A line of kids on snowmobiles crossed the road just before we reached the farmhouse. I counted five of them, all going too fast. I watched them shoot away into the night, their lights growing dim as they followed the groomed trail across the barrens.
Atop its low hill, beneath the leafless elms that had somehow survived a century-long blight, sat the farmhouse. The porch light was turned off, but a yellow glow showed in the mudroom window, and I saw Doc’s pickup parked outside the yawning barn. I unbuckled my chest belt. Lucas fiddled with his, but I caught his arm.
“Stay here,” I said. “I’ll be right back.”
“I want to see the dead dog.”
“No way.”
I swung open the driver’s door and a strong gust of wind nearly pushed it closed on my leg before I could get out. I braced the door with my arm. “Don’t fool around with anything in my truck, please. I’ll know if something’s missing.”
He didn’t say anything in response, just reached inside his backpack and drew out his notebook.
As I trudged through the snow up to the farmhouse, I felt the hairs in my nostrils begin to bristle from the cold. The temperature was plunging again, headed back below zero, but at least the clouds were breaking. Every now and again, the moon showed its pale, pockmarked face before ducking out of sight. The last time I’d visited this farm, the blizzard had hidden most of the surroundings from view. Now I saw snow-covered blueberry barrens tumbling down the rocky hillside toward Bog Pond. In the moonlight, I spotted a couple of shadowy shapes that must have been ice-fishing shacks on the frozen lake.
I rapped with my knuckles on the old door, hearing the glass windows rattle in the wood frame, then resorted to my fist when no one answered. Maybe the old guy really had passed out. I gave a glance down the drive and saw Lucas’s headlamp flickering inside my truck.
The door opened when I twisted the knob. Given the near panic in Doc’s voice earlier, I was surprised to find it unlocked.
The house was cold, and it smelled bad-not just that mustiness that I remembered from the night of the dinner party but the reek of food scraps beginning to rot in the garbage, and a sharp vinegar odor that made me think of spilled wine.
“Doc?”
A moan came from the interior. I switched on the hall light and made my way down the cramped passage to the living room. Doc was slumped across the horsehair sofa in the dark. I flicked the switch. He squeezed his eyes shut and jerked his head away, as if he couldn’t bear the brightness.
There were several empty bottles on the side tables and the window seat-wine bottles, a bottle of Maker’s Mark, and even some bottles of fancy liqueurs I associated with his late wife. It was as if the old widower had raided his cabinets, looking for every last remaining intoxicant in the house. Was all this chaos over a dead dog?
I folded my arms across my chest, pressing the armored vest I wore beneath my shirt against my rib cage. “What the hell happened to you?”
“I must have tripped.” He tried to prop himself up on the couch arm but seemed to lack the strength. When he turned his head to me, I saw that his lip was swollen.
“Your phone went dead while we were talking.”
He glanced around at the floor, looking for his cordless phone. “It’s around here somewhere.”
“I was worried about you. What’s so important that you had me rush over here?”
“I made a mistake. I should have told you before.”
“Told me what?”
“What really happened.”
“You’re not making any sense, Doc.”
There was dried blood and food in his beard. “You were right about Prester Sewall. He didn’t kill his friend.”
I felt my beating heart push against my sternum. “How do you know that?”
Doc sat up and reached for the nearest liquor bottle. He tilted it over his open mouth, but nothing dripped out. “I just know.”
“You have to stop drinking and tell me what happened.”
“The night of the blizzard…”
“Yes?”
“I didn’t know who he was,” he said. “Not at first. His face was too swollen, and I didn’t recognize his name from the license; none of us did.”
“Are you talking about Prester Sewall?”
He nodded. “After they came back to the house-you were still out there in the Heath-Kendrick told me who the frozen man was.”
“Kendrick?”
“I told him I couldn’t do it. I’m just an old vet, but I was a medic in the army, and I took an oath!” He coughed into his closed fist. “You should have seen him, the look on his face. He would have done it himself. He tried to push me aside. But then the ambulance arrived, and it was too late.”
I could feel my pulse throbbing in my neck. “Why would Kendrick want you to kill Prester Sewall?”
“He wanted them both dead.”
“Both of them? Are you saying Kendrick was the one who murdered Cates?”
In my mind’s eye I saw the sled-dog racer coming across Randall in the storm-hypothermic, stumbling, unable to defend himself-then holding Randall’s face down in the snow until he could no longer breathe.
Doc Larrabee nodded his whiskered chin. “Kendrick said they deserved to die.” He began to shake, as if on the verge of tears. “But I kept dreaming about Helen. She wouldn’t have wanted me to lie. ‘You can’t let them convict the wrong man,’ she told me, ‘no matter what those men did to those young people.’”
The wind howled outside the house. It sounded like a living thing now, some sort of choral voice of animal spirits.
“So you told Kendrick you were going to the police?”
“I tried to convince him. I tried everything to reason with him, but he wouldn’t listen. It was poetic justice, he said. The police already had their suspect. Then he heard that you were asking questions.”
“What did you tell him?”
“That you showed me a picture of a snowmobile. I said you didn’t believe it was Prester who killed his friend. He got really worried. He knows about your history.”
