Widowmaker

by Paul Doiron

  “I don’t suppose you have any coffee,” I said.

  “We have cocoa.”

  “That’ll work.”

  The ski patrollers must have assumed I needed a minute or two to warm up. The truth was, I didn’t know how forthcoming Josh Davidson was going to be with me. And silence can be a useful tool when you’re conducting an interrogation. I removed my gloves finger by finger and set them on the table.

  Kat brought over a thermos and set it in front of me. “So what can we do for you?” she asked again, this time with less friendliness.

  The main room included a kitchenette and table, a two-way radio, and a wall of stormproof windows overlooking the trails below. There were orange trail makers piled in the corners and stacks of sleds for transporting crash victims down to the bottom of the mountain.

  I took a sip of the hot chocolate. “Is there anywhere Josh and I can talk in private?”

  The young man blinked. “What? Why?”

  “Josh is on duty here,” Kat said. “We might get a call at any minute.”

  “It’s about Adam Langstrom,” I said.

  The mention of the name caused Kat to scowl. “What’s going on here, Josh?”

  “Adam skipped out on his probation,” he said. “Supposedly, I was the last to see him.”

  “There’s a court order keeping him off the mountain. Why didn’t you call security?”

  “Because it happened two weeks ago. We just ran into each other in the parking lot of the Snow Bowl.”

  Kat looked puzzled. “Two weeks ago? This couldn’t have waited until the end of Josh’s shift?”

  “I’m afraid not.” I took another sip of cocoa. “Adam’s probation officer has her hands full with other cases. I told her I was going to be in the area and that I would make some informal inquiries on her behalf. It would probably be better if Josh and I spoke privately.”

  “Well, the only other room is the toilet,” Kat said.

  “I have an idea,” I said, rising to my feet. “Elderoy, do you mind if Josh and I talk in your snowcat?”

  Elderoy had begun to look anxious. He stroked the rabbit-fur lining of his hat the way a nervous person might pet a cat. “That’s a brand-new machine.”

  “I promise not to touch anything.”

  “In that case, you’re going to freeze your asses off.”

  “I’ll only touch the heater.”

  After a moment, Elderoy reached into his snowmobile suit. He pressed the keys into my open palm, as if afraid I might drop them.

  Davidson smiled nervously around the room. “Is this really necessary? Can’t we just grab a beer after my shift?”

  “The sooner we talk, the sooner Elderoy and I can get going,” I said.

  “Just answer the warden’s questions, Josh,” said Kat.

  “OK.”

  As I slid my fingers back into my gloves, I remembered what Elderoy had told me at the bottom of the mountain. Crashing a groomer was how my father had gotten fired from Widowmaker all those years ago. No wonder the old dude was nervous about handing me the keys to his new ride.

  * * *

  It couldn’t have taken more than two minutes to cross the distance from the patrol shack to the PistenBully, but it was time enough to flash-freeze my face again.

  Davidson climbed into the passenger seat beside me. I managed to start the engine but had trouble seeing the temperature controls. After a moment, Josh reached over and hit the button to blast the blower.

  “I still don’t understand why you had to come all the way up here,” he said. “You could have just waited for my shift to end. You could have waited at the bottom.”

  The rime ice that had formed on the windshield—the condensation that had frozen while we were inside—was already beginning to melt.

  “You want to know the truth?” I said.

  “Yeah.”

  “I wanted to take a ride in a snowcat,” I told him. “My dad used to work at Widowmaker when I was a kid. He drove one of the old Tuckers. I remember him taking me up the mountain in that hunk of junk. Scariest night of my life. This PistenBully is pretty sweet, though. It’s still got that new groomer smell.”

  Davidson leaned away from me with a puzzled look, as if he was considering the possibility that I might not be a game warden after all, but some crazed impostor. The haphazard nature of our conversation was clearly unnerving him, just as I had intended.

  “So you’re from out west,” I said. “Seattle, right?”

