Bitter Crossing (A Peyton Cote Novel) (27 page)

Peyton drove past and didn’t turn off immediately. Mind racing, she drove another half mile.

When they had eaten dinner, Scott Smith had needed to take a call outside. She had recognized the number, and for good reason: She’d gotten it from Kenny Radke’s cell-phone records. When she had dialed it, Garrett High School’s history chair Morris Picard had answered.

Now, she pulled into a driveway, made a three-point turn, and headed back north, stopping a quarter mile from the Picard home.

She focused the camera on the front door and waited.

For what? A shot of Smith leaving the Picard home?

And what would that do? Prove he was investigating Autumn’s disappearance?

Someone at Garrett Station was making an issue of the shooting. She couldn’t prove it was Smith, but he had asked so many questions, knew so much about her.

Had she been single so long that she had forgotten what is like to be pursued by someone genuinely interested in her? Smith had cited promotional materials as his source of knowledge about her.

What the hell was she doing?

The front door opened and Scott Smith walked out of the Picard home, his jacket unzipped. Nearing his car, he paused to zip his coat, and as he did a white envelope fell from his breast pocket. He bent and quickly retrieved it from the frozen driveway.

Camera pointed, she continued clicking away until Smith closed his door, backed up, and drove away.

She drove to Garrett Station.

“I thought you understood that you were to stay home,” Hewitt said, when she entered his office and closed the door behind her.

“Who’s working the Autumn case?”

“Why?” he said.

She waited.

Hewitt pointed to the adjacent chair.

“I’ve been in your situation, or one like it,” he said. “I don’t like Alan McAfee, either. Just do whatever Marcy Lambert says.”

“What is it about Alan McAfee? Anyone defending Hurley would look at my shooting of Radke. Who
internally
is making something out of this, Mike?”

“I can’t tell you that, which you damn well know. Now why don’t you—”

“This is my career.”

He sighed, pushed back from his desk, and stretched his legs, his boots settling on an open desk drawer.

She waited patiently.

“I know you don’t like this, Peyton, and I might understand that more than anyone here.”

“You’ve been in this situation? You know what this is like, having someone you work with—”

He waved her off.

“When I was a field agent in Arizona,” he said, “I had a great friend out there, a guy named Ryan Schmidt. He was about my age, had two kids and a very nice wife. He was a Boston guy like me, a good agent. Went the extra mile, you know? Not a guy who parked the truck and sat in the same spot all night. The kind of guy who’d walk six, eight miles a night in the desert. I was with him one night, and we came to this truck we thought was full of illegals.”

He paused and stared at the desk blotter. The memory clearly made him uneasy, and Peyton didn’t know if he’d continue.

“They weren’t illegals. They were all armed, and what they were hauling was cocaine—enough to make it worth shooting a couple agents, if it came to that.”

“Fifty million dollars’ worth,” she said, nodding.

“You know the story?”

“I heard about it. I was in El Paso, remember? That was you?”

“That was me. When the shooting started, Ryan and I spread out. He circled behind the truck. It was one of my bullets”—he looked out his office window—“that killed him. I took responsibility for it. We made the bust. Like you said, around fifty million dollars’ worth. But the defense attorney hung me out to dry, brought my integrity into question. Made it look like I shot Ryan on purpose. Said I had access to other cartels and maybe wanted the cocaine for myself, or maybe I was with these guys and trying to help them get away by shooting the ‘good’ agent.”

“Mike,” she said, “no one believed those theories.”

“No one? Maybe no one who mattered—I eventually got promoted to PAIC—but the way people looked at me changed, Peyton. There’s no question about that.”

“Mike, someone internally is making something out of my shooting, saying something. I need to know who.”

“There is no way I can tell you.”

“This is my career,” she said and was quiet for several seconds. “Why did you tell me your story?”

“Because I wish my PAIC had looked out for me a little better. That court case dragged out for three months. My wife couldn’t take it. It was the beginning of the end for us. I’ll call you when I hear something about the shooting investigation. Now go home.”

She nodded and left.

Now she knew why Mike Hewitt was so hard to figure out, why he was both open to his agents and at the same time completely closed off. She walked to her Jeep thinking of what he must’ve gone through—on the stand, fielding questions about why and how he’d shot a close friend, in front of the late-officer’s wife and parents no less.

