A Preliminary Report on Restorative Justice

The old man’s police report was a joke, but his plan to rob the mayor wasn't. Now, we're accomplices.

The document felt flimsy, an insult to the weight of its own ink. It was a photocopy of a photocopy, the text blurring at the edges, the official letterhead of the Sûreté du Québec a hazy gray ghost at the top. I ran a thumb over the paper, feeling the cheap, slightly damp texture that screamed ‘small town government office.’ Outside, the world was a frantic swirl of white. The blizzard had hit Sainte-Céleste-du-Fjord three hours ago, right on schedule, turning the already remote town into a snow globe someone had shaken with malicious intent. The window of our motel room, Le Gîte du Voyageur, Room 11, was rattling in its frame, a syncopated percussion against the steady, wheezing groan of the wall-unit heater.

My name is Carrie, and this was supposed to be my redemption. A simple human-interest story. ‘Ice Sculptors Brave the Elements in Quebec’s Fiercest Winter Festival.’ Something wholesome. Something easy. Something to prove to my supervising professor, Dr. Albright, that I could still function as a journalist after the ‘unfortunate incident’ that led to my suspension. The incident involved a city councilman, a hidden microphone, and a quote that I’d creatively, and as it turned out, illegally, stitched together. My zeal for the truth, Albright had called it, had outpaced my understanding of it. And my ethics. And the law. So here I was, exiled to the frozen north with my cameraman, Ben, to write about ice, of all the inert and pointless things.

“Anything?” Ben’s voice was a gravelly mess from the other side of the room. He was a heap of limbs and North Face gear sprawled on a bed that looked as uninviting as mine. A half-empty bottle of Labatt 50 stood sentry on his nightstand. Ben was tethered to my disgrace, the collateral damage of my ambition. He’d been my cameraman on the city council story, and when I was suspended, the university’s journalism department had quietly suggested he take the semester off, too. Guilt was a constant, low-grade hum in my chest whenever I looked at him.

“It’s a police report,” I said, holding up the stapled sheets. “Got it from the clerk at the town hall. Paid twenty bucks for the ‘clerical fee,’ which I think is French-Canadian for ‘pity tax for the sad American girl.’ She told me it was the most excitement they’d had all year.”

“Let me guess. Someone’s prize-winning pig went missing? A snowmobile theft ring?”

“Better. An old man named André Dubois is accusing the mayor of stealing his family’s secret maple syrup recipe.” I let the sentence hang in the air, thick with the smell of stale coffee and wet wool.

Ben sat up, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. He ran a hand through his perpetually messy brown hair. “His… syrup recipe? You’re kidding me.”

“‘Grand theft, culinary arts division,’” I read from the report. “‘Complainant, Dubois, André, age 78, alleges that Mayor Réjean Tremblay did knowingly and with felonious intent appropriate a secret and proprietary family recipe for Acer Saccharum reduction, colloquially known as maple syrup.’”

“Jesus. Who writes this stuff?”

“A cop named Constable Pelletier, who clearly has a thesaurus and too much time on his hands. He lists the recipe’s estimated value as ‘priceless’ to the family and ‘approximately three million dollars annually’ in potential commercial revenue.” I flipped to the next page. “And here’s the best part. The official disposition: ‘No further action to be taken. Complainant advised to cease vexatious reporting. File closed.’”

Ben grunted, a sound of profound disinterest. He stood up and stretched, his joints popping in the quiet room. “So the cops told the crazy old syrup man to get lost. End of story. Not even enough for a B-roll montage of sad, empty syrup buckets. Can we just drink until the storm passes?”

“Maybe,” I said, but my eyes were still scanning the text. There was a detail in the report, a small, handwritten note in the margin, that snagged my attention. It was almost illegible, a doctor’s scrawl. ‘Subject claims recipe stolen during a private tasting event at Mayor’s residence four years ago. Subject’s syrup, ‘L’Or du Fjord,’ won the provincial gold medal three years running prior to the incident. Tremblay’s own brand, ‘Le Sirop du Maire,’ has won it every year since.’ My pulse gave a little flicker. It wasn't just a crazy old man. It was a crazy old man with a verifiable backstory. A pattern.

