The Marble Mask

Chapter 15

I slowly slid my stockinged feet under gail’s bottom, careful not to spill the mug of soup cradled in my hands. We were sitting opposite one another on an overstuffed couch in her condo outside Montpelier, wrapped in heavy terry cloth robes, our legs entwined, our bodies tired and pampered from making love and sitting too long in a hot tub afterward. I’d taken a short break from the investigation to allow Lacombe and his bunch time to build a case against Marcel Deschamps, and to report our progress to Bill Allard in Waterbury, just a short drive from Gail’s.

As usual, she was analyzing the recent past in practical political terms. “This must have made your various bosses happy,” she said. “It’s not every day you get handed a half-century-old homicide and solve it overnight. I heard the governor blowing VBI’s horn on the news this afternoon-talking about how well a tactical approach can cut through the red tape.”

I let the strong aroma of hot soup fill my nostrils before taking a cautious sip. “I hope he doesn’t have to apologize later,” I said after a pause.

Her eyebrows rose. “Is there a chance of that?”

I tried a vague approach. “It’s up to the prosecutors now. It is an extradition case, after all-we can’t have at him unless the Canadians think there’s just cause. You know how that can go.”

I should have known better. Her expression turned serious. “You sound like the case might be shaky.”

“There are questions. We all think this came together pretty easily.”

“Marcel Deschamps didn’t do it?”

I made a face and shrugged. “The evidence said he did. Means, motive, and opportunity are in place. It even makes sense logically, sort of.”

“But you’re not convinced,” she concluded.

“I’ve still got inquiries going,” I admitted. “That’s what I told Bill this afternoon. Despite the supposed straight line between Jean being murdered and his son killing him, there’re a lot of messy, unexplained details and a couple of awfully convenient coincidences.”

“Was Bill sympathetic?”

“More or less. He wanted assurances that (a) nothing I had going would unnecessarily upset the apple cart, and that (b) Willy wasn’t involved in any of it.”

Gail laughed. “I can’t blame him there. What did you tell him?”

“I lied on both counts. Willy’s one of the best diggers I know, and how the hell do I know if we’ll upset any apple carts? We might. We might not.”

She gave me a rueful smile. “Hardly the best start to a new career.”

“You should know.”

It was an unnecessarily pointed comment, which she absorbed thoughtfully, concentrating on the contents of her own mug. Just a few months earlier, she’d been a newly hired deputy state’s attorney. Unfortunately, she’d quickly found it an awkward fit, given her penchant for championing the disadvantaged, and had locked horns with her boss during her first major case, winning in court and being all but fired in the process. Her advice on new careers, therefore, carried some cautionary baggage.

But I wasn’t guiltless, either. I hadn’t left a lifelong job as a municipal cop just because VBI suddenly came knocking. I’d been falsely accused of a theft a while back-a headline maker that a hungry deputy attorney general had tried and failed to mold to his political advantage. During the mudslinging, he’d suggested that I’d committed the theft out of feelings of inadequacy-being a frustrated, aging flatfoot living with a rich, attractive, upwardly mobile younger woman.

Baloney, as the woman in question and I had rationally assured each other. But the portrait had stung, and when VBI became a reality, I joined as much out of pride as for its mission’s altruism. That tainted motivation continued to nag me, especially now that we were living apart once more and in distant towns for months at a time. In Brattleboro, whether under the same roof or not, we’d seen each other all the time. Ever since those opportunities had become more haphazard, they’d been laden with doubts and worries with no real basis in fact.

Which is why I’d asked Gail from my hospital bed how we were doing.

Apparently, my rudeness had now given her pause. “I told you how I felt about us after they pulled you out of the snow,” she began almost timidly. “But I didn’t ask you the same question. Should I have?”

I shook my head, irritated with myself. “Only if you’d wanted the same answer. I’m sorry about that crack-not sure where it came from.”

“I am,” she said more confidently. “You’ve spent your entire professional life as an insider-the hometown cop. Now you’re on the outside, trying to win the trust of everyone you meet, including your own bosses. You’ve got no base, no organization, a patchwork squad, and a seriously distracted girlfriend.”

I wagged a finger at her. “Better not let your feminist friends hear you say that.”

She poked me with her toe. “They’re as sentimental as the next person. What do you think, though? Are we heading for a crash with all this career stuff, or can we make it work?”

