How It Happened

by Michael Koryta

  Barrett cut the engine of the Mustang and sat there for a moment, watching Mathias. He knelt and checked the top of the wall with a level, then rubbed his thumb along the mortared edges between the massive, rounded rocks. It was a fine wall, a beautiful piece of work, and whoever owned the place would be pleased with it. Mathias Burke’s clients were always pleased. Barrett had heard that from plenty of them.

  Only when he slammed the door did Mathias glance back his way. He recognized Barrett—that was evident—but he didn’t react to him, didn’t speak or even move from his kneeling position. Instead, he just waited until Barrett was standing next to him.

  “Pressure-wash and seal,” he said then. “You probably think that’s funny.”

  He stood up unhurriedly and dusted his palms off on his jeans before picking up the level and sliding that into his back pocket. He looked just as Barrett remembered, although his chest seemed even thicker, as if he’d added another slab of muscle during the winter, growing harder while others stayed indoors and went softer.

  “I knew you’d take a simple pressure-wash job. It’s so easy, and your reputation is so valuable.”

  Mathias leaned back against the new wall. “You look like shit, Barrett.”

  He was utterly calm, studying Barrett’s recently disfigured scalp with a casual glance.

  “It’s been a hard couple of days.”

  “But you came back looking for trouble, right? Otherwise, why come back?”

  “New leads,” Barrett said. “It’s a hassle, but it’s my job. You know that feeling. Things need to be fixed, and we come when there’s trouble, right?”

  “Sure. The two of us, we’re just alike.”

  “I think so. People call us when there’s trouble.”

  Out beyond the wall, the lawn gave way to landscaped grounds featuring massive boulders that had to weigh hundreds or thousands of pounds each, and none of them were natural to the yard. They’d all been dug up, hauled out, and then carefully placed by men like Mathias for sums that would seem unthinkable to most but that wouldn’t earn a blink from the people who owned homes like this one. It was this kind of work that so impressed Barrett’s grandfather. People out here really worked, he would say, and his grandson would be well-advised to pay attention to them. Rob lived out there in a different America, a country populated with thinkers and talkers but not doers, and if he fell into place among them? Well, he’d be no better than his father. A soft-hand man, paying others to do what he would not, or could not.

  Ray would inevitably be pouring himself another drink while he delivered this lecture, and whatever needed to be done around the Harpoon would be sitting neglected, waiting for someone else’s handiwork. The irony never seemed to register with him.

  Mathias said, “So what got Kimmy so scared that she opened up whatever vein she hadn’t already tapped?”

  Barrett’s pulse filled his ears like horizon-line thunderheads. He looked away and breathed in the salt-tinged air of the sea. Finally, he looked back at Mathias.

  “Kimberly was telling me about this thing called Plasti Dip paint,” he said. “It was very interesting. Now, what the lab guys can do with it, I don’t know, but…” He shrugged. “At least she got them started.”

  Mathias turned his back to Barrett and knelt and set the level atop the rock wall. The green-tinted bubble in the level floated left, then right, then crawled back to the center.

  “It’s plumb. It’s taken me a long time to find the boys who can do it right. Usually, they screw up one way or the other. Now, though…I’ve finally got the right crew.”

  He didn’t turn around. Just studied that level as if it held every fascination the world could offer. The bubble didn’t move. It held a perfect center.

  “Here’s the way I understand it,” Barrett said. “You took that truck from Girard, marked it up, then sprayed it clean and gave it back. That’s a good trick. Lab techs will confirm, and we’ll go from there, but I’m curious—what was the extra step worth to you? Why not just borrow the poor bastard’s truck and set him up that way? It’s the extra flourish that got you in trouble. That, and taking the girls along for the ride.”

  Mathias didn’t speak or turn. He moved the level a few feet farther down the wall. The bubble bobbed, swayed, and returned to center.

  “I understand the reason you went back to the pond,” Barrett said. “There’s a lot about it that is easy now. I see the mistakes I made before. But what was the idea with the paint?”

  Mathias slid the level down another foot. He brought both hands up to shield his eyes, just the way Barrett had done when he’d looked in the window and found Kimberly Crepeaux’s corpse. The bubble swayed left to right, found the center again, and held.

  “You know what makes me happy?” Mathias said. He spoke easily yet with a patronizing tone, like a friendly teacher talking to a hopeless pupil. “Hard work done right. That has always pleased me. And this?” He tapped the wall with his knuckles. “That house will blow into the ocean before this wall moves an inch. Because I know how to see that hard work is done right.”

  He straightened, slipped the level back into his pocket, and turned to Barrett. His face was too weathered for his years, but his hair rose in the light breeze and gave him a boyish look. “Plasti Dip paint,” he said. “That’s beautiful.”

  It had taken him a while to arrive at this familiar scorn, and he’d needed to turn away first. Barrett had interviewed him on many occasions, and this was the first time he’d seen Mathias turn his back to him.

  “Never heard of it?” Barrett asked

  “Sure, I’ve heard of it. When I first saw it, my dad was dipping tool handles into it, replacing the grips so he didn’t need to buy new ones that weren’t built to last. Now druggies and rich kids like it for their cars. But, yeah, I’ve heard of it.”

