His yellow eyes didn’t blink.
“I’m starting to feel ridiculous now so I guess I’ll be on my way. I’m glad to see you looking strong again. I’ll never understand how you survived what you survived. But I’ll see you again soon.”
As I began to turn toward the door, I heard the click of his long nails on the painted concrete. He had approached the bars and had pushed his black nose through them and was sniffing at me with that nasal inquisitiveness all canines possess.
I squatted down on my heels and held out the top of my hand. The bars were too close together for him to bite it off the way the Norse wolf Fenris did to the god Tyr. But I sure as hell wasn’t going to extend any fingers.
He continued his loud snuffling. Then he let out a whine. He extended a tongue that was about twice as long as I had anticipated and rubbed my knuckles with it. I fought the primal urge to jerk back my hand. His luminous gaze held me spellbound, unmoving, as if by unspoken command.
Roughly an hour later, I dropped Zane Wilson off at his yurt. The ground fog was still rising from the sublimating snow, but we could see, driving across the field, that no lights were on in the walled tent or any of the outbuildings. Nor was the Baja parked in its usual spot. I wasn’t surprised that Indigo had left without explanation, even if Zane seemed both baffled and hurt.
We had been quiet on the drive over the mountains. I had asked him about his search for a new truck, and he’d said some of the urgency was no longer there as Alcohol Mary had, for vague reasons, revoked her offer to apprentice him. My take on Mary Gowdie was that most of the reasons behind her decisions were vague. She was one of those people who, living alone in the woods, have no interest in explaining or justifying themselves to others. But if Zane and Indigo were on the verge of a split—and I wagered they were—he would need a new set of wheels.
“Am I right that Indigo owns this land?”
He was slow to answer. “Her dad does.”
It seemed a little cruel to be pushing these revelations on him, but he wasn’t a kid even if he possessed a childish innocence. I could have taught a Ph.D. seminar in betrayal. I knew what it felt like to learn that someone you loved, someone you thought you understood inside and out, lacked a hole in the chest where a heart should have been. But Zane was going to have to suffer through his own epiphanies.
He mumbled a goodbye in the back of his throat. Then he unlatched the door. The air that seeped inside had the damp taste of rain even though a drop hadn’t yet fallen.
“Zane?”
He looked back at me, neck bent, with the bone weariness of a man twice his age.
“Take care of yourself.”
I didn’t envy him.
39
The rain still hadn’t started falling as I turned onto the Tantrattle Road. Then the sky burst open, and all the fog that had risen from the softening snowbanks returned to earth with a sudden and terrific weight. The drops that splashed off my windshield were as big as dimes.
I crept along carefully, afraid to outpace my rain-hazed headlights.
I realized I was about to reenter a cellular dead zone and took the opportunity to check my phone for new messages I had missed. There was only one of consequence. Steve Klesko wanted me to call him back.
He sounded tired. “Billy was at Pegg’s house, Mike. We found size-fourteen sneaker prints inside matching the ones he wore at Bolduc. Not to mention his fingerprints all over the mudroom.”
After I’d recovered from the bombshell, I said, “But you told me whoever murdered the Peggs tried to make it look like an accident. Why would Billy go to the trouble of trying to conceal the cause of death only to give himself away so clumsily?”
“No offense, but your friend isn’t exactly Einstein.”
“You said you found all the prints he left in the mudroom?”
“Yep. Why?”
“Wouldn’t it make sense for you to have found them near the furnace, or wherever else the killer sabotaged the system?”
“Maybe he was looking for gloves in the mudroom. Maybe he found the gloves. Maybe he removed his shoes. Maybe he left the house without remembering to clean up after himself. The point is Billy Cronk was there.”
The call dropped. I put the Scout into park and redialed the detective’s number.
I wasted no time asking the question. “Why would he kill Pegg?”
“We’ll be sure to ask him when we make the collar.”
“He didn’t do it, Steve.”
But the call had dropped again, and my friend, the detective, hadn’t heard my testimony.
None of this made sense. I wasn’t going to be of much help if I remained holed up in my vacation cabin. I needed to return to the Midcoast if I was going to intercede—yet again—on behalf of my star-crossed friend.
But a thought came to me as I reached for the shifter.
The phone connection being so sketchy, I texted a message to my self-appointed private investigator, Charley Stevens:
Do me a favor and check something else. Find out if any guards from Machiasport transferred to the Maine State Prison in the year *before* the shutdown.
If Dawn Richie really was a budding criminal kingpin, she had to have more than one accomplice besides the late CO Mears.
With luck, an answer from Charley would be waiting when I drove back out with my gear.
Before I reached the gate, the beams of my headlights bounced off the reflectors of a parked vehicle. I stomped on the brake and leaned over the wheel. The SUV was big and dark, maybe black, maybe blue. Definitely blue. I didn’t have to read the license plate to know it