I wanted to choose my words carefully this time. “We’ve gone through a lot worse. I’d like to think we can beat this, too. Might take some adjusting-now and then.”

She smiled warmly and snuggled down more securely into the pillows behind her. “I can do that. Tell me about Willy and Sam.”

I laughed at the abrupt shift. “I’m more of a wishful thinker there. It’s tough to tell-they’re so buttoned down about it. He’s softened up a lot, though, so selfishly speaking, I hope they can pull it off. And they are fun to watch-hardheads in love. I guess time’ll tell.”

Along with everyone else I knew, Gail didn’t like Willy Kunkle, but she also couldn’t help looking pleased. “And the team in general?”

“I like Paul Spraiger. He doesn’t talk unless he has something to say. Gary Smith and I knocked heads early on because of the VBI thing, but I think we’ve made up. And I don’t know about Tom Shanklin, except that he’s done nothing wrong and hasn’t taken any potshots. He seems to be a nice guy. Just keeps his own counsel.”

She appeared satisfied by all that, nodding ever so gently as she sipped her soup.

“Is Montpelier life living up to expectations?” I asked in turn.

Since we’d already addressed our mutual misgivings, the question was less loaded than it might have been ten minutes ago. Gail was relaxed enough now to show real enthusiasm. “Even better. It’s like everything I did before suddenly coming together. All those boards I used to be on, the selectman job, going back to law school, even selling real estate. They all make sense now-being put to use at the same time. I love making things happen that affect the whole state. The hassles are familiar, but the rewards make them more worthwhile.”

“So, you’re happily upwardly mobile,” I said.

She didn’t deny it, which made me feel just the smallest bit mournful. “Who knows?” she answered. “There’s so much going on here, so many bright people… It’s exciting to think of the possibilities.”

It was that, and I knew I was sitting with a woman who had the smarts and drive necessary to be governor or a member of Congress. I therefore couldn’t but wish her well in the pursuit of her dreams-while also casting backward to when things had been quieter and less ambitious. A farmer’s son, I was more attuned to an evolutionary pace-and not so enamored of change for change’s sake, which often seemed to rule in Gail’s new environment. I had never undersold her sense of right and wrong, but it made me nervous to see her so avid about a lifestyle society was largely trained to mistrust. Politicians and lawyer/lobbyists weren’t often credibly combined with integrity and idealism. As one-sided a view as any other prejudice, it still made me uneasy when it involved someone I loved.

Kathy Bartlett waited until I’d settled into one of the chairs in her temporary office on the second floor of the Sûreté building back in Sherbrooke. Paul Spraiger and Gary Smith were already there. I was newly returned from my trip to Vermont.

“The case against Marcel Deschamps is going soft,” she announced.

I glanced at the other two, recalling how I’d told Gail that the governor’s optimism might have been premature. From their neutral expressions, I guessed they’d already been briefed. “I can’t say I’m surprised,” I said. “What’s been going on?”

“I think the crown prosecutor is starting to buy Marcel’s line that he wasn’t in Vermont in ’47, didn’t kill his father, and honestly thought some rival had done him in.”

“Based on what?”

“The video of Marcel’s interrogation,” she explained. “Canadian law demands that all police interrogations be videotaped. After Marcel’s session, Lacombe and company began kicking around how credible he seemed. My counterpart, Boulle, decided he wanted an expert opinion, so he sent the tape to a behavioral science team in Montreal-apparently that’s an option they use now and then. It would drive me nuts.”

Guillaume Boulle was the Sherbrooke crown prosecutor Lacombe kept invoking, and the same man who’d accompanied us the night we’d raided Marcel’s house. I’d heard his and Kathy’s styles were beginning to clash, she being more type-A, and he having a barely veiled contempt for assertive women. This latest glitch wasn’t going to help.

“The report come back yet?” I asked.

She didn’t look happy. “That’s why you’re here. They say he sounds truthful. That he has the right personality for a leader of a bunch of cutthroats, but that he didn’t do this one.”

“And you don’t buy that,” I guessed.

“It’s too fine a line for me. How the hell can you tell if a guy sounds like he either killed or didn’t kill his father half a century ago, especially if he’s ordered hits in the meantime? I think it’s a psycho-babble crock they’ve chosen over hard evidence. Why I don’t know, unless somebody’s playing footsie under the table.”