  His gray-blue eyes didn’t betray any emotion, but Barrett didn’t recall him volunteering his father’s memory in their previous conversations. Barrett had tried to nudge him there a few times but always pulled back because he did not want to guide the interview. You got to the truth by listening, not talking, by following, not leading.

  Today, he was struggling to hold that approach.

  “You’ve come a long way,” Mathias said, “not to have any better ideas than that.”

  “I didn’t have any ideas, period. Kimberly had a few, but mostly it’ll be the lab guys. I don’t pretend to know their side of the business either. That’s elite science.”

  Again, he was becoming the cop he’d promised never to be. Now he wasn’t just steering the interview to the places he hoped it would go, he was outright lying to push it there.

  “If I painted the truck,” Mathias said, “whether it was with Plasti Dip or Rust-Oleum or finger paints, I’d still like to know why I did it. Can’t you tell me that much, Special Agent Barrett?”

  “Here’s what I’m wondering,” Barrett said, ignoring the question. “Who was your real partner? Somebody helped you out the night I had you arrested. Somebody who knew where the bodies were. Girard?”

  Mathias just smiled.

  “Or maybe Mark Millinock. I don’t think you’d have trusted Girard that much. Was it Mark?”

  No response but the smile.

  Barrett shrugged. “That’s fine. I’ll wait on the evidence.”

  “Of course you will. What about the motive, Special Agent? Found one of those yet?”

  “I assume it had to do with the drugs, but I could be wrong. So I’ll wait. I can be patient. You know that by now.”

  Mathias smiled. “Ah, the drugs. What was I doing with the drugs again?”

  “Selling or transporting—you tell me.”

  “Selling or transporting now? Damn, I’ve moved up in the world! Major leagues, eh? I love that. Back when you had me charged with murder—double murder, at that—I was just using drugs. Now I was selling or transporting! Look at me go! Here’s a question for you: I’m not a legal expert, but at some point, don’
t you have to stick with a story?”

  “It’s a process. And I’m patient.”

  Mathias grinned. It seemed like a genuine smile, the infectious kind that could change the mood in any room.

  “I like your choices. In one option, I’m a drugged-out maniac willing to kill with a truck, a pipe, or a knife. In another, I’m, what, a crime boss? Drug kingpin? And in the third option…I didn’t do a damn thing.” He pushed away from the wall, stepped toward Barrett, and stopped just a few inches from him. “There’s only one constant in all those. No matter which version you believe—maniac, crime boss, or innocent man—they all go to the same place. They mean the same thing.”

  “How do you figure?”

  “No matter which one is true, I’m a serious threat to your future.”

  He shouldered his way past Barrett and walked to his truck.

  Part Three

  Clean Tragedy

  Skin and bones, you never did come home

  Crashing on my heart through the telephone.

  I remember the tall grass waving,

  In past lives, old poems.

  —Brian Fallon,

  “Nobody Wins”

  44

  He had told Howard Pelletier to stay close to the phone, but he decided to talk to him in person. New information and old information and something still submerged in the subconscious were swirling together, but he felt he was close to an answer that required revisiting an old idea. The old idea would be hard on Howard, and it deserved more than a phone call.

  Howard opened the door when Barrett pulled in, just as he had that morning, as if he’d been waiting for him. Then again, the Mustang didn’t let you sneak up on anyone.

  They went back into the garage workshop, Howard’s preferred meeting space. He had a beer in hand and offered one to Barrett, who shook his head.

  “Probably had one too many myself,” Howard said, and it was evident from the way he worked on the words that he’d had more than one too many. “I was just…strugglin’, after hearing about Kimberly. There was a lot riding on her, you know? Without having her around to tell a jury This is the truth, and this is why I changed my story, it seems like it’ll be harder to convince them. Don’t you think?”

  “We’re going to convince them.”

  Howard didn’t argue, but it was clear that he didn’t believe it either.

  “Howard, do you remember when I asked you about the trawling net?”

  “Sure. Wouldn’t have worked.” Howard tugged on his beard, one of the edgy tics he always displayed when discussing his daughter’s corpse.

  “You said it wouldn’t work because the net settles on the bottom and pulls up what’s above.”

  “Right.”

  “Would it have worked if someone set it down there first?”

  “Well…sure. But a good net ain’t cheap, and it’s not likely someone just happened to leave one down there in a pond and…”

  He got it then. He stopped talking. He looked like he might have stopped breathing.

  “If he put a net down there,” Howard Pelletier said slowly, “then you’re saying he knew what he was going to do.”

  “I’m wondering if it’s possible.”

  “But that doesn’t make any—”

  “Don’t worry about anything else yet. Just think about whether it could have worked. If he’d used the raft as a guide and laid the net down below, could he have gone back and gathered them up quickly?”

  Howard seemed to be receding within himself. He wet his lips and then said, “Yes. In fact…the raft would make it easier. He could have stood on it and cast the net out in front. Watched it settle down, and he’d have known just where it was.”

