Widowmaker (14 page)

Maybe the time had come to end my fool's errand and return home before the snow made the road through the mountain pass even more treacherous.

Someone loomed beside me. “Sir?”

I looked up into the face of a man in a blue uniform. At first, I assumed he must be a police officer. He was wearing a gun belt with a holstered .45 and pouches for handcuffs, a flashlight—all the usual tools of my trade. He had a badge, too: Franklin County Sheriff's Department. But the cap on his head was emblazoned with the trademark Widowmaker logo. Was he a cop, a security guard, or what?

“Yes?” I said.

“Can I ask you a couple of questions real quick?” It was the same verbiage I had been taught to use whenever I began a conversation with a potential suspect that was serious and not likely to be quick.

“What about?”

The officer was a tall man in his early twenties with a nondescript face I might have had trouble describing to a sketch artist: dull brown eyes, mousy hair, lips on the thin side, a few moles on his pale neck. He wasn't overweight, exactly, or at least not obese, but he seemed to carry an extra layer of fat over his entire body the way seals do. It made him appear soft, but I had a sense that the muscles were solid under that coating of blubber.

“Were you in this bar an hour ago?” he asked.

“Yes, I was.”

“We had a report of a man matching your description having an altercation with a kid.”

“The ‘kid' was old enough to drink. Who ‘reported' this altercation?”

“That's not important. Can you come with me, please?”

What the hell was up with this half-assed inquisition?

“Where?” I asked.

“I have an office downstairs.” The officer kept a blank expression that made it impossible to read his emotions. “I'm just trying to straighten some things out.”

“Russo, leave the guy alone!” said the bartender.

“Lexi, you do your job, and I'll do mine.” The words themselves had an edge, but he managed to keep his tone even.

“The guy's a fucking forest ranger. Show him your badge, Mike.”

“Is that true?” the man named Russo asked.

“I'm a game warden.”

“Are you on duty here today, Warden?”

“No, I'm not.”

“And have you been drinking today?”

“No, I haven't.”

“Can I see your badge real quick?” Russo had the patter down, that was for sure.

Whatever this guy was, he was no ignorant rookie following a script he'd just learned. He had shown up here for the deliberate purpose of hassling me, and I had no idea what it was about.

I reached slowly—very slowly—into my inside chest pocket.

Russo examined my badge and photo ID. His eyes remained as absent of human response as a doll's.

With all the noise from the dining room, I hadn't heard another person approach me from behind.

“That's all right, Russo,” a man said. “We saw everything.”

The officer stood at attention. “Mr. Cabot.”

I turned and found myself face-to-face with the mustached member of the Night Watchmen.

The whites of Cabot's eyes were more of a lemon chiffon color. His breath smelled strongly of beer. “My friends and I witnessed the whole incident. Warden Bowditch acted appropriately. He defused the situation before it could get out of hand.”

I had come to the conclusion that Russo must be some kind of deputized security guard. Perhaps Widowmaker had an arrangement with the sheriff that granted some of their people arrest powers. I had seen similar setups on certain offshore islands.

“That's good enough for me, Mr. Cabot,” said Russo, as if he worked for the man.

The guard returned my badge to me. “Sorry for the inconvenience, Warden. Just trying to straighten some things out. You have a good day now.”

Meanwhile, the man with the gold-rimmed glasses extended his hand. “Name's John Cabot. Like the explorer. I apologize for Russo. He's a zealous officer, and usually that's a good thing here. Widowmaker has always attracted a certain unsavory element.”

The odor of alcohol coming off Cabot was overpowering, and yet he spoke more coherently than almost anyone else I'd met that day. Clearly he was a person of some power, too, the way the officer had practically bowed to him.

“Thanks for backing me up,” I said.

“Those brats were out of line.” He gestured to his corner table. “Are you sure you won't join us for a drink?”

I remained fixed in place.
“
How did you know my name, Mr. Cabot?”

“What's that?”

