Twenty-Eight

“I remember being here twenty years ago,” Peyton said to Thomas Simpson, Garrett High School principal. “I was waiting for my father to arrive and bracing to be grounded.”

“Matt will be down in a minute,” Simpson said.

Peyton thanked him for his cooperation.

Simpson looked far too young to intimidate teenagers. Thin and blond, he looked more like a volunteer Little League coach than a disciplinarian.

“Ever meet Michael Garnett?” she asked.

“He was something of a mentor to me. He was principal here more than thirty years. Scared the hell out of everyone.”

“Including me.”

“That’s not my style. I have an assistant principal who’s as intimidating as Hulk Hogan.”

She grinned. They were in Simpson’s office. There was a photo cube on his desk. It held pictures of a blond woman and three little girls.

“Yours?” she asked.

“Rosey is eight, Mary is six, and Emily is four.”

“My son, Tommy, is in fifth grade.”

“He having a good experience in the school district?”

“Actually, he isn’t. But I’m not here to talk about my son.”

“I know that, but as a district administrator, I would like to hear about it.”

“Tommy has struggled this year, was just tested, and it turns out he’s dyslexic.”

“We have excellent resource rooms.”

“He’s also being bullied,” she said.

Simpson’s eyes narrowed. He leaned forward. “That’s unacceptable. Have you mentioned it to his teachers?”

“Not yet. Didn’t want to make it worse.”

Simpson wrote something on a sticky note just as there was a faint knock on the door. He stood, rounded his desk, and let Matt Kingston in.

“I’ll give you a few minutes alone,” Simpson said and left.

Matt Kingston, according to his birth certificate, had been born in Reeds and was eighteen. If she didn’t have that information in a manila folder in front of her, she wouldn’t have believed it. He looked all of twelve. His acne hadn’t improved since she’d seen him Friday, and his shoulder-length hair hung in greasy clumps. His eyes made him look older than he was. They reminded her of her late-father’s eyes at the end of the potato harvest—the dark rings, the drooping lids, the dullness from exhaustion. It was hard to remember he was a high schooler.

He again wore his light-blue work shirt, Matt stitched into the breast pocket.

“Do you remember me?” she asked.

He nodded and looked at the closed door.

“I bet this office gives you the creeps,” she said. “It sure gave me the creeps in high school. I landed here too often. Once, we put Alka Seltzer in the fish tank during a science lab.”

“No way,” he said. “That’s awesome.”

“Don’t try it,” she said and smiled. “I got suspended for a day—and that was just for being in the room. The guy who dropped them in there was out for a week.” She thought about how ironic it was that the culprit, Pete Dye, was now a teacher himself.

“Wow.”

His reaction made her smile. He might have old man’s eyes, but he was still a kid.

“Matt, do you work at Mann’s Garage?” She pointed to his shirt.

“Yeah. I change oil for Tom Mann after school.”

“Then you go to Tip of the Hat?”

“After dinner for a few hours, four nights a week.”

“You’re a busy guy,” she said.

He shrugged.

“What do your folks do?”

“Dad farmed.”

“But not anymore?” she asked.

He shrugged again. And that was all she needed: she could predict the rest of the story.

“I grew up here,” she said. “My dad lost the farm when I was in seventh grade.”

“So you know what it’s like?”

“Oh, yeah. We lost everything. But to a twelve-year-old girl, I didn’t care about the house, the land, the tractors. For me, it meant going to school in Kmart clothes and hand-me-downs. Half-used school notebooks. Buying inserts instead of getting new basketball sneakers.”

He was staring at the worn toe of his boot and nodded.

“But you know what?”

He looked up.

“It’s all bullshit,” she said. “Doesn’t mean a thing. I studied hard, went off on my own, and my family made it. My sister’s studying to become a teacher. My mother is doing fine.”

“And you became an agent.”

She smiled.

“I got a letter from the University of Maine saying I would get a merit scholarship.”

“So you’re hard-working and smart.”

“I don’t want to blow the U-Maine offer,” he said. “I need that scholarship. It’s my way out. I can’t blow it.”

“You won’t blow it.”

“If they know I jack deer, they might rescind the offer.”

“Rescind the offer?”

“SAT word. I study a lot.”

She smiled. “I don’t know one Border Patrol agent who can use that word in a sentence.”

“That’s hyperbole,” he said.

“Now you’re just showing off.”

He smiled.

“You won’t blow the offer, Matt. I can get you an attorney, if you want.”

“Do I need one? Am I in trouble?”

“No,” she said. “I’m not interested in deer-jacking, although you may want to give that up for a while.”

“I only do it once a year. I usually try to take a two-hundred-pound buck. Get enough meat off that to feed my dad and me for a year.”

“I want to know what you saw and heard last Monday night.”

He moved his palms over the arms of his chair, wiping pers-
piration.

“It’s okay, Matt. Take your time.”

“It was dark,” he said. “But I know I heard three voices.”

“You are sure you heard three?”

“Yes.”

“You could clearly differentiate three voices?”

