Widowmaker (Mike Bowditch #7)(68)

I shaded my eyes with my hand against the sun. “Are those Angoras?”

“Cashmeres. You wouldn’t believe what we get for their wool. You sure you don’t want a tour of the farm?”

“I should head home.”

Seeing Mink in women’s clothes seemed to have lifted his spirits. Either that or his hangover had worn off. He helped me dig out my Scout at least.

“You should call DeFord this morning and tell him you’ve been up here,” he said, “Didn’t he tell you to keep a low profile to help the AAG make a stronger case against that Michaud bitch?”

“Too late for that.”

“You are exceptionally bad at following helpful advice, Bowditch. It’s almost a gift.”

“So you’ve told me.”

As I backed out of the dooryard, he waved like a beauty queen riding by on her float: limp-wristed, with a pasted-on smile. Always the comedian, Pulsifer.

Heading back into town, I turned left at the blinking light and took my second tour of the day through beautiful downtown Bigelow. Mink was back at the gas pumps, but he was too engrossed in his work as a freelance service station attendant to notice me.

Wait until I told Stacey that my hitchhiker had turned out to be the town drag queen. She would insist on us driving up here again to see Mink in the flesh. Stacey was, if anything, a more curious person than I was.

First, she needed to accept my apology, of course. She had given me no guarantees that she would.

I knew that at this very moment she must be up in the Forest Service helicopter. The stubborn woman couldn’t take a single day off from work to rest in bed and recover. It took me a few seconds to realize who she reminded me of in that regard.

I passed the apartment complex where Amber lived but didn’t see her Jeep. Had she recovered enough from her grief to return to the Sluiceway and beg for her job back? Her manager didn’t seem to be a sympathetic sort.

I decided to take the long way home. I followed Route 27 southeast through Stratton and Wyman Township, skirting the edge of the Bigelow Range. As I approached the Sugarloaf ski resort, I saw the first trails, across the valley, white against the dark green of the mountain. From a distance, I picked out the skiers and boarders, small as specks, and I thought of lines of ants exploring a bowl of sugar. I crossed the bridge over the Carrabassett River and came to the village at the base of the mountain. It reminded me somewhat of the string of businesses outside Widowmaker, the difference being that these seemed to be thriving.

It was a picture-perfect day to be out on the slopes. When all of this was over, I promised myself that I would head up this way again. It had been too long since I had gotten out my old skis.

An hour later, I arrived back in civilization in Farmington. I stopped for lunch at the McDonald’s at the edge of town. In my head, I heard Stacey’s scolding words about my miserable diet, the toll that cholesterol and sodium were taking on my arteries. I thought briefly of ordering a salad but broke down and got a Big Mac. And extra-large fries, of course.

Someone had left a newspaper in the booth. I paged through it while I picked at my fries, until I came to the editorial page and saw a column written by Johnny Partridge titled “A Soft Landing for Sexual Predators.” It was an “exposé” of Don Foss Logging that portrayed the bare-bones compound as a woodland paradise where child molesters and serial rapists enjoyed luxurious accommodations and gourmet meals on the Maine taxpayer’s dime. I couldn’t find one true sentence in the piece, but that hardly mattered. All Partridge cared about was causing an uproar.

Maybe Foss’s gravy train was about to go off the tracks.

My phone buzzed. Half of my fellow diners were gabbing away on their own cells, so I felt free to take the call.

“This is Bowditch,” I said.

“Warden, this is Joanie Swette from Pondicherry. We met at the house with the wolf dog.”

Preoccupied as I’d been with Adam’s disappearance, I had almost forgotten about Shadow.

“Hi, Joanie. Thanks for calling me back.”

“I tried you a couple of times yesterday, but the call kept dropping.”

“I’ve been up in the mountains.”

“Oh, it must be beautiful.” She waited to see if I would say something out of politeness, then plowed right ahead. “You asked me to call you when the DNA tests came back. It usually takes weeks, you know, but it turns out that Shadow has a tattoo.”

“A tattoo?”

“On his stomach. No one saw it at first. Shadow began showing signs of stress at the shelter, not aggression, but you could tell that he had some pretty bad associations with cages. He was fine in the carrier, but he really freaked out at the shelter. Eventually, Dr. Carbone decided to sedate him, because it was the only way he was going to be able to draw blood. He was afraid of being bitten.”

That poor animal, I thought. I’d seen canids in zoos and wildlife parks, and almost without exception they’d worn grooves along the inside borders of their pens from nonstop pacing.

“So that’s when he discovered the tattoo,” I said. “What did it tell you?”

“It’s a registration number. It seems that Shadow’s from Montana.”

“Montana?”

“The number was assigned by the Montana Fish, Wildlife, and Parks Enforcement Division. Shadow is a high-content wolf dog. Almost pure wolf, basically.”