  “Vail, too.”

  “How did you and your sister end up at the Alpine Sports Academy?”

  “My dad went to school here. He raced in the 1988 Olympics in Calgary. Then he blew out his knee.” He tried humoring me to hurry things along. “Elderoy said you’re a game warden. You must know Gary Pulsifer.”

  “I know Gary all right.”

  “I worked some searches with him—seems like a class act.”

  It was not the description I would have chosen.

  “So if you’re a warden, and you’re looking for Adam, does that mean you think he might be lost in the woods somewhere?”

  “No.”

  Trying to follow my train of thought had made Davidson confused, which was just what I had hoped. “Did you bust him for poaching or something?”

  “Was Adam a poacher?”

  “Not that I know of.” He couldn’t stop himself from smiling. “But who knows? He liked causing trouble, seeing what he could get away with.”

  “Including with girls?”

  “What are you getting at?”

  “Like I said, I’m just making some inquiries because his probation officer has her hands full. You never know what information might be useful in finding someone.”

  He rubbed his chin and nodded, but he didn’t seem entirely convinced. “What is it you want to know?”

  “Tell me about the fight.”

  “The fight?”

  “You confronted Adam when you found out he’d been having sex with Alexa. You two got into it.”

  Davidson touched the corner of his eye. “He broke my eye socket. My orbital bone.”

  “And that was how the school found out?”

  He knocked his head back against the window of the cockpit so hard, I could hear it. “The nurse asked me what happened, and I was so pissed off, I said some things I shouldn’t have. The next thing I knew, the headmaster was there, asking me all these questions, and a detective showed up, and I got freaked out.”

  “What did you tell them?”

  “That I was mad at Adam because he was my friend, and he’d been banging my little sister.”

  I could imagine what had happened next. The detective would have gotten the parents’ permission to confiscate Alexa’s phone, and they would have found texts (almost certainly lewd) and photographs (even worse). Then, after they’d managed to convince Alexa to cooperate, the cops would have orchestrated a pretext call. It was a recorded conversation between the boy and the girl to get him to admit what he’d done. A simple “I’m sorry” was all it took to send people to prison for statutory rape.

  “I would have been pissed if someone had raped my little sister,” I said.

  “Yeah, but it wasn’t rape. I don’t know what the right word for it is, but it wasn’t rape. They’d been having sex for a month. Alexa wasn’t even a virgin when they started going out.”

  Davidson had begun to perspire from the heat inside the cockpit.

  “It’s still against the law,” I said. “You did the right thing by coming forward.”

  “But I didn’t know what was going to happen to him!” He let out a groan, as if overcome with nausea. “If I’d just made up some story about how I’d broken that bone, Adam would have moved on to some new girl, and Alexa would have been sad for a while. But she’s always had her skiing to focus on anyway. Just talk to my dad for two minutes, and he’ll tell you who’s the champion skier in the family. Alexa just made the U.S. Ski Team. And here I am working on the Wi
dowmaker ski patrol, trying to figure out what to do with my life.”

  Davidson really did seem to be a sensitive, emotional kid. Not at all like other college athletes I had known. I had a hard time believing it had been his idea to attend ASA.

  “Did you end up testifying at the trial?” I asked.

  “They didn’t need me,” he said. “My dad got Alexa to do it. He convinced her, like he always does. Plus, the police had that phone recording, and some dick pics Adam had sent her. They didn’t need me to testify. I never even went to the courthouse. I was too ashamed to look my friend in the eye.”

  “You still consider him your friend?”

  He laughed bitterly. “I’m not sure the feeling’s mutual.”

  “Adam’s mom said you kept in touch with him in prison.”

  “I sent him some letters, apologizing for what happened. But I never heard from him until after he’d gotten out. That was a couple of weeks ago. He was living at some kind of logging camp over in Kennebago with a bunch of other— It sounded horrible. The guy who ran the place was a slave driver, Adam said. He asked if I could meet him at the Snow Bowl. That’s the bowling alley in Bigelow.”

