Bitter Crossing (A Peyton Cote Novel)

by D. A. Keeley

“It’s always sad when a marriage fails. I wish I could help the couple. But I think we both know that isn’t possible, isn’t that right?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Come on now, Agent Cote. Isn’t it true that your sister has made a lifestyle choice that excludes Mr. Hurley? A lifestyle choice that will confuse their innocent baby and convey perverse immoral behavior to him?”

  There was a glass of water on the table between them.

  Two seconds later, McAfee was wearing it.

  “How dare you!” he shouted.

  He stepped close to the table, wiping his face. Peyton was standing across from him now. They glared at each other.

  “Good God, Peyton,” Lambert mumbled, “get a hold of yourself.”

  “Where is Jonathan?” Peyton demanded.

  McAfee snapped the briefcase shut. “I told you. I have no idea.”

  She stared at him. Lying or not, she knew one thing: this was a man who would gladly ruin her career.

  Peyton made sure she was the last to leave the building. When McAfee and Lambert had both left the parking lot, Peyton went to her Jeep and sat, leaning her head against the steering wheel.

  The sky above was gray. She started the truck but didn’t touch the gearshift.

  McAfee had help. There was no doubt about that.

  Hewitt hadn’t denied that someone at Garrett Station was making an issue of the shooting. But, as PAIC, he would play it close to the vest. Pam Morrison, Bruce Steele, and Scott Smith were now assigned to the missing baby. Since it had been Peyton’s case, she knew the three agents would have access to her reports, which in turn would give them details to leverage any claims against her.

  Scott Smith’s questions during their dinner “date” still bothered her. And he had gone to see Morris Picard.

  As part of the investigation?

  What was in the envelope he had dropped in the driveway?

  She couldn’t ask Hewitt. Being a female in a male-dominated environment made things difficult enough. No way she would accuse an agent of undermining an investigation without undeniable evidence.

  She had far too much to lose.

  Peyton didn’t drive home when she left Houlton. Instead, following a phone call to Linda Farnham, the director of Little Tykes Daycare in Reeds, she drove to the facility. In jeans, a turtleneck, and wearing the thin gold chain Tommy and Lois had given her on Mother’s Day, at least she looked like a volunteer.

  But she felt like a spy.

  After filling out the volunteer paperwork, she met Farnham, a tall, elegant fiftyish woman in a pale blue 5K Cancer Run T-shirt. Farnham pointed to the table at which the nine children ate their afternoon snacks. Peyton sat beside four-year-old Matthew Ramsey, the boy who had either the best imagination this side of Stephen King or had taken one hell of a road trip.

  “Do you know your address?” she asked him.

  She’d been to the boy’s cul-de-sac home. The question was merely to gauge his cognitive abilities. Susan Perry said a typical four-year-old couldn’t remember details like those little Matthew recalled on three separate occasions over nine months.

  “Sixty-two Lindmark Road,” he said and bit into a French toast stick, syrup dripping onto Peyton’s jeans, “Reeds, Maine, oh four seven six nine.”

  “Wow,” she said.

  It brought a smile to his face. The boy had blond hair and green eyes. Dr. Matthew Ramsey looked French-Canadian—eyes, hair, and complexion all dark; Mrs. Ramsey was a blonde, her hair a lighter shade of her son’s, if Peyton remembered correctly, and had blue eyes.

  “I know my address, too,” a little girl with blond pigtails said. She sat across from Peyton. Her T-shirt read Don’t above a picture of a ladybug, followed by the word Me. She picked up a slice of apple with peanut butter on it. A dime-sized drop of peanut butter fell onto her jeans.

  The boy across from Matthew had a runny nose. With each breath, a clear bubble of mucus emerged from his right nostril. Peyton had taken no food, but after that visual couldn’t even finish the remainder of her Tim Hortons coffee. Linda Farnham was quickly at the boy’s side and wiped his nose, telling two other children not to “share food you’ve already chewed.” The snot wiped, she simply went to the sink, washed her hands, and retook her seat. She took a bite of a French toast stick, appetite undaunted.

  Peyton compared the occupational hazards of being a Border Patrol agent (the occasional flying bullet) to the occupational hazards a daycare provider faced (snot bubbles). Maybe Linda Farnham needed the Kevlar vest more than she did.

