One Last Lie
Page 22
I found a new text from Kathy Frost waiting:
Temperature down to 100 degrees and steady.
Sleeping now.
Her family’s here wondering where you are.
What should I say?
Kathy would have done her best to explain, but an explanation is not an excuse, and Dani’s mom and brothers had a right to question what kind of boyfriend I was.
In the past I had dated civilians who hadn’t appreciated the demands of my job. With Dani Tate, I could take comfort knowing that, as a cop herself, she would understand.
Wouldn’t she?
Fort Kent was a small town, and there was no missing the Swamp Buck. The restaurant, on Main Street, had the aura of a local institution. The first sound I heard, coming through the door, was boisterous laughter. True to the name, there were antler light fixtures hanging from the ceiling and moose horns mounted on the walls.
Plourde and Kellam had arrived before I did and been given a seat of honor near the window, where the chief could see and be seen. The older officers sat side by side, forcing me to face them across the table. Clearly they had questions.
Roland’s and Egan’s interrogations might have been over for the day, but mine was just beginning.
The young woman who came to our table greeted the chief in French, then switched automatically to unaccented English when she addressed Kellam and me. She looked to be all of fifteen years old and gawky as an egret.
The chief ordered a swamp burger with a side of poutine and a cup of King Cole tea.
Kellam ordered something called a sour cream salad and a twenty-ounce glass of Molson Golden.
I asked for a tuna sandwich and a cup of coffee. “And a side of ployes.”
These were thin buckwheat pancakes, served with butter: the traditional accompaniment to any Acadian meal. My grandmother used to make them whenever I visited their humble mill worker’s house. Both she and my grandfather had died of the blood cancer that seemed epidemic in Maine factory towns that had processed pulp into paper.
Our server couldn’t have been more apologetic. “We don’t serve ployes here. I’m sorry.”
I had been looking forward to the French Canadian delicacy. I missed my barely remembered grandparents.
Chief Plourde registered my disappointment. “How can you have a restaurant in the Valley that doesn’t serve ployes? I tell you, we are losing our culture. The children, they don’t learn French at home. Families don’t travel between countries like they used to.”
“I thought ICE had made it easier for the locals to cross.”
“In theory, yes. But there are always new agents who are strangers here—they have come from the south where there is the feeling of a war—and they do not appreciate the specialness of the Valley.”
I wasn’t sure about customs agents, but I knew that every Border Patrol agent in Maine had been trained in the no-man’s-land of South Texas, Arizona, or California. There, they were taught to regard all foreigners as prospective—if not presumptive—criminals.
Before 9/11, Americans and Canadians had crossed back and forth over the international bridge, often several times a day, with nothing more than a wave at the officer in the customs booth. They might live in Madawaska but shop in Edmundston, buy their prescriptions in Clair but gas up in Fort Kent. The collapse of the World Trade Center towers had sent shock waves that rippled all the way to northernmost Maine. With a butcher’s cleaver, the Department of Homeland Security had severed a unique and vibrant community older than the Constitution itself.
Our server returned with our drinks.
Chief Plourde emptied five packets of Splenda into his tea. “Stanley says you’re a friend of my friend Charley Stevens.”
“That’s right.”
“I thought I saw him in town last night. But the man I saw was bald.”
“Charley’s up here,” said Kellam. “He’s poking around.”
I put down my coffee mug. “I wouldn’t know.”
“Give me a little credit, Mike. Pellerin was like a son to Stevens. I’m wise to the game you two are playing.”
Chief Plourde stirred his tea, then licked the sweetener from the spoon. “Charley, he was never satisfied with the outcome of the investigation, I remember.”
“It had to do with not finding Pellerin’s remains,” I said.
“He didn’t trust the findings,” said Plourde. “The official report. He returned here often to ask questions. Not so much anymore.”
All that was left in Kellam’s beer glass was foam. “As far as I’m concerned, Mike, the two of you have Angie Bouchard’s blood on your hands.”
“For Christ’s sake, Stan,” I said. “Why did you invite me here? Was it just to insult me?”
Three middle-aged women were seated in a nearby booth. Although it was only midday, all of them wore dresses suited for a fancy dinner out, were made up with lipstick and mascara, and smelled of three different perfumes. One had tinted hair that reminded me of sangria. The second had hair as red as an overripe tomato. The third’s was solid platinum.
Tomato raised a painted finger. “The Lord’s name. You should not take it in vain.”
“But we will forgive him because he is very handsome,” said Platinum with a smile.
“Your young friend is a detective, no?” said Sangria with the same flirtatiousness. “He is here to arrest the man who killed Evangeline Bouchard?”
“Ladies, if you’ll excuse us,” said Kellam. “This is a private conversation.”