  “When was this, exactly?”

  “Two weeks ago Thursday,” he said, stroking his lips with his long fingers. “He was waiting for me in the lot. It kind of spooked me, because I didn’t know how angry he was going to be.”

  “Were you scared of him?”

  “Fuck yeah! He’d just gotten out of prison. I almost didn’t recognize him. Someone had bitten off part of his ear! His hair was real long, and he was bigger than before he went inside. The guy was fucking jacked.”

  Prisoners in Maine no longer had access to barbells or pull-up bars, but some of them compensated by maxing out on body-weight exercises in their cells. A friend of mine named Billy Cronk, who was serving out a manslaughter sentence in the Maine State Prison, had told me that plenty of ex-cons were still coming out of the joint stronger than before they’d gone in. Meaner, too.

  “So what happened that night?” I asked.

  “He asked me for some money,” Josh said. “I only had a twenty on me, but he asked if I could use the ATM inside the bowling alley. I took out the max—three hundred bucks—and I gave it to him. Then he drove off in a truck I didn’t recognize.”

  “Do you remember what kind of truck it was?”

  “An old Ford, maybe. Or a Chevy. I don’t know trucks. I am pretty sure he was all alone, though.” He let out another groan. “I was relieved after he’d gone.”

  “Did he threaten you?”

  “No. But—”

  “But what?”

  “He wasn’t very talkative. Not like the old Adam at all. I used to be his sidekick. I’ve always been someone’s sidekick, I guess. But he was really cold and quiet. I asked if I could buy him a beer, and he said he wasn’t allowed to go to bars or drink alcohol as a condition of his release. He said there was a long list of things he would never be able to do again. He said I should appreciate all the privileges I had in my life.” He sat forward, sweating, with a strained look on his face. “There was one other thing, too.”

  “What?”

  “He had a black eye. It made me wonder about the guy who’d given it to him.”

  I considered my next question carefully. “Did he say anything or do anything that made you think he might—”

  “Kill himself? Yeah, I’ve wondered about it since that night. It was the reason I called his mom when I heard he’d run off. I was worried about him. But why would he have needed money if he was just going to shoot himself?”

  That was an excellent question. “Have you told any of this to the police?”

  He sat forward. “I’m telling you.”

  Earlier that morning, I had promised myself that I wouldn’t cross any lines. But now I possessed information that Shaylene Hawken, at least, should know about. How the hell was I going to explain to Adam’s PO how I had come by it?

  Informal inquiry, my ass.

  * * *

  Elderoy cranked up the music even louder than before on the ride down. He seemed in no mood to talk. Not that I cared particularly—I needed time to think.

  I hadn’t expected to see Davidson suffering—literally suffering—from guilt. But his emotions had seemed heartfelt. It always boggled my mind that people could be so charitable to those who had hurt them.

  That Adam had needed money was no surprise at all. What were the economic prospects of a convicted sex offender up here? Not bright, I was certain. Why not scrape together some cash and make a break for a better life?

  My brother must have known he would be caught; must have realized that he was facing one of only two possible futures—prison or death.

  My brother.

  Did I keep repeating that word because I wanted to believe it or because I didn’t want to believe it? All I knew was that Adam Langstrom—whoever he was—had awakened a long-dormant sense of dread in me. Not since my father fired those shots into a police car had I felt such a fear of the truth.

  My wounded arm jostled the center console as Elderoy took a couple of whacks with his plow at a drift that offended his sense of symmetry.

  The week could have been worse, I realized. Carrie Michaud could have aimed for the jugular.

  At the bottom of the mountain, Elderoy remained belted in and kept Bob Marley blasting and the engine running. He looked at me through his eyelashes and muttered something I couldn’t hear over the noise.

  “What?”

