I pulled against the right snowbank to make room.
The emergency medical technician at the wheel rolled down his window so we could have a chat. He was a big woodsy guy with flushed cheeks and a white beard. His partner, beside him, looked ashen.
“Have you been up there yet?” the driver asked in a deep baritone.
“No, I just arrived.”
“Imagine the worst death scene you’ve ever worked and then multiply it by ten. Most of them were killed in their bunks or trying to get out of them.”
“What about Foss?”
“The shooter gave him special attention.” The EMT’s tired eyes grew wide as he spotted Shadow beside me. “Holy hell! What in the world is that beast with you? Is that a wolf dog?”
“I had to confiscate him from some drug addicts,” I said. “He’s a sweetheart, though.”
“I’ll take your word for it!”
I was eager to return to the subject at hand. “So the state police think it was just one guy?”
“One guy with an AR-15 and a whole bunch of clips.”
That wasn’t much help. Black guns, as some people called them, were as common up here now as M1 rifles used to be in the Maine woods after World War II. Their omnipresence was why the service had equipped us with Windham Weaponry MPCs; we had been in serious danger of being outgunned at every firefight.
“He was a regular Audie Murphy, too,” the EMT said. “That’s what I’m hearing. The CSI guys are still mapping the scene up there. Maybe they’ll find it was two shooters. They’re leaving all the bodies where they fell until they can finish photographing everything. They said they’d call us again when they’re ready for us to cart them away. They’re going to need a caravan of ambulances for that job, let me tell you.” He scratched his woolly beard. “I didn’t think I could ever feel sorry for those men, after the things they did. I used to say that prison was too good for them, but now—”
He didn’t finish the sentence. He just rolled up his window and drove away.
Adam had been a good shot. I’d seen the evidence in the deer mounts on his bedroom walls. But he had taken a Glock handgun from his mother’s apartment, not a semiautomatic rifle. Unless he had used the money he’d taken off Josh Davidson to buy a carbine.
Dyer had mentioned owning a black gun, too. A Smith & Wesson. I forgot which model.
But, really, the list of potential suspects was close to endless. All it would have taken was for one crackpot to have read Johnny Partridge’s inflammatory column about the pampered pedophiles of Kennebago. The worst-case scenario was some unaffiliated vigilante—just a random kook with a gun—who had traveled in to do the job and had now disappeared back wherever the hell he’d come from.
As I neared Foss’s gate, I came up on a cluster of wardens gathered around an unmarked patrol truck. They were all wearing headlamps and looking at a topographical map spread across the hood. Sooner or later, I would have to show Shadow to them, and I would need to explain what he was doing in my pickup, but I had sped all the way up here to find out what had happened. Show-and-tell could wait a few minutes.
I left the wolf in the truck and buttoned up my coat to join the others.
“Hey!” I said.
Pulsifer glanced up. With his headlamp, he looked like a coal miner. “What did I tell you guys? Bowditch can’t help himself.”
“You make me sound like a compulsive gambler.”
“Your words, not mine.”
“Good to see you, Mike,” said Bill Gordon. He was Pulsifer’s sergeant, despite being nearly a decade younger. Gordon was new to the division—he had worked up in Aroostook County for years—and had never met my father. Many of the other area wardens shared Pulsifer’s hatred for the late Jack Bowditch and still treated me as the son of a cop killer. Jeff White, the other warden present, fell into that category.
“You want to bring me up to speed?” I said.
“CID is controlling the death scene,” said Gordon. “They want as few people as possible disturbing it, which is why we’re down here. Word is it was a regular bloodbath.”
“More like a turkey shoot,” said White.
“And none alive to tell the tale,” added Pulsifer, as if quoting some famous novel I didn’t recognize.
“So most of them were shot in their bunks?” I asked.
“All of them except Wallace Bickford,” said Pulsifer. “He must have been out taking a leak, because when Clegg found his body, the old dude’s wang was hanging out of his union suit.”
Poor Wally, I thought. A pathetic ending to a pathetic life.
“What about Foss?” I asked.
“Clegg found him outside his trailer,” said Pulsifer. “Don must have heard the shots and screams, because he came out with a big old Ruger 500. Got a couple of pops off, too, before the shooter made Swiss cheese out of his face.”