Fallen Sparrow

by D. A. Keeley

  She looked at Rowe, who shook his head.

  “No friggin’ way,” Rowe said. “That’s a big operation. A lot of overhead. He didn’t have that much of a better year.”

  “So now we’re trying to figure out,” Peyton said, “where the seventy-eight grand came from?”

  Both men nodded.

  “The daughter is married to a dentist,” Rowe said. “They live in Yarmouth, Maine, in a house valued at six hundred thousand.”

  “Think Chip and Sherry bailed out her father?”

  “That’s the trail I’ve been following,” Cosgrove said. “And it’s the one that confuses me most.”

  “Tell me all about it,” she said.

  Twenty-Five

  Monday evening, Peyton was at the island in her kitchen, helping Tommy with multiplication.

  “How was school?” she asked.

  He shrugged, staring at his worksheet.

  “Does that mean good, bad, or indifferent?”

  Shrug.

  On the stove, the lid bounced atop its pot, making a metal-on-metal clicking sound. Her stool scraped on the tile floor when she stood to add pasta to the boiling water. She splashed oil into the pot so the pasta wouldn’t stick and regained her stool across from Tommy.

  “Look at me, Tommy.”

  “What, Mom?”

  “Are you getting teased at school?”

  “What? No. Why?”

  “Tell me the truth.”

  He stared down at the worksheet, but she knew it had become as inconsequential to her ten-year-old as the price of oil.

  “No,” he said again. “Nothing. I have lots of friends.”

  “Do they tease you because school doesn’t come easily?”

  He was staring at the worksheet. His shoulders started to shake.

  Don’t cry. Hit the table. Yell and scream. But don’t cry. She knew that if he cried, she would, too.

  Her mind ran to a bright desert night several years before when she’d learned just how big the world could be for a child. His name was Pedro, and he’d been about Tommy’s age when she found him a half-mile from the Rio Grande, near El Paso, sitting beside his mother, who had bled out following a gunshot wound to her thigh. Peyton never learned what had happened (A stray bullet? An intentional kill shot?) or how much the boy witnessed. But she’d never forgotten him—his wide-eyed stare, looking from one agent to the next, obviously terrified and undeniably alone in a world that was too vast and moving too quickly.

  She watched Tommy white-knuckle his pencil and knew her son, whose father showed little interest in him, was also trying to navigate the world’s swift-moving currents.

  “They call me Lenny,” Tommy said, looking straight at her now, tears tracing his cheek.

  “Lenny?”

  He nodded and sniffled. “Pierre said his brother read a book where the stupid guy is Lenny. So they call me that.”

  Of Mice and Men. She didn’t speak.

  “Mom, don’t cry.”

  The water boiled over, and she went to the stove. “I’m not crying, sweetie. What do you say when they call you that?”

  “I asked them not to, but they won’t stop.” He shrugged again, as if ambivalence was becoming his default emotion. “So I just let them.”

  She dished them each a plate of spaghetti. “Can you get the salads from the fridge?” she said.

  He did, looking at her the whole time. “What are you going to do, Mom? It’s okay. Don’t make it worse.”

  She put his worksheet in his notebook and set it on an empty chair, brought the plates to the table, and poured two glasses of milk. “How would I make it worse?”

  “Like you did with math,” he said. “Now I have to leave class every day to work with Mrs. Robertson. I don’t like being different.”

  “You’re not different,” she said, “and you’re not like Lenny from that book. Let’s eat, then I’m taking you somewhere special.”

  “Where?”

  “Someplace where you’ll learn what to do when people make fun of you.”

  “It sounds bad,” he said.

  “It might be,” she agreed.

  “That sounds fun.”

  “This is where you go in the afternoons?” Tommy said.

  “Sometimes,” Peyton said, as they crossed the parking lot in Caribou. “This is a dojo. I’ve spent a lot of time here. Started when I was in high school, but I think you’re old enough.”

