Bad Little Falls (21 page)

Munro peeled her hands away. He pulled his T-shirt over his head, revealing a muscular abdomen totally lacking in body fat. Across his chest was a large tattooed heart bearing the inscription
FOREVER JAMIE
. “You see this?” he asked her. “Do you even remember when I got it?”

“I remember,” Jamie said in a softer voice than the one she’d been using.

“I don’t deserve to be treated like this,” Munro said. “Not in front of my own son.”

On cue, we all looked at Lucas, who was standing there with an expression of dismay on his pale face. The boy had no idea what was going on here. He and I were in the same boat in that regard.

Jamie crouched down to get closer to eye level with her son. “Here’s your notebook, Lucas.”

“Thank you.”

“Tell the warden.”

“Thank you,” the boy mumbled.

She tousled his hair, then smoothed it back into shape. “Now are you going to tell us where you hid his binoculars?”

“I didn’t steal nothing,” the boy said.

“See?” said his father, as if that settled the matter once and for all.

22

Before their divorce, my mom and dad were constantly nipping at each other like two starving dogs. Looking back, I realize it was my mom who bit the hardest. Not that I could blame her. Living with a violent alcoholic, watching him stay out all night or disappear into the woods for an entire weekend, not knowing whether he had run off with another woman or was lying dead in some flooded roadside gully, watching him squander the dollars and cents she’d carefully saved on bottles of whiskey while she and I made two meals out of a single box of macaroni and cheese—was it any wonder she wanted to tear his hair and scratch his face? After ten years of this uncertain life, she had become hardened, desperate, even a bit cold-blooded, you might say; a grim woman faced with a choice: leave this dangerous man once and for all, or lose herself and her son forever.

That was why I was so shocked to learn that she’d maintained sporadic contact with my dad over the years that followed. She talked to him on the phone at night when my stepfather and I were asleep. Maybe they even met a few times. It is not inconceivable that they had sex.

In that light, the spectacle I had witnessed at the Sewall house was not surprising. I could believe that Jamie was both determined to break from her past and incapable of banishing her ex-husband from her affections. Jamie’s interest in me might very well be heartfelt, I realized, but mistakes aren’t so easily shaken off, especially when they take the form of a twelve-year-old boy.

Having been that child myself, I thought I understood the contradictions inside a mother’s heart. But one of the perils of being naïve is that you cannot identify that particular quality in your personality. You have an outsize sense of your own sophistication.

So when Jamie escorted me to the door and whispered, “I’ll call you,” I felt confident that she would continue to struggle for a while, feeling affection, pity, and disdain for Mitch, but that eventually her emotions would align and point the way forward. In the meantime, all I had to do was be patient. I considered myself to be a realist. Whatever would be, would be.

*   *   *

On the drive through the streets of Machias, heading to the motel, I passed the Spragues’ darkened Laundromat and remembered my icy conversation with Kendrick that morning.

When I got back to my motel room, I decided the time had come to check up on Doc Larrabee myself. I didn’t know the veterinarian well, but he struck me as a garrulous and inquisitive man. He liked people, and he liked stories. A few nights ago, he and I had raced into a blizzard to rescue a hypothermic drug dealer. Now a murder investigation was under way. By all rights, Doc should have been chewing my ear off. Something seemed amiss.

The phone rang six times before triggering the voice mail. It was the usual spiel about not being available and leaving a message at the tone. Doc included another number for clients with veterinary emergencies. I hung up when the recording kicked in.

I tried his home number again. On the fifth ring, he finally picked up.

“Hey, Doc,” I said. “I hadn’t heard from you since the night of the storm. I wanted to see how you were doing.”

“Fine.”

“Have the state police come to see you?”

“I gave then a statement yesterday. That Detective Zanadakis said I’m not supposed to talk about what happened, even with you.” His voice sounded thick, gummy, as if he might have been drinking.

I considered whether this sufficiently explained his distant demeanor. “I ran into Kendrick this morning outside the Spragues’ Laundromat.”

“Where?” His voice went up a few decibels.

“The Laundromat in Machias. He’s a strange character. I don’t think he likes me, for some reason.”

