One Friday, Keiser emerged with an overnighter and drove to Memphremagog. Adamski followed. To his surprise, she went to his old hunting shack.
Three times he observed this weekend routine. When Keiser wasn’t there he checked security. Visibility. The proximity of neighbors.
Slowly, a plan took shape. He’d break into the cabin, hide Poppy’s car in the shed, and wait. When Keiser arrived he’d demand her stash. If it was hidden at the cabin, perfect. If it was at the apartment, he’d drive her back to town and kill her there. Either way, he’d make it look like a home intrusion.
Except Keiser didn’t surrender as easily as expected. When she finally broke, Adamski was so furious he doused her body with kerosene and tossed a match.
According to Adamski, the women were mostly to blame for their own deaths. His reasoning ran thus. He has problems with rage. They shouldn’t have crossed him. Flawless.
After nearly ten hours of watching the sleazy bastard, I was ready to burst my skin. Or shed it in disgust. Partly the coffee? Maybe.
My brain was still ragged from staring first at the microfilm, then at the grainy image on the closed-circuit TV. Exhaustion had scrambled my emotions, and I had no desire to sort my psyche. I felt sadness, sure. Repugnance. Anger. Yeah, a boatload of anger.
Anyway, by four I’d had it.
With Ryan’s promise to keep me looped in, I headed home.
That night I dreamed again of moths and skeletons and incinerated corpses. Ryan was there, Ayers, Chris Corcoran. Others, too murky to name.
I awoke at eight, again sensing a missed shoulder-tap from my subconscious.
What? The Jurmain, Villejoin, and Keiser cases were closed. The Lac Saint-Jean bones would soon be identified. Nothing remained but Edward Allen’s accuser. Was that the cause of the
While feeding the cat, I realized I’d failed to tell Ryan about my discovery of the Sainte-Monique boating accident. No biggie. He’d call shortly with an update on Adamski.
“Big day today, Bird.”
Birdie kept crunching his little brown pellets.
“First, I’m going to resolve the Lac Saint-Jean case. Then I’m going to nail the rat bastard who smeared my name.”
Bird shot me the cat equivalent of a reproachful glance. At my use of language? The rodent reference?
I left him to breakfast alone.
At Wilfrid-Derome, a small tan envelope lay on my lab desk. Finally, Joe had taken postmortem X-rays of all the teeth recovered with the Lac Saint-Jean remains.
Sliding the little black films onto a light box, I examined each tooth.
The spot of dullness on the second upper baby molar glowed white and radiopaque. A restoration. Interesting, but of little value without antemortem dental records.
Next, I reexamined each of the Lac Saint-Jean skeletons. Then I called Labrousse, the gynecologist-coroner in Chicoutimi.
After describing my library microfilm find, I asked Labrousse to see what he could dig up locally on the drowning victims. He agreed to look for surviving family members, medical, and dental records. He also offered to check the coroner archives, but doubted anything would remain from 1958.
Agreeing that retention of fifty-year-old files was unlikely, I asked Labrousse to query three things. Was Richard Blackwater First Nations? Was Claire Clemenceau given antibiotics as an infant? Did she have any fillings?
Labrousse said he’d get back to me.
Next, I called the chief coroner.
To describe Hubert’s reaction as skeptical would be akin to calling Bull Run a minor skirmish. Or maybe he hated to admit that
His parting remarks: Valentin Gouvrard took tetracycline at age seven months. The kid from the lake had defective baby molars.
Coincidence is right, I thought, hand lingering on the cradled receiver. A coincidence the size of Yankee Stadium.
Sometimes you just know. Call it intuition. Call it deductive reasoning based on experience and subconscious pattern recognition.
I was certain in my gut that the people from Lac Saint-Jean were the Sainte- Monique picnickers. I simply had to prove it.
I searched my brain. Was there
I came up blank.
I was gnawing on the problem when Ryan called. He sounded as tired as I felt. That didn’t surprise me. His update did.
“Adamski’s copping to Keiser and the Villejoins, coughing up detail like he’s writing a novel. But he’s adamant about having nothing to do with Jurmain.”
“Do you believe him?”
“Why own three murders and lie about the fourth?”
“You did suggest a little American custom called capital punishment.”
“Adamski lawyered up. He now knows extradition’s not on the table.”
“Is that little trick going to come back to haunt you?”
“No one told Adamski he’d go to the States. It’s not our fault if the moron misinterpreted reference to Jurmain’s citizenship. We were just placing her death in context.”
I thought a moment. Rose Jurmain’s bones had no signs of violence.
“Maybe being at the auberge was nothing more than bad luck for Adamski,” I said.
“Meaning the initial finding was correct. Jurmain wandered off drunk and froze to death.”
“There was no trauma to her skeleton.”
“Except for the bears.”
“Except for that. And her body wasn’t buried or hidden in any way.”
“Speaking of trauma, here’s another kicker. Adamski swears he gut-punched Keiser to death.”
“Why lie about shooting her?”
“Beats me. But the story skews right with his history.”
“But I saw the bullet track. Ayers showed me photos.”
“Maybe Adamski has self-image issues. You know, guns are for sissies, that sort of thing. Or maybe the gun belongs to someone he’s trying to protect. We’re still working him. It’s harder now that he’s hired a mouthpiece.”
I told Ryan about the ’58 boating accident on Lac Saint-Jean.
“Did you ask Jacqueme about his brother-in-law’s ancestry?”
“Yes, ma’am. Achille Gouvrard was
“And Jacqueme remembered something else. Gouvrard fought at the battle of Scheldt in ’forty-four. Came home with shrapnel in his right thigh. Complained of bone pain when temperatures
