Bitter Crossing (A Peyton Cote Novel)

by D. A. Keeley

ing.”

  The files were lined in a neat manila row, not one sheet of paper exposed.

  “How can you tell?” Hewitt said. “Looks like everything’s in order to me.”

  “He didn’t know it, but I went through these files one day when he was at work a couple months ago. I needed to know what was going on.”

  “What do you mean?” Hewitt said.

  “Just that I knew he was hiding something. It wasn’t anything he said, nothing overt, just the way any wife would know. All I know is that he kept the files in alphabetical order. There was a file beginning with the letter S. It’s gone.”

  “What did the S stand for?” Morrison asked.

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Are you sure?” Morrison said.

  “If you can remember,” Hewitt said, “it might help us.”

  “I can’t, and I don’t think I will. I didn’t think it was important. I just remember seeing two S folders, and now there’s only one.”

  Peyton moved past her sister and stared into the file cabinet. Hurley had risked a lot coming here, so the file had been worth coming for. What was in it? She’d been given a letter, an S. How did it fit with the rest of the puzzle? Like a crossword puzzle, the letter had to go with something else, something she had already learned. What was it?

  She turned around and looked at Hewitt.

  “I think things are falling into place.”

  “How?” Hewitt said.

  “What is it?” Morrison said.

  “Not sure,” Peyton said. “Let me talk to Jerry Reilly first.”

  “He’s gone,” Hewitt said. “He cooperated, answered our questions, so we had to kick him free.”

  “You know where he is?”

  “At home. Someone is watching him.”

  “It’s late, Peyton. Take one of the patrol SUVs and bring Elise and the boys to your mother’s. We’ll be working in here all night. Get some sleep and come in first thing so we can debrief. I’ll send Stan to your mother’s in the morning.”

  Peyton looked at Elise, who leaned against the counter, hair disheveled. She looked as tired as Peyton felt.

  “Drive carefully,” Hewitt said. “It’s nasty out there.”

  A sputtering snowfall had turned to a steady downfall, and the ride home was treacherous. Elise was fast asleep, along with the two boys, by the time Peyton had reached the middle of Garrett. She passed Leo Miller at a roadblock; she knew he’d be looking for Hurley’s Toyota pickup. She saw a tall black man in a dark winter coat with ICE on the back.

  She thought of what they had: A call to McAfee’s Boston office had done no good. His receptionist said she didn’t know where her boss was staying in northern Maine. In fact, she insisted McAfee told her only he wouldn’t be in the office this week. “Northern Maine? Really? That’s where he is? What’s he doing up there?”

  And despite his nighttime hiking prowess, to Peyton, Jonathan didn’t fit the profile of a Columbia-gear-wearing serious hiker. No L.L.Bean backpack or leather ankle-length boots for him. Instead, he wore a sleek leather jacket, a Cesar Chavez T-shirt, and Converse Chuck Taylor sneakers. He wouldn’t last long in falling temperatures and blowing snow.

  So where was he?

  She guessed he wasn’t on foot, and she doubted he was in the Toyota pickup that everyone was looking for.

  What about Autumn, who, according to Tyler Timms, was Hurley’s and Celia’s love child? Where was she?

  And what did any of it have to do with a missing file titled with a word starting with the letter S?

  By the time she arrived at her mother’s house, she had a theory but still more questions than answers, and she wanted nothing but a pillow.

  FORTY-FIVE

  PEYTON SPENT SUNDAY AROUND the house. She didn’t let Tommy out of her sight. When he went outside, she was with him. She insisted Elise and Max remain there all day, too. Stan Jackman, bless him, even took Lois to Mass.

  She hoped the day provided a respite for Elise. For Peyton, it was anything but. When not outside with Tommy, she worked. At the dining room table, she sat before her yellow legal pad, recalling recent conversations with Tyler Timms and Jeremiah Reilly. The names Reilly, Timms, Radke, Hurley, Picard, McAfee, and Celia were on the pad. She drew arrows among them, in both directions, as she thought. The name Scott Smith was circled.

