How It Happened

by Michael Koryta

  “Barrett? Stop. Think. Here’s what we have now: Naked bodies in barrels—not clothed bodies in plastic wrap with pipes—that were buried in the woods, not found at the bottom of a pond, several hours and several hundred miles from the pond they were supposed to be in. Multiple gunshot wounds. None of these elements were in Kimmy Crepeaux’s confession. Not a one.”

  Barrett leaned on the deck railing. Somewhere through the trees, down along the river, a loon called. He usually loved the sound. Now the mournful tone seemed cruel.

  “Who found them?” he asked.

  “Warden Service. After somebody e-mailed the precise GPS coordinates to the tip line.”

  “What?”

  “Want me to read it to you?”

  “Yes,” Barrett said, though part of him didn’t want to hear it.

  “Okay. It came from a Gmail account that seems to have just been set up, no history on it; the tech guys are working on tracing the IP as we speak. Anyhow, here’s the message: ‘None of this ever should have happened and it all got out of control fast. I do not want to go back to prison ever but I can’t let you send innocent people to prison for me. You will find the bodies up in the Allagash. I will not tell you how it happened but it is all wrong, you are all wrong, and go find the bodies so you know you are wrong.’ Then he gives the GPS coordinates. They were easy to find.”

  Barrett didn’t speak right away, his mind stuck on the words Johansson had just read, playing them back and trying to imagine whose voice they came from. I will not tell you how it happened but it is all wrong.

  “The e-mail address isn’t going to lead to anyone,” he said finally.

  “Maybe not. But it led to the bodies. And it came in while Mathias was in custody.”

  Barrett didn’t know what to say to that.

  “Step back and tell me what you’d think of this if you were coming in from the outside today,” Johansson said.

  “It’s a different investigation now.”

  “That’s an understatement. And it will have different investigators as well. The discovery of the bodies moves the crime scene. We are on the sidelines now, at best. After we went all in on the Crepeaux story? Nobody’s going to want us close. We’re meeting with the new lead investigator in the morning.”

  “Who is he?” Barrett asked.

  “She is Emily Broward. Good cop.”

  “Sheriff?”

  “State. Major crimes, just like me.” There was bitterness in his voice, but not blame. At least, Barrett didn’t think so.

  “I’m sorry,” Barrett said, and he meant it.

  “You shouldn’t be. We shouldn’t be. This is progress. Someone—maybe not us, but someone—is going to get to the truth now for those families. That’s what matters.”

  “Yes,” Barrett said, and he saw Howard Pelletier’s smiling face then. Ascending. Ayuh, that’s just the word.

  Howard’s daughter had been shot in the chest and in the back of the head, her body jammed in a barrel and dumped in the woods.

  “Yes,” Barrett said again. “That’s what matters.”

  14

  They didn’t wait on Barrett to start the briefing. He drove like hell to make it on time but still found himself entering in the middle of the conversation, half the faces in the room familiar to him, half of them not. The woman at the head of the table looked at him as if he’d opened the wrong door by mistake.

  “Agent Barrett,” she said. “Thanks for coming. We’ll try to catch you up.”

  Her words were more welcoming than her eyes. He took a seat between one of the unfamiliar state troopers and Johansson. A projector screen displayed a booking photo of a wild-eyed man with unruly hair, and the name below it was new to Barrett: Jeffrey Girard.

  “Who’s this?” he said.

  “We got a match on the prints,” Emily Broward said. “They belong to one Jeffrey Girard, thirty-six years old, originally of Rockland, now in Mechanic Falls.”

  “Does he mean anything to you, Don?” Barrett asked Johansson. Johansson nodded, looking almost physically pained by the question.

  “He’s been arrested in the area, I know that.”

  “He’s been arrested several times,” Broward said. “Burglary, drug possession, and felon in possession of firearms are the highlights. Did his name ever come up in your investigation?”

  “I don’t think so, but a lot of names did.”

