Louis Shalako: Dead Reckoning, Chapter Twenty-Four. An Inspector Gilles Maintenon Mystery. Louis Shalako.

Sunday, January 19, 2025

Dead Reckoning, Chapter Twenty-Four. An Inspector Gilles Maintenon Mystery. Louis Shalako.

Louis Shalako

The pair of detectives had one last stop on the way back to the office. It was to the home of LeBeaux, on an upper floor of a pension-style apartment in a central part of the city.

As it turned out, Hubert barely had the chance to explain himself, as the lady of the house was out. Her daddy was still sick in bed, where he had been battling some sort of respiratory infection for weeks, and Éliott’s little sister had the bored composure of the typical fifteen year-old. Unluckily for them, any older siblings were also out at the moment. She took the envelope and the short explanation at face value, asking no questions and making no statements. A radio blasted away in the background, popular music no doubt, but it wasn’t helpful in communicating and it was clear they weren’t all that welcome in her little world.

After a quick thank you and a promise to draw it to her mother’s attention, she shut the door in their faces, and none too gently, either.

“That didn’t take too long at all. The fact that we simply reek of alcohol probably has nothing to do with it—” Garnier followed him back down the stairs again, and out onto the street.

And, of course, by the time they got back to the car, Alphonse had taken another radio call, and this time it was two more hits on their news story. The first, a man who claimed to have sold two large freezers to the same customer on the same day, and the second was a little more mysterious but it involved a low-level employee of the custodial department of a prominent Paris teaching hospital, Les Sœurs de la Charité de Sainte Marie, asking to meet them anonymously at a location of his own choice, assuming arrangements could be made.

Craning again, Martin kind of shook his head. He looked at his watch too.

“So. What do you think?”

Reviewing the addresses in question, they might do one, but they couldn’t do both, not before quitting time. This was a real thing when the case was going along at a certain pace, and this one had looked sort of hopeless all along. They were not gendarmes responding to a fire or a bank robbery in progress. They were detectives on an investigation. This was the long game, rather than the short game.

It was Alphonse who had the answer.

“Tell them we’ll get back to them.”

“He’s right.”

Martin picked up the microphone, clicking over to Channel D for secure communications.

An executive decision—but Hubert had been going all gangbusters for quite some time now and there was the need to prioritize. He did have a life of his own. He did have a wife to consider, and it had been quite a while since he’d spent a quiet evening at home. And just when you started to get comfortable, you thought of LeBeaux. That one was enough to make one’s stomach churn. There was nothing he could do about that, but he still wondered…and then there was Gilles.

Even so.

It could still wait until tomorrow.

And thank God for Alphonse and his no-bullshit attitude.

***

The girl had departed, which might help in some ways. It was also something of an emotional wrench, but one could only hope and pray on that one. He’d just have to sweat it out. Éliott had made a bit of a show, taking his sweet time, doing a real thorough job of it, in washing up the dishes, and in giving one hell of a good scrub to the pots and pans. He’d uttered a few cusses of his own while doing that, but it was like the old man just didn’t care. Then, heating more water and giving himself a proper shave. He’d topped it all off with another bit of performative theatre. He had taken off the boots and the socks, rolled up the pant-legs, all while sitting on the chair in front of the hermit, with the big bowl on the floor, and washed his feet in the leftover shaving water.

“Oh, thank God.” Finally—

Toweling the feet dry, changing into fresh socks, rinsing out the old socks, hanging them up to dry near the stove, it seemed the hermit couldn’t care less—or maybe he did; but he seemed to be lost in a world of his own.

“Oh, Charles. Oh, Darwin.” Fuck—

The hermit had laughed at that one.

Strong liquor would do that to you. This was especially true if a person hadn’t had any in a while. A full belly might have helped as well.

With nothing else to wear, he’d pulled the tongue and the flaps of the boots wide, stuffing the long laces down inside so he wouldn’t trip on them. This wasn’t the sort of place where you could go barefoot, there simply wasn’t the luxury. That floor was grubby indeed, and the socks were white and brand new.

They’d agreed to switch over to beer for a while and conserve the cognac. The hermit was half-pissed anyways. It was more a question of maintaining that buzz, without going overboard, so to speak. Éliott had dumped the scummy water outside, a good distance from the front door. He’d immediately filled up their big pot and began heating more water.

“Sir. There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you.”

“Huh. The answer is no.”

He grinned, but the man really was like that. He simply didn’t care as to how he might be perceived.

“Ah, I don’t mean to pry, ah, but, uh. I was just wondering how you got that awful wound on the head, ah, on the old noggin there. That’s downright nasty-looking. Also, I was wondering. Would you, ah, have such a thing as a broom around here…”

A little psychology, a little human understanding. A little compassion might go a long way in a situation like this. It bordered on animal psychology. A little bit of the carrot, and a little bit of the stick. A direct question, and an indirect question, a rhetorical question, and one that was right to the point, always ready to back off, to circle around again, and try it on again another way—

“Huh?”

“A broom. A broom, sir. I was just saying, do you have any kind of a broom around here…”

“Yeah? And who the fuck are you.”

