The Bone Orchard: A Novel

There were paper place mats on the lacquered wooden table, featuring boxed advertisements for a variety of local businesses and organizations. The Shear Perfection Beauty Salon (“Because you deserve nothing less”); the Lighthouse Pentecostal Church (“Sin sees the bait but is blind to the hook!”); Big Al’s Gun Shop (“Offering 10 percent off all muzzle-loader supplies”).

God, how I missed this place.

I’d looked for Dot Libby when I’d come in but hadn’t seen her. The talkative plumber I’d spoken to a few days ago, Pulkinnen, was hunched at the counter. He’d been the one complaining about Dani Tate to me. He’d said the local poachers were unafraid of her, but I’d come to the conclusion that the rookie was facing much bigger challenges if she was ever going to be a successful warden.

The new waitress, Destiny, came over with a pot of coffee. She must have just received a perm at Shear Perfection; her hair was twisted into ringlets tighter than any I’d ever seen on a poodle. She filled our coffee cups without asking.

“How are you two doing today?”

“Fine,” said Tate. “I’ll have the oatmeal.”

“You want any raisins or brown sugar on top?”

“No.”

“I’ll have a molasses doughnut,” I said.

“Healthy choice,” said Dani Tate.

I leaned back against the creaking booth and spread my arms along the top. “My body is a temple.”

She kept her mouth clamped shut as she surveyed the room, so she seemed to have no lips at all. She made fierce eye contact with every person who tried to sneak a peek at our booth. The woman might have been antisocial, but she was hardly a shrinking violet.

“Can I give you some advice?” I said.

“This is going to be good.”

“Stop trying to intimidate everyone you meet. Giving people the stink eye won’t make them afraid of you.”

“I’m a woman, and I’m five-four. How do you expect me to intimidate anybody?”

“By knowing their secrets.”

“The arrogant a*shole returns,” she said.

“It’s not arrogance,” I said. “It’s experience. You need to talk to people if you’re going to be an effective warden. Cultivate a few informants. There are dozens of feuds going on around here—neighbors who hate their neighbors—and they’ll happily rat each other out if they trust you with their secrets.”

She made a penciling motion with her empty hand on the place mat. “Should I be taking notes?”

“There’s an old woman named Reetha Gee who lives with her clan on Maple Grove Cove,” I said. “She has something like twenty teenaged grandkids. The boys all have rap sheets and the girls are all dating guys with rap sheets. You should pay Reetha a visit someday and give her some deer meat as a bribe.”

“I know who Reetha Gee is. She’s basically the matriarch of a heroin-dealing organization.”

“She’s also a useful informant. If you’re nice to her, she’ll call you with incriminating evidence you can use to make a bust. It’s how she gets rid of her enemies.”

“You don’t have a problem doing business with someone like her?”

“Not if I bust some bad guys along the way.”

She threw her elbows on the table and tried the alpha-dog thing with me, staring hard into my eyes.

“You know what?” she said. “I do have a question about your ‘mysterious past.’”

Her irises were the color of shale fragments, I decided. The woman was made entirely of stone.

“Fire away.”

“If you were such a kick-ass warden, why did you quit?”

An answer came out without my being able to stop it. “I’ve been asking myself that question every day.”

The frankness of my response seemed to surprise her. She slunk back into the booth but kept the muscles in her jaw clenched. “I still don’t understand why the colonel didn’t fire you a long time ago.”

“Maybe it was because I had the highest conviction rate in the service two years in a row.”

She crossed her short, strong arms. “Big whoop.”

“I also had Kathy Frost looking out for me for a while. She seemed to think I was worth holding on to.”

“I don’t know why.”

“When she wakes up, you can ask her.”

My comment was an unwelcome reminder that a woman we both respected was still in a coma. Tate’s face flushed red. She pushed herself violently out of the booth.

“I need to take a piss,” she said.

The other diners stopped what they were doing in order to watch her. I wasn’t sure what I’d hoped to learn from Dani Tate, but I had blown any chance of getting her to open up. When she returned, she would tell me it was time to go, breakfast or no breakfast.

