Fallen Sparrow

by D. A. Keeley

  “Not well.”

  “Do you have family?”

  “My parents and my sister and her husband are coming tomorrow to help me.”

  “And your kids are coming here?”

  He nodded.

  “How are they?”

  “My sister is very good with them. She has two teenagers. She told them about Sherry. They are, of course, devastated.”

  “They’ll live with you?”

  “Yes. Why do you ask?” He looked genuinely confused.

  “Both children?”

  “Of course. Why?”

  “What if Kvido wants Sam? Doesn’t he have a legal right to take him to the Czech Republic, if he wants?”

  “I adopted Sam. What are you talking about, Peyton?”

  “How did you keep your home when you filed for bankruptcy?”

  “Why would Kvido want Sam?”

  “How did you keep your home when you filed for bankruptcy?” she said again.

  “It’s common. That’s one of the reasons to file.”

  “But you and Sherry paid off her parents’ back taxes, which allowed them to keep the farm. How could you afford to give them a hundred grand if you lost your business?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Sherry received two hundred thousand dollars from Kvido, Chip.”

  “I know nothing about that.”

  “How old was Sam when you adopted him?”

  “Two. I’ve raised him as I have Marie—like he’s my flesh and blood.”

  “And that’s why Sherry hired Kvido? So he could see his son?”

  “His son?”

  “What is your relationship with Kvido like?”

  “Relationship? With him? My wife left me for him, Peyton.”

  “But you drove to the diner to meet him.”

  “No.”

  “Yes. He ran outside and stopped you before you came inside. What did you two need to talk about?”

  He didn’t speak. She saw perspiration on his forehead.

  “And why couldn’t you just meet here, Chip? What reason would you have for meeting somewhere else?”

  “I think it’s time for you to leave, Peyton.”

  “Me, too,” she said.

  Peyton took the elevator to the lobby. She didn’t return to the Camry. Instead, she sat in an overstuffed chair near a glass end table.

  In a chair near the elevator, a man wearing Oakley shades, a dark T-shirt, jeans, and running shoes sat reading Crime and Punishment. On the other side of the lobby, at the bar, a man drank coffee and sat with his back to the far wall. He wore glasses frames and a Bass Pro Shops hat. She expected to see those two men.

  The man she didn’t expect to see walked by her without recognizing her. Once again, he had traded the leather New York Yankees jacket and snake-skin cowboy boots for a suit—this time it was a conservative gray with a navy-blue tie—and he had a neck tattoo she’d seen only on inmates in federal prison.

  It was Tom Dickinson—the man in witness protection who had worried that his chat with Sara Gibson in Tip of the Hat might lead to his anonymity being lost.

  He was carrying a briefcase and walked to the elevator. He didn’t press either arrow. Just stood, waiting.

  Finally, the elevator doors opened, and Kvido nodded to him. Dickinson joined Kvido on the elevator, and it went up again.

  Peyton moved quickly across the lobby and hit the arrow pointing up.

  The man seated next to the elevator set down his copy of Crime and Punishment and ran toward the stairs. The man at the bar wearing glasses frames followed him.

  Forty-Eight

  When the elevator opened, no one was in sight.

  Peyton stepped out and moved toward room 418. She walked past the room and rounded the hallway corner, where she met Stone Gibson, who had removed his Oakley sunglasses, and Mike Hewitt, who had tossed the glasses frames and Bass Pro Shop cap.

  “Crime and Punishment?” she said to Stone, shaking her head. “Not exactly inconspicuous.”

  “Who was the guy meeting Kvido?” Hewitt asked.

  “That’s Tom Dickinson, Mike. Remember him?”

  “No.”

  “The guy who met Stone’s sister, Sara, at Tip of the Hat. The guy in witness protection. He was at the diner when Kvido was the only other person there besides me and Stone. It was the day Chip showed up. Before Chip could enter, Kvido went outside to stop him. I thought it was because I was there, but maybe it had something to do with Dickinson.”

  “What’s he doing here? And how the hell does he know Kvido?”

  “I have no idea. You heard my conversation with Chip?”

  Hewitt nodded. “Yeah. Hammond tapped both rooms.”

  “You stirred the pot pretty good,” Stone said.

  “Chip had no idea Sam is Kvido’s son.”

  Stone shrugged. “He does now, and he’s upset. We can use that to get him to turn on Kvido.”

  They heard the elevator stop. Peyton leaned out and saw Chip walking down the hallway with both hands thrust in the front pocket of a gray sweatshirt.

  Peyton leaned back out of sight. “It’s Chip.”

  The footfalls stopped at room 418. Chip took a deep breath. Then he knocked hard on the door.

  “Who is it?”

  “Open up!”

  The door opened, then closed. Peyton looked around the corner. Chip was out of sight.

  Hewitt reached into the breast pocket of his fishing shirt and retrieved a small speaker. Peyton and Stone huddled around it.

