Widowmaker (Mike Bowditch #7)(12)

“Well, how much were you lying?”

“I wasn’t lying.”

“Everyone lies,” he’d said with a merciless grin. “It just depends how good you are at doing it.”

That was my introduction to the untrusting, ever-mocking worldview of Gary Pulsifer.

*

He began our phone conversation the way he began all our phone conversations: “What fine mess did you get yourself into this time, Bowditch?”

“It’s not what I did. It’s what you did.”

“Amber Langstrom found you, did she?”

“What the hell, Pulsifer?”

“I didn’t tell her where you lived. I just pointed her in your general direction.”

“Come on!”

“You’re right,” he said. “I shouldn’t have done it, but I was curious to see what would happen, and I couldn’t help myself. So what did she want to talk to you about?”

Pulsifer was aware that his last name sort of rhymed with that of a certain fallen angel. At times, it seemed, he liked to play up the resemblance.

“She didn’t tell you?” I asked.

“She said it was personal. She didn’t explain how you two knew each other, just that you went back a ways and she needed to get in touch.”

“I never met her before last night.”

He chuckled. “Well, it wouldn’t be the first time Amber Birch lied.”

“I thought her name was Langstrom.”

“Birch was her maiden name. She was the hottest girl at Mount Abram High. She’s still smoking. Don’t you think?”

“Is that why you helped her find me—because you want to get in her pants?”

When he spoke again, his voice was different, harder. “I hope I haven’t created a problem for you.”

“Yeah, well, you have. What can you tell me about her? Is she crazy?”

“Crazy, no. Trouble, always. She works in the pub over at Widowmaker. Been there forever now, ever since the Red Stallion closed. She married A. J. Langstrom right out of high school. Who knows why. We used to joke they hooked up because A.J. had the biggest dick at Mount Abram. Everybody knew his only ambition in life was to take over his old man’s gas station. But Amber had champagne wishes and caviar dreams, as my old man used to say.”

He paused to take a sip of something.

“I think Amber realized she’d made a mistake pretty fast. I used to go over to the Sluiceway during my drinking days, and she had a reputation. I remember she didn’t wear her wedding ring at work, said it would get scratched or something. I think she was hoping one of the rich skiers would sweep her up and take her off to Fiji. Then she got pregnant, and that was that.”

I needed to be careful about what I said next.

One of the impediments to Pulsifer and me ever becoming friends was the history he had with my father. I might have called them archenemies if the rivalry hadn’t been so one-sided. Gary had been a district warden during the heyday of my father’s poaching career, and he had never managed to catch him in the act. My dad delighted in spreading stories about all the deer and moose he was taking out of season, knowing how much it would humiliate the local warden. The relationship between Gary Pulsifer and Jack Bowditch was not unlike the one between Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner.

To his credit, Pulsifer never seemed to hold my dad’s misdeeds against me, although he was far too subtle to reveal his true feelings. Still, I had no intention of asking him if my father might have been the one who knocked up Amber Langstrom.

“So what’s the story with her son?” I asked.

“Her son?” He seemed genuinely taken aback. “Now I get it. She asked you to help find Adam, didn’t she?”

“Yes.”

“Christ! I should have made the connection,” he said. “Amber came to see me first, asked if I could go looking for her kid. She flirted like hell, trying to get me to say yes. But I’m not going to risk what I’ve got for a piece of ass, not anymore. She was pissed when I turned her down. I can’t believe I didn’t make the connection.”

Pulsifer was one of the smartest, savviest wardens I knew. The possibility that this hadn’t occurred to him defied belief. “What can you tell me about Adam?”

“He f*cked the wrong girl, first of all. I’m pretty sure it was consensual, but he should have realized that there’s a different standard for eighteen-year-olds. Not that I feel sorry for him. Adam Langstrom was no angel. He beat up the Davidson girl’s brother pretty bad when he tried to put an end to it. Did Amber tell you that part?”

“No.”

“I think that’s what set their father off, hearing his son had been busted up in a fight and then finding out why.”

“Who’s his PO?” I asked, meaning his probation officer.

“Shaylene Hawken in Farmington. Talk about a hacksaw! That woman could stare down a grizzly. I feel sorry for the guy in that respect.”

“Amber said he was living at some sort of halfway house, but it shows up on his registry page as a logging outfit.”

“It’s a company owned by a guy named Don Foss,” Pulsifer said. “He’s got some sort of arrangement with the state where he takes in sex offenders who can’t find a place to live. Gives them beds and jobs working on his crew. I can’t decide whether he’s a secular saint or a modern-day plantation boss.”