“Affaires de police,” added the chief in the honeyed tone of a born politician. “Je suis sûr que vous comprenez.”
“Pfff!” said Tomato, unsatisfied.
During the exchange, I dug out my phone and opened up the photos app. I thumbed through the dozens I had taken of files Kellam had given me until I found one of the autopsy shots taken of the late Zacharie Michaud after his suicide.
I held the screen out for Kellam to see. “What would you say that was on his upper arm?”
He squinted at the screen, refusing to reach for his reading glasses. “Looks like a burn. What do you think, Chief?”
“A burn, yes.”
“To me, it looks like a brand,” I said. “Like someone drove a heated piece of iron into the muscle and charred the flesh.”
“That’s why you asked Roland that question,” said Kellam. He sounded almost impressed.
“Roland has the same mark on the same arm. He said he got it when he joined a club. Nowhere in Pellerin’s reports did I find anything about Pierre Michaud and his associates all having brands. Can you remember if he ever mentioned these burns to you, Stan?”
“I have no memory of it,” said Kellam, raising his beer glass so the server could see he needed a refill.
“What about Pierre Michaud? Did he have a scar like that, too?”
“No,” said the chief. “I was there when they dragged his body from le lac. They pulled off his shirt to find the bullet hole. It had passed through the muscle here.” He indicated his collarbone. “I would have remembered a burn like this.”
Kellam leaned his thick forearms on the table. “What exactly are you suggesting, Mike? That these guys conducted some sort of midnight ritual before Pierre admitted them into his top-secret poaching society?”
“Wouldn’t Egan have one as well, then?” said Chief Plourde, showing deductive powers I had doubted he possessed.
“Maybe we should chase him down, strip his clothes off him, and have a look,” said Kellam, glancing again toward the server. Clearly he needed another beer.
“I’m serious about this, Stan.”
“No, you’re not,” he said. “You can’t even say what it means.”
“If Roland, Zach, and Egan all have the same brand, and Pierre didn’t, I find it suggestive.”
“Of what?”
“Maybe old man Michaud gave it to them.”
“And why would he do that?”
“I don’t know.”
I twisted my neck and saw Chasse Lamontaine, still in uniform, enter the restaurant accompanied by a young man, early twenties, who could only have been his son. He had the same ash-blond hair and rugged jawline. But unlike his old man, he was dressed like a civilian in a logo T-shirt, jeans that were distressed almost to the point of disintegration, and mud-caked boots that made the host go in search of a broom to clean up the tracks he left behind.
Father and son approached our table.
“Bonjour, Chasse!” said one of the women at the next booth. They all joined in, as giggly as teens.
“Don’t you three ladies look beautiful,” said Chasse.
“Pfff!” said Tomato.
Sangria said, “Your son, he looks more and more like you. Très beau.”
The son had no apparent interest in older women; he didn’t answer or give them a glance.
“Excuse us, ladies,” said the father, turning toward our table. Chasse had good manners, I had to hand it to him.
I could read the words screen-printed on the younger Lamontaine’s shirt:
MUDHOLES
THE ONLY PLACE
WHERE PULLING OUT
IS ENJOYABLE
Chasse smiled without opening his lips. “C. J., you haven’t met Warden Investigator Bowditch.”
I rose from my seat to shake the younger Lamontaine’s hand. “Good to meet you.”
He was one of those young men who need to show their toughness with a death grip.
“You men having lunch?” asked Kellam.
“We grabbed subs at Subway,” said Chasse. “We just happened to see you in the window as we were driving by. We wanted to see if the detective has spoken with Roland yet.”
“Why?” I asked, settling back down in my seat.
He lowered his voice so that the women wouldn’t hear, but the gesture was futile; they had ceased speaking and were clumsily eavesdropping. “Who else could have killed her?”
“He has an alibi,” I said. “He was across the border at the time.”
“Bullshit,” said C. J., who had inherited his father’s good looks but none of his charm. “Angie was terrified of that asshole. I saw him hit her once. Roland definitely killed her.”
His father put a hand on the young man’s shoulder. “This isn’t the place for this conversation, son.”
From my seat, I looked up at him. “Maybe you should tell Detective Zanadakis about what you saw, C. J.”
He reacted as if I’d challenged him to a fistfight. “Maybe I will.”
Chief Plourde had trouble rising from the table—his stomach was in the way. “When are we going muskie fishing, Warden Lamontaine? You keep promising to take me, but you never do. Meanwhile, in Collins’s store, I see the photos of the trophies people have been catching. There was one fish last week weighing forty pounds!”
“When things settle down, maybe.”
The chief, grinning, held out his arms to their full wingspan. “You promised me a fish like this.”
But Chasse had turned his attention back to Kellam. “What’s this I hear about Charley Stevens being in town?”
