How It Happened

by Michael Koryta

  “Nothing.” He lifted his hands before Barrett could argue. “Honestly, nothing. I’ve read about the case. I believe you were given a false confession, and frankly, I don’t care. It’s of no interest to me. What is of interest to me is the drug. I’m following a distribution map. Or trying to build one. Some areas are making sense. Port Hope, Maine, is not. Usually this thing kills in waves. I go to see a coroner who has seen two dozen dead in two weeks. In Ohio, they had fifty in one county. Up here, that’s not the case. Toxicology reports are showing matches, and Cass Odom is one of them. The matches are sporadic, and the path of entry isn’t clear. That’s what’s important to me. I chase this cancer all around the country, talking to coroners and cops and watching the bodies stack up, and what I need to know is how it’s coming in. Maine’s intriguing to me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Maine has plenty of harbor towns, and my job is to determine how the drug is arriving. A lot of it has been flown into Dayton or Indianapolis, centrally located cities with major interstate systems. Maine is usually a final destination for heroin, not an entry point. But it’s not killing many people up here either. A handful of dead in tiny coastal towns doesn’t make sense for this shit. Which makes me wonder…did it arrive here, and did some enterprising soul pilfer a little before they let it bleed out into the rest of the country?”

  “Interesting questions,” Barrett said. “But I can’t answer them. And I’m still curious about my questions. Someone tried to kill me, and you seem to know more about it than I do, but you’re not sharing that.”

  “Who do you think did it?”

  “I’m not sure, but it seems safe to assume it was someone who doesn’t want me asking questions about a murder case that was closed too early.”

  “I think you’re halfway there but facing the wrong way.”

  “What?”

  “They don’t want you asking questions, but that’s because your questions are changing. You’re not asking about the murders anymore. You’re asking about the drugs.”

  “How do you know that already?”

  Vizquel smiled and shook his head. Barrett wondered who his informant was. Millinock? Girard? Johansson?

  “How’s your relationship with the state police up here?” he asked.

  “Aces,” Vizquel said, “but you’re still facing the wrong way.”

  “Then set me straight, and stop throwing the curveballs. I clearly can’t hit them, and I can’t help you unless I can hit them. Who’s your source, Vizquel?”

  Vizquel gave a dry little smile. “No source. Oh, by the way—there was a GPS tracking device attached to the frame of your car. That’s why I’m here. Cass Odom matches the drug profile, and Rob Barrett nearly gets killed with a tracker on his rental car, and this is what brings Nick Vizquel hustling up to Maine to chat at your bedside, understand?”

  Barrett stared at him, trying to catch up. “Is the tracker clean or do you think you can get something from it?”

  “We’ll try, of course, but unless someone got lazy, it’ll be clean. You’ve honestly got no idea who might have put that on your car?”

  “I don’t. My first thought is Mathias Burke, because he’s the—”

  “Stop thinking about the murder case. That’s small ball.”

  Barrett pointed at Nick Vizquel, dragging IV tubes across his body as he did it.

  “Tell that to Howard Pelletier, asshole. Tell him that his daughter’s murder is small ball.”

  Vizquel sighed. “I was hoping you’d get it. You’re a fed, not a local.”

  “Sorry to disappoint.”

  “You are disappointing. I could use the help, and you’re still talking about caretakers and addicts and old murders. Get past that. Think about money. Somewhere, somebody is making big money on this drug.”

  “I’m sure they are. But it’s not Kimberly Crepeaux.”

  Vizquel looked disgusted. “You’re right about that. Listen, I’m leaving my card and my cell number. You get better ideas than that, share them, would you? You scared somebody pretty good by coming back to Maine. I’d like to know who it was.”

  “Yeah,” Barrett said. “You and me both.”

  Vizquel left his card on the table beside the bed and stood. “You’re a lucky man.”

  Barrett gestured at the rack of IVs beside his hospital bed. “Really?”

  “Absolutely. You wandered into the ring without knowing what weight class was punching in it. Most guys like you? They don’t see a hospital bed. They see a morgue.”

