Fallen Sparrow Read online

  “Did you know him?”

  “Who?”

  “Simon Pink,” Peyton said. “You said that like you knew him.”

  “No. I read his name in the paper.”

  That, Peyton thought, was a mistake: a blatant lie. There was no way the name of the man her brother was charged with killing hadn’t come up in conversations with her brother or his attorney, especially if she and Chip were funding the defense.

  Peyton looked at Tina and raised her finger. Tina nodded and prepared her bill.

  “I don’t trust Nancy Lawrence,” Sherry said.

  “How do you know her?” Peyton said.

  “She went to school with us.”

  “She has to be ten years younger than we are,” Peyton said.

  Sherry stared at Peyton, silently. Her eyes opened and closed slowly, as if she were trying to focus.

  When Tina brought the bill, Sherry said, “We’ll get this, Peyton.”

  But Peyton insisted on paying herself.

  When she got outside, the green Ford Escape, driven by the man with the deformed hand, was gone.

  Peyton sat in the early-morning sun with her truck idling and watched the Duvall couple through the window. Chip spoke and pointed his finger at Sherry, who sat with shoulders slumping. The image reminded Peyton of Sherry as a little girl, of a cold winter day in Sherry’s bedroom when her father had burst in, pointed his finger, and scolded his daughter in front of Peyton.

  Sherry St. Pierre was now Sherry St. Pierre-Duvall. She had a Ph.D., had authored books, and traveled the world. But men, it seemed, were still telling her what to do.

  And she was still letting it happen.

  Fifteen

  A half-hour later, Peyton entered the interrogation room with two cups of coffee.

  “Eh, Christ,” Freddy St. Pierre said. “You have any idea what it’s like to sit in a cell staring at the wall all day?”

  She shook her head. “So I bet you’re glad to have company.”

  “Where’s my attorney?” he said.

  “Probably working on your defense. We can wait for him, if you want. That’s your right, and it’s totally up to you, Freddy. But I don’t think it’s necessary. I just want to chat for a few minutes.”

  She slid the paper cup of Tim Hortons coffee across the table and smiled at him. “Take it with cream and sugar?”

  His eyes narrowed. “I hear they want to move me to Houlton,” he said.

  She didn’t reply, but a move to the county jail could only improve his wardrobe: he still wore the jeans and flannel shirt he’d worn the day before, and, judging from the scent—a rich odor like sweat mixed with manure—it was time he donned the orange jumpsuit.

  “Troop F Headquarters is in Houlton,” she said, “and this is a murder investigation. So it makes sense that they’d want you near the state-police barracks.”

  He drank some coffee. “But I want to stay here.”

  “You’re going to be in a cell either way, Freddy.”

  He turned and looked out the window lined with bars. In the distance, like a reminder of all that had been lost, lay a potato field. Weeks from now, it would be a aglow with white blossoms, a prelude to the late-summer harvest. And then Aroostook County would brace for its annual hundred inches of snow, which made winter, not summer, the tourist season in this part of Maine. Up here, when it came to drawing visitors, lobsters gave way to snowmobile trails.

  “Unless I make bail,” he said.

  “At a hundred thousand dollars?”

  “It’s steep, I know. But it ain’t just about me, eh.”

  “What are you talking about?” she said. “What isn’t just about you?”

  Dark rings encircled his eyes, and his head bobbed slightly like a man either about to cry or nod off. His hands rested silently atop the Formica tabletop, one atop the other, fingernails caked with dirt. Then he reached for his warm paper cup and gently wrapped his hands around it.

  He stared at the cup with the intensity of a man lost at sea spotting a life preserver.

  “What is it, Freddy? You’re focused on that coffee cup like it’s the Holy Grail. What’s going on?”

  “I just … I need something to stare at.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s crazy,” he said. “You won’t believe me.”

  “Try me.”

  “I don’t want to leave the farmhouse, eh. Don’t want to be that far away from it.”

  “Houlton’s only forty-five minutes,” she said. “I don’t understand.”

  “It’s the last place I saw her happy,” he said.

  “Your mother?”

  He nodded and turned away like Tommy sometimes did when she brought up Jeff McComb, Tommy’s father, the man they’d moved back for Tommy to be near. The one Tommy rarely saw.

  Except Freddy St. Pierre was in his thirties. So he was right: it was a little crazy.

  Then again, who was she to say? She didn’t know what it felt like to learn your father, the man you spent every day of your life with, even as an adult, had murdered your mother and then killed himself. And now the life you’d known was gone, like a puff of smoke lost in the wind.

  She looked across the table.

  When Freddy looked away—because his eyes were watery—she knew the time was right.

  “Tell me about Nancy Lawrence, Freddy.”

  “She’s my girlfriend.”

  Peyton handed him a napkin. I wasn’t just a sympathetic gesture; she wanted him to know she’d seen him cry. The show of emotion was a demonstrative weakness, one most men were reluctant to show a female who, given their opposite places at this conference table, held power over them.

  It had to be the right type of man, but sometimes, she’d learned, you could use his chauvinistic instincts to your advantage.

