I pulled my gun and gestured to the deputy to do likewise, motioning him to work his way forward along the near wall. I took the opposite side, nearer the barn, and slowly picked my way through a tangle of agricultural odds and ends, thinking back for a moment to when my father, my brother, and I spent long winter evenings servicing the equipment we’d use for spring planting.
There was a faint sound from the passageway leading to the locked barn. I crouched behind an empty oil drum and waited. I saw a shadow furtively flit past against a strip of sunlight through a crack in the wall, heading for the truck. I waited until I heard the slight squeal of the passenger door opening before I followed. With the click of the door quietly being pulled shut, I sidled up to the side of the truck, swung around to face the open window, and leveled my gun at the pale-haired shadow of the man sliding toward the steering wheel.
“Don’t move, Peter,” I said.
He froze instantly, his whole body coiled to react, and I suddenly knew in my gut this wasn’t going to work, that he would yield to impulse and do the one thing I’d been hoping to avoid.
Then, just beyond him, the deputy appeared in the driver’s window, pointing his gun, as I was, at Peter’s head. It wasn’t a great tactic-had either one of us fired, we probably would have killed the other along with Neal. But fortunately, he didn’t put us to the test.
He dropped his hands to his lap and said, “Okay.”
I opened the door and crooked a finger at him. “Come on out.”
He slid over and I grabbed his arm, twisting him around as he came out so he was facing the truck. “Lean up against the cab, step way back, and spread your legs.”
The deputy circled around and covered him as I carefully checked him for weapons. I then removed my cuffs and snapped them on his wrists.
“I thought you just wanted to talk. You said no arrest,” he complained.
I ignored him and turned to the deputy. “You better call off the cavalry. And tell Jon where we are.”
He nodded and left the way we’d come. I steered Neal toward the front door and slid it open a few feet, letting the bright sunlight knife into the darkness. “It’s amazing what you’ll say when you want something,” I told him, and pushed him outside.
There were several hay bales stacked against the garage wall. I pointed to one of them. “Sit.”
He did as I asked, tossing his white hair out of his face and staring at me belligerently. “Who the hell are you, anyway?”
Jonathon Michael rounded the far corner of the distant barn and approached us. I waited until he was within earshot before answering. “We’re from the attorney general’s office, Peter, which is some of the worst news you’ve ever had.”
He gave us both a sneer. “I’m scared to death.”
“We know that. That’s why you’re here. ’Course, it’s not us you’re scared of. It’s Norm Bouch. And in your place, I would be, too.”
“I don’t know who you’re talking about.”
“Lenny Markham did,” I said. “So did Jasper Morgan. As you know, we found one, and Norm found the other. And Lenny’s not complaining. How long you been down on the farm, Peter? Twenty-four hours? Less? We got to you pretty quick, didn’t we? And we have no idea how close behind us Norm might be. We just know he’s out there, taking care of loose ends.”
Neal didn’t answer, but the anger had slipped from his face.
“I don’t think Mr. Neal’s interested,” Jonathon said softly. “We might as well pack up and leave-let this brave young man with his trademark looks fend for himself. Maybe he can dye his hair and go live in New York or something.”
I shrugged and pulled out my handcuff key. “Turn around.”
Peter twisted on the hay bale and I undid the cuffs, but he remained sitting there, meditatively rubbing his wrists. His expression reminded me of one of my uncles’, when he was deep in the middle of a late-night card game. “What do you have on Bouch?”
I feigned surprise. “You know him?”
“Up yours.”
“We’re taking his operation apart, piece by piece,” Jonathon answered.
I tried reading into Neal’s question, thinking he had something specific in mind, and remembering how J.P. Tyler had thought two people had moved Morgan’s corpse. “And we know you and he visited Jasper in that motel.”
“You have proof?”
He might as well have confessed. I smiled. “We have you.”
He stared at the ground for a moment, weighing the odds. “What would I get out of the deal?”
“Did you kill Jasper?” Jonathon asked.
“No, but I saw Norm do it.”
“Then,” I answered, “I’d recommend you get immunity. You’d also get to live.”
He paused a while longer. “You close to catching him?”
I understood his concern, having seen it mimicked by Arsene Gault. “We’ll put you under lock and key till we do-protective custody.”
He finally nodded and stood up. “Okay. It’s in the barn.”
He slid open the doors I’d had the deputy lock earlier and led us down the center feed passage. A couple of cows stood in their stanchions, noses shoved into troughs. Near the back wall was a wooden ladder leading up to the loft. Neal climbed it with practiced ease and returned us to the front of the barn, running a tall, dusty gauntlet of stacked bales. Just shy of the closed hay door, he stopped, reached above a thick overhead beam, and retrieved a manila envelope. He handed it to me without comment.
In a shaft of light from a small window tucked under the gable, I opened the envelope and peered inside. A nine-millimeter semi-automatic pistol gleamed back at me.
“It’s that cop’s gun,” Neal explained. “I was supposed to get rid of it. It’s got Norm’s fingerprints on it.”
Chapter 24
I was standing at the second-floor window of the State’s Attorney’s reception area, my hands in my pockets, looking at Brattleboro’s rush-hour traffic. I was lost in thought.
An arm slipped through mine. “How’re you doing?”
I looked down into Gail’s face. “Hey, there. I was just thinking I should be in an incredibly upbeat mood.”
“Which you’re not.”
“I’m not complaining. Kathy Bartlett’s down the hall cutting a deal with Gault’s lawyer so he’ll spill his guts about Norm Bouch. I got an eyewitness to Norm killing Jasper Morgan, a gun with his prints on it, and an electric blanket from Bouch’s apartment with chemical traces of Morgan’s blood. And Bartlett told me that at the inquest, Jan Bouch admitted the whole case against Brian Padget was a frame. She said Norm not only broke into Padget’s place, spiked his aftershave, and dropped that bag of coke into the toilet tank, but that he watered Brian’s gas tank so Emily Doyle would get sucked into the mess with him.”
“Sounds Christmas wrapped.”
“Except the box is empty.” I pointed with my chin at the passing traffic. “I saw Bouch early this morning-I’m pretty sure it was him. He was staking out Gault’s office, probably getting ready to knock him off. An hour ago, I heard they’d found the van he was driving, abandoned on some logging trail… It’s hard to celebrate when the bad guy is still out there.”
“If there’s one thing I’m learning in this job,” Gail said gently, “it’s that you have to settle for what you can get. Brian’s off the hook, and Jan and her kids are headed for a better life. Those are real accomplishments. Bouch will get what he deserves, even if you aren’t the one to give it to him. That’s the way it works out sometimes.”
I smiled and kissed her.
Kathy Bartlett stepped into the corridor and joined us, speaking in a theatrical whisper. “I can’t believe I’m locked in a room with two slimy chiselers, while you two are necking out here.”
“Things going well, are they?” I asked.
Her voice returned to normal. “Actually, not too bad. We’ve gone from where Gault was going to take the fifth, to where he’s going to give us everything we want.”