“Did he live high on the hog?” Willy asked.
“I didn’t think so. He was better off than I was, but then almost everyone was. He didn’t drive a fancy car or anything.”
“Probably being discreet,” I said softly, mostly to myself.
Amy’s husband spoke up at that. “I don’t suppose we could ask why you want to know all this?”
“You could,” I told him, “but we wouldn’t be able to tell you much. It’s a very old story, with quite a few holes in it. And we’re not actually singling out Mike Sawyer-he’s just one of many leads.”
“Did the restaurant have a freezer?” Willy asked abruptly.
Butynski’s face lit up. “Yes. Actually, that’s another example. Right after we had the problem with the meat shortage, Mike had one put in. It was quite a big deal-I’m not sure anyone else had one then. They were quite rare in those days. In fact, the government had started a program of building community freezers here and there so that people could use them the way municipal swimming pools are used now-for the benefit of all. But typically, Mike wasn’t interested in anything like that. It was always first-class for him. It made the newspaper, if I recall correctly, and the freezer was enormous-as big as a room. In the summer, some of us would go in there to cool off-when Mike was away, of course.”
Unconsciously, both Willy and I leaned slightly forward in our seats.
He spoke first. “What time of year did he put it in?”
“Easy-late winter, before the ground thawed. That was part of what made it news-that he didn’t wait till summer, or spring at least. It must have cost him much more to have it done then, but he was insistent, even though it caused a big mess and lost him business.”
“Ms. Butynski… I mean Sommers,” I asked, “was there anything unusual about the freezer? Maybe a locker that Sawyer kept secured or even a separate room he might have used for storage?”
She was silent for a moment and then shook her head. “It was just a room. It had shelves running along both long walls, of course, but they were open, and it had hooks for the bigger pieces of meat, but that was it.”
That was disappointing. I was so sure we’d found where Jean Deschamps had spent at least the first few years of his afterlife.
“You said you used to go in there to cool off during the summer,” Willy asked. “Where did you sit?”
“On the box,” she answered pleasantly, “at the back.”
“How big was that?” I asked, as impressed by our luck as I was by Willy’s inspiration. “Maybe seven feet long by three or four wide?”
She smiled broadly. “Exactly. How did you know?”
Chapter 22
The mood in the air was refreshingly upbeat, especially after so many setbacks. We were sitting around our quasi-official table at the Commodore’s bar, Willy and I updating Paul, Gary, and Tom about our conversation with Amy Butynski.
“Assuming the box had Jean’s body in it,” Tom was asking, “who’s the connection between Mike Sawyer and Sherbrooke-Picard, Guidry, or Marcel?”
“Rule Marcel out,” I said. “He may be a crook and he may’ve benefited from his father’s death, but I think he was clueless here.”
“Joe thinks the ‘we’ in the letter was Picard and Guidry both,” Willy explained. “Could’ve been, too, with Guidry as the pig sticker and Picard the mastermind.”
“They set up Mike Sawyer in a fancy restaurant just so they could put a body in the freezer?” Tom asked incredulously. “Give me a break.”
Willy didn’t take offense, his optimism holding the upper hand for once. “Sawyer was probably only a money launderer at first. But the freezer was installed in late winter, just before a body in the snow would begin to thaw. It was luck of the draw. Jean Deschamps was indulging in chasing down his son’s supposed killer. He came to Stowe, perfect for Guidry because it was not only across the border, but where Sawyer had already been put in place. Guidry knocks the boss off and sticks him in the snow, while Picard pays Sawyer to order the freezer and-probably a few years after everything’s calmed down-lays the trail that eventually nails Marcel by salting Alvarez’s records, setting up that weird will, and planting the letter that led us to Marcel. A nice, neat, lawyerly approach.”
“But why bother?” Tom complained. “Why not just knock off both father and son and take over the business?”
Willy was beginning to lose patience. “Because it was a family business, duh, and to destroy that means to destroy the works. Besides, now Guidry moves up from chauffeur to right-hand man, and Picard becomes the consigliore, all because snotnose Marcel turns into this smoking son of a bitch who transforms Pop’s outfit into a multimillion-dollar hotrod. Everyone comes up roses, with the extra advantage that the first two have this rabbit in their hat they can use against Marcel whenever they want-which is when he comes down with galloping cancer and talks about handing everything over to his son, Michel, who is guaranteed to piss it all away.”
Tom was silent, considering Willy’s version of reality. Gary Smith, however, seemed won over. “I’ll be damned. That would explain why things have gone to hell since Marcel passed the polygraph, and why they tried to hit Joe for poking around beyond the trail they laid out.”
“I think it’s been more Guidry than Picard,” I said. “He’s the one with the street-brawler past. Could be the two of them are falling out, which would explain the stupidity of trying to shoot a cop.”
Gary Smith reached for his silent pager and looked at the display. “Be back in a sec,” he said and left the table.
Tom Shanklin didn’t look totally convinced but obviously had no counterarguments. “What’s the next move? See what the Canadians can make fit?”
“After meeting Butynski, Willy and I did just that-we called Lacombe to try some of this out. He already had a little on Sawyer, from Sammie’s call earlier, and confirmed that Sawyer was a bad boy up there before leaving for the U.S. during the war, which is why he didn’t get into the fighting, apparently. The kicker, though, is that he may’ve been here illegally all this time, which means we’ll have something to squeeze him with. I doubt he’ll want to go back to Canada to do time at his age, even with their soft sentencing.”
I took a swallow of my Coke and then asked Willy, “Where is Sammie, anyway?”
He curled his lip. “Obsessing, surprise, surprise. She’s still running that World War Two roster against the Stowe records.”
I saw Smith returning from the phone out in the hallway and could tell from his expression he wasn’t bearing good news.
He didn’t sit down. “I hope you didn’t plan to talk to Mike Sawyer again.”
No one said a word.
“He’s been found dead at home. Shot three times, with a frozen hot dog shoved down his throat.”
We drove to Sawyer’s house in a caravan, to find the Stowe PD had already cordoned off the area, laid out a narrow path into the building, and made sure that whatever evidence there was would be preserved. I’d already called the mobile crime lab, and since Waterbury was just down the road a few miles, their response time promised to be mercifully short.
In the meantime, donning white coveralls, a cap, and booties, I followed the access path into the house to see Mike Sawyer one last time.
He was still in the tastefully appointed living room, now oddly silent and somehow not smelling quite right. He was sitting in an armchair, his head thrown back grotesquely. The bullet wounds were to his chest, the dark stippling around the holes indicating the shooter had stood very close. The now thawed hot dog was there as advertised, protruding from between his lips, probably placed there posthumously as a statement to us-this was a man who was not going to speak. Ironically, I’d figured that would have been the case anyhow, despite my high hopes around the table at the Commodore. The one time I’d met Mike Sawyer, I hadn’t thought him easily susceptible to pressure. Killing him had therefore been totally gratuitous, which gave me a glimpse into the character of the shooter.