The Storm Murders (7 page)

“Isn’t it part of his modus operandi? Which you know. You didn’t bring me here to figure any of this out. You’ve known it all along.”

The agent raised one of his bushy eyebrows and gave him a sharp look. “Our killer brings a rope with him,” he began. “He pulls himself up, as you said, then he either lifts the chair or the table, whatever he uses, back up behind him, or he puts it back where he found it. By this point, he has tied the rope to beams in the attic—once he left rope fibers behind on the wood, scraping the wood a little—which he can then use to go up and down as he pleases. He arrives when his victims are out of the house and waits—in one case, for days—for his victims to return. In this case, I suppose he had to dispose of a dog and a cat, or cats. So he’s in the house and is familiar with the layout by the time his victims come home. In one example, we believe that the victims arrived home with friends in tow, so he remained in the attic and waited for the guests to leave. He kills on his own time, then remains in the attic until after the police arrive and eventually vacate the house, and then, and only then, does he rob the place. Even taking clues away with him sometimes. In this case, he shot the officers, I’m guessing, for the reason you gave. After that, he didn’t bother with a robbery as far as anyone can tell. That’s what’s different this time—dead cops and no theft. After killing the police officers, he knew that more were on the way. He hid in the attic, but with dead cops, he knew the crime scene would get more attention than usual. He got out while the getting was good, I’m guessing. No time for theft.”

“Or what he stole remains secret,” Cinq-Mars added.

“So now you know what I know,” Dreher said as Mathers returned up the stairs and erected the ladder under the trapdoor. He had been climbing the steps slowly, catching the tail end of the agent’s remarks.

“So why didn’t you tell us all this when we first got here?” Mathers sounded petulant.

Cinq-Mars chose to answer when Agent Dreher did not. “He’s testing me, Bill. He wants to know if I live up to my reputation.”

With a slight nod, Dreher concurred.

“I hate being tested,” Cinq-Mars declared, in a tone that conveyed exactly that sentiment. “Were you aware of that?”

“I might have guessed.”

“So mystery solved,” Mathers enthused.

His mentor cautioned him. “No, Bill. A much larger one has opened up.”

“What’s that?”

“Who called the cops to come out here in the first place?”

Surprised by the query, the two policemen currently on the job looked questioningly at one another. Neither man proposed an answer.

“Come on, guys,” Cinq-Mars chided them. “Two police officers didn’t drive out here on a whim. Somebody set them up. Or intended to set the killer up, before it all went south.”

FIVE

As they tramped through snow across the wide yard to the barn, at Cinq-Mars’s suggestion, the three men remained mute. A simple latch on the gate gave them entry and they flicked on a light. Again they found a premises properly cared for, tidy, likely underused. Once inside, with the door shut behind them against wind from that direction, Mathers was first to speak, citing a report that claimed that the barn had been thoroughly scoured by the SQ. Nothing suggested that any aspect of the crime had extended to the dull gray building.

Cinq-Mars did not seem to care, off on a tangent, musing. “I could use a barn like this. Let me know if any relatives show up. I might take it off their hands.”

Dreher gazed at him as if the man had just returned from a stint in an asylum, a look the older detective ignored. Instead he roamed around with his eyes fixed on the rafters. When he returned to where they stood, the agent noted, as if to mollify him, “Still no cats, huh?”

“This place must be infested with mice.”

“So, no sale?”

Cinq-Mars offered the visitor his most agreeable smile yet. He liked his little quip. “For the barn, maybe not. Although if I bought it, I’d move it, and that might shake the rodents out. But I’ll tell you what, Rand. Say why you asked me out here, and I’ll let you know whether or not
you
have a sale.”

A few feet away, Mathers positioned himself upon a bale of straw and stuck a stalk between his lips. He took it out when Cinq-Mars warned that it might be covered in mouse poop. For his part, Dreher relaxed against a sturdy post, his hands behind his back for support. Still smiling, Cinq-Mars faced the two men who were trying to conscript him and zipped his jacket higher. He was finding it not only cold in the barn but damp.