“You said, ‘My friends and I saw the whole incident. Warden Bowditch acted appropriately. He defused the situation.'”

His sallow skin sagged around the mouth. “You have a remarkable memory, young man.”

“So I've been told.”

His teeth were as yellow as the rest of him. “I knew your father. He worked for my company years ago, although we never met at the time. I got to know him later at various watering holes. Jack was quite the character, needless to say. He made a sizable impression.”

“You own Cabot Lumber?”

“I did before I retired. I'm still the president of the board, but my sons run the business.”

It was one of the state of Maine's larger independent building suppliers and had several sawmills, lumberyards, and dozens of retail stores. My father had felled trees for the company before being fired for some offense or another.

I crossed my arms. “But how did you know who I was?”

“You underestimate your own notoriety, Warden. At least in this part of the state.”

Looking over his shoulder, I saw the ruddy British-looking chap waving me enthusiastically toward the table.

I had come up to Widowmaker promising not to call undue attention to myself. Clearly, these Night Watchmen jokers had me at a disadvantage. The whole sequence of events since I'd returned to the restaurant—Amber's unexplained disappearance, the grilling I'd received from Russo, being “rescued” by Cabot—left me feeling uneasy.

“Please come join us at least for a coffee.” Cabot extended his scarecrow arm toward the back table. It was a grand, welcoming gesture that made me think of the ticket taker at a haunted house.

What other choice did I have?

I followed him.

The ruddy man in tweed pulled out a chair for me as I approached. “Welcome! Welcome!” he said in a posh accent.

“This is Johnny Partridge, late of Fleet Street,” said Cabot. “And this taciturn fellow is Chief Petty Officer Lane Torgerson, U.S. Navy, retired. Gentlemen, we were correct in our deductions. This is indeed Warden Mike Bowditch, the son of the notorious Jack Bowditch, whom we were discussing earlier.”

Torgerson I didn't know. But he looked like someone who had seen combat in a handful of theaters—from Vietnam to Iraq—and who could still hold his own against you in a bar fight and might even help you pick up your teeth afterward.

Partridge, however, I recognized.

He was a British-born reporter who had worked at several Maine newspapers over the years. I had no idea what had brought him from London to our little backwater state, but he'd had a long and controversial career. Everyone who worked in state government knew him by reputation and few were willing to take his phone calls. I remembered one particularly cruel column he had written attacking two friends of mine after they had been involved in a tragic suicide-by-cop shooting. Partridge had called wardens Danielle Tate and Kathy Frost “frantic female fish cops.”

He had written about me, as well, following my father's death. Or so my friends had told me. I had managed to avoid reading the column he had published questioning my worthiness to carry a badge and a gun.

“Have a seat, young man,” said Partridge boisterously. “Join us for a drink.”

Torgerson nodded respectfully.

“He says he's drinking coffee,” said Cabot, pushed his sliding spectacles back up his nose again.

“You must have a beer at least!” said Partridge.

The thought of sharing a table with this vile man soured my stomach.

“I apologize, but I didn't realize how late it is,” I said. “I need to get going.”

All three of them stopped moving at once and went completely quiet long enough for an old-time photographer to have made a daguerreotype of them.

“We noticed you talking to Amber Langstrom earlier,” Partridge said, showing off his British dental work. “How do you know her?”

“I don't.”

“Didn't she hug you?” the Brit asked. “I'm sure she did.”

“She mistook me for someone else,” I said. “She thought I looked like someone she knew.”

Cabot raised one of his bristling eyebrows. “Really? We were all sitting here envying you.”

I forced a smile. “I really made myself the center of attention, it seems.”

“You've got to excuse us for being nosy Parkers,” Cabot said. “We're all retired—in Johnny's case, partially retired. We have too much time on our hands, which makes us dangerous, of course. And we pay particular attention to Amber for obvious reasons.” If he had shaped the outlines of her breasts in the air, he couldn't have been any more lewd.

“It's a shame about the poor woman's son,” said Partridge to me.

