The Bone Orchard: A Novel (Mike Bowditch Mysteries) (36 page)

“I thought you two weren’t supposed to communicate until the investigation is complete.”

“She broke the rules.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“You’re a bad influence, Grasshopper.”

I studied her smiling face, and I realized that there was something I needed to tell her. The attorney general’s investigation was still proceeding. Kathy had time to come clean.

“Kathy,” I said, lowering my voice. “I know you didn’t shoot Jimmy Gammon in that barn. It was Tate who killed him, but you took the blame.”

Her bloodshot eyes widened. “How?”

“You kept saying to me that it wouldn’t have happened if I’d been there. At first, I thought you meant it wouldn’t have happened because I was more experienced. But you were speaking literally. Then, later, I found a diagram in your wastebasket. I thought it was just a doodle until I realized you were plotting out the trajectories of the two bullets. You lied in your report, Kathy. You could be prosecuted for obstructing justice.”

It took her some effort, but she rolled her eyes. “Who’s going to tell?”

Not me, obviously. “Tate might confess if she figures it out.”

“She thinks it was me who hit him. I told her I did it, and she believes me.”

“What about the ballistics investigators?”

“The bullet went through his neck. No way to tell which one hit him. But I know I missed. I plotted it out, and there was no way I could have hit him in the carotid from where I was standing.”

The confession left me feeling like I’d gotten the wind knocked out of me. “Why did you lie to protect her?”

“She’s a good warden. I thought she deserved more than a few second chances.”

“Like me, you mean.”

“Yeah.”

Why should it have surprised me that the woman who had spent years stopping me from throwing away my career—who had sacrificed so much on my behalf—would do the same for another promising young warden?

“Jesus Christ, Kathy.”

Her lip curled on one side, the way it did when she was being a smart aleck. “I think she has a crush on you.”

“Tate?” The woman disapproved of everything I did.

“I told her you were taken, though.”

I leaned back in the chair and frowned. “I’m taken? Tell that to Stacey Stevens.”

“She’s an idiot. She’s going to end up with a dog if she isn’t careful.”

Without meaning to, she’d brought up a topic I’d been avoiding. “I’m sorry about Pluto.”

“He was a good dog.”

“The best.”

A tear slid down her pale cheek.

I squeezed her hand as gently as I could, afraid of injuring her. Her eyelids lowered. “Are you getting tired?” I asked.

“A little.”

“I’ll come back when you have more energy.”

“No. Stay.”

She shut her eyes. I thought she might be falling asleep, but then she opened them again.

“When are you going to shave that fucking beard?”

41

My new vehicle was a shiny black GMC Sierra, the crew cab version with the standard box. The bed was spacious enough to carry a snowmobile or an all-terrain vehicle. The truck came with a set of tires so rugged, I felt like I could have driven it up the side of Katahdin, right into Pamola’s living room. I cruised from Augusta up I-95 through Bangor, enjoying the smoothness of the acceleration, and turned east when I saw the billowing smokestacks of the Lincoln Paper and Tissue mill rising above the eastern treetops.

May had turned to June. Where there had been only dandelions before, there were now lupines growing wild in the fields: pink, blue, and white. Now you could walk through the forest and identify every tree by the shape of its newly formed leaves. Jeff Jordan had told me that the salmon were biting on Pale Evening Duns in Grand Lake Stream, which was where I was headed.

I followed Route 6 east to the crossroads, where I paused at the stop sign, thinking about the past few months. If I turned left on Route 1, the road would lead me north to Houlton, Presque Isle, and the outskirts of Maine’s Swedish Colony. The Eklunds, I’d heard, were back home after a somber trip to Arlington National Ceremony. They had wanted to bury their son in the town cemetery, but Kathy had convinced them that—whatever lies Kurt might have told to win his Purple Heart—he deserved to rest in the company of heroes.

Kathy hadn’t been well enough to make the trip herself; the doctors said it would take months for her wounds to heal, and even then she shouldn’t expect to return to her former routines. In short, she would never be the same. The initial neurological tests showed no signs of traumatic brain injury, but she had lost her spleen, which meant that she would be more susceptible to the bacteria that cause pneumonia, meningitis, and other dangerous infections. She had survived her brush with death, but at a significant cost.

