Bunker 01 - Slipknot (11 page)

“What are you doing?” I asked as Cal completed his three-point turn and headed back into town.

“Taking you home. I thought you changed your mind about the field trip.”

“Are you out of your mind? I need to get into his house right now! As soon as the news of his sobriety gets out, the place will be crawling with detectives. Come on, Cal. Give me fifteen minutes inside,” I pleaded. Cal did not resist, nor did he have much to say other than some mumbling about never having seen a detective in Green Haven. He methodically reversed direction again, lit a fresh cigarette, and drove s l i p k n o t

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along with the look of a man forced into doing something against his better judgment at the hands of a woman.

After less than a mile, Cal turned off the pavement into a narrow opening in some overgrown rhododendrons. The one-lane dirt road that I supposed was Dow’s driveway was not well traveled. Deep wheel ruts of dried mud—divided by tall grass and weeds that tickled the underside of the truck—

made slow, ambling turns left and then right. If we should meet an oncoming vehicle, one of the two drivers would need to back up some distance to find a spot to pull off and allow the other to pass, since trees and rocks lined the ruts closely on either side. As if reading my mind, Cal said, “Dow didn’t drive and didn’t receive many guests.” That you know of, I thought.

“This road is creepy,” I said excitedly. “It’s like driving into an Alfred Hitchcock scene.”

“Wait till you see the house. It would give Stephen King nightmares.”

“Cal! You holdout! You’ve been here before?”

“Nope. My nephew drives the fuel oil truck for Dead River and has delivered here monthly for years. I’ve heard enough about it from him to be scared witless. Which is what I am for agreeing to this foolishness.”

Expecting to see a dwelling around every corner, and sensing that we were moving slower and slower, I suspected that Cal’s dread was growing at pace with my enthusiasm for a glimpse into Dow’s life. I reminded my chauffeur that it would soon be dark and that darkness would surely enhance the creep factor. This threat resulted in a slight increase in

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the depression of the gas pedal and a corresponding bump in speed. It was finally faster than I could walk.

The evening had matured to dusk in full bloom when the narrow drive opened to untold acres of unmowed hay. An old farmhouse in midfield looked nothing more than abandoned in the distance. The road ended in a loop under a lone tree ripe with a flock of fat crows that complained loudly as they gave up their roost when we neared. The sun, just below the horizon, had drained the colors from the day, leaving the scene washed out in tones of gray and white. There was a certain stark and simplistic beauty about the place, I thought, and said, “Andrew Wyeth.”

“All that’s missing is the crippled woman,” Cal responded just over a whisper. His awareness of
Christina’s World
surprised and delighted me. My first friend in Maine, other than Audrey and the landlords, was slowly revealing himself as a fascinating enigma. Cal pushed pure white bangs that had fallen over one eye back onto the top of his head. “Going in?”

“The house is bigger than I imagined. I guess I was expecting something like a shack. I’ll need more time.”

“I have to pick Betty up from bingo in thirty minutes.”

“I thought she was at church.”

“They play bingo and cribbage in the basement on Tues-day nights.”

“Gaming in the church. Must be a New England thing.

The United Church of Reprobates . . . I like it. What time would you be back to get me if you were to take Betty home first?” I asked.

s l i p k n o t

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Cal looked at his wristwatch, did a quick mental calculation, and said, “Nine o’clock.”

“See you then,” I said, and hopped out of the truck. The vehicle was moving away as I slammed the door. So much for the age of chivalry, I thought as the tailgate was swallowed by the first bend in the drive. As I moved toward Dow’s house, I was immediately engulfed in a cloud of mosquitoes. I walked faster and waved my hands over my head in an attempt to swat away the buzzing mass. I didn’t know if the tickling around my exposed ankles was caused by the neglected grass or the bugs. But it nearly drove me insane in the short walk to the front steps.

