“Maybe you think this media crusade of yours is a joke,” he said. “But it’s going to come back to haunt you at your next election.”
“That’s what your director told me two years ago. And yet here I am.”
The agent stood up suddenly in the booth, bumping the table with his knees. “You’ll be hearing from us.”
“I’m giddy with anticipation. Have a safe drive back to Augusta.”
The agent didn’t say good-bye to me, but then he hadn’t said hello, either.
“Asshole,” said the sheriff as the door closed behind him. “Have a seat, Warden.”
I settled down and eyed her half-eaten sausage McGriddle enviously.
“You’ve probably heard about my beef with the MDEA.” Roberta Rhine had a gruff voice.
“I don’t know any of the particulars.”
“It’s a rogue agency, with a director who excuses and covers up misconduct by his agents. Did you know an MDEA agent lost-I repeat, lost — three thousand dollars in buy money? And then they have the gall to accuse one of my men-they won’t say who-of being on the take from Randall Cates.” She sipped from her paper coffee cup. “So you’re the one who found him dead, I hear.”
“Me and a couple of other wardens. Your chief deputy told me you had some special interest in Cates.”
“I certainly do. That tattooed freak killed a student over at the university last year.”
“That would be Trinity Raye?”
The sheriff nodded. “Randall Cates sold her some tainted heroin laced with a blood-thinning agent. Her friends said it was her first time smoking the stuff. She was just a hippie chick, experimenting. ODs are pretty common around here, but when it’s a nice girl from a nice home, everyone screams bloody murder. We had nothing to connect Cates to her death except about a thousand rumors.” She leaned back in the booth. The vinyl made a noise like a hand rubbing a child’s balloon. “Speaking of drugs, you look like you could use some caffeine. Why don’t you go get yourself a cup of coffee. Then you can tell me what happened last night.”
On the sheriff’s instructions, I bought myself the largest-size coffee the restaurant served, added three egg McMuffins, and returned to tell my tale. She listened with rapt attention, not interrupting, fiddling with a big turquoise ring on her right hand the whole time I talked.
When I’d finished, she said, “The state police will start with Prester Sewall as their prime suspect.”
“I would, too, if I were investigating the case.”
“Let’s see if Walt Kitteridge can shine any light on the matter.” Rhine removed her cell phone from her pocket. Kitteridge was the state’s chief medical examiner. She apparently had his number on speed dial, given how quickly the call went through.
“Walt,” she said. “It’s Roberta Rhine. I bet you know why I’m calling.”
She smiled at me while he spoke. Then she moved the phone away from her ear and held a man-size hand over the microphone. “He just got out of the woods, and he sounds wicked pissed about being called out in a storm.”
She moved the phone back to her ear. “I understand it’s still early, but I need to decide whether to put a guard on that guy in the hospital. If there’s a chance he killed Randall Cates, then I owe it to the doctors and nurses to send a deputy over there, don’t you think?”
Without hearing the other side of the conversation, I could guess the bone of contention: The medical examiner didn’t want to speculate on cause of death until he’d done an autopsy.
“It’ll be our little secret,” Rhine said. “Cross my heart and hope to die.”
Dr. Kitteridge must have relented, because the sheriff fell silent for a full minute while she listened to his preliminary findings.
“Thanks, Walt. I swear I won’t tell a soul. Give me a call when it’s official.”
She grabbed her winter coat from the booth and began working her arms into the sleeves.
“How’d you like to follow me to the hospital, Warden?” she said with a horsey smile. “Kitteridge found contusions on Randall’s neck and signs of petechial hemorrhage. It looks like someone held his face down in the snow until he suffocated to death.”
FEBRUARY 14
The hospital has got a weird smell. Like Dr. Frankenstein’s laboratory or something. Creepy!
Ma sits me down in a chair in the waiting room while she talks to some frog-faced woman at a desk.
She says Prester is in the EMERGENCY ROOM and we can’t see him until he is STABLE.
Prester has never been stable, Ma says. I think it’s supposed to be a joke, but she don’t laugh.
She smiles and pats my hand. What do you know, Edgar Allan Poe? she asks me.
Nothing, I say. That’s what I always say.
Do you think you’ll be all right here on your own for a few minutes? I need to get something out of the van.
A cigarette?
You know I don’t smoke anymore, Lucas. It’s just something I need right now. She smiles and opens my NOTEBOOK on my lap. Just stay here and write some more stories for a while, she says. No one’s going to bother you.
Can I have a Coke? I need one dollar and twenty-five cents.
Lucas, don’t think you can trick me just because I’m upset.
When she goes out the automatic door, a cold wind blows in behind her, and the mean lady behind the desk shivers hard.
If Prester is frozen solid, that must mean his willie is frozen, too. What if the doctor accidentally snaps it off like an icicle?
OUCH!
Ma comes back and she has something in her hand. I can’t tell what. She’s got her eyes closed and she’s moving her lips like she’s praying, but no words are coming out. She sits down next to me again.
What did you forget, Ma?
She holds out her hand and there’s a little green plastic chip. It says UNITY/SERVICE/RECOVERY in a triangle around the words 3 MONTHS.
What’s that? I ask.
My good-luck charm, she says.
12
You can tell a lot about a town from its hospital. The one in Machias was located on a piney stretch of road, not near anything in particular except an abandoned horse-racing track festooned with NO TRESPASSING signs. Most people would have driven past the building without realizing it was the local medical center. The low-slung brick structure was smaller than my old junior high in Scarborough.
Whoever decorated the interior had gone for a casual down-home effect, sort of like a country inn. The waiting room was painted a canary yellow, with several blue couches and floral-print chairs arranged around an imitation woodstove. A totally bald man who looked like he might have fought in the Battle of the Bulge sat in a robe and slippers, watching old newsreels play in his head. The only other person in the room was an odd-looking boy who had his legs drawn up beneath him in his chair and was scribbling violently in a notebook.
We met a male nurse, a whip-thin guy in green scrubs, coming down the checkerboard hallway that led to the emergency room.
“Hey, Sheriff,” the nurse said. “What’s up?”
“Who’s on duty in the ER this morning, Tommy?”
“Dr. Chatterjee.”
“Can I speak with him?”
“He’s with a patient-it’s a severe hypothermia case.”
“Yes, I know,” said the sheriff. “The patient’s name is Prester Sewall. We have reason to believe he might be dangerous.”
The nurse nodded as if he understood-although he clearly didn’t-and disappeared down the hall in the direction of the ER.
The last time I’d set foot in a hospital had been a year earlier, when I’d had my skull fractured by the scariest man I’d ever met. He’d beaten me to within an inch of my life, and it was a miracle I’d survived. It was a different hospital, different emergency room, but the memories of that day made the hairs on my neck prickle.
After a few minutes, a doctor in a white coat and scrubs came hurrying along from the ER. He had the darkest skin of anyone I’d met in Washington County, and jet-black hair swept up from his forehead. His plastic-frame glasses didn’t hide the shadows under his eyes.