The Poacher's Son (Mike Bowditch 1)

away.”
    Charley said, “Come on now, Truman. Show some manners and open the damned door.”
    The curtain parted for an instant and then quickly fell shut. The door opened and I saw a man I hadn’t seen in eight years and probably wouldn’t have recognized, anyway. The face was familiarly flat and round, but now a jagged red scar ran from the scalp through one sightless eye and down the cheek to a notched jawbone. Looking at that cruel scar I wondered what instrument of violence could have split a man open from skull to jaw and somehow left him alive.
    “Do you remember me?” I asked.
    “Yeah,” said Truman, “I remember you.”
    “You mind if we come inside?”
    He moved to block the door with his heavy body. “What do you want?”
    “I just want to ask you a few questions. About the hom i cides outside the Dead River Inn.”
    “I already talked with the cops.”
    “Well, now you can talk to me.”
    Truman focused his good eye on me. “I don’t know where your old man is.”
    “I know that.”
    “Him and me don’t hang around no more.”
    “I know that, too.”
    “Then what do you want?”
    “It’s about B.J.,” I said. “She’s been saying things about you.”
    He ran his tongue over his cracked lower lip. “Like what?”
    “Let us in and I’ll tell you.”
    Truman let go of the doorknob and stepped carefully back into the room, still facing us. He wore a mustard-colored canvas shirt and stained green workpants and muddy boots. For the first time I saw that he was holding a rifle in the hand he’d kept hidden behind the door.
    Charley looked at the rifle and smiled wide. “Is that how you answer the door, Truman? What if it’s the Publishers Clearing house come to give you a million dollars? You might shoot old Ed Mc-Mahon’s head off before he even hands over your sweepstakes check!”
    Truman’s good eye blinked slowly. “Ed McMahon’s dead.”
    “Why don’t you put that gun away?” said Charley.
    Truman lowered the barrel and stepped back into the apartment.
    “I guess that’s the best invite we’re going to get,” Charley said to me.
    I followed him into the room, leaving the door cracked open behind us. The apartment stank of stale cigarettes, dirty laundry, and dishes left to molder in the sink. I also detected what I hoped was the odor of a cat’s litter box—although I saw no sign of a cat. The furnishings were Salvation Army surplus: ripped couch, painted metal table and chair in the kitchenette.
    “What did B.J. say?”
    I made my voice firm. “How about setting that gun down first so we can have a conversation?”
    “It’s my house. What did B.J. say?”
    “She calls herself Brenda now.” I kept an eye on the rifle in his hand, wishing like hell that Charley could talk him into putting it down. But the old game warden seemed surprisingly unconcerned. I remembered the night eight years ago when Truman had last pointed a loaded firearm in his direction. “I just finished talking with her an hour ago,” I continued.
    “So?”
    “I guess you two had a falling-out. She didn’t say why, but I’m figuring it was over my father. You didn’t like her being his girlfriend, right?”
    He didn’t speak, just waited for me to continue, his good eye as blank as a cow’s. There’s a peculiar challenge that comes from interrogating a slow person—all the tics you try to pick up on aren’t there half the time. Either their lies are so obvious they slap you in the face, or there’s just this generalized confusion that makes the emotional state impossible to read.
    Charley sensed it, too. “If it were my friend messing around with my little girl, I’d sure as hell be pissed off.”
    Truman rubbed his lips with his free hand. “What did she say about me?”
    I decided subtlety was going to be wasted on Truman Dellis. “She said you and Russell Pelletier killed Jonathan Shipman and Deputy Brodeur.”
    He shook his head so vigorously that his hair swung. “No.”
    “She said you killed those men and then tried to frame my father.”
    “I didn’t do nothing.”
    “So why did she say those things?”
    A sheen of sweat stood out along Truman’s brow. “I don’t know.”
    “She claimed she saw you out at Rum Pond the day before the shooting. Is that true?”
    “No.”
    “She said she saw you talking with Pelletier behind the boathouse.”
    “I wasn’t there!”
    “So why is she saying these things about you?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Your own