Widowmaker (Mike Bowditch #7)(51)

When I got to the stack of magazines, I knelt down and shuffled through them. Under the ski mags, I found a Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue that was four years old. Convicted sex offenders in Maine are prohibited from possessing pornography. Did bikini shots qualify? There was something sad and touching about the thought of Amber saving this magazine for her son’s return.

I found the yearbook at the bottom of the pile. The cover was blue and silver, the colors of the Alpine Sports Academy. One page was dog-eared. I turned to it and came upon Adam Langstrom’s senior portrait. He had never looked more handsome than he did in his blazer and tie, with his thick hair expertly cut and his eyes as blue as sea glass. Other pictures of him—racing downhill through the gates, laughing in a pool with friends—surrounded the posed photograph. The quote beneath his list of athletic accomplishments read: “Waking up is the second hardest thing in the morning.”

My brother, the philosopher.

Amber had begun to cry. “That yearbook came out a week before he was arrested. His missed his final exams, so no diploma. I told him he should get his GED in jail, but he didn’t see the point.”

I paged through the yearbook until I found the section devoted to the underclassmen. Alexa Davidson was with the other freshmen. She resembled her brother—same wavy hair, big eyes, and an olive complexion. Her teeth were perfect. Her lips were very full; if she had been an adult, they would be described as sensuous. But you could see she was just a kid here.

“I still can’t believe he threw everything away for that,” Amber said with venom.

“She was pretty,” I said, as if speaking of someone dead.

“His other girlfriends were prettier.”

I found another picture in the yearbook of Alexa and her brother at a race. They were wearing helmets, dressed in skintight ski suits, and had their arms around each other’s shoulders. She was beaming. He looked seasick. I flipped back to Josh’s senior page and found his portrait. Unlike all the others, it had been taken in black and white, giving it a somber, old-fashioned look that might have been intended to be ironic. His quote: “Victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.” It was a strange sentiment coming from a student about to graduate from a school devoted to competitive athletics.

“Do you know where Josh lives?” I asked.

She sniffed and rubbed her eyes. “Why? You just talked to him.”

“I might have more questions for him down the line.”

“He has a house over in Rangeley, on the lake. Adam told me his dad bought it for him. That family is loaded.”

Maybe I had been too quick to believe Josh Davidson. I had only his word about having met Adam outside the bowling alley that night.

The glass eyes of the deer kept catching my gaze the way the eyes of a portrait seem to follow you around a room.

“Whatever happened to Adam’s guns?” I asked.

“His guns?”

“Gary Pulsifer told me Adam was a serious hunter. He shot all these bucks, didn’t he? What happened to his rifles?”

She cleared her scratchy throat. “Adam’s not allowed to own firearms. He’s a felon.”

“I know. I’m just wondering where they went. Did you sell them for him?”

“Yeah.”

“What kind of rifles were they? How much did you get for them?”

Her hands flew up into the air. “Who cares? Why does it matter? You saw the inside of that truck.”

“Amber, the detective is going to want to know if Adam had access to a firearm.”

“That f*cking Pulsifer,” she said with a bitterness that shocked me. “I could tell you stories about Gary back in the day. You wouldn’t believe some of the stories I could tell you.”

She’d recognized how curious I was about the guns and was trying to divert my attention.

“Where are the guns, Amber?”

“I told you he doesn’t—”

“I’m trying to help you both. Please let me help you.”

Her shoulders sagged. “Adam’s past help. I know he is.”

“Maybe, but you’re not.”

Without a word, she turned and left the room. I switched off the light and followed her into her own bedroom. She had a fish tank that projected aqueous light on the ceiling and filled the space with the sound of bubbles. But I didn’t see any actual living fish behind the glass.

She went down on her hands and knees beside the bed. She pulled out a long plastic box, the kind a person might use to store sweaters for the summer. Inside were two rifles: a scoped, bolt-action Ruger and a lever-action Winchester identical to the one I’d used to shoot my own first deer.

“Adam gave these to me,” she said, sitting up again. “They’re mine, and no one can prove otherwise.”

I knelt down beside her and inspected the bin. The rifles had recently been cleaned. I could smell the bore solvent and lubricating oil. There were boxes of rifle cartridges in .30-06 and .30-30 calibers. Also a smaller box that had once contained 9mm rounds. But when I shook it, I could tell it was empty.

I held the box in my hand. “Where’s the pistol?”

“What pistol?”

“The one that fires these rounds.”

She drew her lips back from her teeth in an unsuccessful attempt to appear affronted. “A friend of mine left those in my Jeep. We went target shooting once behind the Sugarloaf snowmaking ponds.”