The Bone Orchard: A Novel

It didn’t sound like a question, so I didn’t reply.

“You did an exit interview when you resigned from the service,” he said. “Who did it? Peasely?”

“Yes.”

“Did he mention that you had a year to rethink the decision? If there’s an opening, you don’t need to formally reapply.”

“He said the provision was applicable only if a warden left under good circumstances.”

“Did he say you were fired?”

“No.”

“That means you left under good circumstances.”

I had never imagined that returning to the Warden Service was a possibility. I had too many enemies in the Augusta headquarters. My resignation had felt irrevocable from the moment I’d offered it.

The hospital loomed ahead.

“So I could just come back?” I said.

We entered the darkened interior of the Congress Street parking garage. “At the colonel’s discretion,” he said.

Or the acting colonel’s, I realized.

* * *

Malcomb escorted me as far as Kathy’s private room. “I’m going to get myself a cup of coffee. Do you want anything?”

“I’m good,” I said.

I knocked and heard a man’s voice tell me to come in. I braced myself before turning the doorknob.

Kathy’s parents were seated in chairs they’d pulled up beside the bed. They both rose to their feet as I entered. The father I knew from the chapel, but the mother I recognized only as an older version of the woman I’d seen in the family photograph hanging in their dining room. Alice Eklund was as tall as her husband. Her hair had faded but still had a slightly blondish tint. There were deep folds of skin along her neck, and the blue veins were prominent in her hands. But she seemed fit and healthy for a woman in her eighties.

The hospital bed was adjustable, and Kathy had raised it so that her head and shoulders were only slightly elevated, as if sitting upright might be a step too far in her recovery. Her skin was no longer gray, but there was no other word to describe her complexion except sickly. Her hair hung close to her scalp, as if she’d recently been wearing a cap; the sutured wound above her ear looked painful. She was wearing actual pajamas rather than a hospital Johnny. They were white, patterned with images of Walt Disney’s cartoon character Pluto.

“Hey, Grasshopper,” she said in a hoarse voice.

“Hey, yourself.”

Kathy raised a hand weakly to indicate her parents. “Did you meet my folks?”

“Reverend Eklund.” I extended my hand to the old man.

“Erik,” he reminded me. “Alice, this is the warden we were telling you about, Kathy’s friend Mike.”

The old woman stepped forward and pressed both of her wrinkled hands around mine. They were ice-cold. Her eyes welled up with tears so fast that they were running down her cheeks before she could lift a tissue. “Thank you.”

Erik Eklund put an arm around his wife’s shoulders. “We can never repay you for what you’ve done for us.”

“Papa,” said Kathy from the bed.

“What?” asked her father.

“You’re embarrassing him.” She was having a hard time getting her words out, but her tongue didn’t have the swollen sound of a person with a speech impediment. “Can you leave us alone? Just for a little while?”

“Of course,” said her father.

Her mother wouldn’t let go of me. It became a bit awkward. Her husband nearly had to pry her fingers loose.

After the door closed behind them, I remained standing at the foot of the bed, as if Kathy had a contagious disease.

“You’ve looked better,” she said to me.

I smiled and raised my hand to the side of my face. “You should see the other guy.”

“Decoster, huh?”

“It’s sad about Marta Jepson.”

“She asked me what she should tell Jason about that night, and I said she could blame me. I’m sure he grew up hating my guts. But he held it against Marta, too. I think he wanted to kill her his whole life.”

“It doesn’t make much sense, does it? The son avenging his abusive father.”

“I think I heard that story before.”

She gave me a faint smile to indicate that it was a joke. My own father had been a bastard, and no one had been quicker to defend him than yours truly. She waved me forward. I took a seat beside the bed. Her arm was connected to all sorts of tubes and wires, but she held out her hand to me. Her grip was so light, it was barely there.

“I’m sorry about Kurt,” I said.

“You can’t save someone who doesn’t want to be saved.”

