On the drive through the streets of Machias, heading to the motel, I passed the Spragues’ darkened Laundromat and remembered my icy conversation with Kendrick that morning.
When I got back to my motel room, I decided the time had come to check up on Doc Larrabee myself. I didn’t know the veterinarian well, but he struck me as a garrulous and inquisitive man. He liked people, and he liked stories. A few nights ago, he and I had raced into a blizzard to rescue a hypothermic drug dealer. Now a murder investigation was under way. By all rights, Doc should have been chewing my ear off. Something seemed amiss.
The phone rang six times before triggering the voice mail. It was the usual spiel about not being available and leaving a message at the tone. Doc included another number for clients with veterinary emergencies. I hung up when the recording kicked in.
I tried his home number again. On the fifth ring, he finally picked up.
“Hey, Doc,” I said. “I hadn’t heard from you since the night of the storm. I wanted to see how you were doing.”
“Fine.”
“Have the state police come to see you?”
“I gave then a statement yesterday. That Detective Zanadakis said I’m not supposed to talk about what happened, even with you.” His voice sounded thick, gummy, as if he might have been drinking.
I considered whether this sufficiently explained his distant demeanor. “I ran into Kendrick this morning outside the Spragues’ Laundromat.”
“Where?” His voice went up a few decibels.
“The Laundromat in Machias. He’s a strange character. I don’t think he likes me, for some reason.”
Doc paused before he spoke. “Kendrick is his own man. He doesn’t care what people think of him. He says and does what he believes is right. Damn the consequences.”
That description matched the wild-eyed activist I’d read about in the New York Times. “I wanted to let you know that I saw Prester Sewall in the hospital. The charge nurse says they’re going to transfer him to Eastern Maine Medical so they can deal with his wounds.”
“Frostbite in January, amputate in July.”
“But it’s February.”
“It’s an old medical saying. It means they’ll amputate the gangrenous tissue in six months.”
“Thanks to you, it looks like he’s going to pull through.”
He seemed to chuckle. “Thanks to me.”
“Are you OK, Doc? You sound out of sorts.”
“I’m an old man, living by himself in a wreck of a farmhouse, a thousand miles from his grandkids. Why shouldn’t I be out of sorts?”
I decided to bring the conversation to an end. “Thanks again for dinner the other night,” I said. “Julia Child would have been proud.”
“Not hardly.”
After we’d hung up, I sat on the bed and wondered where Doc’s outburst of frustration had originated. I could tell that he was a lonely man who missed his dead wife. Maybe the stress of that night at the Sprague house had undermined his abilities to cope. He was a veterinarian, not a medical doctor, and being thrust into a position where the life of another human being rested in his half-drunk hands must have terrified him. Still, I was surprised he didn’t want to hear more about my own experience in the Heath or quiz me about the murder investigation. Doc didn’t seem like the sort of straight arrow who would obey a detective’s order to refrain from discussing a criminal investigation.
But maybe I was projecting Charley Stevens’s rebelliousness on the veterinarian, trying to make the two old men more similar than they actually were. I hadn’t spoken with the retired warden pilot in many weeks, and I missed him. Charley and I had become good friends following the manhunt for my father in the mountains around Flagstaff. He had taught me more about being a good warden-about being a good man-than anyone I knew. He’d listened to me recite my romantic troubles with Sarah or describe my latest dustup with the warden colonel without passing judgment; instead, he would set my mind on a healthier course by asking, “Now what other way might you have handled that pree-dicament, do you think?”
It was ironic that we no longer saw each other, since we were living less than an hour apart. Charley and Ora were up around Grand Lake Stream and I was down along the coast. The move had kept them busy, and they’d had a troubled adult daughter, Stacey, living with them for a while. For my part, I had figured that the best way through my current problems was to be a man and tough them out.
To hell with that. I decided to brew myself a cup of coffee and give him a ring.
“Hello there!” said the old pilot.
“Hey, Charley. How’s that new house treating you?”
“Just grand. We may be short on a few creature comforts, but we’re long on scenery.”
“So when are you going to invite me up there to see it?”
“When my moose survey is over. The department has got me hopping like a flea across this country.”
I’d gotten a report that the state was conducting an aerial census of moose in District C, but no one had told me the contract had gone to Charley. Although he was officially retired as chief warden pilot, he still did odd jobs that required a fixed-wing aircraft for both IF and W and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. He might be in his late sixties, but there was no better pilot in the state of Maine.
“I’d like to go up with you some time. I’m still getting to know this area, and it always helps to see things from the air.”
“How about tomorrow? The forecast calls for snow showers and northwesterly breezes, but I never let a few flurries hold me down.”
A woman murmured something in the background. The volume went dead, as if Charley had clapped one of his big hands over the receiver. I had to wait half a minute for him to return to the line.
“I had a bird singing in my ear,” he explained. “So I heard about your escapade in last week’s blizzard. Got the story from young Devoe, who said it was a drug deal that went off the road, so to speak.”
“I suppose you want me to tell you the whole story,” I said.
“You know I’m as curious as a tomcat.”
Charley and I chatted for the next hour. It had been so long since I’d really opened up to someone. Everything came pouring out: the frozen zebra, the coyote pelt nailed to my door, the note from Magoon, the dinner at Larrabee’s farmhouse, the mad rush to the Spragues’ chalet, the long hours I’d spent searching in the storm for the lost man, my meeting with Jamie at her brother’s bedside, the encounter with Brogan and Cronk, my grilling by the state police, the skunk loose in my trailer, even my recent near-fisticuffs with Mitch Munro.
I hadn’t realized, until I’d finally shut up, just how lonely I had been been.
“You can’t say your life is boring,” Charley offered.
“That’s never been my problem.”
“Something doesn’t smell right about the way that Cates character died.”
“Don’t mention bad smells. I’m going to be smelling skunk on myself for the rest of my life.”
“It’s just a little musk. Why, they make French perfume out of the nether glands of weasels! How bad can it be?”
“Pretty bad.”
He chuckled. “I’m glad we’re having this conversation by telephone.”
“I swear to God I’m going to nail Brogan.”
“Be methodical about it if you do. Joe has friends in the governor’s office.”
Which reminded me again that a day had passed and I hadn’t heard so much as a peep from Rivard.
“I have a question for you,” I said. “When I got my transfer, you said I should introduce myself to Kendrick. What were you thinking? The guy is a world-class egomaniac.”
“I didn’t mean you should bring him a coffee cake! I meant that he was someone for you to keep an eye on. Kendrick is one of the best woodsmen I’ve ever met-and I’ve known a few-but he’s got some odd notions about right and wrong. Someone vandalized the logging equipment over on that old International Paper timberland last year. I’ll bet you a dollar it was Kendrick or one of his young apprentices.”
