The Storm Murders (35 page)

“That’s what I thought,” Mathers said, although only after he spoke did he realize that he had been too intimidated to ask the question himself.

The retired detective shrugged. “If for no other reason,” he admitted, “than to see who would show up to try and sell it to me. Now, I’ll never find that out. But, yeah, I was serious. I can use another barn.”

They had to move aside for a vehicle to back up to the burning pickup. The firefighters wanted that flame out to prevent an explosion, although the charred metal suggested that the gas tank had already been compromised. Probably not a lot of gas had been left in it.

The three men reformed their circle with a slightly different viewing angle of the twin fires to barn and home.

“So what do you think,
É
mile? We’ve been scratching our heads trying to figure how this could have anything to do with our murders. We’ve fired off nothing but blanks so far.”

“Did they make any noise, your blanks? I wouldn’t think so. A hospital owns the property now. To suggest that they might burn their holdings to the ground to collect on the insurance strikes me as ludicrous. I know it’s not a great market in agriculture right now, but the death knell hasn’t been sounded. The property has to be worth more with two sound buildings on it than with none. So you know who that implicates.”

Borde appeared to be nodding in agreement so Mathers asked the question.

“Who?”

Borde answered. “Buyers.”

“The property is worth less now,” Cinq-Mars concurred, “and the seller might be even more motivated than before. So I hate to implicate our local farmers, but that’s the first place I’d go looking. I let them know that I’d be willing to buy the barn, but that wasn’t enough to save it, I guess.”

“I’ll pass that on to whomever gets the case. It won’t be me.”

“The arsonist got away with it. Your only hope is an eyewitness. The odds on that? Finding a winning lottery ticket in a snowbank is easier.”

With no dispute of the argument, they permitted themselves to observe the blaze. The robustness of the flames would shift from one section of each building to the next, sprout here and appear to diminish there, then be fanned to a new brightness and rage all over again. Fortunately, the smoke dissipated in a constant direction, they didn’t have to duck it, although sometimes it did gather itself and strike for the ground well beyond where they were standing, only to billow up again. With no other buildings within two kilometers, and with the owners already long in the grave, the fire was almost a peaceful thing, a sound and a fury quite fascinating in its evolution and slow demise.

Sergeant Detective Bill Mathers was the first to turn impatient. “So,” he inquired, “nothing for us here, I guess.”

“Guess not,” Borde acknowledged.

Cinq-Mars hesitated. “Bill, you said that the dogs and the cat were found. Or the cats and the dog, whatever it was. Do you know where, precisely?”

“That would be my people who located them,
É
mile,” Captain Borde interjected. Unlike the other two, he was in uniform, and his overcoat was the same grim green as the SQ tunic. “I could find that out soon enough.”

“Why?” Mathers wanted to know.

“All part of the killer’s mindset. Granted, we don’t have much to go on. If he dropped them a short distance away that indicates one set of parameters. Perhaps that he was hurrying. Or just didn’t care. But if he dropped them into the snow a long way off, then he really was trying to keep them concealed forever. If he thought that way it gives us a different set of mental parameters.” He looked over at Mathers. “If he dropped the animals and the accelerant in the same spot, is that coincidence or is that the same person doing it? Good question, no? In a case like this, when we have nothing, I want to keep looking for something, anything. I found out today that the people killed in Geraldine, Alabama, and in New Orleans, Louisiana, were both visited prior to their deaths by an insurance adjustor, who presumably was there to assay the value of the destruction to their property. Cops dismissed the information and never took it a step further. So that’s what I’m looking for, Bill. The evidence we’re missing not because it’s not there, but because it’s been overlooked.”
É
mile shot a glance at him, then chose to apologize. “Sorry. I’m in a mood today. I didn’t mean to lecture.” To Borde, he explained, “An agent for the FBI, someone I worked with down south, was found murdered this morning.”

“Sorry to hear that. The adjustor thing is an interesting angle though.”

“Why’s that?”

