I motioned to Jamie.
Prester Sewall lay prone on the wheeled bed. Some time over the past hours, the doctor had wrapped white bandages around his face, so that only his closed eyes showed now. He looked small with the sheet pulled up to his narrow chest and his skinny arms extended at his sides. We could hear his labored breathing through the strips of gauze.
“Prester?” Jamie whispered, taking his hand.
His eyes snapped open, bloodred and filled with terror. “Jamie?”
“Oh shit, he’s awake,” said Dunbar.
“I’m so happy to see you,” she said, but her voice cracked.
“What have they done to me, Jamie?”
His sister started to sob and shudder. Reflexively I set my hand on her shoulder.
“You’re OK,” she said. “Prester, you’re OK.”
“I’m not OK! They’re going to cut off my fingers!”
“Prester…” Her folded coat slid off her arm onto the floor.
“They’re going to cut off my nose!”
“Prester…”
He tried to sit up but didn’t have the strength and dropped his head against the pillow. “They won’t show me my face. I keep asking for a mirror, but they won’t bring me one.” He waved his bandaged arms. “What do I look like, Jamie? I look like a freak, don’t I?”
She put a hand to her mouth to hide her sobs. “Maybe they can do plastic surgery. Doctors in France gave a woman a new face.”
“I don’t want a new face! I want my normal face. I’m never going to have sex again in my life!”
“The doctors can repair your face.” She looked at me with pleading eyes. “Can’t they, Mike?”
“Doctors can do some amazing things,” I replied, fully aware of the lameness of this as a response.
“Who’s he? What’s he doing here?” His crimson gaze turned on the deputy standing behind me. “Why are the cops here, Jamie?”
“This is my friend Mike. He’s the warden who found you. He said you and Randall got lost in the snow.”
Again the injured man tried sitting up, and again he flopped back against the pillow as if attached to it by a string. “Where’s Randall? Is he here in the hospital? Is his chest OK?”
“We’d better cut this off,” the deputy whispered in my ear.
Jamie dropped down to one knee and clutched at her brother’s freckled arm. “Randall’s dead, Prester.”
“Jamie,” I cautioned.
“He’s dead?”
“The cops won’t tell me what happened,” she said.
“OK, that’s enough.” Dunbar tapped his rolled magazine against his open hand. The gesture was meant to be intimidating but came across as comic-as if he was really going to club anyone into submission with an old issue of American Snowmobiler.
Prester’s voice rose to the level of a wail. “Randall’s dead?”
If Sewall really did kill his friend, I thought, he’s a terrific actor.
“Give me a fucking break,” Dunbar muttered.
Prester was breathing heavily through his bandages. His bloody eyes were locked on mine. “What happened to him? Did he freeze to death?”
The deputy had forgotten his own orders to prevent the injured man from having any conversations. “You know exactly what happened.”
“Leave him alone,” said Jamie. “My brother’s an injured person.”
“Your brother’s a murder suspect.”
“Dunbar,” I said, my voice heavy with warning.
Prester Sewall had begun to flail his arms and kick his legs. “The cops think I killed Randall?”
“Hey! Hey!” a woman said, stepping into the fray. She wore an unbuttoned sweater over surgical scrubs. She was as lean as a marathon runner and had short sandy hair and a voice like an army bugle. “What’s going on here?”
“I’m sorry, Doctor,” I said.
“I’m not a doctor. I’m the charge nurse.”
“This is Mr. Sewall’s sister,” I explained.
“I don’t care who she is. This man is in serious condition. He’s recovering from hypothermia, and he’s detoxing off alcohol and opiates. Are you officers trying to give him a heart attack?”
“Everything is under control,” Dunbar said.
“The hell it is.” She thrust her finger in the direction of the nearest door. “I want you out of here right now.”
Prester seemed to be hyperventilating. “The cops think I killed Randall, Jamie.”
“No, they don’t,” she said. “It’s got to be some kind of mistake. Isn’t it, Mike?”
My silence must not have reassured her because a look came into her widening eyes, as if she’d just guessed the answer to a riddle.
“You all need to leave this instant,” said the nurse.
“You heard the nurse,” said Dunbar in his “Move along” voice.
“Including you, Deputy,” said the nurse.
“I want to wake up now,” Prester sobbed. “I’m having a nightmare!”
Jamie grabbed her coat from the floor and said, “I’ll be back tomorrow. I’ll bring Tammi and Lucas.”
“I want to wake up,” wailed the injured man.
“If you don’t all leave this instant, I’m calling the sheriff,” said the nurse.
“We’re leaving,” I said.
The nurse yanked the drapes shut across the glass windows; it was like a curtain closing at the end of a play.
“You need to calm down, Mr. Sewall,” I heard her say. “Take deep breaths.”
Jamie stormed down the hall to the admittance desk as if she’d forgotten I was in her company.
I glared one last time at Deputy Dunbar, who looked like a kid who’d just broken a window with a baseball, and followed her out into the stark light of the parking lot.
By the time I caught up with her, she’d beeped open the van and was rummaging around the passenger side for something.
“Jamie?”
She spun around with an ice scraper in her hand and went to work on the layer of frost that had built up across the windshield. Her motions were quick, compact, and violent.
“So when were you planning to tell me?”
“Tell you what?”
She stopped scraping but kept her back to me. “The cops think my brother killed Randall.”
“I’m not part of the investigation,” I explained.
Jamie turned around. In the cold light of the parking lot, I became aware of the bones beneath her skin. I could easily imagine the shape of her skull. “What does that mean?”
“It means I don’t know what theories the state police are pursuing.”
“Prester wouldn’t hurt anyone,” she said.
“Not even if he was provoked?”
The question seemed to catch her off balance, because she took her time answering. “My brother loved Randall. Don’t ask me why.”
“And you have no idea what they were doing in the Heath?”
“You asked me that before.”
“Look, I know this has been a horrible shock.” I dug my bare hands into my parka pockets. “But if you want to help your brother, you need to tell me what you know.”
“You just said you weren’t part of the investigation.”
“I’m not, but maybe I can help you.”
She let out a sharp laugh. “Because you care so much for my well-being.”
“I know we just met,” I said. “But I understand what you’re going through.”
“Oh, you do, do you?”
It was a good question. “Let me buy you a cup of coffee, and I’ll try to explain.”
“I thought you were different,” she said.
“I am different.”
“No, you’re not. You’re just a guy with a stiff dick like all the rest.”
I opened my mouth to respond, but really, what was there to say?
17
After Jamie screamed off into the night, I decided to grab a late, lonely dinner and reflect on the absurdity of my day.
I made a circuit of the mom-and-pop restaurants that constituted the Machias dining scene and found that all of them had ceased serving for the night. Eventually I put aside my scruples and returned to the McDonald’s on Route 1.
I paused in front of Jamie’s portrait on the wall and felt my pulse speed up. Her golden brown eyes looked so clear in the photograph, and her smile seemed so genuine, as if being named Employee of the Month were truly an honor. And maybe it was an honor after all she’d been through: a busted marriage, the death of her parents, caring for a brain-damaged sister, an alcoholic brother, and a weird little boy. I remembered her sobriety chip and her breakdown in my truck, when she’d blamed her past behavior for the calamities that had befallen Prester.