  Barrett stared at the photo of Girard. The speed at which it had all happened was disorienting, a Rip van Winkle sensation, like waking up to find the world had moved on without you.

  “Don told me the fingerprints came off the barrels,” he said.

  “Correct.”

  “Considering the nature of the crime, that seems bizarre. He’s packaging, transporting, and burying bodies but doesn’t think to wear gloves?”

  “The whole thing was done sloppily, rushed. Maybe he got spooked or maybe he wanted the barrels for transportation only and intended to leave the bodies exposed.”

  “Why would he have done that?”

  “Because there’s a low chance of bodies being stumbled across by humans in that part of the Allagash, and a high chance of animals getting at them. Exposure and the animal destruction eliminate a lot of what we can determine in specifics. Time of death, things like that.”

  “Cause of death?”

  “Doesn’t eliminate that. They were shot.”

  “Do we know if they were shot pre- or postmortem, though?”

  “I’m not a medical examiner,” Broward said. “I won’t pretend to know those answers yet. I’m sure we’ll find out in due time. We have a forensic anthropologist working with the remains right now.”

  “Even transporting the bodies is a lot of work to go through without wearing gloves,” Barrett said again, and he caught Johansson’s warning look. But Barrett wasn’t trying to press Broward. It seemed like a damn reasonable point.

  “This fits our understanding of Jeffrey Girard pretty well, actually,” she said.

  “How so?”

  “He’s not smart, and he’s nervous, jumpy. I spoke with a deputy who knows him and with his parole officer. Both of them said his IQ is extremely low and that he has difficulty processing complex situations. The PO told me that he tends to rely on television or movie narratives to give him context when he’s confused, to help him in a world outside of his own.”

  “What’s his world?”

  Broward spread a state map out on the table and swept her hand over the northwestern portion, the part of Maine where there were no highways and not many towns. The deep pines of the north woods.

  “This. He’s an outdoorsman. Good with a gun and a fishing rod; bad with people. He claims he’s never been outside of Maine, and yet he’s an itinerant guy. His contacts are his family, basically. He’ll bounce from mother to brother and cousin to cousin.”

  She tapped the map. “No sign of him recently at the trailer near Mechanic Falls that is his official address, according to the parole officer.” She slid her finger north. “We’re told the Girard family has a hunting camp outside of Jackman and that he’ll be up there for long stretches when he’s not working. There’s no indication that he’s holding down any kind of formal job, so Jackman is probably our best bet.”

  Her fingertip was resting on a speck near the Canadian border in the far western reaches of the state.

  “A long drive from Port Hope,” Barrett said.

  “Yes, it is.”

  “That’s strange, don’t you think? We’re supposed to believe that the guy was so careless and rushed that he didn’t wear gloves when he dumped the bodies, but he had to cover, what, four or five hours just to get to the dump site?”

  “I don’t have all the answers yet, but let’s remember that we’re arresting a man based on physical evidence at the crime scene, not rumors.”

  There was a palpable shift in the room. The familiar faces turned away from Barrett, and the new ones turned toward him.

&nbs
p; Emily Broward sensed the shift too, and seemed to regret causing it. Her tone softened and she said, “There is some interesting overlap with Crepeaux’s confession, though.”

  “What’s that?”

  “There’s one vehicle registered to Girard,” she said. “It’s a 1998 Dodge Dakota pickup, gray—similar to the one Crepeaux described. The license is Maine 727CRC.”

  Barrett was starting to feel punch-drunk, a fighter begging for the bell. The truck was right, but the suspect wasn’t.

  “Any distinguishing paint?”

  “If there is, it’s not noted on the registration. I’d like you and Don to check with the Girard cousin who owns a body shop outside of Biddeford. Maybe he’ll know something about the truck.”

  “Who’s the cousin?”

  “Bobby Girard. It’s not a very formal outfit. They do some towing and they buy and sell wrecked cars. Sporadic hours, cash clients, that sort of thing. I’d like you and Don to interview him and specifically ask about the truck.”

  “You said the smart money on Jeffrey Girard’s location was on Jackman.”

