Barrett drove out of Port Hope with Mark Millinock’s blood drying on the hand that held the steering wheel.
You got my blood up, he’d said. That phrase so etched in his memory had risen easily to his lips as his heart thundered and his muscles bunched and he saw the pain he’d inflicted on another human being.
You got my blood up.
He stopped at a Dunkin’ Donuts in Thomaston, washed the blood off his hands in the bathroom, and looked at himself in the mirror as if assessing damage, although Mark had never landed a blow on him.
What in the hell had he been thinking? Mark was an addict and a ne’er-do-well, deserving of sympathy, not rage, and Barrett had just delivered painful news about his nephew’s death. Then somehow at the first taunt, the first provocation, Barrett had swung on him. What in the hell had happened?
Mark had reminded him of Mathias, that was the problem. He’d called Barrett out on failure and he’d laughed.
Don’t get your feet wet.
Barrett shut off the water and dabbed his face with his damp hands as if trying to cool a fever. It had been two days since he’d had any real sleep. He thought that he should get a hotel room, pick some national chain where everything looked the same. He’d close the blinds and sleep the day away until he was rested, until his mind and fists belonged to him again.
He bought a large coffee instead. Then he got back in the car and called Don Johansson.
He’s just like you, Mark Millinock had said. Coming apart, because you got it wrong.
Johansson answered his call with good humor and a touch of wariness.
“Hey, Barrett. How’s Montana?”
“I’m not sure. I’m in Maine.”
There was a long silence. Then Johansson said, “Why?”
“I’d like to meet in person to talk about that. Grab a beer, maybe?”
“If this is about Kimmy, I do not want that beer. If it’s about anything else, I’ll buy.”
“What if it’s about both?”
Johansson’s sigh was soft and sorrowful, like a mourner’s at a wake.
“Barrett, I can’t step back to that. And you should know better. You should—”
“I saw Mark Millinock today,” Barrett said. “He mentioned you.”
The silence stretched on and out like an unfamiliar highway.
“Come by the house,” Johansson said finally, and then he hung up.
Johansson lived in a charming ranch with cedar flower boxes under the windows. The flower boxes, usually overflowing with beautiful color, were empty today, the remnants of last summer’s soil beaten down.
Johansson opened the door before Barrett knocked. His fleshy face was now hollow-cheeked, his double chin converted into a sharp angle of bone as if at the hand of an aggressive plastic surgeon. His rounded gut had closed inward, and his belt, once straining to keep his pants closed, was now overworked trying to keep them up.
“How’s it going, Barrett?”
Barrett gave him a long look and said, “I was going to ask if Mark Millinock had fed me a lie about you. I don’t think I need to, though.”
“He’s a failed fisherman and a bad bartender with a pill habit,” Johansson snapped. “You believe anything he has to say, you’re even more gullible than I thought.”
Barrett didn’t answer.
“Last few times I’ve seen that junkie, he was higher than a giraffe’s asshole, and now you’re telling me he’s reliable? Come on.”
Still, Barrett didn’t answer. Just watched and waited.
“What’d he tell you?” Johansson asked finally.
“That you’ve got a bad back.”
“I hurt my back. That’s true enough.”
For a moment they faced off, Johansson defiant, Barrett patient, and then Johansson stepped back from the door and said, “Ah, screw it. Come on inside.”
Barrett stepped in and was stunned by what he saw. The interior of the house looked more like a dorm room than a family home. The only furniture was an old couch and a coffee table facing a television that sat on the floor. Two empty beer cans also sat on the floor, and there were stains on the carpet where previous members of their battalion had fallen wounded. The walls were bare, but nails and hooks that had once held family photographs and childhood artwork still protruded from them.
“Let’s have that drink,” Johansson said, and he walked into a kitchen that smelled of old sourness. Barrett stared around, thinking of the last time he’d been here. It was for a barbecue, and Don’s wife, Megan, had put out a spread of fine food while Don and his son manned the grill and shot unsuspecting attendees with squirt guns.
Johansson came back into the living room and handed Barrett a can of Budweiser. He’d already cracked his own. He lifted it in Barrett’s direction.
“Cheers.”
He sat on the couch then, and Barrett felt ridiculous joining him there, the two of them sitting side by side in the empty house, staring at the blank TV on the floor, so he remained standing and leaned against the wall.
“Where are Megan and David?”
“Florida. Living the good life. Fun in the sun. But don’t get to feeling sorry for me—it isn’t as bad as it sounds.” He gazed around his home. “Or looks.”
“No?”
