The Storm Murders (34 page)

“Excuse me?” The man from New Orleans did have a few sayings that might be common enough, but they were new to Cinq-Mars.

“Some men say to me, ‘I’ve been thinking,’ and I say back to them, ‘Spare me that pain.’ Know what I mean? It’s not what I most want to hear, the deepest opinion of a dumb-arsed man. But what’s on your mind is of interest to me,
É
mile, no matter what it is, because there’s always a chance a pearl’s in that oyster. You’re the pearl oyster,
É
mile, that’s not just a glob inside y’all, tasty as it may be.”

“All right, if that’s a compliment, thanks.” Cinq-Mars figured he might as well throw in a few exercises while he was talking, to make the most of his time. Tucking the phone between his neck and shoulder, he stretched that arm to the moon.

“Let me in on those thoughts,
É
mile.” Somehow, Dupree said that as he chuckled.

“I was casting my mind back to the pickpockets in New Orleans. I can’t seem to get them out of my head.”

“Okay. What do they do for your pondering?”

“For one thing, I can’t release them from being involved in all this in some way. All they took from me was a notebook.”

“One strange theft, grant you that.”

Cinq-Mars switched ears for the phone and stretched his other arm high, trying to extend the muscles the long way down to his hips. “They were professional, Dupree, yet they don’t come up on your radar. So let’s say they were outsiders. Let’s give them that designation because it feels more than possible, it feels likely. So if we say they flew in from elsewhere, such as Miami, or maybe L.A. or New York, what does that give us?”

“Drawing a blank. But I can see how a question like that can obsess a man.”

“Who would make that flight to nick a wallet or pinch a notebook?”

“Nobody I know well.”

“The only outsiders—and not one guy, but two—who would do that, would be outsiders who were hired. Money up front and expenses paid.”

“Then the question raising up its head out of the sand is who hired them?”

“That’s it, Dupree. The answer, I’ll bet you the cash in a bank, is found on somebody’s ledger somewhere.” He put his arm back down. “Whoever paid that bill.”

“Who? Are you stringing me along or do you have that answer, too, or just the question?”

“Only the question, Dupree. But is there anywhere you can think to look where such a ledger exists, which might show a strange and inexplicable entry?”

“Not offhand, no. What’re y’all accusing me of now,
É
mile? Just when we were getting along so well. I don’t have access to the books of any crime syndicates.”

“Are you sure? Maybe if you think about it some more.”

É
mile took the silence as being respectful, a willingness to meet him halfway.

“Yeah, well, now, yes, something’s come up in my head.”

“Danziger Bridge, Dupree. Danziger Bridge. I do recall that my arrival had your knickers in a twist over something I knew nothing about.”

“My what? In a what?”

So Cinq-Mars had his own expressions new to Pascal Dupree.

“You’ve got a couple of detectives,” he reminded him, “checking on insurance adjustors. If they get that done, maybe they can move on this.”

É
mile felt that he could almost hear the other man shaking his head.

“No way,” Dupree let him know, “this one, I will do myself.”

“I understand. Thanks again. For everything.”

“No promises,
É
mile. But you’re welcome.”

“Take good care, Dupree. Stay cool.”

“Y’all stay warm.”

Sandra came away from his flip chart with so much success that
É
mile retired to the basement to give it further study himself. The aggravating issue for him was to posit how her abductors in New Orleans could also have been involved in installing the Lumens on their property in Quebec years earlier. By any stretch of the imagination, how could those two circumstances be linked, and what flowed between them, over time, across borders, and amid disparate lives?

