Water Dogs (17 page)

“The cops have already searched here, haven’t they?” he asked.

“I thought you agreed this was a good thing to do,” she said.

“What are we looking for, exactly?” He poked at the dense snowbank beside the road with one of his crutches.

“I’m just going to walk to the far corner, over there. It shouldn’t take me more than twenty minutes.” Helen pulled her hat down over her eyebrows and zipped her jacket up over her chin.

But Bennie knew why they were out there: to find LaBrecque’s body. It was true the police had looked, but with nearly four feet of snow, there was plenty of acreage that had probably been neglected. It would
have taken a hundred men several weeks to prod every nook of the quarry woods, and the prevailing opinion was that LaBrecque had left town on his own. As soon as Helen suggested that they come to the quarry and the surrounding snowfields, though, Bennie knew that he, too, was starting to wonder if Littlefield was telling the whole truth.

Bennie sat in the Skylark, listening to WBLM, staring at the knob on the glove compartment. Every few seconds, he glanced up at Helen, at her back, as she moved steadily through the drifts. He’d get lost momentarily in a song, then he’d look up and see Helen. The farther she got, the less he liked the idea of her exploring the woods by herself. He’d left her alone in the cold with thoughts of the chase, and of the dark snowstorm. When she reached a thicket of pine trees, he opened the car door and stepped back into the wind whipping along the icy road. “Helen!” he yelled. “Helen, come back!” She was ducking under branches; she stumbled, and he wondered if she’d bend down and check to see what she’d stumbled on, but she kept her head up and continued trudging through the drifts. He yelled again and still she didn’t turn around. He watched her red jacket disappear and reappear as she moved through the trees, and soon she was out of sight entirely.

He stared at the place where he last saw her, the hard smooth trunks of beech trees, until all he saw was an abstract weave of overlapping, muted colors. His eyes watered in the wind, so he stepped back into the car. For the next forty-five minutes, he looked through the windshield at the spot where she’d disappeared. He hoped she was walking in a straight line from the quarry, toward Lindonville. He imagined she was steadying herself on the trees as she moved forward. He wondered if her suspicions about Littlefield were growing. Did she still believe Bennie, deep down, when he said he knew Littlefield had done nothing wrong? He was sure she was winded and her legs were growing weak after walking through the deep drifts. This would help her know what Littlefield and LaBrecque had gone through.

But it still nagged him, why she cared so much. Did she have her own curiosity about that night at the quarry, or was she simply trying
to help him, trying to provide him with a better understanding of his brother?

She might have come to these woods only to confirm for herself how foolish winter paintball was. Maybe she was still trying to figure out if he was a good boyfriend. With Helen out of view—somewhere beyond the beech trees—he remembered how little he knew her.

He closed his eyes and saw her falling, the wind gusting: a broken ankle, blood coming from a gash on her temple. He got out of the car again and screamed her name a few times. Yelling at the top of his lungs on a cold windy day in the middle of an open patch of fields beside a deep forest only made things worse.

The songs he listened to in the car while he waited were “Learning to Fly,” “Space Cowboy,” “Purple Haze,” “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” “Red, Red Wine.” Each one seemed to go on forever. He was surprised by how repulsive, slow, and stupid these songs sounded.

He was still staring at the silver trunks of the beech trees when Helen reemerged, first just a blip of red, then her entire jacket in view. For another few minutes he watched her labor through the deep drifts. When she was closer, he jumped out of the car. “Helen!” he yelled, waving. She waved back. When she got to the edge of the road, he tried not to show too much concern. “Are you freezing? You were gone for longer than I thought you’d be.”

“I’m boiling,” she said. “That’s hard work, walking through the deep stuff. My feet kept getting tangled.” She brushed the clumps of snow off her pants and knocked her boots against the tires. When she climbed back in the Skylark, she took her hat off and steam swirled from the top of her head. “There’s a lot of land out there,” she said. Despite the sweat in her hair, her cheeks and her nose looked cold, and her eyes had been tearing from the wind.

