Fallen Sparrow Read online

  “You tried to call her?”

  “Repeatedly.”

  “May I see your phone?” Hewitt said.

  Chip looked at Talon, who took off his metal-framed reading glasses and held them before him.

  “May I ask why?” Talon looked at him.

  “I’d like to have your client’s phone records checked.”

  “My client is here of his own volition. Now you’re naming him as a suspect?”

  “We have no suspects,” Hewitt said. “We have no crime, unless you know something different.”

  “This is about Sherry,” Chip demanded. “She doesn’t handle stress well. You know her.” He pointed at Peyton, urging her to agree with him.

  His gaze was intense. He wasn’t going to offer her a glass of wine now. She saw fear in his eyes, and he spoke directly to her, as if no one else was in the room.

  It made her think of something. She took Hewitt’s pen and wrote on his pad: Search hotel room 210 for her suitcase. Windbreaker? He nodded.

  “I think she’s overwhelmed,” Chip said. “This isn’t how she normally acts. Her parents are dead—in a horrific scene; her brother is accused of murder, and is linked to the murder weapon; and she thinks she loves a man from Prague. It’s all coming at her so fast. I think she panicked and ran.”

  “Where to?” Peyton said.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Does the name Matt Kingston mean anything to you?”

  “No. Should it?”

  “Do you own any properties we aren’t aware of?” Hewitt asked.

  “No. Just our home outside Portland.”

  “Tell me about Simon Pink,” Peyton said.

  “The man Freddy shot?”

  “The man Freddy’s accused of shooting, yes.”

  “Didn’t they match Freddy’s gun to the scene?”

  “Tell me about him.”

  “I’ve never met him. I don’t think Sherry ever did either.”

  “How many times a year does Sherry go to Prague?”

  “Two, three.”

  “Describe your relationship with your wife,” Hewitt interjected.

  The question came out of the blue, as Hewitt intended, and it set Chip on his heels.

  “What do you mean? We have a fine—but sometimes confused—

  relationship.”

  “Can you describe it?” Hewitt said.

  “I love my wife.”

  “And it’s mutual?”

  “Is this relevant?” Talon said.

  “His wife is missing. She recently left him for another man,” Hewitt said. “Isn’t that right, Chip?”

  “It’s complicated.”

  “But she left you. How’d that make you feel?”

  “It hurt.”

  “I bet it made you angry, too.”

  “I object to that statement, agent,” Talon said. “It’s leading, and you know it.”

  “Then how’s this: Are you angry at your wife, Chip?”

  “I’m worried about her.”

  “Do you know where your wife is, Chip?”

  “No. I do not. I came here to help you find her. I have nothing to do with her disappearance.”

  “What did you tell your kids about their mother?” Peyton said.

  Chip’s hands were clasped before him. He was squeezing them together. “That was the hardest conversation I’ve ever had, Peyton. I had to tell them that Mommy and I might not be living together when we come back.”

  “So the marriage is over?”

  “She left me, all right? We all know it. It hurts. I’m not angry, just sad.”

  “Do you know Kvido Bezdek?” Hewitt said.

  “Of course, he works for Sherry. She dated him years ago. Have you interviewed him?”

  “Why? Should we?”

  “Sherry was staying with him, not me, when she went missing.”

  “Chip,” Peyton said, “if you have any theories or thoughts regarding where Sherry is or what might have happened, now is the time to share them.”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Where are Sherry’s things, Chip?”

  “I don’t follow you.”

  “She had a suitcase in room 418. She was staying there with Kvido. You had room 210. Where are her things—her clothes, her computer, her suitcase?”

  He looked at her. “I have no idea. I assume they’re at the Hampton Inn, still in Kvido’s room.”

  Peyton took Hewitt’s pen again, wrote: I didn’t see them. I walked through his room.

  Hewitt looked at Stone Gibson.

  “I’ll go over there,” Stone said. “I’ll put out a BOLO and call the airport, too.” He left the room.

  “Do you know where Sherry was last night at nine-thirty?” Peyton asked.

  “I have no idea. I was in Portland.”

  “I assume you’ve been watching the news, Chip,” Hewitt said.

  He shrugged.

  “You know about the IEDs found. One killed a game warden.”

  “Yes. I saw that on TV. It made CNN.”

  “Do you know anything about that?”

  “What?”

  “Do you know anything about that?”

  “Of course not. Why are you asking me that?”

  “We’re here about his wife,” Talon said. “The man is concerned about his wife.”

  “As we all are,” Hewitt said.

  “I think not, agent. I think you’re looking to pin the IEDs on someone. And you should know that it won’t be my client.”

  “We’re just being diligent,” Peyton said.

  “What is your plan for finding my wife?”

  “We will work with the state police, the FBI, and our agents. We will put out BOLOs and road blocks. Please describe the car she is driving.”

  “That’s the thing,” Chip said. “She has no car. I took the Mercedes back to Portland. Kvido has the rental, the Ford Escape.”

  “That changes things,” Hewitt said.

  “How?”

  “It narrows our search. We’ll comb the area around the hotel, maybe even go room to room, search the woods behind it.”

  “Oh my God,” Chip said.

