Widowmaker Read Online Free Page A

and there seemed to be nothing biologists could do to stop the plague. The direness of the situation had only hardened Stacey’s resolve. Like her father—my friend and mentor Charley Stevens—she seemed to fight the hardest for causes other people had given up for lost.
    â€œStacey’s not back yet,” said the man who answered the phone. “They’re still out in the field.”
    â€œIsn’t it dark?”
    â€œLet me check. Yep, it’s dark all right.”
    â€œIsn’t it snowing?”
    â€œIt snows every day this time of year.”
    â€œWhat you’re telling me is not to worry,” I said.
    â€œI’ll have her call you when she gets back.”
    I tried to keep busy while I waited. I took off my gun belt again and changed out of my uniform into a flannel shirt and jeans. I even washed the dishes. But worrying about Stacey and not being able to tell her my news only added to my agitation.
    I had a fifth of Jim Beam in my cupboard that I hadn’t yet opened. My father had been an alcoholic, and I’d had more than my share of moments when things were going badly and I had felt the pull of the bottle. But if ever I needed a drink, it was now. I filled a glass with bourbon and sat down in front of my laptop to read the sad tale of Adam Langstrom.
    And sad it was.
    I started by accessing the state law-enforcement database to see if there really was a warrant out for his arrest. The page that came up showed a picture of Langstrom taken by the Department of Corrections and listed him as a fugitive, wanted for violating his probation. He looked older and more hardened than he did in the photo his mother had left behind. He had put on muscle, and his hair was dull and in need of cutting, but what was most noteworthy was his right ear. It was missing the lobe, as if something—or someone—had chomped it off.
    It listed his age: twenty-one, as Amber had stated.
    It listed his height as six feet two inches—my height.
    It listed his weight as two hundred pounds—ten pounds heavier than me. Adam Langstrom was a big kid.
    I then pulled up the public sex offender registry and typed in his name. The same photo came up, along with his “town of domicile,” which was Kennebago Settlement, east of Rangeley on Route 16. It listed his place of employment, too: Don Foss Logging, also located in Kennebago. The site identified him as a ten-year registrant and said he had been convicted of one count of unlawful sexual contact and one count of unlawful sexual touching. No additional details were given about his crimes.
    I had to continue my search elsewhere.
    The Maine newspapers had barely covered his arrest and trial, in deference to the sensitivities of the Alpine Sports Academy, no doubt. It wouldn’t have been in ASA’s interest to trumpet the news that one of its scholarship students had raped the daughter of some captain of industry. The school tended to enroll kids who had spent their formative years on the ski slopes of Vail, Park City, and Jackson Hole. It had produced a handful of Olympians, but its greatest achievement was building its endowment, which some sources said rivaled that of some Little Ivies, including my own alma mater, Colby College.
    There was no mention in any of the articles of a prior romantic relationship between Langstrom and the unnamed girl. To read the stories, you would have thought the case came down to a single assault. Langstrom had claimed the sex was consensual, but under examination, the girl had said she had been coerced.
    Even though the papers hadn’t identified her by name, I remembered that Amber had called her Alexa Davidson. From there, it was easy enough to search the academy’s archived press releases and discover that a Seattle couple named Ari and Elizabeth Davidson had given a million-dollar gift to the school five years earlier. Now I could see why the headmaster had been so eager to turn