On the other hand, Felice had deceived me about her father being in Atlantic City. And knowing she had lied had colored everything else she’d told me. I suspected she might indeed deal drugs, as Tori and Tiff claimed. She’d said something about waiting tables, but that parka she was wearing had easily cost a thousand dollars. So if she had a sideline selling candy, why was she living in her father’s dumpy trailer and not a home fit for human habitation?

“There’s Bibi’s house,” she said.

At the bottom of the hill, the Chamberlain house twinkled with tasteful lights. I wondered if Mariëtte had given up waiting for me to return. I had no intention of giving her a “report” of my day, in any case.

“One last question about Professor Chamberlain,” I said. “I’m trying to determine who might have wanted him dead.”

“Some people are easy to dislike.”

“But you said you’d never even met him.”

“I heard the stories, though. Like how he’d be out in his orchard plucking apples by lantern light until midnight, and then before dawn, my dad would see him, walking backward up the hill for exercise.”

“Backward?”

“Bibi told me he alternated each day, backward and forward, in order to exercise all the muscles in his legs. What kind of asshole does that? And that tired old dog of his struggling to keep up.”

“He might have been an odd man,” I said. “But it’s clear Bibi really loved him.”

She seemed puzzled. “Loved him? No, I wouldn’t put it that way.”

“How would you put it?”

“Bibi hated his guts.”

33

Reynolds was feeling no pain when he ran off the road. Now he lies in the snow, beating his fists against the ground and screaming questions at God.

“I don’t understand, I don’t understand. Why is this happening? Why are you doing this?”

Meanwhile the glowing laser dots have moved to his head. One of the shooters has steady hands. The red spot never quivers more than an inch from Reynolds’s hairline. The other is shaky.

A man’s voice speaks from the phone. “What’s the nature of your emergency?”

“This is 2154 Augusta. I’m a Maine game warden, taking fire from multiple assailants. My name is Mike Bowditch. One bystander has been shot. Situation is 10–74. Send help.”

“2154 Augusta, what is your location?”

“Leeds? Greene? Ping the phone for God’s sake!”

“Say again, 2154,” says the dispatcher. “I’m not receiving you well.”

Then a woman’s voice calls from the darkness, “Throw out the phone, Mike!”

Even if I don’t say another word, the dispatcher is required to ping my location. He’ll send a nearby unit to check it out, possibly a state trooper, possibly a deputy sheriff. Either of those officers would be driving into a turkey shoot.