The Bone Orchard: A Novel (Mike Bowditch Mysteries) (27 page)

The weather seemed to have taken a decided turn for the better. The sun was bright and the sky was the cornflower blue you expect to see in Maine during the last weeks of May. I drove with the back windows of the Cutlass rolled down, letting the breeze dry my wet hair. I passed an old man on a John Deere tractor. He was mowing an overgrown lawn he’d been unable to tend during the many days of rain. He waved at me as if we were old friends. The pleasant smell of freshly cut grass drifted to my nose as I rounded the curve.

Dani Tate lived in a smallish modular home in a clearing in the trees along the Friendship Road. The property looked as if a team of professional landscapers had recently visited; there wasn’t a single weed sprouting from the tulip beds. The black patrol truck and the silver Toyota Tacoma parked side by side in the drive had both recently been washed and waxed. The woman was a neat freak.

I parked Eklund’s beater on the side of the road. I made a bet with myself how quickly Tate would slam the door in my face. Thirty seconds, I decided.

The doorbell glowed orange. I heard electronic chimes, followed by quick footsteps descending a staircase. I waited with my hands plunged deep into my pockets and a dopey smile on my face. I wanted to appear clueless enough that she would at least open the door when she saw me through the spy hole.

The door opened, but she held her sturdy arm across the opening to bar me from entering. She had been exercising when I had arrived. Her compression T-shirt was drenched with sweat, and her forehead and cheeks were pink and glistening. She was barefoot and her feet were raw-looking. She had been practicing her martial arts, I concluded.

Her expression was openly hostile. “How did you know where I live?”

“Warden Service roster.”

“So what do you want?”

“I thought I might buy you breakfast,” I said, never once dropping the grin I’d put on for her benefit.

“You’ve got to be joking.”

“Come on. It’s healthier than smoking a peace pipe.”

She started to close the door. “Thanks, but no thanks.”

I stuck my Bean boot into the crack and nearly got my metatarsals crushed. She yanked the door wide.

“What the fuck, Bowditch?”

“Kathy would want us to be friends.”

“Not gonna happen.”

“She wouldn’t want us to hate each other, at least.”

She narrowed her eyes. “You’re serious about this? You drove all the way out here to buy me an Egg McMuffin?”

“I was thinking more like a bowl of oatmeal at the Square Deal. You strike me as an oatmeal person.”

She hung in the doorway, studying me with the same open suspicion with which she probably approached every hunter or fishermen she met in the field. Her facial features weren’t unattractive. It was her attitude that made her appear so mean and unapproachable.

“If this is some lame ploy to get information out of me, I swear to God I’m going to punch you in the heart.”

“Duly noted,” I said.

Without another word, she closed the door, leaving me standing on a welcome mat that was the dictionary definition of false advertising. I wandered back across the road, leaned against the side of the Cutlass, and raised my face to the sun. A wave of excited magnolia warblers had descended into the crab apple tree behind me. A soft hum at my feet made me look down. A low-flying bumblebee was scouting for a mouse hole in which to nest.

I wasn’t sure if Tate would accept my invitation or not. But after five minutes, she emerged from the house, having taken the world’s fastest shower. She was wearing a denim jacket over a baggy sweatshirt with the Unity College insignia on the front, Carhartt carpenter pants, and scuffed work boots that looked like she’d done real work in them.

She waved me across the road, heading toward her silver Toyota.

“Are you afraid of being seen in the Cutlass?” I asked.

“I don’t trust your driving,” she said, putting on a pair of aviator sunglasses. “Besides, this way I can kick you out anytime you start pissing me off.”

The humorless tone of her voice let me know I should take it as a very real threat.

The inside of the vehicle made it appear as if she’d just driven it straight from the dealer’s showroom. There were no stains on the graphite fabric, no trace of dust on any plastic surface. I secured my shoulder belt while she switched on the Bearcat police scanner she’d installed on the dash.

“I thought you were suspended,” I said.

She fired me a look. “I still want to know what’s going on.”

She backed out of the driveway quickly but with the expertise of a professional race car driver. She kept her hands at nine and three o’clock on the wheel—the way we’d been taught on the Criminal Justice Academy’s practice course—and never crossed them when making turns. She was a better driver than I was.