  The facility was the Leo Lafleur Gym. Lafleur had been a college wrestler, a Golden Gloves Champion, and was a third-degree black belt. Peyton had known him for more than twenty years. His gym offered fitness equipment, boxing, and karate lessons.

  Peyton didn’t stop at the front desk. She went right to the back, climbed the stairs, and knocked on the office door. She entered when a voice called, “What?”

  “Oh, it’s only you,” Lafleur said.

  “Only? This is Tommy,” she said. “I want to enroll him in karate classes.”

  Lafleur had wrestled at 158 pounds in college. Peyton guessed he wasn’t even 160 now, at age sixty-one.

  “I’m not teaching the beginner classes. Actually I just hired a new guy to do a couple beginner classes every week. I’ve seen him with the kids. He’s good.” Leo Lafleur looked at Tommy and offered his hand. “Call me Leo.”

  Tommy grabbed Leo’s fingers.

  “Look me in the eye,” Lafleur said, “and squeeze my palm when you introduce yourself.” He extended his hand again.

  This time Tommy looked at him. “I’m Tommy,” he said.

  “That’s better. You want karate lessons?”

  “Yes, sir,” Tommy said.

  “Why?”

  “So I won’t get teased.”

  “That’s not a reason,” LaFleur said. “Let’s take a walk.”

  Tommy looked at Peyton.

  She nodded. “You can go with him.” She watched the slight grandfather lead Tommy out of the office. She knew LaFleur still sparred often, and he moved with the grace of an athlete who was still a practitioner.

  She went to Lafleur’s office fridge and took out a VitaminWater, then turned her chair to see out the picture window and watched Lafleur give Tommy a tour of the facility, talking intently all the while. Lafleur was two heads taller than the boy but repeatedly bent to look Tommy in the eye. Tommy listened and nodded.

  Peyton couldn’t help but smile. Lafleur had given her the same talk when she’d first entered this gym at age thirteen. There had been no mirrors and chrome then. Just free weights and two rings. But Leo had asked her a series of questions that day. She hadn’t answered them, but Tommy was different. He’d already told Leo he was being teased, opening up to him. Again, she thought of her ex and of how badly Tommy wanted (and needed) a male adult role model in his life.

  It had taken months for her to trust Leo. But eventually she told him about her father; about how the men from the bank appeared at their kitchen table with papers for her father to sign; about how the family had been left with one acre of land; about how it felt to hear others talk about her father’s new job—as a janitor in her school—and about how it felt each time she and her father passed each other in the school hallway and he had to look away.

  Eventually she realized why Leo wanted to learn so much about her: if she went the distance—and he saw something in her that told him she would—he was giving her lethal capabilities. He had to know she could handle the accompanying responsibility.

  When Tommy and Leo Lafleur returned, he gave Tommy a bottle of chocolate milk from his fridge.

  “Your instructor is getting changed, Tommy. He’s in the men’s locker room. Go down and introduce yourself.”

  Tommy looked at Peyton again.

  She nodded. “I’ll be right down.”

  When Tom
my left, Leo got up and closed the door behind him.

  “Ask him the standard questions?” she said.

  He went to the window and stood watching Tommy, his back to Peyton. She got up and stood next to him.

  “I don’t have standard questions, Peyton. I like to get to know the students, especially the kids. This isn’t like an aerobics class. Martial Arts is a way of life.”

  “I know that.”

  “He told me about his father.”

  “You were only with him ten minutes, Leo. What did he tell you?”

  The crow’s feet near his eyes tightened. “Said he doesn’t think his father cares about him.”

  “Jesus Christ.”

  “Yeah,” Leo said. “That’s really shitty.”

  “He’s having a hard time. That’s why I’m here.” She was staring at Tommy’s back as he approached the men’s locker room. “He’s getting teased at school,” she said.

  “Pushed around physically?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “We don’t preach violence or revenge, Peyton. You’ve been with me too long not to know that.”

