Jeanette Crepeaux closed her eyes. “She wanted some of my pain pills. I didn’t give them to her.”
“But she was looking again.”
Jeanette nodded, steeled herself, and opened her eyes. “My guess would be that’s what she set off for. By now she’d usually have phoned, though. Even if it was to call me names that nobody should ever hear from their own granddaughter, she’d have phoned by now.”
She looked up at him, hot with anger again. “It’s your fault she’s out looking for pills or needles, you know that? She’s trying to block it all out. Hide from the world. That’s all because of what you made her—”
“I get the idea,” Barrett said. “Where could she be, Jeanette?”
She hesitated. He knew that she wanted to order him off the property, but she was worried about her granddaughter, and some part of her still believed that he was a potential source of help. In the end, she gave in to that part.
“If not her daddy’s, then at the Odom girl’s, probably. She goes there now because she’s still got a key, and nobody’s moved in after that girl died. That’s what you’ve turned her into—a girl who hides in a dead person’s trailer.”
“If she comes home or calls, you make sure she doesn’t leave until I see her,” he said. “Don’t let her leave without me.”
“I don’t know why I should do that.”
“Yes, you do,” he said, and then he left.
39
After finding Cass Odom’s trailer empty, Barrett drove along the coast to look for Steve Crepeaux, the car’s windows rolled down. The rain had tapered off overnight and given way to a gorgeous day, the sky and sea competing for the deepest blue, a light wind pushing off the water, temperature nearing eighty. The air was scented with ocean breezes and pines and held only the faintest trace of humidity. A quintessential Maine day, more suited to July than May.
If you weren’t looking for a drug addict and self-confessed murderer, it would be a day to treasure.
Kimberly’s mother lived in Lowell, Massachusetts, and had little contact with her daughter. Kimberly had been raised by her paternal grandmother, which gave her at least sporadic contact with her father, Steve Crepeaux. Steve had never married but had sired four children with four women. None of the children or mothers had lived with him for long, but despite this—or maybe because of it—he maintained pleasant relationships with all of them. He was one of those likable losers, a man who brought nothing but problems to friends and family but somehow was always welcomed back, like a dog who wandered off to chase cats or pursue bitches in heat and then returned with a limp, fleas, and I meant no harm eyes that promised you that a good meal was all that stood between him and changed habits. That’s just Stevie seemed to be the peninsula’s mantra.
His place was between Port Hope and Cushing, three overgrown acres with a scattering of slumped outbuildings and a house that was a bizarre blend of an ancient mobile home and a stick-built addition. The old trailer was off-white; the house was brown cedar-shake shingle. The stairs leading up to the porch were untreated deck boards; the porch itself was stained a deep red. A gutter ran down directly beside the front door and through a hole that had been cut out of the porch. Ugly as it looked, the carpentry of the marriage was solid enough, and the steps didn’t yield or creak when Barrett went up them. There were no cars in the drive, so Kimberly probably wasn’t around, but it was still worth a stop.
The front door was part of the old trailer. Barrett knocked on that and got no answer. Through the window he had a clear view of the kitchen. There was no one in sight, but dishes were stacked in the sink and an open bag of barbecue potato chips sat on the table, a few empty beer cans beside it.
And a spoon and lighter. Barrett cupped his hands and leaned forward so he could see. There was a clear brown residue on the spoon.
Steve Crepeaux had no shortage of faults and vices, but drugs weren’t among them. In fact, he’d told Barrett that hard drugs terrified him. He’d been drinking a forty-ounce beer at ten in the morning when he’d said that, but he’d been sincere.
“Kimberly?” Barrett called, and he banged on the door again. Nothing.
He walked off the porch and around the framed portion of the house and looked in at the living room. A couch and two recliners, woodstove, and television. The TV was on, Johnny Depp strutting around a pirate ship, but nobody was in the room.
Barrett moved away and walked through the weeds to the opposite side of the house and the next window. He could hear music playing faintly through it.
