Fallen Sparrow Page 8

  He’d announced that he had an alibi—a move that always looked suspicious—for the night Simon Pink was shot to death and his body torched. The details of the alibi would be checked, of course, but none of it felt right to Peyton.

  Nancy Lawrence and Fred St. Pierre Jr.? An item?

  Peyton knew Nancy Lawrence types. She’d gone to Garrett High School with plenty of them—teenage girls who acted (and often looked) much older than they were and who undeniably believed they were better than the local boys. Too-big-for-this-small-town types. She hadn’t respected that mentality then, didn’t now.

  Or maybe her instant disbelief that Freddy was dating Nancy Lawrence said something else. Something about Peyton herself. Maybe she’d grown cynical, her worldview soured after more than a decade as an agent. Had she jumped to a conclusion? Profiling could come in forms other than race and ethnicity. Maybe Nancy Lawrence would date a man like Fred Jr., a guy who wore Carhartt and had grease under his fingernails and smelled like fertilizer.

  “Excuse me,” a voice called from the bullpen, the tone slow and deliberate. “Where is my brother?”

  Peyton turned around, looked down the hallway, and instantly recognized the former Sherry St. Pierre amid the desks in the area where Linda Cyr, the receptionist, sat.

  “Where is my brother?” she repeated.

  “Please, come sit down, ma’am,” Bruce Steele, the station’s lone K-9 handler, said, motioning to a chair near his desk.

  “No thank you. I want to see Freddy. Now.”

  “Ma’am,” young Miguel Jimenez said, “you really—”

  “I said now!”

  “Sherry,” Peyton said, hustling toward her.

  “Peyton?” Sherry said. “Peyton Cote?”

  “Yeah, Sherry. I’m talking to your brother right now. He’s cooperating fully.”

  Sherry shook her head. “The interview is over,” she said.

  “The interview is voluntary, Sherry,” Peyton said. “Your brother is cooperating. I think he wants to know why it happened.”

  “My attorney—Freddy’s attorney—will be here momentarily. The interview is over.”

  Gone were the faded Levi’s and flannel shirts from high school. Wearing boot-cut DKNY jeans, high-heeled suede boots, and a cardigan over a white blouse, the sleeves of which were creased and cuffed neatly over the sweater, Sherry looked far more stylish than any professor Peyton remembered at the University of Maine. The only hint that she was an academic was her large-framed purple glasses. She figured Sherry had waved goodbye to Aroostook County on her way to Boston to attend the Harvard Kennedy School of International and Global Affairs and never looked back.

  She also noticed the dark puffy rings around her one-time friend’s eyes: the past two days had seen lots of tears.

  Once the Portland-based lawyer arrived, Peyton knew the show was over. She wanted just a little more time with Freddy. To get it, she’d have to pacify Sherry.

  “Bruce, can you take this coffee to Mr. St. Pierre?”

  Steele stood and did so.

  “Sherry, it’s been a long time.”

  “Yes, it has.”

  “Too long,” Peyton said and smiled.

  Sherry paused, caught off guard, and, judging from her expression, momentarily forgot her brother, instead recalling a past the two women shared.

  “More than fifteen years,” Peyton said, thinking of when the girls were fourteen—and of the phone call during their freshman year that ended their friendship. She remembered, too, hearing Fred St. Pierre’s deep murmuring voice in the background as Sherry had spoken that night.

  “You’re a professor now?”

  “Yes,” Sherry said.

  Peyton had known people who achieved excellence to prove something to a parent and guessed Sherry was one of them. The woman’s father had sure as hell given her motivation.

  “Where’s my brother, Peyton?”

  “In that conference room.” She pointed. “He’s under no duress. He and I were just talking. Could you and I chat for a couple minutes?”

  “What has he told you?”

  Peyton thought about the question. Sherry would soon have access to every detail of the interview Fred could remember.

  “Your brother told me he has an alibi for the night Simon Pink was killed.”

  “What is it?”

  “Come with me,” Peyton said and started walking before Sherry could argue.