“No. I’m headed down there myself. They just went ahead of me, that’s all.”
And went in a hurry, Barrett thought, but he said, “You’re quitting the police?”
“Retiring, yeah.”
“You’re five years from retiring with a pension, Don.”
“I’ll get work easily enough down there. Florida police departments, are you kidding me? Security guards in the gated communities make as much as me. It’s just time for a move.”
Barrett said, “How many people know about the pills?”
Johansson looked like he was considering denial, but instead he sipped the beer and said, “A few people know about the pills. I don’t think many know that I’ve…gone to outside sources. If anyone in the department knew that, I’d be fired.”
“Have you tried cleaning up? Getting to a clinic or a counselor or—”
Johansson waved him off. “Yes, yes, yes. I’m working on it, Barrett. Shit, I don’t need you showing up at my doorstep like a missionary. Leave your tracts and go, if that’s what this is about.”
“That’s not what I came for, but I’d like to help you. Seriously.”
“Right. What else is on your mind, old boy? Let me guess—you finally figured out how Mathias moved the bodies.”
“Not yet.”
Johansson’s eyes tightened. “But you’re trying? You came back here to try that?” Johansson gave a little laugh and shook his head. “Tenacious,” he said. “You are tenacious.” He tipped the beer back, realized it was empty, and set it down on the carpet beside one of the stains.
“We fucked up the wrong case,” he said. “Too many people cared too much. And then with Girard…” He shook his head. “I really did a number on that one, didn’t I? The man’s gun wasn’t even loaded. Lead suspect in the most famous murders this state has seen in years, I killed him before the courtroom, and the son of a bitch was unarmed.”
“You didn’t know that.”
“No. But I can tell you exactly how much that meant to people. Ask Howard Pelletier about it sometime, see what it meant to him. Ask Amy and George Kelly.”
Barrett finished his beer but held it in his hand, unwilling to set it on the floor the way Johansson had.
“Did you know that Girard sold the drugs that killed Mark Millinock’s nephew?”
Johansson’s face registered more interest than he probably wanted to show, because all he said was “You don’t say?” without looking up.
“Yeah. And Mark said something interesting. He called the drug that killed his nephew DC. It’s the same term Kimberly used, but she attached it to a place. She thought it was from Washington. Mark told me that it was a nickname. Devil’s cut or devil’s calling. Have you heard of it?”
Johansson closed his eyes and shook his head again, slowly and emphatically.
“Bear with me,” Barrett said.
“‘Bear with me,’ he says,” Johansson said sarcastically, as if talking to someone else in the room. “‘Bear with me while we search this pond. Hell, let’s drain this pond!’ If Girard hadn’t had a good guilt complex, I’d have been breaching dams with you and wandering around in my hip waders, sorting through old beer cans and babbling about items of evidentiary value. I shouldn’t have shot the son of a bitch—he saved me a lot of embarrassment.”
“You’re sure he was the one who e-mailed the body location?”
“Yes.”
“He seemed startled to see us, in my opinion. If he gave up the location, he should have known how fast it would move from there. No gloves, the truck still parked with their blood in it, but all he could bring himself to do was direct police to the bodies? Why? Because he felt guilty seeing Mathias take the fall? If he really did, why not go all the way and come forward? He knew it wouldn’t take long.”
“The guy was hardly a Rhodes scholar. Maybe he thought the scene was old enough that there’d be no evidence to attach him to it, and he’d bust Mathias loose without paying the price.”
Barrett didn’t like that idea and never had.
“I’d like to see the forensic reports from the body-dump scene,” he said, ignoring him. “I was never given that access. If I can prove—”
“What you can prove is that none of what that trailer-trash tramp told you was the truth!” Johansson shouted. “We already proved that, Barrett!”
Barrett let silence hang for a moment, and then he said, “I didn’t come out here to draw you back into this.”
“Sure as hell sounds like you did.”
“I came out here to tell you that people will be talking now that I’m back. Mark Millinock may be one of the people doing the talking. You follow me?”
Johansson didn’t respond.
“I don’t want to drag you down,” Barrett said. “So I’m giving you fair warning. Be ready for some attention, okay?”
“I’m fine,” Johansson said.
“You’re not fine, and more people than Mark know it.”
“Let ’em talk. I’m done here, anyhow. Florida, brother. And once I’m gone, unlike you, I won’t be stupid enough to come back.”
Barrett crossed the room and set the empty beer can down on the stained carpet where the other cans were accumulating.
“If you need me, call me.”
Johansson didn’t answer.
Barrett let himself out.