  Freddy wiped his eyes and blew his nose.

  “So I imagine,” Peyton said, “that Nancy has come to visit you here.”

  “She’s my girlfriend,” he repeated.

  “She’s, what, six, eight years younger than you?”

  He shrugged. “So what?”

  “How many times has she been here to see you, Freddy?”

  He didn’t say anything, staring at his coffee cup.

  “How long have you been dating?”

  “Not too long.”

  “And you were with her the night the cabin burned?”

  He looked up. He liked this question. “Yup,” he said, his voice growing confident, like a student who’d been given the test question beforehand.

  “How’d you meet her?” Peyton asked.

  “Meet her?”

  “Yeah, how’d the two of you meet?”

  “Same as how I met you,” he said. “We all grew up together.”

  “But she’s younger than you and I. I don’t remember much about her. How’d you two start dating?” She sipped some coffee and leaned back in her seat, just two old friends chatting.

  “At Keddy’s one night,” he said. “Just started dancing one night. You know how it goes.”

  “No. How does it go?”

  “Just started dancing, and …”

  “… and you went home together?”

  “Yeah.”

  “To her house or yours?”

  “Hers,” he said. “I live with my parents.”

  Or did, she thought.

  “And now you two see each other often?”

  He pushed away from the table but didn’t stand. He looked down, eyes focused on the table leg. She knew he didn’t want to get into specifics.

  “Freddy, does that question bother you?”

  “No.”

  “Do you spend a lot of nights at Nancy Lawrence’s house,” she said, “or was Monday an aberration?”

 
“A what?”

  “Was Monday a one-time thing?” she said.

  He drank some coffee, then set the cup down. “I’d like to see my attorney now.”

  “We both know this isn’t adding up, Freddy. If you didn’t shoot Simon Pink, why do you have a bullshit alibi for the night he died?”

  “I want my lawyer.”

  She shrugged and stood. “One final question, Freddy: why did your father really let Simon Pink go?”

  Freddy stared at her, his jawbones flexing like a man struggling to hold back an outburst.

  “I think I know the answer to that question. And I think it has to do with an upcoming trip your mother had planned.”

  “You don’t know nothing,” he said, but his eyes wouldn’t meet hers.

  At the door, she said, “You know where I am, if you want to talk. And if you do talk honestly, I might be able to keep you from going to Houlton.”

  He opened his mouth, but then closed it.

  “One more thing,” she said. “Yesterday, you told me you ‘didn’t exactly know’ Simon Pink but you also admitted you shingled the roof of the cabin last fall. Only three of you worked on that roof, Freddy—you, your dad, and Simon. How well did you really know Simon Pink?”

  “I want my lawyer, Peyton.”

  “That’s a good idea, because your lawyer told the prosecuting attorney he intended to prove that you and Simon were friends to show that you’d never hurt him. You two might want to get on the same page, Freddy.”

  When he didn’t take the bait, she walked out.

  It was 10:30 a.m. when she paused at the stationhouse coffee maker, saw the no-named coffee tin on the counter, and weighed her options: How tired was she? How badly did she need coffee? Was the kick worth the bitter taste? And, finally, when the hell would someone open a Starbucks in Aroostook County?

  She poured a cup, diluted it with a lot of milk, and went to Hewitt’s office.

  “Plates on your green Ford Escape,” he said, “are registered to a rental agency.”

  She sat down across his desk from him. “One of the two rental places at the airport?”

  Aroostook County had only the tiny Northern Maine Regional Airport in Presque Isle. A puddle jumper to Boston’s Logan International was required to fly anywhere beyond New England.

  “No,” Hewitt said. “Hertz out of Boston. Your professor friend is the name on registration.”

  “Sherry St. Pierre-Duvall rented the Ford Escape?”

  “Her name,” he said, nodding. “Her Visa card. That mean something to you?”

  “Not sure,” she said.

  It meant that Sherry St. Pierre-Duvall obviously knew the man with the disfigured hand. It explained why she’d jumped to his defense when Peyton mentioned how bad the hand looked. But she had offered no indication that she knew him. And why had he remained outside?

  “Something isn’t adding up,” she said.

  “Like what?” Hewitt said.

  “Not sure,” she said, “but I just talked to Freddy St. Pierre for about twenty minutes.”

  “Jesus, Peyton.” He leaned back in his chair and shook his head.

  “What?”

  “He’s in state police custody.”

  “He’s in our building.”

  “Peyton, you interviewed the guy with no attorney present. And without telling the state police you were doing so.”

  “He volunteered to talk, Mike.”

  Hewitt said something under his breath, then: “So you think something’s there with the Nancy Lawrence alibi?”

  “I know there is,” she said. “She would no more date Freddy St. Pierre than you would.”

  “So where do we go from here?”

  “I might have indicated that if he were to talk to me,” she said, “we might be able to keep him here.”

  “Might have indicated that, huh? As opposed to him going to the state-police barracks?”

  “Anyone ever tell you that you have a way of looking at the negative side of things?”

  “My ex-wife,” he said. “What the hell difference does it make? A jail cell is a jail cell.”