I didn't have Officer Russo's gift for maintaining a deadpan expression. “Her son?”

“Sex offender,” said Cabot. “Convicted child rapist. The kid was a promising skier, too. And now he's run off.”

“He's human garbage,” said Torgerson. I'd been wondering if he possessed vocal cords.

“That seems like too strong a word,” said Cabot.

Partridge followed a swallow of scotch with a sip of beer. “What would you prefer?”

“I'd say that young Adam has forsaken his personal savior.”

“Foss?” growled Torgerson. He really did sound as if he'd spent a lifetime breathing in napalm fumes and desert sand.

Partridge laughed uproariously. “That's a new name for Don! Personal savior!”

Torgerson's cell phone buzzed in his shirt pocket. He rose quickly to his feet and turned from the table, making sure I, at least, couldn't hear what he was saying.

“Now tell us about you,” said Cabot.

“You already know that I am a game warden.” The conversation seemed to be careening in the wrong direction. “The bartender said you gentlemen are part of a club,” I said, trying to change the focus.

Cabot fingered the beads of moisture on his beer glass absently. “We enjoy a pint together.”

“She said you call yourselves the Night Watchmen,” I said.

“In jest,” said Partridge.

“I don't get the joke.”

“We all own homes on the mountain,” said John Cabot by way of explanation. “The irony in my case is that I don't even ski. But my wife and her children can't get enough of it. We have an interest in protecting our property values. That's all there really is to it.”

“Protecting your property values from what?” I asked.

“Fugitive sex offenders!” said Partridge.

Cabot raised his pint glass. “Touché.”

Torgerson leaned over the table. “I have to go.”

He didn't wait for a reply from them. Nor did he leave any money for the bill. Maybe the Night Watchmen ran a monthly tab.

“Are you sure you won't sit down?” said Partridge. “I wrote about your father, you know. Horrible thing, and so embarrassing for you, as a warden. I am curious to hear what your life has been like over the past years.”

For another column? “Thanks for the invitation, but I need to get on the road. Nice meeting you gentlemen.”

Cabot and Partridge silently raised their glasses to me and didn't speak a word to each other while I made my way to the door.

Well, that was a first, I thought. Usually when you are being threatened, you have some clue as to why.

 

14

The sky was as white as the slopes now. It was a cold, dry, nearly weightless snow, beyond the ability of the snowcats to shape. Skiers zoomed along the trail beside the lodge—momentary flashes of color—and then were swallowed up again by the silent storm.

The powder came off my truck with the faintest push of my gloved hand. I didn't bother getting out the scraper. I started the engine and watched my breath, my life, unfurl into the cold before my eyes.

Had Officer Russo deliberately tried to bully me away from Widowmaker—or was he just another ham-fisted rent-a-cop? Did the Night Watchmen really suspect I had a secret relationship with the Langstroms that threatened them somehow—or were they just the drunken old busybodies they admitted themselves to be?

The phone buzzed in my pocket. When I saw that it was Stacey's number, I felt my pulse begin to ease. The calmness lasted all of two seconds.

“You asshole!” she said. “You lying son of a bitch! Did you think I wouldn't hear what really happened, Mike? You had a ‘scuffle with a tweaker'? Is that warden code for being stabbed in the back?”

“I'm sorry, Stacey. I didn't want to worry you.”

“You lied to me.”

“I lied by omission.”

“What the hell does that mean?” Her nose still sounded plugged up. “My dad told me you could have died. He said every cop in the county came to the scene because they thought you were bleeding out.”

Of course I should have anticipated that her father would have heard the news of my stabbing. Charley Stevens had been the worst gossip in the Warden Service before he retired, and he was even worse now that he was uninhibited by department politics. The old pilot had sold me out to my girlfriend—not that I could blame him.

“It wasn't that bad,” I said.

“That's not the point.” She began to suffer a coughing fit. “You need to tell me what happened, Mike, or I swear to God, I'm going to come down there tonight and kick your lying ass.”