"You own strip bars."

"Last I checked, exotic dancing's still legal in this country. Every one of my girls is over eighteen." Bastarache spoke with a cadence similar to Hippo's.

"You sure of that?"

"I check ID's."

"One or two manage to slip under your radar?"

Bastarache crimped his lips tightly and breathed through his nose. It made a wheezing sound.

"Way under. Sweet sixteen. I wonder. She have the braces off yet?"

A flush crept north from Bastarache's collar. "The kid lied."

Ryan clucked and gave a short wag of his head. "Kids today."

"She wasn't complaining."

"You like the young stuff, Dave?"

"The kid swore she was twenty-three."

"Age-appropriate for a guy like you."

"Look, there's two kinds of women in this world. Those you slip it to and those you take home to Sunday dinner. This chick wasn't going to Grand-mere's for pot roast, know what I'm saying?"

"You nailed the third type."

Bastarache tipped his head.

"Jail bait."

The flush spread upward to Bastarache's face. "Same old recycled bulls.h.i.t. She said she was legal. What you want me to do, check her teeth?"

"How about hooking? That legal?"

"A girl leaves the bar, we got no control over her personal life."

Ryan responded with silence, knowing most interviewees feel compelled to fill it. Bastarache wasn't one of them.

"We've got some girls missing down our way," Ryan continued. "Some dead ones. You know anything about that?"

"Got no ties to Montreal."

Ryan used another interrogation trick I'd seen him employ. Sudden switch of topic.

"You like movies, Dave?"

"What?"

"Lights! Camera! Action!"

"What the h.e.l.l are you talking about?"

"Let me guess. You decided to branch out. Go Hollywood."

Bastarache's hands were resting on the table, fingers interlaced like short, fat sausages. At Ryan's question, the sausages tightened.

"Bare t.i.t on a pole. That's pretty low-rent action."

Bastarache glowered mutely.

"Motion pictures. That's the big time."

"You're G.o.dd.a.m.n crazy."

"Let's just say, for argument's sake, you got a kid eager to earn a few bucks. You propose a little poontang on camera. She goes along."

"What?"

"Am I going too fast for you, Dave?"

"What are we talking about here?"

"You know what I'm talking about."

"p.o.r.n flicks?"

"Of a very special genre."

"You lost me, pal."

Ryan's voice turned glacial. "I'm talking kiddie p.o.r.n, Dave. Children."

Bastarache disengaged his hands and slapped them down on the table. "I. Don't. Mess. With. Kids."

The guard poked his head into the room. "We good here?"

"Jim dandy," Ryan said.

While Bastarache locked glares with Ryan, I observed him covertly. The rolls in his neck and stomach looked hard and his arms were corded with muscle. The guy wasn't the lardo I'd first taken him for.

Never breaking eye contact with Bastarache, Ryan reached into a pocket and withdrew one of several stills I'd printed from the video in Cormier's Vintage Vintage folder. Wordlessly, he slid the print across the table. folder. Wordlessly, he slid the print across the table.

Bastarache looked down at the girl on the bench. I watched his body language. Saw no tensing.

"You check this little girl's ID?" Ryan asked.

"I never laid eyes on her."

"What's her name?"

"I told you." The piggy eyes rolled up. "I never met the young lady."

"You know a photographer named Stanislas Cormier?"

"Sorry." Bastarache started running a thumbnail through a scratch on the tabletop.

Ryan pointed at the print. "Got this from Cormier's computer. Part of a nasty little video. Drive holds quite a collection."

"The world's full of degenerates."

"That your house?"

The thumbnail froze. "What the f.u.c.k are you talking about?"

"Nice landscaping."

Bastarache squinted at the print, then flicked it toward Ryan with one meaty finger.

"What if it is? I was barely out of high school when this kid was playing Indian princess."

A tiny bell pinged in my head. What was wrong there? I set it aside until later.

One by one, Ryan laid out the photos of Phoebe Quincy, Kelly Sicard, Claudine Cloquet, and the facial reconstruction of the girl from the Riviere des Mille iles. Bastarache barely glanced at the faces.

"Sorry, pal. Wish I could help you."

Ryan added autopsy shots of the Lac des Deux Montagnes floater and the girl from the Dorval sh.o.r.eline.

"Jesus friggin' Christ." Bastarache blinked, but didn't look away.

Ryan tapped the photos of Quincy and Sicard. "These girls also appear in Cormier's collection." Not exactly true for Quincy, but close enough. "They have now vanished. I want to know why."

"I'll say it one more time. I don't know s.h.i.t about p.o.r.n flicks or missing kids."

Bastarache glanced up at the ceiling. Seeking composure? Clever answers? When his face came down it was devoid of expression.

"You employ a pair of cretins named Babin and Mulally?" Ryan pulled another topical switch.

"I am now going to await the arrival of counsel. Much as I'm enjoying this, it's time I roll outta here. Got a business to run."

Ryan leaned back and folded his arms.

"You surprise me, Dave. Sensitive guy like you. I figured you'd still be in mourning for your wife."

Was it my imagination, or did Bastarache tense at Ryan's reference to Obeline?

"But then, h.e.l.l, it's been almost a week."

Two beefy palms came up. "Don't get me wrong. I'm not the coldhearted b.a.s.t.a.r.d you think I am. I feel it. But my wife's pa.s.sing was no shocker. The woman's been suicidal for years."

"That why you had to tune her up now and then? To reinvigorate her zest for life?"

Bastarache drilled Ryan with a porcine stare. Relaced his fingers. "My lawyer will have me out of here before you hit the on-ramp to the forty."

I looked at Ryan, willing him to confront Bastarache with the contact sheet of Evangeline. He didn't.

"Your lawyer has plenty of time." Ryan held Bastarache's stare. "CSU's at your place right now. When I leave here, I'll be helping them take your life apart, nail by nail."

"f.u.c.k you."

"No, Dave." Ryan spoke with a voice of pure steel. "We find one name, one phone number, one snapshot of a kid in a two-piece swimsuit, you'll be so f.u.c.ked you'll wish your parents had decided on celibacy."

Shoving back his chair, Ryan rose. I followed. We were at the door when Bastarache barked, "You haven't a clue what's going on."

We both stopped and turned.

"How 'bout you tell me, then," Ryan said.

"These girls call themselves performance artists. Every single one's got dreams of being the next Madonna." Bastarache shook his head. "Artists, my a.s.s. They're vipers. You block 'em, they'll take you off at the d.i.c.k."

Though I'd promised to remain mute, the man was so repugnant I couldn't hold myself back.

"How about Evangeline Landry? She ask to appear in one of your dirty little films?"

The sausage fingers went so tight the knuckles bulged yellow-white. Again, the lips crimped. After several wheezy nasal intakes, Bastarache replied to Ryan, "You're way off base."

"Really?" Loathing glazed my response Still Bastarache ignored me. "You're so far off base you might as well be in Botswana."

"Where should should we be looking, Mr. Bastarache?" I asked. we be looking, Mr. Bastarache?" I asked.

Finally, the response was directed at me.

"Not in my backyard, baby." A serpentine vein pumped the midline of Bastarache's forehead.

Ryan and I both turned our backs.

"Look in your own motherf.u.c.king backyard."

33.