  “The past eighteen hours have been absolutely unfathomable,” Sherry said. Peyton could smell Obsession perfume. “You have no idea what it’s like. I mean, first my parents, then my brother. No one knows what this feels like.”

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” Peyton said.

  But Sherry wasn’t listening. She muttered, “I didn’t sign on for this.”

  They were in Mike Hewitt’s office, Hewitt having offered to “step outside for a few minutes” when he saw Sherry following Peyton. Peyton was in Hewitt’s high-backed leather chair; Sherry sat across the desk in the seat typically designated for visitors (or Peyton).

  The situation wasn’t new. Peyton had listened to someone who sat on the wrong side of the table make a statement or ask a question posed to evoke an emotional response hundreds of times: Agent, you have kids? Know what it’s like to not be able to care for them? You’d drive a car with birth certificates over the border, too, lady, if you couldn’t feed your kids. Once, a man had told her he’d smuggled drugs, simply driven a car through a border crossing, to earn money to get his wife cancer treatments. She’d caught him, and he’d gone to prison. That one was tough. Darrel Shaley. Peyton couldn’t forget his name.

  Each time someone posed a statement or question, she didn’t respond. It did no good to do so because she knew emotional appeals didn’t matter. Emotion had nothing to do with her job. She manned an international border and stopped contraband from entering or leaving. Period. But each time someone offered her the bait, she also remained silent for another reason: truth be told, she knew if life had dealt her a different hand, she couldn’t say for certain she wouldn’t be seated across the table, too.

  Somehow this interview was different. Sherry’s voice was matter­-of-fact, not urging sympathy. And her eyes offered something else Peyton didn’t expect. The woman she hadn’t seen in close to two decades was reaching out to her; her eyes were desperate for someone to listen. So Peyton found herself returned to childhood, at the St. Pierre barn on a fall day, sunlight streaming through gaps between wall boards, slanting in, turning the hay golden, she and Sherry feeding horses apples. Then, years later in middle school, the horses gone, in Sherry’s room, listening to music, talking about boys and basketball, and laughing. She remembered Sherry’s laugh as if she’d heard it the day before. And, finally, the night during her freshman year, Peyton alone in the hallway outside the kitchen, Sherry’s shaky voice over the phone cracking and finally breaking.

  “I mean it,” Sherry said. “Any idea what it’s like to learn that your father did that to your mother? I mean, how can that happen?”

  Sherry was crying now. Not sobbing. Not head in hands. Just staring straight ahead, tears in rivulets down her cheeks.

  “I’m terribly sorry for your loss,” Peyton said again. “I have fond memories of your parents.”

  “Not of my father,” Sherry said. “I don’t believe that for a second.”

  “I focus on the early years, Sherry. The times we had on that farm as kids. I have some wonderful memories of those days.”

  “Those days all ended after my freshman year. You know that better than anyone.”

  “Almost anyone,” Peyton corrected.

  “Yeah,” Sherry said. “Not better than me.”

  “I remember the night you called,” Peyton said. “I’ve thought about it for years.”

  Sherry tilted her head. “Rea
lly?”

  “Sure. We’d been friends since first grade. Then, with one phone conversation, it was over.”

  “I couldn’t see you anymore. Couldn’t really see anyone. I had to call to tell you.” Sherry turned away to look out the window at the Crystal View River.

  Peyton followed her eyes. “From here, the river looks black. Water’s cold.”

  “I owe you an apology, Peyton. I cut you out of my life.”

  “No.”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “Not you,” Peyton said. “I knew it wasn’t you. That’s why I never stopped reaching out.”

  “You knew?”

  Peyton nodded. “It took a while, but I figured it out. It wasn’t you.”

  “You knew that?”

  “Not immediately. But we all figured it out.”

  Sherry took a deep breath. “It’s humiliating to hear that, even now. You all knew my father forced me to cut ties?”

  “It’s been twenty years, Sherry. Let it go.”