All of that had been followed by suspicious looks from colleagues.

She would make damned sure that didn’t happen to her.

THIRTY
-
THREE

S
OME THINGS ONE EXPERIENCES
as a parent are truly priceless. And at 1:15 p.m. Thursday, despite the events of the past fifteen hours, Peyton felt like the luckiest woman in the world.

Tommy looked up from his desk and saw her standing in the doorway of his classroom.

“Tommy,” Sara Roberts, his teacher, said, “look who came to volunteer.”

She didn’t know what to expect. Was it still cool to have your mom visit class when you were a big second grader?

When his face lit up, she knew the answer. She knew, too, that he’d know he had one parent who took an interest in him.

Peyton drove Tommy home after school and then, at 4 p.m., met Pete Dye and Billy Dozier at a bar on Main Street in Reeds.

She couldn’t report to Garrett Station, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t work. Dozier was the doorman at the Tip of the Hat in Garrett, the bar where an awfully young-looking Spanish-speaking girl—who, according to Dye, had been pregnant early last summer—had gone with a man in a tweed jacket.

“Pete said that if I came here and talked to you, you might buy me dinner and a few beers,” Dozier said, taking a seat across from Peyton.

The interior of the bar was dimly lit and had dark carpeting and low circular tables.

“Did he now?” She shot Dye a look.

He smirked and shrugged. “Always been good at spending other people’s money.”

“I’m remembering that now.”

When a waitress approached, Peyton said, “All of this is on my bill.”

Dye ordered a bottle of Heineken for himself and a Michelob Light for Dozier. Peyton got a Bud Light draft.

“I’m glad you’re back in town,” Dye said.

“Oh, I can tell.” The last twenty-four hours had been the worst of her life since the day Jeff left her, making the smile she now flashed feel like her first in months. “No draft beer when I’m buying, huh? Instead it’s three-dollar bottles.”

“And dinner.” Dye grinned.

“Dinner? Sure. There’re some peanuts here.”

She nudged the bowl near the candle on the table toward Dye. The tablecloth was fawn-colored vinyl; the candle was unlit.

Dozier rolled his eyes. “You ask me here just to watch you two flirt?”

“That what we were doing?” Dye asked Dozier, but his eyes were on Peyton.

She held his gaze. She could see how it looked like that, but Pete Dye was just fun to be around. They hadn’t been flirting.

Had they?

“Pete said this was about an ID,” Dozier said. “I card everyone who walks through the door of the Tip of the Hat.”

“Tell me about a Spanish-speaking girl in the Tip last summer.”

“Don’t know any.”

“Wrong answer,” she said. “Let’s keep this cordial, Billy.”

“I know what Border Patrol agents are like. They beat the shit out of my cousin.”

“Sorry to hear that. I’m sure he deserved it.”

“Bullshit.”

“The girl,” she said. “I’m not after you. I have some questions to ask her.”

“Fine. The Mexican girl only came with a guy in a tweed jacket. The guy’s coat looked ridiculous.”

Dozier was short, squat, about twenty-five, with a ruddy complexion and a shaved head. He was rugged in a thick, farm-boy way. His beer-keg physique had been acquired via a meat-and-potato diet and lots of manual labor.

The waitress returned with the beer.

“Did her ID say she was Mexican?”

Dozier shrugged. “Don’t remember, but she spoke Spanish.” He looked around the room.

The bar was called Cooper’s Lounge. Peyton knew she wouldn’t run into fellow and, more importantly, active-duty agents here to witness her working in a less-than-official capacity.

Having come from school, Pete Dye wore khakis, a creased white button-down, and loafers. He’d either just bought the shoes or had polished them especially for the occasion. That, and the way he’d sounded disappointed on the phone when she’d asked him to bring Dozier, made her curious. It also made her wonder about Dozier’s interpretation of their light-hearted conversation.

“What was the girl’s name?” she said.

“How should I know?”

“You IDed her.”

Dozier looked at Dye.

“I’ll get the second round.” Dye stood and went to the bar.

Dozier watched him go and shook his head. “Am I in trouble?”

“No.” She ate a peanut. “Got nothing to do with you. I’m not a cop.”

