by D. A. Keeley
“Yeah. You’ve forgotten about them, haven’t you?”
“Of course not,” she lied.
“Could you take a look at the video this morning? See if we can determine who’s growing pot behind McCluskey’s?”
“I was planning to snowshoe behind that shack this morning.”
“What if I offer to buy you dinner tonight?”
“You’re bribing me?”
“And I’ll give you a shoulder rub.”
“We both know what that usually leads to,” she said.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about. It was an innocent, friendly gesture.”
“Right,” she said. “Give me the morning. The cameras have been out there for a while now. It’ll take me some time to go through the video.”
“Call if you see anything interesting, please.”
“You’ve brought the Maine DEA in on this, haven’t you?”
“Affirmative.”
“Keddy’s,” she said, “at six thirty.”
“How about my place?”
“I’ve had your cooking,” she said.
“I was thinking more about the shoulder rub,” he said.
“I’ve had that too.”
He laughed. “Ouch. Actually, I was thinking Tommy might come with you.”
“That would put a damper on the shoulder rub.”
“But it would give me a chance to spend some time with him.”
“You know,” she said, “you’re actually a very good guy.”
“That’s why I offered the shoulder rub.”
“We both know why you offered the shoulder rub.”
“And it was purely altruistic,” he said, laughing and getting in the final word before hanging up.
Jimenez was gone, had left for the field, when she returned to her desk with her iPad in a thick rubber OtterBox case.
The field scan option on each camera had been preset for one-minute intervals, and she hadn’t reviewed what had been recorded the previous day. Scanning the images sent to her iPad would be time consuming. So Peyton settled into her chair and began the task.
A large doe was caught in one frame. She paused the slide show, looking for human footprints. The snow was crusty and frozen in this image. So she knew it was more than a day old.
An hour later, she reached an image of falling snow. It had come from last night, when six inches had fallen. Looking closely, she saw something near the shack that resembled a boot print. A trip to the site might confirm it as animal or human, or she might find the snow completely covering the track.
The cabin, however, wasn’t her main priority. She was hoping the video would reveal people or, more likely, one man—someone who looked like he knew how to enter and leave the US without detection. Someone who could’ve led Aleksei Vann from Ukraine to the US.
She’d worked through frame-by-frame images, hating desk work more than ever. Her mind wandered. Jimenez had been caught playing fantasy basketball. At his age, before her marriage and Tommy, she’d have used her off-duty hours to scour these video images. Back then, in her early twenties, when fewer than 10 percent of agents were female, professional success and proving herself to be as good or better than male agents had driven her.
A deer appeared in one image. She watched it cross the screen, frame by frame, like a silent movie reel. It sniffed the ground and moved off.
Had she been a better agent back then? Or just unproven and hungry? She knew now she tried to be a better mom than agent. Felt like she failed at that. A lot. Stone said she was too hard on herself, but Tommy deserved the best she had.
She stopped thinking, squinted, and paused the iPad. Scrolled back and let the frame play again.
“Gotcha,” she said aloud, took out her iPhone, and called Stone.
11:15 a.m., near the Canadian border
“What’s this?” Peyton said, when Stone climbed into her truck and handed her a paper bag.
“It’s the least I could do.”
She opened the bag and saw a burger wrapped in wax paper atop a container of french fries. “Is this from the Blue Moose?”
“You told me the Blue Moose has the best fries in Aroostook County,” he said.
“You drove halfway to Houlton to get me fries?”
“I was checking on Sara.”
She recognized the name of the victim in his child-abuse case.
He nodded and picked up the grainy black-and-white photo on the seat between them. “I had to get more testimony.”
“That must be brutal,” she said.
He didn’t have to answer. He was looking at the photo. The radio was silent. They’d met between Route 1A and the Canadian border, several miles behind the McCluskey’s Processing plant. She was to hike the trail, snowshoeing when needed, and the burger and fries wouldn’t help her. But she didn’t want to insult Stone. And she did love fries from the Blue Moose.
“I can’t eat the burger,” she said, “but I’ll eat the fries.”
“We can’t let the burger go to waste.” He reached into the bag.
She smiled. “That’s big of you.”
“I have to cancel dinner,” he said. “I’m staking this place out tonight. Very sorry.”
“I understand.”
“I knew you would,” he said. “You know what it’s like.”
“To have to drop everything for work? Oh, yeah. Stay warm.”
He nodded. “I have a tent and a sleeping bag good for minus forty.”
“Are you alone?”
He nodded. Then, in what she knew was an effort to deliberately change the subject because he didn’t want her to worry, he said, “I brought a good book.” Along with the one printout, she’d emailed photos from her surveillance cameras. He had his phone out and was looking at a photo she’d emailed him.
“I wish the photo was closer and not so grainy,” she said, pointing to his phone.
“It looks like a man,” he said.
“But the hood and sunglasses make it difficult to determine. And the scarf doesn’t help.”
“I think it’s definitely a man. And he knows what he’s doing—the hiking gear, the winter-wear. He’s prepared for the climate and the conditions.”
“You make him sound like a pro.”
