by D. A. Keeley
“He’s cool. You know that.”
She did know that, but this wasn’t about her. “You know he thinks the world of you, right?”
Tommy leaned back in his seat, arms folded across his chest. “Yeah. So does Dad. He just has to work a lot.”
“I know that, Tommy.”
Jeff McComb—her ex, the man who, at least partially, she’d moved back for, hoping he’d play a larger role in Tommy’s life—hadn’t seen Tommy in eight weeks. Hadn’t called him in six. Yet Tommy held out hope, which broke her heart. She wanted to lean over and kiss him. At the same time, she wanted to kick Jeff McComb in the kneecap for hurting her son.
“Sweetie, how would you feel about Stone moving in with us?”
“What about Dad? What about if he wants to move in?” Tommy stood. “Do you ever think about his feelings, Mom?”
“Tommy, please sit down. Let’s talk about this.”
But he was gone before she’d finished saying the words. She heard the cacophony of a zipper and the stomping of feet into boots. Then the front door slammed. And he was gone—to the end of the driveway, twenty minutes before the bus would arrive.
She went to the window next to the front door. Tommy’s back was to the house. She considered going to him but knew this wasn’t the time. She’d upset him enough before school. His dyslexia provided enough fodder for classmates who teased him. She didn’t want him getting on the bus in tears.
Where would this leave things with Stone?
It wouldn’t be fair to Stone, or her, to allow him to move in if Tommy was going to fight the arrangement. That situation would be destined to fail.
Twenty minutes later, she watched the yellow school bus stop at the end of the driveway. The doors opened and Tommy climbed the stairs. The loud gears shifted. And Tommy, sitting near a window, ignored the house, stared straight ahead.
Then the bus was out of sight.
8:44 a.m., McCluskey’s Potato Processing Plant
She didn’t go in the building.
The courteous maneuver was to go inside and let Kyle McCluskey know she was about to search the woods behind his processing plant. But she didn’t have much use for Kyle. Thought he was a chauvinistic jerk, actually. So she parked behind the building, grabbed her backpack and snowshoes, and started through the woods, heading northeast.
The morning Aleksei Vann surrendered she’d parked near the Canadian border, planning to walk these woods from the other direction, traveling several miles toward the plant. This day, she would backtrack, maneuvering around the balsam firs and northern white cedars, toward Canada.
The sun was bright overhead, and she wore sunglasses, her Border Patrol cap, and fleece-lined Gore-Tex pants over her uniform greens. It was thirty-one degrees, but the sunshine felt warm—one of those March days that offer a tempting hint of spring, one you want desperately to believe, like a kiss on the cheek that never leads to the real thing.
Hers was the only vehicle parked behind the plant. The others—maybe fifty trucks and cars—were out front in the enormous parking lot. She had her snowshoes attached to her pack. She wouldn’t need them at the start. Ten feet from her tailgate in the west corner of the lot lay the mouth of a narrow, hard-packed trail at the side of the windowless building. She wondered what it led to, since everything an employee of McCluskey’s Processing needed was inside. But she was glad for the helpful egress: the longer she could avoid using snowshoes, the more energy she’d have at the end of her shift.
As she started down the trail, leather hiking boots crunching loudly on the frozen, hard-packed snow, and zigzagging through the green sea of fir trees, she began to develop a theory regarding the packed trail. Had Kyle McCluskey given employees the green light to cut Christmas trees from the forest of balsam firs? Most of the trees back here were too large to be six-foot Christmas trees, but if cut accordingly, the top would serve nicely.
She’d walked for longer than an hour and was more than a mile into her hike when she heard the generator. She walked another half mile before spotting the shack.
The wood used to construct the outside of the structure wasn’t clapboard; it looked more like plywood, although she didn’t think it was. The hut had been painted forest green and was the size of the ice shacks she and her father sat in on winter nights on Madawaska Lake.
She pushed fallen (or carefully placed) pine branches out of the way to get to the structure’s door. Locked? She couldn’t see a handle or any way to open it. She circled the outbuilding once, feet sinking through the crusty top layer of snow, and spotted a rope running through a small hole near the roofline and coming from somewhere inside. It hung against the back of the shack.
Peyton’s father had told her about structures built by hunters, places where one could sleep and store food, usually a halfway point to a hunting spot deep in the woods. Bear hunters, especially, found these places useful. Her father’s description seemed fitting. Except for the generator. It hummed loudly inside the shack. She thought of the unnamed man who led Aleksei to Garrett, of Bohana’s strange description of him: I’m not even certain he can make it back.
If anyone was living as a troll in the woods between Garrett and the Canadian border, the coyote fit the description. She unclipped the safety strap on her service weapon and knocked on the door.
No answer. No sound above the rumbling generator.
“Anyone in there?” she called.
No answer. No audible movement.
She went to the back of the cabin again, gave the rope a pull, and felt something release on the other end of the rope. Apparently, the crude pulley system allowed whoever was using the shed to lock and unlock it from the back. She returned to the front and found the door ajar.
