by Paul Doiron
He drove his fist into the side of his face—the side with the functioning eye—so hard, I worried he might have broken his hand. It left a wine-colored mark on his cheek, as if he had managed to damage even more of the blood vessels beneath the socket. He raised his hand to strike again and then fixed me with a stare and took a staggering step in my direction.
An image flashed through my mind of Kathy and Dani Tate in that darkened barn. For a split second, I felt as if I were standing face-to-face with Jimmy Gammon.
I raised my empty hands. “Kurt,” I said. “Listen to me. I want you to take a deep breath and think of Kathy.”
“Kathy’s not here!”
“What would she say if she were?”
He paused, wobbling back and forth on his toes, but close enough to lunge. “I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do. She’d tell you that she loved you and that you’ve got to stop hurting yourself.”
“Shut up,” he said, his voice choking with a sob.
“Kathy needs you, Kurt. She’s your little sister, and she’s in trouble.”
He lowered his head, so that the tousled hair fell in his face. “I told you I was bad luck.”
“Just go lay your head down for a few minutes. Don’t worry about the mess in here. I’ll clean it up.”
He lurched away, unsteady on his feet, like an actor pretending to be a zombie. I watched him blunder around the corner, saw him stumble into the old parlor, and heard a heavy noise as he let his body fall across the sectional sofa.
I looked down at my hands. They were shaking.
* * *
I swept the glass shards into a dustpan and used a dishrag to sop up the mint-smelling liqueur.
Afterward, I sat down to read the papers. There was little in them I didn’t already know, except that Jimmy had been the victim of the Taliban’s weapon of choice—an improvised explosive device. I’d suspected as much.
The quote from James Gammon sounded just as vitriolic as when Kurt had read it aloud. It didn’t matter that Kathy Frost had nearly died—might still die—what mattered was that his son should be avenged. There was no notice of a funeral, but the Gammons had requested that, in lieu of flowers, donations be made to the Wounded Warrior Project.
When I looked in on Kurt ten minutes later, he was lying on his belly again. His snores were softer and wetter now, as if his throat was clotted with mucus. I pulled my sleeping bag up over his long legs. I had no clue how long he’d be out. In his drunken state, I wasn’t about to take him to Maine Med unless it was to drop him at the detox ward.
I needed a shower and a change of clothes. I lugged my duffel bag to the upstairs bathroom. Slowly, I peeled off the bandages and was relieved that the cuts showed signs of healing. I ran the faucet in the claw-foot tub until the water was piping hot. Then I twisted the handles and stepped inside.
The only shampoo I could find smelled of fake wild berries. The body wash was even fruitier, but I lathered myself up as much as possible, eager to strip away days of perspiration and grime. My knotted muscles eased under the heat of the showerhead.
After I was done, I had to run a hand towel across the fogged mirror to see my reflection again. I didn’t see a need to apply fresh dressings to the scabs on my face. Remembering what Kathy had said about my looking like a younger version of my father, I decided to shave off my beard.
I was rooting around for a razor when I heard the sound of an engine roar to life outside the bathroom window. The glass was misted, but after I ran my palm across it, I saw Kathy’s personal vehicle, the Nissan Xterra, backing away from the hay barn. I’d been so concerned about securing the keys to the Cutlass and the patrol truck that I’d forgotten all about the SUV.
Behind the wheel was Kurt.
24
As quickly as I could, I put on clean clothes and rushed downstairs. Outside, the clouds seemed thinner, gauzier—the way they do when they gather around a mountaintop. I unlocked Kurt’s Cutlass and was greeted with the smell of stale beer and Swisher Sweets cigars. He’d tried but failed to cover up the stench with one of those evergreen-shaped air fresheners. The combination of odors was noxious.
I turned the key in the ignition, and the engine made a harsh straining noise. Eventually, the rods and pistons began to churn. I backed the sedan past my Bronco and swung the wheel sharply until I was facing forward. Then I mashed the gas pedal and took off down the gravel drive in the direction of Camden.