“This place. It didn’t need one before the Lumens were murdered. But it’s going to need one now. I’m not serious, but I’m pointing that out. Maybe he’s in the neighborhood. Might be interesting to see who shows.”

“I see. You want our killer to just appear on our doorstep.”

“Admit it,
É
mile. That would be nice.” The three enjoyed a brief chuckle, but they were moving to go their separate ways. “Bill,” Borde said to Mathers, “if you don’t mind, I’ll get my people to send the answer on
É
mile’s request to you. That way, I don’t have to explain sending information off to a civilian.”

“No problem. I’ll pass it along.”

“Gentlemen, next time, let’s bring marshmallows. Have a great day.”

Each man returned to his vehicle, and
É
mile Cinq-Mars, last in, was positioned to be the first out, and led them back to the highway where they split up,
É
mile going one way, the Montreal and SQ policeman the other.

TWENTY SIX

Where farmland yielded to a spruce forest, at the crest of a rise,
É
mile Cinq-Mars pulled over. He didn’t know why. Not a hunch or the need for a quiet moment, yet he felt that he was responding to an inner notion that, although amorphous, was somehow compelling. Stepping out, looking back over the plateau under its snow blanket, he observed the buildings still spewing smoke onto the breeze and the gathering gloom of dusk. The sun was setting behind him and behind the spruce, the darkness gaining upon a land that remained shot through with a ruddy glow of light. He felt, if anything, nostalgic, but had trouble putting a finger on his mood.

Nostalgic?
he pondered.
For what?

That was the question.

Not for the day, as it was just another one on the cusp of spring, soon to be over. Better weather, if nothing else, was promised for the coming weeks, and he felt no nostalgia for winter. Although the hour and the red sun suggested a finality, the expiration of an allotted moment—he acknowledged that the day brought the news of Vira Sivak’s death and that was likely part of this—but something else, vaguely mysterious and quaint, was taking a tentative hold on his sensibilities.

Cinq-Mars tried to scratch away at his mood. The day was ending, and the grand epic that is winter in the north was terminating as well, so there was that, and in following that line he soon realized where his nostalgic thread was guiding him. Way in the distance, mere pinpricks now, the taillights from Borde’s and Mathers’s cars shone. Then even those infinitesimal dots vanished as Venus and the first stars of the evening emerged. So was that it then? He was going home, and those two might be heading home to their wives also, and in Mathers’s case to his kids as well, but the men remained on the job, and in the morning they’d wake up to their responsibilities to investigate and to protect. Whereas he would not. Cinq-Mars recognized that he was pleased to be working this case despite it’s sluggish and even nonexistent progress, but for the first time since retiring he was truly missing both his badge and his duties, even his Glockmeister. In the months that passed since retirement, he’d been too distracted by cracked ribs and pneumonia, and the announcement by his wife that she might be done with him, to take any time to simply say goodbye to his long and eventful career, to reassess, and to get on with something new. This case yanked him right out of his new life and dropped him into a time warp among aliens. Thanks to the case he could almost believe that he was a legitimate policeman again. On a hillock at dusk, observing the fire diminish to smoke,
É
mile Cinq-Mars understood, really for the first time, that he was a detective no more, and for the first time, with an appropriate level of honesty, he was saying goodbye to his long career, and more importantly, to the life he’d led and even to the person he understood himself to be.

All that wasn’t so bad, he considered. Sandra had shocked him more, perhaps, by saying that she was done with horses than she did when she let him know that she might be finished with him. Without horses, whatever came next for her would be a complete rebuild, a transformation. Surely the same held true for him. His change had been thrust upon him, partly by circumstance, but primarily by time, whereas Sandra wanted to reshape her outlook, redistribute her priorities, develop alternate routines and charter unknown territory if for no other reason than to do so. She honored change over routine or familiarity. Given his own situation he saw the virtue in that, both for her, and by extension, for himself. So this wasn’t so bad. If she was willing to let him be a part of her next move in life, then he was at a juncture when he could thoroughly accommodate whatever she might choose.

