Fallen Sparrow

by D. A. Keeley

  “I was with my family,” she said. “When my son was in bed, I checked for messages. There weren’t any. Figured it was a question about my shift and someone else answered it.”

  She was in gray sweatpants and an oversized T-shirt and was curled up on the living room sofa with a Lisa Scottoline novel, sipping a glass of wine.

  “I called your work phone,” he said, “not your personal phone.”

  She knew what he meant. She dog-eared the page and closed the book, took a sip of wine, and set the glass on the coffee table.

  “And if you’d have left a voicemail or called a second time I’d have known something was up and would’ve picked up, Mike. But you didn’t, and I was with Tommy. I like to compartmentalize my life as well as I can, which usually isn’t that well, but I’m trying.”

  “You’re saying that when you’re home, you’re home?”

  “I’m saying that I try to be a mom when I’m home.”

  “Look, I was calling because your theory just got more in-

  teresting.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “The guy they pulled from the burned-out cabin wasn’t killed by the fire,” he said. “He had a bullet hole in his forehead.”

  “Have they done an autopsy? The hole wasn’t caused by flying debris during the explosion?”

  “No. They found a twenty-two slug in the guy’s skull, Peyton. Can you meet me tomorrow morning at eight?”

  “I was going to email you tonight. Tommy’s teacher wants to meet me at eight.”

  “I have a meeting with Wally Rowe at eight thirty. Can you come by after that?”

  Rowe had begun life as an FBI agent. Now he was Secret Service, stationed in Boston, and responsible for coordinating trips to the region by any top government officials or diplomats. The last time Rowe made the eight-hour drive from Boston, the president had taken a fishing trip to an Aroostook County sporting camp. Rowe had visited Garrett Station to be briefed on border activity, and since Hewitt was the top-ranking federal official in the region, he’d had been included in several security details, and he’d brought some agents with him. Peyton remembered sitting in her truck at the end of a dirt road while the president (and what seemed like a small village of Secret Service agents) scoured a brook for rainbow trout. (If memory served correctly, the only one to catch a fish that afternoon had been the president’s seven-year-old grandson.)

  “I can come by around nine,” Peyton said.

  “Don’t cut your meeting short to do it,” Hewitt said. “Tommy having a hard time in school?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Anything I can do? Maybe take him out for ice cream, talk to him.”

  “That’s a kind offer, Mike. Pete took him to the batting cages last week.”

  “Same guy you brought to the Christmas party?”

  “Yeah,” she said, “Peter Dye.”

  “I remember,” Hewitt said. “I talked to him for a while at that party. Nice guy. A teacher, right?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “We’re sort of dating.”

  Sort of dating. What the hell did that even mean? Even she didn’t know what—exactly—she and Pete Dye had been doing for the past six months.

  “That was nice of him,” Hewitt said. “I’m sure he’s a good role model for Tommy.”

  “Tommy’s failing math, and the special ed teacher is having him tested. I really need to be at this meeting.”

  “Yeah,” Hewitt said, “you do. We can catch up when you get to the office.”

  “Thanks for understanding,” she said.

  Three

  Peyton was at Garrett Station Wednesday morning at 7:15, seated at her desk in the “bullpen,” as agents called it—an open area in the center of the stationhouse where agents’ desks were aligned nose to nose, not only allowing them to share desktop computers (Washington skimped on computers for agents on the Northern border) but to talk face to face about cases. Or about the Red Sox. Or a hundred other topics she’d heard over the years.

  According to the open file on her desk, Fire Marshal Mitch Lincoln wasn’t finished processing the scene. But, given what she read, the cabin was being used as a lab of some sort.

  A crystal meth lab?

  Lois arrived at the house before seven and made Tommy breakfast, so Peyton had cut out early and now sipped bitter black coffee. Regardless of the taste, she needed it. She’d lain awake staring at her bedroom ceiling, thinking of Tommy and of the meeting in forty-five minutes. Now she was in her comfort zone, lost in the reprieve of work.

