The Poacher's Son (Mike Bowditch 1)

smile. “And your father was so grief-stricken he shot himself.”
    “She was the reason he came back.”
    “I thought you said he came back to frame Pelletier and Dellis.”
    “The real reason was Brenda. After she drowned, he had nothing else to live for.”
    “A real romantic.”
    My coffee had grown cold. I poured it onto the ground. Dusk had begun to fall. Out on the lake I saw trout rising as insects hatched out onto the surface. Soon the bats would come out to feed in the dark. “I’d like to go to Skowhegan. I’d like to wait with Ora at the hospital.”
    The tape recorder clicked off on its own. Menario reached into his Windbreaker for a new microcassette. “Let’s go over this again,” he said.
    “It can wait,” Soctomah said to his partner. “Why don’t you go find a ride for Mike.”
    Menario looked at him sourly. Then he stuffed the recorder in his pocket and walked off.
    “He’s a good detective,” said Soctomah, watching him go.
    “I’ll take your word for it.”
    “The A.G. is going to have to take a look at what happened with Truman Dellis. Your shooting him, I mean.”
    I shrugged. “It doesn’t matter what happens to me.”
    A boat motored up to the dock. We watched the state police unload two body bags, carry ing them up the hill to a waiting ambulance.
    I stood up. My joints felt a hundred years old. “I’d really like to get going, if it’s OK with you.”
    “I understand,” he said.
     
    My last view of Rum Pond Sporting Camps was in the mirror of Deputy Twombley’s patrol car. Once again he had been designated my private chauffeur. Lit up by the blue strobes of police cruisers and the lights brought in by crime scene investigators, the camp receded into the darkening forest. I wondered if I’d ever see it again.
    Probably not. Pelletier didn’t have any children, that I knew of, no heirs except maybe his ex-wife, but it wouldn’t matter if he’d left behind a family of ten since there was no way in hell Jonathan Shipman’s murder would stop Wendigo Timber from developing this land. There was never any chance of that happening, no matter what Vernon Tripp and the others might have hoped. The leaseholders would be evicted from their camps throughout the region and this hundred-year-old sporting camp would be sold to some hedge fund millionaire to turn into a private lakeside retreat to be used two weeks every summer.
    Which meant Charley and Ora would also lose their home of thirty years on Flagstaff Pond. What would they do then? What would Ora do if he never returned from the hospital?
    Twombley didn’t say a word during the drive. His puffy face was lit up by the dashboard, but I couldn’t read his expression. I rolled down the automatic window, letting the air rush in around my head, and closed my eyes.
    He woke me sometime later. We had arrived at Redington-Fairview General Hospital in Skowhegan and were idling beside the ambulance bay. I started to get out, but he called after me. “Bowditch.”
    “Yeah?”
    He stared at me for a long time, then shook his head and said: “Never mind.”
    I went inside to start my vigil.
    Kathy Frost was already there in the brightly lit waiting room, talking with a forest ranger I didn’t recognize. She took one look at my bruised and bloodied face and all the toughness went out of her. For half a second I thought she might actually hug me, but instead she shook my hand hard enough to crush bones. “I’m really sorry, Mike.”
    “Me too. About everything.” My throat was so dry my voice was just a rasp.
    “Don’t beat yourself up.”
    “You were right about my dad. I don’t know why I couldn’t see it when it was so clear to everyone else.”
    “You were too close to the situation.”
    “That’s what you kept telling me.”
    “It’s my eternal curse not to be believed, Grasshopper.” It was the best she could do for a joke under the circumstances, but I appreciated it. She stuck her thumbs in her gunbelt, a question obviously weighing on her mind. “So what the hell happened up there?”
    I could have told her about the murder of Russell Pelletier, and my fight with Truman Dellis, and the part I played in the drowning of Brenda Dean, but I was too tired. Rather than say anything more, I cut to the heart of the matter. “He shot himself.”
    She would have to get the rest of the story from someone else. I glanced toward the admitting desk. “Do you know anything about Charley?”
    “They’ve got