Stone thought about that. “Not sure. We’re only talking about six marijuana plants. But he’s growing them pretty damn well in subzero temperatures. Think there’s a connection to your Ukrainian boy?”
“Aleksei didn’t mention the structure. But he hasn’t said much to me. I’m still working on that.”
“Trying to gain his trust?”
“Yeah, if we can find this guy”—she pointed to the photo of the man wearing the blue winter jacket with a yellow emblem on the collar—“you can have your drug bust, and I’ll question him about what he saw out there.”
“I wanted to spend time with Tommy tonight,” Stone said.
“He didn’t even know we were going over for dinner,” she said, “so he won’t be disappointed.”
“But I am,” he said. He dropped the hamburger bun back in the bag, folded the wax paper around the patty, put it inside his backpack, and opened the truck door. “Rain check?”
“Of course,” she said. “Be careful.”
“You too.” He stepped out and closed the pickup door, then waved and started into the woods.
11:45 a.m., Garrett Middle School
Aleksei Vann was sitting at the end of a table at the back of the library in Garrett Middle School. The novel We Were Here lay open before him, but he wasn’t reading; he was thinking.
About how it felt to be alone. To be unwanted.
About how things had been different back home.
About how this had been his father’s idea. A better life, his father
told him.
Was it? Would it be?
He was wearing new clothes—an Abercrombie & Fitch sweatshirt and Levi’s, for starters, thanks to Aunt Bohana. He was doing very well in the high-school Algebra II class, the only eighth-grader in it. But the students laughed when he spoke, repeated his phrases, and took pleasure in correcting him.
The boy at the other end of the table was a sixth-grader. Other eighth-graders were at the round tables, seated in twos and threes, at the front of the library. Aleksei looked at them, watching them talk, secretly text each other with phones under the table, and laugh quietly. The laughter was what he noticed, what he missed. Laughter meant you were part of the crowd. It meant that you had friends. He’d yet to share a laugh with his cousin Michael at the Donovan home, and he certainly hadn’t laughed with anyone at school.
But not everyone from Garrett, Maine, laughed. There were other outsiders, even among the locals. He’d seen that, seen how kids treated some others. That didn’t change in America. Same as it had been back home. An “in” crowd and an “out” crowd.
In the Fiction row, a girl—Ally, that was her name—with clumps of greasy, shoulder-length blond hair moved her index finger down the spines of books, looking for something particular. She wore blue jeans. Not the tight-fitting jeans most of the other girls wore. Her jeans were baggy, faded, and were usually torn near her knee. Clearly hand-me-downs. He’d never seen her in a winter coat, just a gray Patriots sweatshirt. Her hands were usually stuffed in the pocket. No gloves or mittens.
Aleksei was watching her when she turned and scanned the library, her eyes stopping on him. Then she approached. Had she seen him looking at her? They’d never spoken.
“You reading that?” She pointed to the copy of We Were Here.
He shook his head. Outside of class, he spoke as little as he could. It was easier to fit in if no one heard his accent.
Her eyes were on the book, hands hanging stiffly at her sides. “You sign it out?”
He looked at her index finger—raw and cracked. Saw the dried blood.
Her hand went quickly into her sweatshirt pocket. “What are you looking at?”
“Nothing,” he said.
“Tell me where you’re from, again.”
He told her.
“I hear you’re in Algebra II,” she said. “I’m in the other section. You and I are the only eighth-graders who walk next door to the high school to take it.”
“Really?”
“Uh-huh. You like it here?”
She bent like she might take the seat beside him, but then stopped, looking over her shoulder. Two girls—one in a cable-knit turtleneck sweater, the other in a basketball jacket with Scotty stitched into the sleeve—were watching from a nearby table.
“It’s not home,” he said. She had been the first one in his new school to seek him out. “Want sit down?”
She shook her head. “You beat up Scotty Champaign?”
He shrugged.
“I hear that’s a good book.” She pointed.
He slid it to her. “Take.”
“Take it? Really? You don’t want to read it first?”
He shook his head.
She snatched it off the table and took a step toward the librarian’s desk, then turned back.
“Scotty’s a jerk. So are a lot of kids here. He’s been teasing new kids or nerds for a long time. A bunch of us were glad you broke his nose.”
He didn’t say anything.
“You’re pretty quiet, huh?”
He just looked at her.
“Joining the math team?”
“Is there math team?”
“Were you on a math team where you were before?”
He nodded. “And skeet.”
“Shooting?”
“Yes.”
“We don’t have that here. I’m on the math team. You should join.”
“Okay.”
“Yeah, you’ll join?”
He nodded.
“It’s in room six. Right after school. See you there.”
She took We Were Here to the circulation desk. As the librarian checked the book out, he was thinking about the math team, about being part of something.
The girl turned and looked at him over her shoulder. When they made eye contact, he smiled at her.
She looked away.
2:15 p.m., 7 Drummond Lane
Michael Donovan ascended the stairs to the one-time attic, now the third-floor apartment. As a precaution, he carried the sudoku book Uncle Ted left downstairs. He could say he was just returning it, if Uncle Ted appeared and asked why Michael had let himself in.
