Widowmaker (19 page)

I circled around to the other side of the truck. There was no visible broken glass.

Clegg appeared at my shoulder. “Satisfied?”

“I thought it was the driver's window that was broken.”

“No, this one was just rolled down,” he said. “It's the other one that was smashed.”

I made my way around to the back of the truck. Snow had piled up in the bed, but it was thicker along the sides and near the cab, as if the pickup had been carrying something big recently. I glanced around the lot, gauging the heights of the snowbanks along the perimeter.

“I think there was a sled in the back of this truck,” I said.

“A snowmobile?” said Pulsifer.

“Look at the shape.”

In the winter, I would often go on patrol with a snowmobile in the back of my Sierra. When the banks got high enough, all you had to do was back up to one, throw open the tailgate, and drive your sled out. No need for a ramp.

Unfortunately, half a foot of snow had fallen that afternoon. Whatever snowmobile tracks might have been visible earlier had become soft, unreadable grooves.

I gazed around the clearing. “I expected to see Shaylene Hawken here.”

“Are you kidding?” said Pulsifer. “If Langstrom's dead, it means less work for her.”

Standing beside the construction light were two men, one in camouflage utilities, the other in civilian clothes. The man in civvies seemed totally focused on me. I was shocked to realize that I knew him.

“Is that Torgerson?”

“How do you know Lane?”

“I met him this afternoon at Widowmaker along with a couple of his drinking buddies. What the hell is he doing here?”

“So you met the Night Watchmen,” said Pulsifer with a toothy grin. “Someone from the school must have called him. Torgerson used to be a SERE instructor. He moved back to Rangeley after he retired from the navy.”

No wonder the old guy was such a badass; he'd worked at a survival school, teaching pilots how to resist abuse by abusing them.

Amber's truck had been abandoned at a trailhead just outside an off-limits navy base. The proximity to the SERE school might have been coincidental or it might have been significant. The same could be said about Torgerson's presence at the scene. The so-called Night Watchmen had a legitimate connection to the base. He and his friends had also voiced contempt for the local ex-cons whose names were on the sex offender registry.

“I'm going to go talk to him,” I told Pulsifer. “I want to know what he's doing here.”

“Do I actually have to tell you what a bad idea that is?”

Torgerson watched me approach with the same welcoming expression with which he might have greeted a door-to-door salesman.

“Chief Torgerson,” I said. “I didn't think I'd be seeing you again so soon.”

You might have thought he was totally deaf.

“This must have been the call you got at the Sluiceway,” I said. “Someone from SERE wanted you to know Adam Langstrom's truck had been found.”

The SEAL beside him said, “Do you know this guy Torgy?”

Torgerson's eyes bored into mine. “I know exactly who he is.”

Without uttering another syllable, Torgerson turned his back on me. He dug his fists into the pockets of his peacoat as he tromped away through the snow toward a cluster of parked vehicles. The SEAL remained behind for a few seconds, his eyebrows knit together, his mouth twisted in confusion. After a while, he also left the halo of the construction lights for the darkness of the trees.

Torgerson was an expert at manipulation and intimidation. I had to hand it to him. He'd left me feeling as naked as if I'd just stepped out of the shower. And he'd done it without making a single explicit threat.

Pulsifer had been standing five paces behind me the whole time. His snowmobile helmet hung from his hand. “You and I need to talk about a few things.”

“I know.”

Car doors slammed around us. Engines roared to life. The tow truck driver went to work wrapping the bloody pickup for its trip to the forensics garage in Farmington.

Pulsifer bounced the helmet against his thigh. “You got a room somewhere for the night?”

“No.”

“You can stay at my place, then.”

The exposed skin of my face had taken on a cold, rubbery texture. “I don't want to impose.”

“Lauren won't mind. I've told her so many stories about the shit you've pulled, she doesn't believe you're real. It'll be like I'm bringing home Bugs Bunny.”

Typical Pulsifer: trying to cheer me up by comparing me to a cartoon character. The humor left me untouched.

Two days earlier, I had learned that I had a brother I had never met.

Two days later, I had come to the place where he might well have died.

The thought was having a hard time taking hold in my head.