  But Sherry’s eyes widened, then narrowed, and her bottom lip quivered momentarily. And Peyton realized the weight of what she’d just said.

  “I shouldn’t have said that, Sherry. It might not be easy to just ‘let it go.’ I don’t know what it was like for you.”

  “To be alone, friendless, for four years of high school? Not too great. My father made me call you and say I couldn’t see you anymore. He was behind me as I spoke. He just thought …” But she didn’t finish.

  Peyton leaned back in the leather chair, her hands folded calmly in her lap. “We all have to come to grips with our childhoods.”

  “You never stopped reaching out to me—sitting by me at lunch, in the library during free periods, picking me for teams in gym class. And I never told you what was really going on.”

  “It’s over, Sherry.”

  “Four long years.” Sherry’s hand went absently to her earring.

  Peyton noticed the large diamonds for the first time.

  “My father had dreams for me. He thought I was wasting too much time. That was the farmer in him.” Sherry spoke in a low, quiet tone, the way many did, Peyton realized, when recalling the deceased. “Farmers always think they can work harder. In my father’s case, he passed that on to me. We call it transference in the social sciences. But it wasn’t passed on—not genetically and not as a learned behavior. Instead, he forced me to call you that night, to tell you I wouldn’t be—”

  “Wasting time,” Peyton finished her sentence for her.

  “That’s what I said that night, wasn’t it?”

  Peyton nodded.

  “But not wasting time,” Sherry said, “actually meant something else—coming home and studying four hours a night, having no weekends, no friends, no boyfriends.”

  “Looks like it all worked out for you. You went to Harvard, and now you’re very successful.”

  Sherry looked at her. Peyton watched as Sherry’s hands clasped the long sleeves of her cardigan, as if drying her palms.

  “There are many definitions of successful,” Sherry said.

  “I made my peace with it long ago,” Peyton said, “and I’m sure you did, too. Let’s talk about your brother and—and I know this is difficult—about your parents a little. Your father said something I need to ask you about before he …” She didn’t finish, but Sherry rubbed her palms on her thighs and nodded.

  “He couldn’t have killed her,” she said. “It doesn’t make sense.”

  “Sherry, I need to ask you something about your parents’ final seconds.”

  “Oh God. When you say it like that,” Sherry said, her hand flashing to her mouth.

  Peyton thought the woman, who looked so confident, so self-directed, might wretch.

  “I’m sorry,” Peyton said, “but I need to ask you this.”

  “What is it? I can hear it. I probably need to.”

  “One of the last things your father said was, ‘I hope she can forgive me.’” Peyton looked at Sherry, who pursed her lips, brows creased in deep contemplation. Then she shook her head abruptly.

  “No idea,” Sherry said. “Who will forgive him? My mother?”

  “I don’t think so,” Peyton said.

  “Was it you, Peyton? He wanted you to forgive them because he dragged you into their abusive relationship?”

  “I don’t know. But I don’t think so. Do you have any other theories?”

  “None,” Sherry said, her voice suddenly serious. “Now, tell me what my brother is charged with.”

  Twelve

  “This whole thing is ludicrous,” Sherry said almost three hours later, shaking her head. She shifted on her seat, opened her briefcase, and took out a collection of papers. She searched desperately for something.

  They were in Garrett Station’s only conference room: Hewitt, Stephanie, and a state police detective Peyton had never seen before were on one side the table. Sherry, attorney Len Landmark, Sherry’s husband, Dr. Chip Duvall, and Fred Jr. sat across from them.

  Peyton and Maine State Police Detective Karen Smythe sat on folding chairs along the far wall.

  Fred had his hands before him, the metal cuffs clicking lightly against the tabletop. Landmark had an iPad propped before him and scrolled through his notes.

  But it was Sherry who Peyton noticed. Peyton watched Sherry shuffle and reshuffle papers frantically, her eyes racing from the stack of uncooperative papers to Stephanie. Why was she focused so singularly on Stephanie? Because Stephanie was the opposing attorney, or because Stephanie sat as confidently as one preparing for a card trick they’d done a thousand times?

