Three hours later we were back at the Stowe police department, with nothing much to work with. The neighbors hadn’t heard or seen anything. Sawyer had lived alone and had apparently let his killer in. There were no signs of a struggle or of anything being disturbed in the house, and while the forensics team had collected a fair amount, including an open package of frozen hot dogs in a sink, they’d found nothing immediately revealing except a large empty freezer in the basement-presumably Jean Deschamps’s arctic condo for the last few decades. Basically, we were left hoping that either the surveillance Lacombe had ordered on Marcel’s gang would reveal Guidry’s having left for Stowe, or that the Customs and Border Patrol people we’d alerted would get lucky and give us a call.
But we still hadn’t heard from either one.
It was therefore in a relative state of despondency that Sammie Martens found us, having at long last extricated herself from the town clerk’s office.
“No luck on the Sawyer shooting?” she surmised.
“Sure,” Willy came back. “We won’t have to worry about how to make him talk.”
She put a single Xeroxed sheet on the table before me. “Then maybe we should try this guy.”
I studied the document as she explained to the others, “Roger Scott. He’s lived in Stowe since the war, bought big early, held on till the land rush of the 1970s, and has been selling here and there for a bundle ever since. He’s also on the roster you gave me of the Special Service Force-the only one, so far as I can tell.”
She looked exhausted, her hair unwashed and lank, her eyes ringed with dark, puffy skin.
“Nice work, Sam. He must’ve been the man Jean Deschamps came down to visit,” I said.
She sat heavily in one of the chairs surrounding the conference table. “Wonder if they ever met?”
“We’ll find out tomorrow,” I told her, “after you get a good night’s sleep and I give that press conference announcing I have a secret.”
Tom Shanklin looked at me dubiously. “You still doing that-after Sawyer?”
“All the more reason. Sawyer’s death proves we’re on the right track. Someone-presumably Pierre Guidry-is running around trying to plug as many holes as he can. What better time to present him with another and force him into the open? Besides, I already told Lacombe I would.”
“How did the shooter know we were hot on Sawyer’s heels?” Willy asked.
“Sawyer probably called to report after our first visit,” Sammie proposed.
“Maybe,” Willy grumbled.
“What’re you thinking?” I asked him.
“That things are a little leaky in your pal Lacombe’s outfit. Seems like a lot of bad happens right after you tell ’em what’s doin’.”
I hated the idea of that.
He held up his one hand and began folding down his fingers, one by one. “The press tumbled to Jean Deschamps’s identity right after you hit Sherbrooke. The old gangster Lucien Pelletier was conveniently recommended to fill your ear about how Marcel was a son of a bitch who hated his father, while swearing Jean didn’t have Guidry along as chauffeur the day he vanished. The secretary-what’s her name, Marie Chenin-spilled the beans about Jean being lured down here by his son just before we could report the same news back to Sherbrooke. That guy in the motel knew exactly what door to knock on before he took a shot at you. And now Sawyer gets whacked before we get a chance to squeeze him. You can explain all that a bunch of different ways, but they make for a pretty interesting bundle, if you ask me, and most of them trace back to the Sûreté.”
“And to Jacques Chauvin,” Paul said in his typically quiet voice.
We all stared at him, while my private gloominess was suddenly given a reprieve.
“The old Sherbrooke cop we talked to almost as soon as we got there,” he reminded us. “He put us onto Pelletier. The first domino, if Willy’s right,” he added. “It looked to me like he had free run of the building.”
I saw Willy give Paul an appraising glance-a ringing endorsement from a hard-core independent like Kunkle, and one I was happy to second.
“Could be,” I conceded. “I’ll give Lacombe a heads up. It doesn’t alter the value of putting more heat under Guidry’s feet.”
“Sure,” Willy finally agreed. “What the hell? Worst that can happen is you die with your boots on.”
“By the way,” Paul added in the silence following that crack. “When you meet Roger Scott, you might want to ask him why Dick Kearley thinks he died from a dud mortar round while he was standing next to Colonel Frederick. Remember?”
The press conference setting me up as a target went off the next morning as planned, ostensibly to update the media on the Sawyer murder, and also to appease the governor, the commissioner, and my boss, Bill Allard.
I tried to do the latter first, explaining VBI’s role yet again and handing the mike to Frank Auerbach so he could say how happy he was with the teamwork. I also downplayed the attempt on my life in Sherbrooke, which had taken its time to filter down to the U.S., and highlighted the effectiveness of our working with the Sûreté, stating with confidence that the mystery of the “frozen man of the mountain,” as Jean was being called, would soon be solved.
The real point of the exercise, though, was brought up at the end, when the inevitable question was asked about how we were planning to arrive at that goal.
“At this time,” I answered in practiced bureau-speak, “we are following a number of solid leads, any one of which could give us the break we need.”
“Is there one you like better than the others?”
“You could say that,” I said coyly. “It’s pretty vague right now-more of a theory. I haven’t even shared it with my team.”
“Why not? Isn’t that a little unusual?”
“We all have ideas we chase down now and then on our own-saves on informational clutter. If this works out, though,” I added with a laugh, “you might end up with some interesting headlines.”
Afterward, Bill Allard was not amused. He called me on my cell phone five minutes after the story aired on the radio. “What the hell’s this private theory crap? You sounded like Sherlock Holmes, for Christ’s sake. The point of this unit is to support the locals, not hold out on them.”
“I’m not. Auerbach’s in on it. I wanted the opposition to think I know something I don’t. We’re hoping it’ll flush them out. I’m sending you my report by fax within the hour.”
The edge left his voice as he asked, “You’re sure you know what you’re doing?”
“Absolutely,” I lied. “It’s all under control.”
Even by Stowe standards, the house Sammie and I drove up to east of town later in the day was a standout. Most of the mansions-Gary Smith’s “starter castles”-were built of wood, designed ostentatiously but with a nod toward the surrounding countryside. This one was a pile of gray rock, complete with turrets, leaded stained-glass windows, and a front door big enough for a rider atop a horse. Castle it was, with nothing of the beginner about it.
We rolled to a stop in the front courtyard and admired a full view of Mount Mansfield across the Stowe valley, its recumbent profile clearly etched on the horizon. Cold, white, and distant, it brought to mind Jean Deschamps’s mask-like face staring up from the autopsy table.
“Geez,” Sammie commented, gazing at the house, “what the hell did he do to buy this?”
I swung out of the car into the crisp, freezing air. “Let’s see if we can find out.”
The front door opened almost as soon as I pushed the bell, revealing a starchy, round man in a dark three-piece suit. “You are the police?” he asked in a stiff, formal voice.
“Yes,” I answered, as we showed him credentials that he scrutinized carefully.
“Follow me.”