“Had you met the Spragues before?” Rhine asked.
“Not before last night.”
Zanadakis coughed. “I think we’re getting off track here. I’d prefer to ask my own questions in my own manner.”
In their eagerness, Rhine and Corbett had hijacked his interview.
“How would you like me to proceed?” I asked.
“I want to know everything you did yesterday,” the detective said. “Sheriff, can we use your interview room? I’d like to get this on tape.”
18
The interview lasted two hours. Now that Zanadakis had learned I was prone to omitting relevant details from my reports, he wanted to cover all the bases again. He made me run through the events of my day from the moment I awoke until the discovery of Randall Cates’s body. From the encyclopedic scope of his questions, I couldn’t determine what theories the detective might be pursuing. He seemed interested in everything at once and in nothing in particular.
The more I heard myself talk, the more certain I became that the key to the whole mystery was the identity of the person, or persons, Randall and Prester had met in the Heath. If, as Jamie insisted, Prester would never have harmed his friend, then the next suspect had to be the man they’d sold drugs to that snowy day. My suspicion was reinforced by Corbett, who followed me out of the sheriff’s office and down the heavily salted front steps.
“Hey, Bowditch,” he called. “Hold up.”
I waited for him to descend the stairs behind me. A cold wind was howling down the street, and he hadn’t even bothered to grab a coat.
“I need to talk with you,” he said, already shivering. “You mentioned Barney Beal in there.”
“What about him?”
“I’m fixated on that snowmobiler you saw. Any chance it was Beal? I’m wondering if he was the one they were meeting.”
I remembered Corbett’s saying he lived up the road from the Spragues and that he had staked out the Heath a few times after they’d reported suspicious activity. Was his interest personal or professional?
“Rivard says he’s been busting into camps around Bog Pond to get money to buy drugs. Find out if his sled is green.”
Corbett wrapped his arm around his broad shoulders for warmth. The breeze was lifting the individual blond hairs from his head and making them dance. I hadn’t noticed before, but his neck was suffering from the worst case of razor burn I’d ever seen. “Whoever it was did a number on Cates,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“Haven’t you heard what the ME found during the autopsy? Randall’s sternum was cracked. That’s why he must have stayed behind when Prester went for help. The guy was probably in pain every time he took a breath. I’m surprised he made it even ten steps from his car.”
I watched the chief deputy ascend the steps to the sheriff’s office, wondering about the significance of that detail and why Corbett had chosen to share it with me. I was still wondering when my cell phone rang. The number that showed on the screen belonged to Rivard.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“I’m back at your house.”
“My house?”
“Yeah, I was passing by and decided to stop in.”
That was unlike Rivard.
“You’d better get back here,” he said.
“What for?”
“Your place has been trashed.”
By mid-February, Maine’s back roads are as battered and bruised as an old boxer’s face. Potholes form yawning craters deep enough to swallow a tractor wheel. Frost heaves create sharp ridges in the asphalt, which, taken at speed, will launch a vehicle clear off the ground. Factor in patches of black ice-slick spots invisible in your headlights-and towering snowbanks that hide driveways from view, and you have the perfect formula for a wrecked car.
I drove home with the gas pedal pressed flat against the floor. The road bounced me up into the air until the shoulder belt drew tight across my chest, then pulled me hard against the seat. Later, I would discover a strap- shaped bruise on my shoulder, but at the time, I didn’t feel anything but mindless fury.
Rivard’s truck was pulled up in the dooryard beside my snow-covered Jeep. He had the engine running and the headlights blazing, and I saw his darkened profile behind the wheel as I drove up. From the outside, my trailer looked intact. No windows had been broken; no new animals had been crucified on my front door. So why did Rivard think the place had been vandalized?
I got my answer as soon as I opened the truck door. The night air was cold and crisp; in my lungs, it felt as thin as the atmosphere atop Mount Denali. Then the night breeze pushed a sour but unmistakable smell in my direction: skunk.
Sergeant Rivard climbed out of his vehicle. He was wearing a black baseball cap with the embroidered Maine Warden Service logo, a green pine tree with red letters, on it. Despite the hour and the darkness, he had his sunglasses propped atop the bill of the cap, as if he might require their protection from some sudden glare.
“There’s a skunk loose in your trailer,” he said.
“I can smell it!”
“How did it get inside?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t put it in there.”
My eyes were adjusting to the darkness, and I could see that Rivard was having a hard time containing his amusement; the corners of his mouth kept sneaking up.
“This isn’t funny,” I said. “Do you know how hard it is to get stunk spray out of things?”
“I own two dogs, remember? I reckon you’ll need about a thousand gallons of tomato juice to start.”
“Do you think it’s still in there?”
“Only one way to find out.”
I fetched my flashlight from the truck and approached the front door as quietly as I could, which wasn’t very quietly, considering how loud the crunching snow was beneath my boots.
Rivard leaned against the hood of his truck. “I’ll wait out here!”
I turned the key in the lock and eased the door open. In an instant, I was enveloped by a vomitous miasma. My eyes began to gush as if they’d been smeared with raw onions, and I had to press my tongue against my teeth to keep from gagging. I shined the light slowly around the living room, knowing that a skunk’s retinas are reflective.
The stench was overpowering; I could feel it seeping through my pores.
“Do you see it?”
I glared at Rivard for him to be quiet. Except for the nauseating odor, all my possessions looked exactly the way I’d left them a few hours earlier.
I shined the light under the coffee table and sofa. No green eyes flashed back at me. The room was stuffy from the electric baseboards, but when I straightened up, a draft brushed my face. It seemed to be coming from the kitchenette. I crept in that direction until I could get a good look at the countertops and appliances.
The window over the sink was broken. Someone had shattered the glass in order to undo the lock, then raised the window until the gap was large enough to let in a skunk. George Magoon had paid me another visit in the night. The skin along the back of my neck grew hot as I recalled my confrontation with Brogan and Cronk. I would make them pay for this.
First, I needed to find the skunk.