  “Peyton, you’ve got a visitor,” Linda Cyr, the silver-haired receptionist who resembled Aunt Bee from The Andy Griffith Show, called from her desk near the front door.

  Peyton knew who it was. And she knew she wore a smile as she crossed the bullpen.

  “You beat everyone to work again today,” Pete Dye said to Linda.

  “He’s flirting with me again,” Linda said to Peyton when she reached the desk. “See?” She pointed to a Tim Hortons paper coffee cup.

  “You bring all the girls coffee?” Peyton asked him.

  “No, just Linda,” Pete said.

  “Oh,” Peyton said, “I guess I’ll go back to my desk.”

  “I might have an extra cup for you,” he said and extended a cup to her.

  He’d gotten into the habit of dropping off Tim Hortons coffee for her on his way to school when she was working midnight to 9 a.m.

  “You’re here early,” he said. “I swung by your house. Your mother told me you’d already left. She also made another pass at me.”

  “How embarrassing,” she said. “I’ll talk to her.”

  “No, don’t. I think she’s a pistol.”

  “She’s something alright.”

  “Busy tonight?”

  “No busier than usual. Soccer practice. Then homework.”

  “A late dinner? Keddy’s?”

  She looked at him. Those jade eyes. Was the five-o’clock shadow intentional?

  “Sure,” she said, “but I can’t meet you at Keddy’s. Come over around seven.”

  “Your house?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Great,” he said, and glanced at his watch. “I have a kid coming for extra help this morning. And they don’t call it Keddy’s anymore, not since it was sold, and that was years ago.”

  “Anyone who grew up here still does,” she said.

  Keddy’s was now the Reeds Inn and Convention Center. It was a ten-minute drive down Route 1A from Garrett, and it had changed hands and been renovated but still housed her late-­father’s favorite Italian restaurant. Given that Reeds, Maine, had a population under ten thousand, the place was a monstrosity. It had 120 rooms, a pool and fitness center, and a bar with live music on weekends. Winter—when snowmobilers descended upon the region from all over the East Coast to take advantage of Aroostook County’s Interconnected Trail System, spanning 2,300 miles—was the Inn’s busy season.

  “There’s a low-fat blueberry muffin here,” he said and set the paper bag on her desk.

  “You saying I need to diet?” she asked.

  “No, I was … That’s what you ordered the last time we went … ”

  She was grinning. “It’s too easy.”

  “Very funny,” he said and smiled. “My student’s going to be waiting. Have to run.”

  She thought he might kiss her, thought he was leaning forward to do so, but then he turned and went out the door.

  Linda and Peyton watched him go.

  “Does he shake your hand after a date?” Linda said.

  “We’re taking things slowly,” Peyton said.

  But she knew the glacial pace of their romance was her decision, and, although he said all the right things, she wondered if her reluctance to allow him into her bedroom was bothering him.

>   Finished reading the fire marshal’s update, Peyton took her coffee and knocked on Hewitt’s office door.

  “Got a sec?” she asked, peeking in.

  He waved her in.

  “I’m not interrupting, am I? I saw the Ford Taurus with government plates.”

  “Wally Rowe will be here for two weeks,” Hewitt said. “It’s fishing season.”

  “Doesn’t sound like a stationary-surveillance detail,” she said.

  “Correct. You won’t be ordering pizza. And there will be a lot of prep work, too. We’ll work with the Secret Service to give the all-clear to every goddamned brook the president wants to fish.”

  She sat down across from him, wondering how the “all-clear” would work. Would the Customs and Border Protection agents and the Secret Service review an area the day before the president planned to fish it?

  “Got a list of places he’s fishing?” she said.

  “They’re keeping that confidential.”

  “From you?”

  He shrugged. “You know how it is,” Hewitt said. “It’s the president. Everything is need-to-know. Besides, idiosyncratic crimes are on the rise.”