  35

  Dr. Abeo came and ran him through his tests and paces and proclaimed him fit for release—and bed rest.

  “That must be taken very seriously,” he said. “You’re not to lift anything heavier than a frying pan. You stay in bed, you get bored and miserable, and you get better.”

  Barrett nodded and promised the doctor that he would adhere to the bed rest. He said he’d have to call a cab to get him home, and Abeo looked surprised.

  “The ladies have been waiting,” he said.

  “The ladies?”

  “Two of them, yes.” Abeo smiled. “They do not seem to like each other very well, though.”

  Barrett was puzzled by this statement until he made his way out to the waiting room, dressed in blue hospital scrubs, and saw Liz Street and Roxanne Donovan occupying opposite sides of the room, each on her phone, pretending not to be aware of the other. Liz glanced at him and then back down at her phone. He caught a blend of relief and anger in her eyes before she looked away. Roxanne came over to him and gave him a head-to-toe look followed by a chagrined shake of the head.

  “You’ve looked better, Barrett.”

  “I’ve felt better.”

  “I was told you shouldn’t be driving. I thought you might need a ride to the airport.”

  Liz cleared her throat. “I thought you might want one heading back north.”

  Dr. Abeo watched this exchange with amusement. He winked at Barrett and said, “I will see you next week, yes? And—bed rest. North or south, you stay in bed.”

  Roxanne rolled her eyes. “Nobody’s fighting over the man with the staples in his head, Doctor. The outside of his skull is actually more appealing than the inside.”

  “I’ve missed you too, Roxanne,” Barrett said.

  “I know it. And before you follow your guiding light toward another bad decision, let’s talk.” She glanced at Liz. “Alone.”

  She walked toward the door and he followed. When they were outside and alone, her hard-ass approach softened, and she put both hands on his shoulders.

  “What…are…you…doing?”

  “Ending my career, I’m sure.”

  “Good news—medical leave will buy you some time. It’s poor form to fire an agent who was nearly murdered. But seriously, Barrett, what do you think you’re doing?”

  He told her about the calls—Howard’s and Kimberly’s—and how he’d ended up on a plane to Portland, needing to see them for himself.

  “And this”—he pointed at his wounded head—“actually suggests I’m not crazy. Before, it was all instinct, right? No proof, no proof, no proof. But somebody just tried to kill me, Roxanne, and it’s because they do not want those tired old questions asked again.”

  “DEA says it’s not about that,” she said.

  “You’ve talked to my friend Vizquel?”

  “Yes. He told me about the tracker. Asked if it could have been ours, since he knew you’d, to quote him, ‘fallen out of favor’ with us.”

  “Interesting. He didn’t suggest to me it was the work of the beloved Bureau for whom I serve so tirelessly. I probably should have thought of that myself.”

  “You think we knew you were back? Please. You’d have been grabbed at the airport and put on the next plane out. And you should be now. Screwing with a DEA investigation, intentionally or not, is the red line.”

  He didn’t answer.

  She regarded him sadly. “You could be a great agent, Barret
t. I regret ever sending you up here. I thought it was the right case and that you could use your knowledge of the area. I didn’t think you’d get hung up on a lie. You didn’t seem like that type.”

  “Fooled you,” he said.

  She didn’t smile. “When someone with a higher rank than me calls you in the next few days, you need to understand exactly what you and I discussed: your medical condition, and my concern for your health. That’s all. Got it?”

  “Sure.”

  She put her sunglasses on, so he couldn’t read her eyes when she said, “Has anyone disclosed that the investigation was already active without your helpful nudge?”

  “The drug investigation or the homicide investigation?”

  “The latter. Both, apparently, but I’m talking about the latter. Maine State Police do not consider the case closed, no matter what they’ve said publicly.”

  “If it’s active, then why haven’t they told the families? Howard Pelletier is sitting up there in Port Hope losing his mind. That’s wrong, and cruel.”

