Widowmaker (Mike Bowditch #7)(20)

Then there were my fellow wardens. Volk showed up in his civilian clothes: the same hundred-dollar suit he’d worn in divorce court that morning.

Volk was a big guy, not muscular so much as heavy-boned and beefy, who had followed a well-worn path to the Warden Service: Marine Corps, jail guard, deputy sheriff, game warden. He still wore his hair shaved down to the scalp in the high-and-tight style he’d first gotten back on Parris Island. The severity of the cut made his ears seem unnaturally small, and I had noticed that they tended to turn red whenever he got angry, which was often.

“You punched her?” he asked in disbelief. “What happened? Did your gun jam?”

He seemed more disappointed that I had not shot Carrie Michaud dead than concerned for my well-being.

My redheaded sergeant, Cameron Ouelette, worried about the state of my mind.

“Do you want to talk with somebody, Mike?” he asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Should I call Deb or Kate?” he asked earnestly. The Warden Service had two top-notch female chaplains. Their job was to counsel officers who had witnessed traumatic events or who had suffered themselves from some assault on body and soul. “Or should I call a priest? You’re Catholic, aren’t you?”

“I don’t need last rites, Cam. I’ve got a cut on my arm.”

Ouelette had just returned from a training session in crisis incident stress debriefing, or CISD, and so I forgave his superabundance of caution.

The person I found most difficult to face was my newly promoted captain, John “Jock” DeFord. DeFord was a rising star in the Warden Service: a natural leader who was also a natural politician. It was a rare combination, I had found. Cameras loved his blond, all-American good looks. As Warden Service captain, his new duties included supervising the Wildlife Crimes Investigation Division (WCID)—our version of a detective unit—as well as all personnel matters. It was in the latter capacity that he had come to see me.

“The colonel wishes he could be here,” he said first off.

“I didn’t expect him to fly back from Patagonia for me.”

Colonel Malcomb and his new wife were off on the fly-fishing trip of a lifetime in South America.

“Detective Pomerleau told me what happened,” DeFord said, studying my bandaged arm. “How are you doing, Mike?”

“I’m fine.”

“Those vests we wear aren’t knifeproof. The Kevlar is designed to stop a bullet, not a blade.” The captain was in his forties but looked a decade younger on account of being more physically fit than anyone has a right to be. “You’re lucky you were a moving target.”

“Yeah, I’ve definitely had a lot worse things happen to me.”

“But each one hits you different.”

“Really, I’m fine.”

“I hope you weren’t this cavalier talking to the AAG.” His boyish face darkened. “That Michaud woman needs to go to jail for a long time, Mike. Her boyfriend, too. You should take a couple of sick days. I won’t force you to do it, but before you start arguing with me, I want you to hear me out.”

I leaned back on the hospital table. The paper under my butt rustled.

DeFord said, “If you’re back at work tomorrow, Michaud’s attorney might make it look like you exaggerated what happened. How many prosecutions have you seen screwed up because DAs went into trials overconfident in their witnesses, and then they got their asses handed to them by smart defense lawyers?”

“You want me to buy a neck brace to wear when I go grocery shopping?”

“This isn’t a joke.”

“I understand.” I just hated to see myself as the sort of professional who could be sidelined by ten stitches. DeFord and I hadn’t talked privately in a while. But I had the sense that he liked me—a lot more than most of my colleagues, at least. Which wasn’t saying much. I was eager to change the subject from my injury. “So I heard Pete Brochu got promoted to the warden investigator job in Division D.”

The position had been held for decades by a man named Wesley Pinkham. Stacey had encouraged me to apply for the post myself—warden investigator was my dream job—but I hadn’t felt that I was ready. Kathy had told me that DeFord had floated my name, but Colonel Malcomb thought I needed to prove I had matured out of my youthful rule-breaking phase before I could be handed a WCID job. I had a hard time disagreeing with the colonel.

“Pete’s a good man,” said DeFord.

True, but Brochu had never impressed me with his intelligence, and I had heard he was considering taking a job in his brother’s lucrative home-building business.

“I wish him well,” I said.

“Me, too.” DeFord and Pinkham had been longtime colleagues, and clearly thinking about his dead friend made him uncomfortable. “I’m going to find someone to drive you home. Maybe Volk—”

“No.”

“You shouldn’t get behind the wheel, Mike.”

“All they gave me was Tylenol.”

“Still.”

“I’m driving myself, Captain. I screwed up today by getting careless. Don’t make it worse by making me look bad to the rest of the division, too.”

He nodded, shook his head, and smiled. “Whatever you do, Bowditch, just don’t get in another accident.”