  “Do you ever take trips?” Peyton asked the boys and girls at the table.

  The Don’t Bug Me girl said she’d gone to the ocean last summer. Peyton nodded and looked at Matthew encouragingly. He remained quiet. A redheaded boy dipped a French toast stick in syrup and stuck it in his mouth. He told Peyton about going to see the Red Sox, his toothy mouth full, a lumpy piece of French toast falling to his plate.

  “That must’ve been fun.” She turned to Matthew Ramsey. “Have you ever taken a trip?”

  “No.”

  “You’ve never gone anywhere? Never stayed in a hotel?”

  He shook his head and picked up his plastic cup of apple juice. As he drank, some ran down his chin, onto his shirt collar.

  “I stayed at a hotel once,” a brown-haired boy said. He had torn jeans and a faded shirt. His face was dirty. Peyton thought of kids, of how money and privilege didn’t separate people until later. Here, young Matthew Ramsey, a doctor’s son, snacked with a child his own age who clearly would never have the opportunities afforded by a doctor’s earnings.

  “Tell us about the hotel,” she said.

  “It was in Houlton.”

  “Wow!” Peyton said. “Anyone else have a story about a trip to share?”

  Matthew Ramsey looked at her, opened his mouth, but then closed it.

  “Do you have a story, Matthew?”

  He shook his head and left the table. He went to the wooden-block area and sat by himself.

  “Matty,” Linda Farnham called, “you okay? You usually love snack time. Is anything wrong, sweetie?”

  He shook his head. Linda and Peyton exchanged a glance. Something was wrong. The little boy was obviously upset now. And that had to do with her questions, which, if truth be told, at present, she wasn’t authorized to ask. Peyton felt two inches tall. She got up and walked past a bookrack and a pile of block letters to the hallway.

  Linda Farnham closed the door behind her and was quickly at Peyton’s side. “What do you think?”

  Peyton shook her head. “I thought he spoke openly about his trip.”

  “He has.”

  “Well, something’s wrong,” Peyton said. “I have a son. My questions set him off. I could see it on his face.”

  Behind them, the door squealed open. Matthew Ramsey leaned out.

  “Yes, Matty?” Linda said. “Everything okay?”

  “I don’t feel too good.”

  “What is it?” Linda was on her knees beside him.

  “My stomach hurts.”

  “Are you still hungry?”

  “No, I said a lie.” His eyes flashed to Peyton, then fell to his shoes. “Dad said I’m not supposed to talk about my trip.”

  “That’s fine, sweetie,” Linda said, her eyes darting to Peyton.

  Matthew nodded once and went back inside.

  Peyton watched him go.

  “I told Susan Perry something doesn’t make sense,” Linda said. “I’m no social worker, but I’ve dealt with young kids for a long time. So now what do you think?”

  The boy felt guilty and sick because of her questions. Peyton was saved from attempting an answer when the door opened again.

  Matthew peered out once more. “Thanks, Miss Farnham. My stomach feels a little better.”

  She knelt by his side again. “That’s fine. Go on in and have something to eat.”

  He nodded. Then: “Will you sit with me?”
r />   Linda looked at Peyton, who nodded. Linda followed the four-year-old back inside. Peyton watched them go and left, wondering what, if anything, she’d just learned.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  AT 4:30 FRIDAY AFTERNOON, Peyton pulled into Mann’s Garage in Garrett. The door to one of the bays was up, and she entered. Owner Tom Mann was beneath a Ford Explorer thrust above him by a hydraulic lift. Kool-Aid-like blue liquid dripped from the engine into a black plastic pan.

  In the next bay, a red GMC Astro van sat idle, patches of rust lining its wheel hollows. The inside of the garage smelled of wood chips and oil. She saw sawdust on the concrete floor and made the connection—sawdust was used to soak up oil spills.

  She nearly jumped at the sudden burst from a whining air ratchet.

  “Can I help you?” Tom Mann wiped his hands and returned the rag to the back pocket of his Dickies work pants. He was six-four and over 250 pounds but smiled amicably.

