“What did you do with this voice message?”

  “Erased it.”

  “So you’ve been cruising the logging roads because you think he collapsed walking back to your house.”

  “I know he’s dead.” Ed gazed up with wet, pleading eyes.

  “How do you know?”

  “His ghost told me last night.”

  Charley ran a hand through his hair and considered the situation from several angles. He rarely concerned himself with the protocols surrounding an arrest. Some officers worried that if they didn’t get the confession recorded and signed in triplicate it would be tossed out at trial. But he was certain that Grindle’s admission would qualify as “a spontaneous utterance.”

  On the other hand, the confessed killer was beyond plastered. And he’d just sustained a gunshot wound, however glancing, to the head. Ed Grindle’s certainty that he had committed homicide was based upon an irrecoverable voice message and a statement made by a phantasm.

  Charley decided to take his time before he got the state police on the horn.

  “Let’s take another run at getting you upright,” the warden said. “I’m going to drive you home.”

  Charley moved his sled into the woods, then took hold of Grindle by the shoulders. The warden pushed with all his strength, but his boots slid on the icy road. He returned to his Ski-Doo to fetch his cleats. With the added grip, he made headway. In all, the process of rearranging Ed Grindle took ten minutes.

  He confiscated the Glock pistol Ed had used to attempt suicide and tucked the gun into the waist of his trousers. He adjusted the seat for his short, slim stature. As he drove, he was forced to lean forward because there was blood on the headrest.

  The heat from the rising sun was melting the snowbanks, but the water had nowhere to go on account of the ice below, and it seemed to him like he was driving down a placid stream instead of a road.

  When he arrived at the house on Pickle Hill, he heard barking and realized he had the Doberman to deal with, too. But the watchdog, chained in the yard, was so terrified of his master that he slunk away while Charley helped Ed through the garage door. It took all his strength to keep the big man upright.

  Tim Grindle’s “bedroom” was even sadder than he’d imagined. The boy’s bed was a folding cot that just about collapsed under Ed’s weight when he fell across it. A comically large hunting knife, like something used by Tarzan of the Apes, was tucked beneath the lone pillow, presumably for self-defense. A cheesecake poster of Pamela Anderson in a red swimsuit was duct-taped to the cinderblock wall.

  Charley didn’t bother asking the homeowner for permission to search. Ed wouldn’t remember giving it when he sobered up. If push came to shove, it would be the warden’s word against the self-confessed killer’s.

  Beneath the cot, he found dusty, wadded socks, a dog-eared issue of Penthouse, and a paperback titled the Home Book of Taxidermy and Tanning. Most of Tim’s other possessions were stowed in a cheap footlocker or stuffed into a trash bag of unwashed clothes. A tool cabinet contained the boy’s rifle, a poacher’s special Savage Model 64, as well as assorted wire snares, leghold traps, and bottled lures. Nothing unexpected or out of the ordinary.

  Charley zip-tied Ed to the cot and took the poaching rifle to be on the safe side. Then he went upstairs.

  He pushed the play button on the answering machine, but a telemarketing call had recorded over the alleged message from Tim.

  He couldn’t rule out the possibility that the boy might still be found alive. Young Grindle was sneaky enough to let the world think he was at death’s door as part of some scheme. But was he cruel enough to play games with Ricki Tripp’s emotions? Charley thought not.

  The time had come to accept the awful truth. The Grindle boy had almost certainly died of his injuries.

  So where was his body? Enough time had passed that, if Tim had collapsed on a snowmobile trail, a sledder would have found him. The same went double for the local roads. Even the most remote logging roads around Flagstaff Pond saw occasional truck and ATV traffic.

  The dying boy might have sought shelter in the dumpster behind the Bear’s Den. The motel basement was another possibility; it was always steamy from the commercial washer and drier Patty-Ann used to clean the sheets and towels. Charley doubted the door to the laundry was even locked.

  In his head now he could hear Ora telling him to call in the cavalry.