This is how it starts. The little itch. The loose thread you can’t resist pulling. It was the same feeling I’d had with the city councilman. A story that everyone else dismisses is often the one worth telling. It wasn’t about redemption anymore. It was about the hunt.

“What if he’s not crazy?” I said, more to myself than to Ben. “What if the mayor of this charming little ice town is a syrup plagiarist?”

Ben sighed, the sound of a man who had followed me down too many rabbit holes already. “Carrie, no. We’re here to shoot ice. Sparkly, frozen, non-litigious water. We get our footage, we write the puff piece, you get back in Albright’s good graces. Don’t go looking for trouble.”

“I’m not looking for trouble. I’m looking for color. A sidebar. ‘The Syrup King of Sainte-Céleste.’ It’s a human-interest story, Ben. It’s what we’re here for.” I was already pulling on my boots, the cold leather stiff and unyielding. The lie tasted easy, familiar.

“His address is in the report,” I added, stuffing the papers into my jacket pocket. “He lives just on the edge of town. We could be there in ten minutes. The storm’s bad, but the truck can handle it.”

Ben just stared at me. He knew that look in my eyes. He’d seen it before. It was the look that had gotten us both suspended. He shook his head slowly, a gesture of weary resignation.

“Fine,” he said, grabbing his camera bag. “But if he offers us a tinfoil hat, I’m leaving you there.”

Finding André ‘Andy’ Dubois’s house was like finding a punctuation mark at the end of a long, white sentence. The town gave way to farmland, and the farmland gave way to dense, snow-laden forest. A narrow, barely plowed lane veered off the main road, ending at a small saltbox house with a plume of woodsmoke rising from its chimney like a defiant finger pointed at the storm. A sprawling, ancient sugar maple stood sentinel in the front yard, its bare branches laden with a thick coat of fresh snow. It looked less like a house and more like a part of the forest that had decided to grow a roof and windows.

We crunched up the path, the wind whipping snow into our faces. The air was so cold it felt sharp in my lungs. Before I could knock, the door creaked open. The man standing there was not what I expected. I’d pictured a frail, perhaps confused old man. Andy Dubois was compact and solid, built like a tree stump. He wore a red and black checkered flannel shirt over a pair of worn denim overalls. His face was a roadmap of wrinkles, but his eyes, a startlingly bright blue, were sharp and missed nothing. They flicked from me to Ben, to the professional-grade camera in Ben’s hands, and then back to me.

“Vous êtes perdus?” he asked, his voice a low rumble. Are you lost?

“Non, Monsieur Dubois,” I replied, my university French feeling clunky and inadequate. “My name is Carrie. This is Ben. I’m a journalist. I was hoping I could talk to you about… uh… your syrup.”

A flicker of something—amusement? suspicion?—crossed his face. He looked us up and down again, a slow, deliberate appraisal. The silence stretched, filled only by the howl of the wind. I felt like a specimen under a microscope.

“Journalist,” he said, testing the word. He switched to heavily accented but perfectly clear English. “From where?”

“We’re… from the States. A university paper. We’re here to cover the Fête des Glaces.”

“The Ice Festival,” he snorted, as if it were the stupidest thing he’d ever heard. “You come all this way to watch water freeze into the shape of a beaver, eh? Come in. You are letting the heat out.”

He stepped back, holding the door open. The inside of the house smelled of woodsmoke, coffee, and something else—something warm, sweet, and earthy. It was the smell of maple sap boiling down. The main room was a controlled chaos of books, stacks of newspapers, woodworking tools, and framed photographs. It was the den of a man who read, and thought, and worked with his hands. A cast-iron stove in the corner radiated a comforting, bone-deep warmth.

“Sit,” he commanded, pointing to a pair of sturdy wooden chairs by a large table. “Coffee?”

