“He’s not that clever,” I said flatly.
Marcel gave a pale imitation of a laugh.
“Picard sure is,” Didier answered for him. “Guidry called him that night in a panic. Picard drove down and they set it up together.”
It was like hearing a tune that had lingered too long just outside memory’s grasp. In that single moment, all the disconnected bits and pieces of this case began falling together.
“How did Sawyer fit in?”
“He was a money launderer Jean had authorized the year before. Stowe was nothin’ then, but it was a coming thing and it was nearby. The U.S. dollar was lookin’ good. Picard being the legal eagle sent Sawyer down from Canada to open a restaurant, which is a great way to wash money. Picard came up with the angle of keeping Jean’s body on ice-typical lawyer move-but he needed a freezer. Enter Sawyer.”
“And they had to move fast,” I suggested. “Before the snow melted and Jean’s body thawed.”
“Right on. After that, all they had to do was con Marcel with fake loyalty, be rewarded with top jobs, and cruise through the years on what Jean had created by busting his ass-knowing all the time they had a big-time secret tucked away for future use.”
“But Marcel’s fingerprints were on the ice pick,” I protested.
Marcel looked disgusted.
“Piece of cake,” Didier explained. “Ice picks were used all the time back then. All Guidry had to do was hand Marcel this one a couple of times to chop ice. The only joke was that DNA came out of nowhere to help ’em out even more. That was pure dumb luck. Anyhow, once the ice pick was squared away, they planted the other clues you found and made sure they had a small gang in their pocket to back them if things got tough, which of course they were hoping would be never.”
“Like Marie Chenin and Lucien Pelletier,” I guessed.
“And their inside man, Jacques Chauvin,” Didier agreed. “Not counting some hired muscle. All of ’em either pointed you where they wanted you to go, or told Picard and Guidry what you were telling the Sûreté. Like when they leaked Jean’s name to the U.S. papers as the frozen stiff, just so Chenin could pretend the publicity reminded her that she had that old hotel bill.”
“And the trigger for all this was Marcel getting sick and Michel being tapped to replace him?” I asked.
“Right.”
“Hadn’t they anticipated that possibility? No offense, but none of them is any spring chicken.”
Marcel’s whole body quivered slightly, and he raised a hand to point at me. “I knew. I knew.”
Didier leaned forward and adjusted the sick man’s blankets again after he fell back against the pillows, exhausted.
“Marcel had been smelling a rat for years,” he said over his shoulder, “at the same time that the other two were getting suspicious about how much Marcel knew, which really wasn’t that much. So each side was making plans and building up private manpower while they were all pretending to be a big happy family. Picard and Guidry found out they weren’t going to be able to use Michel like they’d used Marcel after Jean’s death, so they sprang their trap.”
“By pulling their fifty-year-old frozen rabbit out of the closet,” I concluded.
Didier smiled. “Yeah-too much, huh? Dumping him out of a plane? You gotta give ’em points for style.”
“Who flew the plane?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Beats me. Lot of guys might do that for the right amount. But that was just the beginning, anyway. They also had to fake a war with the Angels. They knocked off Tessier, since they knew he was in Marcel’s pocket-not knowing Tessier had the three of us as backup-and then they killed the guy who supposedly called you that night at the old jail. You were a big help. And then they sliced one of their own and put an Angel’s button in his hand. Very Hollywood.”
“And very useless after Marcel passed the polygraph,” I said.
“Yeah. That’s when the shit hit the fan,” Didier agreed.
I looked directly at Marcel. “But you still didn’t know who’d killed your father.”
Marcel merely tapped the side of his head.
“He had a pretty good idea. It just happened to be wrong. We only figured it out after Guidry lost his nerve, tried to knock you off, and did kill Sawyer.”
That still didn’t make sense to me. “How? Those dots don’t connect to Roger Scott.”
There was an awkward silence. Marcel’s glance fell to his idle hands.
“Michel did that,” Didier said. “He got tired of screwing around, grabbed Guidry, and got it out of him.”
I shook my head. “He tortured him. I knew he was shy of a full load. You guys are too much.”
Again Marcel jerked to life, waving a hand at me and croaking, “They are the killers. We were just businessmen.”
I didn’t argue with him. “I’m guessing Picard suffered the same fate. Where’s he stored?”
There was no comment from either one of them.
“Why grab me, then?” I persisted. “What was that going to do for you? You told me you were buying time for Michel. Am I the diversion while he heads out of the country?”
Again, there was only silence. I looked from one of them to the other, wondering at this sudden reticence, reviewing all I’d learned. As far as the Deschamps lineage was concerned, the three relevant intertwining threads were ego, pride, and revenge. Jean had set out to redress his son’s murder in Italy. Marcel had conspired with his son to right the wrong of Jean’s death. So what of Michel in this parody of a Greek tragedy? He’d killed in turn, ignorant of ever having known either Jean or Antoine, but inflamed by passions he’d inherited in psychopathic proportions from a father only reputed to be as cold as a calculator-but who’d proved to have been willing to sacrifice his final legacy for the sake of family honor.
Michel had to be the remaining loose missile in all this, and the silence I was getting now implied that his destiny was as yet unfulfilled.
A coldness crept into me as I finally understood.
I swung around, opened the door, and stepped outside, looking back at Marcel one last time. “I may have been behind the ball on most of this, but I am goddamned if I’m going to let this play out the way you want it to. You can go to your death knowing your vanity destroyed your own son.”
Marcel’s eyes widened and he opened his mouth to speak, but I slammed the door to cut him off. I’d already heard more than I wanted to.
Chapter 25
I ran back to the railroad yard as fast as I could, slipping on the snow, calling Willy’s name before I even reached our boxcar.
He stuck his head out the door, his gun in hand. “What the hell’s goin’ on?”
“We gotta find a phone. Fast,” I said, already heading back out toward the street.
“What about these two?” He shouted after me.
“Take their wallets for the IDs and cut them loose. We can round them up later.”
Willy caught up to me as I was slowing down before a public phone booth mounted to the side of a darkened building.
“What happened?”
I picked up the receiver and began dialing the Stowe police department. “If we’re lucky, nothing yet. The reason I was grabbed was to stall us.”