  She made additional notes and wrote full paragraphs—she might have been a math student working out a problem. In the late afternoon, she viewed a British website on her laptop, thinking all the while about a missing file folder from the S section.

  Shortly after dinner, she called Mike Hewitt at home.

  “I think I have something,” she said.

  “I’m all ears,” he said.

  Monday, she woke early, went to the kitchen for coffee, and glanced at her phone.

  A message had been sent at 1:57 a.m.

  The kitchen was dark, the house silent. She took her iPhone in hand.

  I need to see you. In trouble.—JR

  She called the number.

  “Hello?”

  “Jerry, this is Peyton Cote. I got your message. Do you need me to send police?”

  “God, no. Don’t do that. I need to see you. That’s what I wrote. Can you come to my place?”

  “Are you in danger?”

  “Not at this moment,” he said.

  She looked at the clock on the stove. It was 6:45 a.m.

  “Give me a couple hours,” she said.

  “Why so long?”

  “Takes me a while to get going,” she lied. She planned to wait for Jackman’s arrival and then drive Tommy to school.

  The hardwood floors were cold. She placed two logs and some newspaper in the woodstove’s dying ashes, then carried her coffee to the upstairs bathroom, thinking all the while about a British website, the envelope Scott Smith had dropped in Morris Picard’s driveway, and what she’d seen on Picard’s coffee table.

  When the snow stopped falling, the final tally was four inches. Halloween was still a day away. Peyton had seen October deliver worse during her childhood, but after years in Texas, four inches was plenty.

  Showered and uniformed, she was at the kitchen table with her laptop open again, taking one final view of the British website. Like working on a difficult crossword puzzle, she managed to fit her letter S with what she’d seen at Morris Picard’s home.

  The knock at the front door took her away from the computer, but her theory was making more sense.

  She went to the door, her .40 in her right hand, but saw Stan Jackman and reholstered the pistol before unlocking the door.

  “I’m sorry for leaving your sister last night,” he said, as she led him to the kitchen for coffee. “The call came to my cell phone. They said there was a shooting near the border. Mike is really upset because no one has my cell number. Only one who ever calls it is my daughter, and of course you guys. Maybe I’m getting too old to be doing this.”

  “Don’t read into it, Stan. It’s not your fault. The question is who lost their phone in the past two days?”

  “Think someone stole an agent’s phone?” he said.

  “Could be. We all have each other’s numbers in our Contacts.”

  She filled a travel mug, added cream, and kissed him on the cheek.

  “Not your fault. And if I thought differently, I wouldn’t be leaving my family with you.”

  The first time she’d seen Morris Picard since moving back—at the diner—he’d recognized her and smiled. No such reaction this time.

  “May I help you?” he asked flatly. “Class starts in about fifteen minutes.”

  “I know that,” she said. “Same old desk, huh?”

  “This desk is probably older than you.”

  Two neat piles of essays were stacked before him. A thick history book lay open; next to it, a sheet of paper. He was taking notes.

  “I’m preparing my afternoon lectures, Peyton. I don’t have much time to chat.”

  S
he stood in front of his desk. “Have you heard from Jonathan Hurley in the past few days?”

  “I wish I had. I don’t know whether my substitute teacher should be considered long-term or not. Apparently, Hurley just up and left.”

  “You call his home?” she said.

  “Oh, no. I didn’t want to bother his wife in her time of trouble.”

  “What trouble do you mean? She must be looking for him, too, right?”

  “Well, I mean, she’s still there and he’s gone, so I assumed the marriage failed. Look, the office tried to reach Jonathan but couldn’t, so now we have a sub. That’s really all I know.”

  Peyton unzipped her flannel field jacket, adjusted her holstered pistol so it wouldn’t dig into her side, and sat in a desk-chair combination in the first row.

  “I sat in one of these, in this very room, about fifteen years ago.”

  He nodded. “Same exact spot, if I recall.”

  She smiled.

  “Those were good years,” he said, and she sensed him relaxing.