  “Correct.”

  “Then I’d like to be part of that trip. Please.”

  There was an awkward, heavy silence. Emily Broward’s gaze was steady and her voice clipped when she responded.

  “With all due respect, I’d rather not conflate the situation out in Port Hope with the reality that we have here.”

  The door opened then and an older man in uniform stuck his head in and said, “Lieutenant? George Kelly is on the phone.”

  The desire Barrett had to walk out of the room ahead of Broward and take the call was so intense that he shifted in his chair. Johansson looked at him as Broward left the room, his jaw tight, and Barrett knew he was fighting the same feeling.

  Broward was gone for perhaps ten minutes, and when she came back in, she had a tight smile and a fighter’s eyes.

  “Mr. Kelly just confirmed by check receipt that Jeffrey Girard was paid to pressure-wash his decks in July.” She paused for a beat and then said, “That puts him at the property when both Ian and Jackie would have been there.”

  “Mathias Burke would have hired him, then,” Barrett said. “Or found him. George relied on him for every detail of that house’s care.”

  “We’ll certainly keep that in mind. But the check was written to Jeffrey Girard, and Jeffrey Girard’s fingerprints are present at the crime scene.”

  There was an undercurrent to her tone that said she was running out of patience. Barrett stayed silent for the rest of the meeting. When it broke up, Emily Broward headed northwest with an arrest warrant in hand, and Barrett headed southeast to talk to the suspect’s cousin.

  “It’s bullshit that they’re sending us south,” Barrett said to Johansson.

  “Yeah.”

  “The idea that Girard worked on the Kelly property puts him in Burke’s realm. If he moved those bodies, he’d likely have needed help. I don’t think this discredits Kimberly’s confession. Not yet.”

  Don didn’t answer.

  “Maybe the cousin will have something,” Barrett said. “Want me to drive?”

  “I’ll just meet you there,” Don said, and then he walked to his car without a look back, leaving Barrett alone in the parking lot.

  15

  He was on I-95, headed for Biddeford, when Johansson called.

  “They got something from the autopsy,” Johansson said.

  “They’ve already done the autopsy?”

  “This morning, I guess. Don’t know how much help it will be, because the decomposition was advanced, but…they did get something.” He cleared his throat. “I, uh, I thought you should hear it from me.”

  “What is it?”

  “She was pregnant,” Johansson said.

  For a long time, there was no sound except for the tires of Barrett’s Ford Explorer on the asphalt.

  “Pregnant,” he said finally, as if he were unfamiliar with the word.

  “Yeah.”

  “How…it couldn’t have been far along.”

  “Two months, tops,” Johansson said. “The ME found a, um…the start of a pelvic bone. I guess that’s the first one to form. Who knew that? I’ve got a kid, but I never knew that.”

  For a while they were both silent, and then a horn blew, and Barrett snapped his eyes to the rearview mirror, saw a Cadillac hugging his bumper, and realized he’d let his speed fall from seventy to fifty without even being aware of it.

  “Do the families know?” he asked as the Cadillac passed him. “Does Howard know?”

  “Yes. County sheriff called them. A stranger. Somebody they’d never met in their lives, never talked to. He beat Broward on it, even. Said he felt it was his duty to tell them as soon as possible.”

  “Fuck that,” Barrett said, and now his own voice was hoarse, his throat tight and thick.

  “Yes,” Johansson said. “That was my sentiment as well.”

  More silence. Barrett realized his speed was dropping off again. He felt light-headed. He shifted into the right lane and looked for an exit sign. He wanted to get off the interstate. He wanted to get out of the car and into fresh air. Wanted to punch something. Wanted to lie down and close his eyes.

  “I’ll see you in Biddeford,” Johansson said, and he hung up without another word.

  Barrett put the window down and let the wind rip into the car, grateful for the way it stung his eyes.

