by John Farrow
“And a dead woman.”
“Always two floors?”
“Every time. Male victim downstairs, the woman on the second floor.”
“Sometimes shot. Sometimes knifed. That doesn’t sound like the same MO.”
“In certain circumstances, the killer may have needed to be quiet.”
“How many murders?” Cinq-Mars looked directly at him. “On your side of the border?”
“Can’t tell you that yet, Émile.”
“Right. I haven’t indicated if I’ll be, as you say, involved. I find it curious.”
“Excuse me?”
“Your reticence,” Cinq-Mars told him. “It’s curious.”
“This is the way it has to be, that’s all,” Dreher confirmed.
Testy for the first time on this trip, Cinq-Mars replied, “Oh, I doubt that.”
Dreher looked angry, but said nothing.
As if trying to break that rising tension, Mathers suggested they go upstairs.
“You go,” Cinq-Mars directed them both. “I want to hang back a minute.”
Both Mathers and Dreher thought that odd. The crime scene was cold, they couldn’t imagine what might be gleaned from a chalk mark on the floor of an empty room, but dutifully they lumbered up the stairs to the second story.
Cinq-Mars kneeled over the outline of the dead body. More than anything, he wanted a moment in the quiet of this house. To soak in the atmosphere, to feel what that might tell him. He wasn’t going to explain the method to anyone, as he could scarcely explain it to himself, but in his estimation investigating officers talked too much and thought too much and never allowed the environment to have its say.
Nor did they give the mind a chance to truly think.
He couldn’t stay crouched for too long though. His knees and fragile back. Straightening, he stood still. The premises were astonishingly quiet, and somehow that felt significant. He gazed out the window at the snow, and at the adjacent barn. What was wrong with all this peacefulness? The loudest sound proved to be the footsteps of the two detectives overhead and their muffled voices, and even that was intermittent.
Cinq-Mars regarded the chalk mark again. Then the sofa took up his attention. He examined it up close, picking at the fabric. He returned to the kitchen and checked the cupboards and the pantry. Around about this time the heating system came on and he went down into the basement. He found what he was looking for beyond the oil tank, then climbed the stairs again to the first floor. He checked the TV room and another small alcove downstairs, then joined the two officers up above.
“So what did you discover?” Dreher inquired. If he had been hopeful of this partnership ahead of time, his confidence now appeared to be waning.
“Where are the animals?” Cinq-Mars asked.
“What do you mean? Horses, cows? They didn’t have any.”
“Cats, dogs. It’s a farm. What farmhouse isn’t overrun with mice without a cat or two? Where are they?”
“The reports don’t mention animals,” Mathers pointed out to him.
Dreher picked that up. “No cats. No dogs. No pigs. No hens. What does it matter? No nothing. There are no animals.”
“Then why does the living room sofa have claw marks where it’s been used as a scratching post? Why do the floors show nicks like those my dog makes when her nails have grown too long? Why do we find dog hairs and cat hairs or some kind of hair on the carpets? Why is there a full kitty-litter box in the basement, with some old droppings, if a cat hasn’t lived here? And why keep a dog’s cushion on the floor of the TV room if no dog lies on it? I suppose Morris and Adele kept cat and dog food, both, in the pantry for an occasional late-night snack on their own?”
“Holy shit,” Mathers exclaimed. “Where are the animals?”
Cinq-Mars glanced at him. “That’s my question,” he said.
Mathers held up his hands.
Agent Rand Dreher, in the meantime, appeared to be consumed by thought.
Cinq-Mars examined the chalk lines that demarcated where the policemen and the woman of the house met their fate. He could tell which represented the officers as the artist had carefully drawn the pistols found in each man’s hand. “Ask the SQ to bring in their canine squad, Bill.”
“The trail’s shit-cold, Émile. You know that.”
“The animals, Bill. You’ll find them dead in the snow somewhere nearby. If they were in the house, we’d be smelling them by now. I’m not counting on it, but their collars might relinquish a thumb print. Or something. Maybe they managed to get in a bite of flesh. Maybe a nail scratched our killer.”
“How do you know for sure they’re out there?”
“Where else would they be? The killer didn’t dig them cute little graves in the frozen ground. If he tried he’d still be digging. He just dropped them in the snow. He doesn’t expect them to be found until it melts. By then, Mother Nature will deal with the carcasses before anyone finds them in the tall spring grass. Whoever does, the assumption will be that wild animals did them in, or exposure. Nobody will care or think twice, and anyway there might be nothing left. Thinking that way, maybe our guy allowed himself to be careless. So, canine squad, Bill. Worth a shot.”
“Okay, but if he dropped them in the snow,” Mathers argued, “why can’t we just follow his steps right to them? Oh. Right. His footprints are invisible somehow.”
“He killed the animals first, Bill. That tells us that he was here a while. Perhaps waiting for his victims to show up. He killed them during, or perhaps before, the storm.”
Dreher was nodding. He finally seemed impressed. “What does this bedroom tell you?” he asked, and Mathers noticed that the man’s tone now conveyed a smidgen of respect rather than mere guarded judgment.
Cinq-Mars was looking around the space. The silence, even with the heating system engaged, kept getting to him, speaking to him, in a way. As below, the floor was stained by the mopped-up blood of the victims.