  “If they’re keeping him out of it, maybe there’s a reason.”

  “What does that mean?”

  She spread her hands. “I don’t know. You’ve heard what I understand about this; it is more than I should have told you, but it’s also all I’ve got. Okay?”

  “Okay. And thank you.”

  “Make good choices, Barrett,” she said. “I know that would be breaking new ground for you, but there’s never been a better time to start.”

  With that, she turned and walked to her car.

  36

  When Barrett stepped back into the hospital, Liz rose to greet him, but she didn’t reach for him. Even Roxanne Donovan had touched him, but Liz did not. She just floated close, tantalizingly close, but kept the distance between them.

  “Your old boss doesn’t like reporters,” she said.

  “It’s why I may quit.”

  She held up a hand. “Spare me.” Her eyes drifted up from his, and her face darkened and he knew she was looking at the ghastly wound across his skull. “How you feeling?”

  “Conspicuous,” he said. “I would like a hat.”

  “What about a ride?”

  “I’d like both.”

  “You know the right woman.”

  They left the hospital and walked to the battered Ford Mustang that was the worst possible car for a Maine resident, rear-wheel drive and torque-heavy. Naturally, Liz had persisted with it for years.

  “I didn’t think to bring your suitcase down here with me,” Liz said, “but you’ve got some clothes at my house. Until then, I can help with a hat.”

  The backseat of the car looked like a cross between a mobile office and an abandoned storage center, and it took her a few minutes of rooting around before she emerged with a New England Patriots cap.

  “There you go.”

  He stared at it and shook his head. “You know better.”

  He’d been a Giants fan since birth.

  “You look like someone from The Walking Dead, but you won’t put on the hat?”

  “No.”

  She sighed, tossed the cap into the backseat, and found another.

  “This is the other option.” She held it out—it featured a cartoon moose in a yoga pose and said NAMOOSTE. “You tell me what you’d rather be seen in.”

  He took the moose hat.

  When they were in the car, she gunned the engine to life—it made a clatter more befitting a boatyard than a parking lot—then turned to him and said, “Kimmy’s in the wind.”

  “What?”

  “Howard Pelletier told me. As soon as word spread about you, the media came looking for her. She took off. Stole her grandmother’s car and went AWOL.”

  “Shit.”

  “Media scares her.”

  “Media scares her, maybe, but that’s not why she ran. She’s afraid of Mathias.”

  “He’s happy to give quotes. He told me that the police should be awfully interested in what happened to you after you visited Bobby Girard.”

  Barrett closed his eyes and took a breath. “And Howard?”

  “He told me to wish you well,” she said. “He didn’t want to be on the record.”

  “Right.”

  “Rob, who do you think came after you?”

  “I don’t know.” He was checking the side-view mirror compulsively and wondered how he’d do the next time he was behind the wheel, whether he’d be able to keep his eyes off the mirror, his mind off memories of the black truck with the grille guard that looked like bared teeth.

  “The state police haven’t bothered to talk to me,” he said, “but the DEA dropped by, apparently because they found a tracking device on my car.”

  She turned to him, wide-eyed.

  “Watch the road,” he said. “My last wreck was enough to hold me for a while.”

  She turned away. “The DEA.”

  “Yeah. And I was encouraged to think bigger. To ignore small-ball issues like the murders of Jackie Pelletier and Ian Kelly. Bigger, to them, is drugs and money. They didn’t mention sex or rock ’n’ roll, but I assume those are in the mix.”

  “Mathias has no drug history. Girard did.”

  “I’m aware,” he said, and then realized that he sounded like a total prick and added, “Sorry. I’m trying to get my head around it. You’ve listened to Kimberly, and you came away with the same thought as me: She’s not lying. Not completely.”

  “No.”

  “But…”

  “But she’s telling a story that doesn’t fit with the rest of it.”