  He telephoned the sheriff’s office in Skowhegan and told the deputy who answered that Ed Grindle had just confessed to killing his missing brother. He said there was good reason to believe the boy was indeed dead. The deputy went quiet, then asked if he could have Sheriff Hatch call Charley back.

  The phone rang a moment later.

  “What have you gotten yourself mixed up in now, Stevens?” said Joe Hatch.

  “You must know that a boy by the name of Tim Grindle is missing. I reported it several days ago.”

  “My guys tell me the kid’s a budding criminal and regular runaway.”

  Charley chose to ignore the implication that the boy wasn’t worth the police exerting themselves. “His brother Ed is convinced that Tim is dead. The two had an altercation on Tuesday night. Ed Grindle hurled a log at his little brother. I believe the blow caused internal injuries.”

  “This Grindle is that whale we had in lockup?”

  “If you mean the violent man you released on his own recognizance—”

  “It’s a good thing you don’t work for me. I don’t tolerate smart-mouths.”

  Charley was saved from saying something he would regret.

  “Where’s the whale now?” the sheriff asked.

  “Passed out downstairs on a cot in his garage. I’m calling you from his house.”

  “So bring him to the jail!”

  “I came here on my sled, and while Ski-Doo makes a quality product, I believe Mr. Grindle alone exceeds the recommended weight limit.”

  “What did I say about smart-mouths?” said Hatch. “So what’s your evidence that Ed Grindle killed his brother? The last I heard, the kid was still missing, and we haven’t found a body.”

  “Ed Grindle just confessed.”

  “This was before he passed out?” Hatch didn’t pause for an answer to his rhetorical question. “Why should we believe anything that drunk says?”

  “Because he tried to shoot himself out of grief. Fortunately, he flinched but—”

  “Is the man in need of an ambulance?”

  “No, the bullet just grazed him, and I was able to patch him up. You should be able to transport Ed directly to the jail. The infirmary nurse can clean up the wound. With all due respect, Sheriff, it seems like you’re coming up with excuses not to take action here.”

  “And it seems like you’re determined to ruin my day, Warden. In my experience, any time someone uses the words with all due respect, it means the opposite. If I send a deputy to the house, I assume you’ll be there when he arrives?”

  Charley murmured his assent.

  He assumed the conversation was done until Hatch came back with one last jab.

  “You’ve been a busy beaver, Stevens. I heard you made an appearance last night at Mountainside Estates. Tomer Elmut might be a horse’s ass, but how is it OK with you that Jack Bowditch broke his jaw?”

  Charley didn’t understand. “Sheriff?”

  “A few hours ago, someone dumped that Indian outside the ER in Farmington with his mandible hanging down around his nut sack. Did you not notice the extent of his injury when you left the trailer park last night?”

  Of course, Bowditch had returned to Mountainside.

  “How is Mr. Elmut?”

  “Uncooperative. He won’t even write down the name of the man who attacked him. The only reason we know it was Bowditch was because a nurse, on her smoke break, recognized his truck in the lot. I don’t give a hoot about the Indian refusing to press charges. I’ve told my men to bring your buddy in for questioning.”

  Charley hung up the phone. He checked briefly on Grindle to be sure the man was in no danger of choking on his own vomit. He left the garage door open so that the responding deputy would know to enter. Then he ran as fast he could back to his sled.

  12.

  Ora had gone grocery shopping and the girls were at school when he arrived home to grab the keys to his truck. The hospital in Farmington was an hour’s drive from Flagstaff. Out of habit, he cast a glance at the answering machine in his office before he left.

  The red light was blinking. It was probably Hatch raging about being hung up on.

  Charley hated to be delayed, but the past few days had taught him the folly of making assumptions.

  It might be Ricki Tripp with news.

  It was unlikely, but it might even be Tim Grindle himself.

  The last voice he expected to hear was that of Jack Bowditch.

  “It was Elmut who shot the eagle,” the poacher said. “I got the truth out of him just now. He thinks he knows where Tim Grindle is, too. I owe it to the little shit to go make things right. Some things can’t be left to the law.”