He tried to get at it from any and every possible direction through a series of rash suppositions, including the blatantly ridiculous, anything that might trigger a possibility. He considered that the men were indiscriminate killers, but showing up in two locales in two countries and both incidents being connected to Cinq-Mars remained a more extraordinary coincidence than he could swallow. If they were not, then,
indiscriminate
killers, did that make them
discriminating
? And presuming that that was the case, what targets attracted them and for what purpose?
Or,
the men could be police, but what game were they playing and to what possible end? The Lumens were in witness protection, so the men who established them on their farm could easily be, and were likely to be, FBI. And in New Orleans, Sandra’s abductors wanted to make a point of being considered the good guys in all of this. Your garden variety benevolent kidnappers. Of all the scenarios that came to mind, this was the most promising. But if they were indeed the good guys, who were the bad?
Or,
maybe they were not the good guys at all and were really international criminals whose activity involved the Lumens somehow.
É
mile’s own investigation of the Lumens’ murders meant that he had shown up on their welcome mat, hence their actions down south. Such men wanted him to return to mucking out stalls in the Canadian countryside, not to muck about dives in New Orleans.
Or,
they were international terrorists hell-bent on world domination and somehow, some way, he had interfered with a master plan. That thought provoked a smile. Given what he knew about the case, one crazy idea just might be as valid as the next, although he conceded that he was barking up trees that might not exist.

Nothing worked for him wholly or succinctly. Nothing at all. He could not see through the maze. But he sensed FBI involvement where perhaps it did not belong.

Already dressed for the outdoors, Sandra skipped downstairs to kiss him goodbye and offer up a summary of leftovers lurking in their refrigerator should he want lunch. She was off to the village for an outing and a little food shopping. She didn’t expect to be gone for more than three or four hours and did he need anything? He requested that she stop at the pharmacy for his monthly medications and she happily added them to her list. He detected that she was glad to be off on her own—now that she’d hired a man to look after the horses during the day, such an excursion was a pleasant indulgence. She didn’t have to rush.
É
mile could tell that she was not canvassing for company, so he didn’t ask. Individual forays were a break from being stuck together constantly, so had merit apart from the practical purposes served.

“The roads are dry. I’ll take the Nissan. Leave you the Jeep.”

“Don’t need it.”

“Whatever.”

When she bent to kiss him,
É
mile ran a hand up her back, then down.

“Don’t spend the day in the basement,” she commanded, and was soon gone.

In her absence as the house went still, he acknowledged that the space was dark, despite the bare lightbulbs, and dreary, so before long he abandoned the easel and returned to the company of Merlin and the sunlit rooms on the first floor. The dog greeted him and wholeheartedly concurred when
É
mile suggested a walk.

Despite a nip in the air, he became ambitious, hoping the walk might clear his synapses and provoke a good thought or two. He slipped one leg then the other over a wood fence, one that the aged Merlin leapt through, and headed off across the fields of snow. The wind still had bite, picking up the snow’s coolness, but if the day was this breezy going out the wind would be behind him on the home trek and easy to bear. The walk took about twenty minutes down a riding path to a lone pine at an intersection of split-rail fences, and it seemed obvious to Merlin before it occurred to
É
mile that they were achieving their destination for the day. The retriever waited for his master, who leaned against the tree out of the wind when he arrived, and they both took in the vista, then trudged on home again.

The hired man’s pickup was in the yard by the time he got back, but
É
mile decided against going into the barn for a chat. For the nonce, he was taking the measure of his solitude and enjoying it. Inside the house, he started up a fire in the wood stove, more for the ambiance than the extra heat, and looked through his CD collection for something, really anything, neglected over the last while. He decided on the Rachmaninoff Concerto No. 3, performed by Horowitz, when the telephone rang again. His home phone this time.

É
mile was torn, but finally put the CD down and crossed the room to the side table to take the call. No screen to identify the caller here, and he began as usual with his own identification.

“Cinq-Mars.”

“
É
mile, it’s Bill. Have you heard?”

“About Vira Sivak. Yeah, it’s very sad.”

Mathers was quiet a moment. “Ah, who’s that again? What happened?”

Realizing his error, that Mathers didn’t know her, that he’d only mentioned her name in passing, Cinq-Mars relayed a short version of the morning’s news, adding, “I hope you have something better.”

“Only marginally,
É
mile. Morris Lumen’s farm is on fire.”

Once again, he could scarcely believe what was being relayed. “What? Who told you that? On fire? How can a farm be on fire in the winter?”

