The Storm Murders (22 page)

“He’s disappointed,” Mathers said.

Cinq-Mars delayed his response. He was thinking that in this town in which he’d worked for decades, he was now a tourist, too. Time and even a short distance could do that to a person, make him a stranger amid familiar digs. “Dreher?” he asked. “Why? Because I’m back alive or not still down there?”

“Both. What I mean is, he’s sorry that you’re off the case.”

“Who says I’m off the case?”

“
É
mile.”

“Bill, of course I’m off the case. I’m up against people who will kidnap my wife for no other reason than to teach me a lesson. Imagine if they actually got angry with me. And as I keep reminding myself, I’m retired. I don’t need this garbage.”

At a corner, they waited for a red light to change. When it did neither man reacted, as if their boots had seized in the water freezing back to ice.

“That’s pretty much what Dreher expected,
É
mile. Nobody’s blaming you. It’s impossible to continue. So don’t.”

“I won’t.”

“Good.”

“So tell him,” Cinq-Mars instructed him.

“I don’t have to. He already knows. Or guessed.”

“But he still wants to talk to me. Chickenshit is waiting for me to call.”

“He’s expecting you to call to cut him a new one. That’s it. That’s all.”

“That can’t be it. That can’t be all.”

“
É
mile.”

“Fuck off, Bill. All right?”

“All right.” Mathers was stymied by a red light again. “Look, I can give you that one shot, for how I reacted after I got the call at home. But that’s the last free pass you’re getting from me. I’m not your rookie lackey anymore.”

“You owe me a lot more than one free pass.”

“Bullshit.”

“Not just for ten, eleven days ago.”

“I know what you meant.”

“For all those old times.”

“I know what you meant,
É
mile. My answer is still the same.”

Oddly, Cinq-Mars felt lost. “Which is what?” he asked.

Mathers pursed his lips briefly, chuckled slightly, and summoned the courage to look at him. “Bullshit,” he said.

“Fine,” Cinq-Mars responded. Looking away, he felt no particular animosity. “At least that’s settled.”

“What are we going to do?” The traffic passed. They started across the street before the light changed to green, although it did before they reached the other side. “You know what I mean. About Dreher.”

“I’m inclined to shoot him,” Cinq-Mars stated, “but like I said, I have to keep reminding myself that I’m retired.”

Mathers pointed out, “You’re the one who decided to go down south.”

“I took my wife on an excursion. A vacation, Bill. Mardi Gras. He never suggested that we were taking our lives in our hands by investigating the fringes of a cold case his own people undoubtedly bungled seven years ago.”

Cinq-Mars stopped walking. Struck by a thought.

“
É
mile? What’s up? What’s going on?”

The retired detective studied a pile of dirty snow, as if a body was surfacing from the melt.

“
É
mile?”

“God, I’m out of practice,” he said. “How long has this been staring me in the face? Hell, this makes going to New Orleans worthwhile.” He glanced at Mathers, then at the melting snow again, then illustrated his thought with a finger in the air. “Sergeant Dupree is a New Orleans detective. Right? My old rank. Yours, now.”

“I recall the name from the files. He investigated the case you were going to look into, the first murders.”

“Right. That makes him the first detective to have egg on his face for allowing the killer to hang around in the attic instead of doing the decent thing that all bad guys are supposed to do, namely running away to hide.”

“Okay. So?”

“So his mistake was revealed, he told me, by Agent Sivak of the FBI. She told the press.”

“Okay,” Mathers surmised, “so I guess we don’t like her very much, whoever she is. I’m down for that.”

“Follow me on this. That was the first of a series of murders, the one after Katrina, right?”

“That’s true, yeah.”

“So there was no
series
of murders back then, at that moment. At the time it was a one-off. As it turned out, the first of many, but no one knew that back then.”

“Okay,” Mathers said, expecting his former partner to continue. But a thought alighted. Cinq-Mars saw the light go on behind the younger man’s eyes and waited for Mathers to articulate what he just put together.

“This Agent Sivak told the press. So she was investigating the murder along with the NOPD.”

“Correct.”

“But why?”

“Exactly. It was not their case,” Cinq-Mars emphasized. “The FBI had no jurisdiction. Our Agent Dreher seems to readily flaunt his jurisdiction, doesn’t he? Case in point, coming up here.”

