"Be right with ya," Pults called.

Fisher walked past the reception desk, turned at a copy machine/coffee room, and stood in Pults's doorway. Pults was sitting on the edge of his desk, one sock and shoe off, clipping the toenail on his big toe. Behind Pults was a floor-to-ceiling bookcase packed to overflowing. Fisher saw some Herodotus and Plutarch, dozens of World War II and Civil War history books, Shakespeare's sonnets, and a compendium of Three Stoogestrivia. Clearly Pults was well-read and had eclectic taste. Beside the bookcase was a five-by-seven picture of a dog, a bichon frise, Fisher guessed. It was wearing a superman costume with the word SNOWBALL emblazoned across the front.

"Hey, hi there," Pults said, looking up. "I'll be right--"

"That's okay," Fisher said. "This won't take long. You had lunch with a man named Peter a couple weeks ago at Brulerie St-Denis. As far as I can tell, you were the last man to see him alive."

Pults squinted at Fisher for a few seconds, slipped his sock and shoe back on, then limped around his desk and plopped down in his chair. "Peter's dead?"

Pults looked genuinely surprised. Fisher nodded.

"And who are you?"

Fisher had already given his approach a lot of thought. Both his gut and Pults's personnel file told Fisher the former RCMP detective was an honest man. If he had anything to do with Peter's death, it was probably unintentional. Plus, Pults, being a cop, had heard a lifetime of crap from criminals trying to get over on him. Fisher's best chance was to simply lay his cards on the table and ask for the man's help.

"My name is Sam. I'm Peter's brother."

"Yeah? Huh. Funny, Peter never mentioned a brother."

"He never mentioned a private detective to me."

"Can you prove it?" Pults asked.

"What'd you have in mind? An old Christmas card?"

"You guys had a cat when you were kids. What was its name?"

Interesting,Fisher thought. Pults's question implied more than a simple business relationship, but a friendship.

"Pod," Fisher said. "Short for Tripod. He lost his right front leg in a raccoon trap in the woods behind our house. Peter found him, ran home with him, and pestered our mom till she gave in and let us keep him."

"And how'd he stop the bleeding?"

"He didn't. I did. Used the rubber tubing off my sling-shot."

Pults smiled, showing a gap between his front teeth the width of a nickel's edge. "Man, I always liked that story. Tell me what happened to Peter."

Fisher did. After he finished, Pults was silent for a few seconds. He clasped his hands on top of his desk blotter, dipped his chin, and shook his head. "I should have gone with him. This goddamned hip . . ."

"Gone where?" Fisher asked. "Start at the beginning."

He and Peter were business partners, Pults explained, and had been for nearly two years. He was Peter's link to the RCMP and the Canadian underworld, which Pults knew inside and out after two decades. Peter paid him under the table and kept their relationship off the books.

"He played his cards close to the vest," Pults said.

"Runs in the family."

"Anyway, he had a lot of big clients. When he had something for me, I'd handle it. It wasn't often, but it was enough to keep me in salmon lures and fishing trips."

"Which explains your business's low traffic."

"Yeah. I've got a decent pension, so whatever Peter tossed my way was gravy. This last thing, though, was a different animal."

"How so?"

Pults opened his top desk drawer, withdrew a manila folder, and slipped a newspaper clipping from it. He handed it to Fisher, who scanned the article, which included a picture of a woman. She had long black hair, delicate cheekbones, a nose with an ever-so-slight bump in it, and flashing brown eyes. Fisher read the picture's caption and looked up at Pults in surprise. "Carmen Hayes? You're kidding?"

Pults shook his head. "Price, Carmen's father, hired Peter to find her."

Four months earlier, the twenty-eight-year-old daughter of Price Hayes had disappeared on a trip to Montreal. While Price Hayes was infamous--a colorful and crotchety old-money Texas oil baron with a family name as old as Sam Houston's--his daughter, Carmen, was renowned, but only within her chosen field, hydrogeology, the study of how fluid moves through and affects rock. Since graduating from college, Carmen had worked in the exploration division of her father's company.

According to Price Hayes, his daughter had responded to a corporate headhunter's invitation to meet with the CEO of Akono Oil, a Japanese firm specializing in deep-water petroleum exploration and extraction. The day after arriving in Montreal, Carmen disappeared. Through its general counsel, Akono Oil claimed it never extended such an offer to Carmen, and none of its corporate staff had been in Montreal during that time.

Both the FBI and the RCMP had worked the case with fervor, turning over every rock and every lead, large and small, but to no avail. No sign of Carmen could be found. Her trail ended the moment she stepped out of her hotel that morning. For the first month after her disappearance, the mystery of Carmen Hayes had been a regular on every cable news channel and tabloid show.

"Mr. Hayes had pushed and rousted every government official he could get on the phone on either side of the border," Pults said. "But there was nothing they could do. Before he hired Peter, Price had gone through three other private investigators, some of the biggest and best in the business."

"How long had Peter been on it?"

"About a month."

"And?"

"And I think he had something. He didn't share much with me, and that had me worried. He said it was for my own good. He was looking at a man named Aldric Legard."

"I've heard the name," Fisher said. "Quebec Mafia."

"Right. A brutal son of a bitch. Was the number two man until one night five or six years ago. He and the boss are sitting down to a nice dinner of potage aux pois chiches. The boss had a spoonful of it halfway to his mouth when Legard jammed a stiletto into his eye. Boss goes headfirst into the potage,Legard keeps eating. Piece of cake."

"That'll put you off your soup," Fisher said.

"And then some. So, Legard moves to number one and starts shaking up the business. The old boss was into contracts, unions, high-end escort services, and so on. Legard ditches all that and starts up with heroin, coke, and white slavery."

"Pardon me?"

"White girls, late teens or early twenties, mostly blondes, shipped over to Indonesia and the Middle East for stripping or sex--or both. Legard has quite a customer base. He even takes requests: height, weight, eye color . . . you know. Legard's also--"

"How many?" Fisher said.

"Girls?" Pults shrugged. "Who can say? Most of them live off the grid. They disappear, and no one notices except their friends--who rarely report anything, given the way they feel about police. If I had to guess at a number, though . . . Well into the hundreds."

"Christ," Fisher said. "What else?"

"Legard's also elbow deep in Ottawa. He's on a first name basis with half the House of Commons. Just a rumor, of course, but it would explain why he's not locked up in some hole somewhere."

"So Peter thought Legard had snatched Carmen Hayes?"

"That's my guess, but she doesn't fit the profile: brunette, closer to thirty than twenty. Most of Legard's acquisitions are runaways or street kids. I think Peter figured Legard had been contracted to snatch Carmen and deliver her somewhere for someone. Not a regular customer. If you want someone kidnapped, why not go to someone who's done it a lot?"