  “Don’t read anything into it,” Hewitt said.

  “You think she killed herself. I’m going to be sick.” Chip was on his feet, sprinting to the door.

  Forty-One

  The noon meeting on Friday was all-hands-on-deck, and all the agencies involved were represented, including a new player: FBI Agent Frank Hammond, who arrived from Boston.

  Stone, Hewitt, Peyton, Wally Rowe, and Hammond were in the breakroom at Garrett Station.

  “Are you the agent I spoke to on the phone last week about Tom Dickinson?”

  “I don’t know,” Hammond said. “Who is Tom Dickinson?”

  “He’s in the federal witness protection program.”

  “Couldn’t have been me,” Hammond said. “We don’t have anyone up here.”

  Peyton looked at Hewitt, who shrugged.

  “I got Freddy and his attorney, Steve St. Louis, up early and spent two hours with them this morning,” Hammond said. Standing in front of the whiteboard like a teacher, he faced the others who sat at the table and circled Freddy’s picture.

  Hammond was the FBI’s executive assistant director of the Criminal Investigative Division and worked out of Boston. Peyton knew he was close to sixty, but small and wiry. He’d run three marathons and still ran 10Ks. She’d worked with him previously and had always been impressed. Where State Trooper Leo Miller spoke to hear himself speak during meetings, Hammond was a listener who could take in information, process it, and synthesize it in a manner that was useful to everyone involved.

  Stone leaned and took an orange from his computer b
ag near his feet and began to peel it.

  “Freddy freely admits that he burned down his cabin. He keeps saying that, ‘My cabin,’” Hammond continued. “Smart guy. Can’t be accused of arson unless he files a claim, which he won’t do.”

  “But he was paid to burn it,” Peyton said.

  “You have the money trail that proves that?”

  Peyton looked at Hewitt.

  Hewitt shook his head. “Nope. And, if it’s on his land, it’s not a crime”—he pointed to Hammond and nodded—“unless he’s going to commit insurance fraud.”

  “You see the problem here?” Hammond said.

  “No one has ever called Freddy St. Pierre smart,” Peyton said. “He’s being advised well by someone.”

  “The lawyer, St. Louis?”

  “I doubt that,” she said. “Someone is pulling the strings to all of this. We need to find out who.”

  “His sister has a Ph.D., she might have given her brother twenty thousand dollars, and she’s missing,” Hewitt said.

  Peyton nodded. “True, but she was as surprised as anyone when this all began. She was devastated by her parents’ deaths.”

  “That assumes the murder-suicide is connected to Simon Pink’s murder,” Stone said. He took his cell phone off the table and checked to be sure the ringer was set to vibrate. “Maybe they aren’t related. Maybe her father was just an abusive asshole who knew the cat was finally out of the bag.”

  The room fell quiet, each law-enforcement official processing.

  Hammond folded his arms across his chest. “So Simon Pink and Freddy roof the cabin and work the harvest together.” He started pacing. “The neighbors, who are Stone’s sister and mother and therefore reliable, say they heard explosions in recent months. The kid, Kingston, goes to the farm to poach deer but hears three men talking about ‘steps’ and then hears a gunshot, but he can’t provide visual confirmation of the murder. Peyton goes there the next day and finds the torched cabin, which Freddy now admits to.”

  “And his confession places him at the murder scene,” Peyton said. “Matt Kingston recognized Freddy’s voice that night. Freddy knows who shot Simon Pink.”

  “It’s him,” Hewitt said. “That’s becoming clear. He tried to separate the arson from the murder because it was the lesser of the two.”

  “He appeared in court and entered a not-guilty plea,” Stone said. “But he knows damned well Stephanie DuBois is moving forward with the murder charge.”

  “Three people were there that night.” Peyton was shaking her head, frustrated. “Why isn’t he trying to pin it on the third person? He’s facing life in prison.”

  “We know one had an accent,” Stone said. “We get Kvido in here, we can record him and play it for Matt Kingston.”

  Hewitt shook his head. “I disagree. It makes sense that the person with the accent was Simon Pink, who, we assume, didn’t shoot himself.”

  Hammond nodded. “And even if that’s not right, that’s certainly how a defense attorney will spin it.”

  Peyton leaned forward and rubbed her forehead with her thumb and forefinger. “The third person, according to Matt, was quiet. He couldn’t describe that voice. Why hasn’t Freddy given us that person? That’s what I’d do; we all would. We’d be throwing the third guy at the cops.”

  Stone ate part of his orange. “DuBois even said I could tell him we’d negotiate if he tells us who was there, what was going on.”

  “He knows the third person has more on him than he has on them,” Hewitt said. “That’s why he’s not talking. He did it. He figures to take his chances at trial because the whole case is circumstantial.”

  “Makes sense,” Hammond said.

  “And without Matt Kingston,” Peyton said, “there is no case against Freddy.”

  Matt Kingston had now been missing for two and a half days.

  Hewitt blew out a long breath. “We need to find that kid.”

  “I’d like to get Freddy’s sister in here, too,” Stone said. “Kvido held up very well under questioning, but her brother would tell her things he wouldn’t say to anyone else.”

