The room was dim. The bedside clock said 8:42. Christ. Had I really slept that late?
Jamming a pillow behind my back, I punched a speed-dial entry.
My call was answered quickly. “Ryan.”
I started to tell him about my theory. About Rodas.
“I know.”
“You know?”
“He phoned.”
“When?”
“An hour ago. Not bad, Brennan.”
I felt a rush of irritation. Said nothing.
“Where is he?”
“Driving to the location.”
“What location?”
“You nailed it. The Corneaus own ten acres with a house and outbuildings a bit south of St. Johnsbury. It’s about twenty miles from the farm where Menard holed up before moving to Montreal.”
“Rodas couldn’t have waited?”
“He thought it wise to have a look.”
“He has backup?”
“He’s been a cop for a very long time.” A note of condescension?
“Did he take a CSS team?” I knew that was stupid. Asked anyway.
“It’s a bit premature for that.”
“What’s his plan?”
“Observe. See if anyone’s living there.”
“He couldn’t determine that before heading out?” Sharp.
“Rodas has someone running a search. Tax records. Phone and utility bills. You know the drill.”
I did. “How long is the drive to St. Johnsbury for him?”
“He estimated forty minutes.”
I looked at the clock. It was now 8:57. “If it’s been an hour since you spoke, why hasn’t he called?”
“Probably nothing to report.”
“So what are we supposed to do?”
“Wait.”
“Fine. I’ll wait. While you and Rodas bust your asses protecting and serving.”
With that clever retort, I clicked off and tossed the phone.
I knew my peevishness was juvenile. I needed to vent, and Ryan had taken the hit. But Rodas had left me out of the loop. So had Ryan. Not even a text from him. I was furious.
Throwing back the covers, I shoved to my feet. Yanked on sweats. Stomped to the bathroom and brushed my teeth.
9:08.
Into the kitchen for a bagel and coffee. Dining room table. Back to the bed for my mobile. Back to the table.
Out the French doors, the sky was the color of old nickels. The shrubs in the courtyard looked dark and droopy, as though dispirited by the prospect of sleet or snow.
At 9:29 the phone rang. I knocked over my coffee snatching it up. Grabbed a towel from the kitchen as I answered.
Slidell was talking before I could say my name. “Pastori’s getting some of Leal’s browser history.” He took my nonresponse as puzzlement over the name. “Pastori’s the computer geek.”
“I know who he is.”
“Whoa. We got a bug up our ass today?”
“What is Pastori finding?” Diverting a brown tentacle coursing toward the edge of the table.
“I’ll spare you the bullshit about URLs and partial URLs and embedded sites, blah, blah, blah. Bottom line, it don’t seem like much.”
I heard a wet sound as Slidell thumbed his tongue, flipped a page, went on. “No shopping trips to eBay, Amazon, that kind of thing.”
“Not surprising. Shelly Leal was thirteen years old.”
“She visited some game sites let kids play dress-up with cartoon characters. You know. Put Barbie in a tube top and braid her hair.”
I held the phone with my shoulder as I lifted and blotted.
“There was a site lets kids create aviators for moving around virtual worlds.”
Knowing Slidell hadn’t a clue about avatars, I didn’t bother to correct him.
“What the hell’s a virtual world? That some kinda make-believe where everyone’s good?”
“That would be virtuous. What about chat rooms?”
“The kid didn’t hit porn sites, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“You know it isn’t.” Wiping off the chair seat.
“She linked to a site called AsktheDoc.com. You put in questions about your prostate, someone claiming to be a doctor answers.”
“Is that what she did?”
“What?”
“Ask about her prostate?” What little patience I had was fast disappearing.
“You could try tweezers.”
“What?”
“To pluck that bug crawled—”
“What questions did Shelly ask?”
“Pastori couldn’t get that.” Paper rustled. “The only other site he managed to pull out was a forum on a disease called dysmenorrhea.” He pronounced it “dies-men-o-ree-ah.”
“It’s not a disease. The term refers to severe pain associated with menstruation.”
“Yeah. I don’t need no details.”
