The Bone Orchard: A Novel (Mike Bowditch Mysteries) (20 page)

“If you’re so concerned about her, you should put away the crème de menthe and take a nap,” I said. “After you wake up, I’ll drive you down to the hospital to see her.”

“If she’s unconscious, what’s the point?”

“The point is that you’re her brother.”

“She wouldn’t want to see me.” He studied the newspaper in front of him. The picture showed Jimmy Gammon with his buddies, Donato and Smith. “I bet one of these assholes shot her. The father probably put them up to it. That’s how these conspiracies work.”

“Take it easy, Kurt.”

“And do you know what’s going to happen to them?” he said. “Nothing’s going to happen to them. Even if the cops figure it out, it’s going to be a cover-up. It says here that the father works with the Department of Defense. He’ll just pull some strings and get the report shredded. Don’t tell me it hasn’t happened before, either. Agent Orange, Abu Ghraib, Haditha! It’s all one goddamned lie after another.”

“You need to calm down,” I said.

“Don’t tell me to calm down. I lost my fucking eye! And no one in the army ever apologized for it. They just gave me a Walgreen’s eye patch and sent me home. ‘Put the past behind you,’ the shrink at Fort Knox told me. ‘That’s easy if you have two fucking eyes,’ I said.”

He rose to his feet, knocking over the chair. The bottle of crème de menthe crashed to the floor. The glass shattered and bile green liquor seeped between the floorboards. He reeled against the doorjamb and caught his body weight against the painted wood.

“The first hooker I was with couldn’t even bring herself to look at me,” he said, blinking. “My face was that ugly to her.”

He drove his fist into the side of his face—the side with the functioning eye—so hard, I worried he might have broken his hand. It left a wine-colored mark on his cheek, as if he had managed to damage even more of the blood vessels beneath the socket. He raised his hand to strike again and then fixed me with a stare and took a staggering step in my direction.

An image flashed through my mind of Kathy and Dani Tate in that darkened barn. For a split second, I felt as if I were standing face-to-face with Jimmy Gammon.

I raised my empty hands. “Kurt,” I said. “Listen to me. I want you to take a deep breath and think of Kathy.”

“Kathy’s not here!”

“What would she say if she were?”

He paused, wobbling back and forth on his toes, but close enough to lunge. “I don’t know.”

“Yes, you do. She’d tell you that she loved you and that you’ve got to stop hurting yourself.”

“Shut up,” he said, his voice choking with a sob.

“Kathy needs you, Kurt. She’s your little sister, and she’s in trouble.”

He lowered his head, so that the tousled hair fell in his face. “I told you I was bad luck.”

“Just go lay your head down for a few minutes. Don’t worry about the mess in here. I’ll clean it up.”

He lurched away, unsteady on his feet, like an actor pretending to be a zombie. I watched him blunder around the corner, saw him stumble into the old parlor, and heard a heavy noise as he let his body fall across the sectional sofa.

I looked down at my hands. They were shaking.

*   *   *

I swept the glass shards into a dustpan and used a dishrag to sop up the mint-smelling liqueur.

Afterward, I sat down to read the papers. There was little in them I didn’t already know, except that Jimmy had been the victim of the Taliban’s weapon of choice—an improvised explosive device. I’d suspected as much.

The quote from James Gammon sounded just as vitriolic as when Kurt had read it aloud. It didn’t matter that Kathy Frost had nearly died—might still die—what mattered was that his son should be avenged. There was no notice of a funeral, but the Gammons had requested that, in lieu of flowers, donations be made to the Wounded Warrior Project.

When I looked in on Kurt ten minutes later, he was lying on his belly again. His snores were softer and wetter now, as if his throat was clotted with mucus. I pulled my sleeping bag up over his long legs. I had no clue how long he’d be out. In his drunken state, I wasn’t about to take him to Maine Med unless it was to drop him at the detox ward.

I needed a shower and a change of clothes. I lugged my duffel bag to the upstairs bathroom. Slowly, I peeled off the bandages and was relieved that the cuts showed signs of healing. I ran the faucet in the claw-foot tub until the water was piping hot. Then I twisted the handles and stepped inside.

