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.

“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.”

Dreher thought through his objection. “Not answer to me, Émile, 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, Émile, 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, Émile.”

“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 Québécois.”

“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, Émile?”

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, Émile, 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, Émile, 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, Émile. 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.”