Fallen Sparrow Read online

  After several casts, McPherson reeled his line in, and they moved on. They were maybe a mile into the trail when McPherson slowed.

  “What is it?” Peyton said from thirty feet behind.

  “Just a couple footprints.” He stepped closer and knelt.

  “Border Patrol agents call that sign-cutting,” she said.

  “Yeah,” he said, “I’ve heard Hewitt use that term before.”

  Sign-cutting meant reading a landscape’s characteristics and deducing what might have taken place there. It could mean noticing a broken tree branch and deciding the corresponding footprints were traveling west. Or it could mean noting the difference between a wind-swept desert or snow-covered trail and one that had been swept with a broom.

  “Tough to spot a footprint in pine needles,” she said, moving closer, standing at his side, genuinely interested.

  “See how these are turned over and crushed?” he said.

  “Animal?”

  “Boot,” he said.

  “You can distinguish a footprint from an animal track?”

  “I do this all day, every day. And when I’m not working, I’m moonlighting as a guide.”

  She didn’t dispute it. No one knew the Maine woods like game wardens who traipsed these trails for hours, year after year, checking licenses and looking for poachers. And no one would know these parts better than a warden who also served as a guide.

  “What do you see?”

  “Someone’s been through here recently,” he said, “maybe within the past twenty-four hours. But it looks like they tried to sweep over their tracks.”

  She knelt closer. “I dealt with this in Texas. People would tie a broom to their waist to sweep their tracks as they walked.”

  The pine-needle bed didn’t much resemble a desert floor, but she saw similar brush lines.

  McPherson continued on. It was eighty-five in the mid-day sun and humid. Peyton paused, took her pack off, unscrewed the top of the Nalgene bottle, and drank. The water was no longer cold, but it was refreshing, nonetheless.

  She leaned forward to return the bottle to her bag when the overwhelming, startling rush of hot air hit her. The physical sensation was the same as she’d once had standing near a jet engine on the tarmac in El Paso. The sound, though, was like a shotgun’s guttural rumble, but louder—it engulfed her.

  She was on her back before she realized the explosion had knocked her off her feet.

  Thirty-Two

  In the aftermath of the blast, she sat up, disoriented but certain what she’d heard wasn’t a gunshot.

  “Mr. McPherson,” she said, shaking her head and struggling to her feet. Off balance, she stumbled and fell. The blood and her torn pant leg—indicators of why she couldn’t stand—served as ice water to her face: there had been an explosion.

  No longer dazed, she yelled, “Mr. McPherson!”

  On hands and knees, she swiveled to see him. Pete McPherson lay maybe thirty feet ahead of her. In her periphery, she saw something leathery that was streaked with red, the way paint beads when applied too thickly, and what looked like elastic cords draped over the object’s side.

  She recognized it as a boot. Tendons and ligaments, from a severed foot, were dangling.

  She vomited once, then collected herself. Turning, she saw the corpse.

  In three bloodied sections.

  Mike Hewitt’s face was the color of dead ashes; Wally Rowe, crestfallen, leaned forward, forearms on his thighs, staring at his paper coffee cup; and Col. Mary Steuben, head of the Maine Warden Service, looked pissed off Wednesday at 3:45 p.m. in the Aroostook County Sheriff’s Office in Reeds.

  The four of them sat around a glass coffee table as if this were a social hour. Except the expressions on their faces made it clear there was nothing social about this gathering: they were there to talk about death and bombs.

  “How’s your leg?” Steuben said.

  “Fine.” Peyton made a small flutter with her hand. “It’s nothing.” And she meant it—eight stitches below her knee, compared to McPherson’s fatal injuries, were nothing.

  “Booby-trapped?” Steuben said.

  The Maine Warden Service shared space with the Aroostook County Sheriff’s Office. Steuben had a second-floor corner office overlooking Main Street. Her desk was twice the size of Hewitt’s and looked like it was real cherry wood. There was a red leather sofa, two matching high-backed chairs, and glass end tables. A framed photo of Steuben with United States President Stu MacMillan hung on the wall.