The only shampoo I could find smelled of fake wild berries. The body wash was even fruitier, but I lathered myself up as much as possible, eager to strip away days of perspiration and grime. My knotted muscles eased under the heat of the showerhead.

After I was done, I had to run a hand towel across the fogged mirror to see my reflection again. I didn’t see a need to apply fresh dressings to the scabs on my face. Remembering what Kathy had said about my looking like a younger version of my father, I decided to shave off my beard.

I was rooting around for a razor when I heard the sound of an engine roar to life outside the bathroom window. The glass was misted, but after I ran my palm across it, I saw Kathy’s personal vehicle, the Nissan Xterra, backing away from the hay barn. I’d been so concerned about securing the keys to the Cutlass and the patrol truck that I’d forgotten all about the SUV.

Behind the wheel was Kurt.

24

As quickly as I could, I put on clean clothes and rushed downstairs. Outside, the clouds seemed thinner, gauzier—the way they do when they gather around a mountaintop. I unlocked Kurt’s Cutlass and was greeted with the smell of stale beer and Swisher Sweets cigars. He’d tried but failed to cover up the stench with one of those evergreen-shaped air fresheners. The combination of odors was noxious.

I turned the key in the ignition, and the engine made a harsh straining noise. Eventually, the rods and pistons began to churn. I backed the sedan past my Bronco and swung the wheel sharply until I was facing forward. Then I mashed the gas pedal and took off down the gravel drive in the direction of Camden.

There was no doubt in my mind where Kurt was headed. The articles in the newspaper had set off his drunken outburst. If Kurt Eklund showed up at the Gammons’ door, he would be lucky if they only called the police.

Below the ridge, the road plunged into a small village that was just a cluster of old houses and a general store with a
FOR SALE
sign behind the dusty window. I crossed a bridge above a swollen river and then began to climb again through rolling hills that were mint green with new leaves. Most of the country had been cleared for grazing in the eighteenth century and then allowed to go back to forest after the original families had sold off their land. There were still a few hay fields teeming with dandelions, violets, and wildflowers whose names I did not know. But the people who owned the farmhouses now seemed to have little interest in tending fields or raising livestock. Occasionally, you might see a place that had a vegetable plot in the yard or a small pasture with a single horse in residence. But those homesteads were the exceptions.

Soon I found myself passing between humpbacked mountains. On either side of the road were cliffs too steep to climb, and dark rows of evergreens staggered along the ridgelines. Sometimes I could see the mountaintops, and sometimes the clouds would drift in suddenly, hiding the rocky summits from view. I was driving through the Camden Hills.

Kurt’s Cutlass was the most sluggish vehicle I’d ever driven. I had to push the pedal to the floor when I came to the steeper grades. Not once did I catch sight of the Xterra.

After twenty minutes, I arrived at the turn that led to the Gammon estate. There were stone pillars at the bottom of the paved drive with black ribbons tied to the lampposts as symbols of mourning. The normally locked gates were standing open. I couldn’t imagine how Kurt had managed to talk his way onto the property.

I drove through the open gates without permission and climbed a quarter mile through landscaped fields until I could see the slate roof of the house. I tried to suppress a sense of dread as I rounded the last corner, but the Xterra was nowhere in sight. If Eklund wasn’t here, where had he gone?

I became conscious of my own uninvited presence on the estate. If James glanced out the window and spotted the broken-down Cutlass I was driving, I fully expected him to summon the entire Camden police force, along with the state police SWAT team. My best course of action was to turn around as discreetly as possible. With luck, the Gammons were having a late breakfast in the back of the house and would never know I had been there.

My hopes were dashed before I’d even managed to throw the gearshift into reverse. The front door opened and James Gammon stepped onto the porch. He wasn’t toting a shotgun, but he was wearing an expensive-looking outfit straight out of the Orvis hunting catalog: whipcord trousers, a plaid tattersall shirt, and a matching a quilted vest. The clothes gave him the appearance of the squire of a manor in the Scottish Lowlands.

I put the Cutlass into park while he came striding across the driveway. His forehead was furrowed, his chest was thrust forward, and both hands were clenched into fists. The automatic window didn’t work when I pushed the button, so I had to open the door and poke my head up.