  Bowditch sounded sober, steady, and dangerous.

  He said he owed it to Tim to “make things right.” Where else could he be going but to murder Ed Grindle?

  Charley had just left Ed cuffed, alone, and helpless. According to the timestamp on the answering machine, the call had come two hours earlier, more than enough time for Jack to speed up Route 16 from the Farmington hospital to the house on Pickle Hill. He sprinted out to his truck.

  What kind of man viciously breaks a person’s jaw, then drops him outside the hospital?

  A man who didn’t just believe in frontier justice, but embodied it.

  He turned the key in the ignition and reached for the radio. The sheriff had already informed his officers to be on the lookout for Jack Bowditch. But that was before the armed and dangerous man had set out to avenge Tim Grindle.

  Charley’s hand paused as it closed around the radio handset.

  In his haste he had skipped over something else Bowditch had said: Tomer Elmut “thinks he knows where Tim Grindle is, too.”

  How was he to interpret that sentence?

  Did it mean Tim was alive somewhere? Or was Elmut referring to the location of the body?

  In either case, wouldn’t Bowditch seek out the missing boy before he exacted vengeance on his brother?

  Only one person could tell Charley where Bowditch was going, and that person was lying in a hospital bed many miles to the south.

  13.

  He’d nearly sped past the Bear’s Den before an insight caused him to hit the brakes.

  How does Elmut know where Tim Grindle is?

  Charley swung his patrol truck into the vast expanse of muddy slush and standing water. Vestigial snowbanks steamed along the edge of the near-empty lot. He left the engine running as he tried to work through the problem.

  Tomer Elmut and the boy were acquainted. Tim had asked the Penobscot to teach him taxidermy. And the cook had all but admitted he’d seen the boy outside the Den on the night he disappeared.

  Had Elmut given Tim a ride after his shift ended?

  Had Elmut seen Tim catch a ride with someone else?

  The pay phone, from which Tim had made his calls to Ricki and his brother’s answering machine, was at the foot of an exterior staircase that led to the guest rooms above the restaurant. One of the motel doors was open with a maid’s cart outside.

  As Charley watched, Patty-Ann emerged from the room for a restorative cigarette. She removed a pack of Virginia Slims and a lighter from her uniform smock. He waved and she smiled back, raising her hand with the unlit smoke. He remembered overhearing Levasseur tell a customer how he’d stopped putting bottles of complimentary mouthwash in the bathrooms because Patty-Ann would knock them back to ward off the shakes.

  His gaze drifted away from the maid and back to the pay phone.

  Ricki had said Tim had spotted a man who owed him money, or could be persuaded to part with some, and used the phrase, “Speak of the devil.”

  Tomer Elmut wouldn’t be in a hospital bed if Jack had thought him a child killer. He would be lying dead at the bottom of a ravine where coyotes would already be making short work of his carcass.

  Charley splashed across the lot until he was standing beneath the railed balcony where Patty-Ann was taking her smoke break: Romeo to her Juliet.

  “Heya, Charley,” she said. “What’s going on?”

  “I’m a confused man, Patty-Ann.”

  “Confused how?”

  “My thoughts are dark and far-ranging—like a murder of carrion crows.”

  The smile vanished, then tried without success to reignite itself, but she had no clue what he meant, and he couldn’t blame her.

  “Last night I asked you who was at the bar on Tuesday evening,” he said. “It would help me a great deal if you could try again to remember who you saw.”

  She tapped her cigarette so that the ash dropped fifteen feet to the ground.

  “There was Levasseur and Tomer, of course. And the new dishwasher, Santiago. A. J. Langstrom came in for a Seven and Seven. A group of sledders were here, speaking French. I think there were five of them. They laughed when I smiled over at their table. I don’t speak the language, but I know what putain means. Is there someone in particular…?”

  “Warren Whittaker.”

  “Warren had some event at the nature center that night. Something to do with bugs, I think.”