“I was shouting, trying to get you to come back,” said Bennie.

“Calm down. I can walk through the woods by myself.”

“ ‘Calm down’?” He felt anger rising in his chest. “I don’t want
someone else getting lost in the woods, Helen. Is it all right with you that I don’t want that to happen?”

“Listen. Don’t worry about me. Right now there are just two people we need to worry about. Ray LaBrecque—that’s for sure. He could be anywhere.”

Bennie had never heard her talk like this, and it was pissing him off. “Oh, really, Nancy Drew? And who else do we need to worry about?”

“I was going to say your brother. Your brother is acting weird. But you know what?
You’re
starting to worry me even more.”

“Oh, really?” he yelled. “Well, maybe we need to make a deal. I promise not to give a shit about you if you promise not to give a shit about me.”

“Deal!” she yelled back.

They were both breathing heavily, staring straight ahead, watching as the windshield fogged. Bennie blasted the defrost fan. After a minute or so of not talking, Helen said, “Ray LaBrecque’s girlfriend—she’s in Tavis Falls right now?”

Bennie nodded.

“Maybe we should go up there,” she said.

This wasn’t her way of exposing his foolishness. She wanted to help him. Bennie clicked the windshield wipers on and put the car into drive.

11

I
t took Helen less than five minutes to throw some clothes in a boxy suitcase. They drove across the island to the Manse, and Helen stayed in the car while Bennie crutched his way through the snow to the oak front door.

When he stepped into the kitchen, Gwen was standing at the electric range, stirring a pot of soup. Ronald was sleeping near her feet. A sharp smell of burning plastic floated in the air.

“What’s on?” Bennie asked, unbuttoning his jacket.

“Holy shit,” she said. “Thank God you’re back.” Her face was pale and her eyelids looked heavy. During the previous week—ever since she’d returned to the
island—she’d continued wearing nice clothes, but she was pulling them out of her luggage and the house didn’t have an iron. She’d started keeping her hair in a loose braid, which made her look more like herself—scattered, impetuous, just like she’d been before she’d moved away. She dropped the spoon into the pot and walked over to him. Standing close, she whispered, “Is Littlefield totally nuts?”

“Is he here right now?” Bennie asked.

“He’s gone.”

“Why are you whispering?” He felt immediately defensive of Littlefield, even though he often felt a similar frustration, a similar annoyance with his brother.

“He slept in the cellar last night,” she said, this time in her normal speaking voice.

“He does that sometimes.”

“Well, when he left this morning, I went down there. I broke in.”

“You shouldn’t have done that, Gwen.”

“Besides that big lock on the cellar door, he put up another door at the bottom of the stairs—it’s got a big new lock.”

“So you couldn’t get in?”

“No, I got in. I crowbarred it off its hinges. The dog was going crazy while I did it—it’s like he knew Littlefield would be pissed.”

Bennie looked down at the kitchen floor, at the splatterings of pasta sauce on the linoleum, and at Ronald, who seemed in the midst of a dream. His legs were twitching and he was whimpering quietly. Taking the door off was a bad decision on her part, but still, he was curious to know what she’d found. “Well?”

“He’s got a cot down there, and his empty soda cans,” she said. “Isn’t that creepy? He’s got these two big doors with locks and that’s it. Oh, and a bucket he’s been pissing in.”

“Great,” said Bennie.

Bennie didn’t know why he’d lock himself in the basement, but Littlefield had always been cautious. Recently he’d gotten anxious about identity theft. He rarely used the U.S. mail—if he had something to
send, he hand-delivered it, even if it meant driving to Augusta—and he never gave out his Social Security number. Though Bennie didn’t do these things himself, he considered this behavior quirky, not worrisome.

Gwen glanced out the window at Helen in the Skylark. “Is she waiting for you?”

“We’re going away overnight. If he comes back, tell him I was the one who broke in,” said Bennie. “It’ll be better for all of us.” “You can’t leave right now, Bennie.”

