Bad Little Falls

by Paul Doiron

  “Oh, you do, do you?”

  It was a good question. “Let me buy you a cup of coffee, and I’ll try to explain.”

  “I thought you were different,” she said.

  “I am different.”

  “No, you’re not. You’re just a guy with a stiff dick like all the rest.”

  I opened my mouth to respond, but really, what was there to say?

  17

  After Jamie screamed off into the night, I decided to grab a late, lonely dinner and reflect on the absurdity of my day.

  I made a circuit of the mom-and-pop restaurants that constituted the Machias dining scene and found that all of them had ceased serving for the night. Eventually I put aside my scruples and returned to the McDonald’s on Route 1.

  I paused in front of Jamie’s portrait on the wall and felt my pulse speed up. Her golden brown eyes looked so clear in the photograph, and her smile seemed so genuine, as if being named Employee of the Month were truly an honor. And maybe it was an honor after all she’d been through: a busted marriage, the death of her parents, caring for a brain-damaged sister, an alcoholic brother, and a weird little boy. I remembered her sobriety chip and her breakdown in my truck, when she’d blamed her past behavior for the calamities that had befallen Prester.

  She’d accused me of being no different from all the leering men she met at the restaurant, as if somehow my desire to save her was just a deluded manifestation of lust. Looking at her portrait again, feeling the effect her smile had on my heart and groin, I found I couldn’t totally deny the accusation.

  My dinner consisted of a rubbery Big Mac, served with some wilted lettuce, too much special sauce, and a side order of oversalted fries. To compensate for the empty calories, I ordered a Diet Coke, as if that would make any difference. I settled down in a corner booth and watched a party of intoxicated young people nervously watching me. A hulking kid with his back to me was wearing a T-shirt with the slogan YOU AIN’T HAVING FUN TILL THEY DIAL 9-1-1.

  Was that Barney Beal? I contemplated going over to speak with him. But then one of the giggling girls leaned over to kiss him, and I saw that it was just another pimple-faced lunk.

  Poor Prester. I wasn’t sure how often he’d been getting laid before—he looked handsome enough on his driver’s license—but having a nose was usually the minimum requirement to lure a woman into bed. I needed to remind myself what the sheriff had told me: As pathetic as he now seemed, he and Randall Cates had been dealers in deadly narcotics. At least one person, a young woman, had died from ingesting the poison they’d peddled. Wasn’t there poetic justice in the idea of a man who’d traded in snortable drugs losing his nose? The sheriff, I was certain, would say yes.

  My brief encounter with Roberta Rhine led me to believe that Dunbar might be headed for an extended stay in the doghouse if the sheriff got wind of what had happened at the hospital. For the first time, I began to wonder how my own sergeant would react when he learned I’d showed up in the med-surg unit with the sister of a murder suspect. And here I’d been so pleased with my professional development as a law-enforcement officer. My old reckless self was still lurking in the shadows, ready to jump out and say “Boo!” as soon as I turned my head.

  When we’d first arrived, Dunbar had made a cryptic remark, but in the ensuing chaos I’d forgotten to pursue the matter with him: “What is it with this guy? How many times do I have to tell people he can’t be disturbed?” The comment suggested that someone else had shown up, asking after Prester.

  What the hell had happened out in the Heath? It seemed impossible for someone so distraught, so emotionally naked, to lie about his innocence with such skill. Unless he’d killed his friend in some sort of irrational state brought on by severe hypothermia and could no longer remember his actions, it meant that someone else had suffocated Cates.

  When I was busing my plastic tray, I realized that the drunken teenagers had slipped out without my seeing them. What are the odds, I wondered, of my being summoned in a few short hours to scrape their dead bodies off the road?

  Instead, I received a call from Detective Zanadakis. I glanced at the automated clock on the BlackBerry screen. It was 10:30. I was half an hour late for my interview.

  “Is there a problem?”

  I apologized and told him I was on my way.

