“Guidry was garroted with a wire,” I said. “Why not shoot him or blow him up? Did Picard strike any one of you as a man who’d order that kind of death?”
“It’s not like he did it himself,” Willy argued. “He probably told one of his psychos to do the dirty work and the guy put a little of his own into it.”
But Sammie wasn’t buying it, either. “There’s a way this all fits together, and it’s not Picard suddenly getting pissed at Guidry. This guy’s waited half a century for his plan to play out, for Christ’s sake. He’s going to get impulsive now?”
“I’m wondering about Marie Chenin,” I finally admitted. “Lacombe just told me she and Michel had a very emotional private meeting shortly before Guidry was found dead and Picard disappeared. I think it was so she could tell him she’d been used by those two to frame Marcel. When Paul and I met with her, it was pretty clear she didn’t know why she’d been asked to produce the receipt to the Snow Dancer Hotel. She hated Marcel for the disrespect he’d shown Jean and Antoine, not because she thought he’d killed one of them. And when I asked her where Guidry and Picard had been when Jean went missing, it looked like a light lit up in her head, which I’m sure had everything to do with Picard. I think she squealed to Michel to atone for fingering Marcel, inadvertently adding to the mayhem in the process.”
Tom returned to a problem he’d had from the start. “She was also the one who claimed Jean’s investigation into his son’s death was a secret, and backed up Pelletier by saying Jean went to Stowe alone as a result. That was probably a setup by Picard and Guidry to keep themselves out of the picture, especially after they discovered Marcel really did think his father had traveled solo.”
“But why would she have allied herself with those two?” Sam asked. “We know Guidry at least was buddy-buddy with Marcel, and she hated Marcel. What was the angle there?”
“Money,” Willy said shortly.
“Partly,” I agreed. “Also, it must have been tough for her, losing two lovers, one right after the other, both murdered. She was young, impressionable, attracted to strong men. It makes sense she’d form an alternate alliance with somebody in that situation.”
“Picard?” Tom asked.
“That’s what I think,” I said. “He’s a patient planner. It probably meant nothing to him to tuck her into his pocket for future use-or just to have her available. Pretty much what he was doing with a lot of people behind Marcel’s back.”
Sammie scowled. “But Guidry killed Jean. If you’re saying she knew they were together down here, you’re undermining your own theory.”
“I think she was given compelling proof of Guidry’s innocence,” I said.
Willy was becoming irritable. “What the hell’s that mean?”
But Tom had seen where I was headed. “He’s saying someone else killed Jean.”
It was eleven o’clock at night when the phone rang. Normally still up at that hour, I’d called it quits early to catch up on some sleep, and so had to grope around a few seconds, both for the phone and the wits with which to answer it.
“Yeah?”
“Is this Joe Gunther?” The voice was hesitant, no doubt surprised by my gruffness.
“Yeah. Sorry. What’s up?”
“No, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you up. I was told this would be okay.”
“It is, it is. Who’re you?”
“Oh, right. Patrolman Jim Patton of the Stowe police. We haven’t actually met, but the chief asked me to call. He’s got something to show you and wanted to know if you could drop by the PD to take a look at it.”
“Now?”
Patton paused, obviously in a spot. “I, uh… I guess it could wait. He’s actually coming in from another direction. I could get him on the radio, maybe, and tell him tomorrow morning would be better.”
I sighed. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah.” I hung up and lay in the dark staring at the ceiling for a couple of minutes, finishing the process of waking up. As he said he would, Frank Auerbach had largely stayed out of the picture until the Sawyer killing. But now his department was looking at two unsolved homicides, and even with Bill Allard’s having opened up the spigots to deliver more VBI agents, Auerbach still had his hands full-putting out political wildfires, if nothing else.
I had no idea what he had to show me, or why it was so urgent.
Ten minutes later, I’d washed my face, put my clothes back on, and was heading out the door for the short drive to the PD. The hallway outside was quiet and dark. I heard the muted rumble of an ice machine somewhere in the distance. I pocketed my key and headed toward the lobby.
“Joe.”
It was a loud whisper from my right. I stopped and saw a door partway open, only darkness beyond it.
“In here-quick.”
I hesitated, took an automatic step in the door’s direction, and began to say, “Who is-?” when two arms reached out, grabbed me by the shoulders, and pulled me across the threshold in a neck-snapping jerk. Before I could shout out, a knee came up and caught me in the stomach, knocking the wind out of me and sending me sprawling to the floor.
Gasping for air, writhing in pain, I felt hands all over me, pinning me in place, stuffing something soft into my mouth, and wrapping what felt like thin wire around my hands and feet. Outside of a single “Don’t hurt him,” there were no words spoken, the lights stayed off, and the men around me acted like a well-rehearsed team. Finally, one of them lay on top of me, making all movement impossible, and several hands gripped one of my arms with viselike ferocity. Still struggling as much as I could, I heard the slight click of plastic hitting plastic, and then felt a sharp needle jab in my shoulder.
I heaved up convulsively, but too late. Almost instantly, I felt a numbness spreading out from the injection site, and in under a minute, my body began relaxing despite my best efforts. The last thing I remembered was feeling as I had just a half hour before, when I’d turned out the light to drift off to sleep.
The only distraction being that this time I was going under in the middle of a panic.
It was dark when I woke up with a headache so blistering, I thought I saw small planets circling my head. I closed my eyes, concentrated on trying to dislodge the cloth wad in my mouth, got nowhere, and ended up sitting motionless, trying to figure out what the hell was happening.
That was when I heard the sound-a pulsing, rhythmic thunder I could feel throughout my body-and realized how cold I was. I thought back to when I was on Mount Mansfield, again in the cold, the dark, and all alone, surrounded by the howling wind.
Except this was not wind. I steadied the fear rising within me, breathing through my nose in slow, steady repetitions, and concentrated. I was riding a train. I opened my eyes again. The planets were still there-dim, perfect circles, in front of me but not extending to either side, and illuminated like gentle nightlights in a child’s room. I blinked several times, trying to adjust my focus against the aftereffects of the drug I’d been given.
They were breathing holes. I was in a box.
The fear subsided. It almost made sense, although why I’d been kidnapped instead of killed I didn’t know. But I knew I was heading north into Canada, that I was a guest of one of the Deschamps factions, and that given the effort put into my packaging, I was in no immediate lethal danger-assuming the gag in my mouth didn’t swell any bigger with my own saliva.
I tried wiggling my feet and hands. Circulation was good, although the hands were half numb from the cold, but I could feel I’d been strapped to a chair of some kind, which in turn, I supposed, had been mounted to the inside of my box. I’d been as carefully encased as an egg in a carton.
One of the planets darkened on the right, then another beside it, then a third as the first reappeared. Someone was moving in front of my refuge, slowly and without sound.