“Take care,” said Deb Davies. I sensed that she was speaking to my girlfriend, not me.
“Good night,” I said.
After she closed the door, Sarah spun around. “I am so mad at you, I can’t even think straight.”
“I’m sorry,” I said again.
“I don’t want your fake apologies.” Her shoulders were rigid. “Ever since that woman disappeared, you’ve been like another person. And you’ve only gotten worse since that boy was injured. You’ve been avoiding your phone calls. Charley’s probably called ten times since your accident. And what about Kathy? You can’t just blow off your sergeant.”
“I told you, I misplaced my phone.” I knew she was right, but there was something afire inside me. “What do you want me to do, Sarah? Tell me, and I’ll do it.”
“I want you to get help.”
“From who? Reverend Davies?”
For a moment, I thought she might step forward to embrace me, but the pain in her eyes made me terrified to touch her. “Michael,” she said softly. “You can’t let yourself be destroyed by guilt or whatever this is. We’ve been through too much for you to fall apart now.”
“I told you, I’m fine.” I walked past her toward the bedroom.
“Michael?”
“I’m going to call Charley.”
I didn’t mean to slam the bedroom door. But I did. Through it, soon, I heard the sound of Sarah crying.
I sat on the bed, dialed Charley’s cell-phone number, and waited for him to pick up. For the life of me, I couldn’t understand why I was so mad. I didn’t even know who I was mad at. Sarah had been correct about everything. Over the past week, despite all my best efforts to move forward, I’d become someone I scarcely recognized. Maybe I really was my father’s son.
“Charley?” I said. “It’s Mike.”
“Hello there!” said the old pilot. “I guess it’s true that a good man is hard to find. I heard about your accident from Lieutenant Malcomb. How’s the broken claw?”
The sound of his voice made me realize how much I’d missed the old fart. I could feel my heartbeat slowing down, returning to its usual rhythm. “I guess I’ll be joining you in physical therapy.”
“That bad, huh? It’s a shame about that Barter boy. How are you holding up?”
“I don’t know.” It was probably the first honest thing I’d said all day. “I’ve been a bastard to Sarah.”
He hesitated. “Has she said anything to you about her condition?”
“No.”
“Maybe Ora was mistaken.” He coughed away from the receiver. “So you found the missing professor, I heard. That’s some smart detective work.”
“Tell that to Menario.”
“Don’t worry about him. He’s just exercised because you keep embarrassing him in front of his superiors.”
“There’s no way Westergaard killed himself, Charley.”
“I’m inclined to concur.”
“There’s some connection to the Erland Jefferts case, but I haven’t figured out what it is yet.”
“You might want to ease up on the pedal and let someone else get behind that wheel.”
“Spare me the folk sayings, Charley.”
“I just worry about you. The state police will crack this case with or without your assistance. If I were in your boots, I’d stick closer to home for the time being.”
I paused and moved the phone away from my ear. Through the door, I could no longer hear Sarah weeping. The house had fallen completely silent.
33
Sarah slept on the couch that night. I offered her the bed, but she wouldn’t take it. By the time I’d finished my conversation with Charley, her sadness and pity had hardened once again into a firm resolve.
“Tomorrow morning,” she said in a calm, flat voice, “I want you to call Kathy Frost and arrange to set up an appointment with the Warden Service psychologist. Ask her to drive you there. If she doesn’t, I will. I don’t want you driving anymore.”
I agreed to do what she asked. “I’m sorry, Sarah. I really mean that.”
“I’ll believe you when you finally get some help.”
She left me alone in the bedroom.
I popped two Vicodins before turning in and started the Hemingway book to get my mind off Ashley Kim. I might have read a single page before I passed out. In the night, I dreamed that Sarah was in the bathroom and couldn’t stop vomiting. When I awoke from my coma the next morning, she had left for school, the paperback was spread open across my chest, and the phone on the nightstand was ringing insistently.
“Hello?” My speech was thick and dry. I desperately needed some water.
“Warden Bowditch?” It was a woman’s voice, a familiar one.
“Yes?”
“This is Jill Westergaard.”
I sat up against the pillow and tried to cough the phlegm out of my throat before continuing. “Mrs. Westergaard. I’m very sorry for your loss.”
“I wondered if you would meet me at my house. I need to speak with you.”
The request startled me. Stanley Snow had said she was having a bad time of things. I could see how she had suffered a double wound in the last few days. First, there was the hard truth of her husband’s affair with his teaching assistant. Then there was my discovery of his lifeless body in the woods. Despite the unpleasant way our last encounter had ended, I felt compassion for Westergaard’s widow. I also wondered whether she was clinging to some piece of information that might lead to his killer or killers.
Charley’s advice about leaving the investigation to the professionals murmured in my head. But what was the point of sticking close to home if Sarah was at school?
“I’ve had an accident since we last spoke,” I said. “I really shouldn’t drive.”
“Please,” she said. “It’s very important that I see you.”
I told Jill Westergaard I would meet her in an hour.
I rinsed my face in the bathroom sink and brushed the fur from my teeth. I swallowed two ibuprofen tablets with a glass of orange juice. Then I put on the same mud-splattered pants I’d worn the previous day and a faded flannel shirt. As I grabbed my coat, I felt the weight of the pistol and remembered my missing cell phone. Where the hell was it?
I went outside to look in the Jeep.
There were new tire tracks in the driveway. I squatted down and examined them. They had been made earlier that morning, after Sarah had left for school, by a big vehicle-either a pickup or a very large and heavily loaded SUV. The tracks led toward the house and then back out again, so whoever had come to visit me hadn’t chosen to stick around. Probably just some lost driver looking for another house, I thought.
My mobile was nowhere to be found. All I could think was that I might have dropped it somewhere the night before, either outside the Guffey house or at the Harpoon Bar. Maybe it had fallen out of my coat when Hutchins stopped me on the road.
As I was rummaging through my vehicle, I noticed that my hand, while still a ghoulish mottle of purple, yellow, and black, was a bit smaller than it had been previously. I trudged back inside. I used our landline to set a date with the orthopedic hand specialist at Pen Bay Medical Center to be fitted for a hard cast. The sooner I moved on to that stage of my recovery, the better.
After I’d finished with the hospital, I considered the promise I’d made to Sarah. I was supposed to have Kathy make an appointment for me with the psychologist. I started to dial my sergeant on the landline, then stopped. Instead, I found myself punching in my own cell-phone number to see if someone had found it. But all I got was voice mail.
My hand was abuzz. I was tempted to take a Vicodin but resisted the urge for the moment. I tucked the vial inside my shirt pocket and set out for Parker Point.
It had rained lightly during the night, the ditches were again running with meltwater, and I spotted fewer patches of snow in the shadows of the trees along the road. The ice storm had distorted the forest into some grotesque version of its previous self, with birches and willows bent over like whipped slaves and snapped limbs lying strewn about the landscape in a mass dismemberment.