  “Who are you?” It was Chip speaking.

  Tom Dickinson’s voice: “Nobody, man. I was just leaving.”

  “No.”

  “Chip, this is my accountant. Let him go.”

  “Kvido, tell me about Sam.”

  “What do you want to know? Please put the gun down, Chip.”

  Without a word, Hewitt was sprinting, his .40 out. He nearly knocked Peyton over in the process. She grabbed her .40 and followed, Stone right behind her.

  Hewitt kicked the door on the knob and it burst in, banging against the wall. Then he was inside, crouched in a shooter’s stance to the right of the door.

  Across the room, Kvido and Tom Dickinson stood facing Hewitt. Kvido had lost the swagger he’d possessed in their meeting earlier that day. He was sweating, his eyes pleading.

  Chip was facing them, his back to Hewitt. He never turned around, as if he’d not heard the door frame splinter and the doorknob hit the inner wall.

  Peyton moved in to cover Hewitt, crouching to the left of the door frame, her .40 drawn. She peered into the room.

  Chip had a pistol pointed at Kvido.

  “Drop the weapon,” Hewitt said.

  Tom Dickinson had both hands in the air.

  “Don’t shoot him,” Dickinson said.

  Kvido was saying, “I’m not a bad man, Chip. I’ve helped you.”

  “You helped me? Explain that.”

  “I paid off your home.” Kvido’s hair was matted against his forehead; sweat beads crawled down his cheeks.

  “You took my wife. Now you’ve humiliated me. Sam is your son?”

  “I was going to tell you.”

  “No you weren’t. Neither was Sherry.”

  Peyton was looking at Hewitt. The shot was there. Chip had his back to him, and he had two hostages.

  Hewitt looked at her, and she realized what he was doing: He was waiting to hear the conversation, trying to learn as much as he could, risking Kvido’s safety to gain information needed to build a case against him. He had taken Sherry out when the opportunity presented itself, but not here. Situational ethics could make even routine decisions difficult. And when those decisions could be life-or-death, they became gut-wrenching. She
had seen it when Hewitt spoke about having to kill Sherry.

  “Put the gun down,” Dickinson said with an air of authority that made Peyton take her eyes off Chip momentarily.

  “We were going to tell you,” Kvido said.

  “You turned Sherry into a killer. Freddy told me this afternoon. He said you paid for bombs. You put them in the woods. You killed that game warden. You’re insane. Do you know that? A minefield? It’s crazy. I don’t know what Sherry was thinking to go along with it.”

  “You didn’t think it was so crazy when your wife bailed you out with her ‘book money.’ ” Kvido’s navy blue shirt was black with sweat now.

  “Drop the weapon,” Hewitt said.

  Chip never turned around.

  In the confined space of the suite’s main room, the pistol shot reverberated for what seemed an hour. There was no second shot. Chip fell to his knees, his hand going limp at his side, the pistol falling to the floor. He stared at the hand that had held the pistol as if it were foreign to him.

  Tom Dickinson leapt on him and pushed his face into the carpet. “You stupid shit.” He pulled Chip’s arms behind him. “Give me some cuffs.”

  Stone Gibson ran to him and cuffed Chip.

  “You have the right to remain silent,” Dickinson said. “Anything you say can—“

  “What are you doing?” Hewitt said.

  “I’m Greg Harris,” Dickinson said, “CIA. I’ve been following Kvido Bezdek for two years. And it ends like this?”

  Peyton had gone to Kvido. Chip hadn’t been a skilled marksman, but he had pointed at the center of the mass, and from ten feet, that was good enough.

  Kvido lay on his back, legs splayed before him, his eyes open and blinking. Peyton felt his wrist. The pulse was weak.

  “Look at me,” she said. His eyes rolled toward her. “Stay with me, Kvido.” His eyes blinked once more, then remained open.

  The slow pulse beating against her index finger stopped.

  Forty-Nine

  A few hours later, Garrett Station was quiet. It was nearly 11 p.m., and Peyton, Hewitt, Stone Gibson, Frank Hammond, Wally Rowe, and Greg Harris were in the stationhouse working on final reports and debriefing.

  The group had taken over the bullpen. Several worked on computers; others ate, and Harris even drank a beer.

  “Greg Harris?” Peyton said. “Not Tom Dickinson?”

  “My mother named me Greg.” Harris nodded. He had his feet up on a desk. “I’m sorry for lying to you when we first met. But I was trying to help.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me what you were doing?”

  “Kvido Bezdek is a sociopath, and he’s particularly violent. I was trying to keep as many innocent people away from him as I could.”

  “Like my sister?” Stone Gibson said.

  “Yes. You should tell her she talks too much.”

  Stone didn’t say anything.

  “How did a woman with a Harvard Ph.D. end up with Kvido?” Hewitt said.

