Forty-One

The noon meeting on Friday was all-hands-on-deck, and all the agencies involved were represented, including a new player: FBI Agent Frank Hammond, who arrived from Boston.

Stone, Hewitt, Peyton, Wally Rowe, and Hammond were in the breakroom at Garrett Station.

“Are you the agent I spoke to on the phone last week about Tom Dickinson?”

“I don’t know,” Hammond said. “Who is Tom Dickinson?”

“He’s in the federal witness protection program.”

“Couldn’t have been me,” Hammond said. “We don’t have anyone up here.”

Peyton looked at Hewitt, who shrugged.

“I got Freddy and his attorney, Steve St. Louis, up early and spent two hours with them this morning,” Hammond said. Standing in front of the whiteboard like a teacher, he faced the others who sat at the table and circled Freddy’s picture.

Hammond was the FBI’s executive assistant director of the Criminal Investigative Division and worked out of Boston. Peyton knew he was close to sixty, but small and wiry. He’d run three marathons and still ran 10Ks. She’d worked with him previously and had always been impressed. Where State Trooper Leo Miller spoke to hear himself speak during meetings, Hammond was a listener who could take in information, process it, and synthesize it in a manner that was useful to everyone involved.

Stone leaned and took an orange from his computer bag near his feet and began to peel it.

“Freddy freely admits that he burned down his cabin. He keeps saying that, ‘My cabin,’” Hammond continued. “Smart guy. Can’t be accused of arson unless he files a claim, which he won’t do.”

“But he was paid to burn it,” Peyton said.

“You have the money trail that proves that?”

Peyton looked at Hewitt.

Hewitt shook his head. “Nope. And, if it’s on his land, it’s not a crime”—he pointed to Hammond and nodded—“unless he’s going to commit insurance fraud.”

“You see the problem here?” Hammond said.

“No one has ever called Freddy St. Pierre smart,” Peyton said. “He’s being advised well by someone.”

“The lawyer, St. Louis?”

“I doubt that,” she said. “Someone is pulling the strings to all of this. We need to find out who.”

“His sister has a Ph.D., she might have given her brother twenty thousand dollars, and she’s missing,” Hewitt said.

Peyton nodded. “True, but she was as surprised as anyone when this all began. She was devastated by her parents’ deaths.”

“That assumes the murder-suicide is connected to Simon Pink’s murder,” Stone said. He took his cell phone off the table and checked to be sure the ringer was set to vibrate. “Maybe they aren’t related. Maybe her father was just an abusive asshole who knew the cat was finally out of the bag.”

The room fell quiet, each law-enforcement official processing.

Hammond folded his arms across his chest. “So Simon Pink and Freddy roof the cabin and work the harvest together.” He started pacing. “The neighbors, who are Stone’s sister and mother and therefore reliable, say they heard explosions in recent months. The kid, Kingston, goes to the farm to poach deer but hears three men talking about ‘steps’ and then hears a gunshot, but he can’t provide visual confirmation of the murder. Peyton goes there the next day and finds the torched cabin, which Freddy now admits to.”

“And his confession places him at the murder scene,” Peyton said. “Matt Kingston recognized Freddy’s voice that night. Freddy knows who shot Simon Pink.”

“It’s him,” Hewitt said. “That’s becoming clear. He tried to separate the arson from the murder because it was the lesser of the two.”

“He appeared in court and entered a not-guilty plea,” Stone said. “But he knows damned well Stephanie DuBois is moving forward with the murder charge.”

“Three people were there that night.” Peyton was shaking her head, frustrated. “Why isn’t he trying to pin it on the third person? He’s facing life in prison.”

“We know one had an accent,” Stone said. “We get Kvido in here, we can record him and play it for Matt Kingston.”

Hewitt shook his head. “I disagree. It makes sense that the person with the accent was Simon Pink, who, we assume, didn’t shoot himself.”

Hammond nodded. “And even if that’s not right, that’s certainly how a defense attorney will spin it.”

Peyton leaned forward and rubbed her forehead with her thumb and forefinger. “The third person, according to Matt, was quiet. He couldn’t describe that voice. Why hasn’t Freddy given us that person? That’s what I’d do; we all would. We’d be throwing the third guy at the cops.”

Stone ate part of his orange. “DuBois even said I could tell him we’d negotiate if he tells us who was there, what was going on.”

“He knows the third person has more on him than he has on them,” Hewitt said. “That’s why he’s not talking. He did it. He figures to take his chances at trial because the whole case is circumstantial.”

“Makes sense,” Hammond said.

“And without Matt Kingston,” Peyton said, “there is no case against Freddy.”

Matt Kingston had now been missing for two and a half days.

Hewitt blew out a long breath. “We need to find that kid.”

“I’d like to get Freddy’s sister in here, too,” Stone said. “Kvido held up very well under questioning, but her brother would tell her things he wouldn’t say to anyone else.”

“Ask Kvido anything personal?” Peyton said.

Hammond moved to the table and took up his coffee cup. “We asked about his relationship with Sherry.”

Peyton nodded. “He seemed to avoid talking about himself when Stone and I spoke to him.”

Hammond pointed to his briefcase. “He let us record the conversation—it’s on my phone, if you want to hear it—and he never asked for an attorney.”

“So who set the IEDs in the woods?” Hewitt said. “Pink was dead by the time they were put in the earth, and Freddy was sitting down the hall.”

“What do we know from the IEDs?” Stone asked.

Hammond went to his iPad. “I spoke to a bomb tech and read the report. The techs say the devices were grouped in a cluster. The first one was spring loaded, and it was designed to activate the others.”

“They failed?” Hewitt said. He looked at Peyton.

She felt the blood drain from her face.

Hammond saw the two CBP agents looking at one another. “Thank God for that. All of this offers a picture of the suspect,” he continued. “A profile is coming together. If this were an expert, he had a seriously off day. But this would mean enough to whoever did this that they wouldn’t make a mistake.”

“You’re saying we got their best effort?” Stone had stopped writing. He set his pen down.

“Yes. We’re not dealing with an expert.”

“Some amateur asshole is trying to kill the president,” Hewitt said.

“If this was al Qaeda or ISIS or Boko Haram,” Stone agreed, “they’d have claimed responsibility.”

Hammond shook his head. “Not always.”

Peyton sat listening, but her head was spinning. She’d come even closer to death than she’d known.

“Have you searched Kvido’s hotel room?” she asked.

“Yes,” Stone said. “I served the warrant last night. We have his laptop. Our computer guys have gone through it. He’s clean. Which is probably why he’s staying around.”

“I want to interview him again, Mike.”

“Peyton, we talked about this.” Hewitt pointed at Hammond. “He’s taking that aspect of the investigation.”

“I’ll interview him again,” Hammond said, “believe me. And you can be there when I do.”

That surprised her. “Thanks.” She stood.

Hewitt said, “Where are you going?”

“To do a reference check,” she said.

“You hiring someone?” Stone said.

“Maybe a public policy professor,” she said and walked out.