We nodded, shedding our snow-covered jackets. Ben set his camera bag down gently, his eyes roving around the room, taking in the details with a photographer’s quiet intensity. Andy moved with an unhurried efficiency, pouring thick, black coffee from a battered percolator into two heavy ceramic mugs.

He set the mugs on the table and sat down opposite us, folding his calloused hands. He didn’t say anything. He just watched me, those piercing blue eyes waiting. The folksy old man persona was gone. This was an interrogation, and he was running it.

“So,” he began, his voice low and even. “The little girl at the town hall, she is a talker, eh? She gives you the police report.” It wasn’t a question.

I was momentarily thrown. “Yes. I read it. I wanted to hear your side of the story.”

“My side,” he chuckled, a dry, rasping sound. “There is only one side. The truth. Réjean Tremblay is a thief. He has the palate of a pig, but the ambition of a king. He tasted my syrup, the work of four generations of my family, and he took it. He watched my father, he watched me. He learned our process, our temperatures, the way we tap the old trees only when the moon is right. But he could never get the final step. The secret. So he stole the book.”

“The recipe book?”

“My great-grandfather’s journal. It has the recipe, yes. But more than that. It is my family’s history. My history. Tremblay has it. In his house. In his safe.”

The way he said it sent a small shiver down my spine. The words were simple, but they were loaded with a cold, hard certainty. This wasn't the rambling of a deluded old man. This was a statement of fact.

Ben, who had been silent, shifted in his chair. “So, you told the cops, and they blew you off. What do you expect a couple of American student journalists to do about it?” His tone was blunt, bordering on rude.

Andy’s gaze shifted to Ben. He didn’t seem offended. He seemed to appreciate the directness. “I do not need a journalist to write a sad story about an old man. I need a journalist to document what happens next.”

I leaned forward, my reporter’s instincts buzzing. “And what happens next, Mr. Dubois?”

He took a slow sip of his coffee, his eyes never leaving mine. “I am going to get my book back.”

The statement was so simple, so direct, it was almost comical. Ben let out a short, sharp laugh. “Oh yeah? You gonna knock on the mayor’s door and ask him nicely? I hear he’s a reasonable guy.”

Andy ignored him. He reached under the table and pulled out a large, rolled-up tube of paper, securing it with a small stone paperweight. He unfurled it. It was a blueprint. A detailed architectural drawing of a large, ostentatious house.

“This is Mayor Tremblay’s house,” Andy said, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. “Built two years ago with money he skimmed from the festival budget. The man loves his kickbacks more than he loves his own children. He is not a subtle man. He has a big house, a big safe, and a small mind.”

He tapped a section of the blueprint with a crooked finger. “This is his study. Second floor, southwest corner. And this,” he tapped a small square drawn inside the room, “is the safe. A Citadel, model 7. Fireproof, tamper-resistant. But the combination is based on his wedding anniversary. Like I said. Not a subtle man.”

I stared at the blueprint, my mind struggling to keep up. This was escalating far beyond a quirky sidebar story. “How… how did you get this?”

“The contractor who built the house, his son got into some trouble a few years back. A little problem with a stolen snowmobile. I helped him make it go away. He owed me a favor.” Andy smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes. “In a small town, you learn that favors are a better currency than money.”

He leaned back in his chair, the picture of calm. “Tonight is the Grand Parade of the Fête des Glaces. All the town’s security, all two of them, will be there, managing the crowds. The mayor will be there, acting important. The new provincial minister of culture is in town. Tremblay will be stuck to him like a fly on… well, you know. And the blizzard,” he gestured to the window, “the blizzard is our friend. It will cover our tracks. It will keep people inside. It will make the police slow to respond, if anyone even notices we are there.”

My heart was hammering in my chest. This was insane. Utterly, certifiably insane. But the way he laid it out, piece by piece, with such chilling logic… it was also brilliant.

“Wait, wait,” I said, holding up a hand. “You’re talking about… breaking and entering. Burglary. This is a crime.” My voice sounded thin, reedy.

