Widowmaker (Mike Bowditch #7)(88)

“Are you all right?” I asked, crouching beside her.

“I don’t know.”

The back door was open to the night. I heard yet another gunshot in the clearing behind the house.

“I’ll be right back,” I said.

I smelled gunpowder the second I stepped onto the back porch. An officer stood in the falling snow. It was Caouette, of course. He was staring down the barrel of his shotgun at the second-growth timber behind the farmhouse.

“Son of a bitch!” I heard him say.

The hound had vanished.

“Didn’t you hear the sergeant?” I said. “No shooting.”

“That f*cker bit Carly.”

“Route Sixteen is only a quarter mile from here,” I said. “The reporters are going to have heard those shots. Will you stop pointing that gun at me and start practicing some goddamned muzzle control?”

Caouette dropped the barrel toward the snow. “Where’s the other one?”

“Safe and secure,” I said.

The dog’s prints led in a straight line from the back door toward the trees. I followed them through the calf-deep snow. The light was lousy, but I found the splatter of dark spots melting the snow. The impact had knocked the dog off its feet, but it had regained its footing and loped down the private snowmobile trail Logan Dyer had cleared from his property to the network of interconnecting paths that Pulsifer had showed us on his map.

I knew from hard experience that nothing is more dangerous than a wounded animal. I also knew what I had to do.

I removed the talonproof glove and crossed the yard to the porch, where the hotheaded deputy stood watching me.

“Did you find it?” Caouette asked.

“No, but I will.”

“Why? What for?”

“Because you don’t leave a wounded animal to die in the woods!”

Inside the kitchen, a trooper was applying a pressure bandage to the leg of the injured deputy. Her face had good color, which was a positive sign. I continued through the house and out the front door. I was going to need my snowshoes if I was going to track down that poor dog and put it out of its misery.





34

I returned to the house with my snowshoes under my arm, bracing the single-point shotgun sling against my other side. Cops who had been part of the raid were trickling out through the busted door. The evidence tech didn’t want any inexperienced patrol officers messing up potential evidence.

I found Clegg inside the living room, conferring with a state trooper with corporal chevrons on his sleeve. Both of them had put on latex gloves. The detective waved me over when I stepped across the threshold.

“Any ideas how we’re going to get that dog out of the bathroom?” he asked me.

“Call a real animal control agent. I can recommend a good one in Pondicherry if you’re willing to pay her mileage.” I kept my hands in my pockets to avoid touching anything. “If you don’t need me, I’ve got to go track down a wounded dog.”

Clegg looked none too pleased. “I heard the shots.”

I moved my gaze around the ratty room. It was less of a man cave than a man cesspool. “Find anything interesting?”

“Logan sure likes video games,” said Clegg, pointing to the big-screen television. “First-person shooters primarily. He’s got one hell of a collection. And he drinks a lot of Mountain Dews.”

The trooper chimed in: “Also, his snowmobile is gone.”

“What about Adam Langstrom?” I asked.

“What about him?” said Clegg.

“Is there any sign he was here?”

“It’s a big house, and we’ve just started to search.”

In the winter, before they begin to hibernate, certain snakes will gather together and roll themselves into a writhing ball. That was how my stomach felt.

“I need to go find that dog before the snow covers its tracks,” I said.

A phone rang in Clegg’s pocket. He glanced at the number on the screen and winced but answered anyway. “Yes, this is Clegg.” He made various affirmative noises to signal he was listening and then he covered the receiver with his hand. “A bloody dog just ran out onto Route Sixteen from the woods. Some of the reporters tried to approach it, but it ran off toward Redington.”

I turned toward the broken-down door. “I’m going to get my truck. Maybe I can catch up with it before it gets hit by a plow.”

From another room came a voice: “Lieutenant!”

A deputy beckoned through the doorway. He pointed a gloved finger at the table.

A stack of white computer paper lay in a perfectly neat pile. In a house littered with filthy socks, dirty dishes, and dog-chewed hambones, the pages were noteworthy for having been so carefully arranged.

Standing behind the white-haired detective, looking down over his shoulder, I could read only the first paragraph:

From: Logan Scott Dyer

To: America

Subject: Last resort

As I do not expect to survive the coming days or have my appointed hour in court, I hereby leave this statement of purpose to explain why I have had no choice but to take drastic and shocking actions to protect the children of this community. I know I will be villified by the media as my father was, a great man dragged down by lesser beings. When the evil are allowed to prosper and go free while the pure of spirit are condemned to suffering and death, we must admit that this once-great country is sick with a moral cancer that must be cut out tumor by tumor.