I stared past them at the frozen river. The opposite shore seemed deceptively close at this stretch, and the light was dull enough that you couldn’t see the treacherousness of the ice. Beneath its thin coating of windblown snow, it looked solid. Maybe Prester really had expected to get across. It was confusing that he could have shown such a determination to live when he was lost in that snowstorm and then have decided to end his life just days later.
“Throwing yourself into a waterfall is a hell of way to commit suicide,” I said. “I don’t think he intended to die.”
“You didn’t see the look on his face,” said Corbett. His own face was blazing red from the cold wind.
Until that moment, I hadn’t realized it was the chief deputy who had pursued Prester out onto the ice. “From the plane, he looked like he was taking tentative steps,” I said. “He didn’t appear to be racing headlong to his death.”
Rivard started in on his sore neck with both palms. “Does it make any difference?”
It will to Jamie, I thought.
“It was a suicide,” Corbett said, his voice rising. “I don’t know why it’s such a difficult concept to accept. The guy was maimed for life. He was in agony from the detox. And he was headed to jail on a murder rap. Those are three good reasons to end it all, if you ask me.”
I remained unconvinced, but Rhine pursed her lips, as if she could see the logic.
Rivard just didn’t seem to give a shit.
The sheriff motioned me to follow her to our vehicles. “Come on, Bowditch. Let’s get this over with.”
I gave one last look at the river and dug my hands into my parka pockets. Rhine didn’t speak to Dunbar as she strode past, but she fixed him with a withering stare, which caused the woeful deputy to examine his boots.
I’d scarcely gotten behind the wheel before the sheriff took off at warp speed. It was fortunate Roberta Rhine was the chief law-enforcement officer, or she would have racked up more speeding tickets than anyone in Washington County. I started the engine and turned around in hot pursuit.
27
The sheriff arrived at the Sewall house before I did and took the only parking space in the largely unshoveled driveway, pulling into the slot beside Jamie’s van.
I turned off the engine and studied the house. What a wreck it was on the outside. The asphalt shingles were flaking away from the rooftop like dead skin from a dry scalp. A rusted washing machine rose from a snowbank in the lawn like a weird garden sculpture. Jamie had hung some laundry to dry on a clothesline in the front yard- bedsheets and towels-but the hyperborean temperatures had frozen them solid.
I knew that she killed herself trying to keep everything spick-and-span inside. She mopped and vacuumed and dusted every surface. I had the sense it was a recovery thing: literally getting her house in order. But the face the house showed the street was drawn and haggard, a reflection of its owner’s recent afflictions and a reminder how tenuous a hold she had on sobriety.
Jamie had shown up at my motel door with beer, which seemed unwise for someone in AA, even if she was drinking Diet Coke, and then there were the five empty bottles this morning, when I recalled consuming only four. But maybe I was mistaken. And maybe the Higher Power she couldn’t quite believe was real would assert itself now and stand between the sucker punch headed her way and the seemingly inevitable fall that would result.
I joined Rhine at the foot of the walkway. Fat snowflakes drifted like falling cherry blossoms on the breeze. The beauty of it seemed jarring, given our morbid task.
I’d participated in only one death notification so far, visiting the family of a young man who’d crashed his snowmobile into a tree, but I’d had with me the Reverend Deborah Davies, who served as one of the Warden Service’s two female chaplains. Her presence proved a great help when the mother collapsed to the floor, insensible from the shock.
“I hate this part of the job,” Rhine said.
“I’m surprised you didn’t bring a chaplain along.”
“I wouldn’t be much of a sheriff if I didn’t do my own dirty work.”
The more time I spent with Rhine, the more I respected her. She was notorious in law-enforcement circles, known for her Pocahontas hairstyle, her public feud with state bureaucrats, and the landslide elections that kept returning her to office. When you picture a Maine county sheriff, the first image that springs to mind isn’t a gimlet- eyed lesbian, and yet Roberta Rhine had won the job and made it her own in a part of the world not known for its open-mindedness. I was beginning to understand why.
I followed her up the snow-dusted wheelchair ramp.
Lucas answered when the doorbell rang. He blinked at us silently through thick glasses. His hair was wet and smeared across his bulbous forehead. He wore pants rolled at the cuffs to fit his stunted legs and a long-sleeved sweatshirt decorated with the leering face of Batman’s archnemesis, the Joker.
“Hello, Lucas,” I said. “Is your mom at home?”
“I didn’t do nothing!”
“We’re here to see your mother,” explained the sheriff.
He spun away from us. “Ma!”
A woman’s voice croaked from a distant room. “Who’s at the door?”
“The cops!”
And then he took off up the stairs. I remembered what Jamie had said to me the night before, how I reminded her of Lucas. The comparison left me baffled and disturbed. All I could conclude was that she hoped I might take a paternal interest in the kid. Having met his father and uncle, I could understand why Lucas might require another male role model.
The house smelled of cigarettes. What I’d first taken to be wood smoke from the stove was, in fact, burning tobacco. A bubble of fear unlike anything I had felt before formed in my stomach.
I am about to cause someone great pain, I realized.
Jamie emerged from the living room, still dressed in her McDonald’s uniform. She usually pinned up her hair to work, but she must have lost a barrette during the day, because a strand of hair hung in her eyes, which were already bloodshot from crying or smoking. She hung in the doorway as if barred from approaching by an invisible force field.
“Where is he?” The question was directed at me, as if we were alone in the motel room again.
“May we come in, Jamie?” the sheriff asked.
“Tell me first.”
The cold tickled the hairs along my neck, but I stopped myself from shivering. Stillness seemed important at this moment. I wasn’t sure how to begin.
Fearing that I wasn’t up to the task, the sheriff threw herself into the breach. “This afternoon, your brother escaped from Down East Community Hospital,” she said.
“How could he just escape? I thought someone was watching him.”
“Prester walked out of the med-surg unit while the doctors and nurses were distracted with a bus accident. We followed his footprints across Route 1A into the woods behind Sylvan Park. He tried to elude our searchers by crossing the Machias River, just west of town.”
The sheriff paused. She wanted the import to sink in without having to say certain words. She hoped Jamie would take her meaning.
“And?”
I knew the next line belonged to me: “Prester is dead, Jamie.”
Her lip began to tremble. “What?”
“He fell through the ice.”
“No.”
“We’re very sorry for your loss,” Rhine said.
Jamie didn’t speak. The news about her brother’s death seemed to have left in her a nearly catatonic state.