  * * *

  The Washington County Sheriff’s Department occupied one wing of a sprawling brick building in a neighborhood of handsome houses and venerable maples in downtown Machias. On one side was the county courthouse; on the other was the jail. Yard-long icicles hung from the eaves above the concrete front steps. I eyed them cautiously, thinking about swords hanging over unwitting heads and other metaphors of impending doom.

  Whenever I entered the sheriff’s office, I had the sensation of having blundered into the sitting room of someone’s run-down, albeit historic home. On my first tour of the building, a deputy had told me that in bygone days the sheriff used to live in these very suites and that his wife would cook for the prisoners. The current sheriff lived with her female partner in a fancy house on the water in Machiasport, and the guy who cooked for the prisoners was a taciturn fellow who went by the nickname “Chef” and tended to reduce all solid food to mush because he himself was missing most of his teeth.

  Rhine and Zanadakis were waiting for me in a parlor with a bricked-up fireplace and tall windows that dated from Edith Wharton’s girlhood. On either side of the mantel stood flags in stands, the Stars and Stripes to the left and the Maine state flag to the right. The sheriff’s Nike gym bag was wedged into the bookcase, below a shelfful of heavy legal tomes. A white-muzzled golden retriever sprawled on the hooked rug. The dog snored soundly, drawing deep and even breaths. It reminded me of Doc’s old mutt, Duchess.

  A man was seated in a black leatherette chair across the desk from the sheriff. He wore a pigeon-gray sport coat over a black button-down shirt and a knotted wool tie. Faded black jeans and scuffed wing tips completed his outfit. His dark hair was tacky from some sort of hair product, and his skin had a bronze glow that, in this season, was either the residue of a Caribbean vacation or a tanning booth.

  “We were just talking about you,” the sheriff said. “Have you met Lieutenant Zanadakis?”

  “No, ma’am,” I said.

  The detective and I shook hands. He made a point of making steady eye contact the whole time, as if testing whether I would look away. I didn’t.

  “Thanks for coming in,” he said.

  “Glad to help.”

  “Have a seat,” said the sheriff. She was wearing an unflattering khaki uniform shirt, which was tucked into black polyester pants. She had clipped her star-shaped badge to her belt. Aside from her signature turquoise ring, the badge was her only fashion accessory.

  “We were discussing your report just now,” said Zanadakis. “Sounds like you had quite a night.”

  “It was certainly a long one.”

  There was a knock at the door behind me. Chief Deputy Corbett, the balding blond officer I’d met at the Sprague house, leaned against the lintel. His jowls were red, and he wore his familiar black fleece vest with the star on the breast. “Mind if I sit in?” he asked the sheriff.

  Rhine turned to the detective for his assent. Zanadakis’s shrug indicated he didn’t have a problem.

  Corbett took a step into the room and leaned against the wall. I couldn’t see him there when I turned to face the sheriff and the detective, but I felt his presence the way you do in the forest when a crow is watching you from a tree.

  “I’m going to take some notes.” Zanadakis removed a reporter’s notebook and pen from his blazer. “These are just for my own reference.”

  “Where do you want me to begin?” I asked.

  “At the vet’s house,” said the detective. “You were there for some sort of dinner party. Is that correct?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Dr. Larrabee had invited me to his house for dinner. We were joined by Professor Kevin Kendrick from
the University of Maine.”

  “I need to ask if you consumed any alcoholic beverages while you were there.”

  “No,” I said. “Just coffee.”

  The detective made a note of this. “Did Larrabee or Kendrick?”

  “Yes. I don’t know how much they had before I arrived, but while I was there, they split a bottle of wine and had a couple of glasses of whiskey. They were talking about having cordials when I left. That was one of the reasons Doc—”

  Zanadakis looked up. “You mean Larrabee?”

  “Sorry, yes. One of the reasons Dr. Larrabee asked me to drive him to the Sprague house was that he felt unfit to operate a motor vehicle.”

  “Was he impaired?”

  “In my judgment, yes.”

  “What about Kendrick?”

  “Possibly. He showed no outward signs of intoxication, but he consumed quite a lot of alcohol in my presence.”

