The Bone Orchard: A Novel (Mike Bowditch Mysteries) (18 page)

“I don’t think I can sleep.”

“Do you want me to make us some coffee?”

“What I want is a drink.”

“I don’t think that’s a great idea. Why don’t you come with me out to the kitchen and we’ll see what Kathy has in her refrigerator.”

He rubbed his one good eye and puffed out his cheeks before sucking them back in. He didn’t say another word but rose shakily and plodded down the narrow steps. The sour smell of alcohol drifted behind him.

There was a draft in the kitchen, coming from the direction of the mudroom. I made a fire in the woodstove, using newspaper flyers and fatwood from a pine box in the corner. Kurt settled himself at the antique table, which tilted in his direction when he rested a forearm on it. He bent down to look at the uneven legs.

“I need to fix this.”

Kathy had told me he was a carpenter. I wondered how he’d pursued his vocation when he’d been without a driver’s license for so long. According to Morrison, Eklund was a habitual motor vehicle offender. That hardly came as a surprise.

I made coffee in the fancy Bunn machine that had been Kathy’s big splurge a few years back. Then when the woodstove began to steam, I fried eggs in a cast-iron griddle. I’d hoped for some toast, too, but the bread in the bread box had acquired a bad case of the blue splotches.

Kurt watched me quietly, sipping black coffee. He removed his dusty Nordic sweater. His long underwear was wet and yellow under the arms and in a stained crescent above his sternum. When he rolled up his sleeves, I saw that he had patches of rough red skin on his elbows.

“Do you mind if I open a window?” he croaked. “It’s like a sauna in here.”

I found the room chilly myself. “Go ahead.”

He raised the window above the soapstone sink and stood there, his arms braced on the counter, staring down the hill. “Red sky at morning,” he said.

There was a glow like a distant wildfire burning beyond the hills to the east, but elsewhere the sky was still dark and dense with clouds.

“How much do you remember about last night?” I asked him.

“There was a woman with you. She said someone shot my sister.”

He still didn’t seem entirely sober to me, but he seemed coherent enough to attempt a conversation. I set two plates on the table and sat down to eat. After a moment, he took the chair across from me and lifted a fork.

“Do the cops know who did it?” he asked.

“Not yet. I was wondering if you had any ideas.”

“She’s a warden. She’s made a lot of enemies in twenty-eight years. Start at the beginning.”

“She never mentioned a name to you? Someone in particular who had threatened her?”

He cocked his shaggy head and studied me with his one working eye. The retina was the same shade of hazel as his sister’s, but the sclera was a sickly yellow. “Katarina and I don’t have that kind of relationship.”

Katarina? I’d always thought her first name was Katharine. “You know about the shooting she was involved with a few days ago?”

“Of course I know. I was here when she came home that night. She was very upset. She pretended not to be, but I could tell she was. This wasn’t the first time she had to kill someone in the line of duty, you know?”

“She told me about the Decoster shooting.”

“Then you know how it’s haunted her. Most cops never shoot one person in their career. What do you think it’s like killing two people?”

I had a good idea. “How long have you been living here, Kurt? Your driver’s license says you live in New Sweden. “

“A few weeks. What is this, an interrogation?”

I hadn’t intended the conversation to go in that direction, but Eklund was such an ornery character, it was hard not to treat him with hostility.

“I don’t think the detectives who are investigating your sister’s case even knew you were living here.”

“What does it matter to them?” He hadn’t touched his eggs.

“They need a complete picture.”

“Kathy’s been putting me up until I get some steady work. I asked her for asylum, and she gave it to me.”

My fork paused between the plate and my mouth. “That’s an interesting choice of words.”

“What?
Asylum
?” he said. “I’m an expert on the subject. Ask me anything. ‘Bedlam’ was originally slang for the Bethlehem Royal Hospital in London. Bellevue Hospital in New York treated Eugene O’Neill and Norman Mailer. The blues legend Lead Belly died there. Psych wards are my specialty.”

“Do you mind if I ask you a personal question?”

“Since I have no clue who you are,
Mike,
or what you’re doing in my sister’s house, it seems like it should be me interrogating you.”

