Fallen Sparrow

by D. A. Keeley

  ployees.

  “Not exactly,” she said. “Is Simon Pink still employed here?”

  He shook his head. “No way.”

  The crow’s feet around Buckley’s eyes said he was older than he looked. Or maybe life had thrown a lot at him, and stress had caused the wrinkles. Peyton had interviewed enough people to have seen both scenarios many times.

  Buckley wore a Maine Winter Sports Center golf shirt and looked like a guy who used the winter months to Nordic ski. Peyton hadn’t done much Nordic skiing, preferring snowshoeing, but she knew of the Nordic Heritage Center, located between Reeds and Garret, a place where Olympic Nordic skiers and biathlon athletes came to train year-round. She’d been inside the 6,500-square-foot lodge once and took Tommy hiking along the mountain-biking trails in the summer.

  “Not a fan of Mr. Pink?” she said.

  “Care to see his application and résumé? Sonofabitch lied to me. Said he was an out-of-work chemist.”

  She said, “I’d like to see his file.”

  “I’ll go get it. Guy should’ve listed ‘creative writing’ on the damned résumé.”

  Buckley got up and left the room. He returned with two paper coffee cups and a manila folder under his arm. He set a coffee in front of Peyton and handed her the folder. She read Simon Pink’s résumé. It was suitable for the work Buckley hired him to do.

  “You said he told you he was a chemist,” she said. “The top qualification he lists here is a commercial driver’s license.”

  “Maybe he was full of shit about being a chemist.” He shrugged. “He said he took his driving classes at Northern Maine Community College. We needed a driver, so I hired him.”

  “And?”

  “And it didn’t work out,” Buckley said.

  “Tell me about it.”

  “He worked for me a year ago. The guy was weird. I could tell that about a week into his employment. He was in this office for something, and he starts talking about the World Junior Biathlon.”

  “At the Nordic Heritage Center?”

  “Yeah. I’m on the board of directors out there. At the time, the Junior Biathlon was six months away. But I told him we were planning, looking for volunteers. Then the guy offended me.”

  “How?”

  “He called the place a liberal outpost where yuppies hang out and talk about liberal politics.”

  “The only people I’ve ever seen out there,” she said, “are the athletes training for the Olympics.”

  “A handful of them live there and practice, yeah. The whole conversation was bizarre. Then he got an OUI, so I cut him loose. I hear Fred St. Pierre hired him. Fred sure as hell didn’t check

  references. Pink in trouble again?”

  “He’s dead,” she said.

  “Drunk driving?”

  She shook her head.

  “Well, I never wished the guy any harm. But I admit I didn’t want him around here. I never felt like he was really stable.”

  The coffee was no better than that which they brewed at Garrett Station. On the wall behind Buckley hung a photo of him and a boy kneeling next to a slain deer. Buckley held what looked like a .30-06; the boy held a shotgun. Both barrels pointed skyward, away from the deer and each other—they were hunters who knew what they were doing, not victims of “buck fever.” With his free hand, Buckley was lifting the deer’s head by the antlers, smiling broadly at his conquest; the boy’s expression was different, sullen. She imagined the boy had either vomited or turned away when Buckley had undertaken the gruesome work of field dressing the deer.

  Buckely turned to the photo. “Know any hunters?” he asked.

  She nodded. “I hunt,” she said. “My father introduced me to it. Now I take my son. Field dressing a deer isn’t for the faint of heart.”

  “No. My boy didn’t do well on that day,” he said, eyes still on the photo.

  “My father used to send me out to the road after we shot one, so I wouldn’t have to watch.”

  “Ever shoot one yourself?”

  She held up two fingers.

  “Two?” He shook his head and whistled quietly. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but you don’t look like a hunter.”

  “I’m tougher than I look,” she said.

  “I bet you are. You single?”

  “What made you think Simon Pink was unstable?”

  He chuckled and drank some coffee. “All business, huh?”

