Boy in the Water

As for catching Gaudette, Fly

Fly

Three hours later, Fly

At the Brewster exit, Fly

It was six o’clock by the time Fly

Chief Moulton turned up forty-five minutes later wearing a heavy blue parka and a matching cap. He was driving a black Blazer with oversized tires. Moulton didn’t look like a cop, Fly

“You drove all the way up from Boston today?” asked Moulton. His voice had a buttoned quality, as if he were trying to hide the humor in it.

Fly

Before they were settled in Moulton’s small office, the chief tried to call Hawthorne. He dialed the number, listened, then pushed the button down and dialed again. After a moment, he said, “Looks like the phones are out at Bishop’s Hill. I tried him earlier and left a message.”

Fly

“I’d already got reports on them from the state police,” said Moulton. “Lieutenant Sloan was telling me about them this morning, but I’m glad to have the details.”

“What about Francis LaBrecque?” asked Fly

“Not looking for him anymore. A trapper found him in the Baker River before the storm hit—all frozen in the ice except for the heel of his shoe. We had a devil of a time cutting him loose. Poor guy had been turned into a giant ice cube. Anyway, we sent him down to Plymouth. We thought he might be in the neighborhood because his car showed up yesterday. Somebody drove it way down a logging road and left it.”

“What about LaBrecque?” asked Fly

“I don’t know anything about any LaBrecque,” said Moulton. “But there’s a Frank LeBrun working at Bishop’s Hill. He’s a cousin of Gaudette’s as well. He bakes bread.”

—

Kate began to worry when she couldn’t get through to Bishop’s Hill on the phone. Her own lights had been flickering since five o’clock and she wouldn’t have been surprised if they’d gone out. All it took was for a branch to break a wire; in a storm like this, entire trees had been known to topple. And if the wires were broken in several places, they could take hours to fix.

Hawthorne had called from Plymouth early in the afternoon to see if she wanted anything from the supermarket. She might not be able to get to a store because of the weather. He had Jessica with him and they were about to drive back to Bishop’s Hill. And he had mentioned seeing LeBrun in town.

“I’d like to stop and talk to Chief Moulton in Brewster. LeBrun wrecked Evings’s office. Maybe I should talk to LeBrun as well.”

“Jessica told you about that?”

“Yes, but she won’t give me any details.”

That was when Kate began to worry. She herself didn’t like LeBrun, didn’t like his jokes, didn’t like how he looked at her, didn’t like his friendship with Jessica. Now Hawthorne wanted to go back to the school to talk to him. Kate thought that Hawthorne believed too much in talk, just as he put too much trust in his four-wheel-drive Subaru, that it would take him anywhere no matter how deep the snow got. She recalled how ready LeBrun had been to beat up Chip in the parking lot. What was talk to LeBrun? Nothing but telling jokes and being evasive. For that matter, what was talk to Hamilton Burke and the others who wanted to wreck the school? Only a vehicle of deception, something to make their untruths palatable. And the gossip and slander—all of it had been talk. Hawthorne’s i