  “That’s what we think,” Rowe said. He didn’t turn to face her. He sat staring at the floor.

  “We have state troopers out there right now,” Hewitt said, “to set up a half-mile perimeter to be sure no one gets near the area. There could be more explosives hidden.”

  “It wasn’t a gas line?” Rowe said.

  “No.” Hewitt shook his head. “And the nuts and screws they pulled from Peyton’s leg make everyone think this was a homemade job.”

  “Are we tying this to the cabin?” Peyton asked.

  “We’ll have to see.”

  “Bomb techs will be at the explosion site within an hour,” Rowe said. “They’ll work until sundown and then start again at daybreak.”

  Steuben folded her hands in front of her. “He was a good man.”

  Hewitt drank his coffee.

  Peyton stretched her leg out before her. “Do you think that bomb was meant for the president?” she asked.

  “We swept that area seventy-two hours ago,” Rowe said. “We used dogs.”

  “It’s a big area,” Hewitt explained. “You couldn’t have covered the whole thing.”

  “I wasn’t there, personally. But this is what the Secret Service does. My guys wouldn’t have missed it.”

  “Maybe someone planted an explosive after your guys went through,” Hewitt said.

  Rowe shook his head. “No one even knows where the president is fishing.”

  “The president told a bunch of townspeople he liked that stream last year,” Peyton said. “I heard about it at the diner.”

  “And people here know when the president is supposed to arrive,” Steuben said. “His daughter is already here.”

  “Is the daughter fishing?” Peyton asked.

  Rowe shook his head. “Just visiting.”

  “Don’t get defensive, Wally,” Hewitt sipped his coffee. “This isn’t on you.”

  Rowe said, “That poor sonofabitch.”

  “I just want to make sure Pete McPherson gets the credit he deserves,” Steuben said. “I think a Congressional Medal of Honor is in order.”

  “So you’re declaring this an assassination attempt?” Peyton said.

  Steuben looked at Peyton. “Agent Cote, that decision will be made far from my office.”

  “In Washington,” Rowe said. “And we can’t be sure who that bomb was intended for.”

  Hewitt nodded. “Off the record, I think it was meant for the president, and I think this raises the stakes of what Customs and Border Protection does. I’d be willing to call it an act of terrorism.”

  “I don’t think it’s that well organized,” Rowe said.

  “I think we’re looking at something we haven’t seen before,” Mike Hewitt said.

  “And what is that?” Steuben asked.

  “I don’t know exactly. It doesn’t feel well organized. But it feels like an assassination attempt.”

  “‘Feels like’ isn’t definitive enough, Mike,” Rowe said.

  Peyton was nodding. “I know what you mean, Mike. It feels like someone took a shot in the dark. Plant a mine and see if the president hits it.”

  “That’s a hairbrained scheme,” Steuben said.

  “Let’s see what they find out there,” Hewitt said. “If that’s it, then that’s it, and you’re rig
ht.”

  “But I agree with Mike,” Peyton said. “There’s something here. And it feels more like a Gabby Giffords, Newtown, Colorado movie theatre situation than al Qaeda.”

  “Idiosyncratic crimes,” Hewitt said. “A lone wolf goes after a target himself, does as much damage as he can before going down in flames.”

  “Except no one went down in flames,” Steuben said.

  “Just what I need,” Rowe said, “something else to worry about.”

  “Idiosyncratic terrorism,” Peyton said.

  She lifted her paper cup to her lips. The ER doctor had pulled two screws and one nut from her leg. Fate and seconds and inches, she thought. If she hadn’t paused to drink water, she’d have been closer to Pete McPherson, closer to the explosive. And she wouldn’t be sitting here.

  She wrapped both hands around her cup to prevent a spill—her hands were still shaking. Stop thinking about what could have been, about yourself. Focus on the job.