  “I’m talking about self-defense, Leo. I want him to be able to stand up for himself.” She was still looking at Tommy, but felt Leo’s eyes on her.

  “I know you very well,” he said.

  She turned to face him. “This is my son. I want him to know how to defend himself.”

  “When he is physically assaulted? Or verbally picked on? There’s a difference.”

  “It’s a big world. A tough world, Leo. And Tommy has, essentially, one parent. And every day she leaves the house, there’s no guarantee she’s coming home. He has to be self-sufficient.”

  Leo was shaking his head. “Peyton, this isn’t about you.”

  “Not me,” she said, “my job.”

  “As a Border Patrol agent?”

  “And as his mother. One influences the other.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I’m making damn sure he’ll be able to handle life if I’m ever not here for him. Not just physically. Emotionally, too.”

  Leo looked at her for a long time.

  “I’ll have Stone work with him—I’ll work with him, too—but let’s be honest with each other, Peyton. This is about self-discipline and self-protection—not revenge.”

  “I wouldn’t have it any other way,” she said.

  Stone Gibson, the state police detective she’d met at her mother’s house, walked out of the men’s locker room wearing a gi. She could tell he obviously remembered Tommy. When Tommy pointed to his mother in the window, Stone waved.

  Peyton waved back.

  “Know him?” Leo asked.

  “We’re working the same case,” she said.

  “Looks like you’re working on two cases with him now,” Leo said and pointed to Tommy, who was smiling at Stone Gibson.

  The digital clock on the nightstand read 11:52 p.m.

  Peyton sat up in bed at the periphery of her own consciousness, emerging from a deep sleep.

  Someone was banging hard on her front door.

  She stood, wearing panties and a Red Sox T-shirt, and pulled on sweatpants. Then she pulled her cotton bathrobe on and tied the belt across her waist. She opened the drawer of her nightstand and removed the .40.

  She descended the stairs and approached the front door as the pounding grew louder.

  When she pulled the door open, Dr. Chip Duvall stood before her, eyes wide open. Peyton thought his eyes also looked a little red.

  “Can I, ah, come in?”

  “You’re drunk, Chip. And my son has school tomorrow. I hope you didn’t wake him.”

  “May I come in?” he said again, eyes on the .40.

  “What do you want?”

  The rental Ford Escape was in the driveway behind her Wrangler. Beneath the spotlight, Chip Duvall didn’t look like he’d rolled out of bed to come here—pressed khaki pants, starched white button-­down, navy-blue blazer.

  “It’s about Sherry, Peyton. She’s made some, ah, mistakes. We need to help her.”

  “She doesn’t want my help,” Peyton said, “and you need to sleep it off.”

  “I’m not drunk. Just tired. Please let me in.” Before she could answer, he added, “She told me you know about the Nancy Lawrence alibi.”

  “I see you know about it, too.”

  “Just found out,” he said, sounding as confident now as the man Peyton witnessed patting Sherry’s thigh like she were a show dog during the meeting with DA Stephanie DuBois.

  “Sherry didn’t do anything wrong,” he continued. “You need to believe me. Let me come in and talk.”

  She dropped the pistol in the pocket of her bathrobe and held the door. He followed her to the living room. She hit the wall switch and two lamps snapped on.

  “I haven’t slept in three days.” He took a seat near her on the sofa.

  She moved to the far end. “Tell me about the alibi, Chip.”

  “You’re right. Sherry paid Nancy to say Freddy was with her.”

  “Chip, I need to make you aware of your rights.”

  He waved that off. The desperation she witnessed at the front door was gone. Now he was a man accustomed to being in charge.

  “I don’t think you’re hearing me,” he said. “I’m not here in an official capacity, Peyton. Sherry is a wonderful mother, a loyal friend.” He leaned back on the sofa, legs crossed, looking at her.

  “How is she as a wife?” Peyton asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The last time I saw that rental Ford, it was driven by Kvido.”

