The Bone Orchard: A Novel (Mike Bowditch Mysteries) (35 page)

At least Kurt had died in a heroic attempt to find his sister’s assailant. All of his adult life, he’d been searching for some opportunity to atone for one bad night in Vietnam. It might have been a foolish quest—but so what? The only difference between his efforts and mine was that he was lying cold in the rear of the plane and my heart was bruised but still beating.

Mostly, I found myself worrying about Kathy. I had witnessed the effects of brain injuries in too many people to count. Nearly every family I’d met in the boonies had a brother who’d crashed his snowmobile into a tree or an uncle who’d wrapped his Mustang around a telephone pole. Some of these invalids were near vegetables. The others were even scarier. They reminded me of zombies: shambling, unreasoning creatures who were no longer recognizable as the self-directed human beings they once had been.

Jimmy Gammon had suffered a traumatic injury when the IED had exploded in that pile of garbage. His mother had no longer been able to identify his personality as belonging to her son. I was terrified of finding Kathy similarly altered beyond recognition.

Flying from Houlton to Augusta, we covered most of the state of Maine. The land turned greener and greener beneath us, from a pale, almost yellowish tone that reminded me of the pea soup my French-Canadian relatives used to serve us when I was a kid to a deep, almost jungle-green color down south. There were still a few threadbare hillsides and valleys that the sun hadn’t yet warmed—where you could see winter hanging around in the shadows—but those chilly corners would be gone in a matter of weeks.

We passed from the potato fields of Aroostook County over the commercial timberland east of Baxter State Park. It was a clear day and the summit of Katahdin was bright white with unmelted snow, which caught the glare of the rising run. Then we were flying over fields again: hardscrabble farms carved out of the second-growth forest and great fenced pastures full of white dairy cows. My window faced west, not east, so I had no view of Appleton Ridge or the Camden Hills. Mine was an inland perspective.

I did see a great many turkeys bobbing along at the weedy edges of the cow and sheep farms. Hunters, too, although they were inevitably set up in blinds far from the nearest flocks. The season would be over in a few days, and, as usual, most of the big toms would survive to service their harems. Next year, there would be even more poults.

We landed at the Augusta State Airport, where we were met by another emergency vehicle, this one owned by the state medical examiner’s office. Men were waiting to remove Kurt Eklund’s body from the plane. I started to unhook my headset, but the pilot reached over and gripped my left wrist.

“This is just a pit stop,” he said over the intercom. “You and I are headed for Portland.”

It always amazed me how quickly a small plane could get up and down. We weren’t more than ten minutes on the tarmac in Augusta, and then we were zipping along the runway again, my stomach pressed against my spine. The next thing I knew, I was looking up at a cloud as the nose of the Cessna pointed skyward.

“This won’t take more than fifteen minutes,” the pilot assured me. “Are you feeling airsick?”

“I have a pretty strong stomach.”

“That’s what they all say!”

He waggled the wings to be funny, but my mood was too heavy for him to lift.

We landed at the Portland International Jetport exactly fifteen minutes later and taxied to one of the private hangars on the east side of the terminal. I saw a teal-blue GMC Sierra parked in the lot. I recognized it as one of the Warden Service’s unmarked patrol trucks.

Major Malcomb was waiting for me inside the hangar. The cavernous space smelled of petroleum products, and a radio was blasting classic country for the mechanics’ listening pleasure. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d heard Hank Williams.

“Thank you for flying with us,” the pilot said as I handed him my headset. “We hope you enjoy your stay in Portland or wherever your final destination may take you.”

I felt a little sorry for him. He had tried so hard to coax a smile out of me.

The only luggage I was carrying was my waxed canvas duffel. I’d packed it with all the personal items I thought were worth keeping—my tent, my Snow & Nealley kindling ax. I’d left the rest in the trunk of Kurt Eklund’s Cutlass.

The more you know, the less you carry. That was a saying they used in wilderness-survival schools, but it applied to more than just bushcraft.

Malcomb grabbed the bag away from me before I had a chance to resist. He tossed it into the backseat, beside the locked case in which he kept his AR-15 rifle. He’d done a lot of vacuuming, but the stale smell of cigarettes lingered. Regulations said he wasn’t permitted to smoke inside the state-owned vehicle, but who was there to punish him now?

