Widowmaker (Mike Bowditch #7)(44)

“Are we cool?” he asked, taking the paper back.

“There’s just one more thing,” I said. “You said you work at Widowmaker?”

His tongue seemed to flail around words. “You saw me working there, didn’t you?”

“And you live in that house back there?”

“I already said I did.”

I reached into my shirt pocket for the picture of Adam. “Does this guy look familiar at all?”

While Dyer examined the photograph, I watched his eyes, but there wasn’t the faintest flicker of recognition.

“Who is he?” he asked. “What did he do?”

“Do you remember seeing him driving in or out of here? He might have been in a pickup.”

He scratched his ear. “What kind of pickup?”

“I don’t know.”

“Sorry.” He stretched out his arm, holding the picture clamped between two fingers. For an instant, I thought he might be planning to drop it as a joke. But he didn’t. “Who is he?”

“No one important,” I said. “How about moving your truck for me, Mr. Dyer?”

“Right. Sorry.” Dyer waved at my passenger with just his fingers. “Toodle-loo, Mink. See you on the trails.”

He stepped back away from my door slowly with his hands slightly raised, as if he feared to turn his back on me. I lost sight of him in the glare of his headlights again but heard the door slam. Then the truck went roaring backward.

“So I take it you know that guy?” I asked Mink.

“I know him.”

“Not the friendliest person.”

“No.”

I barely tapped the gas until we had reached the intersection of Moose Alley. My headlights lit up the side of Dyer’s vehicle. It was an old Toyota Tacoma, more rust and Bondo than steel. The windows were all fogged up, as if two teenagers were going at it inside. But I knew the condensation came from the panting dogs.

“Which way?” I asked Mink.

“Left.”

I pressed the pedal and fishtailed all over the slick road before the tires caught. I watched the lights of Dyer’s truck grow smaller and smaller in my rearview mirror. Only then did I realize that I still had my hand clenched around the Walther.

“Are you going to tell me how you know Dyer?” I asked Mink.

“He’s just another asshat. Nothing special. He works over on the mountain, shoveling snow.”

“Does he have difficulty hearing? He seemed to have a speech impediment.”

“I heard he’s missing part of his tongue.”

“What?”

“Had some sort of seizure as a kid and bit part of it off. That’s what I heard. Lots of people think he’s stupid because of the way he talks. He’s not stupid.”

“Are you afraid of him?” I asked.

The question seemed to offend the small man. “If I was afraid of asshats like him, I’d never leave my freaking house.”

From his flattened nose, I should have guessed that Mink had been in his share of scraps.

“Can I see the picture?” he asked suddenly.

“What picture?”

“The one you showed Dyer.”

He brought the photograph very close to his myopic eyes. “This is that Adam guy, yeah? He kind of looks like you.”

“Ever see him around Bigelow? Maybe at the Snow Bowl?”

“I think I’d remember him.”

“Why?”

“Because he looks like trouble I’d want to avoid.”

Based on the past couple of days, I couldn’t argue with him on that point. What I was having trouble understanding was how Logan Dyer could work at Widowmaker and claim not to recognize Adam Langstrom: the most notorious student ever in the history of ASA.

Mink directed me another mile down the road and then told me to take a right into the woods. We passed a farm on one side and then a farm on the other side. The wind blew the snow from the white fields onto the road. It was banked in the shapes of waves, like a flash-frozen sea. We were in the flat bottomland of the Dead River, although we still hadn’t crossed the river.

“You walk all the way into town from here?” I asked.

“It’s good exercise.”

“Don’t you have a vehicle?”

“Cars are too much aggravation.”

The sky had gotten completely dark, but the falling snowflakes reflected the beams of my headlights, and it felt as though we were traveling through a shimmering tunnel of ice. Finally, we reentered the forest again. We crossed a rickety bridge that should have broken beneath the weight of the state plow truck. The windows of a few more farmhouses glowed as we climbed yet another hill.

A line of snowmobiles crossed the road in the distance, their headlights flashing one after the other. I knew that one of the state’s major sledding trails passed along the base of East Kennebago Mountain. We were nearing its northeastern slopes.

“Can you see the lights of the resort from here?” I asked.

“Wrong side of the mountain. This is my stop up here.”

A steep, unplowed driveway branched off from the farm road through a Christmas-card forest. The driving might have been hazardous, but the scenery was undeniably beautiful. I brought the Scout to a halt and pulled the emergency brake while Mink straightened his fur hat.