Smugglers Notch Read online

  “Ed, you caught me at a bad time. I’m over to Stowe just now. There’s two feet of powder on the mountain and the only tracks in it are mine. I’m not in the mood to go hunting for a snot-nose girl probably gone less than two days, who’s—”

  “Less than one, Lieutenant.”

  “Less than one, then … who’s no doubt shacked up with her boyfriend, or her boyfriend’s best friend, or the two of them, for all I know or care.”

  “This one you do,” the dispatcher said.

  “The hell I … Why do you say that?”

  “Because her father’s Raymond Beausoleil, the new state’s attorney for Cabot County, and ’cause if you don’t, Marlow’s gonna bust you down to—”

  But the rest went unheard as St. Germain twisted the key in the ignition and the radio was drained of power as the cruiser surged to life and roared out of the upper lot. The big car skidded onto the highway, a christie turn on two wheels, and found traction, and St. Germain retraced his route past eight miles of shuttered restaurants and motels. On the outskirts of Stowe he went southwest toward Tremont Center, homing in on the radio mast over a clapboard building with grilled windows.

  He came inside the rear entrance, turning to allow his shoulders through the doorways. The colonial-style structure, on the register of National Historic Landmarks, had been erected in 1787 by R. L. Cabot, the timber merchant who had lent his name to the county, and it was St. Germain’s complaint that eighteenth-century Vermonters must all have been under five feet tall. St. Germain, since he was a high school senior, had stood six feet four inches, and in the dozen years since that time had filled out to 220 pounds, most of them rock-hard. He squeezed through the empty corridors toward a door leaking light through a window with SHERIFF painted between ruled lines on the pebbled glass.

  St. Germain opened the door and then knocked and then bent down to strip the gaiters from his trousers. Behind an undersized desk John P. Marlow faced a man wearing a camel’s hair topcoat and with a gray fedora in his lap. The fifty-nine-year-old sheriff, in his ninth two-year term, was in the same uniform as his lieutenant, but without two rows of ribbons over the breast pocket. “Larry,” he said, trying not to glare, “you know Ray Beausoleil.”

  St. Germain snapped to his full height with his right hand extended. The man in the topcoat leaned the least bit to latch onto it and then let go. “Lieutenant,” he said.

  “What can we do for—”

  “Ray’s daughter, Becky, didn’t come home last night,” Marlow interrupted, “and he has reason to believe she might be in some trouble.”

  The little cockteaser with the big round eyes and the rounder heels is gone half a day and we’re supposed to jump like trained dogs? he wanted to say. We could try the hot-sheet motels on the Barre-Montpelier Road, except she probably knows by now to check in under an assumed name.

  But what he said was, “Is that right?”

  Beausoleil leaned back, raking manicured fingers through styled hair going silver at the temples. At his feet St. Germain noticed a monogrammed attaché case done up in soft black leather. “About six weeks ago she took up with a St. Johnsbury man. His name is Benjamin Lederer and he’s thirty-three years old,” Beausoleil said with evident distaste. “By profession he’s a grease monkey, by avocation, I believe, a dope dealer. Since he sunk his hooks into her, Becky’s been acting totally out of character. But she’s never gone so far as to do anything like this before, stayed out all night, I mean.”

  “And you want us to bring her back, do you, Mr. Beausoleil?”

  “Yes.”

  “If she spent the night with him of her own free will, there’s not much we can—”

  Marlow inched closer to his desk. “Hear the man out, will you, Larry, before you jump to conclusions? Just this one time.”

  “She’s only eighteen,” Beausoleil said, redness starting to creep under his blue jowls. “And impressionable. A pushover for someone like this Lederer.”

  St. Germain walked to a folding chair against the wall and lowered his bulk onto it carefully.

  “I don’t expect you to make an arrest,” Beausoleil said. “I just want my daughter home. And I want her to know what a disgrace she has become to her family.”

  In a hollow voice St. Germain said, “I still don’t see where that’s a job for us.”