  Garrett, Maine, was not known for ethnic diversity. Mann, to Peyton’s knowledge, was the town’s lone African-American, his skin the color of coffee beans, his eyes a startling shade of green. Outspoken about racial inequity, he spent many a Friday night drinking and arguing at Tip of the Hat and was on probation for Aggravated Assault.

  Like many Garrett residents in their sixties, Mann had first come to the area during the Cold War to serve at the nearby Air Force base. The Garrett base had been the closest US facility to the former Soviet Union. It had housed thousands of soldiers and their families, but the end of the Cold War saw the base close. Peyton recalled the enrollment of her school falling from over a thousand to three hundred seemingly overnight. Mann must have seen something in the area because he’d retired from the military, returned, and recently hired a fellow ex-military man, Tyler Timms, whom she was there to see.

  “Last time I stopped by,” she said, “I was on my way to work. I’m out of uniform.”

  He nodded, remembering. “You drive a Jeep Wrangler, right? A ding on the front right bumper.”

  “And the back bumper,” she admitted.

  “Yellow paint streaks.” He recalled her vehicle like a wine connoisseur noting subtleties of the palette.

  “That’s my Jeep.” She smiled. “I backed into a huge yellow light-pole base in a parking lot.”

  “Got to treat your Jeep like she’s a member of the family. If you treat her good—change the oil, don’t beat her all to hen shit—you can depend on her. She not running good?”

  “Oh, no. Running fine. I’ve come to see Tyler Timms actually.” She pointed to where Timms was working on a Dodge Dakota in the third bay.

  “About your Jeep?”

  “No,” she said.

  The expression on Mann’s face changed. He looked down at his steel-toed boots. One was spotted with oil. He ran his tongue over his bottom lip considering something. Then he looked up and asked in a low voice, “He in some kind of trouble?” His cat-green eyes flashed an unarticulated recognition, as if he’d been expecting a visit.

  She didn’t answer. The air ratchet whined again. The tinny hammering of metal sounded.

  “I’ll ask if he’s too busy to see you.”

  “It won’t take long,” she said and stepped toward where Timms was working.

  “No,” Mann said.

  “No?”

  “I mean, ah, some of these jobs is real tricky. Can’t be disturbed when you’re in the middle. I better go ask him.”

  The air ratchet ceased; the pounding of metal faded. In the silence, they stood looking at each other. Why was he stalling? Her instincts told her he wanted desperately to talk to Timms before she did. She couldn’t prevent that. She had no authority to make either of them cooperate. She watched Mann walk to the Dakota. The men moved behind the open hood, out of view.

  She waited. This was the part she hated: the bullshit run-around. An agent asks a legitimate question like Where are you coming from? and often what follows are whispers, dodges, outright lies—in short, time-consuming bullshit. Had she been born in the wrong era? Whatever happened to brandishing your weapon to get real answers? She almost smiled at the thought. Just as quickly, she remembered Hewitt’s Lone Ranger quip. The cartoon-like image dissolved.

  She moved closer to the Dakota and caught fragments of conversation: “I can talk to her, eh … Why not? … piece of my mind, eh … Don’t worry, I know …”

  The hood closed with a bang, and Tyler Timms looked up, surprised to see her only ten feet away. Mann’s eyes narrowed, realizing she’d crept up on them. He moved past, eyes sharply on hers.

  “Shoot any more of my friends?” Timms asked. Before she could reply, he went on. “A lot of nerve showing up here. Murder is a sin. You people … You people scared him, eh, so he ran. Then you shot the poor bastard.”

  You people, she thought. It reminded her of Jerry Reilly’s classroom remarks about amnesty for illegal immigrants. Every political topic has two sides—the theoretical and the practical—and people not asked to enforce policy often see only one side.

  “You don’t know what happened that night. But I’m not here to talk about the shooting. Tell me why he ran the border.”

  “Me? How would I know, eh?” He said in his thick French accent.

  For a split second, she recalled sitting through an iambic pentameter lecture at U-Maine thinking Shakespeare wasn’t so difficult, the stress falling upon the second syllable as it did when people like Timms spoke: How WOULD i KNOW, eh?

  His eyes had returned to the Dakota’s engine.

  “A baby is dead, Tyler.”