“I am Éliott, sir, and who the fuck are you, anyways.”

The hermit chuckled. This was about as close as Éliott had gotten to the direct question.

But surely the man would have a name.

“You’re an idiot.”

Éliott laughed, whether it was a joke or not, he wouldn’t care to speculate.

“Yeah. Well. Someday, perhaps, I will tell you my hard-luck story.”

“Huh.”

That’s how it had been going with the hermit, one step forward, and two steps back.

Éliott could only wonder at what had happened—at what must have happened.

“So. When was the last time you figure you had a bath, or anything like that—”

When was the last time you had them fucking boots off.

And—

What in the hell am I going to use for a blanket tonight.

That one didn’t bear thinking about.

***

The first time the two detectives had knocked on the hermit’s door, the whole thing had been so unexpected. The muzzle of a shotgun poking through a crack in the doorway and right in your face will do that to you.

There was a certain shock value. There was a certain immediacy, one which ruled out all other considerations, if only for a time.

But the hermit hadn’t been wearing a hat, and through the gap in the door, Éliott had glimpsed the greying hair, clumped with dark, clotted blood. Hubert had been in no position to see it, it was only him. It had meant nothing at the time, and they’d gotten out of there while the going was good. It was only when the man had passed them on the trail, with Hubert not paying too much attention, eager to get going. He’d taken a second to look, really look, and that wound had looked pretty damned bad.

Even then, he still hadn’t gotten it.

It was just one of those things. The man was such a prickly character, clearly not seeking company or attention, and in some sense, he’d figured it was none of his business.

It was only later, belatedly recognizing that they were, in fact, police officers, with a duty to protect and to serve. They’d sworn an oath to that effect. That was when that sneaky little guilty feeling had sort of caught up with him.

Even then, he still hadn’t caught on. It was only in the pre-dawn hours, laying there in that hotel room, still in that state, halfway between dreaming and wakefulness, it was only then, that the coincidental aspect of that wound had come to him. They’d gotten up, thrown their stuff in their bags and buggered off to the train station, and he’d still been thinking about it.

Had Maintenon fallen down, hit his head on a rock, rolled or slid into the river, and drowned, his body washing downstream and ending up caught under a logjam further down, as Hubert had so strongly come to believe? Or maybe he hadn’t, which left an awful lot of other possibilities, a lot of other theories. It left a lot of other doubts.

What if they were wrong?

What if every fucking one of us is wrong…

What if Maintenon hadn’t died after all? In which case, what in the hell had happened to him.

And what about that alleged ghost. Dolores’ ghostly apparition of her childhood crush, Gilles Maintenon, walking down the road in front of her house. High noon, or shortly thereafter.

What about that, eh.

Ghosts mostly came out at night. They preferred the darkness. Right? Not the broad light of day.

It wasn’t like he didn’t know Gilles. The changes wrought in the man were such, that all previous resemblances, all previous mental images were now somehow rendered obsolete, to the extent that he still wasn’t really certain. If nothing else, the man’s very behaviour would have cast doubt.

In that sense, it really wasn’t the same man.

Not anymore.

He had the scissors, he had the bandages, and he had an ointment to put on that nasty old wound.

But what he wanted, more than anything, (besides the girl), would be to gain the man’s trust, by any means necessary, and to give him one hell of a good shave—to cut that hair to something more closely resembling Maintenon’s hair, which was trimmed fairly regularly, but not obsessively, not with Gilles, that was for sure—

If he could shave his own face, he could shave someone else’s. Confidence was everything, in that sense.

And patience was everything else.

Maintenon did it when it was necessary, and only when he could get around to it. His hair had been fairly longish, weeks ago, when he’d been sent off on vacation. Getting his hair cut would have been just about the last thing on his list at that point.

One thing Éliott had figured out well enough—to get the man drunk, knock him out with the narcotic pain pills he had in his coat pocket, hanging by the door there, and then to just to go ahead and do it, would be pretty invasive of the man’s rights. It might not be very well appreciated, and for that reason, he was going to need at least some cooperation. If he was right, all well and good. If he was wrong, it would be morally reprehensible, and possibly even a kind of assault. An assault on human dignity, if nothing else, and how in the hell one would define that in the current situation was anyone’s guess.

If he could get that cooperation, that really would be some kind of a miracle.

And then there was the girl, an unknown quantity, and one who had no very good reason to trust him. He’d shown up out of nowhere, a complete surprise in every sense. He must be downright threatening to one such as her—every hound-dog in the village must have taken some kind of a crack at that one.

Once upon a fucking time—

No wonder she was so shy.

Right?

If she came back tomorrow, that would be a very good sign, otherwise, she would be gone for good—or at least until Éliott had given up, presumably to go home or just moving on, or something like that. It would be very hard for her to avoid the place and abandon her friend the hermit. Not for very long. Odds were, she just couldn’t do it, but then he hadn’t been able to do it either. Knowing that she didn’t have too many real friends herself didn’t help much either. Then again, everyone in town probably knew her—and sympathized without quite knowing what to do about it. This was, of course, merely an assumption.

Fuck.

End

Previous.

Chapter One, Scene One.