  “This was the first time you and Kendrick ever met?”

  “Yes.”

  “What was your impression of him?”

  Even though Zanadakis was conducting this conversation in the most informal way possible, I was aware that his notes would be entered into evidence at a trial. We could all pretend that this was just a bunch of fellow cops collegially sharing information on a case, but anything I said now might haunt me at cross-examination.

  “I found him to be highly intelligent and interesting. It sounds like he has led an adventurous life. When we were together in the Heath, he impressed me as a highly skilled outdoorsman.” I decided to stop there and let the detective tease out the rest.

  “Did either Kendrick or Larrabee mention Randall Cates or John Sewall at the dinner?”

  “No. However, we did discuss Trinity Raye.”

  The sheriff couldn’t stop herself from leaning forward across the desk. “In what context?”

  “Sergeant Rivard had been telling me earlier that day about a student who had overdosed. When I learned that Kendrick taught at the university, I asked him if he knew her. He said, ‘It’s a small school.’”

  “Were those his exact words?” Zanadakis asked.

  “As I recall them.”

  “And that was all he said?” The sheriff turned her ring around 360 degrees on her finger.

  “Yes,” I said. “It made me wonder if she was a student of his.”

  “She wasn’t,” the sheriff said flatly, “so you can stop speculating.”

  That dispensed with one of my theories. “I just realized that there’s something else that’s not in my report that you should know.”

  They all waited for me to continue.

  “I saw Prester and Randall earlier that day. It was at the McDonald’s in Machias. Sergeant Rivard and I were there getting breakfast. They came in and caused a scene.”

  Zanadakis showed me his bleach-white teeth. “Sergeant Rivard included that information in his own report. It seemed a curious omission from yours.”

  “I was exhausted when I wrote up my notes.” The truth was that I’d been distracted by my confrontation with Brogan and my lingering thoughts of Jamie Sewall.

  “You also neglected to mention it to me when we met at that same McDonald’s yesterday.” Rhine’s tone was as sharp as a butcher’s knife.

  “I was exhausted, as I said.”

  Zanadakis glanced down at his notebook before reestablishing eye contact. “Describe the ‘scene’ Cates and Sewall caused.”

  In my mind’s eye, I saw Randall snatch the visor from Jamie’s head and the look of pure anger on her face when I asked if she needed help. I worried that if I described her expression, it might sound incriminating in a way I didn’t intend. Once again, I felt inexplicable protectiveness toward her.

  “They came into the restaurant and hassled Prester’s sister, Jamie Sewall,” I said. “She works there as a shift manager. I think they were harassing her for free food. She asked them to leave. They waited in the parking lot until she brought them a bag and a couple of coffees. It was how I recognized Cates later, when we discovered his body in the Heath.”

  “It seems important, don’t you think?” the sheriff said. “Your having an encounter with the murdered man?”

  I slouched a bit in my chair. “Yes, ma’am.”

  How was Rhine going to react when she heard from Dunbar that I had accompanied the murder suspect’s sister to the hospital a couple of hours ago? I experienced the familiar sensation of watching my career flash in front of my eyes.

  “Can I ask a question?” It was Corbett, behind me. He didn’t wait for permission. “I’m curious about that snowmobiler you and Larrabee passed on the Bog Road.”

  I was grateful for the change of subject. “What about him?”

  The sheriff glanced down at a piece of paper on her blotter. “In your report, you noted that you encountered a male in a green snowsuit riding a green sled. He was heading toward Route 277 from the direction of the Heath.”

  “That’s correct,” I said. “At least I think the rider was a male. We saw him only for a second, and he was wearing a helmet with the visor down. Maybe Larrabee got a better look.”

  “So you don’t think you’d recognize the rider again?” Corbett asked.

  I considered the question. “I might recognize the sled—it was a distinctive shade of green. Larrabee and I were in a rush to reach the Sprague residence. At that time, all we knew was that an injured man had appeared at their door suffering from frostbite and hypothermia. We didn’t realize a homicide might have taken place.”

