Widowmaker (Mike Bowditch #7)

19

“I had to sell my old condo to pay for Adam’s lawyer,” she said, leading me down a darkened hall. “That’s how I ended up in this dump.”

She opened a door at the end and turned on a light inside.

The room obviously belonged to a teenage boy with two absolute passions: deer hunting and ski racing. The bed was covered with a camouflage-patterned comforter, which matched the drapes. Three mounted deer heads stared down from the wall, their real eyes having been replaced with obsidian marbles. A dozen ski medals hung from the antlers. Ski posters covered every other inch of the walls.

“I thought he was going to stay here,” she said, letting her arms fall slack. “I fixed it up just like his old one. Then the neighbors heard he was coming and complained to the landlord, and that was that.”

“Do you mind if I look around?” I suspected she would be receiving a similar request from Detective Clegg very soon.

“Knock yourself out.”

On the bureau I found two framed photographs. One showed a younger Adam and Amber with a man I assumed to be A. J. Langstrom. It must have been taken after one of the little boy’s first ski victories, because he was holding a gold medal. A.J. was big and blond and blocky and looked nothing like Adam. Nor was he smiling.

The second, newer photo showed a dozen celebrating skiers posed atop a mountain in various stages of undress. Adam was in the forefront, shirtless, his abdominal muscles bulging, his strong arms raised triumphantly above his head, holding two bottles of beer. Two girls lay in the snow at his feet in their sports bras, arms curled around his ski boots, posing like harem slaves. Josh Davidson hung in the back. He had kept his shirt on and was staring at something beyond the camera’s range, as if he had caught sight of a potential threat: an adult headed their way to break up the party.

“I’m surprised he kept this picture,” I said, handing the photograph to Amber.

“Why?”

“Because it has Josh in it.”

“Josh is in most of the photos Adam has from school. I told you they were best friends.”

“What about Alexa?” I asked.

Her mouth twisted. “What about her?”

“Did Adam keep any pictures of her?”

“Of course not!” she said. “That bitch ruined our lives.”

But I noticed that her eyes had darted toward a stack of magazines beside the bed.

I made my way along the wall of deer mounts, pretending to inspect them. Each had a more impressive rack than the next. Pulsifer had told me Adam was a natural-born deer slayer.

Just like my father.

Just like our father, I thought, correcting myself.

Maybe it was having seen the gore-drenched truck, but something had changed for me over the past twenty-four hours. My absolute certainty that Adam Langstrom couldn’t be my half brother had steadily eroded until it had become a real possibility. Now it seemed closer to a likelihood. I was almost, but not fully, convinced. What else did I need to find before I could accept Amber’s claim as the truth?

When I got to the stack of magazines, I knelt down and shuffled through them. Under the ski mags, I found a Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue that was four years old. Convicted sex offenders in Maine are prohibited from possessing pornography. Did bikini shots qualify? There was something sad and touching about the thought of Amber saving this magazine for her son’s return.

I found the yearbook at the bottom of the pile. The cover was blue and silver, the colors of the Alpine Sports Academy. One page was dog-eared. I turned to it and came upon Adam Langstrom’s senior portrait. He had never looked more handsome than he did in his blazer and tie, with his thick hair expertly cut and his eyes as blue as sea glass. Other pictures of him—racing downhill through the gates, laughing in a pool with friends—surrounded the posed photograph. The quote beneath his list of athletic accomplishments read: “Waking up is the second hardest thing in the morning.”

My brother, the philosopher.

Amber had begun to cry. “That yearbook came out a week before he was arrested. His missed his final exams, so no diploma. I told him he should get his GED in jail, but he didn’t see the point.”

I paged through the yearbook until I found the section devoted to the underclassmen. Alexa Davidson was with the other freshmen. She resembled her brother—same wavy hair, big eyes, and an olive complexion. Her teeth were perfect. Her lips were very full; if she had been an adult, they would be described as sensuous. But you could see she was just a kid here.

“I still can’t believe he threw everything away for that,” Amber said with venom.

“She was pretty,” I said, as if speaking of someone dead.

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