Thirty-Two

In the aftermath of the blast, she sat up, disoriented but certain what she’d heard wasn’t a gunshot.

“Mr. McPherson,” she said, shaking her head and struggling to her feet. Off balance, she stumbled and fell. The blood and her torn pant leg—indicators of why she couldn’t stand—served as ice water to her face: there had been an explosion.

No longer dazed, she yelled, “Mr. McPherson!”

On hands and knees, she swiveled to see him. Pete McPherson lay maybe thirty feet ahead of her. In her periphery, she saw something leathery that was streaked with red, the way paint beads when applied too thickly, and what looked like elastic cords draped over the object’s side.

She recognized it as a boot. Tendons and ligaments, from a severed foot, were dangling.

She vomited once, then collected herself. Turning, she saw the corpse.

In three bloodied sections.

Mike Hewitt’s face was the color of dead ashes; Wally Rowe, crestfallen, leaned forward, forearms on his thighs, staring at his paper coffee cup; and Col. Mary Steuben, head of the Maine Warden Service, looked pissed off Wednesday at 3:45 p.m. in the Aroostook County Sheriff’s Office in Reeds.

The four of them sat around a glass coffee table as if this were a social hour. Except the expressions on their faces made it clear there was nothing social about this gathering: they were there to talk about death and bombs.

“How’s your leg?” Steuben said.

“Fine.” Peyton made a small flutter with her hand. “It’s nothing.” And she meant it—eight stitches below her knee, compared to McPherson’s fatal injuries, were nothing.

“Booby-trapped?” Steuben said.

The Maine Warden Service shared space with the Aroostook County Sheriff’s Office. Steuben had a second-floor corner office overlooking Main Street. Her desk was twice the size of Hewitt’s and looked like it was real cherry wood. There was a red leather sofa, two matching high-backed chairs, and glass end tables. A framed photo of Steuben with United States President Stu MacMillan hung on the wall.

“That’s what we think,” Rowe said. He didn’t turn to face her. He sat staring at the floor.

“We have state troopers out there right now,” Hewitt said, “to set up a half-mile perimeter to be sure no one gets near the area. There could be more explosives hidden.”

“It wasn’t a gas line?” Rowe said.

“No.” Hewitt shook his head. “And the nuts and screws they pulled from Peyton’s leg make everyone think this was a homemade job.”

“Are we tying this to the cabin?” Peyton asked.

“We’ll have to see.”

“Bomb techs will be at the explosion site within an hour,” Rowe said. “They’ll work until sundown and then start again at daybreak.”

Steuben folded her hands in front of her. “He was a good man.”

Hewitt drank his coffee.

Peyton stretched her leg out before her. “Do you think that bomb was meant for the president?” she asked.

“We swept that area seventy-two hours ago,” Rowe said. “We used dogs.”

“It’s a big area,” Hewitt explained. “You couldn’t have covered the whole thing.”

“I wasn’t there, personally. But this is what the Secret Service does. My guys wouldn’t have missed it.”

“Maybe someone planted an explosive after your guys went through,” Hewitt said.

Rowe shook his head. “No one even knows where the president is fishing.”

“The president told a bunch of townspeople he liked that stream last year,” Peyton said. “I heard about it at the diner.”

“And people here know when the president is supposed to arrive,” Steuben said. “His daughter is already here.”

“Is the daughter fishing?” Peyton asked.

Rowe shook his head. “Just visiting.”

“Don’t get defensive, Wally,” Hewitt sipped his coffee. “This isn’t on you.”

Rowe said, “That poor sonofabitch.”

“I just want to make sure Pete McPherson gets the credit he deserves,” Steuben said. “I think a Congressional Medal of Honor is in order.”

“So you’re declaring this an assassination attempt?” Peyton said.

Steuben looked at Peyton. “Agent Cote, that decision will be made far from my office.”

“In Washington,” Rowe said. “And we can’t be sure who that bomb was intended for.”

Hewitt nodded. “Off the record, I think it was meant for the president, and I think this raises the stakes of what Customs and Border Protection does. I’d be willing to call it an act of terrorism.”

“I don’t think it’s that well organized,” Rowe said.

“I think we’re looking at something we haven’t seen before,” Mike Hewitt said.

“And what is that?” Steuben asked.

“I don’t know exactly. It doesn’t feel well organized. But it feels like an assassination attempt.”

“‘Feels like’ isn’t definitive enough, Mike,” Rowe said.

Peyton was nodding. “I know what you mean, Mike. It feels like someone took a shot in the dark. Plant a mine and see if the president hits it.”

“That’s a hairbrained scheme,” Steuben said.

“Let’s see what they find out there,” Hewitt said. “If that’s it, then that’s it, and you’re right.”

“But I agree with Mike,” Peyton said. “There’s something here. And it feels more like a Gabby Giffords, Newtown, Colorado movie theatre situation than al Qaeda.”

“Idiosyncratic crimes,” Hewitt said. “A lone wolf goes after a target himself, does as much damage as he can before going down in flames.”

“Except no one went down in flames,” Steuben said.

“Just what I need,” Rowe said, “something else to worry about.”

“Idiosyncratic terrorism,” Peyton said.

She lifted her paper cup to her lips. The ER doctor had pulled two screws and one nut from her leg. Fate and seconds and inches, she thought. If she hadn’t paused to drink water, she’d have been closer to Pete McPherson, closer to the explosive. And she wouldn’t be sitting here.

She wrapped both hands around her cup to prevent a spill—her hands were still shaking. Stop thinking about what could have been, about yourself. Focus on the job.

Bomb-making materials had been found in the cabin. How far did Simon Pink’s murder and Freddy St. Pierre’s arson reach?

“I know you want McPherson to get his due,” Rowe said, “and I’m all for that, but we need discretion right now. You realize that, right? We can’t be talking to the media about his heroism.”

Steuben set her pen down, took off her glasses, and glared. “Are you questioning my intelligence?”

Peyton liked Steuben’s no-bullshit attitude.

“And, the Secret Service, of all agencies, is telling me about discretion? Come on, Wally. Everyone within a hundred miles of this town knows the president is on his way as soon as the first blue government license plate arrives.”

“Not so,” Rowe said.

“You don’t understand this place. This is a tight-knit community, an area where people talk and some haven’t had a lot to feel good about.”

“Until last summer,” Peyton said.

Steuben looked at her. “That’s right. You get it.” She turned back to Rowe. “Wally, a lot of these people are farmers. They have to compete with Canadian farmers who get subsidized by the Canadian government. When they can’t compete, they lose more than their farms—they lose their way of life, they lose their culture even.”

Peyton nodded. “And they know that only five hours away, southern Maine is thriving. They feel forgotten.”

“So having the president come here is a kind of approval?” Rowe said.

“Yes.” Steuben smiled for the first time. “Last year, the president raved about the trout streams and how much fun he had with his grandson here. People can’t wait for him to come back. And they know he’s on his way.”

“It’s nice for me to find all this goddamned information out right now.” Rowe’s jaw clenched.

“Let’s focus on some tangibles,” Hewitt said. “We want to get the detonator from the bomb that killed McPherson—if there’s anything left of it—and compare it to the one the fire marshal pulled from the burned-out cabin and the ones from the barn.”

Peyton said, “Simon Pink is looking less and less like a truck driver.”

“You said he had a chemistry background,” Hewitt said, “and we found bomb-making shit out there.”

She nodded. “Yeah, but, Mike, Pink’s been dead more than a week. And Freddy St. Pierre is locked up. Who put the explosives out there?”