Bitter Crossing (A Peyton Cote Novel)

by D. A. Keeley

  “The boy’s story is bizarre, and he admitted that his father told him not to talk about a trip he made.”

  Hewitt stared at her, then glanced at his watch and shook his head as if to say, All of this before nine in the morning? “I’m getting coffee. Want some?”

  “Please. Two sugars.”

  He went out.

  Her file remained on Hewitt’s desk. She looked at it and asked the same question he must have asked: What the hell happened to her career? One mistake—missing the drop in the field—had snowballed to a series of events landing her on administrative leave. Tyler Timms had told her to “sit by the side of some dirt road and stare at the woods like the other agents. That’s the best thing you can do.” It had been a threat, any way you cut it, and was evidence (however circumstantial) of a relationship between Timms, Kenny Radke, and Alan McAfee.

  But, as she sat staring at her own file, she had to admit that Timms, ironically, had proven prophetic.

  Hewitt re-entered and handed her a coffee.

  “For what it’s worth, the computer hit on the Ramsey boy’s father. One count of possession of marijuana and an OUI in North Caro-

  lina.”

  He sat across from her again.

  “And this guy’s a doctor?”

  Hewitt sipped coffee. “He’s not my practitioner. Tell me about the boy’s trip.”

  She did—about the box with spiders, the hotel, and the crying.

  Hewitt shook his head. “Regardless, we can’t go harassing the guy—calling employers or doing that stuff, Peyton—without a solid reason, but …”

  “What?”

  “I tend to agree with your assessment. I’ll call Dr. Ramsey back, say you were just volunteering. I asked him what reason you might have for questioning his son. He didn’t want to talk about your motive for being there.”

  “Sounds like you knew I wouldn’t go totally off the rails.”

  “I didn’t say that, but I figured you wouldn’t harass a four-year-old without reason.”

  “So where do I go from here?”

  “You’re reinstated. The United States Border Patrol officially cleared you of wrongdoing in the Radke shooting.”

  “McAfee is letting it go?”

  “God, you sound almost excited, like you actually enjoy working.”

  “We all do, boss.”

  He didn’t respond, but he was smiling.

  She smiled back. “And, Mike, there’s one other little tiny thing you should know about.”

  “Dear God,” he said, bracing.

  “Mann’s Garage, too?” Hewitt said, leaned back, and ran a hand through his hair. “If you weren’t about the only one here making progress, I’d be pissed.”

  “How are Pam, Bruce, and Scott doing with the baby?”

  “Not well.”

  She thought about that.

  “When I asked Tyler Timms about his connection to Kenny Radke and Alan McAfee, he picked up a heavy wrench.”

  “Intimidation?”

  She shrugged. “That’s what he was going for.”

  She was relieved that Hewitt didn’t appear angry, although that didn’t make her coffee taste better. She set the foam cup on the edge of his desk.

  “Is Jonathan Hurley fleeing us or just running out on his wife?” He picked a pencil off his desk, looked at it, and dropped it into a coffee mug with others. “And why the plane tickets to England? Why go there twice in one year?”

  She had no answer, but they were talking international boundaries now. “This is getting bigger than Garrett Station, isn’t it?”

  “State police has nothing, zip, on the Jimenez shooting. The Border Patrol won’t stand for that, so ICE is sending someone up here. FBI is tracking names on flights into Heathrow. And DNA tests to try linking the baby in Radke’s van to Radke himself came back negative, so we have no idea who the dead baby was.”

  The additional of ICE—the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the criminal investigations division of Homeland Security—told Peyton that the situation in tiny Garrett, Maine, had made the US Border Patrol’s national radar screen.

  “Presumably, Radke got her in Canada,” she said. “Somebody there has to know who she was. A few days ago, I saw Timms and Radke with McAfee walking on Main Street. When they saw me, they walked in the other direction.”

  “What’s the connection?”

  “That’s a little gray,” she said.