“A crime?” Andy’s eyes flashed with a sudden, fierce intensity. “He stole my family’s soul from me and bottled it under his own name. That is a crime. What I am planning,” he leaned forward, his voice barely a whisper, “is restorative justice.”

Ben was staring at him, his earlier cynicism gone, replaced by a wide-eyed fascination. “You’ve really thought this all through, haven’t you?”

“For four years,” Andy said simply. “Every day. I know the security patrol schedule. I know which window has a faulty sensor. I know the dog walker comes at six, but not when the snow is this bad. I know everything.” He looked from Ben to me, his gaze lingering. “Almost everything. My plan has one small problem. I am seventy-eight years old. My hands are not so steady anymore. My knees ache when it is cold. I can plan the war, but I cannot fight it alone. I need help. I need people who no one would ever suspect. People who are outsiders. People who look like they are just here to take pictures of ice sculptures.”

The implication hung in the warm, sweet air of the cabin. It settled over the room like a shroud. He wasn’t asking me to write his story. He was asking me to be part of it. He was recruiting us.

My mind reeled. This was a line. A bright, uncrossable line. Journalists do not become the story. We report it. We observe. We remain objective. Rule number one, from the first day of J-school. I could hear Dr. Albright’s voice in my head, a droning lecture on ethics and integrity. But another voice, a sly, seductive whisper, was rising up to meet it. The voice that said, *You’re already disgraced. What have you got to lose? This isn't just a story. This is the story. The one that could make a career. Or end it for good.*

Ben was the first to speak. His voice was quiet, almost a whisper. “What’s in the safe? Besides the book.”

Andy’s lips curled into a thin smile. “Tremblay does not trust banks. He is an old-fashioned kind of corrupt. He keeps cash. The kickbacks from the construction contracts, the festival vendors… it all goes in the safe. I would estimate… sixty, seventy thousand dollars. Maybe more.” He let that number sink in. “I only want my book. The rest… a consulting fee, for your trouble.”

Seventy thousand dollars. That was more money than Ben and I had ever seen in one place. It was enough to pay off student loans. Enough to disappear for a while. Enough to start over.

I looked at Ben. His face was a mask of conflict, a battle playing out between his ingrained caution and the sudden, electrifying possibility of it all. He was seeing the same things I was: the absurdity, the danger, and the undeniable, terrifying allure.

“We’re journalists,” I said again, the words feeling hollow and meaningless even as I spoke them. “We can’t.”

“You *were* a journalist,” Andy corrected me, his voice gentle but firm. “The girl at the town hall, she also told me about you. About the scandal. The suspension. She said you were hungry. That you were looking for something big.” He leaned in, his blue eyes locking onto mine. “Well, this is it. This is the biggest story in Sainte-Céleste. You can either stand outside in the cold and write about it after the fact… or you can come inside, and be a part of it.”

The room fell silent again. The heater groaned. The wind howled. I looked at the blueprint on the table, a map to a different life. I looked at Ben, who was looking at me, his expression unreadable. And I looked at the old man, who wasn't crazy at all. He was the sanest, most dangerous person I had ever met. And he had just offered me a choice. Not between right and wrong, but between the story you’re told to write, and the one you choose to live.

My journalistic ethics didn’t so much crumble as they simply evaporated, like a puff of steam in the frigid air. They were a luxury I could no longer afford. The decision was made in a silent, shared glance with Ben. It was a look that said, *This is the stupidest idea in human history. We are absolutely going to do it.*

“Okay,” I said, my voice barely a croak. I cleared my throat. “Okay. Hypothetically… talk us through the plan. Every single detail.”

Andy’s smile was slow and satisfied. He tapped the blueprint. “Hypothetically,” he said, “it begins with a faulty ice sculpture.”

The next few hours were a surreal deep dive into the mechanics of a crime. Andy’s workshop, a converted barn attached to the house, became our command center. The air was thick with the scent of sawdust, machine oil, and percolating felony. Ben and I, who had started the day planning to interview a man in a beaver costume, were now huddled over a detailed schematic of a corrupt mayor’s home security system, taking notes.

