Don’t hurt him, Prester, Ma said.
I didn’t want to wrestle, so I figured I would just go limp. When Tammi said, One, two, three, Prester just picked me up like I was a doll and flopped me completely over-wham! — against my shoulder blades. Snap! went the bone. Everyone heard it!
Ma went mental after that. She made me wiggle my fingers and toes. You could have broken his neck, she told Prester. You could have paralyzed him!
He was sobbing like a baby. He cupped his hand and held it up to his face because he was embarrassed to be crying. Ma made us all pile into the van and drive into Machias.
Prester held my hand and slobbered all over it. Will you forgive me, Lucas? Please, please, please, forgive me!
Later I got my REVENGE-I sprinkled Tammi’s laxative all over his cold pizza.
Prester had the runs for a week.
Ha!
11
Shortly before dawn, Rivard sent me back to the house on the snowmobile because my cheeks were turning white. The wind had begun to die and the snow was lightening to flurries, but even so, I had trouble finding my way. In the minutes since Ben Sprague’s plow had cleared a passage for the trucks, the drifts had thoroughly reclaimed the logging road. In the east, there was a wash of color against the jagged horizon, a brushstroke of gray along the bottom of a black canvas.
I’d expected to find Kendrick’s dog team tied up outside the Spragues’ house. Instead, I discovered a white Ford Interceptor. On its door was a silver star against a black badge; on its fenders were the words WASHINGTON COUNTY SHERIFF PATROL. The rockers were spackled with salt brine. Because of Maine’s perpetually corrosive weather, our abundant potholes and frost heaves, the life expectancy of most new cars was little more than a decade. Less than that for police vehicles.
A balding blond man with broad shoulders and windburned cheeks greeted me at the door. His name was Corbett, and he was the chief deputy at the Washington County Sheriff’s Department. We’d met several times over the previous weeks as part of my orientation. He wore blue jeans tucked into L.L. Bean boots and a black fleece emblazoned with the sheriff’s department logo on the breast.
“You look like a Popsicle.” Corbett had a resonant baritone that made me think he’d missed out on having a lucrative career in radio.
“I feel like a Popsicle.”
“I can’t believe you spent the night out there. I live just up the road, and it took me forever to get out of my driveway.”
I heard a door open and slam shut down the hall. “Is Kendrick here?”
Corbett offered me a quizzical look. “You mean Professor Kendrick from the university?”
“Rivard told him to wait here and direct search units to our location in the Heath.”
“He wasn’t here when I arrived, and Doris never mentioned him.”
That seemed strange. Why would Kendrick have taken off before the first police cruiser arrived? “How’s Mrs. Sprague doing? She seemed in a bad way before.”
“She’s had a rough time of things since their son’s accident. The Spragues are good people-Ben and I are in Rotary-but what happened to Joey has really tested their faith. Is Ben on his way back here?”
“He’s plowing the road again. Rivard wants to keep it clear so the medical examiner can get down into the Heath.” I was curious to learn more about the Spragues’ son and his obscure accident, but my brain felt as numb as the rest of me. “So let me get this straight: You weren’t here when the EMTs left?”
“No, but I passed them on the road. I asked if they needed an escort to Machias, but they said no.” He glanced at his watch, which he wore with the face on the inside of his wrist. “They should be at Down East Community Hospital by now. I haven’t heard how Prester’s doing.”
“I hope he wakes up, just so we can get the story of what really happened.”
“I’m not sure it’s such a mystery,” said Corbett. “Ben and Doris were always reporting seeing suspicious vehicles going by here, heading into the woods. Ben would get really worked up. I even did some of my own patrols down there, but I only scared up a young couple having sex.”
“So you think maybe Cates had a regular place he was doing deals out in the Heath?”
Corbett shrugged his wide shoulders. “It’s certainly off the beaten track. I go deer hunting down there every November and always get turned around a few times before I find my way out. It’s a scary place. I’m surprised you guys found the body at all.”
“We figured he wouldn’t be far from the car. And we had a well-trained dog helping us.” I described the scene to him-the car, the bag of money, the loaded Glock, and then the startled expression on the corpse’s rimed face. “Cates didn’t look to me like a guy who had passed out in a snowbank. I’ll be curious to hear the coroner’s report.”
“The sheriff will want to speak with you about it. Randall Cates was on her personal most-wanted list.”
The longtime Washington County sheriff was a woman, one of only handful of female sheriffs in the state of Maine. Her name was Roberta Rhine. My professional experience working with sheriffs had thus far been hit-and- miss. The chief law-enforcement officer of Somerset County, where my father had committed his crimes, hated my guts, but back on the midcoast, I’d established a cordial relationship with Dudley Baker, the Knox County sheriff.
“Well, she can cross him off her list now,” I said, rubbing my tired eyes. “What about the other one- Sewall?”
“Prester?” Corbett grinned and shook his head. “He’s one of our favorite people over to the jail. We’ve had him in for just about everything-drunk and disorderly, B and E, check kiting, receiving stolen property. Nothing violent, though. A lot of these guys like Cates enjoy having a sidekick to tell them what big-time gangsters they are. Prester’s actually a nice guy when he sobers up, which is almost never. It’s probably all the antifreeze in his system that kept him alive out there.”
I remembered how Sewall had skulked around the McDonald’s, a small guy trying not to draw attention to himself. “Does his sister work at the McDonald’s in Machias?”
“Jamie? Yeah.”
“I was actually in there this morning and noticed her.”
“She’s easy to notice,” Corbett said with the sort of smile that didn’t belong on the face of a married man.
“Prester and Randall were there, too. They were giving her some grief, and she ended up taking food out to their car.”
“You’ll want to put that in your report.”
Standing in the Spragues’ entryway, I found myself leaning against a wall for support. I had been awake for nearly twenty-four hours, and I still had to shovel out my Jeep and drive back to my trailer.
“I should say something to Mrs. Sprague,” I said.
“You’re probably better off just hitting the road,” said Corbett. “The poor woman seems pretty shaken up. When I told her I needed to get an official statement from her, she asked if she could clean Joey’s room first.”
“I need to give her back her snowmobile keys.”
“You can leave them with me.”
I shrugged and handed him the keys.
Ben Sprague had plowed a lane past my Jeep, pushing snow up against the tops of the windows. I had to use my cupped hand to scoop out a hole deep enough to get the tailgate open. From there, it was all shovel work. Beneath my layers of polypro, wool, and Gore-Tex, I began to perspire heavily.
Every once in a while, I took a break from my labors, leaned on the shovel, and looked around me at the dawning world. The last clouds that made up the rear guard of the storm were marching away to the northeast.
