I was inside the Grand Am, shivering, my teeth clenched to keep from chattering. The gym bag lay open beside me on the seat. I was trying to reconstruct in my imagination the drug deal that had taken place in this frozen swamp when I heard a loud scraping sound. I clambered out of the car and stood knee-deep in the snow, watching as powerful lights tore through the storm.
There were two vehicles: a hefty pickup outfitted with a V-shaped plow and a green warden’s truck following behind. I hoped the trucks hadn’t just flattened the buried body of Randall Cates in an attempt to reach me.
Over the idling engines I heard truck doors bang open. Three silhouettes came toward me through the headlights.
“Bowditch!” It was Rivard, wearing his green warden’s parka with the hood up.
Behind him came a shorter, thicker man: the plow driver.
And then another person with a dog.
Kathy Frost? No, she was two hundred miles away tonight in Greenville. It was her protege from the K-9 team, Cody Devoe. He had been the warden in my old district before being transferred to Washington County at his own request. Devoe is one of those natural woodsmen whose idea of heaven is being stationed in the wildest, least populated outposts imaginable, the kind of warden who spends his vacations fishing for arctic char in Labrador. He is a big bruiser with a perpetual five o’clock shadow even at five o’clock in the morning. His friends call him Fred Flintstone. His German shepherd is named Tomahawk.
The plow driver-I assumed it was Ben Sprague-was a short but solid guy. He had a hooked, beaklike nose and small, rapidly blinking eyes set close together. He wore a blue snowmobile suit covered with iron-on patches from various clubs, and a New England Patriots cap with a fuzzy pom-pom on top.
“So what’s going on?” Rivard asked.
“We’ve got a lost man out here,” I said. “It’s Randall Cates.”
“That’s what Kendrick told me. I didn’t believe it until I saw Prester Sewall lying in that bed.”
“I thought his name was John.”
“Everyone calls him Prester.”
“I think Cates and Sewall were out here on a drug deal.”
“Is that a hunch, or do you have more specific reasons for saying that?”
I showed them the gym bag full of money, and the gun. I told them about the map inside the car with our location marked in pencil. My lips were so numb, I sounded like I had a speech impediment. “I think Cates is lost out here somewhere, wandering around in the dark or collapsed in a snowbank.”
“I’m not sure how we’re going to find him in this storm,” Rivard said.
“I’d like to try running a track.” Devoe squatted down beside his dog and adjusted the little orange vest she was wearing. “Tomahawk’s pretty good in the snow. We did some avalanche training last winter up at Baxter State Park.”
“Christ, it’s cold out here.” Rivard rubbed his gloved hands together and stamped his feet, first one and then the other. The Grand Am had almost disappeared again inside the white mound of snow.
“How’s Sewall doing?” I asked.
“The paramedics were putting him in the ambulance when Devoe and I showed up,” said Rivard. “He looked pretty bad to me, but maybe he’ll pull through. They won’t be able to get him to Bangor in the storm, so they’re taking him to Machias to stabilize his condition.”
“Where’s Kendrick?” I asked.
“I left him at the house,” said Rivard. “I told him to direct assistance to our location, and I thought someone should stay with Mrs. Sprague.”
Ben Sprague stared hard at me with a trembling lip and a knitted brow, as if I’d just insulted his mother. “My wife’s had a terrible shock!”
What was up with this guy? Maybe he was just mad that his pleasant evening at home with the missus had been ruined by this freak occurrence. I couldn’t blame him-Doris Sprague had seemed genuinely upset.
“What about Larrabee?” I asked.
“Doc went to the hospital with the EMTs.”
“So who else is coming?”
“I wanted to scope things out before calling in the cavalry,” said Rivard. “I woke up Bill Day over in Aurora, but he’s going to be all night getting here. The Passamaquoddies are sending a dog handler from Princeton, along with one of their tribal wardens.” He stomped his feet again in that same methodical manner he’d used before, first the right, then the left. “We might as well let Tomahawk give it a try, but who knows if that dirtbag Cates is even out here.”
