Widowmaker (Mike Bowditch #7)(21)

*

When I got home, I stood in the darkened driveway, looking up at the stars. The night was moonless, and the stars and planets were as clear as the carefully drawn illustrations on a constellation map. I saw the faint wash of the Milky Way flowing across the sky from horizon to horizon. Orion, the hunter, was raising his club above the trees to the southeast. Across the heavens, Draco, the dragon, was uncoiling himself around the Little Dipper.

As a boy, I had yearned for my father to teach me about the stars and planets, but he never had. It was only after I had become an adult that I received instruction from Charley Stevens, who was scandalized when I’d informed him of my ignorance. Charley believed that a woodsman who didn’t know the stars was no woodsman at all.

Staring at the sky, I began to feel dizzy again. It was as if I were looking down into the void instead of up into it. For an instant, I had the sense that gravity was about to let go of me and I might go spiraling out into the cold vacuum of space. I tipped my head forward and focused on my boots until the sensation passed.

I went inside, threw my parka across the sofa, and poured myself a bourbon.

I knew that I should call Stacey in Ashland. She would want to know what had happened; she deserved to know. We weren’t engaged yet—maybe we never would be—but over the past year, she had become the closest person to me in the world, and I didn’t want to imagine a future without her. But I was too embarrassed to call, and I convinced myself I didn’t want to worry her when I was perfectly all right.

Instead, I sent her an e-mail:

Hey, Stace,

Crazy day today. Got into a scuffle with a tweaker when I tried to confiscate her illegal wolf dog. The poor thing’s probably going to be put down—the wolf dog, not the tweaker. It’s a story for another time. Anyway, I’m OK. Just tired and sore.

Love,

Mike

When I was a kid, my mother took me to Mass every week and made me go to confession once a month. I remembered a kindly priest telling me in the confessional that sins of omission were considered to be less grievous than sins of commission. It certainly didn’t feel that way at the moment.

I returned to the living room and switched on the overhead light. Everything looked so cheerless and lonely. I reached for my parka on the couch, and my father’s dog tags fell onto the floor. The poltergeist was having fun with me again.

I stuffed the bewitched tags into my pants pockets and sat down to finish my drink.

Adam Langstrom’s photograph was faceup on the coffee table, where I had left it. I tried to resist looking at the picture, but the pull was too strong. I threw back the rest of the bourbon and waited for the heat of the alcohol to spread outward from my stomach to my heart.

I held the snapshot by the edges, pinched it between my thumbs and index fingers, as if afraid to leave prints.

Did I want this man to be my brother? Did it matter what I wanted?

Adam and I were far from being twins. His hair was wavier than mine. His nose was longer. His brow was heavier. But there was something there. The word I would use is that I recognized this person I had never met.

And I resented him, too, I realized.

To have thought for years that I was the last of a bloodline and then to learn suddenly that I had a younger brother—a brother who just happened to be a statutory rapist, a convicted felon, a pariah forbidden to live in polite society, another irredeemable fugitive in need of my help—what kind of cruel joke had God decided to play on me?

I had made so much progress in repairing my reputation and rebuilding my life since my dad blew a hole in it. After years of wavering, I had committed myself at last to my vocation as an officer of the law. I had earned the respect of my peers and superiors (most of them, at least). I had a woman who loved me and whom I loved. The last thing I needed now was to be sucked into a thankless quest to find a missing person whom no one seemed to be missing.

Except his mother, of course.

I had begun to feel the alcohol in my head: It manifested itself as a softening of my thoughts.

I turned Adam’s photograph over and read aloud the telephone number that Amber had scrawled on the back. It almost felt as if I were speaking an incantation, uttering an irrevocable spell. Before I could change my mind, I reached for the phone.

*

Amber Langstrom picked up on the second ring.

“It’s Mike Bowditch,” I said.

“Oh, thank God.”

“I’ve thought about it, and I’m willing to make some phone calls—”

“It would be better if you came up here.” Her voice had its familiar rough smokiness.

“I’m willing to make some phone calls.”

“Don Foss won’t talk to you. I had to drive out to his gate because no one would give me his number, and even then he wouldn’t let me inside.”

“What makes you think he’ll talk to me, then?”

“Wear your uniform when you go see him.”

Her assertiveness shouldn’t have caught me off guard. Pulsifer had told me she could be manipulative. I had seen evidence of it myself.

“I can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s one thing for me to make some informal inquiries about a fugitive I saw listed in the WatchGuard database. It’s another to do so in an official capacity, especially if Adam is my brother.”

“He is your brother!”