They didn’t wait on Barrett to start the briefing. He drove like hell to make it on time but still found himself entering in the middle of the conversation, half the faces in the room familiar to him, half of them not. The woman at the head of the table looked at him as if he’d opened the wrong door by mistake.
“Agent Barrett,” she said. “Thanks for coming. We’ll try to catch you up.”
Her words were more welcoming than her eyes. He took a seat between one of the unfamiliar state troopers and Johansson. A projector screen displayed a booking photo of a wild-eyed man with unruly hair, and the name below it was new to Barrett: Jeffrey Girard.
“Who’s this?” he said.
“We got a match on the prints,” Emily Broward said. “They belong to one Jeffrey Girard, thirty-six years old, originally of Rockland, now in Mechanic Falls.”
“Does he mean anything to you, Don?” Barrett asked Johansson. Johansson nodded, looking almost physically pained by the question.
“He’s been arrested in the area, I know that.”
“He’s been arrested several times,” Broward said. “Burglary, drug possession, and felon in possession of firearms are the highlights. Did his name ever come up in your investigation?”
“I don’t think so, but a lot of names did.”
Barrett stared at the photo of Girard. The speed at which it had all happened was disorienting, a Rip van Winkle sensation, like waking up to find the world had moved on without you.
“Don told me the fingerprints came off the barrels,” he said.
“Correct.”
“Considering the nature of the crime, that seems bizarre. He’s packaging, transporting, and burying bodies but doesn’t think to wear gloves?”
“The whole thing was done sloppily, rushed. Maybe he got spooked or maybe he wanted the barrels for transportation only and intended to leave the bodies exposed.”
“Why would he have done that?”
“Because there’s a low chance of bodies being stumbled across by humans in that part of the Allagash, and a high chance of animals getting at them. Exposure and the animal destruction eliminate a lot of what we can determine in specifics. Time of death, things like that.”
“Cause of death?”
“Doesn’t eliminate that. They were shot.”
“Do we know if they were shot pre- or postmortem, though?”
“I’m not a medical examiner,” Broward said. “I won’t pretend to know those answers yet. I’m sure we’ll find out in due time. We have a forensic anthropologist working with the remains right now.”
“Even transporting the bodies is a lot of work to go through without wearing gloves,” Barrett said again, and he caught Johansson’s warning look. But Barrett wasn’t trying to press Broward. It seemed like a damn reasonable point.
“This fits our understanding of Jeffrey Girard pretty well, actually,” she said.
“How so?”
“He’s not smart, and he’s nervous, jumpy. I spoke with a deputy who knows him and with his parole officer. Both of them said his IQ is extremely low and that he has difficulty processing complex situations. The PO told me that he tends to rely on television or movie narratives to give him context when he’s confused, to help him in a world outside of his own.”
“What’s his world?”
Broward spread a state map out on the table and swept her hand over the northwestern portion, the part of Maine where there were no highways and not many towns. The deep pines of the north woods.
“This. He’s an outdoorsman. Good with a gun and a fishing rod; bad with people. He claims he’s never been outside of Maine, and yet he’s an itinerant guy. His contacts are his family, basically. He’ll bounce from mother to brother and cousin to cousin.”
She tapped the map. “No sign of him recently at the trailer near Mechanic Falls that is his official address, according to the parole officer.” She slid her finger north. “We’re told the Girard family has a hunting camp outside of Jackman and that he’ll be up there for long stretches when he’s not working. There’s no indication that he’s holding down any kind of formal job, so Jackman is probably our best bet.”
Her fingertip was resting on a speck near the Canadian border in the far western reaches of the state.
“A long drive from Port Hope,” Barrett said.
“Yes, it is.”
“That’s strange, don’t you think? We’re supposed to believe that the guy was so careless and rushed that he didn’t wear gloves when he dumped the bodies, but he had to cover, what, four or five hours just to get to the dump site?”
“I don’t have all the answers yet, but let’s remember that we’re arresting a man based on physical evidence at the crime scene, not rumors.”
There was a palpable shift in the room. The familiar faces turned away from Barrett, and the new ones turned toward him.
Emily Broward sensed the shift too, and seemed to regret causing it. Her tone softened and she said, “There is some interesting overlap with Crepeaux’s confession, though.”
“What’s that?”
“There’s one vehicle registered to Girard,” she said. “It’s a 1998 Dodge Dakota pickup, gray—similar to the one Crepeaux described. The license is Maine 727CRC.”
Barrett was starting to feel punch-drunk, a fighter begging for the bell. The truck was right, but the suspect wasn’t.
“Any distinguishing paint?”
“If there is, it’s not noted on the registration. I’d like you and Don to check with the Girard cousin who owns a body shop outside of Biddeford. Maybe he’ll know something about the truck.”
“Who’s the cousin?”
“Bobby Girard. It’s not a very formal outfit. They do some towing and they buy and sell wrecked cars. Sporadic hours, cash clients, that sort of thing. I’d like you and Don to interview him and specifically ask about the truck.”
“You said the smart money on Jeffrey Girard’s location was on Jackman.”
“Correct.”
“Then I’d like to be part of that trip. Please.”
There was an awkward, heavy silence. Emily Broward’s gaze was steady and her voice clipped when she responded.
“With all due respect, I’d rather not conflate the situation out in Port Hope with the reality that we have here.”
The door opened then and an older man in uniform stuck his head in and said, “Lieutenant? George Kelly is on the phone.”
The desire Barrett had to walk out of the room ahead of Broward and take the call was so intense that he shifted in his chair. Johansson looked at him as Broward left the room, his jaw tight, and Barrett knew he was fighting the same feeling.
Broward was gone for perhaps ten minutes, and when she came back in, she had a tight smile and a fighter’s eyes.
“Mr. Kelly just confirmed by check receipt that Jeffrey Girard was paid to pressure-wash his decks in July.” She paused for a beat and then said, “That puts him at the property when both Ian and Jackie would have been there.”
“Mathias Burke would have hired him, then,” Barrett said. “Or found him. George relied on him for every detail of that house’s care.”
“We’ll certainly keep that in mind. But the check was written to Jeffrey Girard, and Jeffrey Girard’s fingerprints are present at the crime scene.”
There was an undercurrent to her tone that said she was running out of patience. Barrett stayed silent for the rest of the meeting. When it broke up, Emily Broward headed northwest with an arrest warrant in hand, and Barrett headed southeast to talk to the suspect’s cousin.
“It’s bullshit that they’re sending us south,” Barrett said to Johansson.
“Yeah.”
“The idea that Girard worked on the Kelly property puts him in Burke’s realm. If he moved those bodies, he’d likely have needed help. I don’t think this discredits Kimberly’s confession. Not yet.”
Don didn’t answer.
“Maybe the cousin will have something,” Barrett said. “Want me to drive?”
“I’ll just meet you there,” Don said, and then he walked to his car without a look back, leaving Barrett alone in the parking lot.