Doc paused before he spoke. “Kendrick is his own man. He doesn’t care what people think of him. He says and does what he believes is right. Damn the consequences.”

That description matched the wild-eyed activist I’d read about in the
New York Times.
“I wanted to let you know that I saw Prester Sewall in the hospital. The charge nurse says they’re going to transfer him to Eastern Maine Medical so they can deal with his wounds.”

“Frostbite in January, amputate in July.”

“But it’s February.”

“It’s an old medical saying. It means they’ll amputate the gangrenous tissue in six months.”

“Thanks to you, it looks like he’s going to pull through.”

He seemed to chuckle. “Thanks to me.”

“Are you OK, Doc? You sound out of sorts.”

“I’m an old man, living by himself in a wreck of a farmhouse, a thousand miles from his grandkids. Why shouldn’t I be out of sorts?”

I decided to bring the conversation to an end. “Thanks again for dinner the other night,” I said. “Julia Child would have been proud.”

“Not hardly.”

After we’d hung up, I sat on the bed and wondered where Doc’s outburst of frustration had originated. I could tell that he was a lonely man who missed his dead wife. Maybe the stress of that night at the Sprague house had undermined his abilities to cope. He was a veterinarian, not a medical doctor, and being thrust into a position where the life of another human being rested in his half-drunk hands must have terrified him. Still, I was surprised he didn’t want to hear more about my own experience in the Heath or quiz me about the murder investigation. Doc didn’t seem like the sort of straight arrow who would obey a detective’s order to refrain from discussing a criminal investigation.

But maybe I was projecting Charley Stevens’s rebelliousness on the veterinarian, trying to make the two old men more similar than they actually were. I hadn’t spoken with the retired warden pilot in many weeks, and I missed him. Charley and I had become good friends following the manhunt for my father in the mountains around Flagstaff. He had taught me more about being a good warden—about being a good man—than anyone I knew. He’d listened to me recite my romantic troubles with Sarah or describe my latest dustup with the warden colonel without passing judgment; instead, he would set my mind on a healthier course by asking, “Now what other way might you have handled that pree-dicament, do you think?”

It was ironic that we no longer saw each other, since we were living less than an hour apart. Charley and Ora were up around Grand Lake Stream and I was down along the coast. The move had kept them busy, and they’d had a troubled adult daughter, Stacey, living with them for a while. For my part, I had figured that the best way through my current problems was to be a man and tough them out.

To hell with that. I decided to brew myself a cup of coffee and give him a ring.

“Hello there!” said the old pilot.

“Hey, Charley. How’s that new house treating you?”

“Just grand. We may be short on a few creature comforts, but we’re long on scenery.”

“So when are you going to invite me up there to see it?”

“When my moose survey is over. The department has got me hopping like a flea across this country.”

I’d gotten a report that the state was conducting an aerial census of moose in District C, but no one had told me the contract had gone to Charley. Although he was officially retired as chief warden pilot, he still did odd jobs that required a fixed-wing aircraft for both IF&W and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. He might be in his late sixties, but there was no better pilot in the state of Maine.

“I’d like to go up with you some time. I’m still getting to know this area, and it always helps to see things from the air.”

“How about tomorrow? The forecast calls for snow showers and northwesterly breezes, but I never let a few flurries hold me down.”

A woman murmured something in the background. The volume went dead, as if Charley had clapped one of his big hands over the receiver. I had to wait half a minute for him to return to the line.

“I had a bird singing in my ear,” he explained. “So I heard about your escapade in last week’s blizzard. Got the story from young Devoe, who said it was a drug deal that went off the road, so to speak.”

“I suppose you want me to tell you the whole story,” I said.

“You know I’m as curious as a tomcat.”

Charley and I chatted for the next hour. It had been so long since I’d really opened up to someone. Everything came pouring out: the frozen zebra, the coyote pelt nailed to my door, the note from Magoon, the dinner at Larrabee’s farmhouse, the mad rush to the Spragues’ chalet, the long hours I’d spent searching in the storm for the lost man, my meeting with Jamie at her brother’s bedside, the encounter with Brogan and Cronk, my grilling by the state police, the skunk loose in my trailer, even my recent near-fisticuffs with Mitch Munro.

