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Overview
“Martin Michaud is a master at twisty storytelling and compelling atmosphere.” — Catherine McKenzie
“Never Forget is a crackerjack read.” — Quill & Quire
“A raucous crime thriller.” — Publishers Weekly
When a homeless man jumps to his death in Old Montreal, the police discover two wallets in his possession: one belonging to a retired psychiatrist who was murdered in a bizarre ritual, the other to a powerful corporate lawyer who has vanished. As Montreal police detective Victor Lessard and his partner, Jacinthe Taillon, work to solve the separate mysteries, a dark conspiracy begins to emerge.
While the pressure builds and the bodies accumulate, disturbing secrets come to light about a pivotal moment in political history. But will Lessard and Taillon crack the case in time to stop the killer from striking again?
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781459742734 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Dundurn Press |
| Publication date: | 02/11/2020 |
| Series: | A Victor Lessard Thriller Series , #1 |
| Pages: | 576 |
| Sales rank: | 1,102,156 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 1.90(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
THE YOKE
Montreal Thursday, December 15th, 11:57 p.m.
Broken, emptied, reprogrammed, recovered.
The woman with the frizzy grey hair knew everything there was to know about the workings of the brain, but she'd never dealt with one more twisted than her own. The time for terror, for shouting and weeping, had passed. The pain was numbing her.
The yoke that had been fastened to her was piercing her flesh, impaling the bones of her sternum and chin, forcing her to tilt her head back in full extension. Her clothes had been removed, to humiliate her. Her feet were bare, her hands manacled behind her back, her legs immobilized so she couldn't bend them.
The moon, coming in through the window, projected a rectangle onto the cement.
The woman knew she was being watched. She relieved herself one last time and felt the satisfying sensation of urine running down her thighs. "Fu ... fuck you!" she stuttered, struggling to swallow.
One thought etched a grimace onto her face: the brightly coloured plastic numbers ...
The woman crossed the red line and, after many failed attempts, was able to seize the key, laughing wildly. The laugh of a madwoman.
After an arduous effort to insert the key into the lock, she turned it. For a fraction of a second, she thought the impossible had happened: she'd managed to free her wrists.
Then the dart whistled through the air, pierced the back of her neck, and came out her throat. Blood welled up, seething, gushing from the wound, spurting between her teeth.
CHAPTER 2SNOWSTORM
Montreal Thursday, December 15th, earlier that day
The weather girl cocked her head to one side, pressing two fingers to her ear, a glum expression on her face. When the voice in her earpiece barked that she was on the air, her face lit up and she began confidently declaiming her prophecy: "Winter storm. Thirty centimetres expected. Blowing snow. High winds."
The woman got up and turned off the TV. An impetuous, almost savage smile crossed her deeply lined face. She rinsed her cereal bowl in the sink and put it on the counter. The liquid crystal on the stove showed 6:00 a.m. There was no better moment to go for a walk than during a morning blizzard, when time stood still, and, under the milky dome that purified it of its filth, the city caught its breath.
The woman always followed the same route. Bundled up in a down coat, she left her building on Sherbrooke Street, near the Museum of Fine Arts, and headed south on Crescent. Here, on summer nights, urban wildlife, laden with bling and eager to be seen, pressed up against the bar entrances. Now the woman met only her reflection in the storefronts. She turned onto De Maisonneuve Boulevard and passed by Wanda's strip club. Crossing Peel at the traffic light, she watched, amused, as a car fishtailed its way around the icy corner.
Snow was piling up on the sidewalk. The wind howled in her ears; flakes whirled in the air.
She stopped on the esplanade at 1981 McGill College, where the trees, strung with lights, were contending with the gale. She was admiring the sculpture — The Illuminated Crowd — when the touch of a hand on her shoulder made her start.
Fleece jacket, combat pants tucked into fourteen-hole Doc Martens, multiple piercings, black-shadowed eyes, dreadlocks spil ling out from under a skull-and-crossbones beanie: the young punk looked like she'd just stepped out of a Sex Pistols show.
Terrified, the woman staggered back as this angel of death cupped her hands around black lips, drew close, and spoke into her ear: "I didn't shoot anybody, no sir!"
Wondering if she'd heard correctly, the woman wanted to ask the vampire to repeat herself, but before she could, the punk straddled a bicycle and was swallowed up by the storm. The woman stood for a moment, staring down the street, eyes wide, body buffeted by the squall.
The woman got home at 11:22 a.m. Hurriedly, she left her boots on the hall rug, threw her hat and mittens onto the couch, and dropped her coat on the bathroom tiles. She relieved herself in the darkness with a long sigh.
Pressing the light switch, she looked at her face in the mirror, smiling broadly. Her lips were tinted blue from the cold. From downtown she had walked to Mount Royal, where she had spent hours wandering the park paths, admiring the conifers bent under the weight of the snow, observing, from the elevated vantage point, the city in its transparency.
She hummed as she went to the kitchen to make tea.
As the kettle was whistling, a feeling came over her that something wasn't right. She had a sense of some object being out of place. Her gaze moved along the cluttered counter, dipped into the sink, and traced the line of cupboards. Seeing the date spelled out in colourful number magnets on the refrigerator, she jumped. When she'd taken out the milk five minutes earlier, the magnets hadn't been there.
