Destiny's Pawn Page 4

  “Is that in the letter?”

  “Yes. And judging from what Dariya wrote, I’m not even certain the man can make it back.”

  “Your nephew said he didn’t know whoever brought him here. But from what everyone has told me, I’m led to believe this entire trip was well organized and well executed.”

  Bohana shook her head.

  “Why do you deny it?”

  “Is …”

  “You know the man who brought your nephew here, don’t you?”

  “No, Peyton,” she said. “I do not.”

  And for the first time, Peyton heard something in Bohana’s voice that indicated a fierceness—the inner strength necessary to leave everything behind and start anew, and the determination necessary to help a loved one do it as well.

  Peyton stood. It was time to go. Bohana was the person to whom Aleksei was closest. If she hadn’t done so already, Peyton couldn’t risk alienating Bohana because she needed to know who had brought the boy to the US.

  “Thanks for your time, Bohana. I know you have lots to do.”

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t be more helpful.”

  Peyton thanked her again and showed herself out, knowing she’d soon return, because she needed the coyote’s name.

  6:45 p.m., Reeds Inn and Convention Center

  Stone Gibson, seated at a window table, looked up from his menu and smiled broadly when she entered the restaurant.

  Peyton could remember when the monstrous hotel had been called Keddy’s. Gram Russo’s, the facility’s restaurant, was still serving up the best Italian this side of Bangor. But Peyton wasn’t thinking about the ziti when she crossed the room toward Stone. She wasn’t even thinking about how Stone looked, wearing his blue sports jacket and clean shaven for the first time since he’d finished investigating a child-molestation case. The case had gotten to him, and she’d worried about him.

  But even that wasn’t on her mind now.

  She thought of her late father. Couldn’t step foot in Gram Russo’s without thinking of him. Charlie Cote, despite dying young, had taught her most of the lessons she needed to know. And she’d figured the rest out on her own.

  When she thought of her father, she didn’t think of him at the end of his life. She rejected those final hours in the hospital, following his heart attack. She thought of him in the potato fields, on the tractor, or in the potato house—wearing his dark-blue Dickies work shirt and pants, his hands dirty, dust and sweat dry on his face, and always wearing the big crooked-toothed smile that hard work seemed to give him. Or she recalled him in the woods, toting his .30-06, hunting deer.

  The thought of him dressed in green, mopping floors in her high school after the bank had taken their farm and left them with one acre, was too much. As was the thought of him dying in a white room with the tubes and the drip bags. If she had to think of that time—of him seated across the kitchen table from the men in suits, of him looking around the kitchen at his daughters and wife, the sense of failure she saw in his eyes—if her evil mind ran to those days, she recalled her father declining the trailer and instead building a thousand-square-foot home with his own hands. The bank be damned.

  That thought always put a smile on her face.

  “You looked sad for a moment,” Stone said when she reached the table, “but then you smiled again.”

  She could smell his musky cologne.

  “Just thinking,” she said.

  “Don’t take that the wrong way,” he said and stood. “You look stunning. I was just concerned. Are you okay?”

  She nodded. She was wearing a black dress with a cotton mesh bodice top and a V back that she’d gotten online from Nordstrom.

  “I’m fine. And you’re a gentleman.” She patted his cheek. “Pulling out my chair. I should be asking you the same thing. How are you, now that the asshole is in custody?”

  “I love a woman who can wear a black dress like that and still say asshole. I’ll be better when he goes to Warren.”

  The Maine State Prison was in Warren.

  He retook his seat, his eyes shifting away from Peyton’s. “The little girl, Sara, started therapy today. I brought her an Amazon gift card because she loves to read. It’s probably been her escape for years.”

  “Nice of you.”

  “Have to focus on the victim. If I think too much about the perpetrator, I’ll break the uncle’s legs.”

  “He deserves it,” she said.

  “And some.”

  The waitress came to the table. “Hi, you two.” It was Marsha Campbell. She’d gone to high school with Peyton. “What can I bring you?”

  Peyton asked for a glass of chardonnay; Stone asked for Omission IPA. They didn’t carry it, so he went with a martini.

  “I haven’t been here in a long time,” Peyton said, when Marsha left. “The place always makes me think of my father.” She could smell garlic bread and meat sauce. A tiny white candle burned brightly between them.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I guess I shouldn’t have suggested this place.”

  “No, I’m glad you did.”

  “Is it hard constantly running into people you grew up with?”

  “Depends on the situation. When I run into them as part of an investigation, it can be.”

  “They expect you to cut them a break. You’re one of us. All that bullshit?”

  “Yeah. But when it’s not that, I like it. This is my home.”

  They were quiet as they watched Marsha cross the room, carrying their drinks.

  When she left again, Stone said, “How’s your Ukrainian boy?”

  “Aleksei? I interviewed his aunt, trying to figure out who brought him here.”

  “She helpful?”

  “Partially. She gave me a twelve-page letter from her brother. It’s written in Russian, so I was at the U-Maine branch at Reeds this afternoon having Russian Professor Mark Rogers read it to me. There’s nothing in the letter that’s very helpful. Mark read it to me twice. Just a bunch of I miss you and take care of my son comments.”