“Not the farm. You know what I mean. The house, the barn, maybe both. I’m heading out there to have a look.”

“Why?”
É
mile asked.

“Why what? Why is it burning? I’m not there yet. How am I supposed to know? I don’t have the particulars.”

He wanted to yell at him, but instead took a couple of seconds to calm himself. “Bill, I mean, why are you going out there? You’re a city cop, remember? The Lumens’ property is not in your jurisdiction and anyway, you’re not a fireman. You don’t have the muscle mass.”

“Ha ha ha. Captain Borde called me. Just now. He’s on his way himself, but since it’s connected to our case, he gave me a call. What’s wrong with that,
É
mile?”

“Nothing. I’m sorry, Bill, I’m just—”

“That’s okay. Listen, Borde called me as a courtesy. Now I’m calling you, same courtesy. Borde knows I’m calling. So if you want to come out and see it for yourself, he said to say that you’re welcome. We don’t know what’s going on. Could be kids. Could be an electrical short. Could be nothing. Could be interesting. We don’t know.”

He was on his own anyway. He might as well do something with his day. “Yeah, I’ll go up. I hope it’s not the barn. It’s a well-built barn.”

“Then you’ve got a good reason to go. To look after your interests.”

Merlin wanted to come to, and Cinq-Mars considered it. He could run around the other property, help the fire department do their work. But sometimes one thing led to another and who knows when he might get back home. The dog might starve. So he filled up his water bowl and left him on-site, with a stern warning to protect the premises.

The drive took him across rolling countryside, then through a lengthy corridor of spruce for about two kilometers, then onto a plateau of farmland. The moment he emerged from the woods the smoke and flames were evident. Departments from several towns must have been called, as so much equipment was on the scene. Volunteers all, so among the hook ’n’ ladder trucks and the pumpers were personal vehicles, mostly large pickups and four-wheel-drive SUVs. Cinq-Mars already knew what he’d find before arriving all the way up the long drive. The pumpers had no water to pump, as hydrants didn’t exist out there. A nearby pond probably took time to locate as it was frozen over and under several feet of snow. The trucks couldn’t reach it easily, but men were cracking ice, though that was mostly for show. Whatever was burning was going to burn to the ground. As he neared the farmhouse he saw that everything was ablaze—house, barn, tractor, and truck.

The fire on the tractor had been doused by shoveling snow onto it, but so far everything else was being allowed to incinerate.

Cinq-Mars drove up the long road and climbed out of his Jeep. Borde and Mathers were nearby, behind a line of firemen who gazed at the flames.

“We think it was set,” Borde told him.

“Really? You think that?”

“You know,
É
mile, it’s not a sin to state the obvious. It’s just a way that people communicate sometimes. You should try it. It’s called being friendly.”

“Great to see you, too, Gabriel. How’s the family?” Then he acknowledged Mathers. “What kind of a greeting do you require to make your day, Bill? Will an everyday cordial comment do for you?”

“Be more effusive than that, thanks.”

“He requires a hug,” Cinq-Mars said to Borde and all three men smiled. “What do we have, really?”

Borde blew his nose into his handkerchief first. “According to our lovely volunteer firefighters, it’s too early to tell if this was set. They’ll have to bring in an investigative team.”

“But—” Cinq-Mars started to object.

“Exactly. No way did the cars catch fire from the buildings. They’re all separate fires.”

“Plus,” Bill Mathers said. He seemed coy.

“Plus?” Cinq-Mars asked him.

“We found the packaging for the accelerant. Can’t say why they didn’t let the packaging burn. And—”

Cinq-Mars waited, then finally had to ask. They were obviously yanking his chain.

Borde answered. “We found the gas can. Thrown away in the field. Nobody was trying to hide that this was an arson. But the fire department, they’ll have to send in an investigative team.”

Cinq-Mars listened to the fire crackle and snap and gazed skyward as the plumes of gray and white smoke ascended to the clouds.

“I’m brokenhearted,” he attested a minute later. “I wanted that barn.”

“Why?” Borde asked him. “You don’t need another barn, do you?”