Being so pasty, Pegg was incapable of hiding his agitation. The slightest anxiety caused his facial capillaries to flush.
“This better be on the level.”
As soon as he was gone, Billy said, without a hint of irony, “I like your shirt.”
I’d forgotten I was still wearing Skip’s novelty tee. “Forget my outfit. Jesus Christ, Billy. What the hell happened this morning?”
“I saw the shiv in Chapman’s hand and acted on instinct.”
“Before that, I mean.”
“It was an ambush. Chapman and Dow wanted to ice the sarge. But they had to take out Mears first.”
“You need to back up even farther. Yesterday, you hinted that Dawn Richie was dirty and dangerous. You asked me to look into her private life—which I did by the way. Then the next thing I hear is you’ve nearly gotten yourself killed saving her.”
“I was wrong about Sergeant Richie. She’s a stand-up woman.”
This description didn’t exactly jibe with my own impression of her. “What changed your mind?”
He darted his eyes at the door. “Something Dow said. When he slashed her, he said, ‘This is what happens to rats.’”
So Dawn Richie was an informer? For whom? Against whom?
Before I could ask those questions, the door opened wide, and Donato stood there with his uniformed henchman, Hoyt, behind him. Poor Pegg was nowhere to be seen.
“Get the fuck out of here, Bowditch!”
“Please don’t blame Pegg for my being here.”
“Don’t tell me what to do, asshole.”
The radio crackled on Hoyt’s shoulder. The governor had pulled up to the hospital entrance in his two-car motorcade.
Donato came close to grabbing me by the collar. “Out! Now!”
It was lucky for him that he didn’t put his hands on me. Probably lucky for both of us, given his considerable strength.
I glanced past him at my friend chained to the bed. “I’ll find a place for Aimee and the kids to stay. I’ll take care of everything. Whatever you do, don’t talk to these guys.”
The door shut in my face.
I wanted to be nowhere in the vicinity when the Penguin made his grand entrance.
During his single term as governor, he had hired lobbyists who represented polluters to oversee the state agencies (including my own) charged with protecting Maine’s environment. Despite living in one of the most beautiful places in the world, his only regular encounters with the outdoors seemed to take place on manicured golf courses. Even then, from what I’d heard around Augusta watercoolers, he had spent most of his time at the nineteenth hole.
I slipped through a side door and wandered around the front of the building, toward my Scout, so I could change my shirt, at least. The wind had shifted, and I could smell Clam Cove, the tidal flat just over a knoll from the hospital. Three ring-billed gulls were fighting over a KFC bag until a larger herring gull swooped down and plucked the greasy prize from their midst.
After I’d pulled on a fleece quarter-zip, I remembered my promise to Billy.
It being April, arguably the worst month to visit the Maine coast, I had my choice of motels. I made a reservation at the nearest establishment for two adjoining rooms. I left my credit card number, telling the manager the Cronks’ stay would be open-ended and that he should bill me for all of their expenses.
My mother had left me some money in her will, a generous trust fund. In the note she had written on her deathbed, she had included a quotation from Dorothy Parker. (My mom had loved sending me memes she’d found on the internet.) “If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to.” The quote might have been a warning not to let my newfound wealth change me. More likely, she’d found it a funny zinger.
I texted Aimee with the reservation confirmation for the Happy Clam Motel, and she replied with only slightly less reserve than her husband:
We appreciate your charity, Mike. Hard as it is to accept. Thank you.
Aimee Cronk was the last person who would let me use a financial gift as a balm for my conscience, especially when she knew I’d done nothing to earn my newfound riches.
I became aware of a car creeping up behind me, heard the burp of a police siren, turned, and saw a powder-blue Ford Interceptor Utility with its light bar flashing. The brand-new vehicle had been built on the same platform as the civilian Explorer model with one major difference: under the hood of this unassuming SUV was a monster 3.0-liter, turbocharged V-6 engine capable of accelerating to one hundred miles per hour in less than fourteen seconds. Dani had given me all the specs when she’d been handed the keys two weeks earlier.
She leaned out the window. “Please clear the lane, sir!”
I circled around to her side of the idling vehicle. “I was wondering when you were going to get here.”
Smiling, she removed her shades, and the sun hit her unusual irises, which seemed to change from one shade of gray to another, depending upon the quality of the light. At the moment her eyes were the color of pebbles washed up in the surf.
“I had to wait for the governor’s motorcade. I expected to see you in line to shake his hand.”
“Very funny.”
“I’ve been getting updates on the drive over,” she said in a soft speaking voice that bore no resemblance to the gruff tone she employed as a trooper. “It sounds like a real mess for the prison. Hal Hildreth has already come out calling for hearings. I think the AG sees the incident as an opportunity to attack the governor’s oversight of the Department of Corrections.”
“Are politicians born without souls or do they lose them during puberty?” On cue, the wind blew the sulfur smell of the clam flat to my nose. “On the positive side, Billy’s surgery went well. He looks like he’s fit to cut a cord of wood.”
“Wait a second. They actually let you in to see him?”
“Not