  She waited.

  “I just always felt like the guy was full of shit,” he said. “I don’t know if that makes sense. Just something about him. Never seemed like he was leveling with me. I can’t really describe it.”

  He didn’t need to. She’d questioned thousands of people at the international border crossing between El Paso and Juarez, had been lied to hundreds of times, and had relied on gut instinct and a well-earned grasp of human nature and the signs people unwittingly offered—a blink, a sudden urge to wipe a damp palm, an unwillingness to look her in the eye—to know when she was being bullshitted.

  “Funny thing was,” he continued, “that I could never see a reason to lie.”

  She said, “What did he lie about?”

  “I don’t know. It wasn’t like that, not like I caught him in a lie. I just never thought he was telling me the whole truth. Just little stuff that didn’t add up. Like he said he was from Youngsville, but he didn’t have a French accent.”

  “Did he have any accent?”

  “He sounded like Drago from Rocky IV.”

  That went with Fred St. Pierre’s “Russian” accent claim.

  “Anyway,” he said, “the guy smoked like a Canadian—two, three packs a day. That’s really all I can tell you. I have another meeting in five minutes.”

  She stood and said she’d show herself out.

  “Come by anytime,” he said.

  She thanked him—and wondered why he hadn’t asked exactly how Simon Pink died.

  Seven

  The road was dotted with Norway pines and black spruces. She hated the Expedition’s air conditioner, but in the summer, riding with the windows down meant an onslaught of Aroostook County’s official bird, the mosquito. She considered it a trade-off: Moving from El Paso meant no more 120-degree desert hikes. (“But it’s a dry heat”—bullshit!) Instead, she’d traded the heat for the perils of mosquito season, which lasted two-thirds of the summer. At least this far north (one actually drove south to get to Montreal), summer meant daylight for eighteen hours.

  Her window was partly open, but she still heard the CB radio crackle and a smattering of voices over the rush of wind. The frequency was used by all law-enforcement agencies in Aroostook County, and she knew many residents among this aging population owned scanners and followed the police and Border Patrol calls throughout the day. In fact, the scanner in the Garrett Barber Shop had provided never-ending fodder for conversation since her late father had sat in those chairs.

  All of it made radio transmissions about as private as a Web page—and made her cherish her iPhone. The radio was typically used only for mundane calls or requests for backup. But since the region had only three state police detectives and many municipal forces had fewer than five officers, Border Patrol served as backup on nearly every police assignment. And since Aroostook was the largest county east of the Mississippi, totaling seven thousand square miles, it also meant a lot of driving.

  But this call wasn’t far away, and Peyton had been there once already this day.

  She nearly leapt to grab the radio and offer her services as backup. She wanted to be at the scene.

  After all, she knew her interview had caused this domestic dispute.

  Marie St. Pierre was sitting on a rocking chair on the wraparound porch, crying quietly, when Peyton pulled the Expedition next to the state police cruiser just after noon, got out, and bounded
up the stairs.

  “Mrs. St. Pierre, what happened?”

  “Nothing,” Marie said and stopped crying as if on cue—and, Peyton thought, like someone who’d practiced doing so.

  Marie sat as if frozen in the rocking chair, staring at the farmland like she was itemizing every inch of the five hundred-plus acres.

  A tractor, its tires as tall as a man, sat motionless in the field. Two long arms extended from the tractor’s sides like skeletal wings resembling something from a science-fiction movie. Peyton knew the arms sprayed insecticide, and she knew the cabin was likely air-conditioned and had a Bose stereo—whoever used the tractor, in fact, would be more comfortable in it than she was in her Ford Expedition. But no one was in it now; the cab was empty.

  Peyton had been at domestic dispute scenes offering obvious victims: black eyes, bruises, missing teeth. This scene offered evidence, too.

  “Did Mr. St. Pierre hit you?”

