“I’m still tallying up the charges.”
“Did she tell you that he killed our lambs?”
Stoll reached into his coat pocket and produced what looked like a steel ball bearing, about half an inch in diameter. “Samuel has found these in the field, near the dead animals.”
“You think he was using a slingshot?”
Peaslee had to have excellent aim if he could kill a lamb from the road with such small-bore ammunition. It occurred to me that a hunter who used a weapon as primitive as a slingshot might also have a predilection for other antiquated armaments. Crossbows, for example.
A moment later a boxy ambulance appeared, its red and yellow lights flashing. Behind it came another vehicle: a late-model Jeep Grand Cherokee. Because of the glare coming off the windshield, I couldn’t identify the driver.
The EMTs wore blue shirts and blue pants: a uniform that brought to mind the inmates at the Maine State Prison. For the briefest of instants I thought of Dawn Richie, the alleged black widow and drug-smuggling mastermind. Then the ambulance driver, a burly man with a graying blond beard, was standing before me while his partner rushed to assist the injured man. The driver looked familiar; I was certain we had met on a mountain rescue or at some other emergency scene.
I explained that Ike Stoll lay where he had almost certainly landed and that we hadn’t moved him out of fear that he had suffered a spinal injury. Nor had he so far awakened.
“Did you need to stabilize his breathing at all?” the emergency medical technician asked in a voice at once deep and gentle.
“No.”
“That’s good. I can’t pretend we didn’t expect one of these incidents was coming. We’ve talked about the possibility around the station ever since these Amish folks moved up here. What happened to the horse?”
“She ran off, uninjured.”
“If that isn’t a miracle!”
As he left to assist his partner, the driver of the unfamiliar Jeep finally emerged. It was Ronette, and she must have had the day off. She was wearing a roll-neck sweater and blue jeans under a gray puffer coat from Patagonia.
“How is he?”
“Bad.”
“Did you see this happen?”
“No, but I heard it. Peaslee ran Ike Stoll off the road. I doubt he did it for any reason other than he’s wanted to since the Amish moved in.”
“That son of a—” She stopped herself from uttering the full curse. She was a good Catholic woman. But I had never seen her so enraged. “Where is Gorman?”
“Handcuffed to the bottom of his truck. He resisted my commands and tried to leave the scene so I was forced to restrain him.”
“Good. But I hope you read him his rights.”
“I did.”
“Good.”
“He didn’t even call 911, Ronnie.”
She covered the bottom half of her face with her hand. Without looking at me, she said, “These people are never going to be safe as long as he’s still living here.”
One of the EMTs called across the windswept field, “Can you give us a hand, Warden?”
“Come on, Ronnie.”
“The four of you men should be able to handle it,” said Ronette. “I’m going to go keep Gorman company.”
At the time, I thought nothing of this.
I went to help the medical technicians steady and secure Isaac Stoll’s head in a brace so they could slide him onto a stretcher. Ike groaned and parted his eyelids as we lifted him out of the field. I had never studied head and spinal injuries, but I knew that a return to consciousness is never a bad sign. When we had carried the litter back to the road, the EMTs released the catch on the wheeled legs so they could roll him into the back of the ambulance.
“Tilda? Where’s Tilda?” the injured man kept asking.
His sister-in-law squeezed his good hand. “She is uninjured, Ike. She was not hurt.”
“Where is Tilda?” he asked as if Anna hadn’t spoken.
32
Gorman sat on the road, his muddy knees drawn up, the back of his blazer against the side of his pickup, to which he remained cuffed.
Ronette came toward me. To my surprise, she seemed ecstatic in the religious sense of having been touched by a divine light. She held something in her hand. It was a silver object pinched between her thumb and index finger.
“Look what I found!”
The broadhead was meant to be screwed into the shaft of a hunting arrow or crossbow bolt. It consisted of four razor blades that met at a point like the sides of a pyramid.
“Where did you find it?”
“In the bed of Gorman’s truck.”
He let out a snarl. “I told you it ain’t mine!”
I lowered my voice. “We don’t have a warrant, Ronnie.”
Of course, I hadn’t had legal justification to search the man’s phone either.
“It was in plain view. It couldn’t have been any plainer.”
“It ain’t mine!” insisted the handcuffed man. “Somebody must have planted it. Everyone’s heard that you’re looking for a guy who owns a crossbow.”
“And you don’t?”
“Fuck no.”
“What about a slingshot,” I asked, thinking of the dead lambs.
His gaze went sideways for a moment. He had no intention of answering that question.
“So you’re telling me someone randomly planted a Spider-Bite broadhead in the back of your truck.”
“I’m saying it ain’t mine, and I have no idea how it got there. And what’s the big deal anyway? Suddenly the government doesn’t want us to own bows and arrows either? It’s not enough you’re taking our guns?”
“No one’s taking your guns.”
“Damn right, you’re not.”
It was like listening to a radio and trying to argue with the talk show host.
“So where did you go today?” I said.
“I ain’t telling you!”
“If someone planted the arrowhead, I’d like to know where it might have happened. Understand?”
“No place special. I drove into town to check on my businesses. I like to make sure the guys know I’m watching them. Grabbed lunch at McDonald’s. After that, I had to stop at the hospital to settle a billing dispute. The fuckers overcharged me for my PT again. On the way back, I stopped in at Denny