  “Which is just a fancy way of saying individual nut-jobs go rogue. People who don’t like that their politicians can’t agree on anything, or who don’t like tax hikes or the government’s new health-care plan, or that someone burnt their toast that morning, flip out.”

  “Pretty much,” he said. “Like the nut-job who shot Gabrielle Giffords, the Arizona congresswoman.”

  “Any word on the cause of the explosion yet?” she asked.

  “No. They’re still processing the scene.”

  Hewitt leaned back in his seat. His running shoes were next to his desk. She knew he ran to work, showered, and changed into his uniform before 6 a.m. He’d been a Navy SEAL and still looked the part. His desk was immaculate, but he moved a yellow legal pad an eighth of an inch, centering it on his desk blotter.

  “The fire marshal agrees that it was some kind of lab,” he said, “but there’s nothing conclusive that points to crystal meth. It does smell terrible out there still.”

  “Think the lab blew up accidentally?” she said.

  “You know what you need to make crystal meth?”

  She nodded. “Pseudoephedrine, red phosphorus, iodine crystals, methanol, acetone, toluene, sodium hydroxide, and muriatic acid. It’s dangerous stuff.”

  “You sound like a science major,” he said.

  “We dealt with those labs a lot in El Paso.” The pepper-spray canister on her belt was digging into her lower back, and she shifted in her seat.

  “And these labs do blow up a lot,” he said.

  “If the crank cook survives, they’re usually disfigured, and the burns are horrific. It’s why good crank cooks are in high demand.”

  “Maine DEA is coming, but that cabin was about fifty yards from the border.”

  “You’re saying we’ll be in on it?” she said.

  He pointed at her.

  She smiled. “I’ll be in on it?”

  “Yeah. You found it, and you know the family.”

  “Think about the crystal meth angle, Mike. Red phosphorus is impossible to get in most places without the purchase being a red flag. But it’s also used to make fertilizer. So if you live among potato farmers, you can buy the stuff, and no one would think twice about it. This place is made-to-order for that operation.”

  Ironically, a reason for her return to the area also made the place appealing to drug traffickers: a declining and sparse population, just ten individuals per square mile. The expression “more moose than people” meant tranquility to her. But it meant a down economy to traffickers. What she saw as a culture unto itself—an unspoken us-against-the-world mentality spawned from winter temps running to fifty below; a population that hunted for reasons other than sport: here, freezers were packed with venison, moose, bear, and partridge because the cost of a hunting license could save thousands at the grocery store—also led to some have-nots looking for a way to make a quick buck. Poverty led to vulnerability, and vulnerability led to corruption.

  “Maybe the place is made-to-order for a crystal meth lab,” Hewitt said, “but, according to Maine DEA, we don’t have a crystal meth problem.”

  “But maybe they do across the border,” she said.

  “In Youngsville?”

  “Or somewhere in New Brunswick. I’m saying we’re two hours from Fredericton, New Brunswick, a little more than that from Bangor, five from Portland, and eight from Boston.”

  “Hub of the universe,” he said and smiled. “You think it’s being transported?”

  “Maybe.” She finished her coffee and tossed the cup into the wastebasket. “The question is: where was it being sold?”

  Four

  Nancy Lawrence looked all of twenty-four and had a Carrie Underwood poster on one of the classroom walls near a verb-tense illustration.

  “I saw her in the Portland Civic Center,” she explained. “She was great.”

  “I bet,” Peyton said.

  Nancy Lawrence had blond hair and was slim, and the length of her dress seemed more appropriate for a cocktail party than classroom instruction. Then again, what did Peyton know about fashion? She counted wrist ties and a Taser among her accessories and attended her last youth soccer game wearing a .40 pistol.

  “Thank you for coming in, Mrs. Cote.”

  “Please, call me Peyton.”

  “Oh, sorry. It’s a habit my parents drilled into me.”

  “Call your elders mister or missus?”

  “Um, would you like to take a seat?” Nancy Lawrence pointed at the chair across from her.

