The Bone Orchard: A Novel

I felt a nerve jump in my neck. “That’s a quote from James Gammon Sr., I take it.”

“That’s libel! He can’t just throw around words like murder. Why would they even allow that to be printed? Kathy’s on her deathbed, for f*ck’s sake.”

“Gammon’s a powerful man,” I said. “He probably goes yachting with the newspaper’s owner.”

“Well, he’d better shut up about Kathy, or I’m going to pay him a visit. Kathy told me he has a mansion on McLean Hill.”

“I’d advise against it, Kurt.” I felt in my pocket for his car keys, just to be safe.

“What the f*ck do I have to lose?”

It was a valid question, I had to admit.

I should never have allowed him to start drinking again. Kathy had warned me that her brother became more unstable the more alcohol he consumed. Worse, I’d inflamed his anger by sharing those newspapers with him. I began to wonder about the firearms Kathy owned, and hoped she kept them under lock and key. That was assuming Eklund didn’t have a pistol or rifle of his own stashed somewhere.

“If you’re so concerned about her, you should put away the crème de menthe and take a nap,” I said. “After you wake up, I’ll drive you down to the hospital to see her.”

“If she’s unconscious, what’s the point?”

“The point is that you’re her brother.”

“She wouldn’t want to see me.” He studied the newspaper in front of him. The picture showed Jimmy Gammon with his buddies, Donato and Smith. “I bet one of these a*sholes shot her. The father probably put them up to it. That’s how these conspiracies work.”

“Take it easy, Kurt.”

“And do you know what’s going to happen to them?” he said. “Nothing’s going to happen to them. Even if the cops figure it out, it’s going to be a cover-up. It says here that the father works with the Department of Defense. He’ll just pull some strings and get the report shredded. Don’t tell me it hasn’t happened before, either. Agent Orange, Abu Ghraib, Haditha! It’s all one goddamned lie after another.”

“You need to calm down,” I said.

“Don’t tell me to calm down. I lost my f*cking eye! And no one in the army ever apologized for it. They just gave me a Walgreen’s eye patch and sent me home. ‘Put the past behind you,’ the shrink at Fort Knox told me. ‘That’s easy if you have two f*cking eyes,’ I said.”

He rose to his feet, knocking over the chair. The bottle of crème de menthe crashed to the floor. The glass shattered and bile green liquor seeped between the floorboards. He reeled against the doorjamb and caught his body weight against the painted wood.

“The first hooker I was with couldn’t even bring herself to look at me,” he said, blinking. “My face was that ugly to her.”

He drove his fist into the side of his face—the side with the functioning eye—so hard, I worried he might have broken his hand. It left a wine-colored mark on his cheek, as if he had managed to damage even more of the blood vessels beneath the socket. He raised his hand to strike again and then fixed me with a stare and took a staggering step in my direction.

An image flashed through my mind of Kathy and Dani Tate in that darkened barn. For a split second, I felt as if I were standing face-to-face with Jimmy Gammon.

I raised my empty hands. “Kurt,” I said. “Listen to me. I want you to take a deep breath and think of Kathy.”

“Kathy’s not here!”

“What would she say if she were?”

He paused, wobbling back and forth on his toes, but close enough to lunge. “I don’t know.”

“Yes, you do. She’d tell you that she loved you and that you’ve got to stop hurting yourself.”

“Shut up,” he said, his voice choking with a sob.

“Kathy needs you, Kurt. She’s your little sister, and she’s in trouble.”

He lowered his head, so that the tousled hair fell in his face. “I told you I was bad luck.”

“Just go lay your head down for a few minutes. Don’t worry about the mess in here. I’ll clean it up.”

He lurched away, unsteady on his feet, like an actor pretending to be a zombie. I watched him blunder around the corner, saw him stumble into the old parlor, and heard a heavy noise as he let his body fall across the sectional sofa.

I looked down at my hands. They were shaking.

* * *

I swept the glass shards into a dustpan and used a dishrag to sop up the mint-smelling liqueur.

Afterward, I sat down to read the papers. There was little in them I didn’t already know, except that Jimmy had been the victim of the Taliban’s weapon of choice—an improvised explosive device. I’d suspected as much.

