I pounded down the first-floor corridor, retracing my steps to the warden’s quarters, and just caught the shadow of my quarry as he slammed through the metal door at the far end.
Bursting out onto the porch moments later, I finally spotted him, briefly and from afar-a dark shape in full flight-rounding the corner of Cliff onto Winter, his legs and arms pumping like a sprinter’s. I chased after him still but without the same drive, that brief glimpse having told me that I was no match for his youthful speed. When I then slipped and fell on an icy patch at the same corner, I didn’t bother regaining my feet but lay there instead, panting and stunned, slowly feeling the icy cold reassert itself until all that was left in the surrounding night sky was the ceaseless rumble of the water rushing through the gorge.
Chapter 16
Gilles Lacombe entered the room on the first floor of the Sûreté building and looked at me sitting in a metal chair by the wall, a plastic cup of coffee on the table beside me. It was not an office, but a cross between an interrogation room and a storage closet, complete with no windows. A doghouse, in fact, I knew ruefully, despite the open door. I’d been brought here and debriefed by an SQ detective, who hadn’t bothered hiding his contempt for my behavior.
But Lacombe didn’t reflect the irritation I had for myself. He hitched a leg on the table’s edge and thoughtfully asked instead, “You are not hurt, I hope?”
“A small bruise on the hip where I fell, richly deserved.”
He nodded, as if to himself. “That is good. You are lucky.” He then looked me straight in the eye and gently asked, “Why did you do this thing?”
His obvious disappointment hurt worse than I’d anticipated. This man had bent over backward to accommodate us, and his confusion now spoke more clearly of his generosity-and my betrayal of it-than any angry outburst could have. I couldn’t bring myself to be honest and deepen the wound by admitting my paranoid suspicions of the night before. Better to just look as stupid as I felt.
“He told me to come alone-that he had proof Bossard didn’t kill Tessier-and not to bring anyone local. I thought it might help.”
He was polite enough not to make any more of it. “Did the man tell you anything before he died?” he asked.
“No. I must’ve gotten there less than a minute after his throat was cut.”
“He told you he had proof on the telephone. Did he carry anything?”
I shook my head. “I went back after I called for backup. He was clean. The other guy must’ve grabbed it.”
“Or it was not real,” Lacombe mused.
That possibility didn’t make me feel any better. I hadn’t thought the whole thing might have been a setup from the start.
“Was the dead man a Hell’s Angel?”
“Oh, yes. And he might have called you,” Lacombe said. “But it is possible the killer called him and you each one, so you could see the death of an Angel. It is good headlines, you as witness, as we have this morning, and it makes more tension between the Deschamps and the Hell’s Angels.”
“And it makes the cops look like idiots,” I added. “I am sorry, Gilles. I really messed this up. I’d be madder than hell if I were you.”
He smiled and patted my shoulder. “It is not so big a deal, Joe. Americans take this more personally than we do. You were not hurt. That is good. The rest is little. And they already call us idiots.”
He took pity on me then. His voice warmed as he added, “And if somebody is making a war between the Deschamps and the Angels, it is not working very well. Both are still telling us they are innocent.”
“How’re things moving against Marcel?” I asked, mostly to shift the attention off me. “Bartlett was saying yesterday they think he might be innocent.”
He shrugged philosophically. “We do what we do, they do the rest. If they will not prosecute, we have to return to…” he groped for the right expression.
“First base?” I finished to help him out.
“That is it. But I do not think it will be simple. Marcel fit as his father’s killer. After all this time, I do not know where else we could go. Also, it will be difficult to keep the task force together.”
“Marcel and his lawyers must know that.”
He nodded. “It is an interesting time.”
“Anything else come up from the search of his house?”
“The DNA found on the ice pick is the same as Jean Deschamps’s, and Marcel had fingerprints on the handle, but the Deschamps can have the best lawyers in Canada.”
“What about all the paperwork from Marcel’s office?”
Lacombe thought back. “No,” he said slowly. “They are still analyzing it, but it looks like mostly business affairs. It is clear they either have a second office we did not find or they do not write down what we would like to see. We also are running tests on all the other weapons we found in that closet. If not his father, maybe somebody else can be tied to Marcel.”
He rose to his feet, preparing to go, and then stopped. “There is something interesting, speaking of killed people-a little history. We found documentation from the Second World War in the papers of Jean Deschamps that Marcel had stored. It looks like the father thought his older son Antoine had been murdered in Italy and not killed in battle.”
“By who?”
Lacombe resumed walking to the door. “They do not say. And it might not be true. What we found were copies of letters Jean wrote to the army. The replies all say that it did not happen that way-that Jean should be proud of his son’s sacrifice, et cetera, et cetera.”
He paused on the threshold. “I have to do some of my other work right now. I am very glad things worked out last night, Joe. I would feel badly if you got hurt.”
“I know. And I really am sorry, Gilles. It was a spur-of-the-moment thing. It won’t happen again.”
He left then, but despite his kind words and gentle manner I knew I’d crossed a line-and suspected I’d be seen as more hindrance than help from now on.
It was time to return home, not just to mend fences back there, since I knew I’d just made VBI look a little less than stellar, but because it was becoming clear that the case against Marcel-passed polygraph or not-wasn’t panning out as we’d all hoped it might.
Despite the setbacks, though, I couldn’t repress a paradoxical optimism, as if having just been deprived of the only prize I thought was available, I now could suddenly see others of equal-if less obvious-merit.
Lost in a flurry of new options, I slowly went upstairs in search of a phone.
Willy Kunkle came through my open door at the Commodore Inn back in Stowe and leaned up against the wall, watching me unpack.
“They throw you out or are you running for cover?”
I didn’t look up at him. “Guess you heard.”
“Hell, yeah. Didn’t make the papers-not like if I’d screwed up-but no cop I know hasn’t heard about it. Cowboy Joe, head of the Untouchables. They’re all laughing their asses off.”
I knew he was just rubbing it in-that was as natural as breathing to him. But it didn’t make it any easier to take.
“Maybe it was a blessing in disguise,” I said as a diversion.
He laughed. “God, I’m glad I never used that line on you.”
I stopped what I was doing and straightened. “Where’re Sam and Tom?”
“Sam’s in her room doing homework. I dunno about Tom. We don’t hang out.”
I resisted suggesting why that might be. “Round them up. If I’m going to tell you what I’m thinking, they might as well hear it, too.”
We convened in a small booth at the back of the inn’s over-decorated bar. It was early evening, the TV set’s volume was hovering at near murmur, and we had the place mostly to ourselves.
“I got Willy’s version of the fallout,” I told the other two. “What’ve you heard?”