She didn’t say a word to me for the first few minutes. Instead, we listened to the almost incomprehensible burbling of the police radio. Kathy had compared driving with her taciturn rookie to being alone in the truck with her dog. I was coming to appreciate the comparison.

“So, where did you grow up?” I asked finally.

“Pennacook.”

It was a papermaking town in the western Maine foothills. “Did your dad work at the mill?”

Her gaze never veered from the road. “What’s this? Twenty Questions?”

“Just pretend I’m someone you don’t despise.”

“He’s a shift supervisor. At least for now. The mill’s been laying off people right and left.”

It was the familiar story of the Maine North Woods. The state had been the logging capital of the world in the late 1800s, but by the twenty-first century, most of the paper mills had been shuttered and the jobs shipped off to countries like China, Indonesia, and Brazil. There were too many communities in northern Maine that were just another economic downturn from becoming ghost towns.

“Let me guess,” I said. “You’re the only girl in the family.”

“Why? Because I’m a tomboy?”

“Am I right?”

“Yeah, you’re right.” We crossed the town line into Sennebec, where I had lived when I had patrolled this coastal district. “But it would be more polite to ask me direct questions rather than pretend you’re Sherlock Holmes.”

“What made you decide to become a warden?”

“I grew up hunting and fishing. My grandfather was a warden in New Hampshire. He took me on ride-alongs before he retired. I liked the idea of catching bad guys. The usual stuff.”

“You ever consider becoming a regular cop?”

“Nah. I like the woods too much. And I prefer to work alone.”

Dani Tate’s motivations for joining the Warden Service weren’t so different from my own. The difference was that she believed in following the policy manual as if it were holy Scripture. I had always been a heretic.

“Rumor is you have a black belt in Brazilian jiu jitsu,” I said.

“Jesus, you are nosy.”

“True or false?”

“I wanted to be an Ultimate Fighter for a while when I was in high school. Then I decided it was too much about performing for the cameras. I never gave a shit about being famous like Gina Carano. If I could live my whole life without anyone knowing my name, I’d be happy.”

Her involvement in the Gammon shooting had quashed those hopes.

I was desperately curious to hear her account of what had happened that night at the Gammons’ farm, but the attorney general had sworn her to secrecy during the investigation, and I already knew enough about Danielle Tate to realize I had zero chance of persuading her to break a vow of silence.

The Maine woods in springtime are as pretty as pastel paintings. The formerly dull hillsides were now vibrant with colors I hadn’t seen since fall. The road dipped and passed through a cluster of old houses along a slow-flowing brown river. Locals still referred to the area as Sennebec Village, even though the only commercial enterprise left was the old Sennebec Grocery. The market had gone from offering butchered meat and fresh vegetables in its heyday to selling cartons of cigarettes, cases of cheap beer, and spools of scratch lottery tickets. I doubted that when its current owner, Hank Varnum, decided to retire he would find a buyer for the business.

Seeing my former district from the passenger seat of Tate’s truck put me in a nostalgic mood. I’d endured some of the most dangerous and difficult experiences in my life here, and yet I found myself feeling an abiding affection for the salt marshes and spruce-fir forests of the Midcoast. The passage of time erases the rough edges of memories.

We climbed the steep hill that led up to the main road and the Square Deal Diner and Motel.

“I’ve been asking you a lot of questions,” I said.

“No shit.”

“I figured you might have some for me. You don’t want to know about my mysterious past?”

She gave what sounded like a snort. “No need.”

“Why’s that?”

“I already know all about you, Bowditch. You’re a living legend.”

I grinned. “Is that so?”

“But not in a good way.”

*   *   *

Faces turned toward the door when we entered the Square Deal, and the whispering started just as fast. Dani Tate and I had both become infamous personalities in Sennebec. She kept a blank look on her face as we settled into a booth, but I could tell from the rigid way she was holding her shoulders that she already regretted her decision to accompany me here.

There were paper place mats on the lacquered wooden table, featuring boxed advertisements for a variety of local businesses and organizations. The Shear Perfection Beauty Salon (“Because you deserve nothing less”); the Lighthouse Pentecostal Church (“Sin sees the bait but is blind to the hook!”); Big Al’s Gun Shop (“Offering 10 percent off all muzzle-loader supplies”).