The quote from James Gammon sounded just as vitriolic as when Kurt had read it aloud. It didn’t matter that Kathy Frost had nearly died—might still die—what mattered was that his son should be avenged. There was no notice of a funeral, but the Gammons had requested that, in lieu of flowers, donations be made to the Wounded Warrior Project.

When I looked in on Kurt ten minutes later, he was lying on his belly again. His snores were softer and wetter now, as if his throat was clotted with mucus. I pulled my sleeping bag up over his long legs. I had no clue how long he’d be out. In his drunken state, I wasn’t about to take him to Maine Med unless it was to drop him at the detox ward.

I needed a shower and a change of clothes. I lugged my duffel bag to the upstairs bathroom. Slowly, I peeled off the bandages and was relieved that the cuts showed signs of healing. I ran the faucet in the claw-foot tub until the water was piping hot. Then I twisted the handles and stepped inside.

The only shampoo I could find smelled of fake wild berries. The body wash was even fruitier, but I lathered myself up as much as possible, eager to strip away days of perspiration and grime. My knotted muscles eased under the heat of the showerhead.

After I was done, I had to run a hand towel across the fogged mirror to see my reflection again. I didn’t see a need to apply fresh dressings to the scabs on my face. Remembering what Kathy had said about my looking like a younger version of my father, I decided to shave off my beard.

I was rooting around for a razor when I heard the sound of an engine roar to life outside the bathroom window. The glass was misted, but after I ran my palm across it, I saw Kathy’s personal vehicle, the Nissan Xterra, backing away from the hay barn. I’d been so concerned about securing the keys to the Cutlass and the patrol truck that I’d forgotten all about the SUV.

Behind the wheel was Kurt.





24



As quickly as I could, I put on clean clothes and rushed downstairs. Outside, the clouds seemed thinner, gauzier—the way they do when they gather around a mountaintop. I unlocked Kurt’s Cutlass and was greeted with the smell of stale beer and Swisher Sweets cigars. He’d tried but failed to cover up the stench with one of those evergreen-shaped air fresheners. The combination of odors was noxious.

I turned the key in the ignition, and the engine made a harsh straining noise. Eventually, the rods and pistons began to churn. I backed the sedan past my Bronco and swung the wheel sharply until I was facing forward. Then I mashed the gas pedal and took off down the gravel drive in the direction of Camden.

There was no doubt in my mind where Kurt was headed. The articles in the newspaper had set off his drunken outburst. If Kurt Eklund showed up at the Gammons’ door, he would be lucky if they only called the police.

Below the ridge, the road plunged into a small village that was just a cluster of old houses and a general store with a FOR SALE sign behind the dusty window. I crossed a bridge above a swollen river and then began to climb again through rolling hills that were mint green with new leaves. Most of the country had been cleared for grazing in the eighteenth century and then allowed to go back to forest after the original families had sold off their land. There were still a few hay fields teeming with dandelions, violets, and wildflowers whose names I did not know. But the people who owned the farmhouses now seemed to have little interest in tending fields or raising livestock. Occasionally, you might see a place that had a vegetable plot in the yard or a small pasture with a single horse in residence. But those homesteads were the exceptions.

Soon I found myself passing between humpbacked mountains. On either side of the road were cliffs too steep to climb, and dark rows of evergreens staggered along the ridgelines. Sometimes I could see the mountaintops, and sometimes the clouds would drift in suddenly, hiding the rocky summits from view. I was driving through the Camden Hills.

Kurt’s Cutlass was the most sluggish vehicle I’d ever driven. I had to push the pedal to the floor when I came to the steeper grades. Not once did I catch sight of the Xterra.

After twenty minutes, I arrived at the turn that led to the Gammon estate. There were stone pillars at the bottom of the paved drive with black ribbons tied to the lampposts as symbols of mourning. The normally locked gates were standing open. I couldn’t imagine how Kurt had managed to talk his way onto the property.

I drove through the open gates without permission and climbed a quarter mile through landscaped fields until I could see the slate roof of the house. I tried to suppress a sense of dread as I rounded the last corner, but the Xterra was nowhere in sight. If Eklund wasn’t here, where had he gone?