“I have a stop to make first,” I said. “There's someone I need to see.”

 

18

At the intersection of the Navy Road and Route 16, I waited for the next plow to come along and followed it back toward Bigelow. I was exhausted but in no hurry, and I needed time to collect my thoughts.

Driving in a Maine blizzard is a matter of timing. Get ahead of a plow, and you'll find yourself blazing a path through unbroken snow, unable to see the edge of the road, oblivious to whatever ice might be hidden underneath. Get behind a plow, and you'll find the going easier, provided you're content to crawl along at twenty miles per hour and have your vehicle splashed with salt brine and sand.

It sure looked like someone had died in Adam's truck. You could have butchered a deer inside and spilled less blood. I saw two possibilities: Either a corpse had been taken away from the site for reasons unknown or it had been dumped somewhere before the vehicle was abandoned at the trailhead.

Up ahead, Widowmaker's sign glowed at the base of its access road. The light touched the snowflakes drifting past, making them look like a cloud of winter moths. The mountain itself was invisible in the hazy grayness. There wasn't even a glow in the sky from whatever trails might be open for night skiing.

A new question intruded into my thoughts: Why dump the truck at that particular trailhead?

Maine's western mountains were crisscrossed with logging roads and ATV trails; pockmarked with old gravel pits and remote clear-cuts. Anyone looking to conceal a vehicle beneath a blanket of snow had thousands of potential hiding places to choose from. The decision to park the Ranger just outside the heavily guarded SERE school had to have been deliberate. Maybe someone had
wanted
Amber's blood-soaked truck to be discovered quickly. But why?

Once again, I passed the farm road that led across the frozen river and up the backside of East Kennebago Mountain to Mink's house. What a strange little man. I would have to ask Pulsifer what his story was.

Soon the plow turned west toward Eustis, and I turned east into Bigelow. I followed Pulsifer's directions south of town. Amber lived in an unnamed apartment complex built in the backwoods style you see in Maine. It was as if the builder had visited some suburban cul-de-sac in Massachusetts or Ohio and come back to the North Woods and tried to reproduce the architecture in the least appropriate setting imaginable. There seemed to be a dozen or so units, scattered over three identical buildings. I spotted Amber's Grand Cherokee—covered by only the thinnest scrim of snow, which told me she hadn't been home long—and pulled in behind it.

Light leaked around the edges of the curtains in the living room. I heard sorrowful music playing on a stereo inside. Amber hadn't bothered to shovel the walk leading to the front door when she'd gotten home. I kicked my way through the snow.

I didn't hear the bell chime over the music, but after a minute or so, the door opened a crack, and I got a faceful of marijuana smoke. Amber stared up at me with eyes like cherry tomatoes. She was still wearing her waitress outfit, but her hair looked as if she'd been caught in a sudden tempest.

“Can I come in?” I asked.

“Are you gonna bust me for the pot?”

“What pot?” I deadpanned.

But her mind had been dulled by whatever drugs she had taken.

“I'm not going to bust you,” I said. “But you need to put it out.”

She stood aside. I stomped as much snow as I could off my boot treads and stepped through the door. The apartment was neat enough. All the furniture matched, but it had seen better days. She seemed to have a taste for silk flowers, posters of exotic locales, and framed photographs of herself with male skiers, whom I guessed to be visiting Olympians. The only sign of neglect was the profusion of ash burns in the wall-to-wall carpet. No amount of cleaning would get those out.

I remained standing on the doormat while she flung herself down on a futon sofa. “Have a seat.”

“Do you want me to take my boots off?”

She laughed through her nose.

“I've just come from where your truck was found,” I said. “Why didn't you call me when you heard what happened?”

“I wasn't thinking straight.” The marijuana had slowed her usually rapid-fire way of speaking down to half speed. “Can you fucking blame me?”

On the stereo, Reba McEntire was singing about a woman who got AIDS from a one-night stand.

“Can you turn down the music?” I asked.

She tossed the remote control at me. I pushed the off button.

“You don't have to keep standing there,” she said. “I really don't give a shit about the rug.”

Meltwater had formed around my boots. I tried to shake some of it off before I crossed the carpet to an armchair.