God, how I missed this place.

I’d looked for Dot Libby when I’d come in but hadn’t seen her. The talkative plumber I’d spoken to a few days ago, Pulkinnen, was hunched at the counter. He’d been the one complaining about Dani Tate to me. He’d said the local poachers were unafraid of her, but I’d come to the conclusion that the rookie was facing much bigger challenges if she was ever going to be a successful warden.

The new waitress, Destiny, came over with a pot of coffee. She must have just received a perm at Shear Perfection; her hair was twisted into ringlets tighter than any I’d ever seen on a poodle. She filled our coffee cups without asking.

“How are you two doing today?”

“Fine,” said Tate. “I’ll have the oatmeal.”

“You want any raisins or brown sugar on top?”

“No.”

“I’ll have a molasses doughnut,” I said.

“Healthy choice,” said Dani Tate.

I leaned back against the creaking booth and spread my arms along the top. “My body is a temple.”

She kept her mouth clamped shut as she surveyed the room, so she seemed to have no lips at all. She made fierce eye contact with every person who tried to sneak a peek at our booth. The woman might have been antisocial, but she was hardly a shrinking violet.

“Can I give you some advice?” I said.

“This is going to be good.”

“Stop trying to intimidate everyone you meet. Giving people the stink eye won’t make them afraid of you.”

“I’m a woman, and I’m five-four. How do you expect me to intimidate anybody?”

“By knowing their secrets.”

“The arrogant asshole returns,” she said.

“It’s not arrogance,” I said. “It’s experience. You need to talk to people if you’re going to be an effective warden. Cultivate a few informants. There are dozens of feuds going on around here—neighbors who hate their neighbors—and they’ll happily rat each other out if they trust you with their secrets.”

She made a penciling motion with her empty hand on the place mat. “Should I be taking notes?”

“There’s an old woman named Reetha Gee who lives with her clan on Maple Grove Cove,” I said. “She has something like twenty teenaged grandkids. The boys all have rap sheets and the girls are all dating guys with rap sheets. You should pay Reetha a visit someday and give her some deer meat as a bribe.”

“I know who Reetha Gee is. She’s basically the matriarch of a heroin-dealing organization.”

“She’s also a useful informant. If you’re nice to her, she’ll call you with incriminating evidence you can use to make a bust. It’s how she gets rid of her enemies.”

“You don’t have a problem doing business with someone like her?”

“Not if I bust some bad guys along the way.”

She threw her elbows on the table and tried the alpha-dog thing with me, staring hard into my eyes.

“You know what?” she said. “I do have a question about your ‘mysterious past.’”

Her irises were the color of shale fragments, I decided. The woman was made entirely of stone.

“Fire away.”

“If you were such a kick-ass warden, why did you quit?”

An answer came out without my being able to stop it. “I’ve been asking myself that question every day.”

The frankness of my response seemed to surprise her. She slunk back into the booth but kept the muscles in her jaw clenched. “I still don’t understand why the colonel didn’t fire you a long time ago.”

“Maybe it was because I had the highest conviction rate in the service two years in a row.”

She crossed her short, strong arms. “Big whoop.”

“I also had Kathy Frost looking out for me for a while. She seemed to think I was worth holding on to.”

“I don’t know why.”

“When she wakes up, you can ask her.”

My comment was an unwelcome reminder that a woman we both respected was still in a coma. Tate’s face flushed red. She pushed herself violently out of the booth.

“I need to take a piss,” she said.

The other diners stopped what they were doing in order to watch her. I wasn’t sure what I’d hoped to learn from Dani Tate, but I had blown any chance of getting her to open up. When she returned, she would tell me it was time to go, breakfast or no breakfast.

Destiny returned with our orders. The last time I’d been to the diner, she’d mentioned something to me about the Gammon shooting; she’d used an unusual phrase. But my mind was drawing a blank. She set the doughnut down on its little plate in front of me and the bowl of oatmeal on Tate’s place mat. She said, “That woman you’re with, she’s the one who shot that wounded soldier in Camden?”