  “Exactly.” He paused. The Maine landscape loomed ahead, dark and shadowed as storm clouds moved in, meeting a thin fog that was drifting in from the coast. This state of impenetrable fogs and deep woods and deep snows and deep oceans could hide a lot from you when it wanted to. He thought about what Roxanne and Nick Vizquel had told him and he felt the old fear again.

  “Maybe Kimberly did lie,” he said softly. “Maybe she told me what I wanted to hear and so I believed her, just like every cop who has ever put a conviction ahead of the truth.”

  “You haven’t stopped asking questions,” Liz said. “If you were a bad cop, Rob, you wouldn’t bother.”

  “I’m asking the wrong ones, according to Nick Vizquel.”

  “And you almost died because of it. I hate to say it, but…they can’t all be wrong.”

  He watched the road pass by and wondered about that, about which question had been right, or closest to it. A few raindrops big as nickels splattered off the windshield, and Liz turned on the wipers as the sky darkened around them and they headed farther north.

  “I hadn’t thought about Cass Odom in a while,” he said. “She wasn’t much use to me, considering she was dead when I arrived. Maybe I was wrong about that.”

  Liz glanced at him. “I don’t follow.”

  “I’m not sure that I do either,” he said. “But the DEA thinks there’s only one question I’m supposed to ask Kimberly, and it’s about Cass.”

  The preliminary raindrops revealed themselves as harbingers then, and a drenching, car-wash rain welcomed them north. Liz slowed down while setting the wipers at their highest.

  “You have sources with the medical examiner, don’t you? I remember your stories.”

  She’d won an award for a series of articles about the overwhelming burden overdose deaths put on medical examiners and coroners. “I’ve got people who will talk to me,” she said with a touch of wariness. “What am I supposed to ask them?”

  “I need the medical examiner’s reports on Cass Odom and J. R. Millinock. Julian is his full first name.”

  “Why do you need that?” Liz asked.

  “Because Vizquel said that he’s interested in the drug that killed Cass and wants to know where it came from. I already know where the drug that killed Millinock came from—Jeff Girard. If they match…that would answer his question, maybe. Or tie some loose ends together, at least.”

&nbs
p; “The tox reports would show that?”

  “I don’t know. That’s why I need to see them. Think you can work some magic for me?”

  “I can try.”

  “Remember what she said about…shit, what was the name?” The pain meds were putting up a fog between his mind and his memory. “I don’t remember the name. But Kimberly told us about some girl who’d drowned, but it turned out she really hadn’t drowned…something like that. You said you wrote about her?”

  “Molly Quickery. Her body washed up on the beach out by Owls Head. Nowhere near the Kelly family place, which is what Kimmy was telling us.”

  “But she was in that group.”

  “What group?”

  “Users. Addicts.”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you think you can pull that one too?”

  “I’m not sure they did a full toxicology panel. I just know the coroner said Molly was unconscious when she went into the water or something. There was no evidence of drowning. He was sure of that.”

  Barrett had more questions, but the pills he’d taken were settling into his brain now with a comfortable numbing, like a soft whisper telling him that he didn’t need to stay in this moment, didn’t need to worry about a thing, just needed to close his eyes, and the drugs would take it from there. He didn’t like the feeling, but those whispering voices were powerful persuaders.

  The rain was pounding on the car in a ceaseless staccato, and Liz’s attention was on the road, so he allowed his eyes to close just for a moment. No more than that, he promised himself, because he needed to think of the memory that had eluded him in those early minutes in the hospital. The memory came from being in the water, from a faint, dizzy thought that had come to him as the blood ran down his face and he looked for help, but he couldn’t identify it. Think harder, then. Concentrate.

  He wasn’t sure when he fell asleep, but he stirred awake just before she stopped the car. It was nearing sunset and they were pulling into her driveway.

  “Sorry,” he said. “Drifted off, didn’t I?”

  “Just a bit.”

  She got out of the car and he followed, moving stiffly, every muscle seeming to have its own twinge and ache. She unlocked the door and led him into a small but bright kitchen and a room with a wide bank of windows that caught the fading sunlight.