In the silence following that comment, I could hear the hard drive of her portable computer humming on her desk.

“Kathy,” I said cautiously, “are you blowing off steam, or do you really believe that? ’Cause if you do, you’ve got to act on it.”

She gave me a rueful smile. “I’m a fish out of water here. It pisses me off.”

I didn’t say anything. I could feel the other two looking from one of us to the other, like spectators at a tennis match.

“All right,” she relented. “I don’t really believe there’s any corruption going on. At least I don’t have proof of it. But these guys are so mellow, I’d like to strangle them. I know goddamn well if I had Marcel in the U.S., I could find five shrinks to say those Canadian profilers are full of it. I don’t understand why they’re bending over backward to tank such a strong case.”

I had my own doubts about that strength, which made me duck the debate entirely. “What’re they going to do?” I asked instead.

“They’ve asked him to take a lie detector test.”

Gary Smith laughed. “The head of a crime family? What the hell do they expect?”

“That he might accept,” Kathy explained grimly. “Problem is, if he does-and passes-it means we’re in shit up to our necks.”

Smith’s eyes widened. “You’re kidding. I thought polygraphs weren’t acceptable in court.”

“We’re not talking about court, Gary. We’re talking about the crown prosecutor not pursuing the case because he doesn’t believe the guy’s guilty.”

Gary thought back a moment. “What about all those weapons they found behind the wall-the murder museum? Can’t they make a connection between any of those and Marcel?”

“They’ve been trying,” she told him, “but they’re mostly old hat. The bear trap’s a perfect example-it had traces of human blood on it, but there’s no record of a trap being used in an unsolved crime. The ice pick’s a minor miracle as it is. Marcel’s fingerprints would have decayed by now, but the handle was silver and became permanently etched by the skin oil-pure dumb luck, along with DNA matching being invented in the meantime to pin the blood to Jean Deschamps. Without that, we wouldn’t have gotten this far.”

“How ’bout the lawyer, Picard?” Gary continued. “He was in Stowe two days before they found Deschamps. What’s he say about that?”

I could tell from Kathy’s expression where that was headed. “Sorry,” she said. “He claims he was taking in the sights. A little day trip. ‘People do it all the time,’ to quote him. And in case you were going to ask,” she added, “it’s a no-go putting Marcel in Stowe in 1947-or Picard or Guidry for that matter. They can’t find anyone who’ll admit to knowing where any of them were when Jean was killed.”

I stood up to stop a discussion I knew had no happy outcome, especially if my personal misgivings were going to be called into play. “Then it’s wait and watch time. I take it Marcel’s people haven’t responded to the polygraph offer yet?”

“Right.”

Gary was looking confused. “What does happen if he passes? Don’t we get a shot at him? I thought this was an American case.”

Kathy frowned. “It is, but only if we can extradite him, and that won’t be easy. They’re already muttering about the age of the crime, the lack of witnesses, the suspect’s failing health, and their own lack of enthusiasm as legal stumbling blocks.”

“So what do we do?”

“We keep digging,” I said from the door, “and hope we can turn things around.”

I ran into André Rousseau of the RCMP outside in the hallway a few minutes later.

“You’re back,” he said smoothly. “Good trip?”

“Mostly just reporting to twitchy superiors. They’re nervous about making a good impression.”

“The debut of the VBI? There must be a lot of people hoping you’ll fail.”

I was getting tired of hearing that. “A few. I hear Marcel sounded credible to your behavioral scientists.”

He shook his head. “Not mine-the SQ’s. All very chummy.”

I looked at him sharply. “Meaning?” I asked, Kathy’s similar implication still fresh in my mind.

“Nothing,” Rousseau answered vaguely. “We have a file on Marcel Deschamps that goes back to when he took over-bribery, assault, intimidation, jury tampering, homicide-you name it. He’s been connected to all of it one way or another, although never close enough to put him in jail. And yet he lives here comfortably in a big house, expecting to die of old age. It makes you wonder how that came to be, assuming the local police were on their toes.”

“We have a lot of crooks living like that back home,” I said carefully. “Doesn’t necessarily mean the locals are on the take.”

Rousseau looked at me with feigned shock. “Did I say that?”

