Monday Mourning

Was Catts ever in the frame when the footage was jumpy? If so, who was filming?

I’d been viewing tapes for almost three hours when I spotted the scene I was looking for.

The camera cut on and swept the room with a bobbing motion.

A girl lay stretched on Catts’s table, wrists and ankles bound by leather restraints. Behind her someone had placed a mirror, rectangular, approximately twelve by twenty-four inches.

Catts was in the frame, back to the lens.

My scalp tingled.

Rocketing to my feet, I hit REWIND, then PLAY.

As the lens crossed a point in its arc, I could see a murky figure reflected in the glass.

Menard?

Reversing again, I inched the tape forward in slo-mo, froze the frame.

My hopes plummeted.

“Shit!”

Though grainy and partially eclipsed, the mirror image of the face squinting into the viewfinder across the room was recognizable.

Anique Pomerleau.

“Very effective, you sick bastard.” My voice rang bitter in the empty room. “Force one prisoner to film while you torture another.”

I tried watching more footage, but couldn’t sit still. Like a toddler on a Twinkie high, I kept bounding up, checking my office phone, scanning the corridor.

After twenty minutes I returned to my office, nearly nauseous with anger and anxiety.

I began an article on the Stockholm syndrome, but unbidden images sucked my focus from the page.

Anique Pomerleau scurrying past Neal Catts’s parlor. Tawny McGee begging to be taken from the hospital. Colleen Stan cowering in a coffin under a bed.

I thought about them, sealed in claustrophobic blackness, petrified, naked, alone. Cameron Hooker had hung and stretched Colleen Stan, whipped her, shocked her with electric wires until her skin blistered. Neal Catts had controlled his victims in identical ways, using sensory deprivation, terror, and pain to break them.

I tried to imagine the ordeal these women had endured. Had they lain in the dark listening to the sound of their own breathing? To the hammering of their own hearts? Had they known day from night? Had they felt terror at each rattling of the lock? Had they abandoned hope? Had memories of their former lives slipped from them with time, like fog slowly evaporating into morning air?

Something hardened inside me. I forced myself to concentrate.

As with the tapes, I began taking notes while reading.

Bondage. Magnification of sexual tension by physical restriction of movement.

Sadomasochism. Generation of sexual excitement by giving and/or receiving pain. In the pathological extreme, kidnapping, imprisonment, imposition of involuntary servitude.

The Stockholm syndrome.

I began an outline of the process, adding points as I moved from article to article.

One. Abduction followed by isolation. Victim confined, stripped, humiliated, degraded.

Two. Use of physical and or sexual abuse. Victim made to feel vulnerable.

Three. Removal of normal daylight patterns. Victim kept in continual darkness or light. Use of blindfolds, boxes, hoods.

Four. Destruction of privacy. Defecation, urination, menstruation controlled or observed by captor.

Five. Control and reduction of food and water. Development of dependency on the captor.

Ryan called at three. They’d searched every inch of the hospital. The women were not there.

I returned to my research.

Six. Imposition of unpredictable punishment. Victim denied explanation or rationale.

Seven. Requirement of permission. Victim must ask to eat, speak, stand, etc.

Eight. Lasting pattern of sexual and physical abuse. Victim becomes convinced of permanence of fate.

Nine. Continued isolation. Captor is victim’s sole source of contact, information.

Ryan phoned again at four.

“Mrs. McGee and Sandra are here.”

“You’ve spoken with them.”

“Yes.”

“How did they take it?”

“The mother was distraught. The daughter was furious.”

“Where are they now?”

“I’ve checked them into the Delta Hotel.”

“Did Tawny know anyone in Montreal?”

“According to Sandra, Tawny’s best friend in Maniwaki had cousins in one of the west island burbs. I’m running that down now.”

An idea.

“McGee and Pomerleau knew Catts was dead. Maybe that house was the one place they felt safe.”

“Great minds, Brennan. But no go. I’ve had it checked. The place was empty. I’ll call if anything breaks.”

I returned to the journals.

Ten. Threats of harm to family and relatives.

Eleven. Threats of transfer to more severe captor.

Twelve. Irrelevant leniency. Victim granted unexplained privileges, gifts, periods of freedom.

Thirteen. Unexpected appearances. Establishment of sense of captor’s omnipresence.

At six-thirty my cell phone rang.

The voice gave me that heart-plunge you feel diving on a roller coaster.

“‘D’ wants you.” Female. Strongly accented English.

“Anique?”

“She needs help.”

“I’m glad you called.” I kept my tone casual. “We’re very concerned about you.”

“‘D’ wouldn’t stay at that hospital.”

“Are you all right?”

“‘D’ may harm herself.”

“Where are you?”

“Home.”

Where was home for Pomerleau? Mascouche? Pointe-St-Charles?

“You’re safe?”

“‘D’ wants you.”

“Tell me where.” I grabbed a pen.

“De Sébastopol.”