Bodies Out Back

by Nanisi Barrett D'Arnuk

  Definitely drug murders, thought Cam. It was clear.

  “Those two must have come upon the drug makers and got a surprise,” Carver suggested.

  “Or made some bad meth and got taken out because of it. Or…it could have been rival meth makers. Any idea how long they’ve been there?” Cam asked.

  “Can’t say. It could be a couple months, or if it happened last year, they might have been frozen there all winter. The M.E. will have to determine that.” Adams turned to his partner. “I’ve got the boys picking up all the paraphernalia. They should be ready to head out in a few minutes.”

  There was the sound of another boat pulling up to the dock. Two sets of footsteps ran up the dock, the front yard, and onto the front porch.

  “Michael?” Guy called just before he hit the porch.

  “Ici!” Michael called to him, as they heard the screen door slam shut.

  Guy and Jean-René came in the door. Michael’s two brothers looked alike. Both were over six-feet-four with trimmed light brown hair. Both were well-muscled and stood as straight-backed as could be. Only a wisp of gray around the temples betrayed that Guy was older.

  “Êtes-vous bien?” Jean-René asked, looking at his sister, then at Cam.

  Michael nodded, “Yes, we’re all right.” Then she turned and introduced her brothers to the two Vermont State Patrol Officers.

  Cam turned back to the state troopers. “Is there any way to determine how long ago that road was used?” Cam asked. “I doubt it will be used again very soon if they knew the bodies were there.”

  “We’ll have to check that out, too. But I agree,” Carver concurred. “We’ll keep an eye on it. I didn’t even know it existed,” Carver told them. “We don’t want you to have any unexpected guests. I wouldn’t go back there, if I were you, Ms. Andrews,” he said, “at least until we can scour the area. No telling what else is back there. You seem to have bought yourself a real viper’s nest.”

  “Thank you for being so prompt on this, Sergeant.” Cam stood up, hoping it would urge the state troopers to leave.

  “I’ll go back and see if the boys are finished. I’ll meet you back in town,” Adams told his partner.

  “Mind if I walk out with you?” Guy asked.

  “Sure. Come on.” Adams and Guy started toward the back door. “It was nice to meet you two ladies, and Senior Sergeant,” Adams called back. They walked across the street and disappeared into the woods.

  Then Sergeant Carver turned to Jean-René. “I understand you know where the previous owner is living now.”

  “Yes, I have that information at my office. Are you stationed in Newport? If you have a card, I can call it in to you.”

  Carver nodded and reached into his wallet for a card. Jean-René put it into his shirt pocket and reached to shake hands with Carver.

  They shook and Carver immediately walked toward the front door.

  “Thank you for your patience, ladies. Have a good rest of the day,” he called back as he went outside and walked toward the dock where his boat was moored.

  Michael looked at Jean-René, then at Cam. “Does anyone else need a drink?” she asked. “I know it’s not yet noon, but I feel like I need a really stiff one.” She went to the kitchen cabinet where bottles of Scotch and Canadian Whisky were kept. She returned with three glasses and the two bottles. She handed Cam the scotch and the whisky to her brother, who poured a bit for himself, then handed the bottle back to her.

  After taking a long quaff of the dark amber liquid, Michael sat down at the table.

  “What a day.” She sighed.

  “What exactly happened?” Jean-René asked. “Guy only told me you had found a body in the woods.”

  “Two bodies,” said Michael, looking down at the table as she set her glass there. She wiped up and down her face with both hands. “They’d been there for quite a while.”

  “It seems drug related. There were remnants of a meth lab back there, too,” Cam added.

  “A meth lab, eh?” Jean-René perked up. “I wonder. There’s been a lot of meth and molly going around in Magog and Coaticook. We never could pinpoint where it came from.”

  “Meth labs are easy to set up. It could be coming from almost anywhere,” Cam told him.

