Free Bad Little Falls by Paul Doiron Page B

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    It took me a moment to realize that everything was pitched at a slight angle. The car had slid halfway off the road before the storm buried it. The halogen glow of my light turned the scene in front of me a bluish white. When I exhaled, my breath sparkled. I felt like I was deep inside the cold heart of a glacier.
    Turning my head slowly from side to side, I swept the beam of my headlamp around the inside of the vehicle. A thin layer of hoarfrost, like a dusting of baker’s flour, covered the interior. The car was a Pontiac; I saw the arrowhead logo on the steering wheel. Someone had used pieces of duct tape to stitch up a gash in the seat. There was the odor of old cigarettes badly masked by a pine-shaped air freshener suspended from the rearview mirror. There were empty Budweiser cans, some crushed, scattered across the backseat. There was a handful of twelve-gauge shotgun shells in the console. But no shotgun.
    I found the auto registration tucked above the driver’s sun visor. The car was a 2004 Grand Am, registered to one Randall Scott Cates.
    “Holy shit,” I said aloud.
    The image of a sneering, tattooed face hovered in front of my eyes. And suddenly I realized who the hypothermic, frostbitten man was back at the Sprague house and why his face had seemed vaguely familiar.
    “What’s the story in there?” Kendrick said over my shoulder.
    I braced myself against the steering wheel and climbed awkwardly out into the open air. A blast of icy wind nearly pushed me back. Several of the dogs were yowling.
    “I know the person who owns this car. It’s not a girl named Kate; it’s a man named Cates. Randall Scott Cates. I saw him this morning at the McDonald’s in Machias.”
    Kendrick didn’t speak. I couldn’t make out his expression through the blowing snow. “So where is he?”
    “I don’t know. I don’t suppose any of your dogs can run a track.”
    Kendrick gave a scornful laugh. “They’re sled dogs.”
    If Randall Cates was wandering around in this blizzard, the odds were heavily stacked against our finding him before he froze to death. If he was already passed out inside a snowbank, we wouldn’t find his body until the April thaw.
    Almost a year earlier, I had found a deserted car on a darkened road. For a variety of lame-ass reasons, I hadn’t exerted myself to find the missing driver. A woman ended up dead. Maybe she would have died anyway, but I didn’t need another what-if question hanging over my pillow.
    I found my cell phone and tried to get a signal, but the screen showed only a single bar. I tried the GPS instead. Our location came up as a logging road that dead-ended at Bog Stream. I marked a waypoint and handed Kendrick the receiver.
    “What’s this for?”
    “Go back to the Spragues’ house and call the state police,” I said. “Tell them where I am and that I need assistance locating a lost person. Give them these coordinates. Make sure they notify Warden Marc Rivard. We need a search dog here.” I reached into my shirt pocket and found the auto registration. “The state police should also make sure Randall Cates isn’t asleep in his bed back in Machias.”
    The wind tore Kendrick’s breath from his open mouth when he laughed. “I don’t need GPS coordinates. I know exactly where we are.” He tucked the registration in his parka. “What are you going to do?”
    “I’m going to look for him.”
    “No offense, Bowditch, but I guarantee you that I am better at it than you are. I know this bog like the back of my hand. Go back to the house. I’ll search the Heath.”
    “No offense, Kendrick, but this is my job.” I zipped up my parka and raised the hood over my ears. “See if you can find Ben Sprague while you’re at it. Tell him to clear the Bog Pond Road with his plow so the ambulance can get to his house.”
    Kendrick pulled his goggles down over his eyes. “Suit yourself.”
    I watched him check his team’s harnesses, his body illuminated in the shaky beam