Widowmaker (Mike Bowditch #7)(3)

“Thank you!”

I heard the lock click on the door and began to wonder why—despite all my training and better instincts—I had just let a stranger into my house. It had to be more than her having mentioned my dead father.

I have always had a foolhardy streak. I used to mistake it for bravery until it nearly got me killed for the umpteenth time. Then I saw it for what it was: a chronic addiction to adrenaline. My body craved danger the way a junkie does his next hit of heroin. I wondered how many of the dead cops in that video had suffered from the same weakness.

My girlfriend had only been gone a few days, and already the house was a mess: boot prints on the carpet, coats fallen from the rack in the hall, dirty plates on every tabletop. Stacey and I didn’t live together—we hadn’t yet taken that step in our relationship—but her irregular visits gave me the incentive to keep the place somewhat clean. I might have forgotten and left up my Christmas decorations all winter if she hadn’t pointed out the brittle fir boughs over the mantelpiece.

“How can a man who is so curious that he notices everything not notice his house is a tinderbox?” Stacey had said, her long brown hair shaking as she laughed.

When Amber came out of the bathroom, I made sure to be standing to the side of the door with my hand resting on the butt of my SIG Sauer.

She gave me a nervous smile. “Oh, there you are.”

I hadn’t yet had a chance to stoke the fire in the woodstove; the house felt unnaturally cold. I motioned to the living room. “Have a seat.”

Under the brightness of the overhead bulb, Amber had become middle-aged again. There were faint creases around her mouth and bags beneath her eyes. She was overdue for a visit to the hair salon. Her gray roots had begun to show. She sat with her knees pressed together, her jacket folded over her thighs, clutching her purse.

I remained standing with my back to the wall.

“You look so much like your dad,” she said, gazing up at me. “It’s a little spooky.” She smiled briefly again and glanced around the room, taking in the cold woodstove, the fish mounts on the wall, the overloaded bookcases. “You have a lovely house. Do you live here alone?”

I made a vague throat-clearing noise and shifted my weight from one foot to the other.

She seemed to get the point. “So, I guess I should explain what I’m doing here.”

“I would appreciate it.”

She inhaled through her nose and exhaled through her mouth, as if performing a yoga exercise. “I knew your father. He used to come into the bar where I work. Well, he used to come in until he got banned for breaking a guy’s arm. It was a different bar back then, the Red Stallion in Carrabassett. It’s been closed a long time. I’m over at the Sluiceway now up Widowmaker.”

It was a ski resort near Rangeley. My father had worked there briefly, long ago, driving one of the snowcats.

“Anyway,” she continued, “I heard about what happened with Jack. I mean, who didn’t hear about it? All that horrible stuff up at Rum Pond. It was just—just unbelievable.”

“My father was a bad man,” I said simply.

“No, he wasn’t!” Without fully rising, she started to lift herself from the sofa, eyes widening with disbelief, then sat back down again. “Jack had a good heart. He was just so troubled.” Her bloodshot eyes filled with tears again. “You don’t really believe that he was bad. Why did you try to help him if you thought he was some sort of monster?”

I had puzzled over that same question for years, but I had no intention of baring my own troubled psyche to this unhinged woman.

Her smoky perfume hung heavily in the air.

“Ms. Langstrom…”

“Amber.”

“I don’t mean to be rude,” I said. “But you really need to tell me what you’re doing here.”

“Of course. I’m sorry.” She opened her purse and removed a photograph, which she held out for me to take. “This is my son, Adam.”

It was a picture of a rugged-looking young man, probably no older than eighteen. He had the wavy brown hair of a Kennedy and piercing blue eyes set off by a skier’s tan. The photo had been taken outside against a white mountain backdrop so beautiful, it looked fake.

“He’s a handsome kid,” I said, not knowing what else to say. I tried to return the picture, but she refused to take it.

“He doesn’t look like this anymore,” she said sadly. “He’s been through so much. Anyway, the reason I’m here—” She took another yoga breath. “I’m hoping you can find him for me.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Adam is missing.”

“Have you spoken to the police?”

“You don’t understand,” she said. “The situation is—it’s not that simple.”

I had a feeling that I would regret my next sentence. “Then explain it to me.”

“Three years ago, Adam was a senior at the Alpine Sports Academy outside Rangeley. Do you know it?”

“It’s a high school for skiers,” I said, hoping to hurry her along, “like Carrabassett Valley Academy.”

“I wish he’d gone to CVA!” Her eyes welled up again and she dabbed at them with a wad of tissue from her purse. “But ASA offered him a scholarship. The school pays for a few local kids to go there—kids with athletic potential—everyone else is rich. And he did so well, too. I mean, his grades were never the best, but he was the best racer in his class. He had a shot at making the U.S. Ski Team and maybe even going to the Olympics.”