  “You were awfully busy. I remember you’d bring three, four foster children to see high school sports events. You were so good to those kids. I have one lasting memory. Not really sure why it stands out, but I remember you leaning down to put a Band-Aid on a little girl’s knee. She scraped it on the playground.”

  He smiled. “Did a lot of that.” He looked away, still lost in recollections, but now his face was downcast.

  “Mr. Picard,” she said, “do you know where Alan McAfee can be reached? We’ve tried to reach him all weekend.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “How do you know Mr. McAfee?”

  “I … He’s my attorney, Peyton. Has been for years.”

  “For years? Jonathan said McAfee was an adoption attorney. Is that your connection with him?”

  “I don’t see what this has to do with my missing teacher.”

  A bell rang. In the hallway, doors banged open and lockers clanged.

  “That’s the five-minute bell,” he said. “I need to get ready.”

  “I stopped at the office on my way here. You’ve got next period free, Mr. Picard.”

  He sighed and leaned back. “What is this, Peyton?”

  “You love children, don’t you?”

  “What?”

  “Children,” she said. “You couldn’t or maybe didn’t have any of your own …”

  “Couldn’t.”

  “So you took them in. Ten, maybe more, over twenty or so years.”

  “Eighteen,” he corrected, “twelve boys, six girls, over twenty-two years.”

  “Well, I’m blessed with one son. His name is Tommy. He is my life, Mr. Picard, and someone has threatened him. But I’m pretty sure you know that already. What’s Alan McAfee doing here?”

  “He owns a hunting cabin. Maybe he’s hunting.”

  “Where is the little girl I found in the field, Hurley’s baby?”

  “No idea what you’re talking about, Peyton.”

  She stood and walked to the window and looked out. A young mother held her son’s hand as they crossed the parking lot.

  She said, “Morris, you and Alan McAfee are on the board of trustees for St. Joseph’s Orphanage of London.”

  “How—” He stopped.

  She turned to face him.

  His eyes left her face, and he looked down. “I guess we have mutual interests.”

  “And what would those interests be?” she said.

  He shook his head back and forth slowly. Then his brows furrowed. “I’m in my sixties, Peyton. I’m not out for money. Next year, I retire and collect my pension.”

  His weary eyes ran from Peyton to a picture on his desk.

  The photo triggered Peyton’s memory—the little girl with green eyes she’d seen in a photo in the curio cabinet at the Picards’ home.

  “Tell me about her,” she said.

  He turned from the photo and looked at her. “You wouldn’t understand.”

  “Try me.”

  “The foster system is broken.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The bad parents get kids, and the good ones who can’t have kids of their own get forgotten.”

  “Pam Morrison said the same thing to me,” she said.

  “She’d know. She had a foster child, a three-year-old little girl who she was ready to adopt, but the birth mother got her back.”

  She pointed to the photo on his desk. “When I was at your home, your wife said you got too close to her. Is that what happened?”

  “Courts don’t do what’s best for the kids,” he said sternly. “They give biological parents eighteen million second chances. Margaret and I would welcome boys and girls from anywhere into our home, make progress with the child, only to have a judge tell us the child was going back to his or her biological parents—drunks, drug addicts, abusers. Not all of them, but some. Peyton, these are kids. Six, seven years old.”

  “Is that what happened?” She pointed to the photo.

  “Jenny.” He nodded. “Jenny Davis. She was seven when she came to us. Skinny and sullen. A year later, we had her reading at a fifth-grade level and getting all A’s. She’d become outgoing, a gifted student. Such potential.”

  He stopped talking and looked outside. Heavy raindrop-sized snowflakes danced past the window.

  “And the court sent her back to her parents?”

  “Yes, that’s right. Back to her mother. We wanted to adopt her. The court decided she should be with her mother. Her real father was out of the picture. So she went back to her mother and her mother’s boyfriend. That’s when it happened.”