“I heard three. I was along the tree line at the north end of the property. Johnny”—he stopped suddenly—“I mean, a kid at school, told me there were a lot of deer in that forest. He said they eat Fred St. Pierre’s garden broccoli. Ever smell that stuff?”

She smiled and nodded.

“Well, you can smell it a mile away. No wonder no one wants to eat the stuff. Smells terrible.”

She waited.

“Anyway,” he continued, “I heard three people.”

“Men?”

“I think so.”

“Are you certain?”

“I think so,” he said again. “One person was really quiet, hard to hear.”

That wasn’t good enough, but she had other things to cover, and he was scared. They could come back to that.

“Can you tell me what they sounded like? Do you remember an accent?”

“One had an accent. He was doing most of the talking.”

“What did he sound like?”

“Kind of like the bad guy in Rocky IV.”

“Can you remember anything that was said?”

“This is what I told the other officer. I don’t think they were friends.”

“You’ve spoken to another Border Patrol agent?”

“Well, yeah. She said she needed to speak to me about that night. It was the day after I talked to you in the parking lot at school. I figured you sent her.”

Peyton immediately thought of State Police Detective Karen Smythe. But she hadn’t told Karen about the young witness a day after Peyton had spoken to him. Had Hewitt notified her? Which trooper was leading the murder investigation, Stone or Karen?

“Was she in uniform? A state trooper?”

“No uniform.”

“What did you tell her?”

“That one guy sounded Russian. And the other two didn’t. That they were talking about money. And steps. I remember that word, steps.”

“Can you walk me through the conversation you heard that night?”

“I got out of there pretty quick, didn’t hear too much. I figured one of them was Mr. St. Pierre since it was his land, and I know he’s a real hard-ass. But as I was walking out, I heard a gunshot—not a loud boom like a deer rifle; smaller, like a firecracker—but I saw a flash in the cabin.”

“The shot came from inside the cabin?”

“Yes.”

“Could you make out what each of the men looked like?”

“No.”

“Clothes they wore?”

He shook his head. “I was behind a tree, staying out of sight. I saw the flash in the cabin window. Then I left.”

“And you told all of this to someone already?”

“Actually, not the part about steps. I just remembered that.”

“Did the officer leave a business card, say you could call if you remembered anything else?”

“No. Is there something wrong?”

“Just trying to see if I know her. What did the officer wear?”

“Sunglasses, a hat, and a windbreaker zipped up to her chin. It seemed too warm for the jacket, but I figured she was cold. We only talked for a couple minutes. She was in a hurry.”

“Did she pull you out of class?” To do so, Peyton knew, required one to sign in at the desk in the main office—there would be a name in the log.

“No. Stopped me in the parking lot before school. Just wanted to know if I saw the men. When I said I didn’t, she nodded and left.”

“I’ll start the grill,” Peyton said.

It was 6:15 p.m., Tuesday, “sacred sister night.” And Peyton and Tommy were at Elise’s. Peyton had brought chicken.

“Have to love Aroostook County summers,” Elise said, following Peyton out the sliding-glass door off the kitchen onto the deck. She carried a bottle of red wine and two glasses.

“That’s what I told myself when we got three inches of snow the first week in April,” Peyton said. “I’m cooking lemon-pepper chicken and asparagus on the grill. I brought a salad; it’s in the fridge.”

“Keep doing this and I’ll ask you to move in.” Elise poured two glasses of red, left one on the glass table for Peyton, then sprawled on a deck chair. Autumn was in a playpen nearby.

“I knew you had a late class.”

“A senior seminar in pedagogy,” Elise said. “I don’t think the professor ever taught high school. I can’t see him controlling a group of teenagers. He can’t even engage us, and we’re paying to be there. I volunteer at the high school—student teaching is still a year away, but it looks good on the resume—and the seniors I tutor would eat him alive.”

“That’s how practice-versus-theory goes,” Peyton said. “How is tutoring?”

“Not profitable, but I love it. My advisor set it up. A woman a little younger than me has me come to her American Literature class one day a week and help students with their papers. I have thirty papers to read and comment on tonight.”

“You don’t happen to have Matt Kingston, do you?”

“Peyton, there are only a hundred and thirteen seniors in the Garrett High School graduating class. I helped him with an essay once. He was applying for a scholarship to U-Maine. Why?”

The table had been cleared. Max had his plastic John Deere tractor in the kitchen; Tommy was working on a math worksheet in the living room; and Peyton and Elise had just spent ten minutes loading the dishwasher.

“Everything I just told you is confidential,” Peyton said. She settled Autumn on her lap, a book before the toddler, preparing to read to her. “Never leaves this kitchen.”

“Of course,” Elise said. “I’m glad Matt didn’t actually see the shooting. From reading his essay and talking to him about it, I can tell he’s a sensitive kid. Who do you think went to see him?”

“I have an email into Karen Smythe, and Mike Hewitt has contacted the Secret Service and the FBI to see if either of them sent someone.”

“Could it be the CIA?” Elise asked. “You said they were involved now.”

“If it was a CIA agent,” Peyton said, “I may never know it.”