“Fair.”
“Are the tires studded at least?”
“So the road ahead is shitty, is what you’re saying.”
“Ever hear of the La Brea Tar Pits?”
Soon we were climbing through a storm-blasted grove of deadfalls and widow-makers, up the steep southern face of Number Six Mountain. As we gained altitude, the sky finally opened overhead—a perfect robin’s-egg blue—and I felt a pressure building between my jaw and my eardrum. I wondered what poor soul was charged with driving a snowplow up this series of switchbacks.
The house came into view little by little. The stunted pines and leafless gray trees prevented a good look at it from below, but it seemed to be a structure unlike any residence I’d ever before seen. The derelict wooden building was more tall than wide, with sharply pointed arches, scrollwork trim, and a square turret at the center that rose four floors above the foundation.
We turned into the clearing that surrounded the place, which had once, no doubt, been much more extensive before the willows, birches, and poplars had begun their slow and steady encroachment. The only vehicles in sight were a flatbed Ford outfitted with a snowplow and an ATV parked under a carport-type assemblage.
I pulled up beside Pulsifer’s truck and got out. The temperature was well below freezing at this elevation, although there was no hint of a breeze. We stood side by side and gazed upon the grotesque house.
“It’s something, isn’t it?” Pulsifer said.
“I’ll say.”
Its original color was impossible to discern as the paint had flaked off decades ago. There were many windows, some of them tall, grand, and intact. The rest were covered with sheets of plywood. Two great chimneys rose at either end of the hillbilly castle, but smoke only drifted from one of them.
An architectural term I hadn’t heard since college came into my head: Carpenter Gothic.
The first bird of the morning appeared, a mute robin. People associated the species with springtime renewal. But flocks of robins remained in Maine all winter, feeding on crabapples and winterberries instead of earthworms. They were harbingers of nothing.
Just then a woman’s voice boomed from behind one of the pillars on the front porch.
“I hope you ain’t here to tell me that creature’s dead!” She pronounced here as he-yuh.
Pulsifer raised a hand in greeting. “Not yet, Mary! Not yet!”
She let out a piggish grunt. “Hate to think I went to all that bother for nothing. He would’ve made a hell of a rug if I’d only just waited.”
“It was good of you to call us,” I said.
Alcohol Mary Gowdie emerged from the shadows of the porch into the daylight. She wasn’t fat exactly, although she carried a lot of weight. Rather she was barrel-chested in the way opera singers always are in cartoons. She looked as if she’d be right at home onstage, dressed in a Viking helmet, clutching a spear.
But instead of a winged headpiece, she wore a man’s fedora, and instead of a Valkyrie’s breastplate, she wore a cotton dress under a buffalo plaid coat that was splashed with mud at the bottom. On her feet were shearling-lined duck boots with leather uppers and rubber bottoms.
“Who’s the fancy-pants with you, Gary?”
“This is Mike Bowditch. He’s a warden investigator.”
She squinted at me from beneath her hat. “Bowditch? You ain’t Jack’s son!”
“I am.”
Under my shirt and “executive” bulletproof vest I was wearing his army dog tags. If she had needed proof.
She made a grunting sound that might have signaled acknowledgment or displeasure. “Heard you was the one who killed him.”
“My father killed himself.”
“So you say.” Her tone suggested his suicide was somehow a matter of interpretation and still up for debate. “I used to sell ’shine to your old man. What a rogue he was, let me tell you. The last of the genuine outlaws. And not bad to look at neither.”
Up close, I could see that she had blond curls that couldn’t have been natural. The brassy hair contrasted with a face that made me think she subsisted off nothing but tobacco, alcohol, and red meat.
“Well, are you going to come in or not?” she asked as if we had already resisted several invitations.
I glanced at Pulsifer, and he gave me a wink. We entered the house.
With so little light filtering in through the unbroken windows, the space was as murky as a cow barn and had something of the same smell. The curtains were of red or purple velvet, gone gray with dust. The wall-to-wall carpets were scarred with burns from dropped cigarettes.
Alcohol Mary seemed to be a collector—hoarder might be the more accurate term—of antique bottles. Every flat surface was packed with glass containers of all colors and shapes that had once held patent medicines and other elixirs.
“Would either of you wardens care for a pick-me-up?”
“I don’t drink on duty,” I said.
“Come on, Gary. I know you’d like a tipple.”
He squared his shoulders, drew a breath. “I’ve given it up.”
“Once a drunk always a drunk.”
He took a moment to collect himself but responded with a smile that seemed genuine. “People can change, Mary.”
“Like hell they can.” She turned her squinty gaze on me. “How about you, Warden Bowditch? Did you inherit your old man’s thirst along with his baby-blue eyes? I can give you the ten-cent tour if you’d like. Samples are free. There ain’t no one who comes up here who doesn’t want a look at my potent potables.”
This was some sort of personal test, I realized. She was trying to determine whether I was some kind of hard-ass who might cause her problems with the state.
“I’m sure if I worked for the Bureau of Alcoholic Beverages, I’d find it fascinating. But being a warden, I’m only interested in seeing where you found the wolf.”
“That’s a pretty answer.” She pushed up the brim of her fedora and examined me, with one eye open and the other half-shut. “How old would you say I am?”
Another test.
This time I tried a smile. “My mother taught me never to guess a lady’s