  “Nothing to indicate who brought the boy?”

  “No. The letter is vague and describes the guy as incompetent.”

  “No name?”

  She shook her head. “And Bohana denies knowing whoever it is. Says only that there’s no need to worry about him trafficking anyone else because, based on the letter, she doubts he can even get home.”

  “Is that meant to be reassuring?”

  “I think so.”

  “What does that even mean?”

  “To me, it means we’re going to keep an eye on her to see if she meets up with the guy.”

  “Whoever it is,” Stone said, “they sound lost or stuck.”

  She nodded and sipped her wine and looked around. “Speak of the devil.” She nodded to a table across the room.

  Steven and Bohana Donovan were eating with Kyle McCluskey and a blonde who looked far too young to be at the table. The blonde looked bored too. Peyton saw McCluskey touch the girl’s hand to get her attention. As Steven and Bohana spoke, he whispered something to her. She grinned as if they’d just shared an inside joke.

  “Who are they with?”

  Peyton said, “The big guy is Kyle McCluskey.”

  “That his daughter?”

  “Hardly.”

  “Let’s talk about something else,” Stone said, and Peyton heard a note of nervousness.

  “Okay.”

  “You know, these past six months, getting to know and spend time with you and Tommy, have been really great, Peyton. Best half year of my life.”

  She could feel her face flush. The last time a man started a conversation on this note, she’d ended up married. Then she’d watched her ex, Jeff McComb, walk out on Tommy and her six years later.

  She reached for her wine again.


  “Maybe this isn’t a good time to have this conversation,” Stone said.

  She was no longer sipping and set the wineglass down. “I need to use the ladies’ room,” she said and stood.

  If she hadn’t been wearing mascara, she’d have splashed water on her face.

  What was she doing? She’d nearly run across the room. She’d handled Bill Hillsdale, a federal hotshot, not twelve hours ago. But the thought of a serious commitment sent her jogging across the dining room in a black cocktail dress?

  Tommy.

  If Stone Gibson was about to propose, what could she say? She could not make such a commitment without consulting Tommy first. Was consulting the right word? She didn’t need an eleven-year-old’s permission to allow herself to be happy. Did she?

  She wasn’t sure. She’d spent so much time since Jeff had left them focused solely on Tommy and his needs that maybe she’d forgotten her own.

  Was that why she was hiding in the bathroom?

  “Are you okay?” Stone said, when she returned.

  “Just slightly neurotic,” she said, “but you’ve probably figured that out by now.”

  It made him chuckle. “I love you,” he said. “I’ve told you that for four months. Do you believe it?”

  “I do.”

  “And you’ve said it back each time I’ve told you,” he said.

  She nodded. “I have. And I told you I wish I had met you years ago.”

  “Our lives would be very different, if we’d met then.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’d like to take the next step.”

  “How big is the step?” she asked.

  “Not a leap,” he said, “just a step.”

  7:30 p.m., 7 Drummond Lane

  His younger cousin was weird.

  Michael Donovan could tell that right off. How many thirteen-year-olds, after all, don’t like to watch ESPN?

  Michael’s parents had gone out to dinner, and he was home “watching his cousin”—his mother’s description for babysitting. He’d only met this cousin a day or so earlier. And his mother kept telling him to be nice to the middle-schooler.

  “Being nice” to his cousin, so far, had consisted of taking him to a basketball game and sitting with him in the bleachers and trying to explain to Jenny why he had a middle-schooler with him. (It was hard to convince Jenny to go under the bleachers to make out since he couldn’t leave Aleksei alone.)

  And, Michael sensed, this was just the beginning. His mother said he’d be driving Aleksei to and from the middle school each day. Taking him to school wouldn’t be bad, but sometimes he and Jenny liked to stop on the way home. Each told their parents they stayed late for extra help, but Michael kept a blanket in the trunk of the used Pontiac. They’d been warm on even the coldest days.

  Across the room, Aleksei sat up straight on the loveseat, his eyes leaving the TV to look out the dark window.

  Michael wondered what Aleksei was thinking. For years, he’d heard his mother make occasional references to the uncle he’d never met, the one on his mother’s side in the Ukraine. His other uncle, the one on his father’s side, Ted, lived alone in the upstairs apartment.

  “What you doing?” Aleksei asked, clearly bored by the NBA halftime show.

  “Reading.”

  They were in the great room, as his mother called it. He’d always thought that sounded arrogant, and it embarrassed him when she said it to guests. But he knew the house had been designed around the room with its vaulted ceilings, stone fireplace, bar, big-screen with surround sound, and its leather furniture on which Uncle Ted fell asleep at least one afternoon each week.

  “What you reading?” Aleksei asked.

  “You’re supposed to say are. ‘What are you reading?’”

  Aleksei nodded. “What are you reading?”

  “A book about art. It’s my homework. I’m taking a class at the community college.”

  “College?”

  “Yeah. I’m a senior. You can do that—take a community-college class to count next year at U-Maine.”

