“I understand.” She nodded knowingly and put a hand on my shoulder. “There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you.” She hesitated, looking at me intensely out of the corners of her sky blue eyes. “It’s kind of strange.”
Now I was genuinely nervous. “What is it?”
“Did you vacuum the rug?”
“Yes,” I replied, lying.
“You actually cleaned something in this house?”
“Yes.”
She laughed and tossed the wet dish towel at me. “Who are you? And what did you do with my boyfriend?”
19
The phone rang very early the next morning. Sarah reached across my naked back to answer it.
“It’s Kathy Frost,” she mumbled.
I raised myself off the mattress with a groan. “Jesus, Kathy,” I said, blinking at the darkened window. “Do you know what time it is?”
“I don’t know. Early?”
“It’s five o’clock on a Saturday morning.”
“I must still be on Key West time.”
“Florida is in the same time zone as Maine.”
“Oh, yeah.” A dog was whining plaintively somewhere in the background. “Well, now that you’re bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, how would you like to get some breakfast? I brought you a souvenir.”
I sat up and swung my stiff legs off the bed. The floorboards were cold as ice beneath my heels. “OK. Where?”
“How about my place? I’ve got a sick dog here. I don’t know what shit Devoe fed him, but it’s been coming out both ends all night long.”
I rubbed the flakes from my eyelashes. “I’ll see you in an hour.”
“Bring doughnuts! And coffee!”
So my sergeant had somehow conned me into driving forty miles to her house in the predawn light, on my day off no less, and paying for breakfast in the bargain. What was it about women that made me agree to their most outlandish requests?
I left Sarah dozing in bed and shuffled, naked, into the bathroom. The harsh light above the mirror showed a drawn, stubbled face, making me wonder whether I’d done the Rip van Winkle thing and overslept by a decade or two. My head ached from the three whiskeys I’d consumed before bed. I needed to cut back on those, I decided. And my pubic bone was sore in a spot I rarely had reason to consider. I’d been surprised by Sarah’s sudden playfulness the night before. One moment she’d been all sad and teary, and the next she was reaching for my zipper. She hadn’t seemed like a woman worried about an unplanned pregnancy.
When I’d toweled off after the shower and was pulling on my pants, I found Sarah leaning sleepily against the doorjamb, holding the phone. She, too, was naked. “It’s for you again,” she said, yawning. “It’s Hank Varnum.”
She handed me the phone and collapsed once more onto the bed.
I took the call in the kitchen. A gauzy gray light had begun seeping through the windows. The room was so cold, I could see my breath when I spoke. “What’s going on, Hank?”
“You need to get over here, Mike!”
“I’m not on duty today. Do you want me to call John Farwell? He’s covering my district.”
“No, I want you to arrest that pervert Calvin Barter.”
I settled my aching bones down at the table. “Tell me what happened.”
“That pervert just dragged away my mailbox! I was still asleep when I heard the ATVs ride across my front yard. There were two of them, a big one and a little one, and they were whooping and hollering. I grabbed my revolver and ran outside, but they were already racing down the road, dragging my mailbox by a chain.”
“And you’re sure one of the two riders was Barter?”
“Yes! I’d recognize that big pervert anywhere.”
“Why do you keep calling him a ‘pervert’?”
“The man’s a child molester! Everybody in town knows that.”
When I’d moved to the midcoast last year, I’d reviewed the list of sexual predators-the registry of local child molesters, Peeping Toms, public masturbators, and statutory rapists-but Calvin’s name hadn’t jumped out at me. There were lots of Barters in these backwaters. It wasn’t until this conversation with Hank that I finally made the connection.
“All right,” I said. “I’ll drive over to the Barter place. I’ll arrest him on the spot if I have cause, but I can’t just haul him into jail on your say-so. Please promise me that if he comes back over here later, you won’t do anything rash.”
“I’ll defend myself and my property.”
“I don’t want this turning into a feud between you two.”
“It already is!”
With that, he hung up.
I changed out of my Carhartts and put on my wrinkled uniform. Peering into the darkened bedroom again, I saw that Sarah was snoring softly. I looked longingly at her spread-eagled backside, but instead of waking her again, I left a note on the kitchen counter, promising to be back by noon. We were scheduled to drive to Portland to visit her older sister, Amy-the one who hated my guts. Wait till she heard I’d knocked up Sarah.
The sun hadn’t even risen yet, and already this was shaping up to be one hellacious day.
Outside, there was a sting in the air that made my cheeks feel as if they’d both been freshly slapped. Clouds sagged down on the treetops, and the smell of imminent snow made me dread the long drive to southern Maine later that afternoon.
The cab of the truck always took an eternity to heat up. There were many mornings when my vehicle seemed like a four-wheeled icebox. It actually felt warmer standing outside in the open air.
On the drive over to Barter’s farm, I weighed the idea of calling Kathy or Farwell for backup. But I wanted the satisfaction of confronting Calvin on my own. Like Varnum, I was having trouble not taking this as a personal offense. If Barter wanted a fight, I’d gladly give him one. It didn’t matter if he was the size of Andre the Giant.
I drove past the NO TRESPASSING signs and through the orchard of bony apple trees to the dooryard of the farmhouse. Most of the windows were dim, but I saw a light in a lower room, probably coming from the kitchen. I got out of the truck and carefully closed the door, not wanting to spook Barter into fleeing again.
The cold snap had hardened the mud underfoot. The frozen earth was contoured and crusted into waves that crackled with every step I took. I pounded my fist against the flaking front door. I heard muttering inside and saw a light flick on in the entryway.
The door opened, and Barter’s teenaged, redheaded, chicken-shooting son glared out at me from the hall. He wore muddy jeans and nothing else. His jutting ribs reminding me of an inmate recently released from a concentration camp.
“What do you want?” he sassed.
“Go get your father.”
“He ain’t here.”
“I don’t believe you, kid.” The mud-splattered pants told me who Barter’s ATV companion had been.
The boy pushed a heavy red bang out of his eyes and sharpened his sneer. “Didn’t you read them signs?” he asked.
“I read them. Now go get your father.”
“You don’t tell me what to do.”
“Travis!”