“The Border Patrol doesn’t do undercover. Where’s your uni-
form?”

“I’m off duty,” she said, a gross understatement. “What’s her name? Where does she live?”

“Why you looking for her?”

She shook her head.

A group of men wearing flannel and orange hunting vests entered and went to a round table. When they ordered drinks, their New York accents were clear.

Dozier listened then said, “I hate hunting near out-of-staters. Some of them are sound-shooters.”

“ ‘Sound-shooters’?” Peyton said.

“They hear something in the bushes, they turn and blast. Last year, my cousin had some asshole from Connecticut shoot a limb off a tree about four feet from his head.” Dozier took a handful of peanuts. “The girl’s ID said she lived in Mars Hill, I think. She only came in three, four times. But she was good-looking so I remembered, and I remember her speaking Spanish, which makes her kind of hot, you know?”

Mars Hill was ten minutes south of Reeds, twenty minutes north of Houlton.

“Name on the ID,” he said quietly, staring at the Celtics game, “was Jane Smith.”

“
Jane Smith
?” she said.

He turned from the TV, surprised by her incredulity.

“Did she speak English?”

“Not that I ever heard.”

“The name on the ID was Jane Smith, but she spoke no English?”

Nod.

“That didn’t seem odd to you?” Peyton said.

“Didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about it.”

“I’ll bet.”

He said, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Who was the guy she was with?”

He shrugged. “Some redheaded guy.”

“From?”

Shrug. “He was older. Didn’t card him.”

“What did they talk about?”

“Hey, I don’t spy on people. Like I said, she was only there a few times.”

“Did he speak English?”

“Not to her. Only when he ordered for them.” Dozier drank some beer. “I didn’t hear them talk a lot, but when they were walking in, they spoke Spanish to each other. She called him
Professor.
He looked like a professor to me, not that I know any.”

Peyton thought of her classroom visit, of Jerry Reilly’s elbow patches, of his tweed jacket. How many redheaded tweed-jacket-wearing professors could there be on the tiny University of Maine at Reeds campus?

“She ever call him Jerry?”

“Not that I heard. Can I go?”

“Sure. I appreciate your help. I’ll buy dinner.”

He shook his head, stood, and walked out.

“You can buy
me
dinner,” Dye said, approaching the table.

“I’m sure,” she smiled, “and you’ll eat for two.”

He laughed. The after-work crowd hadn’t arrived yet. The smell of chicken cooking over an open flame was present and mixed with the scent of rum. Her bruised chest hurt when she moved, but the pain was manageable. She was glad Dye had come; glad, too, that Dozier had left.

“I heard something happened to you last night, Peyton. Heard you were there when Kenny …”

She looked away.

“Sorry. I can tell that upset you. When I heard, I called the hospital. They wouldn’t tell me anything, and I didn’t want to bother your mom or Elise.” He drank from his bottle. “Couldn’t sleep all night.”

“That’s sweet.” She smiled at him. “Didn’t know you followed my career.”

“It’s a small town. You hear things.”

“What did you hear?”

“Not much, but Kenny Radke had been to jail for dealing drugs. And I teach high school kids. He doesn’t get a lot of sympathy from me.”

“Hey,” she said, “you and I used to get to Tip of the Hat before anyone else, and I used that time to beat you at pool.”

“Funny, I don’t remember it like that. In fact, you practically paid for my first CD collection.”

She pointed at the vacant pool table. “Rematch?”

“I’m glad we did this,” she said, as Pete Dye walked her to her Jeep.

It was dark now, and there were other cars in the parking lot.

“I’m sorry about what happened with Kenny,” Dye said. “If you need to talk to anyone, you know I’m on your side. When I heard you were involved, I just wanted to see you.”

She didn’t know what to say to that. They were quiet and walked slowly.

Then Pete Dye leaned in and did something she never saw coming.

“Sorry,” he said, when the kiss ended.

“Don’t be,” she said, but she went quickly to her Jeep and drove away.

THIRTY
-
FOUR

B
UZZING A LITTLE FROM
the kiss, and confused a lot by it, she turned left out the parking lot. She had lots to discuss with professor Jerry Reilly now, and work always cleared her mind.