There might be additional costs yet to come. After burying their own son in the hallowed ground of Arlington, the Gammons had returned home to read the official report on the circumstances surrounding his death. The report was titled “Findings of the Attorney General in the Shooting Death of James P. Gammon by State Game Wardens in Camden,” and it declared that Sgt. Katarina Frost and Wdn. Danielle Tate had been justified in their use of deadly force to protect themselves from physical harm. An independent review conducted by the Maine Warden Service had arrived at the same conclusion. There was no definitive ballistic evidence to indicate which officer had killed Jimmy Gammon, but the investigators had accepted the wardens’ independent statements that Sergeant Frost had fired the fatal shot.

Only two people in the world would ever know otherwise.

The newspapers said that the Gammons were still contemplating a suit against the department and the warden sergeant who’d killed their boy. The burden of proof was lower in civil cases, so it wasn’t a foregone conclusion that a jury would excuse Kathy’s actions. At the very least, James Gammon had the resources and connections to make her life difficult. Maine’s intemperate governor had condemned the AG’s report as a “whitewash” upon its release. Later I saw that the Gammons were listed as major donors to his reelection campaign.

Revenge is a powerful motivator.

I’d received a voice mail from Aimee saying that her husband been moved back to Medium Custody for good behavior and asking why the heck I hadn’t told her he’d been in the frigging Supermax. I owed her a personal apology, especially now that I would have less time for household repairs.

Jason Decoster was being held in the Aroostook County Jail in Houlton, pending his trial for the murder of Kurt Eklund and the attempted murders of Sgt. Kathy Frost and Michael Bowditch. The investigators from the attorney general’s office had been unable to prove that Marta Jepson’s death had been anything but an unfortunate accident.

The Neanderthal was proving to be a most intelligent sociopath. If I hadn’t caught Decoster attempting to move Kurt Eklund’s corpse off his property, he might well have escaped justice. His lawyer would need to get creative to explain the dead body with the 9mm bullet in its head.

Eventually, Jason Decoster was going to find himself behind the walls of the Maine State Prison, where I had a dangerous friend who was inclined to do me favors. The truth was, though, I would never ask Billy Cronk to bloody his hands on my behalf, not when he needed to keep his nose clean to keep his sentence from being extended. I’d already had an opportunity to take revenge, and I’d been unable to pull the trigger. One of the other things I’d learned about myself over the past months was that I was no vigilante.

*   *   *

I gave a honk on the horn as I passed by Weatherby’s. Jeff Jordan was out mowing his steep lawn, but his sweaty back was turned to the street, and he was wearing ear protectors against the noise of the engine, so he didn’t hear me. I’d have to catch up with him at dinner.

I crossed the bridge over the stream and saw fishermen on both sides. Word must have gotten out about the big salmon being caught in the river. I’d come back here with Charley some evening to try our luck.

West of town, I passed the roadside memorial to the young woman who had died in the car crash. There were fresh flowers to mark the spot. White roses signified remembrance.

I could have continued on to Moosehorn Lodge and my former cabin, but I’d already hauled away the cardboard boxes containing my life’s possessions, carted them off to my temporary home in southern Maine. And I hardly expected a warm welcome from Elizabeth Morse, if she even happened to be in residence. I wondered if I would ever see the lodge again, then caught myself being naive. Just because you close a chapter in a book doesn’t mean you won’t ever reopen it. That was another life lesson I was trying to absorb.

I made a turn onto the woods road leading to Little Wabassus. The light had a greenish quality from the sun filtering through the bunched leaves overhead. The cinnamon ferns in the ditches had unrolled their tight little fists since my last visit. As the summer progressed, some of their fronds would turn reddish brown, but on this day in early June, everything around me looked lush and full of life.

The Stevenses’ house was an old lakeside camp that Charley had thoroughly overhauled. He had added ramps in the front and back for Ora’s wheelchair and paved a path down to the boathouse, where he kept his floatplane and wide-beamed Grand Laker. My heart sped up when I saw that Stacey’s Outback was parked beside the van with the wheelchair lift. I’d been gambling that she would be home this afternoon.