  “It’s like asking why Sherry paid the back taxes on her father’s farm,” Peyton said. “Maybe it doesn’t make sense. Or maybe it makes perfect sense. It’s who she was. Or who she became. She was pushed around and treated poorly by men her whole life. Her father started the cycle, and she never broke free of it. She wasted so much time trying to prove herself to her father and to everyone else.”

  “Sad,” Rowe said.

  “Remember the scene during the discovery session with Stephanie? Sherry was trying to prove she was more than her father and Chip and Kvido thought she was. It breaks my heart a little bit because I knew her when she was young, before all of this.”

  Peyton was looking at the floor, thinking not of Dr. Sherry St. Pierre-Duvall but of Sherry St. Pierre, back when they were kids, back when there had still been a chance for Sherry.

  “Peyton, she also killed a guy,” Hewitt said. “Don’t forget that.”

  “I know that, Mike. I’m not excusing it. And I assume she told Freddy to get rid of the gun. And she tried to buy him an alibi. But, of course, he screwed up and we found the gun anyway.”

  Harris finished his beer, stood, and put the can in the recycling bin. “The bottom line is that she ended up with a guy who wanted to kill the president.”

  “Using a Goddamned minefield,” Hewitt said.

  “She was so much more intelligent than any of them, than any of this,” Peyton said, and she thought of the line from Hamlet that Leo Lafleur had read to her.

  No one spoke for a while. Peyton finished a bottle of water. Frank Hammond, who hadn’t spoken, sat watching CNN on his laptop. The afternoon’s events had not yet been broadcast.

  Harris said, “I knew there’d be some collateral damage when Kvido got here. I wanted to limit it. I didn’t do a very good job.”

  “This whole thing was fluid from day one.” Hewitt looked at Harris. “Second-guessing yourself will just give you ulcers. It does no good. Christ, I didn’t think Chip would shoot him. I could’ve taken him out before he killed Kvido, but I thought we’d learn something, and we’d talk him down. I was wrong.”

  “We did learn a lot,” Stone said. “And what we learned may help Freddy St. Pierre when it comes to his sentencing.”

  “Freddy knows a lot more than I gave him credit for,” Hewitt said. “But the primary is now dead”—Hewitt looked at Harris—“which doesn’t help you very much.”

  “You were in a tough spot,” Harris said. “Whether or not to take out Chip Duvall was your call. You did what you thought was right, given the situation. I’ve been there myself. So I know never to second-guess someone else’s decision in a similar situation.”

  Hewitt looked at Harris for several seconds. “Thanks,” he said.

  “Kvido was bankrolling this whole operation,” Harris went on. “I haven’t gotten through with everything yet, but I’m pretty sure we’re going to find out Simon Pink could afford two plane tickets to Prague courtesy of Kvido.”

  “And Kvido paid Fred’s taxes, via Sherry, in exchange for giving Simon Pink use of the cabin,” Peyton summarized. “When Marie innocently called us, Fred knew they were all about to get in some serious trouble. He was hoping Sherry would forgive them, for bringing attention to her illicit activities.”

  “Think he knew someone was paying Simon to make bombs out there?” Hewitt asked.

  Peyton shrugged. “He knew enough to prefer the easy way out rather than face the consequences.”

  “So how much did Chip Duvall know?” Stone Gibson asked.

  “Considering that everyone else involved, except Freddy, is dead,” Greg Harris said, “I bet he doesn’t know much.”

  Peyton leaned back in her chair and stretched. “I’m heading home, gentleman,” she said. And she did.

  Peyton drove home and entered the dark house just after midnight. Lois was sleeping in the guest room. She went to Tommy’s room and watched him sleep for a few minutes. Then she went downstairs to the kitchen and poured a glass of red wine, which she took to the living room sofa. She enjoyed the silence of the house, the occasional creak, the low rumble of the ice-maker.

  She reached for her cell phone and hit a number on her list of contacts.

  “Peyton?” Leo Lafleur said.

  “I was thinking about that line from Hamlet you read to me the other day. Could you read it again?”

  “Seriously? It’s almost one a.m.”

  “You don’t go to sleep until much later. You’ve told me that yourself. And, besides, I’d really appreciate it.”

  “I don’t need to read it,” he said. “I know it: There’s a special providence in the fall of a sparrow.”

  “Thank you, Leo.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s all I needed,” she said.

  She hung up and sipped her wine and thought about Sherry St. P
ierre-Duvall as she stared at her own reflection in the blackened window, until the wine was drunk and sleep would finally come.

  About the Author

  D.A. Keeley (United States) has published widely in the crime-fiction genre and is the author of seven other novels, as well as short stories and essays. In addition to being a teacher and department chair at a boarding school and a member of the Mystery Writers of America, Keeley writes a biweekly post for the blog Type M for Murder. You can learn more about the author and the series via Twitter @DAKelleyAuthor or at www.amazon.com/author/dakeeley.