A porch, probably elegant in its day, wrapped around the front of the house, the center of which was divided by a set of rickety steps. A shallow trough had been worn in the middle of each of the three steps, and the remains of a handrail teetered precariously. The house’s clapboards retained only a trace of white paint, light flakes of which appeared to be so tenuously attached to wood, I thought they could be dusted away with the wave of a hand. The window left of the door was missing a couple of panes of glass, allowing shreds of a white curtain to ghost out and flutter in the slight breeze. A hollow whistling of the same breeze through the necks of twin propane bottles yoked by patinaed copper tubing inspired a tingle between my shoulder blades.

What had to be decades of garbage stuffed into green plastic bags formed mountainous heaps that consumed most of the porch. I pulled a penlight from my bag, and the beam

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confirmed the contents of the heaps as garbage. Raccoons had strewn their discarded dinner packaging, and flies were now enjoying what remained in pizza boxes, Twinkie wrap-pers, and tin cans alive with ants. Beyond the end of the porch and outside the window was the largest collection of empty soda cans I had ever seen. It looked as though Dow had simply thrown his empties through the broken window—the height of laziness, I thought. Now my impression of Nick Dow was as low as all I had heard around town.

Slovenly white trash, I thought, realizing that Dow had lived in this dung pile up until three days ago.

I quickly ascended the steps and steeled myself for the squalor I imagined I would find inside. The screen door, which had been patched several times with pieces of duct tape, opened easily. I was not surprised to find the inner door unlocked. As I pushed it open and stepped over the thresh-old, I held my breath, knowing that when I had to inhale, it would not be pleasant. Easing the door closed behind me, I strained to see my surroundings in relative blackness.

Frisking the wall adjacent to the entrance with my left hand, I found a light switch and flipped it on. To my astonish-ment, there were no scurrying vermin. In fact, the kitchen was, as my mother would say, as neat as a pin. The appliances were outdated, and the hardwood floors needed refinishing. But things were orderly and
clean
. There was absolutely nothing in the air that resembled the stench I had anticipated—only a faint musky smell that reminded me of tidal South Carolina. A lot can be learned about a person from the contents of his s l i p k n o t

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kitchen, I knew. So I began the search for clues to unlock the mysteries of Nick Dow.

By the time I had shuffled through all the contents of the cupboards and refrigerator, I understood that the disparity between the house’s outward appearance and the reality of what was inside mirrored the dichotomy of its dead owner.

Signs of neglect in the home’s exterior would indicate to a reasoning intruder—which I was—even worse conditions inside. Were the ramshackle dwelling and surrounding pigsty an intentional facade used by Dow to enhance his reputation as a bum? Or did Dow simply suffer from some psychosis?

The food in the refrigerator and freezer—including organic veggies, yogurt, and fancy cheeses—was a far cry from the mess scattered about the porch and yard. Dow’s dump at-tested that he was a microwaver and junk-food addict, while within the kitchen were only delicacies of a healthy gourmet.

And as the toxicology had indicated, not a single can of beer or jug of rum did I find.

Perplexed, I wandered into the next room and found a light switch. In all of my years of investigative work, I’ve found bedrooms and baths of murder victims always rubber-glove time. The gloves were for my protection. The characters I had investigated had been lowlife slime. Men and women who smuggled drugs and human beings and prosti-tuted their own children for their next fix did not make beds or scrub toilets. Dow did. Murderers, druggies, and rapists did not read
Popular Mechanics
or
Scientific American
. Dow did. Criminals who had no regard for life except their own,

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who ended up dead at the hands of someone a bit more desperate than they, often slept on a filthy mattress on a floor riddled with drug paraphernalia and charred things that were not offerings to the multitude of religious symbols adorning bedroom walls.

I had moved to Maine in part to escape these things. And right now it looked as though I had. Dow’s bedside table held no sex toys or X-rated videos. There was no giant flat-screen television, or even a television, for that matter. There were no personal photographs. There was not a single whimsical item to be found: no art, no games, not even a snow globe. When I looked in a closet, I found a set of golf clubs, much to my surprise. The woods had head covers monogrammed with nd, so there was little chance that they belonged to anyone other than Nick Dow. Rifling through the bag’s pockets, I found scorecards from several courses in Florida and Arizona but none from any place in Maine. Pulling out a pitching wedge, I gripped and swung for no other reason than I could never resist doing so. A little stiff, I thought as I replaced the club. I hadn’t played in weeks. Before moving through the next doorway, I noted the absence in the magazine rack of
National
Fisherman
and wondered why Dow would write a letter to the editor of a publication to which he did not subscribe. It seemed I had a lot to learn.