  He shook his head. His tie was pale blue with sailboats. He wore a crisp white shirt like he had when she’d sat across from him years ago, but there was something she saw now that she hadn’t seen then—anger; his eyes narrowed.

  “You want to know why we’re doing this?” he said. “Take a long, hard look at that photo.”

  The between-class noise had ended with slamming lockers. Springs on his swivel chair grated lightly as Picard shifted in his seat.

  “Courts send them back, and sometimes you wonder forever what became of the little boy or little girl. It’s like giving up your own child. Sometimes we hear from them. Sometimes, they remain in the area, and we can follow their lives, like Kenny.”

  “Kenny Radke was your foster child?” she said. “I never knew that. He had parents in town.”

  “His father was a drunk. Kenny came to us twice. Not for long. I wish we’d had him permanently. Maybe we could have done more, like we did with Jenny.”

  The connection between Morris Picard and Kenny Radke put her in a precarious situation. Surely Picard knew it had been she who’d killed Radke.

  “What happened to her?” she said.

  “It was the mother’s boyfriend. We petitioned the court to keep Jenny. I met the guy once and knew he was trouble. I just knew it. She was with him a month. A month of physical assault and sexual abuse, we learned later, during the trial.”

  “Oh God,” she said.

  “Yeah, that about sums it up, Peyton. The son of a bitch called it an accident. Said he just hit her too hard. A little girl—my little girl.”

  His eyes were slits now, his throat constricted, the words fading. He leaned back in his chair, neck flushed, face coloring.

  She didn’t know what to say. She’d taken US History I and II with him, had seen little emotional variation from him then. Now, in a five-minute span, he’d swung from rage to sorrow. She tried to refocus the conversation.

  “How did you meet Alan McAfee?” she asked again.

  “Peyton, no one’s getting hurt.”

  “Kenny Radke is dead, Mr. Picard. And so is the baby who was with him.”

  “We’re trying to help people. The system is broken.”

  “The adoption system? That’s where St. Joseph’s Orphanage comes in, right?”

  “This conversation is over, Peyton.”

>   “Okay,” she said. “Fine.”

  He looked surprised when she turned and walked out.

  Jerry Reilly probably wasn’t a morning person to begin with, but the two black eyes and bruises on his cheeks couldn’t have helped.

  “Your night must have been as bad as mine,” she said.

  It was still below freezing, but the sun shone brightly, and the roads had been cleared, snow replaced by blue calcium mixed with rock salt, allowing her to get to Reeds in twenty minutes. Hewitt would be calling her cell phone by 10 a.m.

  “This is a nice complex,” she said. “A lot of professionals live here. Get beaten up by a doctor?”

  “You think this is funny?”

  “Not at all, but you know what you have to do if you want help.”

  His eyes narrowed. He frowned and then slid the safety chain off the door.

  She walked inside. The apartment wasn’t what she’d expected. The place was nearly empty. A large tattered sofa with stuffing oozing from an open wound, a circular kitchen table beneath a hanging light, a small radio on the floor, and books scattered on most surfaces.

  “Guess you don’t entertain much.”

  He sat on the sofa. “I need to talk to you.”

  “Here I am,” she said, taking her place at the far end.

  “You’re awfully casual.”

  “Judging from your face, push has come to shove, Jerry. And it might get worse. Tyler Timms had six confirmed kills in Iraq, so he’s capable of more. Like your text said, you’re in trouble.”

  “I need to be exonerated if I cooperate.”

  “Slow down,” she said. “Tell me what’s going on, then we’ll work all that out.”

  “No. I know how these things go. I’m not getting screwed here.”

  “This is pathetic,” she said and stood.

  “Where are you going? And don’t call me pathetic.”

  “I’m leaving, and what would you call it? I’m looking at a man with a Ph.D. who doesn’t know he’s in so far over his head that he probably has about twelve hours to live.”

  “That’s bull.”

  “Jerry, this morning, I looked at the St. Joseph’s Orphanage website. I saw the board of directors. Two names kind of stood out to me.”

  He didn’t speak, but his lips parted, and his eyes narrowed.