“
É
mile,” explained Dreher, “it’s simple. We want to get this guy. Obviously, I have no jurisdiction in your country, so I need someone who can be on the ground locally. Someone I can trust, and someone who’s good, not a dumb-assed private eye who usually spends his days following housewives around. I need a pro who might actually get the job done. Your name came up. Since I’m from across the border, I need a Canadian. Obviously, the person has to speak French to work this territory. Given that you actually live out here, near the crime scene, well, that’s a bonus.”

“May I suggest the obvious?” Cinq-Mars inquired.

“The SQ?” The agent inhaled a deep breath and looked away to marshal his argument. “
É
mile, as I said, it’s simple. I need someone who’s independent, who may be free to come to the U.S. to retrace a couple of our cases, pick up some of background that way. Imagine the bureaucracy if my man is in the SQ. He’d spend two months getting clearance to work with me. Plus, it’s not obvious why he’d bother, given that they’re investigating the crime anyway. They have their priorities, and who can blame them for that, with two of their own cops dead? Even if I got the SQ interested in the bigger picture here, they’d spend another month to propose a budget which would then sit on their agenda for two more months waiting to be approved. Then, if it is approved, who’s to say they’ll send me their brightest light? I’m just being pragmatic here, and I would say, realistic. It’s a question of efficiency,
É
mile, trust, and time.”

Cinq-Mars drew a circle in the dust with the toe of his boot, then carved a line through it and circled that. Dreher seemed to be following the hieroglyphic. “What you really want,” Cinq-Mars told him, “is a guy who’ll answer to you.”

Dreher thought through his objection. “Not answer to me,
É
mile, but keep me apprised, yes. This is important. We may, you see, have a break in the case here, after this episode.”

“How so?”

Responding to Cinq-Mars’s foot drawing, Dreher moved dirt around with the outside edge of a boot. Then stopped. “Every previous event,
É
mile, followed a natural disaster. A hurricane—Katrina, in New Orleans—a tornado in Alabama, a North Dakota flood. In California, a small earthquake, albeit with only mild property damage. In this instance, that’s what’s different. No disaster.”

“So in the aftermath of a natural disaster, your killer strikes. How’s that for a modus operandi, Bill?”

“Beats the hell out of me,” Mathers agreed. “Last week, my eldest boy came home from school with a new phrase.
Pure weird
. This is pure weird,
É
mile.”

“It’s all of that. Out here, Rand, we had a snowstorm. A big one.”

“Okay, but hardly a disaster. You always have snowstorms in winter. You guys can handle big snowstorms.”

“So,” Cinq-Mars postulated, “you believe an individual travels to disaster zones to perpetuate his crimes—maybe because in those situations law enforcement is already up to its earlobes—”

“That’s right.”

“But this time—”

“He became impatient. We think it’s a possibility.”

“What is?” Mathers asked, struggling to keep up. “How is he impatient?”

Dreher locked his gaze on Cinq-Mars and declined to answer. The retired detective met his challenge. “Am I being tested again?” Rather than answer, Dreher kept silent, and Cinq-Mars shot a glance over at Mathers. “Agent Dreher thinks his killer, the man responsible for murders all over the United States of America, might be from here. A Qu
é
b
é
cois.”

“Exactly.”

“So I passed another test. Whoopee.”

“Why does he—? Why do you—why think that?” Mathers asked.

“Because the killer got impatient waiting for a natural disaster.”

“He was waiting to kill. But natural disasters aren’t reliable. He settled for a local storm. Which means he had to be nearby. Was he nearby because he lived here, or was he visiting and waiting for snow? We don’t know. Will you take the case,
É
mile?”

He smiled. “Well, sir,” he considered, “that depends.”

“I’m sure we can come to an accommodation with respect to compensation.”

“Good. Because I’m sure that I don’t come cheap. But to be honest with you, I wasn’t thinking of that. It’s not the stickiest issue I have, although it might help with one of them.”

“What’s your stickiest issue?”

Resuming his inspection of the rafters again, Cinq-Mars took a moment to reply. “Partly it depends on what you’re not telling me.”

Recognizing that his former mentor was moving into battle mode, Bill Mathers crossed his legs and leaned back against a higher tier of straw, making himself comfortable.

“Come on,
É
mile, why do you think I’m not telling you something?”