  He looked up quickly, anger flashing in his eyes. “Don’t give me that shit,” Timms said. “So is Kenny. You people, eh, you’ve got no one to blame for either of those deaths but yourselves.”

  “Who was the baby?”

  “Peyton, I can’t help you.”

  “Can’t or won’t?”

  He didn’t answer, didn’t look up. He lifted a wrench from a cloth he’d lain over the corner of the engine, examined it, and wiped it with a rag.

  “What was Kenny doing in Youngsville, New Brunswick?”

  He shrugged.

  “Okay, Tyler, let’s try a different approach. Where were you when Kenny was running the border?”

  “Me?”

  “Yeah, you. If you two were so tight, and you’re so upset that I had to shoot him, tell me where you were that night.”

  “Home,” he said.

  “Alone?”

  “Hey listen, I’m a Christian. My conscience is clear. I don’t have to answer that.”

  “Fine. I’ll have the state troopers here in twenty minutes to bring you in and ask you that same question.”

  “You can’t do that.”

  “No? Maine DEA was investigating Kenny at the time of his death. Everyone in this town has seen you and Kenny Radke together. Don’t think the state cops can convince a judge that you need to be questioned?”

  She’d skipped some of the legal aspects, but Timms wasn’t a heavy-duty thinker. He looked concerned, so she didn’t let up.

  “What were you two doing with Alan McAfee?” she said.

  “Who?”

  “Got to do better than that, Tyler. I saw the three of you outside the ice-cream parlor on Main Street. You all saw me. You turned and headed the other way. What were you doing?”

  His eyes narrowed. Then he looked her up and down, his expression growing confident as if remembering something.

  “I heard you were suspended, eh. Bet you can’t even ask me those questions.”

  “You got that wrong, Tyler. But now I know you’re still in contact with McAfee.”

  He put the wrench down, careful to align it with his other tools the way she’d seen dentists line up picks and drills. He picked up the largest wrench, held it loosely between his thumb and forefinger, and twirled it slowly in a circle. His eyes locked on hers. Then he stopped twirling the wrench and tapped it gently against his palm.

  A threat?

&
nbsp; He had fifty pounds on her. But her leg, fueled by all of her hundred and twenty pounds, would generate more power than his arm. Army Coat could attest to that. Still, the wrench was eighteen inches long. She took a half-step back and inhaled slowly. If the bastard came at her, she’d blow out his knee.

  “I’m not in contact with McAfee,” he said. It wasn’t much, and it had taken him a long time to come up with it.

  She’d wait him out.

  He shifted from side to side, uncomfortable in the silence. Would he start rambling?

  It seemed odd that Tom Mann would hire Tyler Timms. On appearance alone, they couldn’t be more different—blue-eyed Timms was lithe with a shaved scalp reminiscent of a Skin Head. Had the military background been enough to get him the job?

  “Look, eh, I only met Al McAfee that one time. He was Kenny’s friend. We were going for ice cream.”

  “A baby is dead, Tyler. Get tied to that and you’ll be in Warren for life.”

  “Tied to what, eh? Kenny crashed. What’s that got to do with me?”

  “You tell me.”

  “Why are you here?” he said.

  “What exactly is your relationship with Al McAfee, as you call him?”

  He opened his mouth to speak, then paused, realizing he’d given something away. “I told you. I only met him that once, when I was with Kenny.”

  “Fine. Then what’s McAfee’s relationship to Kenny?”

  “He’s his lawyer,” Timms said.

  “You’re telling me Kenny Radke could afford a Boston lawyer? I don’t think so. McAfee wasn’t the guy who defended Kenny right into Warren for Possession a couple years back. I know that much. And what’s Kenny need a lawyer for now?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Tyler, what were you and Kenny doing with McAfee the day I saw you?”

  “Ice cream,” he said and looked away.

  She waited.

  Finally, his gaze swung back. He didn’t look angry, and he didn’t look scared. He looked frustrated.

  “Look, Peyton, go sit by the side of some dirt road and stare at the woods like the other agents, all right? That’s the best thing you can do.”

  “That a warning?”

  “That’s advice.”

  “Tyler,” Mann called from across the garage, “get back to work.”