I hadn’t realized, until I’d finally shut up, just how lonely I had been been.

“You can’t say your life is boring,” Charley offered.

“That’s never been my problem.”

“Something doesn’t smell right about the way that Cates character died.”

“Don’t mention bad smells. I’m going to be smelling skunk on myself for the rest of my life.”

“It’s just a little musk. Why, they make French perfume out of the nether glands of weasels! How bad can it be?”

“Pretty bad.”

He chuckled. “I’m glad we’re having this conversation by telephone.”

“I swear to God I’m going to nail Brogan.”

“Be methodical about it if you do. Joe has friends in the governor’s office.”

Which reminded me again that a day had passed and I hadn’t heard so much as a peep from Rivard.

“I have a question for you,” I said. “When I got my transfer, you said I should introduce myself to Kendrick. What were you thinking? The guy is a world-class egomaniac.”

“I didn’t mean you should bring him a coffee cake! I meant that he was someone for you to keep an eye on. Kendrick is one of the best woodsmen I’ve ever met—and I’ve known a few—but he’s got some odd notions about right and wrong. Someone vandalized the logging equipment over on that old International Paper timberland last year. I’ll bet you a dollar it was Kendrick or one of his young apprentices.”

“In that case, I’d say your instincts were correct,” I said, “as usual.”

“Where and when should I pick you up in the morning? I’ve got skis on the Cessna.”

We agreed to meet at nine o’clock at the Gardner Lake boat launch in East Machias. I had just hung up when headlights swept across the closed curtains, backlighting the fabric, and tires crunched on the compacted snow outside my cabin. A metal car door opened and shut loudly, and I heard quick footsteps coming up the cabin steps, followed by a knock.

I peeked through the spy hole. “What the hell,” I said, opening the door.

Jamie Sewall stood on the little porch, holding a paper bag with both arms. She had arranged her hair and applied lipstick to make her lips shine, eye shadow to deepen her eyes, and liner to darken her lashes. She was wearing my binoculars around her neck.

“May I come in?” she asked.

23

I caught the smell of jasmine and warm vanilla as she stepped past me into the motel room. Sarah rarely wore perfume. I had forgotten how much I liked the right scent on the right woman.

“I wanted to give you these.” She meant the binoculars, but the suggestion of other gifts wasn’t lost on me.

“How did you know where I was?”

“You told me you were staying here when you came to see me this morning.”

She set the bag down on the embroidered doily atop the bureau and looked around with an amused smile. “This is cute!”

I had a dozen good reasons to send her packing, starting with her being the sister of a murder suspect and ending with the irrefutable fact that I needed no more trouble in my life, however beguiling the package it came wrapped inside.

“I appreciate your bringing me my binoculars.” The room was so small and the bed took up so much of the available space. “But I think you should probably leave.”

“Guess where he hid them.” She didn’t wait for me to respond. “My dad’s old wood shop in the basement. Lucas is terrified of that room, for some reason. He never goes down there. After I searched all the usual places, I tried to imagine where the last place he might go would be. Lucas is crafty. He likes codes and puzzles and things. His favorite writer is Edgar Allan Poe. That’s why he keeps that notebook with him all the time. He wants to write books and movies when he grows up. You and Lucas have a lot in common.”

I couldn’t stop myself from smiling. “I’m not so sure about that.”

“You’re both big thinkers.” She removed a six-pack of beer and a twenty-ounce bottle of Diet Coke from the paper bag. “Does this room have a refrigerator?”

“There’s an ice machine outside the office.”

“I guess it’s cold enough.” She offered me one of the Budweisers. “I thought you could use a beer after the day you had.”

I accepted the bottle from her. I hadn’t expressly stopped drinking or even announced to myself that I might be developing the alcohol problem that had bedeviled my father. But for many months, I had refused glasses of wine and bottles of beer when offered and had walked fast, with eyes turned to the floor, down the liquor aisle of the supermarket. And there was that lonely can of Foster’s back in the refrigerator in my trailer.