CARBON COPY CHAPTER 1 PART 5

The visits to Claude followed each other over the weeks as well as the anecdotes of a depraved life that no one could have believed to be that of this man. Claude's past revealed an instability that may not have been a model for him, but one that did not really explain his crime. Slowly, Cameron began to doubt the writer's guilt.
At the end of a month to visit the prisoner, Cameron received his publishing contract that his editor had sent him. He read it again, leaning on the Avallon bar.
--How was the pastor killed? Charlie asked.
This curiosity surprised Cameron, who looked up from his paperwork. The city's media had widely disseminated the evidence against Cyriltochter.
"A meat knife was found in the family room," Cameron explained.
-- There were his prints on it? Charlie asked.
"Better than that, the knife rested in Claude's hand, who was sitting in an armchair patiently waiting for the police," replied Cameron.
The journalist did not know any more. The writer had jealously kept his secret about what had happened that day. Then, maybe to change the subject:
--Do you have family? Charlie asked.
-- Yes, my two parents, I was only son. I was raised in NDG, the ghetto of the poor Anglos, he says in French.
Cameron laughed at his joke that once again Charlie did not understand.
-- Montreal, he says smiling, after high school, I studied in French at the university. For my parents, it was very important.
-- Where are they ?
"In Florida for six years, a good retirement life, at least for my father, who was a trade unionist for forty years," the journalist explained.
He watched her amused. She was trying to make connections between them. The awkwardness of this young girl seduced him. He realized that his mind had been indifferent to this Eve's daughter until the last minute. Behind this masculine physiognomy, he felt a timid beginning of desire. Slightly helpless, he did not know what to say because he had not had a "real" conversation with a woman since college.
Without thinking, Cameron returned the question to Charlie.
"No, my parents are dead," she said, when I was six years old, in a plane crash. I had a big sister, but I have not seen her for a long time ... I think she died today.
On returning to the hotel, on Charlie's advice, Cameron thought back to Claude's latest book that he had just started reading. This novel was, according to her, very different from what the author had written during his life. The journalist found nothing of interest there, except an unexpected interest in 19th century literature. The Law related the development of a fictional primitive society from the point of view of a scientist of the last century who invented a time machine. This scholar often evoked books such as Les Illusions Perdues by Balzac, Bel ami by Maupassant or La Recherche by Proust.
Cameron did not know the connection between all these books, but something in the man's writing had touched him. She had nothing to do with the crazy escapades of drugs and sex he was collecting. Thinking back to his own past in the basement bars of Montreal, Cameron wondered if that was what united him to Claude.