He laughed and walked away, leaving me with an unpleasant taste in my mouth. As he’d demonstrated before, he was the foreign element here-the federal outsider from the big city. But I couldn’t in all honesty entirely dismiss what he’d said. It had been known to happen.

The phone jarred me awake, filling me instantly with dread. I opened my eyes, focused on the motel room’s dusky ceiling, and hesitated answering, knowing that midnight calls never bore good news, and that for someone to reach me this far from home boded twice as ill.

“Hello?”

“You are Gunther, of the United States?” The voice was male, low, and barely spoke English.

“Yes.”

“You investigate the Deschamps?”

“Who wants to know?”

He ignored the question, as I thought he might. “Hell’s Angels did not kill Tessier.”

“Who did, then?”

“We meet.”

“What good would that do? I’m just an observer in this country. You need to talk to the police.”

He laughed scornfully. “Then I die. How you think Deschamps get rich in Sherbrooke without the police help?”

That was the third such statement I’d heard in two days. “What if I refuse to meet with you?”

“More people die. Tessier was number one. Now he gone, now the Deschamps bulldog is gone. People have protection no more. We want no more killing.”

“Why don’t you just tell me what’s on your mind here and now and get it over with?”

“I have proof. Otherwise, this is talk only.”

“Where?” I asked after a moment’s hesitation.

“An old jail, abandoned. It is on Rue Cliff, near the gorge. You find this?”

“I have a map.”

“It is near Rue Winter, at the corner. You will see steps to a porch and a door. Go in and we talk.”

“Or go in and have my head blown off.”

I could sense his exasperation as he cursed in French and then added, “Why? You can stop this. Lacombe is your friend. You will talk to him.”

“Call him yourself,” I suggested.

“He will not see me alone, and I do not trust them with him. Only you.”

“I’ll think about it,” I finally said.

“One hour. You be alone, or people die.”

The phone went dead.

I replaced the handset and lay in the dark, thinking. It sounded plausible. The Angels had been blamed for Tessier’s death-maybe they had proof of their innocence and even of someone else’s guilt. Given my suspicions about most of what had fallen into our laps up to now-from Christophe Bossard as Tessier’s unlikely killer to Marcel’s conveniently safeguarded ice pick-I found the nature of this phone call almost irresistible.

Which was probably the whole point.

At home, the solution would have been obvious-round up some backup, get to the site early, and proceed with caution. Here, with suspicions ballooning about the case and the people investigating it, I found myself uncomfortably at sea. I was an organization man, as used to teamwork as a fish to water, and since arriving in Canada, I hadn’t been shut out and information hadn’t been withheld from me. I’d had no complaints.

So why this debate?

I got out of bed, conscious of the one-hour deadline, and turned on the light over the desk by the window. I opened a map and located the address I’d been given. It was north of the gorge, midway along its length, at the bottom of a three-sided, horseshoe-like block of streets. Cliff Street paralleled the gorge.

Still unsure of my actions, I began to dress.

It wouldn’t be the first time a generations-old crime family had found its way into a local police force, however discreetly. Some of the caller’s reserve might even have stemmed from simple paranoia rather than any knowledge of corruption. He was apparently sticking his neck out, indulging in covert diplomacy, hoping to keep the peace between two illegal organizations. It stood to reason he might be a little twitchy, with an old pro like Jean-Luc Tessier being knocked off with such ease.

Especially since Christophe Bossard-the unlikeliest of suspects-was being prosecuted for that crime.

I finished dressing and stood looking down at the map. I had no fear for myself despite the concern I’d voiced to the caller. It didn’t make sense that I should be anyone’s target, and nothing suggested this whole thing wasn’t as simple as it looked. Some guy from their side had something of value for someone neutral from our side. And I was that someone.

I scooped up the map and left.

Cliff Street was in the heart of the Vieux Nord neighborhood, which explained why most of the streets had Anglo names-Island, High, Court, William, even London. There was a shoved-together intimacy to the buildings, as if they’d moved imperceptibly closer to each other as the town had grown up around them.

I drove across Queen slowly onto de Montréal, looking for where High Street would take me one block south to Cliff. My headlights slid along dark, quiet walls and over empty, snow-covered lawns. Traffic was nonexistent at this hour.

The setting helped make me feel better about what I was doing. Had it been a warehouse district, or some industrial wasteland on the edge of town, I would have been more apprehensive. But this was as settled an area as Sherbrooke had to offer-something my anonymous caller had probably understood when he’d chosen it.