I understood Rivard’s skepticism. Pitch-dark, in the middle of a snowstorm, at a temperature where even the nose of the best-trained SAR dog in the world might as well have been wrapped in a burlap-these were hardly optimal conditions for a search. And yet I couldn’t help but feel that my sergeant’s lack of confidence was also personal. We hadn’t worked together long enough for him to appreciate my abilities, so all he had to go on was my reputation in the service: impulsive, hotheaded, too impressed with my own intelligence, book-smart rather than woods-smart, a discipline problem, not a team player. In other words, a very, very bad bet.
Devoe found a dime-store bandanna in the Grand Am and let his dog have a good whiff of it. Then he let her begin pulling him around on a leash through the snow. Tomahawk made a circle around the car and began working her way outward in a fan-shaped pattern.
Over the past two years, while on stakeouts and patrols, Kathy Frost had given me endless tutorials on the training and use of canines in search and rescue and human-remains recovery. I knew that Tomahawk was searching for a “pool” of human scent wafting through the snowpack. If she found one, she would begin to dig. And maybe, just maybe, she would discover the frozen-solid corpse of Randall Cates. I also knew that Rivard was right when he said the chances of her finding him in these conditions were slim to none.
Rivard wanted to do his own search of the Grand Am.
Ben Sprague said he was returning to his truck to warm up and wait. I decided to be neighborly and join Sprague.
I opened the passenger door and peered up at him. “Do you mind if I get out of the cold for a few minutes?”
“Be my guest.”
I slammed the door behind me and instantly felt embraced in warmth. My night in the blizzard had frozen my bones to the marrow. “The snow seems to be letting up.”
“Does it?”
He fiddled with the radio and brought up a fuzzy station playing rock and roll from across the New Brunswick border. So much for conversation.
I removed my gloves and warmed my hands over the air vents. At first my fingers were numb; then they began to throb. I rubbed the palms against my cheeks and nose. I made funny faces to loosen the tight skin.
“Hotel California” was playing on the radio. Sprague tapped a beat to the music with his hands on the steering wheel, but more out of impatience than from a sense of rhythm.
“How long have you and Doris lived out here?” I asked.
“What do you mean-in the sticks?”
“In Township Nineteen.”
“Too long.”
I wasn’t sure what he meant, but he didn’t seem inclined to clarify the statement. “You two saved that man’s life.”
He made a snorting sound. “I wouldn’t bet on it.”
“Had you ever seen him before?”
His face had a lime-green cast from the dashboard lights. “Which one?”
“Either one.”
“No.”
“Do you know what they were doing out here?”
“Selling drugs. You saw that bag of money.”
“But why were they out here in the Heath, of all places?” I asked.
“I’m not a drug dealer. I don’t know why they do anything.”
Devoe and Tomahawk moved past our vehicles, heading down the logging road. We turned our heads to follow them. I couldn’t tell if the dog had found a scent trail or was just ecstatic to be doing what she’d been bred and trained to do.
“A dog can’t find someone in weather like this,” Sprague said confidently. “You won’t find his body until springtime.”
“They find people buried by avalanches.”
“Not in weather like this.”
We heard a garbled shout outside. I saw Rivard stick his head up from the car. He began walking quickly through the snow toward Devoe’s position. I grabbed the door handle and hopped out.
At the edge of Rivard’s dancing flashlight beam, Cody Devoe crouched in front of a roadside tree. He was down on his knees, holding Tomahawk around the neck. The German shepherd was straining toward a snowdrift piled against a leafless hardwood.
“What have you got?” Rivard asked.
“Something dead.”
Rivard knelt over the drift and began sweeping snow away with his gloved hands. Soon we saw matted brown hair, a human head nodding forward, as if a man had fallen asleep against the ash trunk. Rivard brushed the impacted snow off the forehead and shoulders. He gripped the head by the forelock and tilted the tattooed face up at us. The young man’s mouth was open and a blue tongue was thrust between the teeth. The eyes were glassy, sightless.
Ben Sprague came huffing and puffing along behind us. “Is he dead?” the plow driver asked.
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!