“Why would the NOPD let the FBI in on the case?” Mathers asked.

“Why would they?” Cinq-Mars asked him back.

“You tell me.”

“All right. I will. Possibly, Katrina had them understaffed and in disarray. But I don’t buy it. In all probability, this had to do with the victims. Why else? The FBI had some connection to the victims. That must have given them access to the case.”

In nodding agreement, Mathers was also looking at Cinq-Mars. He had another idea to process.

“What?”

“This has to do with, you know,” Bill Mathers assessed, “those FBI secrets you were accusing Dreher of. Forgive me,
É
mile, but I thought you were being paranoid that day. Or maybe just a little stuck in your ways. Now I’m not so sure.”

“Stuck in my ways?”

“Oh,” Bill defended, “don’t go off half-cocked on me now. It’s an expression.”

“Stuck in my ways?” Cinq-Mars jutted out his chin. “How about this, Sergeant-Detective Mathers? Contact Randolph Dreher. Tell him you think that maybe I’ve calmed down enough for him to approach me. Suggest that maybe he should crawl up my driveway to my doorstep on his knees wearing only sackcloth and ashes. It’s only a mile. Say that I might be cordial to him after that. Go ahead, make fun of me. Let him know that he’s found the soft spot in the retired old fart—that I got a check for my time and expenses so all is forgiven. But secretly, Bill, secretly, rather than be your usual na
ï
ve boring self, for once in your life keep your eyes and ears open in the company of another officer of the law, in case that helps you and perhaps helps us.”

Mathers bobbed his head from side to side. “You’re supposed to be retired,” he complained. “Too bad that doesn’t apply to your sarcastic attitude. I’d like to retire that.”

Cinq-Mars put a friendly hand upon the man’s shoulder. “Good to see you again, Bill. Sure, for a second there, I forgot myself. This feels like old times.”

“Before you go,” Mathers said.

“Yeah?”

“We found the dog.”

“Dog?”

“And the family cats. Their bodies were more or less holding together, not rotten yet, frozen in the snow.”

Cinq-Mars cottoned on that he was talking about the family pets of the murdered couple out near his place. “Anything pertinent to the case?”

“Not that anybody can tell. A dog in one spot, two cats five feet away. That slight difference in location suggests two separate trips out to the field, which makes sense. No collars on any animal. So no prints. The dog was big, a shepherd, a load to carry, but sorry, no hunk of human DNA down its gizzard. That’s all we got. At least we took care of the carcasses with some dignity.”

“Cremated after an autopsy, you mean? Yeah, dignified enough. Beats a slow rot in the springtime. Or being mauled by crows. Anything else?”

“A lawyer came forward with the couple’s wills.”

“Are you serious? Do we have a next of kin?”

Mathers shook his head. “No such luck. They left the farm, everything, to a charity.”

Cinq-Mars expired a heavy gust of air. No break ever emerged in this mire. “What charity?”

“A children’s hospital.”

“Yet we think they’re childless, no?”

“It gets more interesting than that. You remember we were told that Adele and Morris Lumen came to Quebec from the Maritimes? They may have. We haven’t found anything to confirm or contradict that. They’re still a mystery couple. But the hospital to which they left everything? St. Louis, Missouri.”

Cinq-Mars seemed to relish the news. “That makes sense,” he said.

“How so?”

“The FBI has no interest whatsoever in Canadians. Nor should they. You can take that to the grave. I’ll bet you dollars to doughnuts they weren’t always childless. They once had a kid treated in St. Lou. Hey, Bill. Where’d your good friend Dreher say he was from?”

“Why do you always ask me questions you already know the answer to?”

“To find out if you’re keeping up. What’s wrong with that?”

“The American Midwest.”

“Isn’t that where St. Louis is located?”

“You know the answer to that, too. But what does it prove? Not much.”

“Yeah,” Cinq-Mars concurred. “Not much. Still. It’s
something
. All I’ve had so far is a tall stack of nothing. So are they going to sell?”

“Who? What?”

“The hospital. The farm.”

“I don’t know. I suppose so. Why do you care?”

Cinq-Mars smiled. “I might want to make a deal for the barn. Didn’t you notice? It’s an admirable barn.”