“The pressure plates are here, and here,” Andy said, marking two spots on the mansion’s blueprint with a grease pencil. “In the gravel driveway. Tremblay had them installed after some kids vandalized his mailbox. He thinks they are foolproof. But the cold makes them sensitive. Too sensitive.” He picked up a heavy canvas bag from a workbench. It clinked.

“Road salt?” Ben asked, peering into the bag.

“Mixed with sand, for traction,” Andy corrected. “And a little bit of calcium chloride to speed things up. You spread a generous amount over the sensors. The melted slush creates a conductive bridge. It will short them out. Trick the system into thinking there is constant pressure. It will not register a new vehicle. It will simply… be blind.”

It was diabolical. And brilliant.

“But we’re on foot,” I pointed out. “We’re parking the truck a klick down the road and coming through the woods.”

“The salt is not for us,” Andy said patiently. “It is for the security patrol. Groupe Vigilance. One man in a rusty Hyundai. He makes his rounds every two hours. His last pass before the parade is at 7:45. We need to be in position by 7:30. You,” he pointed a gnarled finger at Ben, “will apply the slush. You are young, you can move fast. You,” he turned to me, “are the lookout. After the slush is down, we wait for him to pass. Once he is gone, the driveway is clear for two hours.”

The dialogue was a chaotic, overlapping mess of logistics and what-ifs. Ben, to my surprise, was a natural. His technical mind, usually reserved for f-stops and lighting rigs, was now deconstructing alarm systems and calculating entry vectors.

“Okay, the window,” Ben said, leaning over the blueprint. “Second floor, southwest corner. You said the sensor is faulty?”

“Magnetic contact,” Andy confirmed. “One piece on the frame, one on the sash. When the window opens, the circuit breaks, alarm goes off. Simple. But the wiring is old. The installer was an idiot. There is a dead spot if you open it just so.” He held up his thumb and forefinger, a tiny gap between them. “Less than a centimeter. Not enough to climb through.”

“So it’s useless,” I said, a wave of relief and disappointment washing over me.

“No,” Ben countered, his eyes alight. “It’s a point of entry. We just can’t use the window itself. We use the frame.” He looked at Andy. “Is it a wood frame? Old house?”

“Vinyl-clad wood. Thirty years old. Tremblay put a new facade on the house, but the bones are old.”

Ben nodded, thinking. “Okay. Okay. So, we don’t trip the sensor. We remove it. The whole unit. We need a pry bar, a small one. A wood chisel. We can pry the exterior trim off around the window, cut a small section of the frame out. A big enough hole to slip through. The sensor on the frame itself will never move. The circuit stays closed. When we’re done, we put the piece of frame back, tap the trim into place. No one will know. Not until spring, anyway.”

Andy stared at Ben, a slow look of deep respect dawning on his face. “You have done this before, eh?”

Ben flushed. “I… helped a buddy get back into his apartment once. He lost his keys.”

It was a weak lie, and we all knew it. I filed it away for later. For now, Ben’s dubious past was our greatest asset. My role in this was becoming increasingly clear: I was the driver and the chronicler. The official witness to our collective insanity.

“And the diversion?” I asked, turning to Andy. “The ice sculpture?”

Andy’s eyes twinkled. “Ah, yes. My small contribution to the town’s artistic heritage.” He led us to another corner of the workshop. Under a heavy canvas tarp was a half-finished block of ice, about four feet tall. Even in its rough state, I could tell it was a caricature. A man with a large, bulbous nose, a weak chin, and an absurdly self-important posture. It was Mayor Tremblay.

“This is our entry into the festival competition,” Andy said with a proud smile. “Sponsored by Dubois & Fils Sap House. A tribute to our great leader. I call it ‘L’Homme du Peuple’ – The Man of the People.”

“It’s… something,” Ben said, circling it.