“What did she do there?”
“He couldn’t get that, either.”
“Why not?” Sharper than I intended.
Slidell let a few beats pass, his way of telling me to lose the attitude. “First of all, you’ve got to have an ID, and the forum’s got a shitload of members. Pastori says he skimmed through a couple hundred posts. But he had no idea what to look for. And even if he did figure out who Leal was, she could have been a lurker. That’s someone—”
“I know what a lurker is. Did he attempt to figure out her ID?” I almost said “aviator.”
“With what little I could give him, yeah. Family names, pets, initials, birthdates, phone numbers. Got nowhere.”
I thought about that. “Was he able to determine what cartoon characters she chose on the game sites?”
“Hmm,” Slidell said.
I bunched the towel, walked to the door, and tossed it into the sink. Coffee dribbled on the floor as it arced across the kitchen.
“This whole Internet angle may be a dead end,” Slidell said.
“Or she may have met someone in that chat room.”
“It’s a site for people whining about cramps.”
Seriously? “Gee. You think some of those whiners could be adolescent girls?”
“You’re saying our target visits this chat room hoping to hook up with kids? Maybe pretends to be a doctor or something?”
“A doctor, a teacher, another kid having difficult periods. People lie on the Internet.”
“No shit.”
“No shit. Have Pastori stay on it. If someone walked Leal through the process of wiping her browser history, it was for a reason.”
Slidell gave a long dramatic sigh. But he didn’t disagree.
“And talk to the mother. See if she has suggestions about passwords or IDs Leal might have used. Find out how much freedom she allowed Shelly online. And ask why her daughter was interested in dysmenorrhea.”
“Eeyuh.”
“Maybe revisit Leal’s bedroom? See what she was reading. What dolls or animals she had. Anyway, get what you can for Pastori.”
“You know the guy is an Olympic-class gasbag. Runs on and on, I’m guessing to fluff his geeky little ego. Every time I call him, it’s half my day.”
I imagined the exchanges between Slidell and Pastori. My sympathies were definitely with the latter. “Is the media still clamoring?”
“Some asshole videoed us working Leal’s body at the underpass, can you believe that? Wanted their fifteen fucking minutes of fame.”
I changed the subject. “What about the age progression on Anique Pomerleau?”
“Yeah. I got that.”
“Did you plan to tell me?”
“I am telling you.”
“How does it look?”
“Like she got older.”
“Send it to my iPhone. Please.”
I briefed Slidell about events on my end. The unsatisfying interviews. My subliminal breakthrough after studying the dossiers from 2004 and talking with Sabine Pomerleau. The property in Vermont.
“Not bad, Do
c.”
“If she did use the Corneau home as a hidey-hole, she’s long gone now.”
“When will you toss the place?”
“When Rodas gives the word.”
“He ask for a warrant?”
I hadn’t thought of that. “Gotta go.” I disconnected.
9:46.
I cleaned the coffee off the kitchen tile, then unpacked the carry-on I’d brought from Charlotte. Took a shower and dried my hair. Dressed in jeans, wool socks, and a sweater.
10:38.
I checked my phone, hoping a text had landed while I was engaged in toilette. Nope.
I paced, too wired to sit still. Why such angst? I felt what? Stunned that I’d been right? Maybe right. Thrilled that we might have found the spot Pomerleau first went to ground? Might have. Outraged that Rodas and Ryan had sidelined me? Definitely.
The phone finally rang at ten past eleven. Area code 802.
“Brennan.” Cool as snow in Vermont.
“Ryan’s on his way to pick you up.”
“Is he.”
“You need to get down here. Fast.”
CHAPTER 21
THE SNOW STARTED as we crossed the Champlain Bridge. Turned to sleet as we hit Stanstead, just north of the border.
I watched the wipers chase fat flabby flakes, later slush, from the windshield. Now and then a wind-tossed leaf hit the glass and was whipped free, brittle and shiny with moisture.
The car’s interior smelled of wet leather and wool. Stale cigarette smoke.
“Look for the Passumpsic Cemetery.”
