The Bone Orchard: A Novel

“I was bleeding from the head at the time. You need to find Eklund, Lieutenant. He’s driving drunk, and there’s no saying where he might go or what he might do.”

“I’ll put out an alert,” he said.

“He’s driving a Nissan Xterra registered to his sister.” I had nothing to lose and so decided to test my luck. “Can you tell me anything about the status of your investigation?”

“You know I can’t.”

“What about Littlefield? It could be that whoever shot Kathy had a grudge against her and was just using the Gammon thing as cover. He wanted to make it look like retribution for what happened to Jimmy.”

The phone went silent for a while. “I’m not going to spitball ideas with you.”

“How about doing me a different kind of favor, then?”

“You have a pair of brass balls on you, Bowditch. I’ll grant you that.”

“What sort of relationship do you have with the Department of Corrections?”

“That sounds like a loaded question.”

“Can you pull some strings and get me a pass to visit a friend in the Supermax? His name is Billy Cronk.”

“I know who he is,” Soctomah said. “He’s in for a double homicide. Just swear to me this doesn’t have anything to do with my investigation.”

“I swear it has nothing to do with your investigation.”

“You have an interesting assortment of friends, Bowditch. I still want my windbreaker back, by the way.”

* * *

I hadn’t been lying to Soctomah, not entirely. I wanted to see Billy because I’d promised Aimee I would.

But I had another reason to visit the jail. Jimmy’s buddy from the 488th, Angelo Donato, worked as a corrections officer there. There was a decent chance Billy knew the former MP and could tell me something about the man.

When I arrived in the prison lobby half an hour later, I found that my name had magically appeared atop the visitors’ list. The weasel-faced guard who had given me grief had been replaced by a tall man with coffee-colored skin and a hairless skull he had shaved smooth that morning. He glanced at my driver’s license and said, “You must have a powerful friend to jump to the top of the guest list.”

“You make it sound like this is a nightclub.”

“A nightclub?” the lobby officer said with a chuckle. “I haven’t heard that one before.”

He told me to leave my keys and whatever else I had in my pockets in the coin-operated lockers across the room. I waited a few minutes on a bench, and then another guard—the visit officer—appeared. He unlocked a door and led me down a cinder-block hallway equipped with two metal detectors. The second machine had a problem with my belt buckle. The guard, a barrel-shaped man with a lazy eye, asked if he could frisk me.

“What happens if I say no?”

“Exit’s back that way.”

After he patted me down, he escorted me to a cubicle with a table and chairs bolted to the floor. The fluorescent lights were too bright, and a stinging chemical smell hung in the air, which made me wonder if an inmate had ever attempted suicide by guzzling the disinfectants they poured over everything inside the prison.

I waited close to twenty minutes for the guard to return with Billy. I found myself growing nervous as the minutes ticked by, afraid my brawny friend would appear diminished by his months behind bars. Eventually, the lock clicked and he came through the door, looking very much like the man I remembered. At six-four, Billy loomed over the guard assigned to restrain him. His woodsman’s tan had faded, and his long blond hair had been chopped as short as Sampson’s, but the guards had allowed him to keep most of his beard, which looked like it had been spun from gold and copper wire.

He was wearing a light blue shirt, darker denim pants, and the sort of sneakers you see on old people who gather at shopping malls to walk for exercise.

“Now, who could this stranger be?” he asked, cracking a broad smile I hadn’t expected.

I extended my hand, but the guard intervened. “This is a no-contact visit.”

Billy gave him a deadpan expression. “I guess a tug job is out of the question, then.”

“Just sit the f*ck down, Cronk.”

We settled down across the table from each other. Now that I had a better look at his face, I could see that there were gray shadows under his eyes.

“How are you holding up in here?” I asked.

“Finestkind.” The word was Down East slang for “first-rate,” except when used ironically, which was most of the time. Billy spoke with one of the thicker Maine accents I’d heard among men my own age. “What happened to your face?” he asked.