“But the beauty of it,” Andy continued, patting the ice sculpture’s frozen shoulder, “is in the construction. I am not a professional sculptor. My technique is… rustic.” He pointed to several deep fissures running through the ice. “Structural instabilities. I have packed them with a mixture of salt and sugar. The sugar keeps it from melting too fast in the cold. But the salt… the salt will do its work. It will weaken the ice from the inside out.” He pulled a strange device from his workbench. It looked like a small heating element attached to a battery pack and a timer.

“At exactly 9:15,” he explained, “this little fellow, hidden in the base, will warm up for exactly two minutes. Just enough to accelerate the melting along the fault lines. The mayor is scheduled to give his speech from the main stage at 9:30. My sculpture is right beside the stage. With any luck, just as he is hitting his crescendo about the proud, resilient spirit of Sainte-Céleste… his head will fall off.”

Ben started laughing, a deep, genuine laugh that I hadn’t heard in months. “You are a sick, brilliant old man.”

“It will not be a huge crash,” Andy said. “Just a… distraction. A moment of comedy. But it will draw every eye, including those of Groupe Vigilance. It will give you the cover you need to get out of the house and back to the treeline. The timing is everything.”

We spent another hour going over the plan, again and again. The route through the woods. The layout of the mansion’s second floor. The combination for the safe – 08-14-92, the day Tremblay married his first wife, the one he’d cheated on with his current one. We synchronized our watches. We packed a go-bag: pry bar, chisel, headlamps with red filters to preserve our night vision, gloves, a thermos of Andy’s coffee, and the bag of salt slush. It felt like packing for a camping trip, if the main activity was grand larceny.

My hands were shaking as I pulled on my gloves. The initial adrenaline rush had faded, leaving behind a cold, hard knot of fear in my stomach. This was real. We were going to do this. There were a hundred things that could go wrong. A thousand.

“What if the dog is there?” I asked, my voice tight.

“The mayor’s wife took the poodle to her sister’s in Chicoutimi for the weekend,” Andy said without looking up from the map. “She hates the festival.”

“What if the patrol guy changes his route?” Ben asked.

“He has not changed his route in seven years. He is a creature of habit. Like the mayor.”

He had an answer for everything. His confidence was a force of nature, pulling us along in its wake. He handed me a small, two-way radio. “For emergencies only. Do not speak unless you must. One click for all clear. Two clicks for trouble. Three clicks for abort.”

We stood by the door, bundled in our winter gear. The workshop felt like an airlock between our old lives and whatever came next. Andy placed a hand on each of our shoulders. His grip was surprisingly strong.

“You are good kids,” he said, his voice softer than I’d heard it all day. “Caught in a bad spot. The world is run by men like Tremblay. Bullies and thieves. Sometimes, to make things right, you have to break the rules. Remember why you are doing this.” He looked at me. “You are not just stealing money. You are taking back a story that was stolen. That is a kind of justice, too.”

I nodded, unable to speak. He was right. It wasn’t just about the money, or the thrill, or even the story. It was about tilting the scales. It was about one moment of defiant, beautiful, illegal justice. Andy Dubois was teaching me a lesson, all right. A lesson Dr. Albright would never have understood.

We stepped out into the storm. The wind hit us like a physical blow, and the world dissolved into a maelstrom of white. The heist was on.

The world outside the treeline was a chaotic symphony of light and sound, muffled and distorted by the blizzard. The Grand Parade was in full swing. Flashing blue and red lights from a police cruiser cast eerie, spinning shadows through the thick, driving snow. The cheerful, brassy fanfare of a marching band was a distant, tinny battle against the roar of the wind. We were crouched behind a snowbank, the woods at our backs, the sprawling, dark shape of Mayor Tremblay’s mansion rising before us like a fortress.

My breath plumed in the frigid air, each exhalation a painful, icy rasp. The cold was a living thing, seeping through the layers of my clothing, turning my fingers and toes into numb, useless appendages. Fear was a cold, metallic taste in the back of my throat. Every fiber of my being was screaming at me to turn back, to run back to the warmth of the truck and drive until we hit the American border.

