“Big cat. Go on.”
“Eventually, I landed on the second in a series of five YouTube videos documenting a college bicycle trip. St. Johnsbury appeared in the title.
“After watching that clip, which I must say was excruciatingly tedious, I moved on to the third. While I was observing the group posing on the shoulder of a road, my mind filled in the missing letters on the sign above their heads.”
“How did you know about the Corneau farm?”
“You spoke of it when you were here.” Surprised and mildly condescending. “The bridge. The Passumpsic River. The broken sign.”
I remembered Mama’s ceaseless questions, didn’t recall going into so much detail.
“Is it helpful?”
“More than you can imagine, Mama. You are a virtuoso of the virtual. But I have to hang up now.”
“Pour téléphoner, monsieur le détective?” Almost a purr.
“Oui.”
Ryan didn’t answer. Which wasn’t calming. I was amped. Wanted action. Answers. Resolution.
I tried reading. Couldn’t focus. Knowing Ryan would call when he’d viewed the video, I gathered Birdie and went up to bed.
Hours passed. I lay there feeling wired, helpless. Asking myself what I could do. Coming up blank.
Around two, I finally drifted off. More sleep would have helped.
The next day the world spiraled into madness.
Ryan called at seven A.M. I’d been up for almost an hour. Eaten breakfast, fed the cat, read a proposal for a student project. I told him everything.
“McGee was driving a 2001 Chevy Impala,” he said. “Tan. Not the F-150 parked in the shed.”
“Could you read the plate?”
“No. But it was green, probably Vermont.”
“Contact Rodas?”
“Already did. He’s requested an enhancement. If that works, he’ll run the registration through the DMV.”
“Get Tawny’s photo from Bernadette Kezerian. Scan it and email it to Rodas, Slidell, and me.”
“Done. I’ll also contact border control on this side, see if they have any record of McGee crossing into Vermont. Or back into Quebec.”
We’d barely disconnected when Slidell showed up at my door. I offered him coffee. He accepted. We settled at the kitchen table. I briefed him on my conversation with Ryan.
“Dew says no can do.”
“What do you mean, no can do?”
“As of January 23, 2007, you gotta have a passport to enter the U.S. from Canada.”
“That’s good. ICE keeps records—”
“You wanna let me finish?”
I settled back, having vowed to be more patient with Slidell.
“That’s for airports. The reg didn’t kick in for land and sea borders until June 1, 2009.”
“Not likely she’d have flown such a short distance.”
“No.”
“Crap.”
“Yeah. But I got this.” He pulled a printout from an inside jacket pocket and flipped it onto the table.
I unfolded and read it. A tox report. I looked up, stunned by the implications. “They found chloral hydrate in the coffee grounds?”
“Yeah.” He tipped his chin at the paper. “A boatload.”
“Ajax was drugged?”
“Doubt he laced his own Joe.”
“You think someone sedated him, then put him in the car?”
“Explains the washup on the cup and coffeemaker. The grounds being outside in the trash.” Slidell thought a moment. “Kind of an odd choice, eh?”
“Chloral hydrate?”
“Yeah.”
“It was found in the victims at Jonestown.” I was referring to the 1978 poisoning of more than nine hundred people at the Peoples Temple in Guyana, a massacre orchestrated by a power-mad evangelist, Jim Jones. “Also in Anna Nicole Smith and Marilyn Monroe.”
Slidell said nothing.