“How was your flight?” His throat sounded as cracked as a waterless arroyo.

“Faster than driving.”

He spun the wheel in the direction of outer Congress Street and pressed the accelerator. I’d seen Maine Med standing like a citadel on the Western Promenade as the plane had turned and banked over the city.

“I heard she’s awake,” I said. “Soctomah said you were going to break the news to the family. How did it go?”

“It didn’t come as much of a shock.”

“Kurt told me he had cirrhosis. I’m guessing they’d given him up for dead a long time ago.”

He’d put on his mirrored sunglasses, but I felt him glancing at me out of the corner of his eye. “How old are you again, Bowditch?”

“Twenty-seven.”

“That’s what I thought. Parents don’t give up on their kids until they see them in a casket. Doesn’t matter how old the kids are.”

I leaned back against the seat, feeling properly chastened. “How did Kathy react when you told her about Pluto?”

“I think you know the answer to that question.”

The major seemed unaccountably hostile. I hadn’t expected a hero’s welcome, but when Soctomah told me that wardens had paid for my hotel room, I’d experienced a brief period of forgiveness, as if I might be welcomed back into the fold.

We crossed the Stroudwater bridge, headed toward downtown Portland. A snowy egret was standing in the tidal muck, one leg tucked beneath its tail feathers. I saw its bright yellow foot. I unrolled the automatic window and let the salt air clear away some of the tobacco reek.

Malcomb pushed a button on his door and my window rolled back up.

“I suppose you heard the latest about the colonel,” he said.

“No.”

“Harkavy announced his resignation last night.”

Colonel Duane Harkavy had been both my commanding officer and my personal nemesis for as long as I could remember. In my mind, he’d represented everything wrong with the Warden Service—the resistance to new ideas, the cronyism that rewarded political savvy over experience in the field, the sexism toward female officers. I had a hard time imagining the department without him. I should have been hopeful about the future, but Malcomb’s sourness suggested he wasn’t planning on throwing his hat in the ring.

“Does that make you the acting colonel?” I asked.

“Until the commissioner replaces me, it does.”

We paused at a stoplight. Malcomb wasn’t upset because he had inherited the job; he was upset because he would never be allowed to keep it. His new boss, the current commissioner, was an incompetent bureaucrat who didn’t give a shit about protecting the state’s natural resources. She was just a shill appointed by a governor who cared even less about Maine’s environment.

“You did a good job up there,” Malcomb said out of the blue.

“Thanks.”

“I don’t think I could have stopped myself from shooting the guy, but you did the right thing.”

“I’m still not convinced.”

His eyes never left the road as we crossed the busy intersection at St. John Street. “I read Tate’s report about that incident at the quarry, too.”

It didn’t sound like a question, so I didn’t reply.

“You did an exit interview when you resigned from the service,” he said. “Who did it? Peasely?”

“Yes.”

“Did he mention that you had a year to rethink the decision? If there’s an opening, you don’t need to formally reapply.”

“He said the provision was applicable only if a warden left under good circumstances.”

“Did he say you were fired?”

“No.”

“That means you left under good circumstances.”

I had never imagined that returning to the Warden Service was a possibility. I had too many enemies in the Augusta headquarters. My resignation had felt irrevocable from the moment I’d offered it.

The hospital loomed ahead.

“So I could just come back?” I said.

We entered the darkened interior of the Congress Street parking garage. “At the colonel’s discretion,” he said.

Or the acting colonel’s, I realized.

*   *   *

Malcomb escorted me as far as Kathy’s private room. “I’m going to get myself a cup of coffee. Do you want anything?”

“I’m good,” I said.

I knocked and heard a man’s voice tell me to come in. I braced myself before turning the doorknob.

Kathy’s parents were seated in chairs they’d pulled up beside the bed. They both rose to their feet as I entered. The father I knew from the chapel, but the mother I recognized only as an older version of the woman I’d seen in the family photograph hanging in their dining room. Alice Eklund was as tall as her husband. Her hair had faded but still had a slightly blondish tint. There were deep folds of skin along her neck, and the blue veins were prominent in her hands. But she seemed fit and healthy for a woman in her eighties.