“I’m a friend of your sister. I used to be one of her district wardens.”

“Used to be?”

“I was here the night she got shot. I arrived a few minutes after it happened. The shooter was still here, though. Whoever he was, he blew out the windshield of my Bronco. You probably missed it on the way in. It’s the vehicle out there with all the holes in it.”

He placed his hands flat on the table and made a smacking noise with his lips. “I’m sorry if I seem like I’m being a dick. I’m hungover and not feeling particularly good about myself in general this morning. The shrinks at the VA say I have a major depressive disorder. I always tell them, ‘How happy would you be if you were a chronic alcoholic with one eye?’” He began to laugh in a way that reminded me of a comic book villain. He held up both hands, palms outward. “These mitts of mine are going to start shaking soon if I don’t get a drink.”

“Maybe you should eat some of your eggs.” The grease had already congealed around the whites.

“I have no stomach for it anymore.”

“Maybe you should check into rehab.”

“Interesting suggestion. Never heard that one before.”

Without another word, he wandered down the hall to the nearest bathroom, leaving me alone in the dimly lit kitchen. I eyed his untouched plate of fried eggs, knowing he wouldn’t eat them now. I decided to help myself.

When he came back, he headed straight for the pantry and emerged with a bottle of amaretto. He twisted the metal cap and kept pouring until his coffee mug was mostly booze. He raised the cup to his mouth, watched me the whole time like a kid deliberately hoping to provoke a scolding.

I remained quiet.

“I expected you to try to stop me,” he said.

“It’s not my house,” I said. “I can’t let you drive today, though. Where are your car keys?”

“Under the driver’s seat.”

Dawn was brightening the window above the sink, but the sun still hadn’t risen. I’d need to fetch those keys if I didn’t want him to sneak off while I was taking a shower. And I should check Kathy’s patrol truck, too.

“You never answered my question,” I said.

“Go ahead.”

“You weren’t here the night Kathy was shot, and you weren’t here the next day when the house was crawling with state police detectives and evidence technicians. Then you come back shit-faced in the middle of the night? Where were you, Kurt?”

He took another swig from the mug and set it down on the tabletop. “I see you ate my eggs.”

“Are you going to answer me?”

“I found a card game at the VFW in Sennebec.”

“You were playing poker for two days?”

“You don’t play, do you?”

“I learned a long time ago that I am a poor loser.”

“Two days at a table is nothing for me if they keep the drinks coming.” When he smiled, he showed stained teeth that looked unnaturally long, and I realized it was because the gums had pulled back from the roots.

I leaned back in my chair and crossed my arms. “Something’s puzzling me. If someone told me that my sister was on her deathbed in the hospital, you couldn’t stop me from rushing off to see her. I wouldn’t be sitting here getting drunk and making wisecracks.”

“You have a sister?” he asked.

“I have a stepsister.”

“And when was the last time you saw her?” He seemed to be playing a game with me—a game with rules only he understood.

“Last year, at the wake following my mother’s funeral.”

He’d expected a different reply from me, I could tell. “I don’t like hospitals,” he said.

“That’s your answer?”

“When I was eighteen years old, I remember waking up in the Twelfth Medical Evacuation Hospital in Cu Chi, Vietnam. It was across Highway One from a petroleum dump and artillery battery. I had no idea how I’d gotten there, but when I woke up, I discovered that I was missing an eye. They had to tie me down, I heard. I’ve never trusted doctors since they plucked my eye out.”

“Is that your all-purpose excuse?”

“For what?”

“For everything that’s gone wrong in your life.”

The smile vanished in an instant. If this had been a fencing match, I would have said that I’d scored a touch against him. He brought his fingers to his chin and ran the back sides of them along the stubbled hair beneath his jawline. The noise was loud and rasping, like sandpaper on a block of wood. “You’re ex-military, right?”

“What makes you say that?”

“You have anger issues.” The smile returned, more condescending than ever, and he pointed a finger at me. “And
that
is why you are no longer a warden. Am I right? Because of your anger-management problems?”

“I have reasons to be angry,” I said.

