The message was unsigned, but the identity of its author was no mystery.
Danielle “Dani” Tate and I had been dating for two months. She was a state trooper assigned to southwestern Maine, close to the New Hampshire border, so our relationship was by circumstance long-distance. Having a two-hour drive between us was also my preference.
Not long before, I had been living with the daughter of my friends Charley and Ora Stevens. Stacey and I had been together for years, and the expectation was that we would get engaged and married. But she was fighting inner demons more powerful than she was.
I knew how that felt. I also knew that I couldn’t help her.
I still loved Stacey. I doubted I would ever stop loving her. She would always have a claim to some piece of my heart.
For that reason, I had been trying to take things slow with Dani. Only now did I understand that my giving her a set of house keys had, perhaps, sent a different message.
She had stocked the refrigerator with greenhouse greens, locally pressed apple cider, and cream in a glass bottle from the dairy down the road; the freezer contained two organic chickens. My year’s supply of microwave burritos had been forcibly evicted. Dani wasn’t the only woman in my life horrified by the junk I ate. But she was the first to take aggressive action against my bad habits.
I was simultaneously shocked and tickled. I checked my watch and realized that she would still be asleep. When she worked the eight-to-eight overnight, she normally rose at five P.M. I sat down with my phone and brought up her contact.
The screen showed the picture of a woman with a square face, blond hair, and stone-gray eyes. Few people would have called her beautiful. But in this rare photograph she was beaming. She had the most amazing dimples that only appeared when she was happy.
I smiled, clicked on the image, and began typing:
I didn’t realize that when you said, “You need to start eating better,” you meant immediately.
After I pressed send, I immediately second-guessed myself.
Dani and I hadn’t communicated since I’d gotten the panicked call from Aimee. In prison, Billy had all but begged me not to share what he’d said with my new girlfriend, the state trooper. He and I both knew that Danielle Tate wouldn’t look the other way where the laws of Maine were involved.
Yet I had to explain why I was home when I’d planned on spending the next three days fishing in Washington County.
Seriously, though, thank you for the food. I’ve had an interesting day. I need to tell you about it.
Interesting?
I deleted the adjective and typed in weird. Then crazy. Then insane.
Upon further consideration, I erased everything and sent Dani a two-word message:
Call me.
I took a quick shower, then wiped a window in the foggy mirror so I could see myself to shave.
I missed having a buzz cut. When I’d been promoted the year before, my captain had asked me to grow out my hair in the event I was called upon to do undercover work. The truth was, my frequent appearances in the news had made it all but impossible for me to conduct covert operations within the state of Maine.
But at least my longer hair concealed the scar on my upper forehead. It was a reminder of a bar fight I’d been in when I was twenty-one, at a backwoods roadhouse called the Dead River Inn. At the time I had no clue how many scars I would acquire in the rough-and-tumble years ahead:
A star-shaped burst of permanently bruised capillaries from the impact of a bullet against my ballistic vest.
A white line on my forearm where a meth head had cut me to the bone.
A permanent lump at the base of my skull from a baton that had slammed me into unconsciousness.
A cluster of dead nerves in my hand where I’d torn ligaments in an ATV crash.
So many scars. Not all of them external.
I put on a pair of Levi’s and a faded COLBY MULES T-shirt, started a fire in the woodstove to banish the spring chill from the house, and popped the lid off a bottle of Molson Export ale. Craft brewing had become a big thing in Maine, but I’d found I had no palate for spice notes and fruity undertones.
For dinner, I grilled a couple of deer-meat burgers in a cast-iron pan that smoked so intensely I had to open a window. Afterward, I poured myself three fingers of bourbon and settled down in the living room to decide what to do with my remaining vacation days. I could drive back in the morning to Grand Lake Stream. But what’s the old quote about how you can’t step into the same river twice?
There would be no way, after my visit to the prison, that I could enjoy myself catching salmon. What I needed, I realized, was a project. But spending my vacation unpacking boxes and repairing holes in the drywall seemed a poor use of my precious time off.
I slugged down the liquor, pushed around the embers in the stove with a poker, then threw on an oak log that would take the whole night to burn.
As I was dusting my hands, my phone vibrated on the side table. I expected it to be Dani.
Instead it was a text from the mentalist Aimee Cronk:
Shame on you, Mike Bowditch.
3
I tried to message her back, but she wouldn’t respond. Nor did she pick up the phone when I called. She’d said everything in that simple scalding text. I had failed her husband when he needed me—and not for the first time.
I slouched in my leather armchair, listening to the fire hiss and crackle inside the stove like a caged imp. Instead of refilling my glass with bourbon, I went into my mostly unpacked office and removed a cardboard box from a desk drawer.
After Billy’s sentencing, I had obtained a copy of the trial transcript. My intention
