Smugglers Notch Read online

  “Are you sure?” St. Germain asked.

  “Sure I’m sure,” Tucker said, and laughed indignantly. “The fella that give her a lift, he was driving a van is what he had. Big one, with the fancy wheels with the writing on the sidewalls. And he looked younger than the hairy fella.”

  “You’re positive about this?”

  “Didn’t I just say so? He near squashed my Toyota like a Jap beetle with that van of his, didn’t he?”

  “I wouldn’t—”

  “Wished he had, too, the piece of shit.”

  “Is there anything else you remember about the van?” St. Germain asked.

  “It was blue,” Martin Tucker said.

  “You’re—” St. Germain caught himself. “What shade of blue?” he asked patiently.

  “…. Or black.”

  “Try to remember. This could be important.”

  “Yeah,” Tucker said. “Blue or black. I’m sure now.”

  St. Germain took another tack. “What about the man behind the wheel?”

  “He was white.”

  St. Germain extended his index finger and twirled it in a circle beside his ear, but he did not hang up on Martin Tucker. “I’d like you to come by the sheriff’s office,” he said, “so we can talk at length about what you saw in St. Johnsbury. It shouldn’t take much of your time, and it might mean an innocent man being let out of jail and a guilty one put in his place.”

  “Well, I don’t know …” Tucker said. “Can it wait till I finish polishing my car?”

  Jeffcoat was stacking large, leather-bound volumes on the floor when two men clad identically in red plaid jackets, baggy wool pants, knit caps and mittens entered the area where St. Germain had pushed the best of his sorry collection of chairs close to his desk. They were tall and raw-boned, with narrow eyes and parchment cheeks showing gray streaks of chronic frostbite. Hilljacks, St. Germain said to himself, hard-drinking, inbred, no doubt half-crazy hilljacks—brothers, or, more likely, half brothers, the older one’s thin features curling into a pleated caricature of his companion. St. Germain put out his hand to the wrinkled man.

  The younger one, who was not young at all—about forty-five, St. Germain estimated—peeled off a mitten and reached for the hand. “Pa,” his tired voice said, “you take the truck back to your place and I’ll call when I want a lift.” To the lieutenant he said, “I’m Martin Tucker.”

  “I thought you’d be the—” St. Germain waved his hand in front of his face, wiping the slate clean. “Never mind,” he said. “Please, sit down.”

  Tucker dropped onto the slatted chair and quickly put his feet out to steady himself. “Well,” he said, and opened his jacket. “Fire away.”

  St. Germain kept an eye on Tucker’s father until Jeffcoat had him by the elbow and was showing him to the street. Then he placed one of the leather books on the desk. “This is what we call our Rogues Gallery,” he explained. “This particular album shows everyone arrested for a sex offense in Vermont over the past fifteen years. There’s a strong chance the man who killed Miss Beausoleil has a previous criminal record. If he does, his picture will be here. We’re hoping you’ll recognize him.”

  St. Germain opened the book to a color Polaroid of a man with his back to a V-shaped mirror allowing right and left profiles beside a full-face portrait. On his chest was a plaque with movable letters spelling out his name, the date of his arrest, and the county in which it was made. The following pages contained similar photos of other men, most with the fish-eyed stare of the witness looking back at them. Although, to the casual observer, there was a flinty sameness about them, to Martin Tucker they were as easily distinguishable as would be a large and errant brood of children to their own father. St. Germain crumpled the cellophane from a box of Camels as Tucker inspected the pictures with the quiet thrill of a librarian sitting down to a review copy of the next best seller.

  “Any questions,” St. Germain said, “just ask.”

  Tucker nodded. He flipped the page and then four more before he looked up and said, “I know this boy.”

  St. Germain stood up so quickly that he knocked his lighter off the desk.

  “This Sam Baker,” Tucker said, jabbing his finger at a snapshot. “He married my cousin Fay in Beebe Plain and brung her and her little girl, Connie, to his place in Island Pond. Wasn’t but two months when Fay learned he was doing things, vile things, to Connie. It’s a comfort to see they got his picture in here.”