  “I know. Anywhere and everywhere, eh?” He sighed and took a gulp of his whisky. “I don’t know why people want that stuff.”

  “That’s what always makes my job harder,” Cam added, agreeing with him. “It’s the folks who have lost faith that the world can be what they want who turn to drugs to make everything seem better. It’s like we’ve abandoned them.”

  “It’s not only young people, either,” Michael added.

  Jean-René and Cam nodded in agreement.

  “I think we need to search the whole of this property. If there was stuff near the stream, no telling what there is further into the woods.” Cam decided.

  “We can start tomorrow morning,” Michael agreed.

  “I thought Officer Carver told you to stay out of there,” Jean-René reminded them.

  “If I remember correctly, he said if he was me, he wouldn’t go back there, but he isn’t me. I own it and I want to see what’s out there,” Cam stated with determination.

  Michael and Jean-René glanced at each other. They knew there was no way to stop her.

  Chapter 4

  Early that afternoon

  The four of them walked north on what was left of the overgrown road. As they approached the edge of Cam’s property, the road veered west, running along what Cam thought was the US—Canadian border. There were several places where a car could turn around. In other places, bushes, fairly young saplings, and tall grass had blocked the entire path. The road looked like it went on for quite a ways.

  “This looks like it hasn’t been used in a many months,” Michael commented. They each inspected the sides of the road.

  “This may not be the way those guys got in here,” Guy suggested. “There may have been another way completely.”

  “These bushes are too new to have been here since more than this spring,” Jean-René decided. “No, this was the way they came in. You may need to put in a fence or some other deterrent.”

  Cam immediately thought of the trap that had been set along that back road in West Virginia. She had been working for the drug cabal at the time. That trap could have wiped out an entire platoon as they plunged into a fifty foot hole with spikes at the bottom, been impaled between two giant wooden claws which had been spring-loaded to clamp together if someone passed the wrong spot on the road, or crushed under large falling logs. When she had found it, her friend Pauly and her boss had led a team of DEA agents to destroy it. That had been the beginning of the end of the drug traffic on the east coast, at least for a while.

  Cam didn’t think this required anything that drastic, but at least a fence would discourage anyone for a while. If left alone, the path would be grown in by the end of the year; impassable by vehicle in two or three.

  “It wouldn’t cost a lot to put a four-foot chain-link fence in here and back into the trees a ways. We could get it done over a weekend.” Jean-René was sure of it.

  “Yes, forty, forty-five feet should do it. It doesn’t need to go all around the entire property, only to stop vehicular traffic here. Nothing would stop foot traffic if they really want to come onto your property,” Guy added.

  “Give me a list of what to buy and I can get it this week. You can bring the whole family out to help. We could have a barbecue and they could see the house,” Cam suggested.

  All three Gauchets nodded. They hiked on.

  “I wonder whose property this is,” Guy said as they looked around in the trees.

  “I’ll have to check it in the county records,” Cam said. “It doesn’t look like it belongs to anyone.”

  Eventually, the road dead-ended onto a well-traveled two-lane road. They’d walked almost three-quarters of a mile.

  “Is this the US or Canada?” Michael won
dered.

  Jean-René stepped onto the pavement. “Unless I’m turned around,” he started, “this is Leadville Road, the road coming down from Magog, it hitches into Lake Road…that’s the road that runs through your property…a few miles south and then goes all the way into Newport.”

  “That’s right,” Michael agreed. “I missed the turn-off onto Lake Road one time and had to backtrack almost ten kilometers to get to your property.”

  “Does anyone live on this road?” Cam asked.

  Jean-René nodded. “There are a couple homes about ten kilometers south, then only sporadically until it gets closer to Newport.”

  “So it would be very easy to smuggle stuff across the border,” Cam decided.

  “Extremely,” Jean-René agreed. Guy nodded.

  “Let’s go back to the house and get my car,” Michael suggested.