The ground sloped away here, so he had to stand close to the wall and stretch to get a look. This room was a small bedroom, and on this side of the house, the sunlight worked against him, putting a glare off the glass. He shielded his eyes. The first thing he saw was that the footboard of the tiny bed was an old ship’s wheel. A child’s bed, though he wasn’t aware of any children having been raised here. The rest of the room was cluttered and cramped but there was no sign of human life except for the music. The same song played on a loop, something both beautiful and sorrowful, a woman’s gorgeous voice singing about flying sparks over a haunting guitar riff. He was looking for the source of the music when he finally saw Kimberly.
He’d looked right over her the first time. She was so small that her body was scarcely visible among the tangled blankets. He noticed her feet before anything else—bright red flip-flops poked up out of pale blue blankets. She was on her back and her hair was splayed out over the pillow and she looked like she was sleeping.
“Kimberly!” He banged on the window. The single-pane glass was so thin that he was lucky he didn’t crack it. Kimberly didn’t react.
He stepped back from the window and ran to the front door. It was unlocked. Most doors out here would be. There wasn’t much crime to speak of on the peninsula, and people knew their neighbors. Kimberly Crepeaux wouldn’t have left her doors unlocked, though. Not after the panic she’d shared with her grandmother.
He entered the small, musty room and called her name again, but the only answer was a soft voice on the television. The house smelled of flat beer and old cigarette smoke, more like a long-closed tavern than a home. He crossed the living room and turned left and found the bedroom. Kimberly hadn’t changed position. She was wearing shorts and a tank top and those red flip-flops, and she looked incredibly small.
He reached for her shoulders. Her skin was cool.
“Kimberly.”
No response. He rolled her toward him, and her head flopped bonelessly. Her cell phone rested beside her cheek, and soft music played from it, that pure and starkly beautiful voice: A disaster, dignified…sparks fly.
He knew by then that it was hopeless but couldn’t allow himself to accept it yet. So he searched for her wrist in the tangled bedding, wanting to check for a pulse, and it was only by an inch that he missed sticking himself with the syringe that lay beside her.
He jerked his hand back like he’d brushed by a coiled rattlesnake. The steel tip gleamed with cold menace against the pale sheets.
Float on my back, watch the purple sky the woman sang through the phone, as if she were serenading Kimberly. I know you don’t recognize me. But I’m a live wire, finally. Sparks fly…
Barrett wiped sweat from his face and said, “Damn it, Kimberly,” as if chastising the dead girl, but then his voice broke and he went silent again. He took a moment to collect himself and then, carefully this time, he found Kimberly’s right arm. It was so thin that he could encircle her forearm with his hand. He pressed his index finger to her wrist.
No pulse.
He put his fingers on the tip of her chin and, very gently, turned her head to face him. Against the pale cast of death, the spray of freckles across her nose and cheeks looked red as blood. Her green eyes stared at his, and though he knew he was imagining the accusation in that unseeing stare, it didn’t make the feeling any less real.
When he moved his hand from her chin, her head immediately rolled back to th
e left, as if she were turning away from him.
He picked up her phone and hit the home button. The screen told him the source of that haunting voice: Waxahatchee. The song was “Sparks Fly,” and Kimberly had died with it playing on loop. Beyond that, there was no information. No missed calls or text messages were visible because the phone was locked, asking for a pass code. It was a cheap smartphone and he wasn’t familiar with the make or model, but it looked like an iPhone, and his iPhone unlocked with one of two methods: a pass code or a thumbprint.
He looked at Kimberly’s hand. He didn’t know whether it would work. It had been a while since blood had flowed through her hands. But maybe…
When he picked up her cold hand, her skin was the texture of a raw scallop, and he had to look away and swallow hard. Then he brought her cold thumb to the home button and pressed the soft flesh against the phone, his own thumb on the back of her thumbnail.