“One man was shot through the back of his head,” Mathers offered. “The other, straight through the top of his forehead.”
“The woman,” Cinq-Mars inquired. “Adele. Any signs of sexual assault?”
“Both victims had the ring fingers of their left hands severed,” Dreher replied. “Both the rings and the fingers are missing. That’s always true south of the border as well. The women, here and in the States, are found naked, but their ordeals do not include rape or any apparent sign of sexual transgression. Except, I guess, for the nudity.”
The very strangeness of all that kept the three men quiet awhile and studying the floor. Then Cinq-Mars asked, “Any surprises with the autopsies?”
No one said anything so he looked up.
Mathers seemed to be hesitating about something.
“What?” Cinq-Mars encouraged him.
“A discrepancy,” Mathers said. “At least, it felt like that to me.” By the way Dreher’s head elevated, the senior cop assumed that this was coming as news to him also, which meant that the pair had not thoroughly debriefed one another.
“Go on.”
“Something weird. The officers, the ones who got shot, they phoned in that the woman was still alive. They requested an ambulance. Yet the autopsy showed that the female victim had two gunshot wounds. Both to the head. One entered under the chin and exited out the top of her skull, which, the pathologist stated, did so much damage it could only have killed her instantly. If that is so, why did the cops call-in to say that she was still breathing?”
The three men surrounded the lines on the floor in the shape of the woman’s form. Dreher at her head, Mathers at the base of her spine, with Cinq-Mars on the opposite side of the body’s outline standing by her knees and thighs. The retired cop was the first to do so, but then each man followed suit, tucking his hands into the front pockets of his trousers and dwelling on all this.
Cinq-Mars answered, “Because she was still alive then, Bill. The fatal bullet occurred after the officers called to say that she w
as still alive. That’s why the officers were killed.”
“Excuse me?” queried Dreher. “How the hell do you know that?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Cinq-Mars appeared to be speaking to the sketch of the woman’s shape on the hardwood floor. “What other explanation is there? The officers radioed that she was still alive. The killer overheard that conversation. At that moment their fates were sealed. He could not allow the woman to remain alive and possibly recover and identify him—or for other reasons—but in order to kill her, he had to get to her, and that meant killing the officers first, and with some haste, since an ambulance and other police were on the way.”
“Okay,” Mathers allowed. He got that much. “But how?”
Cinq-Mars gazed between the two men a moment, then looked behind him. Next, he turned back and pulled his hands from his pockets as he stepped over behind Bill Mathers. Before him stood a pair of Queen Anne chairs and between them a sturdy table which held magazines in its base and a pair of coffee coasters on its mahogany surface. “There’s your footprints in the snow,” he pointed out. Both Dreher and Mathers leaned in closer. “Only they’re in the rug.” The pale, soft-pile, oval rug that covered the surface around the chairs showed indentations the table had made in its original location. The table’s feet now stood slightly to the side of those twin marks.
“Okay, the table’s been moved slightly,” Mathers noted. “So? Are you saying that it got bumped during a struggle?”
Cinq-Mars ignored him. He returned to the hallway. Mathers followed closely behind but Dreher seemed to hold himself back. Cinq-Mars pointed up. To a trapdoor. “He stood on the table to get into the attic. He could push open the trapdoor standing on the table, and a strong man can pull himself up from there. Notice the hall runner.” He pointed to spots between his feet. “It also has slight indentations which match the table legs from when he put his weight on it. Up he goes. When the first cop poked his head out, and when he happened to look down, he was shot through the back of his skull from above. When the second cop peeked around the corner, wondering where that shot had come from, he heard something—the trapdoor being opened ajar, perhaps—and glanced up. Either that or he figured out the first bullet’s trajectory. His last split-second alive. Shot through the forehead. He jolts back, his head hits the doorjamb at this blood mark, then pitches forward.”
Mathers’s focus repeatedly swung between the chalk marks representing the two dead cops and the trapdoor in the hall ceiling. “Son of a bitch,” he said.
Cinq-Mars maintained a deliberately blithe tone when he said, “Our killer could still be up there, Bill.”
Mathers didn’t bite, but he did catch on to what transpired next.
“That means—No shit.”
“Exactly. He was up there the whole time the SQ was scouring the place looking for clues. He got to listen in to everything they said. But a word of caution, Bill, he could still be up there, listening in to us.”
“You’re not serious.”
“I’m not, truth be told. But I’m not a cop anymore. You are. What does correct procedure require of you?” As Mathers was looking around for a prop and seemed to be considering the same table the killer had used, Cinq-Mars helped him out. “I saw a stepladder in the basement.”
Mathers went down to fetch it, which made him feel somewhat like a junior detective again, a gofer, but in the company he was keeping his sergeant-detective status didn’t carry much weight. On the upper landing, Dreher sidled up next to Cinq-Mars and spoke softly.
“So the killer pulls himself into the attic. Doesn’t that leave the table underneath the trapdoor? Wouldn’t the first responders discover it when they came on the scene?”
“He has his methods. But why don’t you tell me what they are?”
“How do you suppose I can tell you that?” He wore a slight smile, and Cinq-Mars determined that he could get along with this guy if circumstances ever required him to do so. He sensed that he was no dummy, and not an FBI robot either.
“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. Al
though 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.
“Émile,” 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. “Émile, 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, Émile, 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.”