  “I’ve got to get home,” Jean-René said, shaking his head. “I promised Teresa I’d work on her car today and it is getting late. The starter has been giving her trouble.”

  “Such a good husband.” Michael smiled. She winked at Cam as they turned around and walked back into the woods.

  As the four approached Cam’s property line, they looked around.

  “It’d hard to believe so much was happening around here that we never knew about,” Guy admitted.

  Jean-René walked a few yards further along the overgrown road. “Did the Vermont Troopers say how far they looked through the property?”

  “They were too busy when they found the plants and the meth barrel to look much farther,” Guy explained. “They wanted to get the bodies and all the evidence back to the labs as quickly as they could.”

  “They simply said they’d be back,” Cam replied. “I should probably look myself.”

  “If you two go exploring, please be careful.”

  “We will, mon frere,” Michael promised. “There’s too much at stake here to do a slip-shod job.”

  “Yes. Don’t worry,” Cam added. “We’ll always be together. I don’t think either of us wants to do this alone.”

  “Especially after what I found this morning.”

  Then Jean-René turned to his sister. “Oh, also, I was going to ask you if you could come out here to teach my officers. I have seven that need refresher courses and to be recertified. It would be cheaper for me if you could come to the Magog station to teach them instead of me paying travel and hotels for them in Montreal.”

  “That is a good idea, mon frère. I can have my assistants teach the classes in Montreal while I’m here,” Michael agreed.

  “I’ll speak to Dr. Nance this week and get permission.” Dr. Nance was the District Commissioner over the entire program. “Magog will be better for everyone than going all the way to Coaticook.”

  “Yes, if you said Coaticook, I’d decline right away. It’s as far to Coaticook as it is to Montreal, and the roads are worse. It’s almost as long to go around the lake as it is to get to a major city.”

  “How long does it take you to get to Coaticook?” Cam asked Jean-René.

  “It’s forty miles each way, so an hour? An hour and a half in the rain. The schools are better in Stanstead, though, and you can’t beat living right on the water.”

  “You should look into buying a boat,” Guy suggested to Michael. “Then you could go to his house and ride with him.”

  “True. We should have a boat, anyway. I’ll check into it.

  “Good,” Guy said. Then he turned to Cam. “Keep my little sister out of trouble, s’il vous plaît.”

  Cam gave a short chuckle. Like that was ever going to happen.

  * * * *

  That night, Michael rolled over with a deep, satisfied sigh.

  “Have I told you how much I love making love to you?” she asked, staring at the ceiling. “I do, you know, I really do, and I’m so glad you bought this house. It’s perfect.”

  “Yes, but it’s quite a commute for you to get to work.”

  “Oui, but it is little effort if I can spend time with you here.”

  “Are you sure? It’s a long ways to travel.”

  “Cherie, there in Montreal is my job; here is you and my life. I can spend one night a week at my house and then have the other six to spend with you. It is well worth it.”

  Cam took a deep, contented breath and smiled back at her. “And did I tell you that I enjoyed making love to you just as much as you do in return?”

  “Then we must be in the right place. I want to do this every single night.”

  “But what will all your little tricks do without you?”

  Michael had been known to prowl leather and lesbian bars in Montreal to pick up women who were willing to go home with her.

  Michael shook her head. “They were only that. Tricks. One-nighters. They were merely warmth to keep me busy when I had nothing else to do. None of them meant a fraction of what you mean to me.”

  “Won’t there be a million broken hearts if you stay here every night?”

  “Then they will have to get over it. I’ve told each of them that she and I had no relationship. If they wanted more, they were out of luck or might have to wait months. Now I have you right here, a few miles from my house. I don’t have the need or desire for others. I have you. I have the original.”

  Cam smiled a very satisfied smile. “A few miles? It’s almost an hour and a half drive.”

  “It’s closer than when you were in Baltimore.”

  “I’ll still have to go away on assignment from time to time.”