Destiny returned with our orders. The last time I’d been to the diner, she’d mentioned something to me about the Gammon shooting; she’d used an unusual phrase. But my mind was drawing a blank. She set the doughnut down on its little plate in front of me and the bowl of oatmeal on Tate’s place mat. She said, “That woman you’re with, she’s the one who shot that wounded soldier in Camden?”

“She and another warden,” I said.

“They couldn’t have just wounded the poor guy or something?”

“He pointed a shotgun at them. They were in fear for their lives.”

“It’s all people are talking about here. Some people think they should’ve shot him, and some people don’t. There ain’t many on the fence.”

Suddenly, the previous conversation I’d had with Destiny came back word by word.

“Do you remember me?” I asked. “I was in here the other day, talking to Dot.”

She gave me a coquettish smile and raised her left hand to show me that there was no ring on her finger. “I absolutely remember you, dear.”

“You said there was a big guy in here asking questions about Kathy. The word you used to describe him was ‘Neanderthal.’ What did he look like, exactly?”

“I don’t have a memory for names and faces.” She leaned in close enough for me to smell the cinnamon chewing gum she was snapping between her teeth. “Unless a guy is wicked cute, I mean.”

I tried to play dumb and pretend she wasn’t flirting with me. “Why did you call him a Neanderthal?”

“He was just wicked big, and he had gross hair all over his arms and neck. I remember thinking he looked like he should have been dressed like Fred Flintstone, you know, in a tiger skin.”

Kathy’s neighbor Littlefield was a large man, but I hadn’t seen his face. One of Jimmy’s buddies from the 488th was also a big dude, the guy who lived up in Aroostook County: Ethan Smith. Even Kurt was a sizable human being. Maybe if Destiny described the mystery man to Dani Tate, the warden could tell if the description fit any of the local lawbreakers Kathy had been investigating.

More likely, Take would just punch me in the heart, as she’d already threatened to do.

“What sort of questions was this Neanderthal guy asking?” I said.

“Like if that warden sergeant was a regular. If she came in every morning. He wondered if she lived nearby. Someone at the counter said, ‘No, she lives in Appleton.’”

“Do you remember who it was at the counter who told the guy where Sergeant Frost lived?”

“Sorry, honey. Like I said, I don’t have a memory for names and faces.”

I dug out my cell phone and typed the address of the Portland Press Herald into the browser bar. The site came up and I searched for the name Ethan Smith. The article appeared, along with a miniature version of the picture of Jimmy Gammon, Angelo Donato, and Ethan Smith horsing around at Camp Sabalu-Harrison. I held the phone up so Destiny could view the tiny screen.

“Could this be the Neanderthal?”

She squinted her already squinty eyes. “Maybe if he had longer hair now?”

I’d missed seeing Dani Tate return. She’d taken a circuitous route to avoid a busboy who was clearing one of the tables. She loomed over my shoulder, seeming taller than five-four.

“What the hell, Bowditch?” she said.

“Destiny may have talked to the guy who shot Kathy. He came in here the day of the shooting, trying to find out where she lived.”

Tate scowled at me. “You just can’t help yourself, can you?”

“She said he looked like a Neanderthal—big and hairy, with a unibrow. Does that describe anyone you and Kathy were investigating? A poacher or a pot grower? Someone dangerous?”

Tate reached into the kangaroo pocket of her sweatshirt to find her key fob. She pushed the button to unlock the truck.

“I think this is significant,” I said.

“And I think you can hitchhike back to my house.”

She turned on her heel and made for the door.

I barely had time to pay for our uneaten breakfast. The bell rang loudly as Dani slammed the door. As I passed Pulkinnen on his stool by the door, I thought I heard him mutter “Bitch” beneath his breath. I glared at him, but the Finnish plumber spun away to face the pie case.





32



I honestly thought she was going to drive off without me. As it was, I had to chase her truck halfway across the parking lot. She stopped long enough for me to open the Tacoma’s passenger door. I started to climb onto the nerf bar, using the interior handle to pull myself up into the cab.