The Broken Girls(71)

It was as if he were hitting her with the words, punching her in the stomach. “Did you know my sister?” she rasped.

“No,” Stephen Heyer said. “But I want Tim Christopher dead.”

“What—” She tried to get a grip, sound rational. “Are you some kind of death penalty advocate?” Vermont didn’t have the death penalty.

“I don’t give a shit about the death penalty,” Stephen said, his eyes alight. “I just want him dead. Not for what he did to your sister. For what he did to mine.”

There are moments when everything shifts, when the world becomes eerily like the kaleidoscope toy given to children, where with the turn of a cheap plastic knob everything changes, becomes different. Fiona looked at the man in front of her and the calm of downtown Portsmouth disappeared; the colors changed; the air smelled different. Everything flew upward, scattered, and landed again. Her head throbbed.

“Who was your sister?” she asked him. “What did Tim do?”

“Who is my sister?” he corrected her, his voice bitter. “Helen Elizabeth Heyer, born July 9, 1973. Would you like to meet her?”

Her voice was a rasp, but she didn’t hesitate, the words slipping out of her as they always did when she was buzzed like this, restless, the madness in her blood. “Yes,” she told Stephen. “I would.”

“My car is parked over there,” he said, pointing down the street. He smiled when he saw her expression. “How the hell do you think I followed you to New Hampshire? I’m a fucking addict, not a bum. It’s a blue Chevy. I’ll pull out and wait for you.”

“Where are we going?” Fiona asked him, her temples pounding.

“Back to Vermont,” he said. “I’ll lead the way. You follow.”





Chapter 25


Barrons, Vermont

November 2014

The Barrons police department was emptying out at five o’clock, the day staff packing up and going home. They kept a dispatcher on at night, but in a town as small as Barrons, that was all that was needed. A few cops were kept on call in case of emergencies, and a duty officer stayed on until midnight in case of evening domestic disputes, noise complaints, or bar customers that got out of hand. The parking lot was nearly empty when Fiona pulled in, though Jamie’s SUV was still there.

Holding a file folder in her hand, Fiona walked through the front door and saw the dispatcher sitting behind the front desk. He looked to be nearly seventy, and he was peacefully leafing through a fishing magazine. He looked up with some surprise.

“Help you?” he said.

He knew who she was. Of course he did. If he didn’t know she was Malcolm Sheridan’s daughter, dating a fellow cop, she’d eat her journalism diploma. But she said, “I’m looking for Jamie Creel. Is he around?”

“Are you here to report a crime?” he asked.

“I’m here to see Jamie.”

The dispatcher slid a clipboard across the desk at her. “You’ll need to sign in. Name, address, identification.”

It was bullshit. This was Barrons, not Rikers Island. “Just tell me where to find him.”

His hairy white eyebrows rose on his forehead. “I’ll have to get my supervisor’s approval to let a journalist in here.”

“If you know I’m a journalist, then you know my name.” She slid the clipboard back across the desk at him. “Go ahead and write it down.”

She walked past before he could protest.

She’d never been inside here, even when Deb died. The cops had interviewed her at the house, sitting in the living room, her parents beside her. I last saw my sister on Sunday, when she visited for dinner. No, I haven’t talked to her since. No, I don’t know where she could have gone. And then, after the body was found: No, she never mentioned anyone following her or threatening her. Yes, I’ve met Tim Christopher. No, I didn’t talk to her that night. They had been exhausted, those cops that interviewed her. Bewildered, maybe in over their heads. Neither of them had been Garrett Creel.

Jamie was at his desk, a tiny cubicle in the open main room of the station, in front of a 2000-era desktop computer. He was in uniform, though his hat was off and the top buttons of his uniform shirt were undone, the white T-shirt he wore underneath it contrasting with the navy blue. He had obviously heard Fiona’s voice, because he was already watching her when she came around the corner from the front dispatch desk, and his eyes, flat and wary, watched her come toward him.

“There a problem?” he said.

“Can we talk somewhere?” she asked him.

His gaze stayed on her face for a minute, and she knew he was reading her, the fact that she wasn’t here for personal reasons. What did he expect? That she’d bring whatever they had to his work while he was on shift to try to hash things out? He knew her better than that.

His eyes darted briefly to the back of the dispatch desk, and then to the others in the room—a cop putting his coat on, another standing by the coffee machine—and pushed back his chair. “Come with me.”

He led her to an interview room, a closet-sized space with two chairs and a table between them. There was no two-way glass, like on TV cop shows. Fiona wondered if Tim Christopher had ever been in this room, if he had ever sat in one of these chairs.

“What’s going on?” Jamie asked, clicking the door shut behind them.