  St. Germain bent for the lighter. He inspected it for dents and found none he didn’t recognize. “Then that’s not the man you saw—”

  “I see Sam Baker again,” Tucker said, “you can make room for my picture in your book here, what I’ll do to him.” He turned the page.

  When Tucker had leafed through the volume, St. Germain started him on a second one. There were sixteen in all, Vermont’s roster of convicted felons dating back to the early 1970s. Over the next four hours Martin Tucker got up out of his broken chair on only two occasions, once to use the deputies’ toilet downstairs, and later to phone his father with word that he would be spending more time in Tremont Center than he had planned on, and that the nice lieutenant would drive him home. It was nearly five o’clock when he slammed the last book shut, massaging his red eyes with his thumbs. “Tell you one thing,” he said confidently. “That boy’s never been locked up for nothing before.”

  “It’s too soon to say.” St. Germain stubbed out his last cigarette against his heel and let it fall to the floor. “If he has a juvenile record, but hasn’t been charged as an adult, we wouldn’t get to see a mug shot. Juvenile records are sealed by the courts.”

  “Well, what are you gonna do about it? We can’t let him get away with what he done.”

  St. Germain pushed the books aside and rested his elbows on the desk. “You come back tomorrow,” he said, “and we’ll have a police artist here to work up a composite of the man you saw. If it’s any good, we’ll put it on a flyer that’ll go out all over New England.”

  “Sounds reasonable.” Tucker pushed up from his chair.

  St. Germain nudged him down again. “In the meantime, maybe there’s some more we can get done today.”

  Tucker reached inside his jacket for a watch attached to a torn leather strap and tapped it against his palm. “It’s getting toward evening,” he said. “My pa …”

  “About the van,” St. Germain said over him.

  Tucker shook his head. “Like I told you, I was too busy trying to scat out of the way to get a fix on it. I still ain’t real sure about the color.”

  “What about the license plate?”

  “Now you mention it,” Tucker said, “it was green. Shiny new Vermont tag—like a quarter million other folks around here have, that helps any.”

  “It could. If the truck was carrying Vermont plates and the boy driving it knew enough to find the road to Lake Mansfield in a blizzard, he’s no flatlander.” St. Germain rummaged through an ashtray for a two-inch butt and brought out his lighter again. “I just wish I knew which damn hill he’s hiding behind.”

  Toward midnight, when Marlow returned from a conference with state police homicide detectives, he found St. Germain nodding in the swivel chair in his office. “Trying that on for size?” he said.

  St. Germain opened his eyes one at a time, and then jumped to his feet.

  “Sit down, Larry. What’s so important it can’t wait till morning?”

  “The witness, Tucker, the one I didn’t think anything was going to come of him …” St. Germain moved away from the chair, kneading the bunched muscles at the base of his neck. “Turned out he could make sense when he wanted to. We ran the mug books by him. He didn’t come up with the ID, but he says he’d recognize the boy if he saw him again. He’s trying for us, only there’s not much he can do if we don’t have the right picture to show him.”

  Marlow took over the vacant seat and leaned back all the way, sighing. The lines in his face had deepened perceptibly, and what sh
ape his insides were in was something that his lieutenant didn’t want to speculate about. The rare major investigation, even more than natural calamities, made the sheriff’s job the killer that everyone said it was. St. Germain wondered if he, too, would grow old before his time.

  Marlow used his hands to pull a leg up onto his desk. “What does he say about the van?”

  “He didn’t get much of a look. I’m thinking about taking him to Burlington and driving him around the auto showrooms till he spots something familiar, and then asking the Department of Motor Vehicles for a printout on all registered owners.”

  “I like that.”

  “Don’t know that it’ll accomplish anything, though. And if things don’t pan out, we’re up against a stone wall.”

  “I’m acquainted with that wall,” Marlow said. “About all you can do when you feel it creeping up on you is sit tight and pray the son of a bitch doesn’t drag another girl inside his van.” He hoisted the other leg. “Murder investigations are drab affairs, most of them, tedious and full of waiting for the other side to gab too much or screw up in some other way. Except in the movies, they don’t lend themselves to the manufacture of heroes.”