Charley was sitting in the screened-in section of the porch, enjoying a cup of coffee and the breeze lifting off the lake. When he saw my truck roll up, he sprang to his feet and hurried to the mesh door. His German shorthaired pointer, Nimrod, pushed at his knee.

“Come in quick!” said the retired pilot. “And don’t bring any of them skeeters with you. This time of year, a man can lose a pint of blood going to the danged outhouse.”

Charley had a colorful way of speaking, which he’d learned in the lumber camps as a boy, but I’d noticed that he saved his best bons mots for me.

“Thank God for indoor plumbing,” I said.

He clapped me hard on the back, hard enough to rattle my teeth. “It’s good to see you, young feller. You cleaned yourself up a dite since your last visit.”

Charley Stevens had a lantern jaw, laugh wrinkles that radiated from his eyes, and a thick head of white hair that his wife trimmed for him with sewing scissors out in the yard.

“How was your Canadian vacation?” I asked.

“Just grand. The folks up in Newfoundland are the salt of the earth. I don’t think I ever met a merrier bunch. There was this one pub we liked in St. John’s. When Ora rolled up in her wheelchair, everyone inside would rush out to lift her through the door. And they’ve got the same rocky cliffs and highlands as in Scotland. It’s a damn beautiful place. You need to get yourself up there, pronto.”

“I’m not going to have vacation days for a while,” I said.

“I expect you won’t!”

“Is Ora here?”

“She’s trying to teach Stacey to pickle fiddleheads. Can you believe it? I didn’t think my daughter had a domestic bone in her body. ‘Every day brings a new surprise,’ my mother used to say.” He peered into the darkened interior of the building, holding his hand flat above his eyes in imitation of a Hollywood Indian. “Where are those girls? They know we have company.”

“I’m not in a rush.”

“But you’re not here to see a slide show of our vacation, either.”

“Maybe some other time.”

Charley pulled on his chin. “So Harkavy is out and Malcomb is in down in Augusta. I hope Tim is in the job long enough to make some overdue changes. The Warden Service could use a good spring cleaning.”

“He’s made a few changes already,” I said.

Before I could say anything more, Stacey and Ora appeared in the doorway. The daughter was pushing her mother’s wheelchair. They were both wearing aprons. Ora’s was pristine white, while Stacey’s was smeared with handprints.

“Mike!” said Ora. She had the same high cheekbones as her daughter and the same jade-green eyes. She’d pulled her hair back from her beautiful face and secured it in a small ponytail. “It’s so nice to see you.”

“And in uniform,” said Stacey with enough of a barb to sting. “You look like a new man.”

I rubbed my hand over my buzz cut. “I was getting tired of combing my hair.”

“Charley told us you’d rejoined the Warden Service,” said Ora. “What good news.”

“I wasn’t sure they’d take me back.”

“After what you did for Kathy Frost? I don’t see how they could have said no. How is she doing? Have you seen her?”

“She’s recovering, but it’s going to take a while. She’s already thinking about coming back to work, but she’s worried they’ll put her behind a desk until she retires.”

“She shouldn’t hurry things,” said Ora in her most motherly tone.

“Have they given you your old district back?” Charley asked.

“They offered it to me,” I said. “But I said it belongs to Dani Tate now. For the time being, they’re moving me around to cover vacant districts. I’m not sure where I’ll end up.”

Stacey untied her apron from her neck, as if she’d suddenly gotten self-conscious about it. She was wearing a waffled long underwear shirt, which clung to her chest and shoulders, and her usual blue jeans. “So what brings you back Down East?”

“I thought I might take you to dinner.”

“What?”

“I have a reservation for us at Weatherby’s.”

“This is a joke, right?”

“We can drive around awhile, and I can show off the fancy new truck they gave me.”

Charley put his hand on his wife’s shoulder.

Stacey touched a loose strand of brown hair that had fallen onto her forehead. “You’re asking me out on a date? In front of my parents?”

I’d had misgivings about the timing because I didn’t want to put her on the spot. But I already knew I was rolling the dice. It would be a gamble however I played it.

“They’re welcome to join us. But I made the reservation for two.”

“That’s nice of you, but we have other plans,” said Ora.

Stacey glared down at her mother. “You do not!”