  “He didn’t stop by afterwards?”

  “I expected him to, but he never showed.”

  Whittaker had volunteered as much; gone out of his way to answer a question the warden hadn’t even asked him.

  Why would he have felt obliged to do that?

  “Patty-Ann, I’m going to start calling you Mnemosyne. She was the Greek goddess of memory.”

  “Gee! That’s so romantic.”

  Because he didn’t want her to get the wrong idea, he stepped quickly to the pay phone without saying anything more.

  He dialed the operator and put in an additional quarter to have her connect him.

  A woman with a quavering voice answered. “This is the Dead River Nature Center.”

  “May I speak with Mr. Whittaker, please?”

  “Warren isn’t here this morning. May I ask who is calling?”

  He knew the woman on the end of the line—a chattering busybody—and as much as he hated being rude, he chose not to identify himself. “Do you expect him soon?”

  “Honestly, I am not sure. It isn’t like him not to call. I am sorry, I didn’t catch your name.”

  But the phone was already halfway back to its cradle.

  The nature center was located north of the village, near the confluence of the east and west branches of the Dead River. Whittaker would have had to pass the Bear’s Den on his drive home to Kingfield, twenty-odd miles to the south. Maybe he’d planned to stop for a drink but had been waylaid in the parking lot by Tim Grindle.

  Like the boy, Warren Whittaker was a budding taxidermist.

  Hadn’t Tomer Elmut complained about “everyone” asking him for lessons in the morbid art? Elmut had also mentioned having a barn in Kingfield where he did his own taxidermy work. It was the same town where Whittaker lived.

  Was the eccentric Warren Whittaker the person Tim had mentioned: his buyer for “rare critters, the harder to get the better”?

  The toad-like man seemed harmless, delicate, even comical in his affectations, but how might he have reacted if young Grindle had attempted to extort money from him?

  As Charley sped south now along the Carrabassett River, he felt the surge of adrenaline through his heart. Time was again his enemy, as it had so often been in his dangerous life.

  He had no idea what he would find when he arrived at the home of Warren Whittaker. He only knew he would be too late.

  14.

  The Whittaker house was located at the edge of the village of Kingfield. Listed in the National Register of Historic Places and built in the Georgian style, it turned a square and solemn face to the road. Its rigid symmetry befitted a family of politicians, jurists, and merchants. Marble steps ascended to a capped pediment; four white columns flanked double doors through which generations of Maine’s prominent citizens had passed. Over its long life, the house had been a landmark in every sense of the word.

  The first thing Charley noticed about the place, however, was that the front walkway was unshoveled. The yard was so perfectly white and flat it was hard to believe the wind alone had sculpted such smoothness. Clearly, the last surviving Whittaker received no visitors through those storied doors.

  Instead, Warren must have entered and exited the house through the back. Many Mainers followed the same pattern of behavior, especially during the winter months. As Charley turned into the drive, he saw confirmation of his worst fear. A single set of fresh tire tracks led through the slush around the building.

  Jack Bowditch had beaten him there.

  He found the blue Ford pickup blocking the carriage house that Warren had converted into a garage for his winter and summer rides: a vintage Land Rover Defender and a classic Cadillac Coup de Ville. Nearby was a barnlike structure with footprints in and out. None of the tracks looked recent to Charley’s trained eye, however.

  Was that barn the space Tomer Elmut used to create his perfect taxidermy mounts? Did Whittaker allow him to use it in exchange for lessons?

  Charley considered calling for backup but was restrained by his ignorance of the situation.

  Jack’s presence didn’t positively prove a crime was in progress or had been committed.

  Nevertheless, he undid the snap holding his revolver securely in its holster.

  He opened the truck door as quietly as he could, knowing anyone inside would have heard him come around the building, and immediately smelled tobacco on the air.

  Jack was sitting in the mudroom door with his unkempt head bowed and a Marlboro burning down to the fingers with which he pinched it.

  Without raising his eyes, he said, “Hello, Stevens.”

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7