  She told him Freddy’s rationale.

  “So he’s as crazy as his old man,” Hewitt said.

  Empathy wasn’t Hewitt’s strong suit, so she wasn’t about to try to explain Freddy’s reasoning.

  “And do you plan to ask the state police—who, oh, by the way, are running this murder investigation—if Freddy can stay with us? You going to tell them he misses his mommy and he’s happier here?”

  She grinned. “Anyone ever say you have a tendency to make things sound worse than they are?”

  “My ex-wife,” he repeated, “all the time.”

  “I’m just trying to get him to talk, Mike. I’ve known him a long time. He’ll open up to me before he opens up to the state cops. And I didn’t break any laws. I told him we could wait for his lawyer before I asked questions.”

  “I know you want to figure this out. You know all the players involved. But rein it in, please.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I mean it,” he said. “You’re involved in this thing because the cabin is near the border, and you were there when the murder-suicide took place. State police is still running the show.”

  “Of course they are.”

  “Is that sarcasm?”

  “From me?”

  He leaned back in his seat, head tilted. “I know seeing the murder-­suicide was tough,” he said. “Has the counseling team contacted you?”

  “There was a message on my phone. I’m fine.”

  “Sometimes it’s good to talk to somebody.”

  “I’m fine, Mike. Really.”

  Peyton was at her desk, reading an email from Detective Karen Smythe. Karen wrote that with only four state troopers assigned to cover all of Aroostook County, the stateys were more than willing to utilize the feds. It meant Fred St. Pierre Jr. would continue being babysat at Garrett Station for a few more days. As it turned out, Freddy wasn’t going anywhere after all.

  Peyton looked toward Hewitt’s open door; he’d been CCed on the email, and she knew he’d be cursing her “luck” under his breath.

  She had sixty-five unread emails and was hitting the Delete key with the speed and fervor of a videogamer when a Tim Hortons coffee was placed next to her keyboard.

  She looked up and smiled at Pete Dye.

  “School year is almost over,” she said.

  “With all the snow days we had this year, I feel like we’re going until the Fourth of July.”

  “Thanks for the coffee,” she said. “Damned email has me chained to the desk.”

  Dye was wearing a white button-down with a tie and khaki pants. He shifted from one foot to the other as if he’d been standing there for an hour.

  “I owe you for dinner the other night,” he said.

  She pushed away from her desk and swiveled to look him in the eye.

  “That’s why you brought coffee?”

  “Sorry I haven’t called or texted,” he said. “I’ve been busy.”

  During their conversation in her driveway, he said he’d call the next day. She hadn’t heard from him. So the coffee was an apology.

  “I don’t run a restaurant,” she said.

  “I don’t follow you.”

  “There are no IOUs after I invite someone to dinner, Pete. I invited you because I wanted to spend time with you.”

  “I didn’t mean it like that,” he said, looking around.

  Linda Cyr was the only other person in the bullpen and, once again, was acting like she wasn’t listening to an agent’s private conversation, eyes focused on her Sudoku. (Peyton often kidded her, saying, “We’d have found bin Laden in half the time, if we had Linda working Intel.”) Hewitt’s office door was
now closed. Six other agents were on duty and already in the field.

  “I’m trying to figure out where you and I go from here,” he said.

  “Let’s keep it simple.”

  “I thought that’s what we’ve been doing,” he said. “I was hoping we could take a step forward.” He looked at Linda, who was still trying to act engrossed in her puzzle.

  “This about sex again?” Peyton said.

  “Not sex,” he said. “Commitment.”

  She heard chair wheels grind. Then Linda stood, crossed the room, and went to the breakroom, closing the door behind her.

  “Well,” Peyton said, “sex doesn’t mean commitment for everyone.”

  “But I know it does for you,” he said.

  She looked at him then, head tilted. “Just for me?” she said. “Not for you, because you’re a player?”

  He shifted and plunged his hands into his khaki pockets. “I’m a history teacher in northern Maine,” he said. “That’s what I am.”

  And, she had to admit, a very cute one.

  “All I’m saying,” he went on, “is that I recognize that it’s not the same for me. I’m not a single mom. I don’t have as much to lose.”

  “So you understand why I hesitate.”

  “Completely.”

  “Tommy is always priority one,” she said.

  “I just want to be with you,” he said. “I’ve waited a long time.”

  “I don’t believe for one second that you’ve been crying into your pillow for the last decade,” she said. “In fact, your bed has rarely been empty, and we both know it.”

  “I’m thirty-five years old,” he said. “And my bed has been empty for the past year.”

  She shifted some papers on her desk. Was that true?

  “How about dinner tonight?” he said.

  “Keddy’s?” she said.

  “Someone told me they don’t call it that anymore,” he said.

  “That’s my line.” She had to smile.

  “I’ll get you at seven,” he said and smirked as he walked away.

  When the front door closed behind him, Linda walked out of the breakroom.

  “Peyton,” she said, and shook her head, “with those blue eyes and that blond hair, if he was any cuter, and I was any younger, you’d have your hands full trying to keep him.”