Skin and Bones: And Other Mike Bowditch Short Stories by Paul Doiron

Author:Paul Doiron [Doiron, Paul]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery, Thriller, Crime
ISBN: 9781250382139
Google: k48hEQAAQBAJ
Amazon: ‎1250382130
Barnesnoble: ‎1250382130
Goodreads: 217387991
Publisher: Minotaur Books
Published: 2025-05-13T05:00:00+00:00

13

He’d nearly sped past the Bear’s Den before an insight caused him to hit the brakes.

How does Tomer Elmut know where Tim Grindle is?

Charley swung his patrol truck into the vast expanse of muddy slush and standing water. Vestigial snowbanks steamed along the edge of the near-empty lot. He left the engine running as he tried to work through the problem.

Elmut and the boy were acquainted. Tim had asked the Penobscot to teach him taxidermy. And the cook had all but admitted he’d seen the boy outside the Den on the night he disappeared.

Had Elmut given Tim a ride after his shift ended?

Had Elmut seen Tim catch a ride with someone else?

The pay phone, from which Tim had made his calls to Ricki and his brother’s answering machine, was at the foot of an exterior staircase that led to the guest rooms above the restaurant. One of the motel doors was open with a maid’s cart outside.

As Charley watched, Patty-Ann emerged from the room for a restorative cigarette. She removed a pack of Virginia Slims and a lighter from her uniform smock. He waved, and she smiled back, raising her hand with the unlit smoke. He remembered overhearing Levasseur tell a customer how he’d stopped putting bottles of complimentary mouthwash in the bathrooms because Patty-Ann would knock them back to ward off the shakes.

His gaze drifted away from the maid and back to the pay phone.

Ricki had said Tim had spotted a man who owed him money, or could be persuaded to part with some, and used the phrase, “Speak of the devil.”

Tomer Elmut wouldn’t be in a hospital bed if Jack had thought him a child killer. He would be lying dead at the bottom of a ravine where coyotes would already be making short work of his carcass.

Charley splashed across the lot until he was standing beneath the railed balcony where Patty-Ann was taking her smoke break: Romeo to her Juliet.

“Heya, Charley,” she said. “What’s going on?”

“I’m a confused man, Patty-Ann.”

“Confused how?”

“My thoughts are dark and far-ranging—like a murder of carrion crows.”

The smile vanished, then tried without success to reignite itself, but she had no clue what he meant, and he couldn’t blame her.

“Last night, I asked you who was at the bar on Tuesday evening,” he said. “It would help me a great deal if you could try again to remember who you saw.”

She tapped her cigarette so that the ash dropped fifteen feet to the ground.

“There was Levasseur and Tomer, of course. And the new dishwasher, Santiago. A. J. Langstrom came in for a Seven and Seven. A group of sledders were here, speaking French. I think there were five of them. They laughed when I smiled over at their table. I don’t speak the language, but I know what putain means. Is there someone in particular…?”

“Warren Whittaker.”

“Warren had some event at the nature center that night. Something to do with bugs, I think.”

“He didn’t stop by afterwards?”

“I expected him to, but he never showed.”

Whittaker had volunteered as much; gone out of his way to answer a question the warden hadn’t even asked him.

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