“Who are you? What are you doing here?” His voice was a rasp, as if he’d recently shouted himself hoarse.

“Mr. Gammon?” I said, giving him the warmest smile I could manage. “It’s Mike Bowditch.”

“Who?”

“Jimmy’s friend. You had me over to hunt pheasants a few years ago, before he went to Afghanistan.”

“The game warden?”

“Not anymore,” I said.

“What do you want?” His dismissive tone suggested that my former occupation had tainted me and that I was not to be trusted.

“I wanted to extend my condolences.” The lie was the best I could do.

He pushed a hand through his thick auburn hair. “Are you insane?”

“Excuse me?”

“You didn’t anticipate that this would be awkward? One of your former colleagues just murdered our son. I’m trying to understand your thought process. You clearly lack a sense of propriety.”

I’d been told that before. “I didn’t mean to cause offense. I considered Jimmy to be a friend.”

“Well, fine, then,” he said. “Now you can take your junk car and clear off my property.”

“James?” Lyla Gammon had appeared on the porch. She was dressed in her habitual riding clothes. “Who is that you’re speaking with?”

“No one. A friend of Jimmy’s.”

“Please invite the young man inside.”

He turned his head. “Lyla?”

“Please, James.”

Like his son, the elder Gammon was a four-season runner, and he had the energy and stride of a man who regularly covered long distances. He approached his wife and whispered something to her, a harsh look on his face. She whispered something back and darted her eyes in my direction, causing her husband to give me the once-over again. Their discussion was heated and went back and forth for the better part of a minute.

“Come inside,” he said, his voice overloud for the distance.

I closed the door of the Cutlass and followed the Gammons into their haunted house.

*   *   *

Our footsteps echoed off the hard granite tiles.

The couple led me into a spacious room with walls of reclaimed barn wood, a black chandelier, and linen curtains that billowed across the floor every time a gust of wind found its way through the patio doors. With a thrust of his hand, James indicated I should seat myself in a leather club chair. Before me was a rough-hewn table on which were arranged an antique set of nine pins and a bowling ball I imagined Rip van Winkle might have used. Except for a vase of yellow forsythia, there wasn’t a single decorative touch I would have identified as feminine. I half-expected a uniformed servant to appear from the shadows to offer me a glass of scotch and my choice of Cuban cigars.

Lyla asked if I wanted tea.

“Only if you’re having some,” I said.

Her face was pale and drawn. She had unsuccessfully applied extra makeup to brighten her complexion and hide the bags beneath her eyes. “Do you have a preference?”

“Bring in a pot of Earl Grey,” James said before I could answer.

After his wife had disappeared into the kitchen, James Gammon placed his hands on his legs, gripping his kneecaps the way a king grips the arms of his throne. His eyes were almost the same auburn color as his recently trimmed hair. I could smell his sandalwood aftershave from across the room.

Compared to him, I must have looked like a down-on-his-luck hitchhiker. My hair was still wet along my neck. My commando sweater was fraying, there were oil spots on my tin-cloth pants, and my Bean boots were still dirty, despite my efforts to scrape away the layers of accumulated mud on the mat.

“I want you to know that I’m only humoring her,” he said. “She’s suffered a horrible shock, and it is my duty as her husband to offer her whatever support she needs.”

“I understand.”

One side of his mouth curled, suggesting he disbelieved me. “So I take it you were let go from the service since we last met.”

“No, sir. I left of my own free will.”

“You don’t seem the better for the decision. What happened to your face?”

Reflexively, I touched the small cuts along my cheekbone. “I was shot by the same person who attacked Sergeant Frost.”

He pressed his spine against the leather sofa and tilted his neck back as if to see me from a better vantage. “You were at her house that night?”

“Yes, sir. I returned fire on the assailant and then performed first aid on Sergeant Frost until the ambulance arrived.”

“You returned fire? You said you’d left the Warden Service.”

“I have a permit to carry a concealed weapon.”

His eyes narrowed. “I hope you’re not wearing a firearm in my house.”

The handle of the revolver jutted against my tailbone when I shifted my position in the chair. “No, sir.”

He rubbed away some moisture that had formed under his nose and around his thin lips. “Did you get a glimpse of the man who shot Sergeant Frost?”