Free The Twenty-Year Death by Ariel S. Winter Page A

its players. A subdued crowd of serious men had gathered around the base of the war monument, spilling into the roadway and blocking traffic.Flickering lights from kerosene lamps and open torches dotted the crowd, casting moving shadows that made the mass of people seem like one large anonymous organism. This was Verargent. With its population spread out over the houses and outlying farms the town could feel abandoned. But brought together, the group was large enough to raise alarm.
    The officer driving Pelleter inched the car forward through the throng, forced to let out the clutch again and again. He repeatedly sounded the horn to no effect. The men in the square were unconcerned with allowing the police car through.
    The truck carrying the coffins was only just ahead even though it had left the farm a good deal before Pelleter and the young gendarme.
    “What is this?” the officer said.
    Pelleter caught sight of Letreau huddled with Martin and the mustachioed officer beside the war monument. Letreau had his hands in his overcoat pockets and his shoulders hunched against the brisk April evening.
    The car jerked again, the gears groaning.
    “Let me out here,” Pelleter said, and he released the door. The cool night air rushed into the closed space of the car.
    The crackle of the open flames sounded over the murmur of people. Some of the men carried electric torches as well. Pelleter began to push his way towards Letreau.
    “Some week to visit Verargent,” a man said close at Pelleter’s side.
    It was Servières. His expression was overjoyed.
    “If things keep up like this, we’ll have to make the Vérité a daily.”
    “You would like that.”
    They were almost to Letreau now, but Letreau and his men were breaking apart.
    Pelleter would not ask the reporter what had happened. He would know soon enough.
    “Have you seen this evening’s edition?” Servières said, and then a copy was floating in front of Pelleter. The headline, which took up almost all of the space above the fold read:
    ESCAPED CONVICT MURDERED IN THE STREET
    Pelleter did not reach for the paper, but Servières forced it on him. “Please. Please take it.”
    Pelleter folded the paper and stuffed it into his coat pocket. They were through the crowd to where Letreau had been standing, but Letreau was now atop the bottom step of the monument’s base calling over the crowd.
    “Gentlemen! Gentlemen!”
    The mass of noise dropped, but it was tentative, the crowd unsure if they had been called to order.
    “Gentlemen!”
    The silence spread then in a ripple from the spot where Letreau was standing, out to the back of the group where the square started once again. All eyes turned to the chief of police.
    “I want to thank all of you for coming out like this.”
    There was a renewed murmur, and Letreau held up his hand.
    “I know we would each want the same if it was our children.”
    Children? So this did not have to do with Meranger?
    “As you have all heard, Marion Perreaux’s two little boys Georges and Albert have gone missing. They were last seen Tuesday afternoon at Monsieur Marque’s sweet shop here intown, and they were to walk back to the Perreaux farm in time for supper.”
    Letreau spoke with calm and command, so different than in his office earlier. Organizing a search party was in his purview, a murder investigation was beyond him.
    “Everyone should split into three-man teams and search from here outward. If you locate the boys and can bring them back here, do so at once. If they are injured, two men stay with the boys and the third man should come here to get help. Everyone should return to report at sunrise regardless of what they have found. Are there any questions?”
    There was a moment’s pause in which a murmur began.
    “Okay, let’s get to it.”
    The crowd began to split, talking and shouting in an indecipherable cacophony.
    Pelleter pushed his way to where Letreau was stepping down from the monument by leaning on the