  “Lieutenant, I’ve spent six years in the attorney general’s office all over this state, and I know better than to consider any sheriff’s department a candy store with free goodies on the shelves. I understand full well the nature of your responsibilities. I also know that days, if not weeks, go by in a rural county of this size without anything more demanding than traffic patrol to take up your time, and so I don’t think it’s asking too much for you to drive up to Lederer’s home with your dome lights blazing and your siren screaming and scare the living shit out of my daughter on her eighteenth birthday.”

  “Have you tried talking to her?”

  “I phoned late last night,” Beausoleil said. “And again this morning. And got nowhere both times. Lederer insists Becky left his place yesterday afternoon and that he hasn’t heard from her since.”

  “I mean did you ever sit down and talk to—”

  “Larry,” Marlow said angrily.

  St. Germain shifted his weight uncomfortably, so that he was facing the man in the topcoat. “What I’m trying to say is that Lederer could be telling the truth, you know.”

  “He’s a liar and a fraud,” Beausoleil said unhappily. “Else what would my daughter be doing with him?”

  When Raymond Beausoleil had gone, St. Germain opened a window to let out the faint scent of gingery cologne lingering in the room. “I can’t figure out why you didn’t give him the gate,” he said to his boss. “Everybody knows the kind of girl Becky is.”

  “I didn’t,” Marlow said, “because in less than two years I’m finally taking off this badge and I believe it might not be a bad idea for the state’s attorney for this county to have a working relationship with the man I hope to succeed me. Does that answer the question?”

  “But you know—hell, he knows, too—that all we can do is go through the motions. Even if I find her, Becky’s old enough to do whatever it is she wants to do and with whoever she wants to do it. I can’t run her in for sleeping with her boyfriend and staying out all night. I can’t even give her a good spanking, which is something I might at least enjoy.”

  Marlow twirled a toothpick in the small space between his front teeth. “Larry, there’s times I think you’re thick as shit. The man’s not trying to change his daughter. He’s scared witless that he’s lost what little control he ever had over her, so he feels he has to throw his weight around here, the other choice being to do nothing and let it eat him up inside. Of course he thinks this office is his candy store. And as far as he’s concerned, you’re the clerk. He’s not asking, he’s ordering you to ride out to St. Johnsbury quick to report that his daughter’s all right even if she is having the time of her life letting this Lederer screw her every which way. And when you tell him that, what he’ll do, he’ll look extremely pained that you didn’t bring her back with you and murder Lederer in the bargain.”

  St. Germain fit his hat squarely on his head and walked to the door. Marlow, watching him, said, “I never told you that being a cowboy was all there was to the job, did I?”

  “No, John, you didn’t.”

  “It’s being a diplomat, and something of a suckass, that’s most of it. So now that we both understand that, how’s about taking Jeffcoat for company to St. Jay and then coming back and telling Ray Beausoleil what he wants to hear.”

  “Yes, sir,” St. Germain said.

  “And, Larry, if it’s not too much trouble …”

  St. Germain paused with one foot already out the door.

  “Take off the other goddam gaiter before you make an ass out of the whole goddam department.”

  At the end of the corridor St. Germain ducked inside a double-doored
room, half of which was given over to three cells fitted out with bunk beds and new clamshell-white American Standard force flush toilets so immaculate that the deputies preferred them to their own single-stall john in the basement. Beyond the bars were four wood desks, bruised and wobbly, and slatted chairs to match. At one of these, filling out a vehicular accident report, sat a man with a boy’s face in the baggy tans of a Cabot County sheriff’s officer. Walter Jeffcoat was in his third year with the department, although only his first in uniform after eighteen months as a probationary officer assigned to clerical duties. On the seat beside him was an eight-pointed policeman’s cap with badge number 138 reflected in the shiny bill. From time to time he looked down at the shield incredulously, as though affirming his membership in an otherwise exclusive club, then touched the point of his pen to his tongue as he searched for his place on the page.

