Widowmaker (Mike Bowditch #7)(52)

“Why would you keep an empty box of ammo?”

She leaned past me and snapped the plastic lid back down on the bin.

My legs were stiff from driving all day as I rose to my feet. “Does Adam have a key to your apartment?”

“What? No. I told you he’s not allowed to be here.”

“But he has been here. He came here, and he cleaned his guns, and he took a pistol that was also stashed inside that bin. Don’t deny it, Amber. I don’t know why you keep lying to me. I don’t know if you just can’t help yourself or if you’re keeping a secret you don’t want anyone else to know.”

She stretched out her legs on the floor and leaned against the bed for support. “I told you he has enemies.”

“Who? You’ve got to give me a name, Amber.”

“I told him not to take that gun,” she said. “I told him he’d be sent back to jail if he was caught with it. But he wouldn’t listen. He said he needed it for protection. He said he’d rather risk being arrested again than get shot in the back of the head. He wouldn’t tell me who was after him.”

“Do you know what kind of handgun it was—the make or model?”

“Why?”

“The police are going to need all the information they can get. If a gun turns up before—” I stopped myself from saying “before his body is found.”

But she knew what I meant. “A Glock. I think that’s what he called it. Or maybe that’s from a movie. I don’t know.”

“Is there a box for it? Papers?”

“Not that I ever saw.”

I extended my hand to her. “Get up.”

She looked at my hand as if reluctant to touch it. Then, slowly, she stretched out her arm. I gripped her by the wrist and pulled gently until she was on her feet. She was wobbly but standing.

“I offered to help you find Adam if I could. But that was before they found the truck he was driving covered in blood.” I put my hands on her shoulders and stared into her eyes. “Tomorrow, we’re going to have a conversation with Detective Clegg. You’re going to tell him everything you’ve told me about the threats and the gun. You’re not going to hold anything back.”

She had a way of pouting that reminded me of a little girl. “I thought you were on our side.”

“I am on your side. That’s why I’m telling you to come clean. I don’t know what happened to Adam, but it looks bad whatever it was. I am not going to lie for you, Amber. And I’m not going to withhold information.”

“But he’s your brother!”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “I swore an oath to uphold the laws of the state of Maine. I’m not going to break my oath.”

“You never had a problem breaking it when Jack was in trouble.”

“I told you the night we met,” I said, “I’m not that person anymore.”

She shoved me in the chest. She wasn’t particularly strong, but she caught me off balance. “Get out!”

“Amber—”

“Get the f*ck out of my house!”

There was nothing left to say. She followed me to the living room. She yanked open the door, letting in a blast of cold air that passed through me as if I were a ghost.

“I thought you were different,” she said. “But you’re just like all the other *s.”

“You should get some sleep,” I said.

“I thought you were a good person. I thought you were loyal. But you’re just as much of a heartless bastard as Jack was. What kind of * son doesn’t even claim his dead father’s ashes?”

I had no answer.





20

Gary Pulsifer lived on a hardscrabble farm outside the little town of Flagstaff, in the shadow of the Bigelow Range.

Back in the 1940s, Flagstaff had been the epicenter of a political fight between the Central Maine Power Company, which had wanted to build a dam at Long Falls to generate electricity downstream in Moscow, and conservationists, who had opposed flooding most of the valley. The dam would have meant the demise of Flagstaff and the neighboring village of Dead River, the residents would have been displaced through eminent domain, and both communities would have vanished beneath the rising waters of Maine’s newest lake.

But in the end, the opponents had managed to mobilize a public outcry, and the project was abandoned. In recent years, the developers had quietly returned. They had revoked the leases of dozens of camp owners on Flagstaff Pond, including my friends the Stevenses, and clear-cut massive tracts of timberland. They had pushed forward schemes to build wind farms atop the scenic mountains. Such is life in remote, unpeopled places. Every victory is inevitably short-lived.

I knew I had found Pulsifer’s farm when I saw his patrol truck in the dooryard. The blowing snow had pushed a drift clear over the hood and halfway up the windshield. I parked beside his pickup in the lee of the wind.

Someone must have seen me coming. The front door opened and two curly-haired little dogs came bounding out at me through the snow, yipping and yapping.

“Don’t mind them!” a woman called through the open door.

They were English cockers. Pulsifer had told me they were the best upland hunting dogs in the world—also the most headstrong and mischievous. It sounded like the perfect breed for him. I leaned down to pet the spaniels, but they sprang away with tails wagging, as if inviting me to give chase back into the house.