  “Ask Kvido anything personal?” Peyton said.

  Hammond moved to the table and took up his coffee cup. “We asked about his relationship with Sherry.”

  Peyton nodded. “He seemed to avoid talking about himself when Stone and I spoke to him.”

  Hammond pointed to his briefcase. “He let us record the conversation—it’s on my phone, if you want to hear it—and he never asked for an attorney.”

  “So who set the IEDs in the woods?” Hewitt said. “Pink was dead by the time they were put in the earth, and Freddy was sitting down the hall.”

  “What do we know from the IEDs?” Stone asked.

  Hammond went to his iPad. “I spoke to a bomb tech and read the report. The techs say the devices were grouped in a cluster. The first one was spring loaded, and it was designed to activate the others.”

  “They failed?” Hewitt said. He looked at Peyton.

  She felt the blood drain from her face.

  Hammond saw the two CBP agents looking at one another. “Thank God for that. All of this offers a picture of the suspect,” he continued. “A profile is coming together. If this were an expert, he had a seriously off day. But this would mean enough to whoever did this that they wouldn’t make a mistake.”

  “You’re saying we got their best effort?” Stone had stopped writing. He set his pen down.

  “Yes. We’re not dealing with an expert.”

  “Some amateur asshole is trying to kill the president,” Hewitt said.

  “If this was al Qaeda or ISIS or Boko Haram,” Stone agreed, “they’d have claimed responsibility.”

  Hammond shook his head. “Not always.”

  Peyton sat listening, but her head was spinning. She’d come even closer to death than she’d known.

  “Have you searched Kvido’s hotel room?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Stone said. “I served the warrant last night. We have his laptop. Our computer guys have gone through it. He’s clean. Which is probably why he’s staying around.”

  “I want to interview him again, Mike.”

  “Peyton, we talked about this.” Hewitt pointed at Hammond. “He’s taking that aspect of the investigation.”

  “I’ll interview him again,” Hammond said, “believe me. And you can be there when I do.”

  That surprised her. “Thanks.” She stood.

  Hewitt said, “Where are you going?”

  “To do a reference check,” she said.

  “You hiring someone?” Stone said.

  “Maybe a public policy professor,” she said and walked out.

  Forty-Two

  It took three phone calls, starting with the University of Southern Maine’s switchboard, but by 1:30 p.m. Friday, Peyton was in the bullpen on the phone with the associate dean of the Muskie School of Public Service, Dr. Suzanne Fontaine—Sherry St. Pierre-Duvall’s supervisor.

  Peyton quickly explained who she was. “I’m calling about Dr. Sherry St. Pierre-Duvall, a professor on your faculty.”

  “She’s not a professor,” Fontaine explained.

  “Are you telling me she doesn’t work at USM?” Peyton leaned back in her seat and crossed her ankles.

  “She works here, but she is not a professor. I sincerely hope she’s not giving people that impression. To call herself a professor would indicate that she is employed here full-time and on a tenure track. Sherry is neither of those things.”

  “What does she do?”

  “She teaches an introductory social science course most se-

  mesters.”

  Peyton had her iPad and stylus and was scribbling furiously. “Bear with me, but I need to ask some rudimentary questions, Dr. Fontaine.”

  “Call me Su
zanne. Is Sherry in trouble?”

  “What makes you ask that?”

  “I’m talking to a law-enforcement officer about her.”

  It made Peyton smile.

  “No. She’s not in trouble. I’m looking for some background information. That’s all.”

  “Well, she was supposed to teach a summer-session course, but she hasn’t taught the last two weeks.”

  “Her parents died suddenly,” Peyton said.

  “Oh, that’s terrible. I wonder why she didn’t simply tell us.”

  Peyton didn’t speculate. “She has a Ph.D. from Harvard, correct?”

  “Yes. And not just from Harvard. She was at the Kennedy School of International and Global Affairs.”

  “Prestigious?”

  “Oh, very.”

  “And she’s published books?”

  “One.”

  “Suzanne, forgive my ignorance, but it seems that her credentials are excellent. Why isn’t she working for you full-time?”

  “Hiring decisions are confidential, Agent Cote.”

  “Call me Peyton. And, again, this is background only. This is part of an ongoing investigation.”

  “Involving Sherry?”

  “I’ll offer my confidential material,” Peyton said, “if you share yours.”

  “I like you, agent. I’ve never heard of a criminal-justice officer bartering.”

  “I’ve never done it before.”

  Fontaine chuckled. “You first.”

  “Yes, this is part of an ongoing investigation.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it.”

  Fontaine chuckled again. She had a deep laugh. Peyton imagined her as one who liked to laugh and didn’t take herself too seriously. “Well, I was hoping for more, but I understand your limitations, and I’ll play along just the same. I guess all you need to know is this: most adjuncts teach to get a foot in the door.”

  “Teach a class to prove yourself?”

  “Yes. She cried during her first class.”

  “Cried?”

  “Yes. She broke down. She was lecturing, and a student challenged her. It’s what we do. It’s what most academics thrive on—intellectual debate. Sherry crumbled. I’ve worked with her since. She’s gotten better, but not a lot.”