A row of trees loomed up ahead and High Street t-boned into Cliff. I turned left and parked. As I killed the engine, I could hear the dull rumble of water cascading through the gorge just beyond the screen of woods. It sounded cold and ominous, undermining my efforts to feel good about being here.

I got out of the car. Across the narrow street, the old jail stretched up into the night sky. Four or five stories tall, built of featureless gray stone, it appeared to have a separate warden’s quarters glued to its side-red-bricked and equipped with windows. But it, too, seemed abandoned and forlorn despite the efforts to make it look homey.

I saw the steps the caller had mentioned leading up to the front door. Flashlight in hand, I tentatively climbed to the concrete porch and laid my hand on the doorknob. There were no lights and no sounds from within.

The door was unlocked and opened without protest. Now thoroughly doubting my wisdom, I stepped into an empty, dusty room with a counter running across it. Playing the light around, I could tell where bars or metal meshing had once run from counter to ceiling, and guessed that the house had been remodeled from warden’s home to front office before being abandoned altogether, presumably to linger in perpetuity on the local historical society’s list of things to restore.

I’d done what I’d been told to do and was now suddenly at a loss, vaguely disappointed after all my misgivings to be merely standing alone in a cold and empty room.

“Hello?” I finally called out tentatively.

Nothing greeted me in return.

I walked through a gap in the counter and discovered a heavy iron door on the other side connecting the house to the jail itself. It was half open. I slipped into its dark embrace, hearing my footsteps echo off hard, unyielding surfaces all around, grit and debris crunching underfoot.

Before me was a long, high-ceilinged stone hallway, lined with open doors. My flashlight revealed no colors whatsoever-just the sliding scale of a black-and-white photograph, looking a hundred years old.

“Hello?” I tried again.

I followed the reverberation of my own voice down the hall, pausing at each doorway to check where it led, mostly into narrow cells, each one fitted with an arched and shuttered metal-barred window.

At the far end of the corridor was a steel spiral staircase. Though less apprehensive as my confidence grew that I was alone, I still wasn’t inclined to head for the basement, so I climbed instead, making an unholy racket as shoe leather hit metal.

The second floor resembled the first, except for a wider area halfway down the corridor which might have once served as a dayroom. I approached it cautiously, still pausing at each doorway, but again only surrounded by sounds of my own making.

In that open, central area, however, my isolation finally ended-replaced by something far more tangibly grim. A man was sitting, legs sprawled before him, propped up against the wall, his eyes still open and his throat slit wide.

Although slowing down, his blood was still pumping all over the front of his denim Hell’s Angels jacket.

He’d been killed while I’d been in the building.

I stood absolutely still, frozen as much by that sudden realization as by the overwhelming evidence that I’d committed a fundamental and potentially fatal mistake. Instead of wondering how and why this man might’ve died, I was seized by a double dose of anger and fear.

The clear sound of a shoe scraping the floor behind me snapped me out of it, and the anger won over, fueled by the guilt of having been so stupid. I turned, yelled, “Stop-police,” and ran headlong down the cold, dark hallway, now in pursuit of clattering footsteps half falling down the metal staircase.

It was no more reasonable than having come here in the first place, of course. Alone, unarmed, and with no radio or backup, I should have stayed put, let whoever it was escape, and then found a phone to summon help. But impulse was driving me now-along with a furious need to take back control and make some sense of all these riddles. I knew I couldn’t actually catch the man ahead of me, and that to succeed might earn me a knife in the chest, but I wanted to at least get a glimpse of him, if for no other reason than to partially offset my embarrassment.

I pounded down the first-floor corridor, retracing my steps to the warden’s quarters, and just caught the shadow of my quarry as he slammed through the metal door at the far end.

Bursting out onto the porch moments later, I finally spotted him, briefly and from afar-a dark shape in full flight-rounding the corner of Cliff onto Winter, his legs and arms pumping like a sprinter’s. I chased after him still but without the same drive, that brief glimpse having told me that I was no match for his youthful speed. When I then slipped and fell on an icy patch at the same corner, I didn’t bother regaining my feet but lay there instead, panting and stunned, slowly feeling the icy cold reassert itself until all that was left in the surrounding night sky was the ceaseless rumble of the water rushing through the gorge.