He took his time, but lowered his gaze from the ceiling and looked directly at Dreher. “Because I’ve worked with the FBI in the past. Several times.”

“I can’t speak for those officers—”

“It’s in your training. Becomes part of your DNA. It has to do with how you think of yourselves. You have a style. You can’t seem to get out from under it.”

“Aside from the details of the other murders,
É
mile, which I’ll provide, what I know about this case is now what you know.”

He smiled. He nearly laughed. “Okay. Look, I’m tempted to take the case if for no other reason than to see if that statement holds up. Tell you what, if it doesn’t, if I work things through and show you later what you are deliberately holding back from me now—and why—then my
accommodation
, as you so elegantly phrased it, doubles. Not only do I want that in writing, I want my potential bonus for your malfeasance placed in an escrow account. And yes, I’m serious. I know that I can never get the FBI to admit to deliberately misleading a colleague, so I’ll ask for the next best thing. I’ll make the FBI
pay
for doing so.”

To Mathers, it seemed clear that Dreher wanted to inquire if Cinq-Mars was serious, if not out on farmland howling at the moon, but he curtailed his own gut reactions. “On a matter of that nature,” he stated, “I’ll need to speak to my superiors.”

“Do so.” In raising his chin, he looked down his magisterial beak at him, his eyes as penetrating as an eagle’s. “Now it’s my turn to test you, Rand. Let’s see if you can’t get that done within two days. I have to think about it some more, pass it by my wife. She might be the stickiest issue of all. I can’t predict how that might shake down. I am, after all, supposedly, retired. I’ll also need to have a private word with Bill here, before you go. If I’m to be of any use to you, I’ll need some help myself. That’s where Bill comes in. After all, he’s an officer of the law. Not much of a brain but he packs a weapon.”

“Which I might indiscriminately use on an old retired kook like you,” Mathers chimed in, straightening up on his bale now.

“Did you say kook or coot?”

Mathers thought about it. “Either applies. Take your pick.”

Cinq-Mars enjoyed the joust, a refresher from the old days.

He continued, “While you’re in with your superiors, Rand, bargaining for my substantial pay increase, why not advise them that they can save considerable expense, and time, and everyone a great deal of trouble, if you just tell me now what you don’t want me to know ever. I’ll give you that out, that chance to reform.”

Agent Rand Dreher pulled his car keys from his pocket, his way of wrapping up their conversation. “I hope to disabuse you of your suspicions,
É
mile. Though I suppose it’s an occupational hazard. I’ve kept nothing from you. What makes you think that I have secrets?”

Touching the man’s shoulder briefly, Cinq-Mars smiled again, not without some obvious pleasure. He winked at Mathers. “Agent Dreher, you’re FBI. Of course you have secrets.”

SIX

Believing he’d made substantial progress in recruiting
É
mile Cinq-Mars, Rand Dreher was not put out to leave him alone in the barn with Sergeant-Detective Mathers while he returned outside to warm up the car. Cinq-Mars promised not to be long, although Dreher called over his shoulder to take his time.

With the barn door shut again, the former cop paced. Mathers stood still and observed him. He’d seen this contemplative visage before. The cold and the barn’s dampness brought a spot of fluid to the tip of his mentor’s nose, which he knocked away with a gloved hand, and went on thinking. Mathers waited beyond his point of impatience, but when the silence was just too much for him, he finally asked, “What’s bugging you?”

He recognized that much. The wily retired detective was not flummoxed by some notion he did not understand, but he was visibly upset.

“He doesn’t want the SQ involved for a reason.”

“Would you?”

Cinq-Mars rocked his head gently, quizzically, from side to side. “Touch
é
, Bill. But I know them. I have cause not to want to work with them. But why doesn’t
he
want them around? He’s an outsider. What does he know?”

“So, are you saying you’re not buying his argument for an independent investigator? Made perfect sense to me.” With his hands in his coat pockets, Mathers caused the bottom portion of the coat to flap a moment. Either that motion, or what he said, stopped his colleague’s pacing.

“The man lies with confidence, doesn’t he?” Cinq-Mars noted. “Man, what a crock of pig manure. That’s one thing about a truckload of pig shit, Bill. You’d know this if you lived out here. Sure it has a purpose, but my God it stinks.”