Beside me, Ben was a statue of focused tension. He checked his watch, the faint green glow illuminating the determined set of his jaw. 7:28. He gave me a sharp nod, then hefted the canvas bag of salted slush.

“Cover me,” he whispered, his voice snatched away by the wind.

He moved with a low, swift crouch, a dark shape against the swirling white. I raised the binoculars Andy had given us, my hands trembling so much it was hard to keep them steady. I scanned the property line, the street, the windows of the house. Nothing. Just empty darkness and the relentless, hypnotic dance of the snow. Ben reached the driveway, a ribbon of black asphalt swept clean by the wind. He worked quickly, efficiently, scattering the dark, gritty mixture over the two spots Andy had marked on the blueprint. He was done in less than a minute, a ghost melting back into the shadows of a large spruce tree at the edge of the property.

He gave me a single, quick flash from his penlight. The signal. Phase one complete.

We waited. The minutes stretched into an eternity. The cold was getting worse, a deep, aching misery in my bones. My mind started to play tricks on me. A branch snapping in the wind sounded like a footstep. The shadow of a swaying tree looked like a man standing watch in a window. This was the part they didn’t show in heist movies: the sheer, soul-crushing boredom and terror of waiting.

Then, at 7:46, exactly as Andy had predicted, a pair of headlights cut through the blizzard. A rusty Hyundai crept down the street, its wipers struggling to keep up with the accumulating snow. The car slowed as it approached the mayor’s driveway, its spotlight beam sweeping across the front of the house. I held my breath, my heart a frantic, trapped bird in my chest. The beam passed over the salted patches on the driveway. Nothing happened. No alarm. No flashing lights. The system was blind.

The security car continued on its way, disappearing into the white curtain of the storm. Ben and I waited another five full minutes, the silence pressing in on us, before he moved from his position and crawled back to the snowbank. He gave me a thumbs-up, his face grim.

“Let’s go,” I whispered, my voice hoarse. It was time.

Crossing the lawn felt like the longest walk of my life. Every step was a risk, every crunch of my boots in the snow a potential betrayal. We reached the side of the house, pressing ourselves flat against the cold, vinyl siding. The southwest corner. Ben unzipped his pack and produced the small pry bar and chisel. He shone his headlamp, masked with a red filter, on the window frame. He got to work.

The sounds were terrifyingly loud in the relative quiet of the storm. The soft scrape of the chisel. The sharp, metallic creak as the trim began to separate from the frame. Ben worked with a surgeon’s precision, his breath misting around his focused face. I kept watch, my head on a constant swivel, my nerves stretched to the breaking point. It took him nearly twenty minutes to pry off the trim and expose the wooden frame beneath. Another ten to carefully, painstakingly cut through the wood around the small magnetic sensor.

Finally, with a soft, woody groan, a small, rectangular section of the frame came loose. The hole was barely big enough to squeeze through. Ben went first, wriggling through the opening with a grunt. I followed, scraping my jacket and my hip on the rough-cut wood, tumbling ungracefully onto the plush carpet of Mayor Tremblay’s study.

We were in. The silence inside the house was absolute. It was a dead, heavy silence, thick with the smell of old paper, leather, and lemon polish. The only sound was our own ragged breathing and the frantic pounding of my heart. The room was a cliché of corrupt, small-town power: dark wood paneling, floor-to-ceiling bookshelves filled with leather-bound volumes that looked like they’d never been opened, a massive mahogany desk, and on the wall, a gaudy, oversized portrait of the mayor himself, smiling a smug, self-satisfied smile.

“The painting,” I whispered, pointing. It hung directly opposite the desk. Another cliché.

Ben nodded. He moved to the painting while I crept to the door, pressing my ear against the cool, solid wood. I couldn’t hear anything. The house was asleep. Lifeless. Ben carefully lifted the painting off its hook. Behind it, just as Andy had said, was the grey, steel door of a Citadel model 7 safe.

