Lacy rested his rear end on the edge of the interrogation-room table. Perrault turned a folding chair around and sat on it backwards, forearms on the top of the backrest. From the smell of the air, the room probably doubled as a cafeteria.
Perrault handed me back my ID. “So, Mr. John Francis Cuddy, private investigator, you just left him there?”
“That’s right.”
Lacy snorted. “Glad I ain’t a client of yours.”
Perrault had a French-Canadian veneer over his English. Lacy came on like a hick. An interesting variation on the Mutt-and-Jeff routine, if I’d been in the mood for it.
“You sending a unit out to find him?”
Perrault smiled. “We’re just a wide place in the road, Cuddy. We don’t got that many units to spare, send them out on a wild-goose chase.”
“You won’t have to chase this one. He was shot dead.”
“And you claim he’s from around here.”
“He claimed it. He came to see me in Boston last week, but just briefly. Said he might be back in touch. Then I get a call from the guy to come out and see him.”
Lacy said, “You drive fifty mile on a phone call?”
“The guy said he couldn’t come to Boston again easily.”
Perrault ran an index finger along his moustache. “And?”
“And the guy gave me a retainer in Boston.”
“How much?”
“Three hundred. In cash.”
Perrault and Lacy exchanged knowing glances.
Perrault said, “Cash is always nice.”
Lacy said, “So you agree to meet this feller on a firebreak.”
“He said he didn’t have a car, but he could hike to it.”
“Why couldn’t he just ask you over to the house?”
“He also said he didn’t want anybody to know he was seeing me.”
Perrault broke in again. “So the guy gives you directions over the phone.”
“Yes. He tells me, come to Tutham Center. Take the road west out of town till you see the turnoff for Fire Road Number Seven. Then go along it about two hundred yards to a clearing.”
“And you agree to see a guy in the woods.”
“Yes.”
“Without you check him out first?”
“Perrault, he said he didn’t want anybody to know he was hiring me. He gave me a retainer. I did check directory assistance, no telephone number registered to the name. Look, have you heard from that unit yet? They should be—”
Lacy said, “Just hold your horses there, boy. You ain’t even told us the name of your deceased client yet.”
He was right. “Sorry. It was Doppinger, Frank J.”
Lacy’s eyes got wide. Perrault’s arms came off the backrest. Both looked at each other, then back to me.
Perrault said, “Lou, get a unit out there. Fast. And get the chief.”
Lacy got up. “But it’s Saturday, Reg. He’ll be out tending his vegetables.”
Perrault just barely kept the knife out of his voice. “So, you beep him, Lou. That’s why he carries the thing.”
Lacy left and slammed the door behind him.
I said, “You know this Doppinger, then?”
Perrault tugged on his beard and told me to shut up.
Twenty minutes later, Lou Lacy came back in with a hulking guy in his late forties. This one wore blue denim overalls and a chamois shirt, both materials dirt-caked and grass-stained. He had a craggy face, no discernible hairstyle, and a pair of cop’s eyes as dead as a plastic doll’s.
The introduction consisted of, “I’m chief of police for Tutham. Let’s hear it. From the beginning.”
After I caught him up to where I’d left off with Lacy and Reg Perrault, the chief said to Lacy. “Let me know when the unit reports in from number seven.”
Lacy started to say something, then thought better of it. “You bet, Chief.”
After Lacy left, the chief tucked his right hand into the strap of his overalls just below the clipped-on beeper. “This Doppinger give you any reason why he didn’t want folks to know about him seeing you?”
“Not over the phone. After I met him on the fire road, though, he said it was about his wife.”
Perrault took in a breath. The chief glanced at him, but Perrault’s face was neutral.
The chief said to me, “What about his wife?”
“I’d told Doppinger when he saw me in Boston that I didn’t do domestics, and he’d told me it had nothing to do with that. But then out on the road, he said his wife was fouling up his life, that he could see her filing for divorce pretty soon, and that he didn’t want her taking the house he’d worked so long to own.”
Perrault started paying attention to the floor.
The chief’s eyes never left me. “But you say you’d told him in Boston—”
“Right, right. And I told him that on the road, too. He smiled and said, ‘Well, just a misunderstanding, then,’ and told me to keep the three hundred.”
The chief shook his head, as if to clear it. “The man tells you, ‘Keep the money’?”
“Yes.” It sounded stupid to me, too, but there it was.
“Then what?”
“Then Doppinger extends his hand to me, and I take it, and somebody on the other side of the valley busts him out of his shoes.”
“And you just left the man.”
“I’ve seen the dead before, Chief. Big hole, eyes open, pieces of his lung—”
“I’ve seen dead people before too, Cuddy. But—”
There was a knock at the door.
“Yeah?”
Lou Lacy stuck his head in, a confused look on his face. The overalls shambled out, closing the door behind him.
A minute inched by. I was pretty sure that Perrault wouldn’t tell me anything with or without his boss there, so I just tried to relax.
The chief came back into the room alone, crossing his arms and latching onto both straps of the overalls for lateral support.
“Our people just drove out Fire Road Seven, Cuddy.”
“And?”
“Nobody.”
It took a second to register that he meant, “No body.”
I said, “What?”
“The unit drove the length of the break. Three times down and back. No corpse, no blood, no nothing.”
“Chief...” I took a breath, started again. “Chief, there has to be.”
“There isn’t.”
“Look, I was standing there, shaking hands with the guy, for Christ’s sake. Frank J. Doppinger is dead.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Why, because—”
“Because I’m Frank J. Doppinger.”
“Oh.”
The three of us moved into the chief’s office, the nameplate centered on his desk saying “FRANK J. DOPPINGER” in brass relief. Next to the plate was a stand-up frame, a photo of a woman maybe ten years younger than the chief. Doppinger and Perrault were sipping coffee from Styrofoam cups. I hadn’t seen Lacy since he stuck his head in the interrogation room.
Reg Perrault said, “Cuddy, why you figure anybody would want to fake a murder?”
“It wasn’t fake.”
“Your client was.”
The chief spoke to the framed photo. “The part about the wife wasn’t fake.”
Perrault didn’t say anything, so I didn’t either.
Doppinger said, “Ellen and I have been having... problems, Cuddy. She’s thinking about getting a divorce. Already went to see a lawyer down to Worcester. Reg, this remind you of anything?” Perrault acted like he wasn’t sure what the chief meant.
Doppinger said, “Sorry, Reg.” Then to me, “Detective Perrault and Ellen were in school together.” The farmer turned back to the lumberjack. “Does Cuddy’s story remind you of one of our cases, Reg?”