Down in his coat pocket, his fingers discovered an old stick of gum. He took it out and studied it in the gloaming to ascertain that the wrapper hadn’t been compromised, then removed it from the sheath, folded it in half, and dropped it into his mouth. Cinq-Mars chewed on that as he mulled his life.

As the day’s last light vanished and the smoky fire was close to being extinguished, he considered the lives of the four who died on that farm. Morris and Adele Lumen, Officers Ron Bouvard and Marc Casgrain. A sorry, wretched business. Had it been him in similar circumstances dispatched to answer a call as a young policeman in uniform, his own life might have been snuffed out as quickly. Those boys would never know the blessings of a long and honorable career, or have families, or grow, like him, old. And the Lumens, what threshold had they crossed during their sojourn on earth to warrant such a swift, brutal demise? What linked them to the violent deaths of others? What developments brought them from who knows where—Nebraska, he was told, via Everardo flores, although some said the Maritimes, but really nobody knew—from who knows where, then, to land on a farm in Quebec now reduced to cinders and ash? And why, he asked himself point-blank, couldn’t he solve this are?

Maybe if he was still a cop, able to tap into available resources and personnel, maybe then he could solve this. Stuck on his own on a farm, he had given it the old college try, but he felt much like a collegian suddenly thrust into a workforce and out of his element. In any case, excuses aside, he failed.

Cinq-Mars considered his situation comparable to one of those impossible crosswords that so flummoxed him these days. When he peeked at the answers, he understood the clues, but when the next crossword came in, once again he could not comprehend what on earth was being asked. He didn’t really want to think this way, yet
É
mile was convinced that persons less intelligent than himself (although he was beginning to have his doubts about that), less well read, who possessed inferior vocabularies to his own were far more astute at the game. He didn’t get that. He supposed that if he was ever going to get the knack of these infernal things he would have to learn the logic behind the clues. That’s what he didn’t grasp now, and so he was deeply frustrated.

He decided that he wasn’t enjoying the stale stick of gum so much, spit it out, and climbed back into his Jeep. He turned the motor on, let the heat blast him and tipped the toggle switch to warm his seat. So what if the damn car burst into flames and scorched his rear end? One more fire on the evening air, big deal. He put the vehicle into drive and moved it about a foot when he clamped down on the brake pedal again and backed up that same short distance off the road.

What had he been telling himself?

An unprovoked excitement drifted across the pores of his forearms, all the way under his down coat and shirt.

To do crosswords, he’d have to learn the particular language of the clues.

One more thing: once he read the answers, he understood the clues.

He was not convinced that he could turn around his success at crossword puzzles, but was his inner self not speaking to him across a widening chasm?

He had to find the answers to understand the clues.

He’d been going at this the wrong way around! He was hoping for clues to lead him to answers, as they did in every other case he’d ever investigated. This one, though, was different, and required a different approach. Cheat. Go straight to the answers. Figure out the clues later.

But how to do that?

As exciting as the possibility seemed, it also appeared unfathomable.

É
mile checked his watch. The correct time was available to him on the car’s dash, but he wanted the old familiar comfort of looking at the hands of a watch to tell him what he needed to know. Yet that time check became protracted, and he took a moment to admire, once again, his elegant timepiece.

What, he wondered, am I doing wearing such a thing? All that money on his wrist. A gift, but a gift from people who hated him, admired him, resented him, loved him, dismissed him, revered him, some of whom were so glad that he was leaving his job they’d chipped in to buy him the watch. What did he care for all that sentiment worn on his wrist? Next to nothing. But he admired the timepiece. The real question though wasn’t what he was doing by wearing an instrument of such obvious value on his wrist, but what was he doing
enjoying
it so much.

Times, if he could permit himself the pun, change.

So did he.

He started the drive home, feeling cautious, alert, awaiting bright answers.

He didn’t need to assess more clues. They weren’t going to help much. He only needed answers. Thinking that way, he soon felt freer, brighter, more attuned to himself and, as a consequence, to his case. He felt that if he didn’t solve the puzzle by the time he went to bed that night, he would most likely wake up in the morning with the whole thing figured out. Just like that. Like magic.