  “Had you met the Spragues before?” Rhine asked.

  “Not before last night.”

  Zanadakis coughed. “I think we’re getting off track here. I’d prefer to ask my own questions in my own manner.”

  In their eagerness, Rhine and Corbett had hijacked his interview.

  “How would you like me to proceed?” I asked.

  “I want to know everything you did yesterday,” the detective said. “Sheriff, can we use your interview room? I’d like to get this on tape.”

  18

  The interview lasted two hours. Now that Zanadakis had learned I was prone to omitting relevant details from my reports, he wanted to cover all the bases again. He made me run through the events of my day from the moment I awoke until the discovery of Randall Cates’s body. From the encyclopedic scope of his questions, I couldn’t determine what theories the detective might be pursuing. He seemed interested in everything at once and in nothing in particular.

  The more I heard myself talk, the more certain I became that the key to the whole mystery was the identity of the person, or persons, Randall and Prester had met in the Heath. If, as Jamie insisted, Prester would never have harmed his friend, then the next suspect had to be the man they’d sold drugs to that snowy day. My suspicion was reinforced by Corbett, who followed me out of the sheriff’s office and down the heavily salted front steps.

  “Hey, Bowditch,” he called. “Hold up.”

  I waited for him to descend the stairs behind me. A cold wind was howling down the street, and he hadn’t even bothered to grab a coat.

  “I need to talk with you,” he said, already shivering. “You mentioned Barney Beal in there.”

  “What about him?”

  “I’m fixated on that snowmobiler you saw. Any chance it was Beal? I’m wondering if he was the one they were meeting.”

  I remembered Corbett’s saying he lived up the road from the Spragues and that he had staked out the Heath a few times after they’d reported suspicious activity. Was his interest personal or professional?

  “Rivard says he’s been busting into camps around Bog Pond to get money to buy drugs. Find out if his sled is green.”

  Corbett wrapped his arm around his broad shoulders for warmth. The breeze was lifting the individual blond hairs from his head and making them dance. I hadn’t noticed before, but his neck was suffering from the worst case of razor burn I’d ever seen. “Whoever it was did a number on Cates,�
� he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Haven’t you heard what the ME found during the autopsy? Randall’s sternum was cracked. That’s why he must have stayed behind when Prester went for help. The guy was probably in pain every time he took a breath. I’m surprised he made it even ten steps from his car.”

  I watched the chief deputy ascend the steps to the sheriff’s office, wondering about the significance of that detail and why Corbett had chosen to share it with me. I was still wondering when my cell phone rang. The number that showed on the screen belonged to Rivard.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  “I’m back at your house.”

  “My house?”

  “Yeah, I was passing by and decided to stop in.”

  That was unlike Rivard.

  “You’d better get back here,” he said.

  “What for?”

  “Your place has been trashed.”

  * * *

  By mid-February, Maine’s back roads are as battered and bruised as an old boxer’s face. Potholes form yawning craters deep enough to swallow a tractor wheel. Frost heaves create sharp ridges in the asphalt, which, taken at speed, will launch a vehicle clear off the ground. Factor in patches of black ice—slick spots invisible in your headlights—and towering snowbanks that hide driveways from view, and you have the perfect formula for a wrecked car.

  I drove home with the gas pedal pressed flat against the floor. The road bounced me up into the air until the shoulder belt drew tight across my chest, then pulled me hard against the seat. Later, I would discover a strap-shaped bruise on my shoulder, but at the time, I didn’t feel anything but mindless fury.

  Rivard’s truck was pulled up in the dooryard beside my snow-covered Jeep. He had the engine running and the headlights blazing, and I saw his darkened profile behind the wheel as I drove up. From the outside, my trailer looked intact. No windows had been broken; no new animals had been crucified on my front door. So why did Rivard think the place had been vandalized?

  I got my answer as soon as I opened the truck door. The night air was cold and crisp; in my lungs, it felt as thin as the atmosphere atop Mount Denali. Then the night breeze pushed a sour but unmistakable smell in my direction: skunk.