  Sherry stared at Stephanie as if it were only the two of them in the room. Somehow, for some unknown reason, this wasn’t about Freddy anymore. What was Sherry trying to prove to Stephanie? And why was it necessary?

  Whatever was taking place between the two women was lost on Stephanie, who was ever organized and tougher than two scorpions. She looked at Sherry, puzzled.

  Peyton wondered if this was the same Dr. Sherry St. Pierre-­Duvall who lectured at a university, traveled extensively, and published books. This version of Sherry looked confused and kept turning to Chip for reassurance. He nodded, and she continued.

  “My brother is guilty of nothing,” Sherry suddenly demanded.

  Peyton had never met Sherry’s husband, but she didn’t like the way Chip patted her thigh, as if calming a nervous Irish setter during a thunderstorm.

  “Sherry,” attorney Len Landmark said, “let me handle this. It’s what you’re paying me for.”

  Sherry turned to Chip once again. He nodded, and she gave way.

  “I get so sick of wearing blue every day,” Karen Smythe whispered, leaning close to Peyton. “At least with green, you guys can accessorize a little. Every winter hat I own has to be dark.”

  “The last winter hat I bought came from Marden’s,” Peyton said, mentioning the surplus and salvage chain store known statewide. “Not sure I’d call that accessorizing. And thanks again for taking on Hewitt for me.”

  “Stop saying that.”

  “No one else has gone to bat for me.”

  “No one else was there. It’s why you don’t need to thank me. I genuinely think Hewitt’s going too far if you get a formal reprimand. I’m not getting one. You did nothing to warrant that.”

  Peyton checked her phone, making sure it was set to Silent. She motioned to the detective. “What happened to Leo Miller?”

  “Out of his league. Pulled off the case.”

  “This new guy looks young,” Peyton said.

  “And cute as hell. Looks younger than he is, though. He’s about thirty-five. Very competent. And single”—she eyed Peyton and smirked—“if that matters to you.”

  “A lot of media in town, huh?” Peyton said. “I got four calls at home about
the murder-suicide.”

  “That a ‘no comment’ regarding the cute-as-hell new detective?”

  “A lot of media, huh?” Peyton said again, but she was looking at the detective, while her mind lurched to Pete Dye and to how they’d left things between them.

  “We’d like the First-Degree Murder charge dismissed,” Landmark said.

  “Good luck with that,” Karen whispered.

  Peyton had grown up with Sherry St. Pierre, but most of her childhood memories also involved Pete Dye. He’d been a neighbor. And, as he’d said, she’d invited him to her wedding. The thing Pete hadn’t mentioned, though, was the night at Madawaska Lake: a May evening during their senior year at the University of Maine, when the bonfire had died, when Jeff had left the party early, and when she and Pete sat at the end of the dock, feet dangling in the sunfish-rippled water at three in the morning.

  He’d leaned in to kiss her. And it was she who’d pulled back that night. How would her life be different now if she’d not honored her relationship with Jeff on that dock?

  “We’re not dropping any charges,” Stephanie said.

  “Look, you get very few murders up here,” Landmark said, “so I just want you to know that I can—and will—prove that Mr. St. Pierre Jr. is nothing more than a hard-working, carefree soul, who loved and still lived with his parents. And I will show that he was a close friend of Simon Pink. Counselor, you’re wasting the state’s money. You need to rethink this.”

  “Don’t you dare patronize me,” Stephanie said. “I’ve got a degree from Harvard Law and worked on Beacon Street for Little and Little for ten years before coming back to northern Maine.”

  “You aren’t the only professional woman here,” Sherry said.

  Stephanie had been about to say something more to Landmark, but turned to Sherry and stared, confused.

  Chip patted Sherry’s thigh again, and she settled back into her chair.

  “I don’t like that,” Karen whispered. “He pats her like a damned dog.”

  Peyton was about to agree when Chip said, “Ms. DuBois, no one is questioning your credentials. We’re worried about saving the taxpayers’ money.”