I remembered running into Kendrick outside the Spragues’ Laundromat, how inquisitive he’d been. And later, during the search for Prester’s body, I’d thought I spotted his pickup parked near the Machias River.
“Did Kendrick have something to do with Prester’s disappearance from the hospital?”
He hung his head. “I don’t know.”
“Think!”
“He didn’t tell me. But I know what he did to Duchess!”
“Kendrick killed your dog?”
“I let her outside today, same as I always do, and she didn’t come back. Then I found her body in the road, like she’d been hit by a car. She never went in the road! Kendrick did it-as a warning to keep my mouth shut.” He started sobbing. “She was Helen’s dog-my last link to Helen.”
Thoughts were darting around my head like quick-moving birds. Doc was rambling and nearly incoherent, but his condition seemed to vouch for his troubled conscience. He sounded like a man haunted by a past misdeed. The problem was that I was missing a key piece of information, without which everything Larrabee had told me was just useless hearsay.
A dog was howling. At first I thought it was the wind again. Then I realized there was a mournful undertone that could only have come from a living creature. I stepped to the nearest window, parted the dusty curtains, and looked out. The light from inside the room made it impossible to see anything but my own troubled expression.
“What’s wrong?” Doc asked. “Is someone out there?”
Ever since I’d arrived in Washington County, people had been invoking the name of poor dead Trinity Raye. Even I had wondered if she’d been one of Kendrick’s favorite students, but the sheriff had said she wasn’t even in his class. Would the professor really have committed one murder, and attempted a second, to avenge the death of a girl he barely knew? It was possible, but as an explanation it seemed insufficient.
The phone rang. The sound-shrill and insistent-seemed to be coming from Doc himself. He turned his head, slowly and stupidly, and patted the cushions.
I bent down on one knee and reached beneath the couch. My blind hand found the cordless receiver embedded in an inch of dog fur and dust.
“Hello?”
“Warden Bowditch! What a surprise.”
“Kendrick?”
“Hell no. It’s your old buddy George Magoon.” The reception had that slightly overloud distortion that indicates the person on the other end is speaking from a cell phone. “Is Doc there?”
“You know he’s here, Kendrick.” Doc was staring at me with wide, glassy eyes, and I could see that he was genuinely afraid. “Where are you?”
“Here and there. I tend to move around a lot.” There was a rustling on the line that sounded like wind. “Doc has been telling you some of his crazy stories, I imagine.”
“He thinks you killed Duchess.”
“He must be drinking again. Why would I kill my good friend’s dog?”
“As a warning to keep quiet.”
“Keep quiet about what?”
“He says you’ve been lying about what happened the night of the blizzard. He says you killed Randall Cates out in the storm and wanted him to kill Prester Sewall before the EMTs arrived.”
“That’s quite a story! His imagination really runs wild when he’s hammered.”
“You’re saying it’s a lie?”
“I’ve never killed anyone in my life. Besides, the state police have already determined that Prester Sewall murdered Cates.”
“The police haven’t determined anything.”
“Sewall’s suicide suggests he had a guilty conscience.”
“I’m not so sure he committed suicide.”
“Now you’re the one with the hyperactive imagination. Tell me this: Why would I want to kill two men I’d never even met?”
“Because they were drug dealers.”
“So are a lot of people in this godforsaken country. I’d have my hands full if I decided to kill all of them.”
“Because Cates and Sewall sold contaminated heroin to a student named Trinity Raye, who died as a result.”
“Go check at the university. Trinity Raye wasn’t even my student. You’re just grasping at straws now-just like you’ve done in the past. Isn’t it enough that your career is in tatters?”
“Since when have you taken an interest in my career, Kendrick?”
“I’m a teacher,” he said. “I believe in doing my homework. Let me see if I’ve got this straight. You’re saying that while embarked on a selfless mission to rescue a lost man, I spontaneously decided to kill him?”
It did sound ridiculous when he put it that way. “You didn’t know it was Randall Cates lost out there until you came upon him in the snow and saw that crazy tattoo.”
“It might surprise you to learn that I don’t have an encyclopedic knowledge of drug dealers and their tattoos. Your entire story is absurd.”
“I’ll make a deal with you, Kendrick,” I said. “Why don’t the three of us pay a visit to the state police-you, me, and Doc-and we’ll let them decide whose story sounds the most absurd.”
“Sorry, I’ve got a prior commitment.”
“You should clear your calendar. Detective Zanadakis will want to talk with you after he hears what Doc and I have to say.”
“Now who’s the one issuing threats? We both know our mutual friend was intoxicated the night of the blizzard and that he’s been self-medicating ever since his lovely wife passed away.”
“What about the Spragues? They were there in the house.”
He gave a laugh. “They’re the last people who are going to say anything.”
“What does that mean?”
He took a long time to answer. “What is it going to take to make you drop this absurd inquiry? How can I persuade you that you’re making a terrible, terrible mistake?”
“It won’t be the first mistake I’ve made.”
“But it might be the last,” said Kendrick. “My crystal ball says you’re headed for a bad end, Warden.”
Just then a dog barked. I heard it over the telephone line but also through the window.
There was a click and then nothing.
I pressed *69 on the keypad. No one picked up, but eventually an automated voice answered. It was my own cell phone.