There was no doubt in my mind where Kurt was headed. The articles in the newspaper had set off his drunken outburst. If Kurt Eklund showed up at the Gammons’ door, he would be lucky if they only called the police.
Below the ridge, the road plunged into a small village that was just a cluster of old houses and a general store with a FOR SALE sign behind the dusty window. I crossed a bridge above a swollen river and then began to climb again through rolling hills that were mint green with new leaves. Most of the country had been cleared for grazing in the eighteenth century and then allowed to go back to forest after the original families had sold off their land. There were still a few hay fields teeming with dandelions, violets, and wildflowers whose names I did not know. But the people who owned the farmhouses now seemed to have little interest in tending fields or raising livestock. Occasionally, you might see a place that had a vegetable plot in the yard or a small pasture with a single horse in residence. But those homesteads were the exceptions.
Soon I found myself passing between humpbacked mountains. On either side of the road were cliffs too steep to climb, and dark rows of evergreens staggered along the ridgelines. Sometimes I could see the mountaintops, and sometimes the clouds would drift in suddenly, hiding the rocky summits from view. I was driving through the Camden Hills.
Kurt’s Cutlass was the most sluggish vehicle I’d ever driven. I had to push the pedal to the floor when I came to the steeper grades. Not once did I catch sight of the Xterra.
After twenty minutes, I arrived at the turn that led to the Gammon estate. There were stone pillars at the bottom of the paved drive with black ribbons tied to the lampposts as symbols of mourning. The normally locked gates were standing open. I couldn’t imagine how Kurt had managed to talk his way onto the property.
I drove through the open gates without permission and climbed a quarter mile through landscaped fields until I could see the slate roof of the house. I tried to suppress a sense of dread as I rounded the last corner, but the Xterra was nowhere in sight. If Eklund wasn’t here, where had he gone?
I became conscious of my own uninvited presence on the estate. If James glanced out the window and spotted the broken-down Cutlass I was driving, I fully expected him to summon the entire Camden police force, along with the state police SWAT team. My best course of action was to turn around as discreetly as possible. With luck, the Gammons were having a late breakfast in the back of the house and would never know I had been there.
My hopes were dashed before I’d even managed to throw the gearshift into reverse. The front door opened and James Gammon stepped onto the porch. He wasn’t toting a shotgun, but he was wearing an expensive-looking outfit straight out of the Orvis hunting catalog: whipcord trousers, a plaid tattersall shirt, and a matching a quilted vest. The clothes gave him the appearance of the squire of a manor in the Scottish Lowlands.
I put the Cutlass into park while he came striding across the driveway. His forehead was furrowed, his chest was thrust forward, and both hands were clenched into fists. The automatic window didn’t work when I pushed the button, so I had to open the door and poke my head up.
“Who are you? What are you doing here?” His voice was a rasp, as if he’d recently shouted himself hoarse.
“Mr. Gammon?” I said, giving him the warmest smile I could manage. “It’s Mike Bowditch.”
“Who?”
“Jimmy’s friend. You had me over to hunt pheasants a few years ago, before he went to Afghanistan.”
“The game warden?”
“Not anymore,” I
said.
“What do you want?” His dismissive tone suggested that my former occupation had tainted me and that I was not to be trusted.
“I wanted to extend my condolences.” The lie was the best I could do.
He pushed a hand through his thick auburn hair. “Are you insane?”
“Excuse me?”
“You didn’t anticipate that this would be awkward? One of your former colleagues just murdered our son. I’m trying to understand your thought process. You clearly lack a sense of propriety.”
I’d been told that before. “I didn’t mean to cause offense. I considered Jimmy to be a friend.”
“Well, fine, then,” he said. “Now you can take your junk car and clear off my property.”
“James?” Lyla Gammon had appeared on the porch. She was dressed in her habitual riding clothes. “Who is that you’re speaking with?”
