I’d turned off my phone before I’d gotten service again. My superiors could wait for my attention until I’d seen Dani.
Nick, however, had calls to make—something about his jailed son. He remained in the Jeep while Charley and I unloaded the gear we would be taking back home with us. I had waited for a private moment to discuss the events of the past days with him. Friend or not, he owed me a reckoning.
“That letter you left me? You must have suspected Chasse from the start. He was the patient man you warned me about.”
“Yes and no,” Charley said. He looked more himself dressed in green Dickies and a green tee. He was a wiry man whose forearm muscles still showed when he lifted the bags. “The truth is, I didn’t know what to think when I saw that badge on Smith’s table. I’d always assumed it had been buried—burned—with Scott’s body. I couldn’t believe my eyes at first.”
“In your letter you said you’d been duped.”
“If someone had the badge all this time, it meant everything I thought I knew about this case was wrong. I started to turn it over in my mind again, wondering who I’d misjudged. There was Roland, of course, still running wild. And Egan, I learned, was out of prison. Even Kellam has always been such a prickly pear—I was sure he had kept information from me. But it was to Chasse, yes, that my suspicions first went. It just seemed so unthinkable, though, given his sterling character. He would’ve had to have been a master manipulator…”
“He’s a hell of an actor,” I said. “I’ll give him that much. I still don’t believe he failed to recognize Scott when they crossed paths at the Valley View.”
“He might be telling the truth about that,” said Charley. “There was something odd about Scott—he had a quality about him—he could seem like just another face in the crowd. Sometimes I can’t fully recall his features, and my memory isn’t that full of holes yet.”
The sound of a plane passing overhead made us look up, but it was just the Border Patrol on another aerial reconnaissance mission.
“I think what happened,” said Charley, “is that Kellam sent Scott here incognito. Probably he told the warden who’d hired Chasse as his deputy, but the information hadn’t gone further than that.”
“So the first time Lamontaine even learned there was an undercover investigator in the area was when Pierre confronted him with the screwup.”
“Keep in mind that this all began with Chasse’s ambition. He became a deputy warden with an arrangement already in place with the Michauds. But even with the money he was getting from Pierre, he wanted more. He realized he could improve his clout and his financial situation if he could become a full-time officer. It was Chasse who convinced the local warden to complain to Kellam about the Valley being overrun with poachers, not realizing the lieutenant would send in an undercover operative without his knowledge.
“After Emmeline found the badge and Scott’s cover was blown, Chasse had a chance to tell the Warden Service. He could have saved Scott’s life. But he was worried that the investigator had learned of his side deal with the Michauds, and so he stood aside as Pierre killed him. Chasse’s shoulder doesn’t have a burn scar, by the way—but it does show signs of plastic surgery, Zanadakis told me.
“Chasse’s predicament, following the raid on St. Ignace, was that the Michauds could still turn on him and expose him as an accessory to murder. My theory is that he shepherded Pierre into that ambush. I think Chasse was the one who suggested the escape route across Beau Lac.”
“Why would Pierre have believed him?”
“Desperation,” Charley said. “Pierre couldn’t be positive that someone in his gang wouldn’t crack. He needed to get out of Dodge. Maybe he gambled that Chasse wasn’t smart or ruthless enough to turn on him. Pierre Michaud wouldn’t be the last man to underestimate Chasse Lamontaine.”
“So let me get this straight,” I said. “Chasse’s plan was to go with you to Beau Lac and make sure Pierre died. Either he would shoot the fugitive or you would. If everything went like clockwork, he would eliminate the man who could link him to Pellerin’s death and come out as the hero who took down a cop killer.”
Charley nodded that big noggin of his. “The one flaw in his scheme was that he assumed there would be a seat for him in my Super Cub.”
“So instead of being the man who shot Pierre Michaud, it was you who got the glory.”
“That’s an empty word for it, but yes, people congratulated me for what happened, even though it meant we never learned what Pierre had done to Scott. Emmeline had been kept in the dark about the details of the murder, I honestly believe. Michaud’s sons refused to break, and I think Egan was terrified that if he revealed his part, he’d spend the rest of his life in a cell. Another tidbit I learned this week was that Egan suffered sexually during his first stint in the Maine State Prison—endured abuses I don’t care to imagine.
“In the end, Chasse got his promotion even if he didn’t get a medal for shooting Pierre Michaud. He went on to have an undistinguished career, probably because he’s been on the take the whole time from assorted lowlifes on both sides of the border. Pellerin’s death was safely in the past until I came across Dupree’s badge on John Smith’s table.”
I glanced at Charley with dismay. “You forgot it! Back on the island.”
Grinning, the old man reached into his pocket and produced the metal shield.
“I went back for it while you were disarming Stanley Kellam.”
Amazingly, this was the first time I’d seen Duke Dupree’s badge up close. It was smaller than mine, but it
