by D. A. Keeley
“Thanks.”
“Or like food is your temptation,” he went on.
She noticed his eyes appraising her. “How can I help you?” She slid the iPad to the center of her desk. Was he staring at her chest or eyeing her badge?
“Sherry met with you this morning.”
She nodded. “You were there.”
“Not for the full conversation,” he said. Then he paused and looked around. Jimenez was sitting maybe fifteen feet away, eating his poutine with a fork and looking at his computer. “Is there someplace,” Chip said, “more, ah, private where we can talk?”
“No.”
“This is important, Peyton.”
“What is this about? It’s been a long morning, and I have a lot of paperwork, which I hate and want to get done.”
“I think Sherry is in trouble,” he said.
Peyton stood without saying a word and walked to the back of the bullpen. She turned right and went down the hallway.
“Peyton?” Chip called after her. “Agent Cote?”
She didn’t stop until she reached the coffee maker. Poured a cup of black coffee and stood sipping. And thinking.
What the hell was Chip Duvall doing here?
She’d begun the day listening to Sherry speak of her brother’s woes. Now her husband was here, saying Sherry was in trouble.
Several of Peyton’s pressing questions were, at least peripherally, related to Sherry: What was the relationship between Simon Pink and Marie St. Pierre? And why did the two plan to travel to Prague?
Could Chip answer those?
Peyton poured a second coffee and brought it to him.
“You wanted more privacy,” she said. “You got it.”
“It’s filthy out here,” Chip Duvall said.
“Were you expecting the Marriott?”
They were in the six-bay garage at the back of the stationhouse, standing among snowmobiles, four-wheelers, a dog crate, a boat, and a green-and-white Ford F250 service vehicle that now served as the plow truck, a Fisher snow plow mounted to its front.
“We could go back to my hotel room,” he said.
The statement gave her pause: had he just made a pass at her?
“I thought you needed privacy,” she said.
“Oh, Sherry?” he said. “She’s writing.”
The relationship had seemed strained that morning, and Peyton had no intention of getting involved in Chip Duvall’s marital crisis.
“What is this about, Chip?”
“I told you. Sherry is in trouble. I think you can help her. I think she knew about Freddy.”
“Knew what about him?”
“I think that’s why she’s fighting this so hard,” he said. “I mean, you saw her in the meeting with the district attorney. I think she knew and now feels a little responsible.”
She retrieved her iPhone from her pocket, turned on the voice-recording option, and said slowly, “I’m going to record the rest of this conversation, Dr. Chip Duvall. Are you okay with that?”
“No,” he said. “I’m not getting involved.”
“You’re not under arrest, Chip. I just want to make sure there’s no confusion later on.”
“No. This is all off the record.”
“She’s your wife,” Peyton said.
“It’s got to be off the record,” he said.
She turned off the phone and slid it back into her pocket. “What exactly are you telling me?” she said.
“I think Freddy planned to do it all along, Peyton. And I think Sherry knew about it.”
“What makes you think either of those things?”
“I heard some phone conversations. There was some money exchanged.”
She waited.
When he didn’t elaborate, she asked him to do so.
“That’s all I know,” he said. “They spoke about money on the phone. I think she gave him upwards of twenty thousand dollars, but I monitor our accounts closely. It didn’t come from us.”
“What was the money for? What exactly did you hear, Chip?”
He sat down on the edge of the snowmobile seat. A leather cover was on the cement floor. The machine’s hood was up. Someone had been working on the engine.
Chip leaned forward, clasped his hands before him, and his shoulders shook slightly. “What have I just done?” he said. He was crying, tears hitting the concrete floor.
“Chip,” she said, “it’s time that we make this a formal discussion. You need to come with me.”
He looked up, wiped his nose on the back of his hand, and said, “No. A husband can’t be asked to testify against his wife.”
“I’m not asking you to testify. I’m asking you to make a formal statement. At this point, I believe it would be in your best interest to do so.”
“Hold on. Hold on. This isn’t what I came here for. I thought you could help her. That’s all. This can’t turn formal.” He stood. “This was a mistake.”
She watched him walk out of the garage. There was no point in trying to stop him. He had a high-powered attorney in the area, and he was no fool. If he’d just incriminated his wife, he would know there were only the two of them present during this conversation, and his attorney would tell him that DA Stephanie DuBois surely wouldn’t use a he-said-she-said scenario in court.
So what was Peyton left with?
Cryptic but incriminating background information. And two new questions: If Sherry had given Freddy upwards of $20,000, where had it come from? And what was it for?
She walked back inside to find Mitchell Cosgrove, the CPA turned Customs and Border Protection officer.
“Mike wants to see you, Peyton,” Linda said, when Peyton re-
entered.
“Is Mitch around?”
“Not until tonight.”
Peyton nodded. Cosgrove was “pulling mids,” which was how agents referred to working the midnight shift.
