Gone(4)

“I don’t think you want my two thousand words,” he said.

She looked surprised, several emotions flashed across her intelligent face. He was used to it — Connie was friendly but very discrete, as her profession required. Surely she surmised why he was there.

“You’d write two thousand words?”

“It would take me the whole weekend.” He mimed tapping at a keyboard with two clawed fingers. “And I’d only get about twenty.”

She laughed and closed up her briefcase. He could sense she was busy and had somewhere else to be. He scratched self-consciously at his shoulder and said, “I’ll be brief.”

“No, it’s okay. Here, sit down. How are you?”

They made themselves more comfortable. She turned towards him and crossed her legs, propped her elbow up on the seatback.

“I’m good,” he said. “You?”

“Very good.”

“Liking this?” He gestured to the lecture theater.

“I am.”

There was a pause. He knew Connie had taught before, in another part of the country. He also knew she was here filling the shoes left by a teacher who had been tarnished by a series of murders the previous year, leaving a void in the department.

For a rural region, the North Country had its share of problems. There had been a prison break as well as the serial killing of the college students. And there had been the murder of a teenage boy.

Rondeau let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. He ran his hands through his hair and looked down. “I’m worried about Millard.”

Her demeanor changed. “Oh, you know . . . I’m sorry, I can’t really . . .”

“I know, I know,” Rondeau began, nodding. He started picking lint from his suit jacket. Then he looked up. “We won’t talk about his therapy, that’s not why I’m here. He just needs to see you soon. He, ah, he shot down a drone this morning.”

“A drone?”

“Yeah. A . . . quadcopter thing. Flying over our property.”

“Wow,” she said. “Those things are everywhere, aren’t they? Don’t they have to be federally registered now?”

“They are, and they do. You know . . .”

He trailed off, for a moment. He knew Connie couldn’t reveal anything Millard had shared with her. But Rondeau already knew about Millard’s past. The big story, anyway, the one which had probably caused Millard’s unraveling. Millard had found a severed head by the subway tracks, duct tape over its mouth. A man. Someone Millard thought he recognized as a cop who’d turned whistleblower on corruption in the city. Someone who’d gone up against the national security state and lost. Millard had become a changed, frightened man. That was his last day as a transit cop.

Rondeau turned back to Connie. “I just think he needs you.” Rondeau was self-conscious, feeling sure now that this was an imposition. He stood up, preparing an apology.

“I wonder if you could do me a favor, Detective Rondeau?” she surprised him.

He sat back down. “Of course. What do you need?”

“Are you going back to your office after this? I don’t want to assume you . . .”

He was nodding. “Yeah, I’m headed straight back.”

She pulled out a pen and paper and jotted something down. She handed the note to him. It said, Henry Leifson, with an address in New Brighton. Her parents’ address. Rondeau knew them — two very nice people who lived on the outskirts of town.

“I wanted to stop and see them before I left, but I’ve got to be in Burlington in one hour. Will you just . . . I don’t know. Drive by? Maybe even peek in, say hello? I know this is unusual, and I’m sorry . . . I . . .”

“Of course,” he said. He wanted to ask her why she was going to Vermont, but it was none of his business.

“Oh, thank you. Thanks so much,” she said, warmth in her eyes.

“No problem.”

“You probably think I’m a worrier . . .”

“Not at all. I’d be happy to say hello to them.”

“This is a quick trip. I’ll be back Sunday.” She touched his arm. “And we’ll set something up first thing Monday morning.”

“Okay.” He was relieved.

She offered that soft smile, that smile that was somehow warm but completely professional. Most people’s faces, when they were giving you short shrift or screwing you over, betrayed the truth. Not Connie’s. It was tough to tell with her.





CHAPTER FOUR / Nobody Home

He drove south to New Brighton thinking about the last moments he’d spent in Connie’s classroom. Maybe she had been in a rush, maybe she didn’t want to see Millard anymore, or maybe he was just imagining things. But something had been off.

He changed lanes on the highway, wondering about the look he’d seen in her eyes. Millard was her patient so she might have considered Rondeau’s visit inappropriate. “Stupid,” he said to himself.

He tried not to think about it anymore. He turned up the radio, dialed it to the classic rock station, and listened to Street Fighting Man. Twilight was leaching the color from the day.

His phone rang. Stokes was calling. Rondeau pressed the speaker button. “Hello.”

“Rondeau.”