Mary, Mary

was sitting in the small, cozy living room of Madeline and former sheriff Claude Lapierre, just outside Derby Line, Vermont. It was a tiny village, as sweet as a calendar photo, and literally pressed up against the Canadian border. In fact, the local Haskell Free Library and Opera House had been accidentally built
on
the border, and guards were sometimes stationed inside to prevent illegal crossings.
    Not the kind of place you’d imagine would keep law enforcement very busy, though. Mary Constantine had lived there all her life—right up until she killed her three young children, a horrifying crime that had made national headlines twenty years ago.
    “What would you say you remember most about the case?” I asked Mr. Lapierre.
    “The knife. For sure the knife. The way she cut up that poor little girl’s face, after she killed all three of them. I was Orleans County sheriff for twenty-seven years. It was the worst thing I ever saw. By far, Agent Cross. By far.”
    “I actually felt kind of sorry for her.” Mrs. Lapierre sat next to her husband on the couch, which was covered in a denim-blue fabric. “For Mary, I mean. Nothing good ever happened to that poor woman. Not that it excuses what she did, but . . .” She waved her hand in front of her face instead of finishing the thought.
    “You knew her, Mrs. Lapierre?”
    “The way everybody knows everybody around here,” she said. “This is a community of neighbors. We all depend on one another.”
    “What can you tell me about Mary before all this happened?” I asked both of them.
    Claude Lapierre started. “Nice girl. Quiet, polite, loved boating. On Lake Memphremagog. Not a whole lot to tell, really. She worked at the diner when she was in high school. Served me breakfast all the time. But so very quiet, like I said. Everyone was pretty surprised when she got pregnant.”
    “And even more surprised when the father stuck around,” Mrs. Lapierre said.
    “For a while, anyway,” her husband quickly added.
    “I assume that was Mr. Beaulac?”
    They both nodded.
    “He was ten years older than her, and she was all of seventeen. But they did make a go of it. Tried their best. Even had a second kid together.”
    “Ashley,” Mrs. Lapierre said.
    “Nobody was really bowled over when he finally took off. If anything, I would have expected it sooner.”
    “George Beaulac was a real bum,” said Mrs. Lapierre. “Took a lot of drugs.”
    “Do you know what happened to him? Did he see Mary or the kids again?”
    “Don’t know,” said Claude, “but I’m inclined to doubt it. He
was
a bum.”
    “Well, I need to find him,” I muttered, more to myself than to either of them. “I really need to know where George Beaulac is now.”
    “Up to no good for sure,” said Mrs. Lapierre.

Chapter 109
    I DIDN’T BOTHER TAKING NOTES after that. Whatever wasn’t already written down, I wouldn’t need. A whirring sound had been coming from the kitchen, and I finally asked Mrs. Lapierre about it. I never would have guessed what the sound was. Turned out she was making venison jerky in a dehydrator.
    “Where were Mary’s parents during all of this?” I asked, moving back to more pertinent questions.
    Again, Mrs. Lapierre shook her head. She topped off my coffee cup while her husband continued.
    “Rita died when Mary was about five, I guess. Ted raised her, pretty much on his own, though he didn’t seem to put a lot of effort into it. Nothing illegal, just real sad. And then he died, too, the year Brendan was born, I think.”
    “He smoked like a chimney,” Madeline said. “Lung cancer took him. That poor girl never got a break.”
    After George Beaulac left, Mary fell in with another local man, a part-time mechanic by the name of John Constantine.
    “He started running around on her almost as soon as she got pregnant,” Madeline said. “It was no great secret. By the time Adam was six months old, John was gone for good, too.”
    Claude spoke now. “If I had to guess, I’d say that’s when she really went downhill, but who knows. You don’t see someone for a while, you just assume they’re busy or something. And then one day, boom. That was it. She must have snapped. It felt sudden, but it probably wasn’t. I’m sure it was building up over a long period.”
    I sipped my coffee and took a polite bite of scone. “I’d like to go back to the day of the murders now. What did Mary have to say when she was caught, Sheriff?”
    “This is more