  “I know, and I will miss you very much, but none of those women meant anything to me.” Michael turned over and leaned up onto her elbow. “Cameron, you are forty years old, I am forty-one. We have wasted the last ten years in our relationship but we cannot waste more. Will you marry me?”

  “Marriage? Where did that come from?”

  “Same sex marriage has been legal in Canada for years, even before your Massachusetts legalized it. Wouldn’t you feel better knowing we had that legal bond between us; that if something happened to you or to me, we’d be able to legally make things better? That we could visit in the hospital anywhere? And I could tell your doctors where to shove their instruments!” Michael and Cam giggled over that one.

  When Cam didn’t respond any farther, Michael immediately sat up and leaned over to her.

  “I know this is sudden, but we don’t have to do it this very minute. Think about it.”

  “Honey, I don’t have to think about it. Yes, I want to marry you. I’ve already committed my entire life to you, but we have to talk about some things.”

  “All right. What?”

  Cam gave a brief laugh. “First of all, when I’m on assignment, there may be times when I’ll need to get information…”

  “And the easiest way to get it,” Michael took over, “is to take her to bed. I know that.”

  Cam sighed, “Yes.”

  “And when you do that, do you ever do it with your heart?”

  “No! How can you think that? I never let my heart get involved. I know it seems cold and unfeeling, but it is only sex.” Cam shook her head. Yes, only sex. The first few times it happened, she’d been in deep despair over the situation, but after that, she checked her morals to understand the entire thing. Yes, it was sex, but nothing more. She had never initiated it herself, but if that was the way she had to get information and the trust of the woman she was investigating, then that’s the way it had to be. In her heart, she knew her emotions weren’t involved, and if the woman went to prison after that, then it wasn’t her fault. Cam had never even suggested that it would continue further.

  “Oui, it was the same with my girls. That doesn’t affect us, Cam. I understand. When you are away, you are doing your work. You’ve dedicated your life to that and I will not try to stop it. You must do what you must do, as long as you don’t lose your heart over it and you keep yourself safe.”

  Michael leaned down and kissed Cam long and hard.

&nb
sp; “Then we will plan our wedding,” Cam whispered.

  Michael smiled. “Yes, we will plan it. We will see when everyone can attend. Oh, wait; there is something I should do.” She got out of bed and walked around to Cam’s side. She knelt down on one knee. “Cameron Ann Andrews, I will love you for eternity. Will you be my wife?”

  Cam smiled and took Michael’s face between her two hands. “Oui, Michelle Marie Gauchet. Je t’épouserai. I will marry you.”

  Michael leaped up onto the bed and took Cam into her arms. “Je t’aime, cherie.”

  “And I love you.”

  This time Cameron took control and made love to Michael.

  Chapter 5

  Two days after Michael’s find

  Early that morning, Chuck Carver phoned Cam. “I wanted to let you know that we’ll be out there this morning to look through your property.”

  “Come right along,” Cam agreed. “We were thinking of looking around out there today, too.”

  Cam could feel him grimacing. “Please wait until we get there,” he pleaded.

  “Sergeant Carver,” Cam started, “Both Michael and I are very highly trained to defend ourselves. I’d put us up against any of your officers. Michael has a tenth-degree black belt. I don’t think any of your men could take her down.”

  Carver chuckled. “But, can you deflect bullets?”

  Cam laughed, loudly. “That’s one of the first things you learn in CIA training. We always carry kryptonite.”

  Cam pictured him shaking his head.

  “All right,” Carver finally gave in. “You both have guns, right?”

  “I do. Michael doesn’t.”

  “Carry it with you? I’ll feel better.”

  “Okay. I won’t go back there unarmed.”

  “Thank you. Please be careful.”

  Cam turned to Michael as she clicked off the phone. She rolled her eyes.

  “So, Carver is worried about us?” Michael asked.

  Cam sighed and merely said, “Yes.”