The screen blinked away, and for a moment he thought it had worked. Then the screen refreshed and told him once more to enter a pass code. No biometric lock on the knockoff phone, evidently.
He wiped the phone down to remove his prints and considered muting the sound, but then decided against it. She’d chosen the song as she went out. She should have it as long as possible.
He put the phone back by Kimberly’s cheek as the singer sang I take it back, I was never alone, and then he covered her with the blanket to ward off a chill she would never feel again.
“I’m sorry,” he told her. Then he went outside to stand in the warm sea breeze beneath the stunning sapphire sky while he called to report the corpse.
40
The man who’d once arrived in Port Hope, Maine, to get people to talk to the police now refused to do so himself.
“I hate to do this to you,” Barrett told the state police lieutenant who’d come in after Barrett declined to make a statement to the first officer on scene. “But I will need a lawyer present before I talk.”
“What in the hell for? You’re an FBI agent! You know all about this shit!”
“You just answered your own question,” Barrett said. He knew enough to understand that he had left physical evidence behind at a death scene, that it would not be hard for someone to imagine a motive for his desire to settle old scores with Kimberly Crepeaux even before he’d been driven off the road by a man with a shotgun in hand, and that he probably had more enemies than friends in the Maine law enforcement community.
“It looks like just an overdose, man. All I need is for you to explain how you got there and walk me through the scene,” the investigator implored.
“I’ll do that through an attorney,” Barrett said. He’d taught this class long before he’d become a cop. No matter how badly you wanted to believe otherwise, there was legitimate risk for an innocent person eager to help an investigation.
Kimberly Crepeaux could have testified to that.
They didn’t charge him with anything, although they threatened to. Once his Boston-based criminal defense attorney, Laura Zaltsberg, got through with her first phone call, Barrett found himself being escorted quickly out of the police station. This was not unusual for Laura’s clients.
“You’ll be back here,” the state cop promised him. “With Zaltsberg or without her, you’ll be back.”
“I intend to be back,” Barrett said. “But it will only be with her.”
After he drove off, he made a few extra turns and watched the mirror, and when he was sure he was not being followed, he pulled to the curb and got out of the car. He lay on his back on the pavement and checked the frame, feeling with his hands for another tracker. When he was certain there wasn’t one, he got back behind the wheel and drove to Howard Pelletier’s home.
He knew that word of Kimberly’s death and his presence at the scene was circulating by now. Roxanne would know, and the police he’d worked with in Maine and those he hadn’t, and Colleen Davis, the prosecutor who’d put such faith in him, and Jeanette Crepeaux, whose slap he could still feel on his cheek—all of them would know by now.
And maybe the man who’d driven the black truck with the grille guard and held the shotgun at point-blank range would also know. In a perverse way, Barrett was grateful to that man. He had dozens of stitches and a few pints of strangers’ blood in him because of that man, and he was also lacking a few things he’d once had: his own cell phone, his rental car. He’d been put adrift by that attack, but right now, that didn’t feel so bad. The tether between him and the real world had been severed, and at this moment, he was glad. He didn’t want to hear rational, reasoning voices. Standing above Kimberly Crepeaux’s tiny, lifeless body, he’d felt the real world recede and a black, comforting rage surge forward.
He didn’t want to let go of that just yet.
Howard came out of the house at the sound of the Mustang’s engine and looked at the car with suspicion until Barrett got out. Then he hurried down the steps. When he drew close enough to see Barrett’s head wound, he stopped and studied it with interest.
“You go through the windshield?” he asked, curious but not horrified. Lobstermen were rarely impressed by wounds.
“Nope. I’m not quite sure what was responsible for the redecorating of my dome. The roof of the car, maybe. It got smashed down pretty well.”
“You have any luck finding her?” Howard asked, and the question took something out of Barrett, like a bloodletting. Howard Pelletier had lost his mother, his wife, and his daughter. He seemed like a man who truly had nothing left to lose, and yet here Barrett was, about to take something else away from him.