  Bomb-making materials had been found in the cabin. How far did Simon Pink’s murder and Freddy St. Pierre’s arson reach?

  “I know you want McPherson to get his due,” Rowe said, “and I’m all for that, but we need discretion right now. You realize that, right? We can’t be talking to the media about his heroism.”

  Steuben set her pen down, took off her glasses, and glared. “Are you questioning my intelligence?”

  Peyton liked Steuben’s no-bullshit attitude.

  “And, the Secret Service, of all agencies, is telling me about discretion? Come on, Wally. Everyone within a hundred miles of this town knows the president is on his way as soon as the first blue government license plate arrives.”

  “Not so,” Rowe said.

  “You don’t understand this place. This is a tight-knit community, an area where people talk and some haven’t had a lot to feel good about.”

  “Until last summer,” Peyton said.

  Steuben looked at her. “That’s right. You get it.” She turned back to Rowe. “Wally, a lot of these people are farmers. They have to compete with Canadian farmers who get subsidized by the Canadian government. When they can’t compete, they lose more than their farms—they lose their way of life, they lose their culture even.”

  Peyton nodded. “And they know that only five hours away, southern Maine is thriving. They feel forgotten.”

  “So having the president come here is a kind of approval?” Rowe said.

  “Yes.” Steuben smiled for the first time. “Last year, the president raved about the trout streams and how much fun he had with his grandson here. People can’t wait for him to come back. And they know he’s on his way.”

  “It’s nice for me to find all this goddamned information out right now.” Rowe’s jaw clenched.

  “Let’s focus on some tangibles,” Hewitt said. “We want to get the detonator from the bomb that killed McPherson—if there’s anything left of it—and compare it to the one the fire marshal pulled from the burned-out cabin and the ones from the barn.”

  Peyton said, “Simon Pink is looking less and less like a truck driver.”

  “You said he had a chemistry background,” Hewitt said, “and we found bomb-making shit out there.”

  She nodded. “Yeah, but, Mike, Pink’s been dead more than a week. And Freddy St. Pierre is locked up. Who put the explosives out there?”

  Thirty-Three

  Peyton was at her desk at 5:15 typing when a door at the back of the stationhouse opened and Stone Gibson walked out. She could see Freddy St. Pierre sitting at the table.

  Stone closed the door to the interrogation room and walked to her desk.

  “Peyton, thanks for doing the legwork and getting Kingston’s information. Freddy, of course, denies it. He says he set the fire at three a.m. and that he was alone and never entered the cabin.”

  “Is that plausible enough to hold up in court?”

  “The fire marshal says there’s no way to say exactly when the fire began, since the explosion would have accelerated it.”

  “Shit,” she said.

  “Exactly,” Stone said and went to the coffee maker.

  Stan Jackman came out of Hewitt’s office and said, “Peyton, I have something you’ll want to know about.”

  Jackman, Garrett Station’s senior statesman, pulled a chair to her desk, sat, and handed her a black-and-white photo.

  “I know this guy.”

  “That’s what I hear. How’s your leg?”

  “It’s fine,” she said.

  “CNN has already reported the explosion and McPherson’s name.”

  Peyton thought about Steuben’s warning regarding discretion. She hoped Steuben didn’t think she was the leak.

  “They’re calling it an assassination attempt,” Jackman said. “And they’ve got a former CIA agent, who’s now a correspondent, offering theories.”

  “Just what Washington wants.”

  “Hewitt asked me to look into the members of Sherry St. Pierre-Duvall’s entourage.” He looked away and shook his head. “Research is what you do when you get to be my age, I guess.”

  Jackman was creeping closer to fifty-seven, the mandatory retirement age for Border Patrol agents, and he’d suffered a heart attack a few years ago. Everyone at Garrett Station knew Hewitt was assigning him more and more desk duties.

  “I think Hewitt’s trying to bore me into retiring,” Jackman said.

  “He knows you’re an excellent researcher. Not all of us can do that.”