  Michael could tell his cousin understood none of it. He would never say it to his mother, but he wondered how long Aleksei was staying with them. He wondered, too, about his friend Davey Bolstridge, wondered how the chemo had been on this day. His mind had wandered to Davey often recently. And he was glad he’d finally discovered a way to help him.

  “You are lucky for college,” Aleksei said. “Very lucky.”

  “You want to go to college?”

  “Oh, yes. My dream. My father went to college here. He wants me to go college here also.”

  His mother kept saying the situation was “complicated,” and Michael knew it was. Did this latest information mean Aleksei was staying with them until he was old enough for college? That was five years away. His mother told him about what happened to Aleksei’s mother and that his father was staying to fight the pro-Russian separatists, which seemed just plain crazy. They would never defeat the separatists, not with Putin funding them.

  “I hear you’re starting school tomorrow.”

  “I cannot wait,” Aleksei said.

  “Really?”

  “Yes.”

  “Look, Aleksei, don’t say that at school.”

  “Why?”

  “The tough kids will push you around.”

  “No,” Aleksei said, “they will not.”

  Michael set his book down on the arm of the chair. He’d heard a tone in his cousin’s voice he hadn’t heard previously in the voice of a contemporary. Impressive. And a little scary. Aleksei was thirteen, four years younger than him, but he seemed much older than that.

  “You aren’t afraid?”

  “Of who?”

  “I don’t know … the bullies.”

  “See this?”

  Aleksei pushed back the hair above his ear. Michael got off his chair and moved closer. The scar was only two inches but jagged.

  “That from one of Putin’s ‘bullies.’ He tell me move out of way. When I”—he shook his head, searching for the word, failing, growing frustrated—“not fast enough, he do this. He do not kill me. Your bullies will not either.”

  “I’m just saying there are a few dickheads in school. And some teachers are jerks too.”

  “My mother say education is a gift. I have not gone school since war started. Putin take school away.”

  Michael hadn’t read anything about that, about Putin closing schools. Did he mean that literally? What was that all about?

  “And he take my mother. I want to learn. It important.”

  Michael looked at his cousin—pale, skinny, with dark rings under his eyes, but with a seriousness in his voice, to his words, that middle-school kids didn’t have.

  “Are you homesick?”

  “I miss Father. I think of him. . .” His voice trailed off. He turned back to the TV. The halftime show was over. The Celtics game was on.

  Michael could tell Aleksei understood nothing of basketball. “I’m sure your father is okay,” Michael said. “Want something to eat? I’ll get it for you.”

  Aleksei shook his head. “Thank you.”

  “You like to read?”

  Aleksei nodded.

  “Like to play video games?”

  Aleksei shrugged.

  “I’ll show you,” Michael said.

  Michael went to the TV and got the Xbox controllers. For the next half hour, they played Destiny.

  three

  Wednesday, March 5, 6:35 a.m., 12 Higgins Drive

  Peyton rose early and was at the stove cooking cheesy scrambled eggs, just the way Tommy liked them, when he entered the kitchen. He went to the table and sat, took his four gummy vitamins—two were fish oil (Peyton had read somewhere that they helped kids focus)—chewed them, and drank s
ome orange juice.

  The kitchen smelled like strong coffee. She’d bought the house because of this room, had seen the potential for renovations. It paled in comparison to Bohana Donovan’s kitchen. Bohana could hold an entire New Year’s Eve party around her center island. But the thought of installing granite counters and stainless-steel appliances had sold Peyton on this house.

  She brought Tommy’s eggs and her coffee to the table and sat across from him. When it was just the two of them, this was where they ate, not the dining room.

  “What’s going on today?”

  Tommy was looking out the window and turned back to her. “What do you mean?”

  “Have a test or anything today?”

  He shrugged. “Can we go snowmobiling again?”

  She’d taken him on the station’s Arctic Cat, which was against regs, but Mike Hewitt had okayed it for one afternoon.

  “That’s a long shot, pal. My boss let me take you that one time because he knew how much it meant to you.”

  “Can we buy our own snowmobile?” He was wearing his Tom Brady Patriots jersey and blue jeans.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Why not?”

  “Snowmobiles cost a lot of money, sweetie.”

  He nodded, understanding, and ate some eggs.

  “Do you have extra mittens packed,” she said, “in case one pair gets wet during recess?”

  “Mom, it’s not cool to change your mittens.”

  “I change my gloves all the time when I’m outdoors.”

  He shook his head, smiling. “Not cool.”

  “Hey, pal, can we talk seriously for a minute?”

  “About what?” His eyes narrowed; he put down his fork. “The last time you asked that, I had to get a math tutor.”

  “Keep eating,” she said, “and the math tutor has worked out well, hasn’t it?”

  “She’s mean.”

  “Mrs. Watson isn’t mean. She was my sixth-grade math teacher. I told her that if she could teach me, teaching you would be a breeze. We’re lucky to have her working with you.”

  “The other kids play soccer after school. I come home and do school all over again.”

  “You play soccer too.” She drank some coffee. “Sweetie, how do you feel about Stone?”