I had learned that lesson before. But it’s one you keep forgetting. “So, how are you feeling?”

“Like a pincushion. Or a pi?ata. Both, I guess.”

I was trying to gauge from her speech how her mind was working. “You’d lost a lot of blood when I found you.”

“They put it back. Now they’re afraid I’ve got brain damage. The docs keep testing me. ‘Count backward from twenty. Remember these three things.’”

She seemed dehydrated and more exhausted than I had ever seen her, but her thinking seemed sound enough. Whatever the doctors were giving her for the pain had left her a little loopy, though. It seemed to have the same effect as truth serum.

“You don’t remember anything about that night?” I asked.

“I remember arguing with you. Did I forgive you?”

“Yes.”

Her laugh was as soft as a sigh. “Of course I did.”

We sat there gazing at each other. She really looked horrible with her sunken eyes and flat hair—almost as bad as my mom had on that last night of her life. I was afraid I might choke up if I didn’t distract myself.

“Do you want to hear some gossip?” I asked.

“Harkavy? Yeah, I know.”

“It’s good for the major, though.”

“He won’t get the job. Doesn’t kiss enough ass.”

“The wardens chipped in for me to stay at the Northeastland last night.”

“Fancy.”

“Maybe after you get out of here, you can show me around Aroostook County. I’d like to see all your old stomping grounds.”

She shook her head. “Too many memories.”

The reference might have been to Jacques and Jason Decoster or to the tragic life of Marta Jepson, but my gut told me she was talking about her late husband, Darren.

She seemed eager to change the subject. “Guess who was just in here? Tate.”

“I thought you two weren’t supposed to communicate until the investigation is complete.”

“She broke the rules.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“You’re a bad influence, Grasshopper.”

I studied her smiling face, and I realized that there was something I needed to tell her. The attorney general’s investigation was still proceeding. Kathy had time to come clean.

“Kathy,” I said, lowering my voice. “I know you didn’t shoot Jimmy Gammon in that barn. It was Tate who killed him, but you took the blame.”

Her bloodshot eyes widened. “How?”

“You kept saying to me that it wouldn’t have happened if I’d been there. At first, I thought you meant it wouldn’t have happened because I was more experienced. But you were speaking literally. Then, later, I found a diagram in your wastebasket. I thought it was just a doodle until I realized you were plotting out the trajectories of the two bullets. You lied in your report, Kathy. You could be prosecuted for obstructing justice.”

It took her some effort, but she rolled her eyes. “Who’s going to tell?”

Not me, obviously. “Tate might confess if she figures it out.”

“She thinks it was me who hit him. I told her I did it, and she believes me.”

“What about the ballistics investigators?”

“The bullet went through his neck. No way to tell which one hit him. But I know I missed. I plotted it out, and there was no way I could have hit him in the carotid from where I was standing.”

The confession left me feeling like I’d gotten the wind knocked out of me. “Why did you lie to protect her?”

“She’s a good warden. I thought she deserved more than a few second chances.”

“Like me, you mean.”

“Yeah.”

Why should it have surprised me that the woman who had spent years stopping me from throwing away my career—who had sacrificed so much on my behalf—would do the same for another promising young warden?

“Jesus Christ, Kathy.”

Her lip curled on one side, the way it did when she was being a smart aleck. “I think she has a crush on you.”

“Tate?” The woman disapproved of everything I did.

“I told her you were taken, though.”

I leaned back in the chair and frowned. “I’m taken? Tell that to Stacey Stevens.”

“She’s an idiot. She’s going to end up with a dog if she isn’t careful.”

Without meaning to, she’d brought up a topic I’d been avoiding. “I’m sorry about Pluto.”

“He was a good dog.”

“The best.”

A tear slid down her pale cheek.

I squeezed her hand as gently as I could, afraid of injuring her. Her eyelids lowered. “Are you getting tired?” I asked.

“A little.”