She knew where her rights began and ended. There was no need, legally, to ask Kyle McCluskey’s permission to walk his land. Section 287 of the Immigration and Nationality Act authorized her to enter private lands without a landowner’s consent within twenty-five miles of the border when she was on patrol. The Act didn’t, however, grant her entry into a structure on the property.
But the door was cracked.
And the coyote who led Aleksei had yet to be captured.
11:25 a.m., Tim Hortons
“It’s Kyle McCluskey’s land, right?” Stone Gibson said when he, Peyton, and Mike Hewitt had gathered in Reeds, fifteen minutes south of Garrett.
“That’s right,” Peyton said.
They’d taken a window booth. Traffic moved slowly on this stretch of Route 1. The cars were covered in white residue left by the salt and calcium used to treat icy roads.
“And you just searched the land and the inside of the structure?” Stone said. “No warrant?”
“None needed for the land,” she said.
Hewitt explained section 287 to Stone, who, listening, sat shaking his head.
“Border Patrol always seems to have a loophole that allows them to do what they want,” Stone said.
Hewitt ignored him and scribbled in his notebook.
She liked Stone’s outfit: jeans, a button-down shirt, and a navy blue sports jacket. When he leaned forward, she saw his 9mm Glock in a shoulder holster.
Hewitt turned to Peyton. “You obviously entered the shack, in order to know what was inside.”
She said, “The door was ajar.”
“When you arrived?”
Across from them, two women sat, drinking what looked like smoothies. One had a baby stroller beside her. Both looked relaxed, their conversation rolling easily. Peyton looked at Hewitt, saw his narrowed eyes, and suddenly wanted to join the two women. She knew an illegal search wouldn’t be permissible in court. Knew also that if an illegal search was proven, her action would compromise the investigation.
“There was a rope hanging off the back of the structure. When I pulled it, the door opened. It’s a pulley s
ystem. The latch can be set and released from the outside.”
“And you pulled the rope?” Hewitt said.
“Not intending to open the door.”
“A warrant to enter the shack would’ve been nice.”
“Five miles separate the processing plant from the Canadian border. A, for lack of a better word, refugee just entered the US through those woods, and we haven’t located the coyote who led him here. For all we know, Aleksei and the coyote spent the night in that shack before Aleksei got to me. I heard the generator, saw a small structure that someone could be hiding in …” She spread her hands.
“And you thought of the coyote?”
She nodded. “That’s probable cause, Mike.”
“Probable cause to get a warrant, Peyton.”
“I could see inside from where I stood and saw something that looked suspicious. The door was ajar, so I entered and found six marijuana plants in two aquariums. The shack has been insulated—nothing very professional, but insulated nonetheless. And the generator keeps it very warm. There are heat lamps and fans and tinfoil lining the aquariums. Some chairs, blankets, a portable heater, even a storage closet, which was empty.”
“How big is the inside?” Stone asked.
“About the size of a storage shed, but taller. It’s framed and half the ceiling’s finished, like a little loft, maybe six and a half feet high. I assume there’s insulation above it.”
“Pot’s being grown in the fish tanks?” Stone asked.
“Yeah. And there was a small amount hung up to dry.”
“Then I’m glad you went inside,” Stone said.
“I’m sure you are,” Hewitt said. “She’s done the dirty work for you.”
Stone didn’t respond. He looked tired, having come from Houlton, where he’d conducted more interviews for the molestation case. Peyton saw the stress on his face. Whatever had been said earlier that morning had taken its toll. The dark half-moons under his eyes reminded her that for him, this was a case that would linger long after retirement. She was glad she wasn’t a state cop in Aroostook County; they were vastly undermanned and overworked.
Her mind ran to her breakfast with Tommy. Stone would surely ask about Tommy’s reaction. What would she say?
Stone poured a tiny bit of cream into his tea. “I haven’t used one, but I’ve heard about these shelters. Someone, usually a hunter, builds one, uses it, and it just stays there. Maybe the hunter comes back to it the next year. Maybe another hunter uses it. They serve as a communal base camp of sorts, so you don’t have to walk all the way out to the road.”
“I want to put a camera out there,” she said. “McCluskey told me all about his all-star security team. Hard to believe they missed it.”
“It’s a long way from the plant,” Hewitt said.
Peyton nodded and recrossed her legs. “I called Stone because he can work the drug aspect of this.”
“Not the Maine DEA?” Hewitt said.
“For six pot plants?”
“Why are you in this at all?” Stone said.
“I’m interested in the area,” she said. “Aleksei Vann came through that path, and Bohana Donovan says the guy who brought him here might still be around.”
Hewitt wrote something on his notepad, then looked at Stone. “So here’s where we stand: You always like a drug bust, Stone, and we’re looking for a coyote. You need cameras to catch whoever is growing dope with heat lamps out there. And we have cameras and don’t need permission to mount them …”
Stone smiled. “Sounds like we might make a good team.”
1 p.m., 7 Drummond Lane
“How are things?”
