Jude
Hours into the road trip, we finally came to a sign that read End of the Road Farm and turned onto a winding country road.
An old white farmhouse with peeling paint stood in the distance, and in the field behind it was an array of junked-out cars.
It looked like the setting of a horror movie, and not the artsy type that won Oscars.
Mila had been cagey, telling me we had to talk to a source and brushing off my concerns.
But now I wished that I’d pushed harder for more information.
“No,” I said, stopping the car part way down the long dirt road.
“Keep driving,” she said, leaning forward in her seat. “Nothing to worry about.”
“No. I’m not letting you walk into a slasher movie set in Shitsville, New Hampshire.”
She patted my arm dismissively. “It’s fine. And this is not Shitsville. It’s actually Pittsburg, New Hampshire. Did you know Pittsburg is the northernmost town in the state? Canada is right over there.” She waved ahead of us, as if the proximity to the border was a comfort.
I stopped the car, put it in park, and glared at her. “I need information. Badly. Who is this guy and why are we here?”
She rolled her eyes. “He’s Dickie Perkins.”
It took me a second, but recognition dawned. Dickie had been our contact at the department of fish and wildlife for decades before his retirement. “We shouldn’t be here.”
“Drive the car, Jude. He’s a harmless civil servant, and we came all this way.”
Nothing good could come of this. If Dickie was clueless to the drug trafficking, we’d get nothing out of him. But if he was involved? That could lead to a lot of trouble for us.
She grasped my hand and squeezed. “He knew Hugo. He might have information, and I need to know.”
It was the shakiness of her voice that got me.
My stomach twisted with dread. “First sign of anything strange, and we’re out of here.”
“Deal.”
With a deep breath, I put the truck in gear and rolled up to the house. From this close, it looked even more decrepit.
Mila jumped out of the front seat and was halfway up the sagging porch before I could cut the ignition.
Her knock was greeted by a muffled response from inside, then a little shuffling. When the door opened, Dickie Perkins stood before us, wheeling an oxygen tank and wearing an old bathrobe.
“Dickie,” Mila said with false sincerity. “You look like shit. Can I come in?”
“Who are you and what do you want?” he asked, looking me up and down.
I’d seen this guy off and on for the last decade, but he looked a lot older and beaten down than the balding guy in a fleece vest who used to do forest walkthroughs with us.
“Just to chat.” Mila walked in, skirting around him. “Nice house.”
“It was my mother’s,” he replied dryly. “She died and left this crumbling shithole to me. But it’s home.”
He seemed unmoved by Mila’s brash entrance, and with his hunched posture, general look of dejection, and oxygen tank, I didn’t get the sense he was a threat.
“I know you,” he said as I stepped inside. “A Hebert.”
I nodded, keeping my shoulders back and my eyes narrowed on him.
“Oh fuck. I need a drink for this.” He shuffled into the living room, which was equipped with a massive fireplace, faded floral sofas and piles of old newspapers stacked along the back wall, and took a bottle off a side table.
He yanked the top off with his teeth and poured a healthy amount into a red plastic cup.
After he’d taken a swig, he surveyed me, then Mila. Finally, he opened his mouth and said, “Who the fuck are you and why are you in my house?”
Without responding, Mila slowly wandered around the room, admiring the dust-covered porcelain figurines on the mantel.
Eventually, she turned to face the old man. “Dickie,” she said, her voice dripping with honey. “I need information, and I know you’re my guy.”
He took another gulp from his cup, attention narrowed on her over the rim.
“Jude.” He shook a finger at me. “That’s your name.
Known your old man for decades. Total asshole, but great poker player.
” He laughed heartily, but it was cut off by a hacking cough.
He lifted the mask that had been dangling around his neck and brought it to his face, breathing deeply.
“Emphysema. It’s a bitch, but my fault for not giving up my vices. ”
He took another hit and cleared his throat.
“How’s Gus doing? Always liked him. Total opposite of your dad. Guess that’s a good thing, given how things turned out.”
“Focus, Dickie,” Mila snapped. “We’re here for information about my brother, Hugo Barrett.”
“Good kid,” he mused. “Smart. I trained him. Such a terrible tragedy.” He shook his head. “But I took early retirement. Don’t know anything about the attack.”
Mila’s jaw ticked, and she fisted her hands at her sides. “I’m gonna need more than that, Dickie.”
With a shrug, he took another sip of liquor.
“Okay, then.” Mila pushed her hair behind her ears and straightened her shoulders.
“You retire at fifty-four from a job with the state. Then move to… where was it again?” She tapped her chin.