She sat down and sent Cosgrove a brief email, asking him to look into the finances of Freddy St. Pierre Jr. in hopes of turning up a money trail.
Peyton hit Send and went to Hewitt’s office.
“Let’s debrief,” he said. “Tell me where you are, and I’ll tell you some new information we have.”
She walked him through her day, starting with the power breakfast with Sherry, running through her meeting with Sara Gibson, and finishing with the recent discussion with Chip.
“The bizarre, the weird, and the just plain crazy, huh?” Hewitt said.
“Yeah,” she said. “That about sums up my three conversations.”
“She gave her brother twenty thousand dollars?”
“It was cryptic information. Chip overheard a conversation. That’s all. He hasn’t seen any money go missing from his accounts.”
“Do they have separate accounts?”
“That’s what I’m asking Mitch Cosgrove to find out,” she said. “I have no idea.”
“Well, Bruce Steele ran Poncho the pooch all over the St. Pierre farm. Your friend Sherry and her attorney didn’t like it much, but we got a warrant. Anyway, Poncho likes the place,” Hewitt said. “A lot.”
“He found drugs? There?”
“Not drugs. Detonators.”
“Poncho smells those?”
Hewitt spread his hands. “Not sure exactly what he smells, but he led Steele to detonators and some other stuff.”
“How much stuff?” she said. “Are we talking massive quantities?”
“No. Just a few in the barn.”
“So Len Landmark will say they were using it to blow up stumps,” she said.
“Maybe. But the Duvalls seem to be willing to talk to you.”
She leaned back in her seat.
He smiled, nodding.
“You’re hoping I can turn
someone,” she said.
“A mind reader,” he said. “That’s what you are.”
Eighteen
Peyton entered Garrett High School Friday afternoon before last period. In uniform, she received the standard reaction: the center of the hallway suddenly emptied, leaving her feeling like Moses.
A couple students nudged each other, pointed, whispered back and forth, and laughed.
She stopped short. “There a problem, boys?”
“No, ma’am,” a boy in a tan Carhartt jacket and a green John Deere cap said.
“Where’s Mr. Dye’s classroom?”
The boy pointed.
She walked to the room at the end of the hall, peered through the narrow, wire-meshed window of the steel door (apparently events like Newtown made wooden doors obsolete), and saw Pete Dye behind a stack of papers at his desk.
When she knocked, he stood and waved her in.
“We still on for seven?” he said.
She held out a Tim Hortons cup. He took it, waiting for her reply.
“I’m here on business, Pete.”
“Really? I don’t get many visitors who wear guns.” He pulled a student desk closer to his so Peyton could sit facing him.
“I hope it stays that way,” she said.
“Yeah. Me, too. Poor choice of words for a teacher to use these days.” He reorganized the papers so they were out of the way.
“People think we’re removed from school shootings up here, but you never know.”
“My father used to talk about bringing a rifle to school during hunting season,” she said, “leaving it in his locker during classes, and hunting after school.”
“Lots of kids did that not too long ago. Think gun control is the solution?”
“Probably not, but I do know no one needs a semi-automatic for home protection.”
He pointed to his stack of papers. “I’m psyched you stopped by. It allows me to procrastinate.”
“How long will it take you to grade those?” The stack was an inch thick.
“Three, four hours,” he said.
“I think I’d rather hike six miles wearing a Kevlar vest.”
“Me, too. Last time you came here on business,” he said, “you were chasing down a pregnant runaway.”
“That’s all you remember from my visit? Teaching’s made you cynical.”
“Seen the parents I deal with?”
“Hey, I’m having my kid tested. I might be one of them.”
“Case in point.”
She smiled. He’d always been able to make her laugh—when they’d been kids pulling high-school pranks, when they’d been in college and had nearly dated, and since she’d begun seeing him several months earlier.
“You know Sara Gibson?”
“I still work at Tip of the Hat,” he said, “if that’s what you’re asking.”
“You’re saying she’s a regular?”
“She’s there more often than I am, and you know I work there four, five nights a week.”
“What’s she like?”
Pete reorganized the stack of papers. “How can I say this without sounding like a jerk?”
“You probably can’t. Just say it.”
“She’s not exactly selective in who she leaves the bar with.”
“She gets around?”
“Understatement,” he said. “She’s sort of nuts. Maybe desperate is a better word. She’s needy, looking for something.”
“More than a one-night stand?”
“Oh, definitely. If you leave with her, she calls and calls.”
“You’re speaking from experience.”
“Oh, God,” he said. “Look, I told you my bed’s been empty for a year. Yes, I did take her home once—more than a year ago—and I’m not proud of it.”
“She ever leave with Freddy St. Pierre?”
“Maybe. I try to avoid her now. She’s moved on, and I like it that way.”
“Why does she do it? Is she attention starved?”
“No. I think she gets attention every night she goes to Tip of the Hat.”
