The rest of us then followed her gaze, suddenly reminded of what had brought us here.
There, against the far wall, leaned a wide-eyed Michel Deschamps-his hair gone, his face blotched red and peeling-crouching behind a wheelchair-bound and slumped over Roger Scott. He had a gun jammed against the crippled man’s temple, although it wasn’t clear the latter was even alive.
We dropped down immediately as Michel screamed in English, “Back off or I’ll shoot him. I swear I will.”
We shuffled up next to Sammie, who, barely glancing at us, shouted, “Relax, Michel. This is a no-win situation. There’re dozens of cops outside and you’re badly hurt. Just put down the gun so we can get you out. You did what you came to do-the house is toast and the treasure along with it. Scott’s a pauper now. Your family’s avenged. Come on, Michel. There’s not much time left. It’s a miracle we’re all still alive.”
“I don’t need time,” he answered above the freight train rumbling of the fire behind the wall. “I need this man dead.”
“Then shoot the son of a bitch and get it over with,” Willy shouted.
Sammie broke her concentration to stare at him.
“I want you out of here,” he told her.
“Michel,” I called out. “It’s Joe Gunther. I just came from Sherbrooke. It’s all over. Your father’s dead. Let’s end this. You put your gun down and we’ll bring that man to justice-hold him accountable for killing your uncle and grandfather both. It’ll be clear to the world what he did. You die in here, nobody’ll know. You’ll just go down as being a madman.”
I could barely breathe because of the heat by now and had stripped off most of my upper clothing despite my burning skin. In the shifting, crimson light, the rafters and window casings were beginning to smoke, building up to a second, perhaps permanent blowout.
“We got to get out of here,” Auerbach warned. “That’s not a request.”
“I can get them out alive,” Sammie said barely audibly, her arm still balanced on the table’s edge, her weapon pointing directly at the two before us.
But it was no longer her call to make. In a gesture as fatalistic as it was born of a survivor’s instinct, Roger Scott suddenly came alive, swept back with one arm and caught Michel on the side of the head, throwing him off balance.
Michel staggered out from behind his human shield just long enough for Sammie to say, “Shit,” and shoot him between the eyes.
As Michel slumped to the floor next to the wheelchair, however, Scott leaned over and snatched the pistol from his dying hand. A hellish smile on his parboiled face, he then pointed the gun at us, yelled, “Get it done!” and began firing.
Willy and Sam both emptied their magazines into him.
Auerbach didn’t hesitate. As the first rafters overhead suddenly burst into flames, he shouted, “Out, out, out!” and started grabbing shoulders and arms, pushing us toward the open door.
As we ran toward the welcoming cool darkness, a muffled roar told us the entire garden house had burst into flame.
We stood in a circle outside the Stowe PD command post a few hundred feet from the flames-a large truck equipped with radios, cell phones, and things to eat and drink-being tended to by EMS people who were trying to cover us with blankets and treat our burned faces and hands, although we weren’t being too cooperative. Everywhere I looked, I could see flashing red and blue lights-all of them made paltry by the towering pyre before us.
“What a way to go,” Sammie said, still shaken by the ordeal.
“Scott chose his,” Willy said simply, pausing to drink from a Styrofoam coffee cup, either recovered from his emotional outburst or working hard to pretend it hadn’t happened. “Took a little trip back to the good ol’ days and died like a Forceman should. I don’t know about Michel.”
“I doubt Michel knew either,” I admitted. “He had so many devils dancing in his head, I don’t think he had a clue anymore. He just plain ran out of options.” I gave Sammie a look. “Nothing you could’ve said would’ve changed that.”
“I suppose,” she murmured, looking both defeated and exhausted.
“That wasn’t true for Scott, though,” Auerbach argued. “We had nothing on him that would’ve stuck.”
Paul Spraiger had been standing on the edge, staring at the blaze, seemingly lost in thought. He turned at Frank’s comment and pointed to the fire. “We weren’t part of his thinking. He’d already died with that… His whole life is in those flames-the life he created from scratch, probably from the day he stole Roger Scott’s dog tags from his corpse, not even knowing why.”
He turned to face me directly. “Sammie told me about the mask you saw when you visited him.”
I nodded vaguely. “Yeah-ugly thing.”
“Ugly maybe, but pretty important.”
I glanced at him. “How?”
“I found a picture of it and showed it to her. If she’s right, it was called Mask of a Faun-believed to have been sculpted by Michelangelo when he was fifteen. A priceless work of art-unique.”
“You think it was the same one?”
“It vanished in 1944, from a hiding place outside Rome.” We all fell silent for a while, contemplating the wreckage we’d witnessed.
“You think the mask could survive a fire like that?” I finally asked.
Paul thought a moment. “If they don’t find it in the ashes-which isn’t likely-we may never know. Real or fake, it’s probably been pulverized by the heat and debris… Unless it vanished just before this was set.”
I glanced at him and he shrugged. “Along with Michel’s mysterious companion.”
Chapter 26
I’d just shut my suitcase when Willy Kunkle knocked on the open door and entered my motel room. Our blistered faces made us look like we’d spent too much time on the beach.
“Headin’ home?” he asked.
“Eventually. I’ve got to wrap up a few things with the brass in Waterbury, and I want to say hi to Gail in Montpelier. Feel like I haven’t seen her in months. But then I’ll head home. Be nice to take a few days off, turn something out in the woodworking shop. What’re you up to?”
He was wandering around the room, brushing his fingers along whatever surface was near. “I don’t know. Maybe goof around a little. Go over to New York State. Whatever.”
I straightened and looked at him. “I didn’t know you went in for sightseeing trips.”
He didn’t return my gaze. “Yeah, well… It’s Sammie’s deal.”
I smiled and turned away, pretending to fidget with the suitcase some more. “Sure-should be fun. I ought to get Gail off for a weekend soon. Give her a break.”
There was a long, awkward silence.
“I’m really glad she made it out alive,” I said softly.
He sighed and finally settled down on the edge of the window sill. “God, I was so scared…”
I didn’t speak, startled by an emotion I’d never before witnessed in Willy, and continued my fiddling.
He cleared his throat. “So… about this VBI job…”
“You want to stick with it?” I asked, looking up at last.
He gave a half shrug. “I doubt it’s up to me, and they strike me as a pretty snotty bunch.”
I picked up my bag and headed for the door. “You know how I feel about it, and you’re looking good in my report. You might be surprised-we may catch ’em at a weak moment.”
I paused on the threshold to look back at his silhouette, framed against the window’s white gauze curtains. His head was bowed as he stared at the floor, his one good arm stretched out, his palm resting on the sill. A complicated, difficult man, fighting more internal battles than any of us could know, except-maybe eventually-for Sammie, if she could stick it out. I was suddenly tempted to ask him what he was thinking about-to gain access to some of that turmoil. But I guessed what his reaction would be, so I resisted, closing the door instead to leave him with his thoughts.