  16

  Bobby Girard’s auto-body shop was outside of town, located down a dirt road beside a hay field. A modular home sat across the street from three prefabricated garages. A hand-painted sign on the gate said only GIRARD’S, as if anyone who made it this far should already know what kind of business it was. That assumption wasn’t a bold one; there was nothing else on the road.

  Behind the garages, abandoned and gutted cars fought a losing turf war with the hay field. A tow truck was parked alongside a battered pickup with a snowplow attachment. The high sun gleamed off the snowplow blade, a reminder not to be fooled by summer in Maine—there would be snow again soon enough.

  The fence around the property was gated and locked; a dirty NO TRESPASSING sign dangled from the chain. Barrett parked and got out into the dust that rose when Johansson pulled his cruiser in. It was a windy day, and the breeze pushed the dust into Barrett’s eyes and mouth. For a moment, he smelled paint on the wind. Then the gust died down, and only the fresh-cut-hay smell lingered.

  Johansson got out and looked from the garage property over to the house. He wasn’t wearing a hat, and in the sunlight, his close-cropped blond hair showed a lot of gray. He’d put on weight in his months working the case. The waistband of his uniform pants should have been earning hazard pay.

  Neither of them spoke at first. Barrett knew they’d both been thinking about the autopsy result for the entire drive. He took a breath and tried to clear his head, focus on the task at hand, and not think about the arrest that was taking place in the western mountains.

  “What was it Broward said about this outfit?” he asked. “Informal operation? Guess so. Closed for business at one o’clock on a Friday.”

  “Chop shop, maybe.” Johansson sounded as distant and detached as Barrett felt, and he looked like he’d been a long time without sleep. He didn’t have sunglasses, and he kept blinking in the brightness as if he were confused.

  The killings had gone into motion on a Friday too, Barrett remembered. A hot and windy Friday, not so different than this. Here the hay rippled and the barbed wire hummed, but back in Port Hope there would be whitecaps on the bay, and down past the old orchard and the graveyard, the pines would be swaying above the pond.

  “Barrett?” Johansson said.

  “Huh?”

  “I just asked if you want to try the house.”

  “Oh. Right. Sure.”

  They walked across the road and knocked on the front door. Nothing. They stood on the porch and looked back at the property. Nothing moved among all those cars exc
ept for a starling that hustled in and out of the shadows of a windowless Oldsmobile resting on cinder blocks in the weeds.

  “Did you call Howard?” Johansson asked.

  “No. Not yet. You?”

  Johansson shook his head. He was staring at the old cars without any focus.

  “Pregnant,” he said. Then, when Barrett didn’t respond, he added, “Jackie was an only child.”

  “I know.”

  Johansson blinked, shook his head as if to clear his vision, and said, “Do we wait or go looking for him?”

  Barrett was about to suggest they leave to find a neighbor when the wind gusted, whistling over the wire fence and lifting dust from the dirt road, and he smelled the paint again. This time the wind held long enough that he was certain.

  “He’s working over there. Somebody is, anyhow. Smell that paint?”

  Johansson cocked his head, hesitated, then nodded. “I do.”

  They crossed the road and walked past their cars and up to the gate. It was chained shut and padlocked, but here the smell of the paint was even stronger, and there was a faint, staccato thumping from inside one of the garages. Barrett cupped his hands and shouted a hello. No response. Tried again; same result.

  “Climb the fence?” Johansson asked.

  “Why not.” Barrett slid his badge case out of his pocket and folded it over his belt so it was visible. The fence was basic chain link, and the gate had a crossbar that made climbing easy. He went up and over and dropped to the gravel on the other side.

  The closest of the three garages had an office built into one corner. He went over and checked the narrow window. It was dark inside, and the cluttered space was filled with stacked furniture, the file-cabinet drawers hanging open as if they’d been ransacked.

  “They’re out back,” Johansson said. “I can hear them now.”

  They walked down the rutted, hard-packed dirt lane. There were a dozen old cars between the garages, jammed in at odd angles, as if they’d been spilled there instead of parked. As they neared the last building, the thumping sound resumed, and now there was an undertone to it, a soft hiss.