I stood up from the table with the two greasy plates and carried them to the soapstone sink. I squirted some dishwashing liquid on them and ran the water until it was scalding hot. Then I brushed the plates with a sponge until my hands were red. I cleaned the cast-iron griddle pan with a paper towel.

Kurt Eklund watched me with the patience of a cat. He’d managed to get under my skin with an ease that I found embarrassing. I was mad at him and mad at myself at being so easily provoked. I felt an urge to take his car for the day and leave him stranded here with his self-pity and his pantryful of booze.

As I was drying the inside of my coffee mug with a rag, I glanced out the window. The clouds had drifted to the eastern horizon, blotting out the newly risen sun. It was visible as a pale disk in the sky, shedding little in the way of heat or light. Below the blueberry barrens were a patchwork of hay fields with a river running through them and a distant pond that reflected the sun like a mirror.

A figure dressed in full camouflage was striding through the barrens less than a hundred feet from the house. He had a mesh bag filled with turkey decoys slung over his shoulder and was carrying a pump shotgun tucked under his arm. He was wearing a sheer green mask over his face, but when he looked up at the lighted window and saw me watching him from the house, I could have sworn that he gave me a smile.

“What the hell?” I said.

22

“Do you know who that is?” I asked Kurt.

He pushed himself up from the oval table, causing it to groan and tilt again beneath the weight of his outstretched arms. He peered over my shoulder, through the window.

“Son of a bitch!”

Before I could ask another question, he’d taken off through the mudroom, pushing the back door open with such force, I thought it might fly off its hinges. Despite his sixty-something years and ill health, Eklund was a strong guy with muscles hardened from a lifetime of physical labor. Through the cracked window, I saw him striding in his stocking feet across the dooryard in pursuit of the turkey hunter.

“Hey! Hey!” he shouted.

I followed him out of the kitchen and down the back steps.

The morning was gloomy, but drier than it had been for a long time, and a wave of warblers was moving through the treetops, singing as they flitted from branch to branch. I heard a whistle of wing beats and looked up to see a pair of wood ducks rocketing against the overcast sky.

The hunter paused and lifted the barrel of his shotgun slightly, not enough to be threatening but definitely as if he was preparing himself for trouble. “Ahoy, matey! If it isn’t Captain Kidd.”

“What do you think you’re doing, Littlefield?” Kurt said.

“Using my right of way.”

“Kathy told you to stay off her land.”

“She should post it, then.” The man, Littlefield, was dressed from cap to boots in camouflage, making it impossible to see anything except his rheumy eyes, which were visible above the leaf-patterned veil that covered the bottom of his face. He was a big guy under all those hunting clothes, but he had the cracked, high-pitched voice of a very old man.

“What’s going on here?” My tone was the same one I used to use as a warden to establish my command presence.

“Who are you supposed to be?” he asked. “Another of the lady warden’s brothers?”

“My name is Mike Bowditch. And I’d like to know what you’re doing here.”

“His name is Littlefield,” said Kurt. “He owns the farm on the other side of that stone wall.”

“And I own the right-of-way through these fields, too.”

“The hell you do,” said Eklund.

“I got the deed that says so!”

I was already steaming at the “lady warden” comment, but I tried to keep the emotion out of my voice. “Do you mind removing your hunting mask, Mr. Littlefield, so we can have a polite conversation?”

“I ain’t interested in having a conversation with either of you needle dicks. Stand aside and let me use my right-of-way.”

“You know the woman who owns this property was shot the other night,” I said.

“Of course I know. Cops trampled all over my place looking for clues.”

“She was shot by someone with a turkey gun.”

“You accusing me of something?”

“You don’t think it’s disrespectful to be hunting on her land under the circumstances?”

“I doubt she cares much one way or the other at the present time.”

Eklund stooped down and grabbed an apple-size rock from the weeds. “Fuck you!”

Littlefield lifted the barrel of his shotgun. “Easy there, Cyclops!”

My right hand went around my side and found the grip of Davies’s revolver where I’d tucked it into the back of my pants. “I suggest you move on, Mr. Littlefield.”

“That’s what I was doing before you clowns accosted me.”

“Don’t think I won’t throw this!” Kurt said.