“I’ll be back tomorrow.”

“He doesn’t talk to me at all. He came up here to eat last night—he just stood at the fridge and bit into that block of cheddar cheese I bought. It’s got these grooves in it now, from his teeth. Then he drank from the carton of orange juice, and he took a few cans of root beer. I said hi, and he said hi, and then he just headed back downstairs.”

“That sounds like him,” he said. “Why don’t you leave, too? Spend the night at Jenny Tollefson’s house.”

“I don’t think Jenny lives on the island anymore, Bennie. I haven’t seen her since eighth grade. Do you really need to leave tonight?”

Bennie peered down at the stove. “Did you burn something, Gwennie?”

“I think there was macaroni down there in the burner,” she said, frowning at the electric coils. “What I really want is for Mom to come back.”

He buttoned his coat. He didn’t want to admit it, but this was true for him, too—he wanted to see his mother. “I don’t want her to freak out,” he said.

“You know, she can handle it. She’s been through worse.”

Gwen used a spatula to dredge for the spoon she’d dropped in the soup. Before he left he asked, “Did you ever meet Ray LaBrecque?”

“I don’t think so,” she said. “Why?”

“Vin Thibideaux will be coming around. He’ll ask questions. I just want to know what you know.”

“How would I know anything?”

“You talk to people.”

“Only you, Bennie,” she said, shaking her head, stirring the soup. “When I come back here, you’re the only one I talk to. God, I hope Vin doesn’t come around when you’re not here. That guy gives me the creeps.”

“Just keep the door locked. You can talk to him through the mail slot if you need to.” He gave her a hug. He knew she hadn’t heard what he’d done to Vin at Julian’s, and that was fine. He’d tell her when he got back, if he needed to. He walked back outside, through the snowdrifts to the Skylark.

Helen had tuned the radio to a classic rock station and had moved into the driver’s seat. She had her green sunglasses on even though it was still snowing. Her face was bright and giddy. Before she shifted into gear, she leaned over and kissed him, and put her hand on the back of his neck.

They seemed to have recovered from their argument—maybe she was good at moving on, not holding a grudge. It was amazing, really, that someone like Helen—confident and stubborn, beautiful and seemingly sane—was helping him. She was interested in finding out more clues about LaBrecque’s disappearance, but she also seemed to like sitting beside him; she put up with his insecurities and his other troubles, his lack of direction. Other women, he knew, thought he needed work. Helen seemed to recognize he was a mess, but a worthwhile mess, somehow. Maybe she was one of those women who liked to take on projects, wanted to solve the man they were with. Most guys—if they knew that was happening—they’d run. Bennie was happy to be considered a project, especially by Helen. They’d talked about his ambitions, about how he’d started college but hadn’t been able to stick with it, about how he’d liked studying physics and European history even though he’d never learned how to apply the knowledge. She seemed patient.

Lewiston was an easy drive from Meadow Island, less than an hour.

Helen wanted to show Bennie her old house on their way to Tavis Falls, and she knew her mom would be at work. As they crossed the Androscoggin, Helen gripped the wheel with both hands, staring intently at the road and the cars around her. Along the way, they’d passed a few gift shops in the middle of nowhere, and the sight of them—in wintertime, each with a dozen or so cars parked in front—made Bennie wonder about all the people, none of whom he’d ever meet, who traveled up to central Maine to buy lobster-trap coffee tables. For much of the drive, they didn’t speak, listening to Cream and Hendrix and Cree-dence Clearwater Revival at low volume on the radio.

Mrs. Coretti lived in a raised ranch on a busy road in the center of town. When they entered, a frail white-haired poodle stood up from its little dog bed and hobbled over to greet them.

“Baby!” said Helen, getting down on her hands and knees, putting her face down against the dog’s scrawny neck. As Helen nuzzled him, he turned his face up toward hers and began licking her nose. “You want to give him a hug?” she asked.