‘Fifties, I’d say. Early fifties. He served in the first Iraq war.’
‘He a sociable man, would you have said?’
‘I never had the pleasure.’
‘But he lived up here, and Patchett lived in Portland?’
‘Scarborough.’
‘Lot of miles between here and there.’
‘I suppose. Is this an interrogation, detective?’
‘Interrogations involve bright lights, and sweaty men in shirtsleeves, and people trying to lawyer up. This is a conversation. My point is: how did Proctor and Patchett come to be acquainted?’
‘Does it matter so much?’
‘It matters because you’re here, and because they’re both dead. Come on, Parker, give a guy a break.’
There wasn’t much point in holding back all that I knew, but I decided to keep some of it, for luck.
‘At first, I thought Proctor might have been one of the veterans assigned to meet soldiers when they return from active duty, and he and Patchett might have met up that way, but now I think Patchett and Proctor may have been involved in a business venture together.’
‘Patchett and Proctor. Sounds like a firm of lawyers. What kind of business venture?’
‘I don’t know for sure, but this place is near the border, and it’s been used for storage recently. There are wood shavings and foam pellets in the room next to the body, and marks on the floor that look like they could have been left by packing cases. Might be worth getting a sniffer dog in there.’
‘You figure drugs?’
‘It’s possible.’
‘You take a look inside his cabin?’
‘Just to see if he was there.’
‘You search it?’
‘That would be illegal.’
‘That’s not answering the question, but I’ll assume that you did. I would have, and you’re at least as unscrupulous as I am. And since you’re good at what you do, you’d have found an envelope filled with cash under the mattress.’
‘Would I? How interesting.’
Walsh leaned against my car and looked from the trailer to the truck, then to the motel and back again. His face grew serious.
‘So he’s got cash, food in the refrigerator, enough booze and candy to stock a convenience store, and his truck appears to be running fine. Yet somehow he ends up barricading himself inside a motel room, firing shots off at the door and window, before sticking the gun in his own mouth and pulling the trigger.’
‘His phone, TV, and radio were all broken up,’ I said.
‘I saw that. By him, or by someone else?’
‘The trailer wasn’t trashed. All of the books were on the shelves, his clothes were still in his closet, and the mattress was still on the bed. If someone was serious about taking the place apart, then they’d have found the money.’
‘Assuming they wanted it to begin with.’
‘I spoke to a man named Stunden down in Langdon. He’s the taxidermist, but he also runs the local bar.’
‘You gotta love small towns,’ said Walsh. ‘If he could add undertaker to his list of accomplishments, he’d be indispensable.’
‘Stunden told me that Proctor was troubled. He felt that he was being haunted.’
‘Haunted?’
‘That was the word he used to Stunden, but Stunden seemed to think that it might be a symptom of post-traumatic stress as a consequence of his time in Iraq. He wouldn’t be the first soldier to come back with mental as well as physical scars.’
‘Like your client’s son? Two suicides, each known to the other. That strike you as odd?’
I didn’t reply. I wondered how long it would take Walsh to connect the deaths of Proctor and Damien with the earlier suicide of Bernie Kramer up in Quebec, and the murder-suicide involving Brett Harlan. Once he did so, he’d probably come up with Joel Tobias as well. I made a mental note to ask Bennett Patchett to keep Tobias’s name out of any conversations he might have with the state police, at least for now.
Four soldiers, three from the same squad and one peripherally connected to the others, all dead from what appeared to be self-inflicted wounds, along with a wife who had been unfortunate enough to encounter her husband with a bayonet in his hand. I’d gone back to the newspaper reports on the killings, and it wasn’t hard to read between the lines and figure that both Brett and Margaret Harlan had met terrible ends.
Increasingly, I was starting to believe that something very bad had occurred over in Iraq, an experience that the men of Stryker C had shared and brought back with them, even if Carrie Saunders had nixed that idea. I still couldn’t grasp how it might tie in with what Jimmy Jewel suspected of Joel Tobias: that he was running a smuggling operation via his trucking business. But there were the marks on the floor of room fourteen to consider, and the traces of packing materials alongside them, and the fact that, if Stunden was right, then Proctor had apparently been visited by some of the men from Stryker C before he died. Then there was the cash under the mattress, which suggested that Proctor had recently been paid for something: storage facilities, I guessed, which raised the question of what was being stored. Drugs still seemed the likeliest option, but Jimmy Jewel hadn’t been convinced, and it would have taken a lot of very heavy drugs to leave those marks on the carpet. Anyway, from what I knew of the international drug trade, Afghanistan was more likely to provide a source of wholesale drugs than Iraq, and Tobias’s squad hadn’t served in Afghanistan.
Soames called to Walsh, and he left me to my thoughts. I wondered what was happening over in Bangor. If Bobby Jandreau didn’t see the wisdom of talking soon, it would be time at last to put significant pressure on Joel Tobias.
Darkness closed in, but the air did not cool. Insects bit, and I heard movements in the undergrowth of the forest as the night creatures came out to feed, and to hunt. The medical examiner arrived, and Klieg lights illuminated the motel as Harold Proctor’s body was removed, ready to be taken to the Maine Medical Examiner’s office down in Augusta. His would be the sole body down there, but not for long. Soon, he would have plenty of company.