“Howard, can we go inside?”
“Sure, sure.”
He led Barrett to the garage instead of the house. He seemed more comfortable there. Howard took the stool by the workbench and slid another one over to Barrett. A stack of traps was piled near the door, and they smelled of salt water and old bait.
“I thought she’d have called me,” Howard said. “After what happened to you, I was sure that I’d hear from—”
“Howard, she’s dead.”
Howard Pelletier blinked at him as if he’d misheard. “Ayuh, I know. But that don’t mean there’s no point in trying. I thought we all agreed on that.”
“I don’t mean Jackie. I mean Kimberly.”
Barrett hadn’t believed this could be worse than the trip he’d made out to the island to share Kimberly Crepeaux’s confession. Somehow, though, the look on Howard’s face made this one worse. That day, he’d resisted. Today, he merely accepted, and Barrett couldn’t remember seeing a man look more broken.
“Aw, no. Aw, shit, no.”
Barrett sat there in the garage that smelled of salt and rust some ten miles from the studio that had smelled of fresh primer and clean sawdust and watched a tear work its way down Howard’s wrinkled cheek and into his beard. He was crying over the loss of a woman he believed had helped hide his daughter’s body.
Barrett understood it. Others wouldn’t, but others didn’t know what it was like to live with questions of innocence and guilt. They didn’t know how much hope you could put in anyone who promised to replace the questions with answers.
“I shouldn’t care,” Howard said, as if reading Barrett’s thoughts. “After what she did and what she put me through, I should be happy to hear it. But she seemed to want to make it right so bad. She seemed to be trying, and it wasn’t any good for her to try. It was worse for her to tell the truth than to just be a liar. But she decided to tell the truth.”
Howard blew his nose into a rag and then shook his head savagely, as if he needed to rattle something loose in there, needed to knock silent some tired, creaky gear that simply wouldn’t stop turning.
“How’d Mathias do it?”
“I’m not sure he did it.”
“Oh, bullshit! Stop with the damned dancing and say what we both know! That son of a bitch—”
“The DEA tells me I’m looking the wrong way,” Barrett said, and that silenced Howard.
Barrett told him about the hospital visit from DEA agent Nick Vizquel and about the one question Vizquel had hoped for help with.
“Kimberly can’t answer that anymore,” Barrett said. “But if the toxicology report matches Odom’s, then she’s still got answers.” He felt a little sick, and then for some reason he found himself holding his head in his hands and telling Howard Pelletier the details of the scene, right down to the child’s bed with the ship’s wheel and the phone by her cheek and the soft, gorgeous song it had been playing when she died.
“It doesn’t matter to me whether she put the needle in her arm or someone else did,” he continued. “Either she was murdered and it was made to look like an overdose, or she took her own life because she wanted to go on her own terms, and she didn’t think she’d have that option for long. You tell me, Howard, does it really matter?”
“No.”
Barrett nodded and rubbed his jaw and stared at the floor. “It could be hard to inject somebody and make it look like an accident,” he said. “If they were resisting, you’d have to fight them. But what if they weren’t resisting? What if they didn’t know what they were taking, but you did?”
Silence. Howard watching him.
“I need to find out who she got it from,” Barrett said. “That is what I need to do.”
“There are four of them now,” Howard answered.
“What?”
“My daughter and Ian. Then both of the girls who helped Mathias. And you damn near made five yesterday, didn’t you?” Howard tugged on his beard. “He’s going to have an easier time now, with Kimmy dead. Your way of settling this hasn’t worked. I don’t believe it ever will. But that doesn’t mean there’s no way to settle it.” He released his beard, and his voice was exhausted when he said, “I’ve tried to give you time. Tried to do it the right way. But I got nothing left. Not with Kimmy gone too. There’s nobody to say the truth in the courtroom, and the evidence you find only helps him.”
How It Happened Page 22