The Poacher's Son (Mike Bowditch 1)

you what, Flint’s Garage is right up the road. You’re going to need a car to get down to Dead River. If you’ll have lunch with me, I’ll drive you wherever you want to go today. We can borrow one of Flint’s old beaters.”
    “Soctomah isn’t going to appreciate me fucking around with his investigation, and Kathy’s going to be ripshit when she finds I’m not here. I don’t want to get you in trouble, too.”
    “I’ve been in trouble since before you were born.”
    I remembered that Lieutenant Malcomb had said the same thing about his old friend. “You don’t have to do this, Charley.”
    “I got nothing else scheduled. That’s the nice thing about being an old geezer.”
    Part of me wanted to be alone, but another part thought he might be helpful when I confronted Truman. There was no question in my mind that this offer was just his way of keeping an eye on me. I wondered whether I was in danger of selling Charley Stevens short. How much of his jolliness was genuine and how much was a put-on? “I’m really not hungry, though.”
    He clapped me hard on the back. “Then you can watch me eat!”
     
    Ten minutes later, Charley emerged from the darkened bay of H. B. Flint’s Garage, jangling a set of car keys. I followed him around the building to a weedy field where smashed autos were arranged like some sort of modern art sculpture garden. I couldn’t imagine any of these wrecks being capable of locomotion, least of all the old Plymouth Charley indicated. It looked like it had once been red or maroon in color, but it was so rusted and patched with Bondo, there was no way to be certain.
    “Hal says a chipmunk has made the tailpipe his abode,” said Charley. “Watch to see if he comes shooting out the backside when I start her up.”
    “I hope for his sake he’s out gathering nuts.” I tried to fasten my seat belt, but the strap had been sawn off below the buckle. I had to knot the loose ends instead.
    The Plymouth coughed, shook, and died when Charley tried the ignition. He tried again, this time giving it a little gas, but with the same result. On the third attempt the car shivered itself awake and we were able to move forward. We turned left on Main Street in the direction of Dead River Plantation.
    “Where are we going?”
    “You’ll see.”
    Across the river, Bigelow Mountain rose four thousand feet into the sky, a dark and jagged shape. In the seventies a developer proposed building an enormous ski resort on the mountain’s opposite slope, facing the existing resort at Sugarloaf. He said he wanted to turn the area into “the Aspen of the East,” but activists or ga nized a referendum to foil his plans. In the end, the State of Maine bought the mountain and established a preserve from the Carrabassett River in the south to the Dead River in the north. Environmentalists considered it a huge victory, but it was hard to feel much joy about the situation now, given Wendigo’s development plans for the surrounding region.
    Charley turned south on Route 144, following the Dead River away from town. Farther along that dark forest road were a few houses and farms, a school house, the fish hatchery that had so recently been the command post for my father’s manhunt, and of course the Natanis Trading Post, where Truman Dellis lived over the barn.
    That was when I realized where we were headed.
    I hadn’t seen the Dead River Inn since the night I got my skull busted by those three bikers. Now the sight of the heavy wood sign, hanging beside the road, sent a chill through me. The inn was a rambling old hotel with dormer windows and gables and two massive granite chimneys. It had a veranda along the first floor with rocking chairs set up so visitors could gaze down the half-mile dirt drive that led back to the road.
    We parked the Plymouth under some tall hemlocks and went around front to the porch. The screen door made a wheezy sound as Charley pulled it open, and then it snapped shut on my heels. I followed him into the dining room across the lobby from the tavern.
    The inn’s restaurant was an expansive, low-ceilinged space with pillars scattered among the heavy oak tables and captain’s chairs. The wide pine floorboards needed a new coat of varnish. Framed black-and-white photos of the inn’s employees from its postwar days to the present hung on the walls along with amateurish oil paintings of loons and moose. Along one wall, light was leaking inside through linen curtains the color