Widowmaker

by Paul Doiron

  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.’”

  Amber reached for her lighter again and her pack of Capri cigarettes.

  “Did you end up going out to Don Foss’s place?” she asked, seemingly out of nowhere.

  “I did.”

  “That self-righteous asshole. I don’t trust him, and neither did Adam. What kind of person takes in sex offenders like stray puppies, then works them for slave wages? There’s something weird about that man. Holier-than-thou, my ass.”

  The tobacco fumes swirling around the room had begun to make me light-headed.

  “Maybe Foss really does believe in redemption,” I said.

  “Adam hated living there. Said it made him feel even worse about himself, sleeping in the same bunkhouse with actual perverts. There was one guy who had done twenty years for raping a toddler. And another guy who used to be a wrestling coach. He’d molested dozens of boys. You know what Adam said to me? He said, ‘Mom, someone should take a match to this place and burn it to the ground.’”

  I remembered what Davdison had told me about Adam’s having a black eye.

  “Did Adam mention anyone in particular to you?” I asked. “Anyone he was afraid of at Foss’s?”

  “He said prison burned the fear out of him. It was true, I think. How can you be afraid if you don’t care if you live or die?”

  “Maybe fear is the wrong word, then. Did he have any enemies?”

  When she laughed, she opened her mouth wide, revealing her missing molar. “My son didn’t have anything but enemies!” She leaned her head back to study the smoke-stained ceiling. “What does it matter? It’s too late anyway.”

  “We don’t know that.”

  “It’s too late,” she repeated. “Adam is dead. I’m his mother, and we’ve got a special connection. As soon as I heard the news tonight about the truck, I felt the knife go through my heart. He’s dead, and I’m done.”

  I wanted to shake her. “Amber, you asked me to help you find Adam, and that’s what I’m still trying to do. I’m not giving up hope yet, and you shouldn’t, either.”

  “What do you care?”

  “I care because he’s my brother.” I rose to my feet and stood over her limp body. “If you’re telling the truth.”

  She measured me with her eyes, all the way from head to toe. Then she stubbed out the cigarette and climbed awkwardly to her feet. “Do you want to see his room? Come on, I’ll show it to you.”

  19

  “I had to sell my old condo to pay for Adam’s lawyer,” she said, leading me down a darkened hall. “That’s how I ended up in this dump.”

  She opened a door at the end and turned on a light inside.

  The room obviously belonged to a teenage boy with two absolute passions: deer hunting and ski racing. The bed was covered with a camouflage-patterned comforter, which matched the drapes. Three mounted deer heads stared down from the wall, their real eyes having been replaced with obsidian marbles. A dozen ski medals hung from the antlers. Ski posters covered every other inch of the walls.

  “I thought he was going to stay here,” she said, letting her arms fall slack. “I fixed it up just like his old one. Then the neighbors heard he was coming and complained to the landlord, and that was that.”

  “Do you mind if I look around?” I suspected she would be receiving a similar request from Detective Clegg very soon.

  “Knock yourself out.”

  On the bureau I found two framed photographs. One showed a younger Adam and Amber with a man I assumed to be A. J. Langstrom. It must have been taken after one of the little boy’s first ski victories, because he was holding a gold medal. A.J. was big and blond and blocky and looked nothing like Adam. Nor was he smiling.

  The second, newer photo showed a dozen celebrating skiers posed atop a mountain in various stages of undress. Adam was in the forefront, shirtless, his abdominal muscles bulging, his strong arms raised triumphantly above his head, holding two bottles of beer. Two girls lay in the snow at his feet in their sports bras, arms curled around his ski boots, posing like harem slaves. Josh Davidson hung in the back. He had kept his shirt on and was staring at something beyond the camera’s range, as if he had caught sight of a potential threat: an adult headed their way to break up the party.

  “I’m surprised he kept this picture,” I said, handing the photograph to Amber.

  “Why?”

  “Because it has Josh in it.”

  “Josh is in most of the photos Adam has from school. I told you they were best friends.”

  “What about Alexa?” I asked.

  Her mouth twisted. “What about her?”

  “Did Adam keep any pictures of her?”

  “Of course not!” she said. “That bitch ruined our lives.”

  But I noticed that her eyes had darted toward a stack of magazines beside the bed.

  I made my way along the wall of deer mounts, pretending to inspect them. Each had a more impressive rack than the next. Pulsifer had told me Adam was a natural-born deer slayer.

  Just like my father.

  Just like our father, I thought, correcting myself.

  Maybe it was having seen the gore-drenched truck, but something had changed for me over the past twenty-four hours. My absolute certainty that Adam Langstrom couldn’t be my half brother had steadily eroded until
it had become a real possibility. Now it seemed closer to a likelihood. I was almost, but not fully, convinced. What else did I need to find before I could accept Amber’s claim as the truth?

  When I got to the stack of magazines, I knelt down and shuffled through them. Under the ski mags, I found a Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue that was four years old. Convicted sex offenders in Maine are prohibited from possessing pornography. Did bikini shots qualify? There was something sad and touching about the thought of Amber saving this magazine for her son’s return.

  I found the yearbook at the bottom of the pile. The cover was blue and silver, the colors of the Alpine Sports Academy. One page was dog-eared. I turned to it and came upon Adam Langstrom’s senior portrait. He had never looked more handsome than he did in his blazer and tie, with his thick hair expertly cut and his eyes as blue as sea glass. Other pictures of him—racing downhill through the gates, laughing in a pool with friends—surrounded the posed photograph. The quote beneath his list of athletic accomplishments read: “Waking up is the second hardest thing in the morning.”

  My brother, the philosopher.

  Amber had begun to cry. “That yearbook came out a week before he was arrested. His missed his final exams, so no diploma. I told him he should get his GED in jail, but he didn’t see the point.”

  I paged through the yearbook until I found the section devoted to the underclassmen. Alexa Davidson was with the other freshmen. She resembled her brother—same wavy hair, big eyes, and an olive complexion. Her teeth were perfect. Her lips were very full; if she had been an adult, they would be described as sensuous. But you could see she was just a kid here.

  “I still can’t believe he threw everything away for that,” Amber said with venom.

  “She was pretty,” I said, as if speaking of someone dead.

  “His other girlfriends were prettier.”

  I found another picture in the yearbook of Alexa and her brother at a race. They were wearing helmets, dressed in skintight ski suits, and had their arms around each other’s shoulders. She was beaming. He looked seasick. I flipped back to Josh’s senior page and found his portrait. Unlike all the others, it had been taken in black and white, giving it a somber, old-fashioned look that might have been intended to be ironic. His quote: “Victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.” It was a strange sentiment coming from a student about to graduate from a school devoted to competitive athletics.