  He scratched his muttonchops. Then he snapped off the music.

  “You got me to drive you up there under false pretenses,” he said.

  “How do you figure that?”

  “You’re looking to arrest that Langstrom kid if you find him. Admit it.”

  Until that moment, I had never considered the question. If I did manage to locate my fugitive so-called brother—and was unable to convince him to surrender—what would I do?

  I got out of the vehicle without answering my chauffeur and made my way through the thickening snow to the base lodge.

  13

  Amber was certain to press me for information. But there were details about my conversation with Josh Davidson that I preferred to keep to myself—at least until I could follow up elsewhere. Adam’s black eye, for instance.

  I scanned the Sluiceway from the doorway but didn’t spot her circulating among the tables. The lunchtime tide had ebbed, but the three curious characters I had seen earlier—what had the bartender called them, the Night Watchmen?—were still hunched over their popcorn and beer. The British-looking fellow caught sight of me and said something to the others, who all looked my way again with the same mix of amusement and interest, as if I were the butt of some private joke among them.

  The inky-haired bartender had her back to me and was watching the television screen above the luminous liquor bottles. The Weather Channel was showing a map with a deep trough of snow moving toward Maine. It looked like it had already touched the Clayton Lake area, where Stacey was flying her moose survey. I needed to come clean with her about what had really happened with Carrie Michaud. Every hour I delayed telling Stacey the truth just made it worse.

  The cold had parched my throat. I let out a dry cough.

  The bartender met my eyes in the mirror. “You’re back.”

  “I am.”

  She braced her arms wide atop the bar. “You want another coffee, or are you ready for a beer?”

  “Water. Is Amber still around?”

  The grin melted away. “She got a phone call a few minutes ago and hurried out of here without telling Gerald. I think she’s pretty much fired at this point.”

  The call must have involved Adam, I thought. I couldn’t think what else would have lighted such a fire under her.

  “Do you know who she spoke with or where she was going?” I asked.

  “Amber and I aren’t exactly friends.” She picked up a clean dishrag and began playing
with it as she studied me. “What’s your name, anyway?”

  “Mike.”

  She looked at me with a sort of pity in her eyes. “Do you really need me to tell you that Amber is bad news, Mike?”

  “Bad in what way?”

  “How many ways do you require?”

  I turned my back to the bar, leaned on the rail, and checked my phone for messages. Nothing at all from Amber. Somehow her unexplained departure seemed fitting. She had sent me urgently up the mountain and then forgotten I existed. Pulsifer had warned me about her selfishness.

  Maybe the time had come to end my fool’s errand and return home before the snow made the road through the mountain pass even more treacherous.

  Someone loomed beside me. “Sir?”

  I looked up into the face of a man in a blue uniform. At first, I assumed he must be a police officer. He was wearing a gun belt with a holstered .45 and pouches for handcuffs, a flashlight—all the usual tools of my trade. He had a badge, too: Franklin County Sheriff’s Department. But the cap on his head was emblazoned with the trademark Widowmaker logo. Was he a cop, a security guard, or what?

  “Yes?” I said.

  “Can I ask you a couple of questions real quick?” It was the same verbiage I had been taught to use whenever I began a conversation with a potential suspect that was serious and not likely to be quick.

  “What about?”

  The officer was a tall man in his early twenties with a nondescript face I might have had trouble describing to a sketch artist: dull brown eyes, mousy hair, lips on the thin side, a few moles on his pale neck. He wasn’t overweight, exactly, or at least not obese, but he seemed to carry an extra layer of fat over his entire body the way seals do. It made him appear soft, but I had a sense that the muscles were solid under that coating of blubber.

  “Were you in this bar an hour ago?” he asked.

  “Yes, I was.”

  “We had a report of a man matching your description having an altercation with a kid.”

  “The ‘kid’ was old enough to drink. Who ‘reported’ this altercation?”

  “That’s not important. Can you come with me, please?”