  We waded out until it was up to my neck and then he swam a little farther, dragging her out toward the raft, Kimberly Crepeaux had said.

  “Would he have had to dive for them later?”

  “No. If he knew what he was doing, he would have laid a line back toward shore. Then he could have just…could have just winched them out.”

  Barrett nodded. It was how he’d envisioned it, but he’d never handled a fishing net.

  “What you’re talking about,” Howard said, “doesn’t fit with nothin’ we’ve ever said. What you’re talking about means he planned it! And that ain’t nothin’ like what you’ve ever told me to believe!” He slapped his palm on the workbench hard enough to rattle tools.

  “I know.”

  “If it’s true, then she lied, and you keep telling me she didn’t! If he laid a net down, he knew he was gonna use it, and then none of what Kimmy said was the truth!”

  “Maybe it was. Maybe he wanted it to look like an accident when he did it.”

  Howard fell silent, slack-jawed and staring. Barrett could feel a tight tingle along the stitched flesh in his scalp again.

  “What in the hell are you thinking of?” Howard said, voice low.

  “I believe Kimberly. And to believe her story, I’ve got to explain some very dumb choices made by a very smart man. I’ve also been told I’m thinking too small. I’m trying to widen my mind a little.”

  He leaned forward, searching for eye contact that Howard didn’t seem to want to grant him.

  “What Kimberly described was an accident that turned into a murder,” Barrett said. “She described a man who was high, drunk, and raging. Then he got calm. Do you remember when Mathias finally calmed down in her version of things?”

  “After it had happened,” Howard said tonelessly.

  “Yes. And then, in his calm, he made a mistake. A very stupid mistake. So stupid that Kimberly recognized it from the start. They were alone with the bodies not a hundred yards from the tidal flats, and the tide was high. They could have dragged them in there and let them drift out to sea. But Mathias Burke didn’t choose to do that. He chose to put the bodies in his truck and then take them to a pond. The ocean was right there in front of him, and he chose a pond?”

  Howard hunched forward as if struck by a stomach cramp. “I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

  “I am wondering about that mistake,” Barrett said.

  Howard remained hunched over, staring at the cracked concrete floor.

  “It doesn’t make sense. Even if it was like you say, and he’d gotten the net down there, the tidal flats were still smarter.”

  “No, they weren’t.”

  “How do you figure that?”

  “Because he had two witnesses with him. Their testimony would have put him in prison. I was going to do it with the testimony of just one, in fact.”

  “Why not kill the two of them too? Dump ’em all in the flats and get out?”

  “He’d been with them all night. He was the last person in the liquor store with Kimberly. He’d have been a suspect before sundown.”

  “If he was worried about them being witnesses, why let them walk away?”

  “Ultimately, he didn’t,” Barrett said. “But I also don’t think he was worried about them talking.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  “Because he knew where they’d lead the police,” Barrett said. “He knew that if the girls told the truth, then some poor dumb bastard with a badge would walk out to that pond and point at the water and say, This is where we find them.” He could hear his heartbeat in his own ears again. “But they wouldn’t be down there. Then what would that poor dumb bastard with the badge have?”

  Howard was rubbing his hands together like he was trying to warm them.

  “It’s a stretch,” he said. “The net could be done, but unless you can show somethin’ else…”

  “I’m going to,” Barrett told him, and he felt a confidence in that statement that he had not felt since he’d gone out to Little Spruce Island at sunset to tell Howard that his daughter’s body would be found the next morning. “He’d paid to borrow a truck he didn’t need and then he’d prepped it to look a certain way. It was supposed to mean something. Now I just need to learn what it meant and who it mea
nt something to.”

  Barrett’s cell phone rang, and he moved to silence it, but Howard said, “Check who it is,” and Barrett remembered that it was actually Howard’s phone. He was prepared to hand the phone to him when he saw Liz’s number on the screen. Then he answered.

  “We’ve got to talk,” she said without preamble.

  “Sure.”

  “Not on the phone.”

  “I’ll come by.”

  “Not to my house. I’ve got the ME reports on Odom and Millinock for you, but if you come here, you’ll never see them. A lot of people are looking for you, Rob.”

  “Who?”

  “Your boss, the state police, and the DEA. They’re all pretty intense too.”

  “I can call Roxanne and back them off you.”

  “Let’s talk first. I’ll be on the boat.” She sounded a little breathless, and he couldn’t tell if she was rushing or excited.

  “You get something from those toxicology reports?”

  “No idea. Haven’t even looked at them. But I got something else. The drug you said Millinock called the devil’s cut or devil’s calling? They have another name for it.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Devil cat.”

  45

  It was dark by the time he reached Camden, the soft lights around the library and harbor park glowing beneath the shadow of Mount Battie. Out on the water, more scattered lights represented occupied boats. Liz’s wasn’t one of them, though. If she was on board, she was in the dark.

  Barrett thought that was likely after what she’d said about the police intensity. He didn’t drive down to the harbor but instead went a few blocks up into town and parked on the street below the long-defunct paper mill’s smokestack. From here he could see the local police station and watch the traffic coming toward him. All seemed quiet.