  “You know that’s bullshit, Peyton. You, of all people, would hate being chained to the desk as much as I do.”

  It was bullshit, but she could see the frustration on his face. And, after all, he and late wife Karen had invited Tommy and her to dinner soon after Peyton’s return to the area. Peyton could still remember trying to explain to Tommy why Karen’s hair was gone. Peyton attended Karen’s funeral three months later. Even at his most trying time—nearing the end of Karen’s life—Jackman had made time to welcome her to Garrett Station. She would never forget it, so she was trying to cheer him up now.

  “I know his first name is Kvido,” she said. “He works for Sherry.”

  “Sort of.” Jackman took out a cigarette and put it, unlit, into his mouth.

  “If I see you light that thing, I’ll shoot you, Stan. I don’t want you to have another heart attack. You’re Tommy’s surrogate grandfather.”

  “I’m not going to light the thing. Helps me think. Kvido was on the CIA’s watch list years ago, but he’s been under the radar for going on twenty years. And he and Dr. Sherry St. Pierre-Duvall are both academics, so maybe he is really working for her. It’s not exactly easy to gather a lot of concrete facts right now.”

  She figured as much. The intelligence agencies would be moving a hundred miles an hour following the explosion that killed McPherson—and each going in a different direction. It meant that every piece of data was part of a fluid investigation. Therefore, everyone, everywhere would be hesitant to share it.

  “What I do know is that Kvido’s last name is Bezdek. He seems to have done a little of everything. Made some big, quick money in real estate in the Czech Republic and studied political science, earning a Ph.D. And before that, he was part of the Andela Group.”

  She pushed her chair away from her desk and looked up at him. “I’ve heard of that group,” she said. “This just got really interesting. Simon Pink is also from the Czech Republic.”

  “You’re connecting some dots,” he said. “What do you know about Andela?”

  She shook her head. “Not much. Nothing intel-based.”

  “So just what CNN tells you?” he said.

  She grinned and nodded.

  “Could be worse,” he said. “You could be getting your information from Fox News.”

  “Tell me what you know,” she said.
r />   “The Andela Group was big about twenty years ago. It was a militia formed after a girl named Andela was killed when government-issued Czech military forces opened fire at a labor-union rally.”

  “The Andela group sounds liberal,” she said. “I thought it was anti-West.”

  “It may have ended up that way,” he said. “A lot of times these terrorist groups get in bed with each other in exchange for money, materials, and/or support.”

  “Politics makes strange bedfellows,” she said.

  “I’ve heard that somewhere. Bezdek is thirty-eight. Simon Pink was sixty-one. Pink came here ten years ago. As far as we can tell, Bezdek still lives in the Czech Republic, at least on paper. He teaches some classes and owns properties.”

  “And he knew Simon Pink?”

  “That isn’t confirmed,” Jackman said. “Based on the Andela connection, I’m assuming they knew each other.”

  “How big was Andela twenty years ago?”

  “Four thousand,” he said. “I know. That’s a lot of people, but the coincidence of them both being part of that group, and then being here together, is too large. I’m assuming they met there.”

  “Do we know how active either man was in Andela, or what either man did for the group?”

  “No. I’m working on that.”

  “I’m willing to bet they were having a reunion party last Monday night at the cabin on Fred St. Pierre’s property,” she said, “and that Simon Pink didn’t enjoy the reacquaintance. Have you told Hewitt any of this?”

  “He’s with Wally Rowe. They went to the Hampton Inn with two other agents and two troopers to get Kvido Bezdek for questioning.”

  She looked at the wall clock. “I’m leaving on time for the first time this week,” she said. “I’ll have my cell phone, if anyone needs me.”

  “You sound like a mother who’s about to take her son some-

  where.”

  She grinned. “And you sound like a surrogate grandfather who gets it,” she said and patted his cheek lightly before walking out.

  Thirty-Four

  Dinner consisted of a trip to Subway en route to the dojo in Caribou. Tommy’s class began at 6:15 p.m.