Rivard removed a glove and pressed a couple of fingers beneath the man’s jawbone. “No pulse.”
I glanced back through the wind-whipped snow. “He didn’t make it very far.”
Rivard wiped the snow off his hands and bent to retrieve his glove. “He must have left the car after his friend went for help. He sat down under the tree to get out of the wind, and that was all she wrote.”
“Do you need a shovel to dig him out?” asked Sprague. “I have one in the truck.”
“We don’t know what went down here,” I said. “For all we know, there’s a bullet hole in the middle of Cates’s chest.”
“Mike’s right,” said Devoe.
“I know he is,” said Rivard sourly. “Use my radio to call Dispatch. Tell them to wake up the medical examiner. Make sure he brings his snowshoes.”
FEBRUARY 14
I was in the hospital last year.
We was having a Barbie Q in the backyard, and Prester was drinking beer. Ma had wheeled Tammi down the ramp and around the side of the house up onto the little hill. Tammi was wearing a cowboy hat Dad brought her from Texas because he was still trying to get back together with Ma even though they are divorced. There were no mosquitoes and the sun was warm before it went down behind the roof.
Ma hadn’t met Randle yet, so everybody was happy.
We was eating hamburgers and hot dogs. Prester had an apron that said on it MR. GOOD LOOKIN’ IS COOKIN’. I remember he called himself the Iron Chef and did some kung fu moves with the grill fork and the paddle thing you use to flip a burger. Kee-yaa!
Ma said something about how I needed to go out for a sport at school because she wanted me to be a student-athlete. The reason I needed glasses, she said, was because I was always reading comic books and Stephen King and writing in my NOTEBOOK.
You’ll develop more if you use your muscles, said Ma. You’re too scrawny, Lucas.
I’m the littlest kid in my class. I could maybe be a jockey if someone would teach me how to ride a horse.
Prester said, What about wrestling? That’s a sport for little fellers. What do you say, Luke Skywalker, you want me to teach you how to wrestle?
Wrestling is gay, I said. I don’t want to touch some kid’s boner.
Lucas! Ma said.
Prester got down on all fours and said, Come on. Kneel down beside me and grab my arm.
I didn’t have no choice. Prester got me all arranged. I didn’t really want to squeeze his belly, but that’s part of wrestling, I guess. He had a weird sour smell leaking through his skin from the beer.
Who’s going to count to three? Prester asked.
I will, said Tammi. Then she went, One, two, three! wicked quick.
The next thing I knew, Prester was sitting on top of me, belching beer breath in my face. I was gulping for air because he’d knocked the wind out of me.
Two outta three, he said.
This time he made me get down on all fours.
Don’t hurt him, Prester, Ma said.
I didn’t want to wrestle, so I figured I would just go limp. When Tammi said, One, two, three, Prester just picked me up like I was a doll and flopped me completely over-wham! — against my shoulder blades. Snap! went the bone. Everyone heard it!
Ma went mental after that. She made me wiggle my fingers and toes. You could have broken his neck, she told Prester. You could have paralyzed him!
He was sobbing like a baby. He cupped his hand and held it up to his face because he was embarrassed to be crying. Ma made us all pile into the van and drive into Machias.
Prester held my hand and slobbered all over it. Will you forgive me, Lucas? Please, please, please, forgive me!
Later I got my REVENGE-I sprinkled Tammi’s laxative all over his cold pizza.
Prester had the runs for a week.
Ha!
11
Shortly before dawn, Rivard sent me back to the house on the snowmobile because my cheeks were turning white. The wind had begun to die and the snow was lightening to flurries, but even so, I had trouble finding my way. In the minutes since Ben Sprague’s plow had cleared a passage for the trucks, the drifts had thoroughly reclaimed the logging road. In the east, there was a wash of color against the jagged horizon, a brushstroke of gray along the bottom of a black canvas.
I’d expected to find Kendrick’s dog team tied up outside the Spragues’ house. Instead, I discovered a white Ford Interceptor. On its door was a silver star against a black badge; on its fenders were the words WASHINGTON COUNTY SHERIFF PATROL. The rockers were spackled with salt brine. Because of Maine’s perpetually corrosive weather, our abundant potholes and frost heaves, the life expectancy of most new cars was little more than a decade. Less than that for police vehicles.
A balding blond man with broad shoulders and windburned cheeks greeted me at the door. His name was Corbett, and he was the chief deputy at the Washington County Sheriff’s Department. We’d met several times over the previous weeks as part of my orientation. He wore blue jeans tucked into L.L. Bean boots and a black fleece emblazoned with the sheriff’s department logo on the breast.
“You look like a Popsicle.” Corbett had a resonant baritone that made me think he’d missed out on having a lucrative career in radio.
“I feel like a Popsicle.”
“I can’t believe you spent the night out there. I live just up the road, and it took me forever to get out of my driveway.”
I heard a door open and slam shut down the hall. “Is Kendrick here?”
Corbett offered me a quizzical look. “You mean Professor Kendrick from the university?”
“Rivard told him to wait here and direct search units to our location in the Heath.”
“He wasn’t here when I arrived, and Doris never mentioned him.”
That seemed strange. Why would Kendrick have taken off before the first police cruiser arrived? “How’s Mrs. Sprague doing? She seemed in a bad way before.”
“She’s had a rough time of things since their son’s accident. The Spragues are good people-Ben and I are in Rotary-but what happened to Joey has really tested their faith. Is Ben on his way back here?”
“He’s plowing the road again. Rivard wants to keep it clear so the medical examiner can get down into the Heath.” I was curious to learn more about the Spragues’ son and his obscure accident, but my brain felt as numb as the rest of me. “So let me get this straight: You weren’t here when the EMTs left?”
“No, but I passed them on the road. I asked if they needed an escort to Machias, but they said no.” He glanced at his watch, which he wore with the face on the inside of his wrist. “They should be at Down East Community Hospital by now. I haven’t heard how Prester’s doing.”
“I hope he wakes up, just so we can get the story of what really happened.”
“I’m not sure it’s such a mystery,” said Corbett. “Ben and Doris were always reporting seeing suspicious vehicles going by here, heading into the woods. Ben would get really worked up. I even did some of my own patrols down there, but I only scared up a young couple having sex.”
“So you think maybe Cates had a regular place he was doing deals out in the Heath?”
Corbett shrugged his wide shoulders. “It’s certainly off the beaten track. I go deer hunting down there every November and always get turned around a few times before I find my way out. It’s a scary place. I’m surprised you guys found the body at all.”
“We figured he wouldn’t be far from the car. And we had a well-trained dog helping us.” I described the scene to him-the car, the bag of money, the loaded Glock, and then the startled expression on the corpse’s rimed face. “Cates didn’t look to me like a guy who had passed out in a snowbank. I’ll be curious to hear the coroner’s report.”
“The sheriff will want to speak with you about it. Randall Cates was on her personal most-wanted list.”
The longtime Washington County sheriff was a woman, one of only handful of female sheriffs in the state of Maine. Her name was Roberta Rhine. My professional experience working with sheriffs had thus far been hit-and-miss. The chief law-enforcement officer of Somerset County, where my father had committed his crimes, hated my guts, but back on the midcoast, I’d established a cordial relationship with Dudley Baker, the Knox County sheriff.