She'd given no further thought to the incident that morning, but now her whole body was trembling, sounding the alarm.
She froze at the sound of a voice behind her; the hair on her scalp rose.
"I didn't shoot anybody, no sir!"
She turned, saw the Taser's threatening mouth, and screamed. The barbs burst through the air, penetrating her skin. The force of the charge knocked her down. As she fell to the floor, her body gripped by convulsions, she couldn't help but be haunted by that voice — a voice she had recognized without difficulty. The delicate voice of President Kennedy's assassin.
The voice of Lee Harvey Oswald.
CHAPTER 3HANGMAN
Friday, December 16th
With surprising agility for a person in his seventies, the man mounted the stairs leading to the Stock Exchange Tower. Without a glance at the decorative wreath draped in red ribbon hanging over the entrance, he pulled open the glass door and, preceded by a screech of wind, plunged inside.
Winter had sunk its hooks into the tatters of Montreal. While Jesus shuddered on his cross, Christmas and the merchants of the temple were jostling at the gate. Snow fell from his overshoes and twirled across the mirror of marble.
In the empty elevator, the man barely heard Bing Crosby's smooth voice crooning about a marshmallow world. On the forty-eighth floor, he greeted the receptionist with a winning half smile of the sort that had once made Walter Cronkite the most trusted man in America.
"Good morning, Mr. Lawson."
He had encountered no one in the submarine.
Every morning, the secretaries' desks and the piles of boxes blocking the hallway gave Nathan R. Lawson the suffocating impression of moving through the cramped entrails of an underwater vessel. Baker Lawson Watkins, the law firm at which he was one of the principal partners, had undergone many changes since he'd joined it in the early sixties. Numbering fewer than twenty lawyers when he'd arrived, the firm had grown exponentially.
At the turn of the new century, a series of shrewd mergers had transformed it into a nationwide partnership. Now it employed more than 600 lawyers, 174 of whom practised in Montreal.
Over the years, palatial offices had given way to more austere workspaces. The tiny cubicles with yellowed partitions in which the associates now toiled were at odds with the firm's high-end image. But clients, whose only wish was to be pampered, had no access to the bowels of the submarine; they were confined to the luxurious conference rooms on the forty-ninth floor, where they could enjoy the panoramic river views and admire the art collection.
Nathan Lawson removed his coat and brushed himself off in front of his assistant's workspace. She was wearing headphones, transcribing the memos he had dictated the day before. Other secretaries were available to work evenings and overnight, but he trusted no one except her.
"Have a nice night, Adèle?"
"Not bad."
For twenty-six years they'd been repeating the ritual, willingly engaging in this daily charade. For twenty-six years they'd been lying to each other every morning: Lawson couldn't care less how his secretary's night had been; Adèle had spent it, once again, contemplating the cracks in her ceiling. Following their custom, they would exchange no further civilities for the rest of the day, their interactions being limited to a few work-related monosyllables.
In a couple of seconds, he would step into his office to go through his mail, while she, during the next half hour, would bring him a cup of steaming coffee and two sugar cubes.
Nathan Lawson was often the first lawyer to set foot on the floor, but he never arrived before Adèle. This rule had been broken only once — the day, eight years ago, that she had buried her mother. Over the years, by a sort of involuntary osmosis, they had come to a complete understanding of each other's lives, without ever talking about them.
"Did you put this in my correspondence?"
Standing in the doorway, Lawson held up a sheet of paper.
He'd just found it, stuck between the Bar newsletter and the billable hours report for the month of November. Waiting for Adèle's answer, he flicked a speck of dust from the lapel of his jacket.
Absorbed in her work, eyes fixed on her screen, Adèle continued to tap at her keyboard. "Lucian handles the mail, not me."
Mystified, Lawson returned to his office. Leaning back in his chair, he stared for a moment at the row of Christmas cards on the corner of the table as his thoughts spun idly. Suddenly, an idea came to him, erasing the puzzlement from his features.
No one else in the firm could have imagined a practical joke like this. Smiling, he recalled that Louis-Charles Rivard had struck again just last week. The prank on that occasion had consisted of switching family photos between the offices of two litigators.
The numerous deficiencies in Rivard's level of professional competence hadn't prevented Lawson from opposing several attempts to fire his protégé. Sexy and entertaining, Rivard made up in social skill what he lacked in lawyerly ability.
The ringing telephone roused Lawson from his reverie. "Your clients have arrived," announced the forty-ninth-floor receptionist.
"All right."
He got up and looked at his watch: 7:02 a.m.
As he picked up his file folder, his gaze strayed once again to the paper lying on the desk:
Good morning, Nathan.
Let's play hangman: _ V _ _ G _ _ _ N
Hint: Company filled with corpses.
Ain't this fun, Nathan?
* * *
The meeting dragged on. Even the man in the Jean Paul Lemieux painting on the wall looked like he was bored stiff. Armani-suited and aristocratically perfumed, two other partners in the firm were on hand to assist Lawson.