Michael Donovan looked across the table at his father. He knew the game; they’d played it on and off since the fall. He’d come home from school in the early afternoon, following his final class, and knew that was why his father arrived home for a late lunch.
He bit into his BLT. “Fine, Dad.” He straightened a crease along the arm of his black T-shirt. The shirt had the words NERDY BY NATURE across the front.
“Just fine?”
“Great. Is that what you want to hear?”
“How’s Davey?”
“Chemo is kicking his ass. He looks awful. The cancer spread to his kidney.”
“Oh God. I didn’t know that.”
“Not many people do. He only told a few of us.”
“How are you doing with all of that?”
“I’m okay,” Michael said. “He’ll be fine.”
His father looked at the floor. “So the prognosis is good?”
“Davey says he’ll be fine.”
His father thought about that, then said, “Let’s talk about us. I feel like something changed between you and me a while ago. And I’m trying to figure out what it is, Mikey. Have I done something?”
“No. Nothing’s changed.”
“You say that quickly, like you’ve been waiting for me to bring it up.”
Michael didn’t respond.
“I offered to take you hunting all fall. You never wanted to go. We haven’t gone to camp together all year.”
“I’m busy.”
Steven sat staring at him, then finally stood and went to the counter. His back to Michael, waiting on the Keurig, he said, “Learning anything interesting in that art-appreciation class at the community college?”
Michael couldn’t believe his father asked the question. He set his sandwich down on the paper plate and pushed it away. “Actually, we’re talking a lot about Rembrandt’s The Storm on the Sea of Galilee.”
“Really?” his father said.
“Did you spill your coffee, Dad?”
“Yeah, most of it. I need to be more careful. If I make a mess, your mother will kill me.”
“You know that painting was done in 1633? It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
“You really appreciate art. I respect that about you. Maybe you could see it for real sometime. It’s probably in a museum somewhere.”
“Not likely. It’s been missing for a quarter century.”
“Really?” Finished wiping the counter, his father returned to sit across from him. “You talk about that in your community college class?”
“Yeah. We talk about how you can’t sell stolen artwork.”
“Why not?”
“Pretty simple, really. Everyone is looking for it. You can’t do anything with it. Can’t hang it. Can’t resell it.”
“Hmm.” His father sipped the salvaged coffee, looked at him. “Interesting. Guess I’ll stick to selling cars.” He smiled at his son.
Michael saw the pain in his father’s eyes when he didn’t return the smile.
“How’s your cover letter and resume coming for summer internships, Michael?”
“I’m working on them.”
“Want help? I was an English major in college, you know. And I hire people and read resumes all the time.”
“I know. And, no, I’m all set.”
His father looked at him over his coffee. “Can we talk about something?”
“This is why you came home for lunch, isn’t it?”
“It’s about your uncle Ted, Michael. He says he feels like you’ve been pretty … distant. That was the word he used when he described how you’ve been to him since the fall, Mikey. Anything you want to tell me?”
“No.”
His father looked at him for a long time before finally nodding. “Okay, pal. I’m going back to work. Have a good afternoon.”
“You, too, Dad.”
His father crossed the room, dumped what was left of his coffee in the stainless-steel sink, and rinsed his mug. He started to leave the kitchen, but paused.
Michael watched his father exhale, blowing out a long breath—one, he thought later, the man had
probably been holding for months.
“Something changed last fall, Mikey. I know it did. I just want to know what and why.”
“I’ll get Aleksei after school,” Michael said, and ate his sandwich.
When the front door closed, he took out his cell phone and called Donovan Ford. “May I speak to Ted Donovan?”
The voice offered to get him, but Michael hung up.
Knowing Uncle Ted was at work was enough.
Uncle Ted’s apartment was locked and dark, but Michael knew where the spare key was, and he switched on the light in the main room.
He liked coming up here. Partially, it was the secret of these trips. But more and more, it was his appreciation for what was in the box that brought him here. Just twenty minutes here and there. That was enough.
What was Uncle Ted doing? He was pretty sure his mother knew nothing about it. It was his father who Michael wondered about. And like most things one dwells upon, these questions and doubts had calcified and now had taken on a life of their own. Michael’s theory was cemented in his mind: His father knew what was here and had some sort of plan for it.
But that wasn’t what Michael was thinking this afternoon, when his mother was at a PTO meeting and his father and Uncle Ted were at work. The apartment was warm. The temperature, it seemed to Michael, never changed in the apartment. Today he simply enjoyed what was there, noticing everything he could, thinking of how much there was to see, of how much he no doubt overlooked.
And he wondered, as he always did, what his father and uncle had planned.
2:15 p.m., Garrett Station
Leaf Ryan didn’t look familiar to Peyton. He was in his late fifties, a former state trooper whom Peyton had never met.
“Thanks for coming in to see me,” she said when he sat across from her in the Garrett Station bullpen.
The term bullpen might have originated with police homicide squads in the 1950s and been used to describe their working space, but an agent at Garrett Station had used the term here. And it stuck.
“Mr. McCluskey required me to do it.”
“You didn’t want to?”