“No one. A friend of Jimmy’s.”
“Please invite the young man inside.”
He turned his head. “Lyla?”
“Please, James.”
Like his son, the elder Gammon was a four-season runner, and he had the energy and stride of a man who regularly covered long distances. He approached his wife and whispered something to her, a harsh look on his face. She whispered something back and darted her eyes in my direction, causing her husband to give me the once-over again. Their discussion was heated and went back and forth for the better part of a minute.
“Come inside,” he said, his voice overloud for the distance.
I closed the door of the Cutlass and followed the Gammons into their haunted house.
* * *
Our footsteps echoed off the hard granite tiles.
The couple led me into a spacious room with walls of reclaimed barn wood, a black chandelier, and linen curtains that billowed across the floor every time a gust of wind found its way through the patio doors. With a thrust of his hand, James indicated I should seat myself in a leather club chair. Before me was a rough-hewn table on which were arranged an antique set of nine pins and a bowling ball I imagined Rip van Winkle might have used. Except for a vase of yellow forsythia, there wasn’t a single decorative touch I would have identified as feminine. I half-expected a uniformed servant to appear from the shadows to offer me a glass of scotch and my choice of Cuban cigars.
Lyla asked if I wanted tea.
“Only if you’re having some,” I said.
Her face was pale and drawn. She had unsuccessfully applied extra makeup to brighten her complexion and hide the bags beneath her eyes. “Do you have a preference?”
“Bring in a pot of Earl Grey,” James said before I could answer.
After his wife had disappeared into the kitchen, James Gammon placed his hands on his legs, gripping his kneecaps the way a king grips the arms of his throne. His eyes were almost the same auburn color as his recently trimmed hair. I could smell his sandalwood aftershave from across the room.
Compared to him, I must have looked like a down-on-his-luck hitchhiker. My hair was still wet along my neck. My commando sweater was fraying, there were oil spots on my tin-cloth pants, and my Bean boots were still dirty, despite my efforts to scrape away the layers of accumulated mud on the mat.
“I want you to know that I’m only humoring her,” he said. “She’s suffered a horrible shock, and it is my duty as her husband to offer her whatever support she needs.”
“I understand.”
One side of his mouth curled, suggesting he disbelieved me. “So I take it you were let go from the service since we last met.”
“No, sir. I left of my own free will.”
“You don’t seem the better for the decision. What happened to your face?”
Reflexively, I touched the small cuts along my cheekbone. “I was shot by the same person who attacked Sergeant Frost.”
He pressed his spine against the leather sofa and tilted his neck back as if to see me from a better vantage. “You were at her house that night?”
“Yes, sir. I returned fire on the assailant and then performed first aid on Sergeant Frost until the ambulance arrived.”
“You returned fire? You said you’d left the Warden Service.”
“I have a permit to carry a concealed weapon.”
His eyes narrowed. “I hope you’re not wearing a firearm in my house.”
The handle of the revolver jutted against my tailbone when I shifted my position in the chair. “No, sir.”
He rubbed away some moisture that had formed under his nose and around his thin lips. “Did you get a glimpse of the man who shot Sergeant Frost?”
“I’m working with state police to identify him.”
I had no idea why I was lying to the grieving man. I tried to recall that I had liked James Gammon once, but now I could see the way his nostrils flared every time I mentioned Kathy’s name. His hatred for my injured friend brought out an irrational meanness in me.
He lifted his chin toward the mantel above the fireplace. A framed portrait of Jimmy in his pixelated army combat uniform occupied a place of prominence. It was a different picture from the one in the newspaper. His grin had become a hard white grimace, and his dark eyes seemed empty of all emotion. I found it odd that his parents had chosen to remember their bighearted son this way.
“Did Sergeant Frost tell you about the night she and the other woman killed Jimmy?” Gammon asked.
“No, sir,” I said, trying not to rise to the bait. “She’s not permitted to talk about a use-of-force incident while an investigation is under way. She also knows that disclosing information would put me in line to give a deposition when you bring a civil suit against her.”