  “I bet. Marcy Lambert’s impressed by McAfee. Says he’s smart as hell. He dragged the Radke shooting out so that, if he has to, he can put you on the stand and say truthfully that your administrative leave was longer than usual. That puts the Radke shooting and, in turn, your character in doubt.”

  “The whole time Marcy and I were with him, I felt like a pawn. McAfee is Hurley’s lawyer. Does he also represent Timms and Radke?”

  “How could Kenny Radke afford a Boston attorney?” Hewitt said.

  “McAfee also deals with U-Maine Professor Jerry Reilly and Morris Picard.”

  “He represents Reilly and Picard?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “But why would a group of Aroostook County residents have a Boston attorney?”

  “I’m going back to the money,” Hewitt said. “How are these people affording McAfee?”

  There was a knock on Hewitt’s door. Linda Cyr entered and silently handed a phone message to Peyton. It was an invitation to lunch. It wasn’t Jeff making another last-ditch attempt to salvage their relationship. It wasn’t Pete Dye either—and the letdown she felt at that realization surprised her.

  Though not as much as the caller’s name did.

  FORTY-ONE

  SHE DROVE TO LEEROY’S, Garrett’s “other” diner, parked next to Tyler Timms’s late-model rust-pocked pickup, got out, and entered.

  She and Timms were the only patrons.

  “Why are we meeting here, Tyler? Why not Gary’s? You can walk there from Mann’s Garage.”

  “This place, eh? It’s nice and quiet,” he said, his French accent as pronounced as ever.

  She didn’t deny it was quiet. Located near the former Air Force base, LeeRoy’s was a good choice if you wanted solitude. The windows were dirty, the clapboard siding slumping, and some shingles were missing. She hadn’t known the place was still open, a relic from the area’s prosperous Cold War period.

  “Silly me,” she said. “I was thinking you picked this place for the ambiance.”

  “Ambiance?”

  “Yeah, it’s like an aura.”

  “Aura? The whale?”

  “That’s orca, Tyler.”

  He shrugged, drank some of his beer, and gestured toward the waitress, who, looking as old as the building itself, made her way to the booth.

  “A Diet Coke,” Peyton said.

  “Can’t remember the last time someone came in here and didn’t order a beer.”

  When the waitress left, Peyton went on the offensive. “You miss being in the military?”

  “I was a grunt. They put me through Basic, eh. Next thing I know, I’m in some Godforsaken desert getting my ass shot off.” He nodded at her uniform. “I see your suspension is over, eh?”

  “You should re-evaluate your source. I was never suspended.”

  “Must have heard wrong.”

  “Can’t always trust Al McAfee’s information, can you?”

  He looked away. “You weren’t in uniform when you came to the garage.”

  “Nope.”

  They were quiet. Peyton watched the waitress pour her Coke from a fountain dispenser and approach the booth. When the waitress asked for lunch orders, Peyton chanced the club sandwich.

  “You working on anything interesting?” Timms slowly turned the Coors bottle in his hands.

  There was oil beneath his fingernails. His most prominent tattoo was a crucifix, complete with a slumping Jesus, on his right arm. The tattoo didn’t seem to fit. Timms wasn’t intimidating. Where Mike Hewitt looked like a banker but had been
a Navy SEAL, Timms struck her as the opposite. He’d be more comfortable sitting here with his mother, ordering ployes before heading to Mass.

  “You mean am I working as opposed to ‘staring into the woods like the other agents’?”

  He sipped his beer. She didn’t mind the silence. He’d asked her here for a reason.

  Timms chewed his fingernail.

  As far as she could tell, two very different sets of men were somehow linked: There was Kenny Radke, an ex-con turned desperate-border-jumper, and Timms, a mechanic who’d been shot in Iraq. The second group consisted of academics—Jonathan Hurley and Morris Picard, both high school history teachers, and redheaded Jerry Reilly, a criminal justice and global studies professor.

  Boston attorney Alan McAfee was somehow the common denominator.

  Where did the abandoned baby and the dead infant, both girls, fit in? And who the hell was the girl who went by Jane Smith?