  “Kvido who?”

  “I was hoping you could answer that.”

  “Are you trying to cause a rift in my marriage?”

  “You have separate hotel rooms, Chip. Why are you still protecting your wife?”

  He yawned. Five minutes earlier, wide-eyed, he’d pounded on her front door. Now he seemed relaxed, even tired. Coming down from a high? If so, it would go with what Mitch Cosgrove told her about what happened to Chip Duvall’s dental practice.

  “I really resent what you’re saying about Sherry,” he said. “And to think she considers you a close friend.”

  The statement struck her as odd. “We haven’t seen each other in years,” she said. “Does Sherry have girlfriends in southern Maine?”

  “No, not really. Why do you ask?”

  She didn’t answer. But the desperation she’d seen in Sherry’s pleading eyes—longing for someone to understand her situation (whatever that situation was)—made more sense now. If Sherry felt alone, it was because she truly was.

  Chip was staring at a blackened living room window. “You’re making a judgement of my marriage based on two, three days. My wife is a writer. She needs to be alone. She’s working on a very important book. Whoever you saw driving our car was probably her research assistant.”

  When he entered the diner during Peyton’s breakfast with Sherry on Friday, Chip made a point of commenting on the Ford rental leaving upon his arrival. Why was he denying knowledge of the driver now?

  There were several questions Peyton still wanted to ask, but couldn’t. This wasn’t an official interview. And if she asked now, he—and his attorney—would know what was coming the next time they met.

  “It’s midnight,” she said. “Go home to your wife, Chip.”

  “She’s in her hotel room, writing. I have some free time.”

  She followed his eyes—and immediately pulled her bathrobe tight across her chest.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she said.

  “Nothing. Just sitting next to an attractive woman.”

  “I think you’re staring at my chest and incriminating you and your wife.”

 
“You’re a beautiful woman,” he said and slid closer to her on the sofa.

  “Stay where you are.”

  He offered a patronizing smile and leaned toward her, hands first.

  She made a short, quick movement.

  Then he was on the floor, clutching his windpipe, gasping for breath.

  “It’ll pass,” she said and stood. “When it does, show yourself out.”

  It did.

  And he did.

  Twenty-Six

  She made notes when she was confused.

  So Tuesday at 9 a.m., Peyton was at her desk, stylus in hand, a bowl of blueberries near her iPad. Scrawled notes and annotations covered the small screen—names, questions, and words: cabin, money, bankruptcy, .22. Lines and arrows connected people to questions and words. She was breaking the clutter into separate groups, seeing what connections she could make. And she was considering holes found in peoples’ stories.

  There were many holes, even more questions, and a few connections.

  A week earlier, Marie St. Pierre saw two men cross her farmland at midnight. Who were they?

  Hours later, Peyton had gone to the scene and found a torched cabin and (eventually) a corpse (Simon Pink) in it.

  Peyton still didn’t know if Pink was one of the two men Marie had seen.

  What had Matt Kingston heard? Although she knew the state police had interviewed him, she still hadn’t spoken with him since their parking-lot conversation. She underlined his name, needing to talk to him ASAP.

  Fred St. Pierre had shot and killed his wife, then himself, after asking forgiveness and saying he hoped someone would understand. From whom did he need understanding?

  A search of the farmhouse turned up passports for Marie St. Pierre and Simon Pink, and cash. The amount of cash—$900 for Marie and $500 for Fred Jr.—was too much to have on hand, given that the Duvalls had supposedly bailed out Fred St. Pierre, but not so much that it raised red flags. But it did make Peyton wonder where the disposable income came from.

  Marie and Simon had been planning a trip to Prague. Why? And did anyone else know about the trip?

  Could she prove Sherry St. Pierre-Duvall paid Nancy Lawrence to let Freddy sleep on Nancy’s sofa? Or would Nancy testify that Sherry had paid her to do so, if it came to that?