Widowmaker (Mike Bowditch #7)(48)

“No.”

“You can stay at my place, then.”

The exposed skin of my face had taken on a cold, rubbery texture. “I don’t want to impose.”

“Lauren won’t mind. I’ve told her so many stories about the shit you’ve pulled, she doesn’t believe you’re real. It’ll be like I’m bringing home Bugs Bunny.”

Typical Pulsifer: trying to cheer me up by comparing me to a cartoon character. The humor left me untouched.

Two days earlier, I had learned that I had a brother I had never met.

Two days later, I had come to the place where he might well have died.

The thought was having a hard time taking hold in my head.

“I have a stop to make first,” I said. “There’s someone I need to see.”





18

At the intersection of the Navy Road and Route 16, I waited for the next plow to come along and followed it back toward Bigelow. I was exhausted but in no hurry, and I needed time to collect my thoughts.

Driving in a Maine blizzard is a matter of timing. Get ahead of a plow, and you’ll find yourself blazing a path through unbroken snow, unable to see the edge of the road, oblivious to whatever ice might be hidden underneath. Get behind a plow, and you’ll find the going easier, provided you’re content to crawl along at twenty miles per hour and have your vehicle splashed with salt brine and sand.

It sure looked like someone had died in Adam’s truck. You could have butchered a deer inside and spilled less blood. I saw two possibilities: Either a corpse had been taken away from the site for reasons unknown or it had been dumped somewhere before the vehicle was abandoned at the trailhead.

Up ahead, Widowmaker’s sign glowed at the base of its access road. The light touched the snowflakes drifting past, making them look like a cloud of winter moths. The mountain itself was invisible in the hazy grayness. There wasn’t even a glow in the sky from whatever trails might be open for night skiing.

A new question intruded into my thoughts: Why dump the truck at that particular trailhead?

Maine’s western mountains were crisscrossed with logging roads and ATV trails; pockmarked with old gravel pits and remote clear-cuts. Anyone looking to conceal a vehicle beneath a blanket of snow had thousands of potential hiding places to choose from. The decision to park the Ranger just outside the heavily guarded SERE school had to have been deliberate. Maybe someone had wanted Amber’s blood-soaked truck to be discovered quickly. But why?

Once again, I passed the farm road that led across the frozen river and up the backside of East Kennebago Mountain to Mink’s house. What a strange little man. I would have to ask Pulsifer what his story was.

Soon the plow turned west toward Eustis, and I turned east into Bigelow. I followed Pulsifer’s directions south of town. Amber lived in an unnamed apartment complex built in the backwoods style you see in Maine. It was as if the builder had visited some suburban cul-de-sac in Massachusetts or Ohio and come back to the North Woods and tried to reproduce the architecture in the least appropriate setting imaginable. There seemed to be a dozen or so units, scattered over three identical buildings. I spotted Amber’s Grand Cherokee—covered by only the thinnest scrim of snow, which told me she hadn’t been home long—and pulled in behind it.

Light leaked around the edges of the curtains in the living room. I heard sorrowful music playing on a stereo inside. Amber hadn’t bothered to shovel the walk leading to the front door when she’d gotten home. I kicked my way through the snow.

I didn’t hear the bell chime over the music, but after a minute or so, the door opened a crack, and I got a faceful of marijuana smoke. Amber stared up at me with eyes like cherry tomatoes. She was still wearing her waitress outfit, but her hair looked as if she’d been caught in a sudden tempest.

“Can I come in?” I asked.

“Are you gonna bust me for the pot?”

“What pot?” I deadpanned.

But her mind had been dulled by whatever drugs she had taken.

“I’m not going to bust you,” I said. “But you need to put it out.”

She stood aside. I stomped as much snow as I could off my boot treads and stepped through the door. The apartment was neat enough. All the furniture matched, but it had seen better days. She seemed to have a taste for silk flowers, posters of exotic locales, and framed photographs of herself with male skiers, whom I guessed to be visiting Olympians. The only sign of neglect was the profusion of ash burns in the wall-to-wall carpet. No amount of cleaning would get those out.

I remained standing on the doormat while she flung herself down on a futon sofa. “Have a seat.”

“Do you want me to take my boots off?”

She laughed through her nose.

“I’ve just come from where your truck was found,” I said. “Why didn’t you call me when you heard what happened?”

“I wasn’t thinking straight.” The marijuana had slowed her usually rapid-fire way of speaking down to half speed. “Can you f*cking blame me?”

On the stereo, Reba McEntire was singing about a woman who got AIDS from a one-night stand.

“Can you turn down the music?” I asked.

She tossed the remote control at me. I pushed the off button.

“You don’t have to keep standing there,” she said. “I really don’t give a shit about the rug.”