  When he heard St. Germain’s heavy step and his, “Morning, Wally,” inside the bullpen, Jeffcoat got up out of his chair and stood stiffly beside it. Stretched ramrod straight he was five feet five and three-eighths inches tall, nearly three inches below the minimum height requirement for the department, and, at 135 pounds, more than 20 pounds underweight. Contact lenses disguised the 20-80 vision that was also in violation of standards. Because he was the first young officer to have been appointed to the force in five years, and was believed to be the only person in the county who would risk his neck for the starting salary of $10,776, he was considered by his superiors to be among the most valuable men in uniform, if a little bit naive.

  “What’s doing?” St. Germain asked.

  “Couldn’t be busier, Lieutenant.” Jeffcoat nodded proudly toward the pile of completed accident reports, forgetting for the moment the disdain with which other officers regarded paperwork. “After I’m done,” he added quickly, “it’s my day to bring traffic charges in District Court.”

  “Insurance companies’ll have to wait,” St. Germain said. He grabbed for a Styrofoam cup beside the papers on the desk, and Jeffcoat saw his protuberant Adam’s apple bob twice before he put it down. “So will the speeders. We’re going for a ride.”

  “Where to?”

  “For starters, to Shep’s diner. I’ve been over to Stowe just now, working up a monumental appetite.”

  Jeffcoat stood more at ease. “You been ski—” The familiarity in his tone brought him up short. Social invitations were rarities from other officers, most of them hardened former military men who treated him as a gofer at best, more often as a kid brother who was always underfoot. Invitations from the big blond lieutenant who was Marlow’s crown prince were the rarest of all. “And then?” he asked warily.

  “To St. Jay. Montpelier after that. There’s a fellow, I think it’d be a good idea if you were around when I talk to him, so I don’t end up committing felonious assault after he hears what I have to say.”

  Jeffcoat squinted longingly at his accident reports. “Armed fellow?”

  “Nope. Come on, Wally, put a move on.”

  Jeffcoat didn’t budge. “Why would you want to do something like that,” he asked, “assault the man?”

  St. Germain picked up the cap with badge 138 above the bill and whisked some lint off the tan cloth. Then he slapped it down low over the baby-faced officer’s eyes. “Tell me, where am I going to find somebody to do it for me?”

  The farmhouse was an architectural collage, its various parts arranged in no particular order, a Cape Cod cottage between a geodesic dome and a greenhouse radiating purplish growth light attached to a redwood garage. The man who met them out in front seemed to have fallen into the same style. He was tall, as tall as St. Germain, but broader, with a full beard and coarse black hair parted down the middle and gathered into a pony tail that whisked against the small of his back. He was wearing a blue reindeer sweater over faded, dirt-caked overalls, red ostrich-skin cowboy boots, thick eyeglasses with black frames, and a gold Romulus watch. In his hand was a long shovel, which he scraped at the yard as the cruiser pulled into his drive and the two officers came outside.

  “Mr. Lederer,” St. Germain said. “This is Deputy Jeffcoat. I’m Lieutenant—”

  The broad man stared at the outstretched hand, but made no move toward it. “You’re looking for Becky, ain’t you?”

  “Miss Beausoleil didn’t come home last night. We have reason to believe you were the last person to see her.”

  “Like I told her father two times over the phone, she ain’t here.”

  “He says he’s not sure he believes you.”

  “That’s his problem.”

  “Uh-uh,” St. Germain said evenly. “Becky’s his problem. What you’re handing out about her, that’s yours.”

  “In that case, let me explain a little better,” Lederer said. “She still ain’t here.”

  “Where—?”

  “Don’t know.” Lederer dragged the shovel over the snow as though he had seeds to cover in the white furrow. “Don’t care either.”

  “But she was here,” Jeffcoat put in, filling a short silence as if he were expected to say something.

  “Yeah,” Lederer conceded, “but that was yesterday, and Becky’s a pretty fast mover, if you know what I mean.”

  “What time was it that you saw her last?” St. Germain asked.

  “Don’t remember. We had a dumb spat and she—”

  “What kind of spat?” Jeffcoat interrupted. He looked to St. Germain for approval, and the senior officer poised a phantom kick at his shins.

  “The same one we’ve been having since I met her.”

  “About what?” St. Germain tried. “If you don’t mind our asking.”

  “What I mind,” Lederer said, “is your being here in the first place.” He scraped another hole in the snow and then clamped his hands over the top of the shovel and rested his chin on his knuckles.

