The medical examiner said that Cates had suffered a cracked sternum in the hours before his death. The injury had rendered him immobile, which was why Prester had been the one to seek help after their car got stuck. But what if Munro had lied to Jamie? What if he had returned to the stranded Grand Am later to finish the job?
“Do you know where Mitch is now?” I asked her.
“He wasn’t at his house?”
“No.” A door slammed shut down the hall, and I remembered why the sheriff had called me in the first place. “Is it possible he could be with Lucas?”
“Lucas is at home with Tammi.”
“No, he isn’t. Lucas ran away, Jamie.”
“What are you saying?”
“The sheriff sent someone from DHHS to look in on Tammi and Lucas,” I said. “When the social worker showed up, Lucas locked himself in the basement.”
“He’s afraid of the basement. There’s something down there that scares him. He won’t tell me what it is.” She raised her fingers to her lips as if to chew on her nails but then stopped herself. “But you said he ran away. I don’t understand.”
“The sheriff decided to send one of her deputies over there, too, because she was concerned for everyone’s safety. The deputy found tracks leading from the bulkhead into the forest behind your house.”
“Deputy? Which deputy?”
“Chief Deputy Corbett”
“He’s the one Randall used to talk about!”
“Talk about how?”
“I don’t know-he just mentioned his name sometimes. Then he and Prester would laugh. Oh my God. Was he the guy who frisked me at the hospital? The blond guy with a red face?”
I didn’t answer, but suddenly the Maine Drug Enforcement Agency’s accusation that Rhine had a dirty cop in her department seemed less and less far-fetched. And to what lengths would a man like Corbett go to avoid exposure? Might he have killed Randall Cates and driven Prester Sewall to his death? Might he even harm Lucas if he suspected the boy knew the truth?
Jamie sat bolt upright in her chair. “You need to go over there, Mike! You need to make sure Lucas is safe!”
“I need to ask you some questions first.”
“What kinds of questions?”
“First, would Lucas have access to a firearm? He told me he did.”
“Prester had a twenty-two he used to shoot squirrels and woodchucks. It was my dad’s.”
“Where did he keep it?”
“In the basement.”
My heart sank. “Is it loaded? Does Lucas know how to fire it?”
“Prester took him out back to shoot cans one day when I was at work.”
I pictured Lucas fleeing into the snowy woods. Was he afraid of Corbett, and that’s why he fled? There was also the father to consider. I couldn’t even begin to guess how Mitch Munro might fit into this particular puzzle, if he even did. Maybe the boy had decided to cross the Heath to reach his father’s house.
“Does Lucas have some favorite place to hide-like a tree house or a cellar hole? Maybe a cave?”
“Prester used to have an old fort my dad built him in the woods. I think Lucas goes there sometimes.”
“Can you tell me where it is?”
“I’ve never been there. He draws maps of the woods in his notebooks. There’s a stack of them under his bed.”
“What about friends?”
“My son doesn’t have a friend in the world.”
I wasn’t sure I’d heard a sadder statement in my life, but she said it with such frankness, I knew it was the truth.
“You need to find him, Mike,” she said. “Please!”
“That’s my job,” I said. “Finding lost kids is what I do.”
It sounded like a boast, but I hadn’t meant it that way. I wanted her to understand that on this one thing at least she could trust me. I was a Maine game warden, and I wouldn’t rest until I found her child.
She pressed her hands flat against the Plexiglas. “I can’t afford to lose him, too, Mike.”
“I know.”
“I’m sorry I’ve been so horrible. You don’t deserve this shit. You’re a sweet guy. You should find yourself a sweet girl.”
Down the hall, another iron door slammed. “I don’t want a sweet girl. I want you.”
She wasn’t sober, not by any means, but when she spoke again, her voice was clear and even. “No, you don’t. You want some fantasy version of me. You want the employee of the fucking month.” She gestured at her prison jumpsuit. “ This is the real me. It always has been and always will be.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“That’s what makes you so sweet. Good-bye, Mike. Please let me know when you find Lucas.”
I nodded, unable to muster a full sentence. I knocked on the door, and one of the guards let me out. Then I went to retrieve my service weapon from the lockbox. When I stepped outside, there was a dusting of snow on my patrol truck.
33
I needed to tell the state police about Mitch Munro so that they could bring the snowmobiler in for questioning, at the very least. The medical examiner had found evidence of a cracked sternum. The injury had been inflicted hours before Cates died. Circumstantial evidence pointed to Munro as the attacker. The problem was Jamie. It was doubtful she would repeat the story she’d told me to a courtroom-not unless she was allowed to retain custody of her sister and son.
As I drove through the falling darkness, I wondered whether I could help broker a deal between Jamie and the prosecutors. If she could deliver Munro, would that be enough to waive the drunk-driving and possession charges? Might she be permitted by the DHHS to keep Lucas?
Of course I would have to find the boy first. I needed to focus on the challenge at hand before I worried about convincing detectives and prosecutors to make deals they would have zero interest in making.
When I arrived at the Sewall house, I found a Volvo V70 station wagon parked in the shoveled section of the dooryard. Beside it was the familiar Ford Interceptor I’d first seen outside the Sprague house so many nights ago: Chief Deputy Corbett’s cruiser.
A woman leapt out of the Volvo as if it had burst into flames. “What took you so long?” she said.
The social worker, Magda Mueller, had a wide, flat face and tightly curled red hair that reminded me of the coats of certain exotic breeds of water dogs. Her charcoal-colored coat hung to her knees, and I saw that she was wearing faded blue jeans and no-nonsense snow boots.
“I stopped by the jail to get some information from the mother.”
“Like what?”
“Whether the boy has access to a loaded firearm.” I spotted Tammi Sewall sitting meekly in the Volvo’s passenger seat, listening to Inca music on the stereo. She gave me a broad smile and a friendly wave, as if she had no idea how dire her family’s situation was. “Where’s Chief Deputy Corbett?” I asked.
“He said he was going to scope things out.”
“He’s inside the building?”
“As far as I know. He might have gone out the basement door if he decided to pursue the boy into the woods.”
The last thing I needed was Corbett blundering around, disturbing Lucas’s footprints. The snow was drifting