Of course, he’d have to explain knowing where the spare key was. And there was certainly no precautions for the rest of the visit. Never was. Maybe that was partially why Michael loved doing this—the risk.
The first time he’d come here alone and looked at it inside the box and wrapped in plastic, he doubted its legitimacy. After all, it had been missing over two decades. Hidden in Aroostook County, Maine? Eight hours from where it had been taken? But there was something about it—he’d unwrapped and rewrapped it six times now—that spoke to him. The precision, the mastery. Then, of course, when research told him of the telltale marks, he knew.
There were a million reasons to take it. But he didn’t. Simply couldn’t do that. It wasn’t Uncle Ted’s future that bothered him. But what if his parents were involved? Could they be? Could they not be? It was, after all, their house. But he’d never seen either of them enter the apartment. They gave Uncle Ted privacy. Yet they’d lived in the house since before Michael was even born.
Besides, if he didn’t wait to see what Uncle Ted and (maybe) his parents had planned for it, what were his other options? Return it to its rightful owner?
And just who, exactly, was that? The last person you could call the “owner” was long dead. And what would become of his parents, of his family, if he did that?
So, as he’d done several other times over the years, he simply looked. Admired. Twenty minutes was long enough.
six
Saturday, March 8, 8:55 a.m., 7 Drummond Lane
Michael woke to a text on his vibrating phone. It was from Davey Bolstridge: Pain is bad, dude. can you get me some?
Michael read it. Ya, later this morning he replied and grabbed a backpack from his closet, put on jeans and baggy wind pants over them, wool socks, and hiking boots.
Bohana stopped him in the kitchen. “Where are you off to?”
“Hiking, Mom. Be back for lunch.”
“Your cousin might want to go.”
“No. Going alone.”
“Where?”
He was taking a water bottle from the fridge. He wasn’t going too far, but he had to sell the hike. He paused, thinking of what to say.
“You must know where you’re going, Michael.”
“I do. There’s a trail behind McCluskey’s. Going to take some pictures.”
“You and your pictures,” she said. “Ansel Adams is what I should call you.” She pointed to one of his photos hanging on the wall in the hallway behind him. “So talented. You said you’ll be home for lunch?”
“Probably,” he said and headed for the front door.
9:30 a.m., Dojo, Caribou
The Saturday morning atmosphere inside the dojo, Peyton thought, was a cross between a hockey game (bloodthirsty, crazed parents) and a tennis match (upper-crust, subdued spectators). She didn’t know which group she fit into; hoped neither.
She sat silently in the back row of maybe thirty parents, separated from the mats by thick plate glass. She noticed, as she did at all of Tommy’s events, that she was there alone. She felt like a single mother more at Tommy’s events than at any other time. A boy younger than Tommy and wearing a gi sat next to his parents in fron
t of Peyton. The man next to him, in a tan Carhartt jacket, reached over and gave the boy’s shoulder a gentle squeeze. The boy looked at him and smiled.
Through the glass, she saw Tommy standing beside three other boys. Stone Gibson, as their instructor, was offering last-minute directives. One by one, the boys nodded. Stone pointed to an area in the back corner, and two of the three boys moved off and began stretching. Now Tommy was alone with Stone. The off-duty trooper leaned forward and spoke, his face serene, his smile warm.
Tommy’s back was to her, but she knew her son, knew his body language. He wasn’t returning Stone’s smile. His head was down, eyes focusing anywhere but on Stone’s. Still, his back was steady, which meant there were no tears. Eventually, Tommy’s eyes found his hands, which fidgeted with his belt.
Tommy typically hung on Stone’s every word, especially in the dojo. This day, though, he seemed set on finding distractions. Was Tommy nervous? Or was he seeking anything to take him away from Stone? She knew her son well enough to know the answer.
Stone shrugged and smiled, then patted Tommy on the back, and Tommy moved off to be with the other boys. Stone looked up, scanned the small audience beyond the glass. When his eyes met Peyton’s, he shook his head.
11:45 a.m., Gary’s Diner
“I need to use the bathroom,” Tommy said. He slung his North Face jacket into the booth and walked off. Peyton and Stone had just slid onto the bench across the table from Tommy.
“Maybe I shouldn’t sit beside you,” Stone said.
“What do you mean?” Peyton asked. She smelled the same onion rings she’d eaten when her father had taken her here at Tommy’s age.
“If we sit next to each other, Tommy has to sit alone, across from us. Might send a bad message.”
Peyton exhaled. “Like we’re ganging up on him?”
“Maybe,” Stone said. “I’m just thinking aloud. I don’t know what to do. This morning was rough. He won’t look at me. He didn’t want advice and wouldn’t listen to me during his match.”
“That’s probably why he lost,” she said and looked across the diner at the men sitting at the counter. Several talked about the upcoming potato season, about anticipated prices. One wore a tan Carhartt jacket, the kind her father used to wear; the other wore an orange hunting vest over a sweatshirt and hoodie. She turned back to Stone. “Obviously I’ve been talking to him about you moving in. And obviously you know where he stands on that right now.”
