and followed her out into the stark light of the parking lot.
By the time I caught up with her, she’d beeped open the van and was rummaging around the passenger side for something.
“Jamie?”
She spun around with an ice scraper in her hand and went to work on the layer of frost that had built up across the windshield. Her motions were quick, compact, and violent.
“So when were you planning to tell me?”
“Tell you what?”
She stopped scraping but kept her back to me. “The cops think my brother killed Randall.”
“I’m not part of the investigation,” I explained.
Jamie turned around. In the cold light of the parking lot, I became aware of the bones beneath her skin. I could easily imagine the shape of her skull. “What does that mean?”
“It means I don’t know what theories the state police are pursuing.”
“Prester wouldn’t hurt anyone,” she said.
“Not even if he was provoked?”
The question seemed to catch her off balance, because she took her time answering. “My brother loved Randall. Don’t ask me why.”
“And you have no idea what they were doing in the Heath?”
“You asked me that before.”
“Look, I know this has been a horrible shock.” I dug my bare hands into my parka pockets. “But if you want to help your brother, you need to tell me what you know.”
“You just said you weren’t part of the investigation.”
“I’m not, but maybe I can help you.”
She let out a sharp laugh. “Because you care so much for my well-being.”
“I know we just met,” I said. “But I understand what you’re going through.”
“Oh, you do, do you?”
It was a good question. “Let me buy you a cup of coffee, and I’ll try to explain.”
“I thought you were different,” she said.
“I am different.”
“No, you’re not. You’re just a guy with a stiff dick like all the rest.”
I opened my mouth to respond, but really, what was there to say?
17
After Jamie screamed off into the night, I decided to grab a late, lonely dinner and reflect on the absurdity of my day.
I made a circuit of the mom-and-pop restaurants that constituted the Machias dining scene and found that all of them had ceased serving for the night. Eventually I put aside my scruples and returned to the McDonald’s on Route 1.
I paused in front of Jamie’s portrait on the wall and felt my pulse speed up. Her golden brown eyes looked so clear in the photograph, and her smile seemed so genuine, as if being named Employee of the Month were truly an honor. And maybe it was an honor after all she’d been through: a busted marriage, the death of her parents, caring for a brain-damaged sister, an alcoholic brother, and a weird little boy. I remembered her sobriety chip and her breakdown in my truck, when she’d blamed her past behavior for the calamities that had befallen Prester.
She’d accused me of being no different from all the leering men she met at the restaurant, as if somehow my desire to save her was just a deluded manifestation of lust. Looking at her portrait again, feeling the effect her smile had on my heart and groin, I found I couldn’t totally deny the accusation.
My dinner consisted of a rubbery Big Mac, served with some wilted lettuce, too much special sauce, and a side order of oversalted fries. To compensate for the empty calories, I ordered a Diet Coke, as if that would make any difference. I settled down in a corner booth and watched a party of intoxicated young people nervously watching me. A hulking kid with his back to me was wearing a T-shirt with the slogan
YOU AIN’T HAVING FUN TILL THEY DIAL 9-1-1.
Was that Barney Beal? I contemplated going over to speak with him. But then one of the giggling girls leaned over to kiss him, and I saw that it was just another pimple-faced lunk.
Poor Prester. I wasn’t sure how often he’d been getting laid before-he looked handsome enough on his driver’s license-but having a nose was usually the minimum requirement to lure a woman into bed. I needed to remind myself what the sheriff had told me: As pathetic as he now seemed, he and Randall Cates had been dealers in deadly narcotics. At least one person, a young woman, had died from ingesting the poison they’d peddled. Wasn’t there poetic justice in the idea of a man who’d traded in snortable drugs losing his nose? The sheriff, I was certain, would say yes.
My brief encounter with Roberta Rhine led me to believe that Dunbar might be headed for an extended stay in the doghouse if the sheriff got wind of what had happened at the hospital. For the first time, I began to wonder how my own sergeant would react when he learned I’d showed up in the med-surg unit with the sister of a murder suspect. And here I’d been so pleased with my professional development as a law-enforcement officer. My old reckless self was still lurking in the shadows, ready to jump out and say “Boo!” as soon as I turned my head.
When we’d first arrived, Dunbar had made a cryptic remark, but in the ensuing chaos I’d forgotten to pursue the matter with him: “What is it with this guy? How many times do I have to tell people he can’t be disturbed?” The comment suggested that someone else had shown up, asking after Prester.
What the hell had happened out in the Heath? It seemed impossible for someone so distraught, so emotionally naked, to lie about his innocence with such skill. Unless he’d killed his friend in some sort of irrational state brought on by severe hypothermia and could no longer remember his actions, it meant that someone else had suffocated Cates.
When I was busing my plastic tray, I realized that the drunken teenagers had slipped out without my seeing them. What are the odds, I wondered, of my being summoned in a few short hours to scrape their dead bodies off the road?
Instead, I received a call from Detective Zanadakis. I glanced at the automated clock on the BlackBerry screen. It was 10:30. I was half an hour late for my interview.
“Is there a problem?”
I apologized and told him I was on my way.
The Washington County Sheriff’s Department occupied one wing of a sprawling brick building in a neighborhood of handsome houses and venerable maples in downtown Machias. On one side was the county courthouse; on the other was the jail. Yard-long icicles hung from the eaves above the concrete front steps. I eyed them cautiously, thinking about swords hanging over unwitting heads and other metaphors of impending doom.
Whenever I entered the sheriff’s office, I had the sensation of having blundered into the sitting room of someone’s run-down, albeit historic home. On my first tour of the building, a deputy had told me that in bygone days the sheriff used to live in these very suites and that his wife would cook for the prisoners. The current sheriff lived with her female partner in a fancy house on the water in Machiasport, and the guy who cooked for the prisoners was a taciturn fellow who went by the nickname “Chef” and tended to reduce all solid food to mush because he himself was missing most of his teeth.
Rhine and Zanadakis were waiting for me in a parlor with a bricked-up fireplace and tall windows that dated from Edith Wharton’s girlhood. On either side of the mantel stood flags in stands, the Stars and Stripes to the left and the Maine state flag to the right. The sheriff’s Nike gym bag was wedged into the bookcase, below a shelfful of heavy legal tomes. A white-muzzled golden retriever sprawled on the hooked rug. The dog snored soundly, drawing deep and even breaths. It reminded me of Doc’s old mutt, Duchess.
A man was seated in a black leatherette chair across the desk from the sheriff. He wore a pigeon-gray sport