  “God no.” Marie was looking straight at Peyton now. “Hit me? Good God, Fred would never do that.”

  “Tell me what happened.” Peyton took the chair next to her, looking at the woman’s cheek.

  Marie began to rock. The chair creaked as it arced forward and rolled back. Peyton remained silent. She could see the gray roots in Marie’s hair. Stress? Or a bad dye job? She wouldn’t press her. Not yet. The best interviews, she learned long ago, occurred when the witness steered the discussion.

  The sun was high overhead, offering golden shafts that traversed the canopy of the yard’s lone maple and splashed onto the hood of the Expedition. Peyton felt the impulse to put on her sunglasses, but didn’t. Sometimes an interview relied on non-verbal language. And Marie had a palm-size bruise on her face. A slap? Or a punch? No sunglasses. Eye contact could make the difference in getting her to talk about it.

  “Who called the police, Marie?”

  “I did.”

  “What did you say when you called?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “There’s an officer inside with your husband,” Peyton said, “right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then he can’t come out here, Marie.”

  Marie’s right hand absently bunched the fabric of her dress as if drying her damp palm.

  Peyton’s hands were folded calmly in her lap. “What was the argument about?”

  Marie turned to face her, narrowed her eyes, and opened her mouth. But the would-be protest passed, and she went on rocking, staring at the field.

  “It’s going to come out, Marie, one way or the other.”

  Marie shook her head, but she said, “Fred asked me about Simon Pink. None of this is your business, Peyton.” She looked down at her left hand and twirled her wedding band. “I knew you when you were a little girl. Now, here you are. I can’t believe you’re here.”

  “It’s been a long time,” Peyton said.

  “You haven’t been here since Fred made Sherry call you and say she couldn’t spend time with you.”

  “Why did Fred hit you, Marie? Tell me what happened.”

  Marie looked at the tractor. “The crop wasn’t great the last couple of years. Not for anyone. Can’t control the weather, you know? Makes it so hard on these farmers.”

  Peyton waited. She’d interviewed enough people to see the pattern. The tension between them had passed. Now Marie was chatting. Eventually, she’d get to it.

  “Fred asked me why I was upset when you told us what happened to Simon. We started to argue.”

  “Where was your son?”

  “I don’t know where he is today. I was afraid, so I called the police. I overreacted. Fred didn’t hit me. I told the police woman as much when she arrived, but she won’t leave.”

  There was only one female police officer in Aroostook County. Peyton knew Maine State Police Detective Karen Smythe well. Both females worked in militaristic, male-dominated settings; they had much to talk about over coffee or dinner once a month.

  “There’s a bruise on your cheek, Marie. Detective Smythe won’t leave without finding out how that happened. And neither will I.”

  “Fred didn’t do that. I fell.”

  “This morning, when I showed you the photo of Simon Pink,” Peyton went on, “you said ‘that’s why.’ What did you mean?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You were upset when I told you Simon Pink was dead, Marie. Did you know him well?”

  “Not really. But the man was killed. That just upset me.”

  “I see. It didn’t seem to affect Fred the same way.”

  “He’s a man.”

  “Simple as that?” Peyton said.

  “I guess so. Peyton, I’m really not comfortable talking about this with you.”

  “Why did Fred sleep in the cabin, Marie?”

  “He didn’t.”

  “When I was here this morning, he said sometimes he did.”

  “Really, Peyton, I don’t have anything else to say. I mean, I’m on the school board and the Potato Blossom Civic Council.” She looked away. “I just fell. That’s all.”

  “Marie, you called the police.”

  Peyton knew damned well Fred had smacked Marie. But Marie, like so many battered women, now denied it.

  “Like I said,” Marie continued, “that was a mistake, an over-

  reaction.”

  “What upset Fred?”

  Marie was staring at the steps, shuffling her feet. The reaction made Peyton think of Tommy, the way he looked when she asked about his school struggles. Human nature, people’s most base and instinctive reactions, never deviated much.

