Widowmaker by Paul Doiron

stitches. DeFord and I hadn’t talked privately in a while. But I had the sense that he liked me—a lot more than most of my colleagues, at least. Which wasn’t saying much. I was eager to change the subject from my injury. “So I heard Pete Brochu got promoted to the warden investigator job in Division D.”
    The position had been held for decades by a man named Wesley Pinkham. Stacey had encouraged me to apply for the post myself—warden investigator was my dream job—but I hadn’t felt that I was ready. Kathy had told me that DeFord had floated my name, but Colonel Malcomb thought I needed to prove I had matured out of my youthful rule-breaking phase before I could be handed a WCID job. I had a hard time disagreeing with the colonel.
    â€œPete’s a good man,” said DeFord.
    True, but Brochu had never impressed me with his intelligence, and I had heard he was considering taking a job in his brother’s lucrative home-building business.
    â€œI wish him well,” I said.
    â€œMe, too.” DeFord and Pinkham had been longtime colleagues, and clearly thinking about his dead friend made him uncomfortable. “I’m going to find someone to drive you home. Maybe Volk—”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œYou shouldn’t get behind the wheel, Mike.”
    â€œAll they gave me was Tylenol.”
    â€œStill.”
    â€œI’m driving myself, Captain. I screwed up today by getting careless. Don’t make it worse by making me look bad to the rest of the division, too.”
    He nodded, shook his head, and smiled. “Whatever you do, Bowditch, just don’t get in another accident.”
    *   *   *
    When I got home, I stood in the darkened driveway, looking up at the stars. The night was moonless, and the stars and planets were as clear as the carefully drawn illustrations on a constellation map. I saw the faint wash of the Milky Way flowing across the sky from horizon to horizon. Orion, the hunter, was raising his club above the trees to the southeast. Across the heavens, Draco, the dragon, was uncoiling himself around the Little Dipper.
    As a boy, I had yearned for my father to teach me about the stars and planets, but he never had. It was only after I had become an adult that I received instruction from Charley Stevens, who was scandalized when I’d informed him of my ignorance. Charley believed that a woodsman who didn’t know the stars was no woodsman at all.
    Staring at the sky, I began to feel dizzy again. It was as if I were looking down into the void instead of up into it. For an instant, I had the sense that gravity was about to let go of me and I might go spiraling out into the cold vacuum of space. I tipped my head forward and focused on my boots until the sensation passed.
    I went inside, threw my parka across the sofa, and poured myself a bourbon.
    I knew that I should call Stacey in Ashland. She would want to know what had happened; she deserved to know. We weren’t engaged yet—maybe we never would be—but over the past year, she had become the closest person to me in the world, and I didn’t want to imagine a future without her. But I was too embarrassed to call, and I convinced myself I didn’t want to worry her when I was perfectly all right.
    Instead, I sent her an e-mail:
    Hey, Stace,
    Crazy day today. Got into a scuffle with a tweaker when I tried to confiscate her illegal wolf dog. The poor thing’s probably going to be put down—the wolf dog, not the tweaker. It’s a story for another time. Anyway, I’m OK. Just tired and sore.
    Love,
    Mike
    When I was a kid, my mother took me to Mass every week and made me go to confession once a month. I remembered a kindly priest telling me in the confessional that sins of omission were considered to be less grievous than sins of commission. It certainly didn’t feel that way at the moment.
    I returned to the living room and switched on