Going into the meeting with Mathers, Cinq-Mars had no prior expectation or result in mind. Coming away from the talk he realized that he knew all along exactly what he was looking for. He wanted a little company, a sympathetic ear, a kind word, and a chance to indulge himself a little, and even, perhaps, to mope. He could admit to all that on the drive home, if not before. Instead of caring about any of those things now he was coming away fired up, transformed. He did not have a clue what he was going to do next, but he appreciated the renewed energy pumping through his veins, and the return of his usual unrelenting combative spirit when it came to ferreting out the truth to arrive at a reasonable facsimile of justice. Just maybe, he was thinking, retired or not, that’s what made his life worth living.

“Up justice,” he told himself out loud. “I just want to get these guys.”

Sandra noticed the change in him when he got home, which surprised him because he tried his best to conceal his new mood. He didn’t want her getting her back up or to fret that he might again put them in danger. One thing he knew well: He was not heading back down to New Orleans as a tourist in a maelstrom without a compass or a roadmap. Enough of that. But perhaps he could do something from home. After all, the murders of the two police officers and the couple in Quebec had occurred on his home turf, and no one was suggesting, yet, that he disregard that crime. Indeed, that was the crime he was hired to solve.

So he wanted to get on it.

While Sandra was out of the house he set up a flip chart in the basement. The materials were at the ready from the summer she picked up some charcoal and attempted to try her hand at drawing. She took a class. Her favorite riding horse, a Paso Fino, turned out looking more like a donkey who had downed the bottle of Percocet
É
mile kept handy in case of back pain, and she quit the hobby. So he had an easel, a flip chart, charcoal, and pencils, although when he looked upstairs in the phone table drawer, he found magic markers that would do a better job.

Then, at once, he was stymied.

He just didn’t know where to start.

Arriving home and seeing the basement door open, Sandra went down the stairs speaking his name.

“Yeah. Here,” he replied.

At the bottom step she found him a-squat on a tall stool. The room was not accommodating. She did the laundry there but beyond such functional uses—the furnace, the hot water heater—the basement was not a welcoming venue except for spiders. Lighting was on the dim side. Cobwebs abounded. She always meant to get at those and every few years she did.

“What are you doing?” she asked him.

He could say that he was staring at a piece of paper. Or that he was back on the case. Instead, he shrugged, and told her, “I’m thinking about taking up art.”

É
mile was a little offended that laughter burst from her so easily, a judgment being passed.

“I’m not saying I have talent,” he countered, miffed.

Arms folded under her breasts, she sauntered over to him and also examined the blank white page awhile.
É
mile did his best to repress his own desire to chortle.

“You do have talent,” she assured him. She placed a hand on his shoulder. “You’ve talked to Bill. And you’re back on the case.”

He couldn’t deny it. “You should have been the detective,” he told her.

“But I am,
É
mile.” Moving behind him, she placed her arms around him, and kissed near the top of his head. She squeezed her man. “We agreed, remember? I’m to be let in on this case.”

“Yeah, well, look where that got us.”

She kissed his neck, laughing a touch. “I know. A bad start. And I’m not saying you’re allowed to go anywhere. Because you’re not. But tell me something. Is this it? Is this all you’ve got? A blank page?”

É
mile bobbed his head a little. “I’m afraid if I start writing things down, it’ll be an alphabet soup. An unholy mess.”

“So you want tidy? Since when?”

“Since I got involved in this case, I guess.” He turned on his stool so that he could face her and took her hands in his. She saw that he wanted to be serious. “Let’s say I work this thing from here. I’ll need to have people elsewhere. I’ve met Dupree. Agent Sivak. I don’t know whose side they’re on. Anyway, they’ve got jobs, responsibilities, their own cases. Why would they bother to work with me?”

“So you still want to investigate New Orleans in order to investigate Quebec?”

Cinq-Mars was not positive that he needed to, but thought that he might. “Seems to me the people who went to the trouble of kidnapping you feel that way. I had a thought when I was out with Bill. Why was the FBI ever involved in the murder case in New Orleans? They had no business being on the scene. So I’m thinking that it had to do with the victims. I’m not sure I can fact-check them adequately without having someone there.” He placed her hands on his neck to disarm any possible protest. “I’m not going there myself. So what do I do?”