He was asleep in the chair when the call came in. He woke at the first ring but couldn’t find the phone before it went to voice mail. He needn’t have worried about that—the second call came immediately.
It was Johansson.
Barrett answered groggily, vaguely aware that Liz was awake and standing on the stairs, watching him.
“What is it, Don?”
“The bodies were found.”
He couldn’t have come more fully awake if he’d been injected with amphetamines. He pushed himself out of the chair and stood up.
“Who was still looking out there? Clyde?”
“Nobody was looking out at the pond.”
“Then where—”
“Two hundred and twelve miles away,” Johansson said. “Buried in the woods near the Allagash Wilderness, wrapped in garbage bags and stuffed in barrels.”
It took Barrett a moment to find his voice. Finally he said, “And we’re sure it’s them?”
“Her rings and bracelets. His watch. No clothes. They’re badly decomposed, and the animals have been at them, but they were both wearing synthetic clothes that day.”
Barrett understood what he meant—synthetic fabrics took longer to decompose than soft human tissue did. If there were no traces of clothing, it meant they’d been stripped naked before they were buried. This was not part of the Kimberly Crepeaux story.
“What about evidence that can help us?” he asked. “Anything?”
“They pulled prints off the barrels,” Johansson said. “One was a full handprint, I’m told. Seven fingers in all, clear and clean. Should get matches quickly with that quality. The autopsy is moving fast too. Everyone wants a positive ID on this in a hurry.”
“He would have worn gloves,” Barrett said.
“Who?”
“Mathias. If he went through the trouble of moving them, he would’ve had gloves on to do it.” He heard Johansson’s sharp inhalation but pushed past it. “The barrels are new to the story, but what about the plastic? Are they really garbage bags, or could it have been clear Visqueen?”
“I was told they were garbage bags,” Johansson said, “but I’m not really worried about that.”
“Well, you need to be. We’re going to have to establish how they were moved from that pond. This is where we—”
“They were shot,” Johansson said.
Barrett was silent. The room seemed to be growing larger and emptier, as if the walls were receding. Liz was still on the stairs, watching him. He walked to the door, slipped out into the cool night, and closed the door behind him so she couldn’t hear him when he repeated the word.
“Shot?”
“Yes. Two different weapons. Each body had a shotgun wound to the front of the torso, and a small-caliber bullet wound, probably from a handgun, maybe a rifle, to the back of the head.”
“We’ll want the ME to try for an assessment on whether those were pre- or postmortem,” Barrett said. “Whether they were the cause of death or mutilation of bodies in order to conceal the cause of death. We’ll want to have them check Ian’s bones for knife wounds. The skull for a fracture. The—”
“Barrett? Stop. Think. Here’s what we have now: Naked bodies in barrels—not clothed bodies in plastic wrap with pipes—that were buried in the woods, not found at the bottom of a pond, several hours and several hundred miles from the pond they were supposed to be in. Multiple gunshot wounds. None of these elements were in Kimmy Crepeaux’s confession. Not a one.”
Barrett leaned on the deck railing. Somewhere through the trees, down along the river, a loon called. He usually loved the sound. Now the mournful tone seemed cruel.
“Who found them?” he asked.
“Warden Service. After somebody e-mailed the precise GPS coordinates to the tip line.”
“What?”
“Want me to read it to you?”
“Yes,” Barrett said, though part of him didn’t want to hear it.
“Okay. It came from a Gmail account that seems to have just been set up, no history on it; the tech guys are working on tracing the IP as we speak. Anyhow, here’s the message: ‘None of this ever should have happened and it all got out of control fast. I do not want to go back to prison ever but I can’t let you send innocent people to prison for me. You will find the bodies up in the Allagash. I will not tell you how it happened but it is all wrong, you are all wrong, and go find the bodies so you know you are wrong.’ Then he gives the GPS coordinates. They were easy to find.”
Barrett didn’t speak right away, his mind stuck on the words Johansson had just read, playing them back and trying to imagine whose voice they came from. I will not tell you how it happened but it is all wrong.
“The e-mail address isn’t going to lead to anyone,” he said finally.
“Maybe not. But it led to the bodies. And it came in while Mathias was in custody.”
Barrett didn’t know what to say to that.
“Step back and tell me what you’d think of this if you were coming in from the outside today,” Johansson said.
“It’s a different investigation now.”
“That’s an understatement. And it will have different investigators as well. The discovery of the bodies moves the crime scene. We are on the sidelines now, at best. After we went all in on the Crepeaux story? Nobody’s going to want us close. We’re meeting with the new lead investigator in the morning.”
“Who is he?” Barrett asked.
“She is Emily Broward. Good cop.”
“Sheriff?”
“State. Major crimes, just like me.” There was bitterness in his voice, but not blame. At least, Barrett didn’t think so.
“I’m sorry,” Barrett said, and he meant it.
“You shouldn’t be. We shouldn’t be. This is progress. Someone—maybe not us, but someone—is going to get to the truth now for those families. That’s what matters.”
“Yes,” Barrett said, and he saw Howard Pelletier’s smiling face then. Ascending. Ayuh, that’s just the word.
Howard’s daughter had been shot in the chest and in the back of the head, her body jammed in a barrel and dumped in the woods.
“Yes,” Barrett said again. “That’s what matters.”