“I could still depose you.” He smiled without showing his teeth. “The assumption that I’m bringing a civil suit presupposes that she and the other one won’t be found criminally liable. That’s a fair assumption, unfortunately.”
I remained silent.
He returned his hands to his knees. “Do you want to hear the statistics? They’re really quite fascinating. Since 1990, Maine police have fired on one hundred and one people, many of them with mental-health, drug, or alcohol problems. And in every case, the attorney general found the use of force to be justified. Every case! What do you make of those numbers?”
My mouth had gone dry. “That Maine law-enforcement officers are well trained to deal with those situations.”
“Were you well trained in crisis intervention when you were a game warden?”
My answer didn’t matter, because Gammon kept on talking. “The Maine State Police deals with more of these incidents than any other agency. Do you know how many of their two hundred patrol officers they have sent to crisis-intervention training? Fourteen.”
“I’m sure the situation is being remedied,” I said with no great confidence.
“The irony is that Jimmy was a police officer himself. He was betrayed by the system he believed in. I’ve devoted my life to the law, and I’ve always been on the side of the good guys. Tell me who the good guys are here, because I’d very much like to know.”
I hadn’t noticed Lyla Gammon enter the dining room, but then her husband shifted his gaze from my face. You never would have noticed that she was shaking unless you heard the rattling of the teacups on the tray she was carrying. When she and I made eye contact, she forced her lips into a tight smile and continued into the living room. She set the tea tray down on the table and poured me a cup from the copper kettle.
“I didn’t ask what you liked with your tea, so I brought everything,” she said in a soft southern accent I’d forgotten that she had.
“Thank you.”
I accepted the cup and splashed some cream into it, then added two spoonfuls of sugar. I disliked tea, especially Earl Grey, but I smiled and took a sip. It tasted like a Turkish spice bazaar.
Lyla Gammon seated herself on the sofa across from me, her artificial smile still fixed in place as if with glue. Neither she nor her husband moved to touch the kettle
. Instead, they both watched me drink from my cup. He was open in his disdain. Her expression, I found harder to decode. There was the barely contained anguish, the forced friendliness, but also a certain dullness in her eyes that suggested prescription medication.
After two minutes of silent observation, I was ready to thank them for their hospitality and excuse myself. I was prepared to leave without ever learning why they’d invited me inside, when Lyla blurted, “Tell us about Jimmy!”
I set my china cup down on the saucer. “We knew each other for only a short period of time.”
“Yes, but you knew him beforehand.”
“Beforehand?”
“You knew him when he was still Jimmy. The men from his unit, they all call him Jim. But that wasn’t his name. What is it that you remember about Jimmy?” She seemed sort of moony.
I was having trouble guessing what she was after. I noticed that her husband reached for her hand.
“Well,” I said. “I remember how much he loved his dog.”
I must have glanced around for some sign of the spaniel. “Winnie is staying with friends,” she said. “We think it’s easier for him for the time being.”
Easier for the dog?
“I guess what I remember most about Jimmy was his smile,” I said. “Everything seemed to make him so happy. I’m not a particularly joyful person myself.”
Lyla Gammon jerked her head around toward her husband. “That’s exactly the word I have been looking for. Joyful. Jimmy was a joyful person.” She turned those shrunken pupils on me. “It means so much for us to hear from his friends. It helps us to hold on to him, you see. Even beforehand, we felt like he was slipping away from us.”
James Gammon tightened his grip on her hand. “Lyla, I’m not sure this is helpful.”
“No, but it is.” Her dreamy gaze was still focused on mine. “You didn’t see him after he came back from from the war, did you, Michael?”
“I hadn’t heard that he was home. If I had, I would have visited. I’m very sorry that I never got to see him again.”
“Don’t be! It’s better that you didn’t come here. People keep saying that he died in the barn, but he didn’t. Jimmy died over there in Afghanistan.”