“It’s a long story. First I want to hear why you got transferred to the Supermax. Aimee thinks you’re in the Medium Custody Unit.”

At the mention of his wife’s name, he hung his handsome head. When he glanced up again, his pale eyes had filled with mist. “I’ve been meaning to say something, but I don’t want her to worry.”

“What happened, Billy?”

He leaned back, but the stiff chair didn’t give. It was odd seeing him without his customary blond braid. “There was a new guy who came into the prison—some bookkeeper who embezzled from a church—and I guess he was scared silly of being raped, so some wiseass told him he should find the biggest, scariest person on the block and sucker punch him, just to show the other cons to leave him alone. Guess who the biggest, scariest person was.”

I had seen firsthand Billy’s capacity for violence, watched him brutally kill two men in a gravel pit. To me, it had looked like self-defense, but the prosecutors claimed it was manslaughter, and the jury had unanimously agreed. At the time, I was still trying to talk Billy into appealing the verdict, if only for his family’s sake, but I had discovered that when a man believes he deserves to be punished, it is nearly impossible to persuade him otherwise.

“Jesus, Billy. What did you do to the guy?”

“He’s having trouble remembering things now. His name, for instance.”

“How long are you in the SMU for?”

“There’s going to be a trial in superior court. I could get a few more years tacked on to my sentence, I suppose.”

I wanted to curse his stupidity, but what was the point? He already felt bad enough. “Can’t you claim self-defense?”

“I seem to recall you offered the same advice last year.” He was referring to the manslaughter trial, in which I’d been called to testify against him as a hostile witness, but the faint smile told me he wasn’t harboring ill feelings. “About time you came for a visit. Thought I was going to see you here yesterday.”

“Do you remember me mentioning my field training officer, Kathy Frost?”

“Course I do.”

“Last week, she and another warden killed a guy. It was a case of suicide by cop. He was drunk and high and pulled a shotgun on them. He was a veteran, Billy.”

“Vietnam vet or one of the younger guys?”

“Afghanistan. He was an MP at Sabalu-Harrison.”

“I met a few MPs when I was at Bagram. What was this one’s name?”

“Jimmy Gammon.”

He shook his head to indicate he was unfamiliar with the man. “So if your sergeant shot this guy, why are you the one who looks like you walked through a plate-glass window?”

“Two nights ago, I was at Kathy’s house when someone shot her with a turkey gun, killed her dog, and took a few shots at me. Blew out the windshield on my Bronco.”

“What happened to your sergeant?”

“She’s in a coma.”

He stroked his beard. “They get the son of a bitch who done it?”

“Not yet.”

“I guess I can excuse you for missing our appointment.” His voice became even deeper, which didn’t seem possible. “So tell me about this dead MP.”

“He was with the Four eight-eight and he was pretty badly wounded. I saw a picture of him after he came back from Afghanistan. He looked like a reject from a wax museum. He was in and out of Togus, living with his parents most recently. One night, they called for help because he was intoxicated, and when Kathy and her trainee arrived, he pulled a shotgun.”

“The cops think there’s a connection between the two shootings?”

“It’s one of their theories.”

“Like maybe one of his buddies from the Four eighty-eighth decided to get revenge on your sergeant for what she did?”

“I take it you have an opinion,” I said.

Billy Cronk had one of the coldest stares on the planet. “Revenge can be a powerful motivator. In Iraq, a PV-nothing in my company got fragged for stealing another guy’s iPod. The MPs could never prove it, but everyone knew what went down.”

“There’s a guard at the prison who was with the Four eighty-eighth,” I said.

He leaned back against the plastic chair. “So that’s why you’re here.”

“I also made Aimee a promise I’d come visit you.”

Billy seemed unpersuaded. “What’s the name of this guard?”

“Donato,” I said.

“Yeah, I know him. He’s a supervisor. Tough, but fair. He’s not your guy, though.”

“How can you be sure?”