Forty-Nine

A few hours later, Garrett Station was quiet. It was nearly 11 p.m., and Peyton, Hewitt, Stone Gibson, Frank Hammond, Wally Rowe, and Greg Harris were in the stationhouse working on final reports and debriefing.

The group had taken over the bullpen. Several worked on computers; others ate, and Harris even drank a beer.

“Greg Harris?” Peyton said. “Not Tom Dickinson?”

“My mother named me Greg.” Harris nodded. He had his feet up on a desk. “I’m sorry for lying to you when we first met. But I was trying to help.”

“Why didn’t you tell me what you were doing?”

“Kvido Bezdek is a sociopath, and he’s particularly violent. I was trying to keep as many innocent people away from him as I could.”

“Like my sister?” Stone Gibson said.

“Yes. You should tell her she talks too much.”

Stone didn’t say anything.

“How did a woman with a Harvard Ph.D. end up with Kvido?” Hewitt said.

“It’s like asking why Sherry paid the back taxes on her father’s farm,” Peyton said. “Maybe it doesn’t make sense. Or maybe it makes perfect sense. It’s who she was. Or who she became. She was pushed around and treated poorly by men her whole life. Her father started the cycle, and she never broke free of it. She wasted so much time trying to prove herself to her father and to everyone else.”

“Sad,” Rowe said.

“Remember the scene during the discovery session with Stephanie? Sherry was trying to prove she was more than her father and Chip and Kvido thought she was. It breaks my heart a little bit because I knew her when she was young, before all of this.”

Peyton was looking at the floor, thinking not of Dr. Sherry St. Pierre-Duvall but of Sherry St. Pierre, back when they were kids, back when there had still been a chance for Sherry.

“Peyton, she also killed a guy,” Hewitt said. “Don’t forget that.”

“I know that, Mike. I’m not excusing it. And I assume she told Freddy to get rid of the gun. And she tried to buy him an alibi. But, of course, he screwed up and we found the gun anyway.”

Harris finished his beer, stood, and put the can in the recycling bin. “The bottom line is that she ended up with a guy who wanted to kill the president.”

“Using a Goddamned minefield,” Hewitt said.

“She was so much more intelligent than any of them, than any of this,” Peyton said, and she thought of the line from Hamlet that Leo Lafleur had read to her.

No one spoke for a while. Peyton finished a bottle of water. Frank Hammond, who hadn’t spoken, sat watching CNN on his laptop. The afternoon’s events had not yet been broadcast.

Harris said, “I knew there’d be some collateral damage when Kvido got here. I wanted to limit it. I didn’t do a very good job.”

“This whole thing was fluid from day one.” Hewitt looked at Harris. “Second-guessing yourself will just give you ulcers. It does no good. Christ, I didn’t think Chip would shoot him. I could’ve taken him out before he killed Kvido, but I thought we’d learn something, and we’d talk him down. I was wrong.”

“We did learn a lot,” Stone said. “And what we learned may help Freddy St. Pierre when it comes to his sentencing.”

“Freddy knows a lot more than I gave him credit for,” Hewitt said. “But the primary is now dead”—Hewitt looked at Harris—“which doesn’t help you very much.”

“You were in a tough spot,” Harris said. “Whether or not to take out Chip Duvall was your call. You did what you thought was right, given the situation. I’ve been there myself. So I know never to second-guess someone else’s decision in a similar situation.”

Hewitt looked at Harris for several seconds. “Thanks,” he said.

“Kvido was bankrolling this whole operation,” Harris went on. “I haven’t gotten through with everything yet, but I’m pretty sure we’re going to find out Simon Pink could afford two plane tickets to Prague courtesy of Kvido.”

“And Kvido paid Fred’s taxes, via Sherry, in exchange for giving Simon Pink use of the cabin,” Peyton summarized. “When Marie innocently called us, Fred knew they were all about to get in some serious trouble. He was hoping Sherry would forgive them, for bringing attention to her illicit activities.”

“Think he knew someone was paying Simon to make bombs out there?” Hewitt asked.

Peyton shrugged. “He knew enough to prefer the easy way out rather than face the consequences.”

“So how much did Chip Duvall know?” Stone Gibson asked.

“Considering that everyone else involved, except Freddy, is dead,” Greg Harris said, “I bet he doesn’t know much.”

Peyton leaned back in her chair and stretched. “I’m heading home, gentleman,” she said. And she did.

Peyton drove home and entered the dark house just after midnight. Lois was sleeping in the guest room. She went to Tommy’s room and watched him sleep for a few minutes. Then she went downstairs to the kitchen and poured a glass of red wine, which she took to the living room sofa. She enjoyed the silence of the house, the occasional creak, the low rumble of the ice-maker.

She reached for her cell phone and hit a number on her list of contacts.

“Peyton?” Leo Lafleur said.

“I was thinking about that line from Hamlet you read to me the other day. Could you read it again?”

“Seriously? It’s almost one a.m.”

“You don’t go to sleep until much later. You’ve told me that yourself. And, besides, I’d really appreciate it.”

“I don’t need to read it,” he said. “I know it: There’s a special providence in the fall of a sparrow.”

“Thank you, Leo.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s all I needed,” she said.

She hung up and sipped her wine and thought about Sherry St. Pierre-Duvall as she stared at her own reflection in the blackened window, until the wine was drunk and sleep would finally come.