A tidy and well-organized office did not surprise me at this point. But who would have believed that a fisherman and low-level bookie would keep such a neat desk and two three-drawer file cabinets? I thumbed through a stack of bills, all marked “paid,” with dates and check numbers. Except for s l i p k n o t

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the absence of a phone bill, there was nothing unusual. No phone, no computer, nothing I could use to track down any contacts Dow might have had. Stacks of pads of white lined paper and an abundance of ballpoint pens indicated that all correspondence to and from this office was handwritten.

The leader of a gambling ring must keep a list or book of bets and debts, I thought. But where? I opened the desk drawers one at a time and scanned their contents, all of which contained typical office supplies. A plastic cup held paper clips, all standard silver save one. A multicolored clip similar to those used by Ginny Turner sat on top of the others. Coincidence? I doubted it.

As I moved around the side of the desk to the file cabinets, my heart raced like it had when I made my very first arrest so many years ago. Beside the far cabinet, on the floor, lay a large rusty tire iron. Dents and missing paint on the file drawers were evidence that they had been pried open and the locks broken. Could the tire iron also have been used as the murder weapon? There was no blood splattered anywhere and no blood or hair on the iron. Although it was not impossible, it was, in my opinion, unlikely that Dow had been killed here and thrown into the harbor afterward. In my experience, killers who used instruments as crude as a rusty tire iron were not meticulous about cleaning up after themselves.

The iron must have been used only to jimmy open the drawers. I hoped that who and why would be revealed by the contents of the drawers.

Slowly, as if expecting something to jump out, I opened the top drawer. It was stuffed tight with file folders. I opened

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the others and found the same to be true of all. The tabs on each folder were labeled with a name, last then first, in alpha-betical order. The front file in the top drawer was labeled abbott, andrew. I slid the folder from the drawer and opened it to find the official and notarized birth certificate of Andrew Abbott, signed by Martha Dow. Alice had said that Dow’s mother was a midwife who had delivered many Green Haveners, so I assumed that her name was Martha and these files were her records.

Peeking into several of the folders, I found similar certificates and a few obituaries and other clippings in which the name on the birthing records also appeared. Midway into the top drawer were oodles of Bunkers; I had learned since moving here that it was quite a common family name. Walking my index and middle fingers through the tabs, I stopped at my name and pulled out the folder. I knew I must be running out of time, but I had to look. Although I was disappointed not to find the answers to any of the questions I had grown up and lived with, I was satisfied to see that I had indeed been born and that my mother was indeed my mother.

Tucking the folder back into its appropriate spot, I pulled bunker, wallace from the end of the Bunkers. A content and productive Down’s syndrome child, Wally lived as an adult in an assisted living space in Florida; he would never have a need for his birth certificate. I knew his thirty-eighth was right around the corner, and I planned to send him some cool superhero stuff. Suddenly, a muted
thunk
jarred me from fond thoughts of Wally.

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The sound came from behind the only closed door in the house. I strained to hear.
Thunk
. There it was again. Feeling naked without my gun, I picked up the tire iron from the floor and approached the closed door. I listened closely against the door. I detected a slight and constant whirring. A small electric fan, I thought. No, that wasn’t it. Now I could hear a rapid, muffled
bloop, bloop
. I hesitated while deciding how best to enter the room. Should I throw open the door and stand back, or barge right in?
Thunk,
louder this time, sounding like a footstep. With the tire iron high over my head, I threw open the door and jumped into the middle of the room. It was dark except for an eerie square luminescence. The smell of southern salt marshes that I had detected in the kitchen was now overwhelming. Backing away from the strange, dim glowing box shape, I found the light switch on the wall.