  It was a classroom chair designed for fifth-graders. Perfect. Now Peyton felt huge and old.

  “Anyway,” she said squeezing into the seat, “thanks for taking time to see me. I’m worried about my son.”

  “He’s being evaluated.”

  “Yes, and I’m awaiting the results. But I wanted to see how he’s doing in your class?”

  “Students change classes in fifth grade,” Nancy said. “Not all districts do it like that. But, here, fifth grade is middle school. I only have Tommy for math.”

  “And how is he doing?”

  “To be truthful,” Nancy said, “he needs to work harder. He’s failing.”

  “He finds the material very difficult, but he’s working hard—two, three hours each night.”

  “Really?”

  A buzzer sounded. Nancy Lawrence drank some coffee. It smelled like hazelnut. Peyton wished she’d been offered a cup.

  “Yes, really. Ms. Lawrence—”

  “Call me Nancy.”

  “Nancy, his scores are not indicative of his effort.”

  “I’m glad to hear that.”

  Peyton watched as Nancy Lawrence crossed her legs and bobbed her ankle. She wore an ankle bracelet and had a tiny heart-shaped tattoo near her right ankle.

  “Where do we go from here?” Peyton asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Can he get extra help?”

  “Are you offering to pay for a tutor?”

  “I guess,” Peyton said. “There’s no free time during the day when he could meet with you?”

  “No.”

  Peyton wouldn’t have been surprised if Nancy Lawrence snapped her gum and twirled her hair around an index finger.

  Garbed in her uniform greens, Peyton crossed her legs, her military-style boot dangling three inches off the floor, and felt her iPhone vibrate in a cargo pocket of her forest-green work pants.

  “Is there a plan to help Tommy?” Peyton asked.

  “We don’t have an IEP, if that’s what you mean. Once the testing is completed, Tommy’s teachers will meet to put together a plan, if the testing dicta
tes one is needed.”

  “IEP?”

  “An individual educational plan,” Nancy said. “LD kids get them. They’re district-mandated, maybe even state-mandated. The district makes us create them.” She reached for her coffee cup.

  “You say that like you don’t think much of them. Do they work?”

  “Sometimes they work,” Nancy said. “I like them just fine. They’re not easy to create or to execute. And, truth be told, I think a lot of the consultants who run these tests overdo it. Not every kid who struggles has a learning disability. Some kids just need more time or need to work harder.”

  Peyton cleared her throat.

  Before she could speak, Nancy Lawrence said, “Tommy’s teachers are meeting later today. I think the testing has been completed, but I’m not sure. We all want Tommy to get what he needs.”

  Peyton stood. She felt flushed.

  “Are you okay, Ms. Cote? I’m sorry if I upset you. I’m sure this is disappointing for you.”

  “It’s not my child who I’m disappointed in, Ms. Lawrence. Please be clear on that.”

  “I feel like you’re upset.”

  “I’m sorry if my child is an inconvenience for you,” Peyton said and walked out of the room.

  She started down the hallway, rounded the corner, and saw Tommy at his locker. His back was to his mother. But Peyton saw a boy much taller than Tommy standing near him, speaking. The tall boy grinned, but his expression wasn’t joyful—he wore a sly, cruel smirk. Peyton had seen the adult version of that smirk—on coyotes who promised Mexicans an escape into the US only to take the life savings from the desperate and leave families in the treacherous conditions of the West Texas desert.

  Her palms felt damp, and she stopped walking. The tall boy was pointing at Tommy now, laughing. He pushed Tommy’s shoulder. Tommy rocked backward. Another buzzer sounded, and the taller boy turned and walked away.

  Tommy leaned forward, his shoulders sagging in relief. He stared into his locker for several moments before gathering his books.

  She stepped back so he wouldn’t see her.

  But when he turned around, books in hand, she saw that he was crying.

  Peyton needed coffee and time to clear her head. She left Garrett and drove ten minutes south to Tim Hortons in Reeds, parked, and went inside.