Read Online The Bone Orchard: A Novel (Mike Bowditch Mysteries) by Paul Doiron - Free Book Online

door again, I saw that Aimee had changed into her pale blue waitress uniform and was slipping barrettes into her newly dried hair. “What’s the bad news?” she asked.
    “I don’t suppose you have any distilled water.”
    “Billy might have a jug in his shed. What for?”
    “Your battery has no water in it.”
    “In all this wet weather?”
    “The battery is sealed,” I said, rubbing my blackened hands together. “The good news is that if we refill it, we can probably get you on the road, but you should have your battery changed in Machias while you’re at work.”
    She smiled. “Ain’t you the handy one, though.”
    “Not like Billy,” I said.
    Her smile went away like the sun behind a cloud. “So when are you gonna visit him in the penitentiary, anyway? He thinks you’re punishing him by not going down there.”
    “I’m the one who testified for the prosecution!”
    “It don’t matter,” she said. “Billy did what he did, and now he has too much time to think on things. I don’t want him obsessing over the past. It’s unhealthful. He can’t change it anyhow, and I need him to start writing letters to his kids and not getting into fights that add years to his sentence or other stupid shit like that. Just tell him whatever he wants to hear so he can start living for today again.” She removed a dirty Kleenex from her skirt pocket and rubbed my nose with it. “You’ve got grease all over your face.”
    “Thanks,” I said.
    “Will you promise to go down there tomorrow? I know you filled out that visitor application, because I made you do it at dinner that time.”
    She had put the sheet of paper in front of me at her kitchen table and refused to serve any of us until I’d completed the form.
    “Aimee,” I said.
    “Promise me you’ll go see him,” she said. “It’s more important than cutting firewood or any of this other shit. You’re his only real friend in the world, Mike.”
    “What about his army buddies?” Billy had served in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
    “The band of brothers? Don’t get me started on those misfits. Will you go see Billy tomorrow or won’t you? I need you to promise.”
    The chestnut-sided warbler started up again in a rosebush across the yard.
    “I promise,” I said.
    “Good, because I’m late for work. Can you stay and watch the rug rats until my sister gets here?”
    I looked past her into the monster’s lair. I had close to zero experience caring for small children. Even baby-sitting the Cronklets for fifteen minutes was a frightening prospect. “What do I do?”
    “Just listen,” she said. “If they’re crying and fighting, everything’s OK. But if it goes quiet all of a sudden, then you know all hell has broken loose.”
    *   *   *
    The text arrived a few minutes before Aimee’s sister did. I had taken up my post in the doorway of the living room, holding the sleeping eighteen-month-old in my arms, terrified she would wake up while two of the kids threw Legos at each other or put them in their mouths. There was one Cronklet missing, I realized. The question was whether to hunt that one down or risk having the other two choke to death on pieces of plastic due to my negligence.
    Like many parents, the Cronks viewed child care as a rudimentary human skill, while to me it seemed like managing a sophisticated series of no-win situations. When the two children on the floor in front of me suddenly rushed off in different directions, one toward a kitchen full of sharp knives, another down a darkened basement stairwell, I found myself paralyzed with indecision.
    My cell phone vibrated in my jeans pocket and I managed to fish it out without waking the little girl. It was a text from Kathy: I killed a guy. It sucks. Thanks for your concern.
    When I was just out of the academy and Kathy was my field-training officer, she used to call me “Grasshopper,” after the old Kung Fu television show. It was the nickname the blind Shaolin monk gave to his