  St. Germain put an edge to his voice. “Tell us anyway.”

  Lederer blew his nose in the snow, thinking it over. “Why not?” he said. “You can tell her old man it was over how many guys she was screwing while she was moving her stuff in with me.”

  Jeffcoat opened his mouth again. A dirty look from St. Germain shut it. “How’d it end?”

  “The way they always do,” Lederer said, “with her screaming and throwing shit and running out threatening she won’t ever see me again. She left her jacket on the door where she could’ve grabbed it if she wanted, so I don’t expect it’ll be long before she’s back.”

  St. Germain was looking at the greenhouse and the slender stalks pressed against the glass. “It didn’t bother you when her father said she hadn’t come home?”

  “You knew Becky, you wouldn’t be worried she was spending the night out in the cold.”

  Jeffcoat asked, “Do you have her jacket here?” And this time St. Germain wanted to pat him on the back.

  “In the greenhouse. With the rest of her crap.”

  “There might be something in the pockets that we can use,” St. Germain said. “Mind if we come in and have a look?” He was moving toward the glass building when Lederer’s, “I do,” caught him by surprise.

  “Then why don’t you bring it out for us, and make everybody happy?”

  “It don’t make me happy. Let me see your warrant.”

  “Lederer, I’m asking you nicely, get me the girl’s—”

  “Not without a warrant.”

  “You think I don’t know what you’re growing in there? I couldn’t give a shit if you hung a sign and sold it by the bale. All we’re here for is to find out what happened to Becky Beausoleil. She means anything to you, you’ll—”

  Lederer let the shovel fall and took two quick steps forward. “The warrant. I want to see a fucking warrant.”

  St. Germain stood his ground, his hands clenched into fists, then suddenly backed off toward his cruiser. “Okay, have it your way.”

  Jeffcoat caught up with him at the passenger’s side. “He’s right. We don’t have any business going in—” />
  “Get in the car, Wally.”

  The rear wheels kicked up angry braids of slush as St. Germain buried the accelerator and the cruiser leaped ahead of an oily pall. Lederer jumped back as the car bore down on him, the Ford gathering speed as it veered off the drive, swerved around a shallow fish pond, and crashed through the greenhouse doors, bringing down the wall and two large plates of waxed glass from the roof. Jeffcoat was still trying to fasten his safety belt as St. Germain tore open his door and ran into the ruined structure.

  Lederer picked the shovel up out of the snow, holding it across his chest as he sprinted after St. Germain. “You’re a dead man, cocksucker,” he hollered.

  St. Germain stopped and turned around, his fingers drumming against the stiff leather of his holster. “Say something?”

  Lederer lowered the shovel and they stood so close that St. Germain could smell the morning coffee on the other man’s breath. “You’re going to be sorry you ever—”

  “I doubt that.” Toeing bits of glass out of the way, St. Germain went into the greenhouse. Under a long shelf lined with clay pots, each one containing four neatly spaced seedlings and a fertilizer spike in rich humus, he saw a blue parka sticking out of an open carton. On the opposite shelf five-foot vines pushed sprays of pointed leaves out of larger pots, and he lifted one of these over his head and let it crash against the floor. Then he snatched up the jacket by a sleeve and unzipped the pockets. There was a knot of crumpled tissues in one and in another a tin of throat lozenges. When he pried off the lid he found three fat joints and some loose marijuana, which he poured onto the broken glass and ground beneath his heel. He patted down the inside, coming up with a ballpoint pen and a slip of paper on which was written, “Muenster cheese, milk, cornflakes, grape jelly.” He offered it back to Lederer, and when the bearded man kept his hands at his sides, let it flutter between his feet. Then he put the jacket on top of the carton and carried everything to the cruiser.

  He pulled on his gloves and whisked away the debris on the hood. A headlight was shattered and some chrome was missing from the grille, but he saw no real damage to the car. When he looked back inside the ruined greenhouse, Lederer was bunching the potted rows beneath plastic drop cloths, as somber as any citrus farmer at the first warning of frost.