Twenty-Two
“Have a nice Sunday?” Mike Hewitt asked Monday morning when Peyton sat down in his office to discuss the information she’d given him over the phone Saturday night.
Was his question genuine?
Saturday night, she side-stepped his hint (he hadn’t made it a directive, after all) that they meet Sunday morning to discuss Dickinson’s claim and to debrief the case. Instead, she spent Sunday with Tommy hiking and fishing for brook trout.
“Tommy and I had a nice Sunday,” she said. “Thanks for asking. I hope you did as well.”
“I worked,” he said.
A passive-aggressive remark? She tried to read his expression but couldn’t. Was she being hypersensitive, reading into things because her career often ran counter to her home life?
She exhaled.
Had she done the right thing by spending the day with Tommy? Certainly. Should she have conferenced with Hewitt instead? No way. If she’d had a penis, she’d not be facing these self-doubts. She shook her head, annoyed.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Nothing,” she said.
“Well, this certainly is turning into a mess. Tom Dickinson, or whoever the hell he really is, is in the federal witness protection program?”
“Dickinson is a government-provided alias,” she said. “That’s all the FBI would say. Details of his situation, I was told, are on a need-to-know basis.”
“I called the FBI to follow up,” Hewitt said. “They had never heard of that alias. Had no idea who I was talking about. You sure this guy is legit?”
“My phone call only lasted about five minutes, but I spoke to someone who said they were FBI.”
“Well,” Hewitt said, “speaking of federal assholes, you missed some fireworks here yesterday.”
“Sunday?” she said. She shifted in her seat. Let it go, she told herself. You weren’t scheduled to work.
“Bruce Steele came back to the station furious. He and the state police arson team were thrown off the St. Pierre cabin site. Sent home.”
“By whom? CIA or FBI?” she said.
“FBI.”
“What does the FBI want with the cabin?”
“No one has told me a thing. I have a conference call later today.”
“Does Wally Rowe know?”
“He’s Secret Service, Peyton.”
“Well, this is our case, Mike. Don’t let Washington—”
“Washington is going to do whatever the hell it wants. You’ve been doing this long enough to know that.”
Both statements were true.
“More Secret Service is arriving today,” he said, “because Michelle Prescott-MacMillan is coming to Aroostook County tomorrow.”
Peyton had seen the president’s daughter on TV. CNN had said Prescott-MacMillan was lecturing at her alma mater, Harvard Kennedy School of International and Global Affairs.
“When is the president arriving?”
“Now that’s really need-to-know,” Hewitt said.
“The dates were on the TV news, Mike. And they’re in my email somewhere.”
“Didn’t think you read your email.”
“I do, sparingly.”
“Within seventy-two hours,” he said. “Depending on when he can get away.”
“Let’s switch gears,” she said. “Sara Gibson told Dickinson that Nancy Lawrence took money to leave the bar with Freddie St. Pierre and to let him sleep on her couch the night of the murder.”
“How does Sara Gibson know that?”
“Dickinson says Sara told him she saw the exchange of money and heard the conversation in the ladies’ room at Tip of the Hat.”
“So, right now, according to third-hand information—provided, no less, by a federal felon in the witness protection program—Fred St. Pierre Jr. didn’t shoot Simon Pink?”
“If I didn’t know you better,” she said, “I’d almost think you were cynical.”
He grunted.
“The FBI says we can’t use Dickinson, just his information,” Peyton said, “because it would compromise his situation.”
“So he can’t testify,” Hewitt said.
“But we can be creative.”
Hewitt tilted his head. “What, exactly, do you have in mind?”
The Hampton Inn in Reeds was overkill for the area, Peyton thought. There were several locally owned hotels, and she hadn’t thought the Hampton Inn would make it. She’d thought (maybe even hoped) local businesses would run it out. But, like the Wal-Mart in town, it had not only survived but thrived. Allegiances fade quickly in a down economy.
She parked her service vehicle, entered the lobby, and walked to the desk.
“I need the room number of Dr. Sherry St. Pierre-Duvall.”
“I’ll call the room and put you on the line.”
The girl behind the counter was college-aged, wearing the standard-issue dark blazer. Her name tag read tanya. Probably an intern, maybe a hotel-management or recreation major at the University of Maine branch at Reeds.
Peyton looked around. No one was nearby.
“Actually, this is official business,” she said. Official business. Even to herself she sounded like a TV caricature.
“Really?” the young woman said, eyes widening. “I can lead you to the room.”
“No, that’s okay.”
“No, really. I mean, I don’t mind. I’m studying journalism. Maybe I can—”
“No. Just tell me the room number. And this is all off the record. Understand?” She knew she had no way of enforcing her request but thought the student-journalist might buy it.
“Nothing’s off the record unless I agree to it. The Duvalls have rooms 210 and 418.”
“Two rooms?”
“One is a suite,” the girl said, nodding.
Peyton took the stairs, and Dr. Chip Duvall answered the door when she knocked.
“Oh, Peyton, hi. Is this a personal visit? I guess not. You’re still in uniform.”
The chain was still on the door.
“May I come in, Chip?”
“Of course.”
He closed the door. She heard the chain rattle, and the door re-
opened.
The first thing she noticed was the room looked like he’d just checked in: both queen-sized beds made perfectly, TV remote next to the TV, desk materials organized.
“Where is Sherry?”
“Oh, she just stepped out.” He wouldn’t look at her.
“Will she be back soon?”
“Um … probably.”
His cell phone vibrated on the circular table in the corner. He went over and read the text message.
“Will she be back soon?” Peyton asked again, moving to the center of the room.
Both closet doors were open. And a red flag went up.
Chip set the phone down, thinking.
“I’d like to talk to Sherry, Chip. Where is she?”
He looked out the window.
Across Route 1, peopled moved to and fro in the Wal-Mart parking lot. Framed against the late-morning sunlight, they all seemed caught up in separate lives.
“You came to see me because you thought Sherry might be in trouble,” Peyton said. “Now I’m reaching out, and you’re stalling.”
“Not stalling,” he said, turning to look at her. “I’m a dentist. That’s all. It’s what I am. It’s what I know.”
“What does that have to do with me coming to see Sherry?”
He took a step toward her, his face softening, a faint smile appearing on his face. “I’ve got a bottle of wine on ice in the bathroom sink. Have a drink with me.”
“It’s not even lunchtime,” she said.
He sat on the corner of the bed. “It’s funny, when Sherry described you to me, she never told me how lovely you were.”
Lovely.
“The last time I was called lovely was by my grandfather,” she said.
“Is sexy better? Sherry’s not going to be back for a while.”
He held both hands out, palms up—a What do you say? gesture—and looked at the bed, then back at Peyton.
She turned and walked out.
At the end of the hall, she didn’t take the stairs. This time, she took the elevator. And this time, she went up to the fourth floor.
When the door of suite 418 opened, it wasn’t the man’s face that she recalled.
It was his hand.