  “I can’t sit,” St. Germain said, and began pacing the room as though he had to prove it.

  Marlow hid an exasperated look behind a yawn. “You get a good likeness put together and a picture of the van, bring them to Fort Abenaki. Plenty of GIs living off base drive trucks. Maybe one of them’s your choker.”

  “I doubt it,” St. Germain said. “Everything points to a local boy.”

  “Try UVM, then, and St. Mike’s and Lyndon College. Should be enough instate students mixed in with the rest of them to give you a run for your money.”

  “Guess I’ll have to,” St. Germain said with little enthusiasm. He paused and then snapped his fingers. “Cancel that, John. If he was in school not long ago, I know a better place to look.”

  When Martin Tucker returned to sheriff’s headquarters the next day, St. Germain and Jeffcoat were waiting in the bullpen behind a mound of Danish and three containers of tepid coffee. “G’morning,” St. Germain said as if it had been wrung out of him. “You’re forty minutes late, you know.”

  “Don’t I know it,” Tucker said. “The goddam Toyota give out again. Had to call my pa for a lift.”

  St. Germain moved an apple turnover across the desk and then reached toward a stack of oversize books on the floor.

  “Got some more of them rogues, I see,” Tucker said, and threw his jacket over the back of a chair.

  “Uh-uh. These are high school yearbooks.”

  “What for? The boy we want, he was voted most likely to succeed?”

  Tucker turned toward St. Germain to see what effect his little joke was having and was pleased when the lieutenant smiled. “Could be,” St. Germain said. “You’re going to tell us.”

  “I am?”

  “If he’s from around here, this is where he went to school. Deputy Jeffcoat and I’ve been trying to put our hands on the yearbooks from every high school in this part of the state. It’s a good bet his picture is in one of them. You shouldn’t have any trouble recognizing him when you see it, now should you?”

  Tucker looked again at the pile on the floor, which seemed considerably higher than it had at first glance. “How many of those books did you say?”

  “The last five years from each school.”

  “But how many is that all told?”

  “It’s not important,” St. Germain said, and interposed himself between Tucker and the stack of volumes. “Far as you’re concerned, his last name could be Aaron and his’ll be the first face you see in the first book. Now get to work.”

  The first face in the first yearbook that Tucker cracked that morning was, indeed, that of an Aaron—Charles F. Aaron—but he was not the boy with the van. Neither were any of the other youngsters smiling uncomfortably from the glossy albums of Montpelier Central, Mount Mansfield Union, Chittenden County Regional, or any of the fifteen schools Tucker went through without so much as a second look. Around noon, when the pile of books dipped below five, St. Germain drove away from headquarters, leaving Jeffcoat in charge of the witness. He returned four hours later with simulated cowhide volumes from two dozen more high schools and religious academies. As he carried them wedged under his chin into the bullpen, Tucker stood up rubbing tired eyes. “No,” he said. “No more, please. I look at another pimple I’m gonna break out myself.”

  St. Germain dismissed him with a terse, “You’ve got to,” and opened one of the new books in front of him.

  Tucker peered inside as if he were about to be sick. “I ain’t interested in no more senior trips to the Statue of Liberty, or the junior proms, or volleyball teams. I don’t give a crap about the French clubs, or the rock climbers, or the cafeteria squad, or the future homemakers, not even the Catamount Choraleers. How long I gotta do this?”

  “Till you find him,” St. Germain said. He turned the pages for Tucker, making certain his witness went through the pictures carefully, getting a good look at each face before moving on to the next. “You know how important it is.”

  They leafed through four more books before Tucker slid his chair away from the desk past St. Germain’s restraining arm, fanning at his eyes with the flat of his hand. St. Germain walked him around the parking lot and then drove him to Shep’s diner for a sandwich and all the coffee he could hold. It was eight o’clock when they came back to the bullpen to start on the six remaining volumes.

  St. Germain was preparing to concede that maybe the witness had been looking at too many pictures when Tucker’s finger glued itself to the page and his bloodshot eyes opened wide. “That’s him there,” he shouted hoarsely. “That’s the one.”

  St. Germain stood up quickly and leaned over Tucker’s shoulder. “You’re sure?”