“I didn't know where you'd gone,” I said. “All the bartender told me was that you'd gotten a phone call and run off.”

She let her head loll in my direction. “Steve—he's a cop I know—he called me when he found Adam's truck. It's funny, you know? I rushed all the way out there, but when I got there, all I could do was wait. Wait to give a statement. ‘Yeah, Officer, that's my truck.' Wait for the dogs to search the area. Wait for the CSI people to show up. Now I get to wait to hear if the blood they found matches my son's.”

I had no idea if the police had Adam's DNA on file; it isn't always the case with prisoners, despite what many people think. The investigators would only be able to cross-reference the blood type in Adam's medical records. A true DNA test would likely take weeks, unless Clegg pushed to expedite. I had no idea where Adam Langstrom ranked on his to-do list.

“You weren't honest with me, Amber,” I said. “You never told me you'd bought Adam a truck. Don't you think that was information I could have used to look for him?”

“I guess.” She picked at a full ashtray on the table beside her until she found a roach with something left in it. She pinched the stub to her mouth and flicked the lighter.

“No more pot,” I said.

“You're such a fucking Boy Scout, aren't you? Colby graduate. Game warden. The perfect son.”

Hardly, I thought.

She sighed and lit a cigarette instead. “Or maybe you're just a tight-assed prick.”

“Tell me about the truck.”

“I knew he'd need a vehicle when he got out,” she said, “so I paid cash for it over in Farmington. I drained my checking account to buy it. After he disappeared, I didn't want the cops to know he was driving it. I didn't want them to put out an APB—or wherever you call it—on the license plate. I was hoping you would find him or he would turn himself in and not have to go back to prison.”

“I thought you'd want to hear what Josh Davidson told me,” I said.

“What's the point?” she said. “It doesn't matter anymore.”

“It might matter.” I massaged my kneecaps. “Josh told me he loaned Adam some money the night he disappeared.”

She leaned her head back and exhaled a cloud at the ceiling tiles. “So?”

“What did he need the money for?”

“I don't know.”

“Think hard.”

“I'm tired of thinking.” Her eyes had a sheen that looked more like oil than water. “That's all I've been doing since I got home—thinking how Adam's life was cursed on account of me. It wasn't his fault I fell for Jack, or that A.J. could never look at him without picturing what I'd done. I was kind of relieved when A.J. finally ran off with that whore from New Hampshire. It seemed like a good omen. Then Adam got into ASA, and for a while it seemed like his luck—our luck—might have been turning around. He was winning ski races. Getting OK grades. Why'd he have to meet that cunt Alexa Davidson?”

Smoke had begun to slither toward me across the room. “I know you're grieving, but—”

“Adam was raped in prison,” she said, lapsing back into monotone. “He told me about it one day when I went to visit. Just broke down into tears and called me ‘Mommy' and whispered what they'd done to him. One of them bit off part of his ear! He'd been trying to act so tough before, like he could take care of himself. I'd been trying to tell myself not to worry, and then all my worries came true. He begged me not to say anything to the guards, said it would be even worse if I did. I remember coming out of the prison, and it was seventy degrees and bright sunshine, and I realized it was the worst day of my life. Until today.”

Suddenly, she let out a curse as the cigarette burned her finger. Reflexively, she dropped the butt to the carpet, where it continued to smolder. She watched it, unmoving, uncaring, until the ember died.

“I would have done anything for my son,” she said. “And I mean
anything.
I would've let every HIV-positive scumbag in that prison gangbang me if it meant they left Adam alone. I would have traded places with him in a second.”

I wasn't sure what to say. “It must have been hard for you.”

“Not as hard as when he got out,” she said. “I thought it was going to be a second chance for him—for us. But Adam had already given up. ‘You know what the worst thing is, Mom?' he said. ‘The worse thing is they'll never stop punishing me. Any other crime—I could've run over a kid or stabbed someone in a bar—and eventually they'd say, “All right, you've paid your debt to society, go live your life.” But they're never going to let me pay my debt,' he said. ‘Every time I ask a girl out now, she's going to Google my name. “Once a sex offender, always a sex offender.” And all I did was have sex with my girlfriend.'”