"We have to set a redemption price for the preferred shares before closing," Lawson said, looking at his clients.
"We'll get back to you with a number," came the assured response from the chief financial officer of a large pharmaceutical company, an elegant man with manicured hands. "By the way, we haven't yet received the closing agenda."
Lawson turned to one of his juniors. Responsibility for the agenda and documentation fell to his protégé. "Carlos, ask Rivard to come and join us."
"He's out of the office, Mr. Lawson. Tania's replacing him. I'll call her."
Lawson nodded. He had forgotten that Louis-Charles Rivard was in a daylong meeting at the office of another client. The discussion resumed, but Lawson was lost in thought, still pondering the drawing.
During a break, while the others were getting coffee, he took the sheet discreetly from his pocket and examined the hanged man more closely. The man looked sinister, his tongue sticking out. Or maybe it was a moustache. Nathan R. Lawson hadn't played hangman since his childhood — even in his youth, he'd never had much time for games — but he remembered that the man was supposed to be drawn piece by piece, with a limb added whenever the other player guessed a letter wrong. In this case, the man seemed fully drawn. What did that mean?
Suddenly, a thought flashed through his mind, making the hairs stand up on his forearm. Using his pen, he filled in the blank spaces with letters. The secret word exploded off the page.
"Mr. Lawson?"
"Nathan?"
Four pairs of eyes were trained on him. Had he cried out? Distraught, he stammered a vague apology and hurried from the conference room.
His vision was blurred, his fingers hesitant over the cellphone keypad, his voice weak. "I need some documents from the archives, Adèle!"
Retrieving a forty-year-old file was no easy job, Adèle had remarked pointedly. Lawson had barely heard the complaint. Though it had taken him a while to recognize it, the face of fear now seemed to lurk in every corner.
Lifting the lid from one of the boxes, he saw with relief that the seals, stamped Never Destroy, were still intact. Picking up the phone, he called Wu, told him he was going away for a few days, and asked him to prepare an overnight bag and to include his passport.
Before leaving the office, he spoke briefly with his secretary. Adèle was visibly surprised; he rarely treated himself to vacations. "What about the active files?" she objected.
"Rivard and the others will step in. That's what they're paid for."
One by one, the floors evaporated overhead until the elevator doors opened at the sub-basement. As Lawson wiped his forehead with a handkerchief, the mail boy lifted the heavy boxes onto a trolley, revealing a Celtic knot tattoo on his left bicep.
"My car is there, beside the black truck," the old man said, nervously pocketing the checkered fabric.
A row of neon lights threw their wan glow onto the concrete walls of the subterranean parking garage. Walking rapidly, the lawyer glanced anxiously over his shoulder, never losing sight of the two boxes on the trolley bed. "Hurry up, for God's sake!"
When he was within a few metres of the Mercedes, he activated the keyless entry. "Are you sure you don't remember, Lucian?" he asked insistently as the mail boy transferred the boxes to the trunk.
"Like I said, Mr. Lawson, I handle hundreds of documents every day. I don't know how that message landed on your desk."
Displeased, the lawyer put a ten-dollar bill in the young man's hand and got into the car.
"Stupid Romanian," he muttered, watching in the rear-view mirror as Lucian walked back to the elevator.
Struggling to overcome the terror that paralyzed him, Nathan Lawson rolled furtively out of the parking garage. For several minutes, he drove around at random, checking the mirror constantly to see if he was being followed.
His mind was focused on solving a problem: apart from calling the police, which wasn't an option in this case, what would an ordinary person do in the face of the threat hanging over him? Of the possibilities that occurred to him, one stood out as the obvious response: an or dinary person would put the greatest possible distance between himself and the danger. Therefore, Lawson would do the opposite. He'd hide nearby, where no one would think to look for him.
His adversaries had considerable resources at their disposal. Their actions would be calculated and ruthlessly executed. And, if his supposition was right, train stations and airports were already under surveillance.
What was happening didn't surprise him unduly. But why now, after all these years?
As per his instructions, the building's doorman met Lawson in an adjacent alley and handed him the overnight bag that Wu had prepared. After making sure his passport was inside, Lawson drove away, wondering why he had received this warning instead of being coldly executed. He considered the question from every angle and kept coming back to the same answer: the aim was to scare him, to force him to make a mistake.
Lawson slapped his forehead. The file he was carrying in the trunk ... he had blundered in removing it from its hiding place. He'd exposed himself.
Lawson stopped at a convenience store and bought garbage bags. He placed the documents inside the bags to protect them from water and humidity before putting them back in the trunk of the car. Next, he went to a business centre and sent a fax. Finally, back on the sidewalk, he extracted the SIM card and battery from his cellphone and threw them into a trash can, along with the phone.
After assuring himself that he wasn't being followed, Lawson drove to the Mount Royal Cemetery, where he pulled up in front of an old family vault. After discreetly placing the garbage bags inside the vault, he relocked the rusted iron door and left the key on a gravestone a hundred metres away. Lawson then got back into his Mercedes and left.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Never Forget"
by .
Copyright © 2020 Martin Michaud.
Excerpted by permission of Dundurn Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
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