  “Positive.”

  “How can you be—”

  “I know,” Tucker insisted. “Ain’t that good enough for you?”

  St. Germain tilted the page toward the light. Under the small square photo of a teenager with a smooth face and shy smile was the inscription:

  PAUL ARTHUR CONKLIN

  Keep on truckin’

  “Take a break for now,” St. Germain said, slipping into his parka. “I’m going to find out what the rest of the world has to say about this kid.”

  The shirt was his favorite, off-white with thin blue pin-striping and the extra long tail that made it the only one he owned that stayed inside his pants—and he groaned when he saw it on her. She had bundled herself against the midnight cold, hands hidden in the forty-inch sleeves, the lightly starched collar turned up and crumpled against the pillow. With a pickpocket’s touch he began undoing the buttons, but then she rolled onto her back and the moonlight found the dark patch where the cloth fell away from her hips and he was forced to admit that the shirt did more for her than it ever would for him. Without taking off his shoes he crawled into bed beside her and felt for the warm curve of her breast.

  “Wha …”

  “Montreal,” he whispered in her ear. “We’ll start off there, say, a weekend getting used to each other again, then fly direct to Islamorada and never come in out of the sun.”

  “Larry, ’s that you?”

  “Some other guy,” he said, and gently closed his hand. “What do you say, anyway? How’s it sound?”

  She used her fingertips to massage her temples. “You caught him?”

  “Not yet. But we know who he is. Tucker ID-ed him, and then I went to his town and asked around, and it’s him. Got to be.”

  “Slow down. I’m only half awake.”

  “No,” he said, “I’ll bust if I can’t let it all out now. His name’s Paul Conklin and everybody I talked to, the ones who’d say anything, told me about the kind of kid you’d think of first when you learned what happened to Becky.”

  Annie reached down around her knees and tugged a patchwork quilt over her. “I’m glad for you, La
rry.”

  St. Germain raised the other side and slid under. He placed his hands on her hips and turned her toward him and kissed her. She fit herself snugly under his massive body and wrapped her arms around his back and dug her feet under his ankles, straining against him until he broke away to get out of his clothes. “Don’t bother opening your eyes, Ann,” he said. “This is just a dream, the best you’ll ever have.”

  “Too late. I’m up.” She lifted a corner of the quilt, lowered it over his shoulders as the bed dipped beneath his weight.

  He pushed himself against her, warming himself, and then drew away. “Tomorrow I’ll run out and grill him, and unless I miss my guess I’ll be reading him his rights by suppertime. We can start packing now, if you like.” He kissed her again, but she didn’t respond, and when he tilted her head into the pale light, the groggy smile was gone from her mouth.

  “Not real romantic, am I?” he said. “Sorry, but I’m slightly obsessed.” He came close to nuzzle the special spot behind her ear, and when even that failed to move her, he whispered, “Ann?”

  “Look in the corner, Larry.” She squeezed herself against him, but her face mocked the urgency in her body. “Do you see that valise? I’m all packed, no matter how you and Becky Beausoleil’s killer are planning to spend the week.”

  4

  FROST HEAVES HAD BROKEN the old road’s spine, so that its distance should have been measured in vertical feet. St. Germain slowed to forty as he followed it away from the highway onto a jagged peninsula that jutted into the lake like a beckoning finger. Six miles of ruined pavement gave way to a crushed rock lane that snaked between tall pines shading a summer colony boarded up for the season. Where the limestone thinned to dirt topped with gritty slush, black paint, dripped onto a wood slab, announced STURGEON COVE ROAD.

  He rode his brakes as he scanned vacation homes disguised as rustic cabins with screened porches and two-car garages and the inevitable satellite dish aimed over the bay, bungalows and glass A-frames, each with a floating dock hauled onto the beach in anticipation of January’s crushing ice. Although the main body of the lake stirred with the wind, a dull glaze had settled over the cove, and a flock of Canada geese on that. St. Germain held the car at fifteen, searching for signs of post-Labor Day life. As he shouldered the cruiser between two stalwart tamaracks, relics of a forest that once had swept down to the shore, he saw that he was not alone.