“Oh yes, Macau. Where you fucked around for almost a year before fleeing some very bad people to whom you owe a lot of money. Do I have that right?”
Dickie’s face paled.
“I know so much more than that. I’ve got the dirt on all your bad investments, the gambling debts, the multiple mortgages on this property. The identity theft and the social security fraud. Should I keep going?”
He stared at her, eyes wide and the cup in his hand trembling almost imperceptibly.
My mind was blown. Mila knew exactly what she was doing and how to get him to talk. It was impressive and also very hot. But the longer we stayed here, the more apparent it became that Dickie was involved in the trafficking ring. Which put Mila at risk.
“What happened?” she asked again.
He ducked his head and gave it a slow shake. “I was horrified by what happened.”
“Which was…?” Mila asked, steepling her fingers like some kind of supervillain.
“Because I’ve spent more than a year trying to figure out how a guy who was only doing his job gets beaten within an inch of his life and left for dead.
He’s not mixed up in your bullshit.” Those last words were spoken with total conviction.
“I don’t know,” Dickie replied. “Everything’s been destabilized since Mitch Hebert went to prison. People are bloodthirsty and running scared. There’s pressure on both sides of the border.”
Mila sauntered closer, only stopping when they were nose to nose, her face a mask of pure hatred. “I don’t want vague bullshit. What happened to my brother?”
He made a choking sound and followed it up with a wheezing cough.
As he reached for his mask, clearly in need of oxygen, Mila grasped his wrist and tugged on the mask herself.
Damn, she was strong. He was sick, sure, but he was still a decent-sized guy.
He struggled, but she kept the mask away from him.
“I’ll let you fucking suffocate if you don’t tell me what I want to know, you piece of shit.”
He wheezed, his eyes narrowing, his face turning purple.
Just when I was sure he’d pass out from lack of oxygen, Mila dropped his hand.
He scrambled to fit the mask over his face and sucked in several deep breaths. “Okay,” he wheezed. “I’ll tell you everything I know. It’s not much, but since you’re threatening my life, I got no choice.” He shuffled to the old couch and sank onto the cushion heavily.
“I loved my job. Truly. I was raised right here with a whole lot of nothing. First person in my family to go to college.”
“Can it with the life story,” Mila snapped.
“Job was great, but the pay was shit. Didn’t matter that I got a fucking PhD while working full time for the taxpayer—”
Mila crossed her arms, being careful with her injured shoulder. “So you thought you’d become a criminal?”
“I am not a criminal,” he hissed, kicking off another coughing fit. He took a few more drags on the oxygen mask.
“Make it make sense.”
“I was approached by a few businesspeople. They asked if I could look the other way when it came to a few things.”
“Like drug trafficking and murder?” Mila interjected.
His eyes went wide. “No. God no.” He cleared his throat. “Things like ignoring signs that a closed road had been used. Moving boundaries a little to allow for access. The bats are either in caves or the tree canopy, so the roads are fine. It’s common knowledge that we overregulate.”
Mila only frowned.
“Then they needed me to write up a few reports.”
“False reports?”
“Yeah. They needed access to the old logging road up to Sainte-Louise.”
Mila darted a look my way, a flicker of triumph in her eyes.
Now we were getting somewhere.
“They’d let me know where they needed to travel, and I’d find a population of bats had shifted.”
“So,” Mila drawled, “you were able to shut down areas of privately owned forest to allow drug traffickers to operate with impunity?”
Dickie scoffed. “You make it sound terrible.”
“It is terrible, you piece of shit,” Mila corrected.
“I did my job,” he argued. “I protected the wildlife. I balanced the interests of the environment and industry. It’s not easy. This state was built on logging, but we can’t decimate the trees and the ecosystems.”
“No shit. But you could have done that job without taking kickbacks. Now start giving me names.”
His gaze drifted down and to one side. “I don’t know them.”
“Bullshit.”
“Deimos,” he mumbled, still avoiding Mila’s eye. “They paid consulting fees. Sometimes official payroll, sometimes unofficial. When I got into some trouble a few years ago, they stepped in and paid off some of my, uh, debts.”
Mila’s eyes lit up. “And who did you deal with there?”
“Couple of people. Wayne managed things for years, but he was pushed out, and then I had to talk to that little shit Denis. Fuck, he’s terrible, throwing his dad’s money around and making threats.”
Mila hummed. “To be clear, you’re referring to Denis Huxley?”
He nodded.
“Did you ever meet with his father, Charles Huxley?”