The hospital bed was adjustable, and Kathy had raised it so that her head and shoulders were only slightly elevated, as if sitting upright might be a step too far in her recovery. Her skin was no longer gray, but there was no other word to describe her complexion except
sickly.
Her hair hung close to her scalp, as if she’d recently been wearing a cap; the sutured wound above her ear looked painful. She was wearing actual pajamas rather than a hospital Johnny. They were white, patterned with images of Walt Disney’s cartoon character Pluto.

“Hey, Grasshopper,” she said in a hoarse voice.

“Hey, yourself.”

Kathy raised a hand weakly to indicate her parents. “Did you meet my folks?”

“Reverend Eklund.” I extended my hand to the old man.

“Erik,” he reminded me. “Alice, this is the warden we were telling you about, Kathy’s friend Mike.”

The old woman stepped forward and pressed both of her wrinkled hands around mine. They were ice-cold. Her eyes welled up with tears so fast that they were running down her cheeks before she could lift a tissue. “Thank you.”

Erik Eklund put an arm around his wife’s shoulders. “We can never repay you for what you’ve done for us.”

“Papa,” said Kathy from the bed.

“What?” asked her father.

“You’re embarrassing him.” She was having a hard time getting her words out, but her tongue didn’t have the swollen sound of a person with a speech impediment. “Can you leave us alone? Just for a little while?”

“Of course,” said her father.

Her mother wouldn’t let go of me. It became a bit awkward. Her husband nearly had to pry her fingers loose.

After the door closed behind them, I remained standing at the foot of the bed, as if Kathy had a contagious disease.

“You’ve looked better,” she said to me.

I smiled and raised my hand to the side of my face. “You should see the other guy.”

“Decoster, huh?”

“It’s sad about Marta Jepson.”

“She asked me what she should tell Jason about that night, and I said she could blame me. I’m sure he grew up hating my guts. But he held it against Marta, too. I think he wanted to kill her his whole life.”

“It doesn’t make much sense, does it? The son avenging his abusive father.”

“I think I heard that story before.”

She gave me a faint smile to indicate that it was a joke. My own father had been a bastard, and no one had been quicker to defend him than yours truly. She waved me forward. I took a seat beside the bed. Her arm was connected to all sorts of tubes and wires, but she held out her hand to me. Her grip was so light, it was barely there.

“I’m sorry about Kurt,” I said.

“You can’t save someone who doesn’t want to be saved.”

I had learned that lesson before. But it’s one you keep forgetting. “So, how are you feeling?”

“Like a pincushion. Or a piñata. Both, I guess.”

I was trying to gauge from her speech how her mind was working. “You’d lost a lot of blood when I found you.”

“They put it back. Now they’re afraid I’ve got brain damage. The docs keep testing me. ‘Count backward from twenty. Remember these three things.’”

She seemed dehydrated and more exhausted than I had ever seen her, but her thinking seemed sound enough. Whatever the doctors were giving her for the pain had left her a little loopy, though. It seemed to have the same effect as truth serum.

“You don’t remember anything about that night?” I asked.

“I remember arguing with you. Did I forgive you?”

“Yes.”

Her laugh was as soft as a sigh. “Of course I did.”

We sat there gazing at each other. She really looked horrible with her sunken eyes and flat hair—almost as bad as my mom had on that last night of her life. I was afraid I might choke up if I didn’t distract myself.

“Do you want to hear some gossip?” I asked.

“Harkavy? Yeah, I know.”

“It’s good for the major, though.”

“He won’t get the job. Doesn’t kiss enough ass.”

“The wardens chipped in for me to stay at the Northeastland last night.”

“Fancy.”

“Maybe after you get out of here, you can show me around Aroostook County. I’d like to see all your old stomping grounds.”

She shook her head. “Too many memories.”

The reference might have been to Jacques and Jason Decoster or to the tragic life of Marta Jepson, but my gut told me she was talking about her late husband, Darren.

She seemed eager to change the subject. “Guess who was just in here? Tate.”