Paul Doiron - Bad Little Falls

After I’d finished, I realized how much I’d sounded like Sergeant Rivard when he was trying to put the fear of God into Barney Beal, and I regretted bringing up the subject. I wasn’t going to change Lucas Sewall’s destiny in one interaction.

“What happens if a kid kills somebody?” he asked.

I tried to lighten my tone. “Who exactly are you planning on knocking off?”

My cell phone vibrated. I didn’t have to look at the screen to know it was Larrabee again.

“It’s just a question,” said the boy.

“Hold on a second, Lucas.” I brought the cell to my ear. “Hey, Doc.”

“I’ve been trying to reach you all night.” His words were slip-sliding into one another in a way that suggested he’d been drinking.

“I’ve been on duty.” I didn’t feel I owed him any further explanation. “What’s the emergency?”

“I have a dead animal here!”

“What animal?”

“Duchess! My dog!”

“What happened to her?”

“It’s my fault; it’s my fault. I should have-when you asked me-you need to get over here immediately.”

To do what, bury the dog in a snowdrift? The veterinarian wasn’t making any sense. “Explain to me what’s going on.”

He sounded exasperated. “I can’t explain-not over the phone. I did something I shouldn’t have. I violated my oath. Do you understand?”

I could feel Lucas watching me through those heavy glasses. “How much have you had to drink tonight?’

“Not enough.” He made a wet throaty noise that might or might not have been laughter. “How far away are you? When can you be here?”

A stop sign glowed red in my headlights. “I’m coming into Township Nineteen now.”

“Good!”

“But I’m not going to be able to get to your house for at least a couple of hours. I’m taking a little boy to the hospital in Calais.”

“Is he all right?” he asked, slurring.

“He’s fine.”

“Then you can stop on the way. My house is right on the road to Calais.”

“I can’t just take the boy with me to your house.”

“My dog is dead! Don’t you understand what that means?”

“Are you saying someone killed it?”

He must have dropped the phone. I heard a jarring, breaking noise that sure sounded like a receiver striking hardwood and then the signal cut out. It didn’t stutter or fizzle; it just ended.

“Doc? Doc?”

After a long interval of not hearing a response, I tucked the cell in the cup holder.

“Who was that?” Lucas asked.

“A friend of mine.” It seemed easier to characterize our problematic relationship in these terms than explain what a pain in my ass the old veterinarian had become.

“What got killed?”

“His dog passed away.”

“You said someone killed it.”

Despite his affected lack of interest, the boy had been listening closely. “I don’t know what happened to the dog.”

“You’re going to his house?”

“After I drop you off.”

“Can I go with you? I want to see the dead dog.”

“No way.”

But sure enough, as I left the shelter of the birches and white pines and came out into the windswept blueberry barrens, my conscience began to gnaw at me. I thought about the abrupt manner in which Doc’s call to me had ended. He’d sounded pretty wasted before, and despite his generally good health, I needed to remember that he was an elderly man. He was definitely intoxicated. What if he had fallen and injured himself? I tried his number again and got no answer. I tried his cell and got voice mail.

Doc Larrabee’s farm was just a few miles up the road. What if the old man was bleeding to death from a head wound? I took my foot off the gas and hit my blinker.

“Where are we going?” asked Lucas.

“To check on my friend.”

“The one with the dead dog?”

“Yeah,” I said. “That one.”

A line of kids on snowmobiles crossed the road just before we reached the farmhouse. I counted five of them, all going too fast. I watched them shoot away into the night, their lights growing dim as they followed the groomed trail across the barrens.

Atop its low hill, beneath the leafless elms that had somehow survived a century-long blight, sat the farmhouse. The porch light was turned off, but a yellow glow showed in the mudroom window, and I saw Doc’s pickup parked outside the yawning barn. I unbuckled my chest belt. Lucas fiddled with his, but I caught his arm.

“Stay here,” I said. “I’ll be right back.”

“I want to see the dead dog.”

“No way.”

I swung open the driver’s door and a strong gust of wind nearly pushed it closed on my leg before I could get out. I braced the door with my arm. “Don’t fool around with anything in my truck, please. I’ll know if something’s missing.”

He didn’t say anything in response, just reached inside his backpack and drew out his notebook.

As I trudged through the snow up to the farmhouse, I felt the hairs in my nostrils begin to bristle from the cold. The temperature was plunging again, headed back below zero, but at least the clouds were breaking. Every now and again, the moon showed its pale, pockmarked face before ducking out of sight. The last time I’d visited this farm, the blizzard had hidden most of the surroundings from view. Now I saw snow-covered blueberry barrens tumbling down the rocky hillside toward Bog Pond. In the moonlight, I spotted a couple of shadowy shapes that must have been ice-fishing shacks on the frozen lake.

I rapped with my knuckles on the old door, hearing the glass windows rattle in the wood frame, then resorted to my fist when no one answered. Maybe the old guy really had passed out. I gave a glance down the drive and saw Lucas’s headlamp flickering inside my truck.

The door opened when I twisted the knob. Given the near panic in Doc’s voice earlier, I was surprised to find it unlocked.

The house was cold, and it smelled bad-not just that mustiness that I remembered from the night of the dinner party but the reek of food scraps beginning to rot in the garbage, and a sharp vinegar odor that made me think of spilled wine.

“Doc?”

A moan came from the interior. I switched on the hall light and made my way down the cramped passage to the living room. Doc was slumped across the horsehair sofa in the dark. I flicked the switch. He squeezed his eyes shut and jerked his head away, as if he couldn’t bear the brightness.

There were several empty bottles on the side tables and the window seat-wine bottles, a bottle of Maker’s Mark, and even some bottles of fancy liqueurs I associated with his late wife. It was as if the old widower had raided his cabinets, looking for every last remaining intoxicant in the house. Was all this chaos over a dead dog?

I folded my arms across my chest, pressing the armored vest I wore beneath my shirt against my rib cage. “What the hell happened to you?”

“I must have tripped.” He tried to prop himself up on the couch arm but seemed to lack the strength. When he turned his head to me, I saw that his lip was swollen.

“Your phone went dead while we were talking.”

He glanced around at the floor, looking for his cordless phone. “It’s around here somewhere.”

“I was worried about you. What’s so important that you had me rush over here?”

“I made a mistake. I should have told you before.”

“Told me what?”

“What really happened.”

“You’re not making any sense, Doc.”

There was dried blood and food in his beard. “You were right about Prester Sewall. He didn’t kill his friend.”

I felt my beating heart push against my sternum. “How do you know that?”

Doc sat up and reached for the nearest liquor bottle. He tilted it over his open mouth, but nothing dripped out. “I just know.”