and woman had to be Martin and Rose Dupuis. That meant one of the younger women was their daughter, Emily. The third woman looked a few years younger than Emily, but bore a striking resemblance to the others.

The missing daughter.

“What’s that?” Orlando whispered.

Quinn looked at her. She was in the doorway, but her eyes were focused on a point at the far end of the room, past where he was standing. So he turned to see what had caught her attention.

There was an item on the floor just a few feet beyond the dining room, in what Quinn guessed was the living room. It was a box, about the size law firms use to put files in. It was in the middle of the floor, definitely out of place. Quinn could see several items sticking out of the top—thin, flat, rectangular shapes.

He looked back at the hutch, scanning the pictures, concentrating on the placement of the frames instead of the pictures themselves. On the pattern.

He found what he was looking for toward the right side on the second shelf. An obvious open spot that Quinn imagined the Dupuises would have never created. There was another spot, too, on the shelf above toward the center.

What the hell? Quinn thought.

He eased into the living room, his eyes taking in everything before he approached the box.

As he’d guessed, the items sticking out were pictures. But there were more than just two. Seven more by his quick count. But that wasn’t all. There was a small wooden box, a stuffed bear, an old book, and what looked like a scarf or maybe a sweater under the pictures.

Quinn was leaning down to pick up one of the pictures when Nate’s voice cut through the silence. “Is that one of you?”

“What?” Quinn asked.

“Did one of you come outside?”

“No. We’re both in the house.”

“Somebody just crossed the front lawn,” Nate said, his voice rushed. “I think he came from around the side of the house. My angle’s bad here, I didn’t notice him until he was already a few feet into the yard.”

Quinn shot a glance at Orlando, then pointed toward the back door. He made a gesture for Orlando to go out and around to the left. With a single nod, she ran through the kitchen, Quinn only steps behind her.

“He’s getting in a car parked out front,” Nate said. “What do you want me to do?”

“Follow him,” Quinn said as he exited the house.

Instead of going to the left with Orlando, he went right. At the back corner of the house, he slowed only enough to take the turn, almost slipping on the grass. The home next door with the blaring TV was silent now. The only thing Quinn could hear was the pounding of his own footsteps as he ran along the side yard.

“He’s got it started,” Nate said.

“Where’s he parked?” Quinn asked.

“Other side of the street. Almost directly across.”