  “I’m pretty sure I know,” Peyton said, “and I can get the tape of your 911 call to hear exactly what you said.”

  That got her attention. What had she told the 911 dispatcher that she wanted kept private?

  “I don’t have anything more to say, Peyton.”

  Fred St. Pierre was seated silently near the coffee table in the den, across from Karen Smythe, a petite, raven-haired, former University of Maine cheerleader who had very little tolerance for bullshit.

  Peyton could see them as she crossed the kitchen. A pot of stew was on the stove, its lid bouncing gently, the kitchen smelling of seasoned meat.

  “Fred, this is going to boil over. Should I turn it down?”

  Fred was staring at the coffee table. He turned to look at her over his shoulder. His face was pale now and his eyes red. He was no longer the arrogant man who’d evaluated every inch of her only a few hours earlier. If he’d been five-ten when she’d been there that morning, he was five-six now.

  He looked at the stove. “I don’t know, eh. Marie started that before … She does the cooking. I don’t know.”

  Peyton turned down the heat. “Were you going to say ‘before we started fighting’?”

  “No.”

  “What, then?”

  He shook his head. “Before I hit her. I already admitted I did it.”

  Peyton said, “Why did you hit her?”

  “Because I wanted her to leave. Now it’s too late.”

  The officers looked at him, but he offered no clarification, only: “Arrest me, if you want. But I ain’t saying another thing about it, eh. It’s between me and Marie. Only us two. You get that? Ain’t no one else involved. Get that?”

  “Karen,” Peyton said, “can I see you out here?”

  Karen nodded and came to the kitchen.

  “Mr. St. Pierre,” Peyton said, “we’ll be right here, if you need us.”

  He shrugged.

  Peyton pulled the door to the den closed.

  “Something isn’t right,” Peyton whispered.

  She and Karen Smythe stood near the kitchen sink, ten feet from the den door.

  “He’s said no o
ne else was involved several times,” Karen said. “Do you know the couple?”

  “Yes,” Peyton said.

  “Well, I plan to arrest him.”

  Through the window over the sink, they could see Marie rocking slowly on the front porch, staring out at the fields. Maybe a half-mile beyond lay the burned-out cabin, a small black shell against a windswept yellow canola field in the distance.

  “The guy confessed,” Karen said. “He slapped his wife. That can get him up to a year in the pen and a two-thousand-dollar fine, and I told him as much.”

  “We both know that’s only if he’s got a previous record,” Peyton said, “and he doesn’t.”

  “You ran him through the system?”

  “I was here this morning,” Peyton said.

  “About the stiff in the cabin?”

  “Yeah. They both knew Simon Pink. I’d like to talk to the two of them together. There’s something more to this.”

  “Fred! Oh, my God! What are you … ?!”

  It was Marie’s voice.

  Peyton turned to see Marie, on the other side of the kitchen window, sliding lower in her rocking chair, desperate to get away from whatever was to her right.

  “I’m so sorry, Marie.” It was Fred’s voice, and it seemed quiet in the aftermath of Marie’s shout. “There ain’t no other way for us.”

  “Don’t!” Marie shouted. “We can talk to her. She’ll forgive us.”

  “I hope she can forgive me.”

  Peyton unclipped the safety strap on her holstered .40, and in one fluid motion yanked the pistol from its holster and ran onto the porch.

  Eight

  Peyton and Karen Smythe were ten feet behind Fred, who stood facing Marie.

  “Drop it!” Peyton yelled.

  The blast from the .357 knocked Marie backward, toppling her rocking chair.

  Peyton watched Marie go over backward and screamed again for Fred to drop the gun. Out of the corner of her eye, Peyton saw Karen crouch behind a wicker love seat, her 9mm sited on Fred’s back.

  “Drop it, Fred!” Peyton shouted again.

  “I’m sorry,” Fred said again; then, in a whisper, “but I have to go.”