Bad Little Falls Read Online Free PDF

look for myself.
    Rivard raised his eyes from his cell phone with surprise. “What’s going on?”
    “I’m not sure.”
    Before I could reach the front of the restaurant, the two men had reversed course and were being escorted out the door. The pretty young woman had the tattooed one firmly by the arm and was pulling him along, a look of utter mortification on her face. The shorter, shambling guy kept his head bowed, his eyes to the ground. As the other one passed me, though, he smiled wide, tapped his illustrated temple with two fingers in a kind of mocking salute, and said, “Top o’ the mornin’, Officer!”
    The three of them exited through the double doors out into the frozen parking lot. They crossed the salted asphalt to a waiting Pontiac Grand Am. The smaller man slid immediately into the passenger seat, as if desperate to escape the wrath he knew was coming. The woman began shouting something—her words were lost through the glass walls and road noise—and shook a finger in the face of the tattooed man. He kept grinning from ear to ear.
    Suddenly he thrust out a hand and lifted the McDonald’s visor from her hair. He held it above her head, playing keep-away for a few seconds, before setting the visor down at a jaunty angle on his own skull. The woman snatched it away and stormed toward the restaurant’s entrance, her hands balled into small fists at her sides.
    Stepping aside as she came through the doors, I said, “Is everything OK, ma’am?”
    But she refused to meet my eyes. “No, but I’ve got it under control.”
    The old folks looked at me with scared and confused eyes, but there was nothing I could think to do except return to the back booth, where Rivard sat scowling.
    “What was that about?” he asked.
    “I thought that woman might need help.”
    “If she’s with Randall Cates, she definitely needs help,” he said.
    “You know that creep?”
    “Everyone knows everyone around here,” my sergeant said. “But that tattoo is kind of hard to mistake.’”
    “What’s his story?”
    “Dealer,” Rivard said. “Oxycodone, heroin, crack, meth. Anything and everything. The Maine Drug Enforcement Agency thinks he has somebody working for him across the border in New Brunswick. There’s another rumor he’s paying off someone inside the sheriff’s office, which is total bullshit, if you ask me. Last year a girl died—a student here at the university. It’s no secret who sold her the poison that killed her, but the DA couldn’t connect the dots.”
    Looking through the frosted window, I could see the Grand Am still parked in its space, blue smoke rising from the tailpipe. I memorized the license plate: 766 AKG. I was wondering what the men were waiting for, when I saw Jamie emerge from behind the counter again, this time carrying a big paper bag and a tray with two coffees. She walked purposely out through the door and straight to the driver’s side window. Two big hands reached out to accept the food and coffee.
    Rivard followed my gaze. “You’d think those women would learn eventually, but they never do.”
    So my sergeant believed. But my own mother had escaped a youthful first marriage to a violent and abusive alcoholic, even if her later life in the suburbs didn’t turn out to be the dream she’d imagined. I’d also seen Jamie’s expression up close, and the look on her face hadn’t been one of submission, but of defiance and rage.
    On the way out the door, I noticed her smiling picture posted on the wall:
    JAMIE SEWALL
EMPLOYEE OF THE MONTH
     

 
     
FEBRUARY 13
     
    Mrs. Greenlaw gave me this book to read … NORTHWEST PASSAGE. It’s pretty cool.
    RANGER ORDERS
     
    • Have your musket clean as a whistle, hatchet scoured, sixty rounds powder and ball, and be ready to march at a minute’s warning.
    • When you’re on the march, act the way you would if you were sneaking up on a deer.
    • Don’t sleep beyond dawn. Dawn is when the French and Indians attack.
    •