The first words Ryan had spoken in almost two hours. I was good with it. After he’d relayed what he knew, which was virtually nothing, we’d both burrowed deep into our own thoughts.
Occasionally, I’d check my iPhone. An email with an attachment arrived from Slidell just past noon. I downloaded and enlarged the image.
You’ve seen pictures of Charles Manson. No matter what his age is, his eyes send a frigid wind knifing straight through your soul. His hair may be shaggy or shaved, his cheeks full or gaunt. You feel like you’re gazing straight into the heart of evil.
That’s how it was with Pomerleau. She was in her teens when the sole existing photo was taken. Now she would be thirty-nine.
The computer had softened the jawline, drooped the lids, and broadened the lips and facial contours, transforming the child face into that of a woman. Still the eyes looked stony cold, reptilian, and unfeeling.
As they had on our last encounter. When she’d doused me with accelerant, then coolly lit a match.
I did as Ryan asked. We’d just passed through St. Johnsbury, were now seeing mostly farm fields, trees, a few clusters of homes.
“There.” I pointed to the cemetery. It was old, with headstones and pillars, rather than ground-level plaques for the convenience of mowers. A perfect Poe tableau in the wintry gloom.
Maybe a quarter mile more, then Ryan slowed, signaled, and made a left from Highway 5 onto Bridge Street. We passed a church, a general store and post office combo, a gray building with an old red auto seat on the porch and a red plastic kayak affixed to the top of the front overhang. Passumpsic was written in white on the kayak’s side. A wooden sign above the door identified the Passumpsic River Outfitter, LLC.
Just beyond the outfitter was a bridge, a narrow latticework of metal girders and wooden beams painted green. Not the covered New Englander I’d envisioned. The Passumpsic River looked dark and menacing as we crossed over. On one bank, an ancient brick power station.
Soon the road’s name changed to Hale. Forest took over on both sides. Lofty pine, less lofty spruce. Hardwoods, their branches nude, their bark black and sparkly wet.
Then there were no homes, no barns. Just the Hundred Acre Wood.
Seven minutes of silence, I kept checking my watch. Then Ryan made a right beside a battered post that at one time may have held a mailbox. A sign nailed to a tree said ORNE in letters sun-bleached to the color of old denim. Below the truncated name, an equally faded fleur-de-lis.
The track was little more than an absence of trees and two ruts undecided between mud and ice. As the Jeep bounced and swayed, I braced myself with palms to the dash. My fillings were loosening when Ryan finally braked to a stop.
Across a clearing, maybe ten yards distant, sat a small frame house that had seen better days. Single-story, once probably yellow with white trim. But, as with the mailbox, the paint was long gone.
The front door, accessed by one concrete step, was propped open with a rock. The windows visible on the front and right were boarded on the inside with plywood. To the left, up a slight rise and nestled under a stand of tall pines, stood three sheds, one large, two small. Dirt paths connected the trio to one another and to the house.
Parked in front of the house was a Hardwick PD cruiser. I assumed it belonged to Umpie Rodas. Beside the cruiser was a crime scene truck. Beside the truck was a black van with double doors in back. My gut told me the vehicle had ties to a morgue.
“Tabernac!”
I swiveled toward Ryan, ready to be livid for what he’d held back. He looked as surprised as I felt.
“What’s the deal?” I asked.
“Damned if I know.”
“Rodas didn’t tell you?”
“He just said they’d found something we needed to see. Sounded distracted.”
“No doubt. He was busy making a whole lot of calls.”
I raised the hood of my parka to cover my head. Pulled on gloves. Got out and started toward the house. The wind was gusting hard, blasting sleet at my face like fiery little pellets. My mind was racing, running possibilities. Senseless. I’d know in seconds. Behind me, Ryan’s boots made swishing sounds in the slippery leaves and grass. Mimicking my own.
A uniformed cop stood inside the front door, thumbs hooked in a belt half hidden by a substantial roll of fat. His hat and jacket bore insignia patches saying Hardwick PD.
The cop straightened upon seeing us.
