Paul Doiron - Trespasser

While the ambulance crew ministered to the injured teenager, Calvin Barter stood beside his ruined vehicle, muttering obscenities. His long black beard grew high on his cheekbones, so that little of his face showed beside his coal black eyes. His chest and belly wanted to burst loose from his mud-splattered snowsuit, and his boots were sizable enough for Bigfoot to wear. Even his hands were gargantuan. I wondered how those thick fingers could ever button a shirt.

I waited for the deputy-my buddy Skip Morrison-to set up some emergency beacons. Then I took him aside. I explained about the ATV vandalism case and how I’d chased Barter and the boy through the woods. I told him about crashing my sergeant’s ATV, and he gave me a pitying look. I didn’t mention my broken hand, just kept it tucked inside my parka, out of sight. My fingers were throbbing. I could feel the knuckles beginning to swell.

Skip left me for a while to go take a statement from the plow truck’s driver.

Barter insisted on helping the EMTs levitate the stretcher with the boy on it out of the ditch. No one dared refuse the giant man. In truth, he probably could have lifted the heavy gurney on his own and toted it all the way to the hospital in Rockport on his back.

As the EMTs were packing to leave, Skip came slipping and sliding back to me. “The plow driver says they were riding in the middle of the road with their lights off, for some reason.”

“They were fleeing from me,” I explained.

“You saved that kid’s life, Mike.”

“Let’s hope so.”

“Do you want me to help you arrest Barter?”

“Not here,” I said. “But I’d appreciate your filling out the accident report.”

“Sure thing. That guy is seriously bad news. I think half the high school kids around here get their pills from him.” He wiped melted water from his chin. “Did you hear someone sighted Westergaard?”

It took a moment for the name to register. “What? No.”

“They got a report about his Range Rover being seen in Massachusetts. But it’s not definite.”

I knew this was potentially big news, but somehow I couldn’t bring myself to care. Between the kid and my hand, I had enough on my mind. “I’m going to follow the ambulance to the hospital.”

“Maybe you should get a doctor to check you out,” he said. “You look a little green.”

I caught a ride with the plow driver back to the tote road where I’d hidden my truck. He was a greasy-haired, pimple-faced dude, scarcely out of high school, and he didn’t say a single word to me while we were on the road together.

“Don’t blame yourself,” I told him. “They shouldn’t have been in the road like that with their lights off.”

The driver looked at me as if I’d just muttered something to him in Swedish.

“Are you going to be OK?” I asked him.

“No,” he said.

The ice had encased my pickup in an opaque shell. I had to chip away at the seams of the door with my multitool before I could pry it open. Once inside, I ran the heater and defrosters full blast, hoping they would melt the windshield ice and spare me the labor of scraping it clear. I cradled my right hand on my lap. Very carefully, tugging each finger one by one, I removed my glove. Every little twitch sent jolts of pain up my forearm. My fingers were visibly swollen. The image that came to mind was of hot dogs expanding in a microwave.

I used my cell phone to call home.

Sarah picked up immediately. “Mike? Where the hell are you?”

“I got sidetracked. I’m sorry about missing Amy’s party.”

“She canceled it on account of the storm. I’ve been worried about you. The roads are horrible!”

“I’m going to be a while longer,” I said through clenched teeth. “That guy I was looking for-Hank Varnum’s ATV vandal-crashed his machine. I’m following the ambulance to the hospital. A boy who was riding with him was injured.”

“A boy? What’s his name?”

“Travis Barter.”

“Oh my God! I have the Barter twins in my class-Jud and Julie. What happened to Travis? Is he going to be all right?”

“I don’t know.”

She took a long time to respond. “Your voice sounds strange.”

“The ambulance is leaving and I need to get going.”

“Call me from the hospital. And please drive safely. It’s such a dangerous night. I’ve had this feeling of foreboding all afternoon.”

“I’ll be home soon.”

I checked my voice mail. There was a message from Kathy Frost, asking for an update. I’d call her later. Maybe by then I’d have an excuse for demolishing her ATV.

There was also voice mail from Charley. “I picked up some info on the q.t.,” he said. “The state police found a print on that telephone outside Smitty’s Garage. It belongs to Mark Folsom, the owner of the Harpoon Bar. That’s an interesting wrinkle, don’t you think? Give me a call when you can, young feller.”

The defroster was having no effect whatsoever on the rimed windshield. I got out and started scraping the glass until, at long last, my truck emerged from its frozen chrysalis.

I could barely process Charley’s message. Was the anonymous caller who reported Ashley Kim’s accident Nikki Donnatelli’s former boss? At the moment, I was in no condition to chase that particular rabbit down the trail.

I drove myself one-handed to the hospital. Sarah and Skip were right: The road was treacherous. At intervals, I felt as if I were driving on sheer glass. Falling rain glittered like diamonds in my headlights. There was an eerie beauty to this night. Every tree branch and hanging wire seemed coated with a pastry glaze.

On my way off the peninsula, I passed several cars off the road and slowed down for each one, but the drivers had disappeared as utterly as Ashley Kim. For their sake, I hoped they had met real Samaritans on the road instead of the monster I knew to be lurking somewhere in the darkness.

At the hospital, I parked in a surprisingly crowded lot and dragged myself through the automatic doors of the emergency room.

The white-haired woman behind the admissions desk looked up from her computer screen with a tentative smile, as if she recognized my face but couldn’t quite place where we’d met. “Can I help you?”

“An ambulance brought in a boy just now. The name’s Barter. He was in an ATV accident. I need to know how he’s doing.”

She pursed her cracked lips. “I’m not supposed to disclose the status of any patients-even to law-enforcement officers.”

“Can I speak to the nurse supervisor or a security guard?”

With a sweep of her hand, she motioned me to a row of chairs. “Please have a seat, and someone will be with you shortly.”

The ER waiting room was peopled with the usual motley crew of injured, ill, and intoxicated persons. Some were casualties of the storm-people who had fallen on the ice or careened their vehicles into snowbanks. But others were just poor folk for whom the emergency room was the only means of getting medical care. A single television set provided the official entertainment, but the remote control was in the hands of a chunky girl with a pierced nose and attention deficit disorder. She would linger on a channel for five seconds and then move on, unsatisfied, to the next.

The security guard arrived first. He emerged through the sliding doors with an expression of alarm. He was a heavyset guy, but he looked strong in the way that some fat men are, impressively muscled beneath the blubber.

“What’s the problem, Warden?”

With my functioning hand, I pointed to an unpeopled corner of the room, beyond the Coke machine. “Can we talk over there?”

When we were out of earshot of the other patients, I explained. “An ambulance just brought in a boy named Travis Barter, who was injured in an ATV crash down in Seal Cove. He’s here with his father, a guy named Calvin Barter. I need to arrest the old man on a bunch of charges, but the boy is in bad shape, and I don’t want to drag his father from his bedside. On the other hand, this Barter guy is potentially dangerous, so I need you to call the Rockport police and get an officer over here. I want to wait for the mother to show up before we bust the father.”