  Why had Miguel Jimenez been shot? What had he seen that night in the barn? Was her soon-to-be-ex-brother-in-law the shooter?

  On her first visit to Reilly’s office, she’d witnessed a conversation in the hallway between the professor and McAfee. “This contribution will really help,” McAfee had said, to which Reilly replied, “It’s a privilege to help.” What was his donation? And what was the cause he was helping?

  The waitress returned with two sandwiches.

  Timms, watching the old woman leave, said, “No mayo, eh? You’re a careful eater. Guess that’s why you look so good.”

  “Thanks for the compliment. Is this a date?”

  “I guess it could be, eh?”

  “No, it couldn’t,” she said.

  He took a gulp of beer. “You looking for Jonathan?”

  “Why? Know where he is?”

  “Of course not. But it’s irrelevant, Peyton. What you need to remember is that he and I are friends.”

  “You and Jonathan, huh? How’d you meet?”

  “Again, irrelevant. You probably figured we wouldn’t get along, eh? But we’re not so different. He understands a lot about the United States government. Anyway, he told me your sister’s a dy—that she likes women. That’s a sin, Peyton. So Jonathan’s doing the right thing leaving her. He loved your sister, but that’s out now. He’s a family man, loves his children, so now he’s with Celia. Let him go. I talked to your sister. She understands.”

  “You went to see my sister?”

  “I explained things to her.”

  She put her sandwich down. “You spray-paint her car?”

  “Don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.

  “You’re a really bad liar, Tyler. You threatened her, didn’t you, you son of a bitch?”

  “Don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  He stared at her, and she saw a hint of instability in his eyes. The shaved head, the tattoos—both consciously added, like décor to a room. But his brown irises were pinpoints and would’ve scared Elise half to death.

  “How about you tell me what you said to my sister?”

  “That’s between me and her. But she’s smart. She’ll take the hint. I mean, Christ, Peyton, she can’t expect him to stay around when she’s a dyke.” He gave another carefree wave with his left hand.

  But this time, she grabbed it.

  Moments later, she was standing to his left, his hand twisted into a control hold.

  “That’s my little sister, Tyler. What did you say to her?”

  His eyes squinted shut. Anger, born of humiliation, painted his face. Rage was in his voice.

  “Hear me out, for Christ’s sake, Peyton.”

  His left arm was fully extended, palm up. She clasped his fingers, pressing them backward and down, knuckles toward the floor. Her right hand pressed against his elbow, pushing it up against the tension of his outstretched arm.

  She felt the elbow tendons strain.

  His eyes burst open like someone waking from a bad dream. “You’ll pop my fucking elbow!”

  She pushed his pinkie and ring fingers back until she felt the ligaments stretch.

  “What did you say to my sister?”

  He grunted. “That’s why I’m here … She gets … she gets the picture. Let … it … go.”

  “You threaten her, Tyler?”

  “I just told her to let him go! Let him try to be happy.”

  “Or what?”

  He shook his head.

  “Where is he?”

  “I can’t.”

  She pushed until his fingers were two inches from the back of his hand.

  He made a low, deep moan, the sound rumbling from deep inside. “He’s gone … Celia went with him.”

  “Where are they?”

  He shook his head.

  “I’ll break them, Tyler. I’ll push your elbow through the other side of your goddamn arm.” She pushed his fingers back.

  He screamed.

  “I’ll do it, Tyler!” She was shouting now, the waitress behind her. “Call the police!” she said.

  The waitress obediently ran back to the kitchen.

  “He had plane tickets to England. Is that where they’ve gone?”

  “They went there for something else.” He was biting his lip. Was that to stop himself from talking or an uncontrolled reaction to the pain? “That’s another … thing they do sometimes.”

  “They do what sometimes, fly to England?”

  “Just let him go,” he said. “I told your sister to forget him. You should too.”

  “My sister’s left with a house to pay for.”

  She pushed the fingers farther.

  Veins pulsed at the corners of each of his eyes.