“God, what an existence,” Peyton said and considered it: living at home, her mother waiting for her to wake each morning to see if she’d met any “nice boys”; what boys there were in town knowing her reputation and thus using her; and the vicious cycle repeating, night after night.
Existence was the appropriate word, Peyton thought. That was no life.
“Know anyone Nancy Lawrence dates?”
“Bartenders are supposed to be discreet.”
“But they never are.”
He smiled. “I hear there’s a young doctor, a real nerd-type.”
That would explain the dinner date Nancy had told Peyton about.
“Anyone else?”
“What are you after?” he said.
“She date anyone else you know of, even for a short period of time?”
“I saw Nancy leave the Tip with Freddy St. Pierre once,” he said, “if that’s what you’re after.”
Corroboration. But what did it mean?
“Can I ask you a question?” Pete said.
“Depends.”
“What’s going on with Freddy? I heard some agents talking about him when I brought you coffee.”
“Get your deer license yet, Pete?”
“Changing the conversation, Peyton?”
She just smiled. “See you at seven.”
She was crossing the parking lot when she heard running footsteps from behind and someone call, “Excuse me.”
She turned to see a boy, not much taller than Tommy. He had terrible acne and unkempt greasy shoulder-length hair and patches he might have called a beard. Was he trying to grow one, or had the acne prevented him from shaving? He wore a light-blue work shirt, Matt stitched into the breast pocket, and jeans with dark spots (oil?) on them. He was so short, his beard was probably an attempt to remind everyone that he was a junior or senior.
“How can I help you?” she asked.
The late-afternoon sun was high in the summer sky. The temperature had risen to the mid-eighties. If she weren’t working, it would be a nice time to take Tommy to kayak on the river.
“You’re not a game warden, right? Someone said you’re not.”
She waved a blackfly away. “That’s right. I’m with Customs and Border Protection.”
He plunged his hands—they were dirty with grime under his fingernails, like he worked on car engines—deep into his pockets.
“Border Patrol,” she clarified.
“Okay. I think I saw something I should tell you about,” he said. “I wasn’t going to … but I been thinking about it for a couple days, and I hear sometimes these things can get turned around on you … and then I saw you … so …” He shuffled his feet. The toe on his right boot was worn to the steel. He looked around nervously.
“I don’t want to take much time,” he said. “It was three guys. I was doing something I shouldn’t have been doing, but I think they …” He looked over his shoulder, back toward the high school.
“No one’s around,” she said. “It’s just you and me.”
“It wasn’t even my property. And, like, I had my rifle and my light, but I didn’t jack anything that night.”
That night. “You were poaching deer?”
He nodded. “But like I said, I didn’t see any. My father is out of work. We can’t afford many groceries. And, like, I didn’t do nothing that night. But I was in the woods, behind a tree, when I heard three voices.” He looked down and moved a pebble with the toe of his worn boot.
“It was Monday,” he continued slowly, “the night of the fire at that cabin. I think somebody got shot.”
“Matt Kingston is the boy’s name,” Pete Dye told Peyton and Hewitt.
Peyton thought he looked relaxed. She also thought he looked good.
He hadn’t come to deliver coffee this time. In fact, he hadn’t come of his own volition. So it was Peyton who got the beverages and, given that she’d asked him here, even a piece of Linda Cyr’s cherry pie.
“Matt Kingston is a good kid,” Pete continued. “I’d take him at his word, Peyton. You bake this pie? It’s very good.”
“I couldn’t bake that,” she said. “Linda’s gone, but I’ll pass the compliment along.”
The agents working 3-to-11 were already on patrol duty. Only Miguel Jimenez, chained to his desk with paperwork from a Houlton-
to-Fredericton cigarette-smuggling ring he’d busted, was moving about the bullpen. He left the room, and Peyton heard the microwave door open with a pop and slam shut.
Peyton pulled her iPhone out and fired a quick text to Lois: Mom, wking late. Home by 5:30, ok?
She felt Hewitt’s disapproving eyes on her.
“I need to confirm childcare,” she said.
“No problem,” Hewitt said.
Did he mean it?
“Mr. Dye,” Hewitt continued, “thanks for coming in.” Hewitt sat beside him, both men facing Peyton.
“Call me Pete,” Pete said and shrugged, finishing the last of the pie.
The microwave beeped, the door popped open, and the bullpen was filled with the smell of steak and spices. Jimenez re-entered carrying a plate of fajitas.
Pete looked at them.
“Want one?” Hewitt offered.
“Boy, you guys eat well around here. No, thanks. We’re supposed to be having dinner at seven.” Pete motioned to Peyton. “The pie will tide me over.”
“I forgot the two of you are dating,” Hewitt said. “That complicates things slightly.”
“Pete isn’t here in a formal capacity,” Peyton said. “This is background only. But he knows the boy. And he’s lived here his whole life. I think he can offer some insights.”