We both looked at it for a long moment. This was the heart of the operation. The dragon’s hoard.

“You do it,” Ben mouthed, pointing at the safe. Andy had insisted I be the one to open it. He’d made me practice for an hour on an old lockbox in his workshop, turning the dial, feeling for the subtle click of the tumblers. He said I had a delicate touch.

I knelt in front of the safe, my fingers clumsy with cold and nerves. I took a deep breath, trying to calm the tremor in my hands. Right to the first number. 08. Past it twice, then stop. The soft click was barely audible, but I felt it, a faint vibration through the steel. Left to the second number. 14. Past it once, then stop. Another click, this one more solid. Right to the last number. 92. I turned the dial slowly, my entire world narrowing to the tiny white marks and the feel of the cold, metal wheel beneath my fingertips. I stopped on 92.

I reached for the handle, my heart in my throat. I pulled. For a second, nothing. Then, with a heavy, well-oiled thud, the door swung open.

We both peered inside, our headlamps cutting through the darkness. It was all there. On the top shelf, a worn, leather-bound journal with the words ‘L’Or du Fjord’ embossed in faded gold on the cover. And below it, stacks and stacks of cash. Neat, paper-banded bundles of fifties and hundreds. It was more than Andy had estimated. Much more.

A wave of dizzying, triumphant euphoria washed over me. We did it. We actually did it. Ben reached in and grabbed the book, handling it with a reverence that surprised me. I started stuffing the cash into our empty go-bag. It felt unreal, like play money. My hands were moving on their own, a greedy, efficient machine.

And that’s when we heard it. A faint crackle of static from across the room. We both froze, our heads snapping up. On the corner of the mayor’s desk sat a small, black radio, the kind security guards use. It must have been left on, the volume turned down low. The static hissed for a moment, and then a voice cut through, sharp with panic.

“Post 4, do you copy? This is dispatch. We have a report of a disturbance at the mayor’s residence. The front door is ajar. Over.”

My blood ran cold. The front door? We came in through the window. We hadn’t been anywhere near the front door.

Static. Then another voice, breathless. “Dispatch, this is Pelletier. I’m on scene. Paramedics are en route. You need to get someone down here now. The mayor… he’s unresponsive. Jesus… there’s… there’s so much blood.”

Ben and I stared at each other in the dim red light of our headlamps, our eyes wide with a new and profound kind of terror. Blood? Paramedics? This wasn’t part of the plan.

The radio crackled again, the dispatcher’s voice now strained, official. “All units, be advised. We have a confirmed 10-7 at the mayor’s residence. I repeat, Mayor Tremblay is deceased. Secure the scene. This is now a homicide investigation.”

Homicide. The word slammed into me like a physical blow, knocking the air from my lungs. This wasn’t a simple robbery anymore. This was a murder. And we were standing in the dead man’s study, holding his stolen recipe book and a bag full of his cash.

Ben grabbed my arm, his fingers digging into my bicep. “We have to go. Now.”

We scrambled back to the window, my mind a blank wall of white noise and panic. Homicide. Murder. We were going to prison for the rest of our lives. Ben was already halfway out the window when the final transmission came over the radio, a calm, procedural announcement that sealed our fate.

“Control to all patrol units. Update on weather conditions. The blizzard has been upgraded to a whiteout. Route 138 is impassable due to a multi-car pileup. The Pont Dubuc is officially closed. All roads in and out of Sainte-Céleste are shut down until further notice.”

Trapped. The word echoed in the sudden, crushing silence of the room. We were trapped. Trapped in a dead man’s house, in the middle of a blizzard, at the center of a murder investigation.

Ben was frozen, half in and half out of the window, looking back at me. The bag of money was on the floor between us. The leather-bound recipe book was still clutched in his hand. Outside, the storm raged, oblivious. And through the static, a voice confirmed the roads were closed, every last one of them, until the plows could clear a path through the storm and the crime scene.