  “Jonathan could never hurt his son.” He writhed in pain. “But you’ve got a son, too, and a sister to think about here, Peyton!”

  Her mind flashed to Tommy, to the vast expanse surrounding her mother’s small home, to her little boy riding his bike on that land. And to him vanishing like snow swept away by a hard wind.

  There was a pop like porcelain shattering.

  Tyler Timms was on the diner floor, screaming.

  “Don’t you ever threaten my family,” she said. “Ever.”

  FORTY-TWO

  MIKE HEWITT WAS PINCHING the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger.

  Again.

  Peyton was back seated across his desk from him.

  “Officer Miller heard the call and went to LeeRoy’s, too. I walk in there, and Miller tells me he found Timms on the floor screaming. Timms says you assaulted him, and the waitress confirmed his story.”

  “I can explain,” Peyton said.

  “You’re coming off administrative leave. I got a parent complaint accusing you of harassing a preschool kid. And now I’m pretty sure you dislocated Tyler Timms’s elbow. This ought to be good.”

  “He went to my sister’s home. The bastard threatened her. He invited me to LeeRoy’s to tell me to leave Hurley alone. Then he threatened my son. That’s when I grabbed his arm. And I’d do it again.”

  “Don’t say that to me.”

  “I would.”

  “I need to write a report here,” he said, “so think very hard before you speak, Peyton.”

  She leaned back in her seat and looked out the window.

  “That’s why you brought Tommy and your sister and her son here,” he said and pointed to the bullpen.

  “I couldn’t leave Elise alone. I went to Tommy’s school and pulled him out of soccer practice. The threats have to do with Hurley, and we don’t know where he is.”

  “The waitress says when the guy’s elbow popped, it sounded like someone dropped a light bulb. Last week, you kicked a guy’s knee halfway to China. This is becoming—”

  “No, it’s not becoming anything. I was surrounded by four men last week. That was self-defense.”

  Hewitt leaned back in his chair. His thick hands rested quietly on the desk blotter, tiny blond hairs visible under the bright ceiling lights. Peyton heard Lin
da Cyr speaking baby-talk to Max. A phone rang, and Linda paused to answer it, her formal voice returning.

  “You realize you dislocated the guy’s elbow about an hour after getting off administrative leave?” he said. “See the spot I’m in here?”

  “I know I didn’t handle it in textbook fashion, but when he threatened Tommy, I just snapped.”

  He looked out the window. “I don’t want to hear that.”

  “It’s the truth. Look, there are some things that I admit I didn’t think would come into play when I moved back. In El Paso, I didn’t know anyone, and no one knew me. So my family was never an issue. Never imagined someone would use my family like this, not up here.”

  “What do you want to do about your sister and her son? We don’t have the manpower to have someone move in with them.”

  “I know that. I’ll do the best I can. Listen, Mike, Timms has spoken to Hurley very recently. I know it. Timms painted Elise’s car, but Hurley told him to do it.”

  “The state police have no leads on the shooting, so ICE is coming aboard. At this point, this is a federal investigation. Did Timms say anything to indicate that Hurley shot Miguel?”

  “No. But he told me the plane tickets to England were about something else—his words. And I got the first name of Hurley’s girlfriend: Celia.”

  “That’s more believable than Jane Smith.”

  “She and Hurley have been flying to England together,” she said. Peyton glanced over her shoulder. Tommy was staring at the floor. Linda Cyr was bouncing Max on her lap as Elise sat by, her face blank.

  She turned back to Hewitt. “The thing is, threatening a Border Patrol agent’s kid and sister is awfully serious. Timms took a big chance by doing that.”

  “He’s not a thinker,” Hewitt said. “We all know that.”

  “I think there’s more to it. I mean, why is Tyler Timms interfering in someone else’s marriage? Because he’s concerned for my brother-in-law’s happiness? No way.”

  “What then?”

  “I don’t know, but I think Jonathan has the answers to a lot of our questions. It was his baby I found, and he was in the area. He might very well have left her there to die.”