“That’s for the judge to decide.”
I lifted the. 22 by the sling. It was attached to the barrel and screwed into the wooden stock. “You shouldn’t be playing with firearms, Lucas. You could have shot yourself-or me.”
“I know what I’m doing.”
“Have you taken a gun safety course?”
“No.”
“Well, you shouldn’t touch this rifle again until you’ve had some instruction in how to use it safely.”
“That’s my grandpa’s gun. I inherited it.”
The boy was dressed in a camo green sweatshirt and wet jeans. He wasn’t wearing a coat, gloves, or a hat. All at once he started to shiver.
“Where did you cut yourself?” I asked. “I saw blood on the snow.”
He pressed a hand to his hairline, beneath a long, loose bang. “It ain’t nothing.”
“Let me have a look.” I reached out my hand, but he recoiled from my touch. “Stand still.”
I lifted the flap of wet hair. There was a cut there, but it was nothing worse than the kind of scrape that kids got on the playground every day.
“Do I need stitches?” he asked.
“Just a Band-Aid. But I’m thinking a doctor should have a look at you anyway.”
He repositioned his glasses on the bridge of his nose. “What for?”
“Well, your feet are wet, so you might be getting frostbite in your toes.”
“Are they going to amputate?”
“I highly doubt it. Let’s get you back to the house and into some dry clothes.” The smell of smoke drifted past. “First, though, we need to put out that fire.”
We circled the two boulders. I made Lucas walk in front in case he decided to take off again, but in truth, he didn’t look like he had the energy. I found my snowshoes on the tar-paper roof of the fort. As I inspected the structure, I realized that it was indeed an old ice-fishing shack that someone had remodeled into a boy’s playhouse.
Smoke billowed out through the plywood door when I gave it a tug. Inside, there was a hibachi grill under a piece of PVC piping that angled through the side wall. Lucas had lighted a small fire in the grill out of broken twigs, birch bark, and wadded newspaper. I was surprised he hadn’t expired from carbon monoxide poisoning, but I decided that I had already given him enough lectures.
There were stacks of water-warped paperbacks in one corner-the Conan books and Stephen King-and a moldy sleeping bag. It reminded me of a fort I had built the year we’d lived in North Anson, before my mom and dad split up that last time. I decorated it with the skulls of animals-raccoons and crows-I’d scavenged from the leaf litter. Every night I’d begged my parents to let me sleep out, where I would read myself to sleep by candlelight, until finally the snow began to fall and my mother decided that I might freeze to death.
I found an empty Maxwell House coffee can and told Lucas to fill it with snow. When I dumped it on the fire, a puff of steam exploded into the air, followed by a sizzling sound. I used a stick to stir the coals until they were cold and damp enough to touch with my bare hand. Then I backed out of the sideways shack.
“Who built this fort?” I asked.
“Me.”
“It’s very impressive.”
“My grandpa helped a little.”
I bent down to strap on my showshoes again.
Lucas watched me with fascination. “How did you find me?” he asked.
“It’s my job to find people in the woods. You were challenging to track, though. It was very clever how you used the stream to disguise your direction, and you almost fooled me backtracking in your own footprints. You would have confused lots of people who aren’t professional trackers like me.”
He grinned, almost literally from ear to ear. The expression made him look even more than usual like a species of large-mouthed amphibian. “Thanks!”
“You’re welcome.” I straightened up and repositioned the sling across my chest. The leather pressed against my hidden ballistic vest.
“Are you sure you ain’t a ranger?” he asked.
As is usually the case, the return journey seemed shorter because I knew where I was going this time and didn’t need to scout for tracks.
I held Lucas’s hand going across the stream again. He pouted and told me he could do it on his own, but I distrusted the footing and grabbed his wrist to steady his balance on the snow-slick rocks. As soon as we were across, he shook me loose and started fiercely up the hill.
Corbett’s cruiser was gone. I checked my pager and cell phone but there were no messages. His unexpected absence unnerved me.
We entered the house through the basement. I wanted to return the rifle to its place above the tool bench, but Lucas hung back, shivering. It wasn’t until I spotted the framed White Owl advertisement that I remembered his strange phobia about the feathered woman. He went leaping up the stairs as soon as I gave him leave to do so.
I followed him up to the bathroom so I could have a look at the scrape on his forehead under the 100-watt lightbulb. I soaked a wad of toilet tissue in hydrogen peroxide and blotted the wound. Lucas squirmed and moaned as if being tortured while the disinfectant bubbled down his brow.
I sat him down on the edge of the bathtub and untied his wet sneakers. His feet were as pale as thin-skinned subterranean animals that lived in total darkness. None of his toes or fingers were blue, which was a healthy sign, but he complained of sharp pain when I tried to massage blood back into the epidermis.
“Ouch! Ouch!”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“I don’t like people touching me.”
“This is not the highlight of my evening, either.”
I found dry clothes for him in his bureau and let him change in private. While he was getting dressed, I put a phone call into the Washington County jail and asked to speak to the matron on duty. I waited a long time for one to be fetched, wondering whether Lucas might have something problematic hidden inside his bedroom, a bazooka or crossbow or God only knew what.
“Yeah?” said a woman with a deep voice.
“This is Warden Bowditch,” I said. “I was in there earlier tonight. The sheriff wanted me to speak with Jamie Sewall. Can you give her a message for me?”
“I’m not supposed to do stuff like that.”
“Just tell her I found her son and that he’s safe.”
“I’m not supposed to do stuff like that.”
“Her son ran away. She’s been worrying that he might have fallen through the ice. Imagine if it was your child.”
“I don’t have kids.” She fell silent, and I worried we’d lost the connection, but then she added, “OK. I’ll let her know.”
My next call was to the social worker, Magda Mueller.
“This is Warden Bowditch,” I said. “I wanted to let you know that I found Lucas Sewall.”
“How is he?”
“Cold but otherwise fine, I think. He got a cut on his forehead from running into a tree branch, and his feet showed signs of frostnip, but they seem better now that he’s warmed up a bit.”
“You should take him to the ER as a precautionary measure. How about I meet you at the Calais Regional Hospital?”
The city of Calais, on the Canadian border, was nearly an hour’s drive away. “Why not Machias?”
“The foster family lives in Calais.”
I heard the bedroom door open. When I spoke again into the phone, I dropped my voice. “What’s going to happen to him now?”
“I’ve been trying to reach the father all evening, but there’s been no answer. I have questions about placing the boy with him even temporarily, based on his criminal record, but I’m required to exercise due diligence. Unless I can track down a family member who isn’t incarcerated, Lucas will stay with a foster family until a judge can schedule a hearing. We have seventy-two hours.”
“What if his mother is still in jail at the time of the hearing?” Given the drug charges against her, it didn’t seem likely she’d get out in time.
“I’d rather not speculate on the outcome.”
Lucas emerged from his bedroom, shoulders sagging. He had made a clumsy attempt at combing his own hair. He looked tired and sad and resigned to his unhappy fate.