Widowmaker (Mike Bowditch #7)(50)

“I did.”

“That self-righteous *. I don’t trust him, and neither did Adam. What kind of person takes in sex offenders like stray puppies, then works them for slave wages? There’s something weird about that man. Holier-than-thou, my ass.”

The tobacco fumes swirling around the room had begun to make me light-headed.

“Maybe Foss really does believe in redemption,” I said.

“Adam hated living there. Said it made him feel even worse about himself, sleeping in the same bunkhouse with actual perverts. There was one guy who had done twenty years for raping a toddler. And another guy who used to be a wrestling coach. He’d molested dozens of boys. You know what Adam said to me? He said, ‘Mom, someone should take a match to this place and burn it to the ground.’”

I remembered what Davdison had told me about Adam’s having a black eye.

“Did Adam mention anyone in particular to you?” I asked. “Anyone he was afraid of at Foss’s?”

“He said prison burned the fear out of him. It was true, I think. How can you be afraid if you don’t care if you live or die?”

“Maybe fear is the wrong word, then. Did he have any enemies?”

When she laughed, she opened her mouth wide, revealing her missing molar. “My son didn’t have anything but enemies!” She leaned her head back to study the smoke-stained ceiling. “What does it matter? It’s too late anyway.”

“We don’t know that.”

“It’s too late,” she repeated. “Adam is dead. I’m his mother, and we’ve got a special connection. As soon as I heard the news tonight about the truck, I felt the knife go through my heart. He’s dead, and I’m done.”

I wanted to shake her. “Amber, you asked me to help you find Adam, and that’s what I’m still trying to do. I’m not giving up hope yet, and you shouldn’t, either.”

“What do you care?”

“I care because he’s my brother.” I rose to my feet and stood over her limp body. “If you’re telling the truth.”

She measured me with her eyes, all the way from head to toe. Then she stubbed out the cigarette and climbed awkwardly to her feet. “Do you want to see his room? Come on, I’ll show it to you.”





19

“I had to sell my old condo to pay for Adam’s lawyer,” she said, leading me down a darkened hall. “That’s how I ended up in this dump.”

She opened a door at the end and turned on a light inside.

The room obviously belonged to a teenage boy with two absolute passions: deer hunting and ski racing. The bed was covered with a camouflage-patterned comforter, which matched the drapes. Three mounted deer heads stared down from the wall, their real eyes having been replaced with obsidian marbles. A dozen ski medals hung from the antlers. Ski posters covered every other inch of the walls.

“I thought he was going to stay here,” she said, letting her arms fall slack. “I fixed it up just like his old one. Then the neighbors heard he was coming and complained to the landlord, and that was that.”

“Do you mind if I look around?” I suspected she would be receiving a similar request from Detective Clegg very soon.

“Knock yourself out.”

On the bureau I found two framed photographs. One showed a younger Adam and Amber with a man I assumed to be A. J. Langstrom. It must have been taken after one of the little boy’s first ski victories, because he was holding a gold medal. A.J. was big and blond and blocky and looked nothing like Adam. Nor was he smiling.

The second, newer photo showed a dozen celebrating skiers posed atop a mountain in various stages of undress. Adam was in the forefront, shirtless, his abdominal muscles bulging, his strong arms raised triumphantly above his head, holding two bottles of beer. Two girls lay in the snow at his feet in their sports bras, arms curled around his ski boots, posing like harem slaves. Josh Davidson hung in the back. He had kept his shirt on and was staring at something beyond the camera’s range, as if he had caught sight of a potential threat: an adult headed their way to break up the party.

“I’m surprised he kept this picture,” I said, handing the photograph to Amber.

“Why?”

“Because it has Josh in it.”

“Josh is in most of the photos Adam has from school. I told you they were best friends.”

“What about Alexa?” I asked.

Her mouth twisted. “What about her?”

“Did Adam keep any pictures of her?”

“Of course not!” she said. “That bitch ruined our lives.”

But I noticed that her eyes had darted toward a stack of magazines beside the bed.

I made my way along the wall of deer mounts, pretending to inspect them. Each had a more impressive rack than the next. Pulsifer had told me Adam was a natural-born deer slayer.

Just like my father.

Just like our father, I thought, correcting myself.

Maybe it was having seen the gore-drenched truck, but something had changed for me over the past twenty-four hours. My absolute certainty that Adam Langstrom couldn’t be my half brother had steadily eroded until it had become a real possibility. Now it seemed closer to a likelihood. I was almost, but not fully, convinced. What else did I need to find before I could accept Amber’s claim as the truth?