“Dr. Temperance Brennan.” I flashed my LSJML security card as Ryan badged him. “Rodas requested our presence.”
The guy barely glanced at our IDs. From another room, I heard the sound of drawers opening and closing. “He’s in the big shed out back.”
“Thanks.”
“Tight security,” Ryan said when we’d rounded the corner of the house.
“It’s rural Vermont.”
We followed the path up the hill. Added ours to dozens of boot prints in the half-frozen muck.
The shack was made of unpainted boards barely maintaining contact. The roof was rusted tin, louvered at the top, curling free of the nails securing it at the bottom.
The shed’s two barnlike doors were thrown wide, and its interior was visible in bright detail. The scene looked surreal, like a movie set lit by an overzealous gaffer. I assumed portable lights had been brought in and set up.
Set up for what?
In a far corner, partly in shadow, two figures stood talking beside a blue plastic barrel. One was Umpie Rodas. The other was a tall woman with a red knit hat pulled low to her brows. A full-length black coat obscured her shape. Both turned at the sound of our footsteps. Rodas was hatless, and his jacket was unzipped. He may have had on the same red shirt he’d worn in Charlotte. Or maybe he had a collection.
“Glad you made it. Sorry about the weather.”
Ryan and I entered. The shack smelled of smoke, moist earth, and something sweet, like a pancake house on a Sunday morning.
I was right about the lights. There were three, the standard tripod variety often used at crime scenes. The generator was gas-powered, the kind you can buy at any Home Depot.
Rodas made introductions. The woman, Cheri Karras, was with the chief ME’s office in Burlington. Instead of mittens, she wore surgical gloves. So did Rodas.
I felt a knot begin to form in my gut.
Behind Karras, a man in a thick padded jacket was snapping photographs. His breath glowed white each tim
e his flash went off.
I took a quick look around. The floor was hard-packed dirt, filled with a hodgepodge of items. Enormous cauldrons, blackened by fire. An open box containing blue plastic bags. Beside it, dozens of identical boxes, unopened. Circling the walls, rusty buckets, saucepans of differing sizes, screens, juice and milk cartons, five-gallon white plastic tubs stacked to form wobbly five-foot towers.
Crude shelving held wooden boxes filled with small metal implements that had a spike at one end and a downspout opposite. Others held metal hooks. Two drills. An assortment of hammers. A half-dozen coils of blue tubing. Jugs of household bleach.
At the shack’s center, directly below the vented part of the roof, was a three-by-five brick-lined pit with iron bars running between the long sides. On the bars sat a rectangular flat-bottomed metal pan, empty, its interior yellowed by some sort of residue. The bricks and bars were fire-blackened and covered with soot. Ditto the outside of the pan.
I was stumped. But one thing was clear. Whatever the shed’s purpose, cobwebs and grime suggested years of disuse.
“—got word no one was occupying the property, I decided to take a look around, be sure vandals weren’t up to mischief. We get squatters sometimes, folks find an empty summer home, decide to move in for the winter.”
My attention refocused. On Rodas. On Karras. On the ominous blue barrel between them.
“House had been breached, all right. Lock was jimmied. That was my green light. No damage inside, nothing worth stealing, so I took a peek out here.”
“Cabane à sucre.” For some reason, Ryan said it in French.
Of course. The shed was a sugar shack, a place to convert maple sap into syrup.
I eyed the barrel. The knot tightened.
Rodas nodded. “A Quebecer would know, eh?”
Karras’s phone buzzed. Wordlessly, she stepped outside. I watched her as Rodas continued talking. She seemed untroubled. A raccoon in the barrel? Or just another day with death?
“The property’s deeded to Margaux and Martin Corneau. Ten acres, eight of ’em mixed red and sugar maple. Until the late ’80s, the Corneaus ran a small operation, provided ten, twenty gallons a year to an outfit that bottled and sold locally.” Rodas arced an arm at the paraphernalia around us. “The old stuff’s theirs, cauldrons, aluminum buckets and lids. The plastic collection bags and polyethylene tubing, now, that’s something else.”