“You understand why I’m taking a personal interest in this thing.”
“Luke and his brother don’t have half a brain between them.”
Another old salt piped up from the shadows. “I know Tim Winters. Never met that son, though. Heard about him enough.”
“What did you hear?”
“How he couldn’t keep a job or move out. Every week Tim had a new complaint about the boy. The day my son received a Bronze Star—everyone was buying me drinks at the range—Winters was so sour, I asked him what his problem was. He said he envied me, having a son who was a hero.”
“Sounds like my old man, may he rot in peace,” said one of the others. “Where did you say this Winters works again?”
“The Narraguagus Sporting Club over on Route 9,” said the old salt.
“Never saw the point in paying to shoot a gun when I can practice on gulls all day,” said the other lobsterman. “What about you, Twelve-gauge? You ever shot at that range? Oh, that’s right. You and firearms don’t get along so good.”
The other men broke into rough laughter.
“Come on, Twelve-gauge,” one of them said, “show the warden.”
Gaynor reached down the length of his pants to his knee. “The only reason I’m doing this, you understand, is to shut up these sons of whores.”
The lobsterman removed his rubber boot, revealing a stockinged foot that seemed somehow wrong in shape. He rolled down the sock to show the prosthetic that helped him to walk in lieu of his missing toes.
“My old man always said I ought to have taken a hunter safety course before I went chasing deer with a twelve-gauge shotgun,” he said with a stained smile.
I ate my bag lunch on the raised causeway outside Machias. Locals called it “the Dike.” During the summer, antiques vendors, basket weavers, even a doughnut maker, set up a little market there along Route 1. Tourists drifted from booth to booth. The festivity of the scene reminded me, strangely enough, of the events the prior morning in Roque Harbor, when the entire town came out to watch the recovery of a drowned body.
My cell phone rang as I was inspecting my teeth in the rearview mirror.
I didn’t recognize the voice. “You don’t know me, but I was shooting at the Narraguagus Sporting Club yesterday afternoon. My name is Pete Rawson.”
The dapper pistolero.
“What can I do for you, Mr. Rawson?”
“I’m outside the gate now. I decided to drive over here because I thought there was a chance that Tim might have come back to work. He hangs out at the club constantly and, well, I wanted to give him my condolences.”
“So what’s wrong?”
“When I got here, I found the gate locked. The thing is, Tim has a particular way of wrapping the chain and locking the padlock to keep someone from driving through the gate. We had a break-in a couple of years ago and some guns were stolen. The thieves dragged away an entire gun safe.”
Now that Rawson mentioned it, I remembered the care Winters had taken securing the gate behind us.
“Doesn’t anyone else have a key?”
“Just Bill Day, but he’s off in Yellowstone. I’m worried about Tim.”
He didn’t need to say more than that.
“Just stay outside the gate until I get there.”
I didn’t really believe that an anguished Tim Winters had returned to the shooting range to take his own life. More likely he had driven there—possibly drunk—because he had nowhere else to go. In his impaired state, he had probably failed to lock the gate behind him in his usual meticulous fashion. And yet, I couldn’t be certain about any of these suppositions.
I started the engine, flipped on my blue lights, and sped off in the direction of the Narraguagus Sporting Club.
Twenty minutes later, I found Peter Rawson standing along the road outside the shooting range: a trim, silver-coiffed man wearing a black polo and black slacks. I skidded to a dusty halt behind his SUV.
“Show me the lock and chain,” I said.
Even from a distance, I could see how lazily the gate had been secured.
Rawson kept up a running monologue while I made my examination. “I was sad to hear about Tommy. He worked for me for a while—it was a favor to Tim—but I couldn’t keep him on. His registers never added up at shift’s end. And he was inappropriate with some of my female customers.”
I glanced up. “Where did he work for you?”
“I own some hardware stores. Tommy worked in my Ellsworth location.”
“You don’t happen to sell honey buckets?”
“Yes. Why?”
Because Rawson’s store was another possible point of connection between Tommy and Dylan LeBlanc. It offered an explanation why the warden imposter had known to look for the drugs under Alvin Payne’s bucket latrine when he learned of its existence. Tommy might very well have sold the portable toilet to the smuggler himself.
I returned to my truck, removed my tactical shotgun from behind the seat, and locked the doors.
“What’s with the firepower?” Rawson asked.
“Suicidal people can be unpredictable.”
“The sad thing is Tim seemed to be happier lately, almost giddy at times. After all the bad luck he’s had in his life. The fall he took at the mill really did a job on his spine and pelvis. He was in traction for months. When he came to work here, you could see the pain it caused him to take even a few steps. Then Karen died, of course.”
“What do you mean ‘giddy’?”
“He’s always been so intense. Never cracked a smile. Lately, though, he’s been so mellow. I swear I heard him giggle the other day.”
Sudden weight loss, constricted pupils, violent mood swings.
I vaulted the gate. “Wait here!”
The driveway down to the shooting range was lined with trees. I kept stepping from patches of light into shadow, and back again. I was hot, then cold, then hot until finally the sun disappeared