“Ask Mike.”
“Maybe he came here to catch one of your fabled muskellunges,” I said.
Kellam broke in. “Shouldn’t you be on patrol, Chasse?”
“You’re not my lieutenant anymore, Stan,” said Chasse.
“True, but I’ve got your sergeant’s number on speed dial.”
“Ha!”
The server arrived with our lunches (and Kellam’s second beer), and the Lamontaines used that as an excuse to leave. The son gave us a scowl on the way out.
None of us spoke until the server had left our booth.
“What’s the deal with Chasse’s son?” I said, then took a bite into one of the best tuna sandwiches I’d ever eaten. “What’s with the attitude?”
“C. J. wanted to be a game warden,” said Kellam. “He applied for a job with the service last year. Chasse asked me to put in a word for the kid.”
“Did you?”
“Actually I put in five words: Don’t fucking hire the cocksucker.”
Chief Plourde counted off the words on his stubby fingers. “That’s six.”
“Cocksucker is one word,” said Kellam with a leering grin. “You of all people should know that, Chief.”
“Dégage.”
I was unfamiliar with the word but could guess the meaning.
The redheaded woman whom I had come to think of as Tomato cleared her throat. She had overheard the profanities and scowled at the three of us.
“Désolé,” said the chief.
But Tomato was having none of his apology. “Pffft!” she said again and returned to her salad.
38
As I made my way along the sidewalk, I thought about the brands on the arms of Roland and Zacherie Michaud. The burns were not identical—hadn’t been made by an instrument forged to leave an identifying mark. It was more like the brothers had been jabbed with sizzling blacksmith’s tongs.
I had no doubt Egan bore a similar scar. He would have been photographed during his intake to the county jail and later the Maine State Prison. Finding a picture of his upper arm would take me all of fifteen minutes’ worth of phone calls.
Maybe the mark was just a rite of initiation: the necessary act before you were admitted into Pierre Michaud’s confidence. The fact that the poacher king himself hadn’t had the same raised scar strongly suggested he’d been the one who’d inflicted it. The man had hot irons aplenty at his smithy.
I was torn about what to do next.
I couldn’t get past the guilt of not being at Dani’s side. The fact that Kathy said her temperature had stabilized seemed like yet another rationalization. Her fever could always worsen again.
And yet I could hear Charley’s cryptic message as clearly now as when he’d said it. “They’re not going to stop now—not after what just happened. All we need is another day. We’re so close to the truth, and they’re getting sloppy.”
Should I find a hardware store where I could buy supplies to patch up my truck? Maybe book a room for the night at the motel across the street from the border checkpoint?
I could begin asking around town who might own a monster truck customized for mudding expeditions. In a few hours, I should easily be able to narrow the list to fifty individuals—not counting the “jeep abusers” across the border.
In the end, I did none of these things because when I returned to my Scout, I found a note on my seat.
MEET ME AT 7 AT THE FORT
The note had been written on a brown paper towel of the kind you find in gas station restrooms. The writing was done in block letters. The ink was blue and didn’t bleed into the paper. So probably a cheap ballpoint pen.
My first thought was that Charley had left it for me, but there was something about the note’s terse anonymity that made me discard that possibility.
Who, then?
There was no lack of candidates.
It could have been Chasse Lamontaine or any of the law enforcement officers I’d dealt with that day (excepting Plourde, who, likewise, hadn’t left the restaurant). It could have been Nick Francis, who seemed to be assisting Charley in this madcap investigation. It could have been Roland Michaud, for that matter, as he’d seen my vehicle outside Angie’s house. Or maybe Egan had changed his mind about talking to me (had he seen me drive off in the Scout?). Last but not least, it could have been the son of a bitch who’d tried to run me off the road. Just because a trap is poorly set doesn’t mean it’s not a trap.
At least I didn’t have to guess at the indicated location.
Fort Kent is named for a still-standing blockhouse made of rough-hewn timbers at the edge of the river. The structure commemorates the only bloodless war in American history.
Mere months after the Battle of Yorktown, Great Britain a
nd the United States had begun quarreling over where to draw the new nation’s northern border. The argument escalated over the decades to what became known as the Aroostook War of 1838–1839, when Congress authorized fifty thousand troops to march north, led by General Winfield Scott, later hero of the Mexican-American War.
For a year, American and British soldiers built fortifications and aimed cannons at each other across the St. John, but no shots were ever fired. The combatants chose negotiation over combat, and the international boundary between Maine and Canada was forever fixed by that agreement between Queen Victoria’s canny emissary Lord Ashburton and the bedeviled Daniel Webster.
For a historic monument, the blockhouse couldn’t have been more strangely situated. It was tucked behind a lumberyard at the edge of a residential neighborhood. Like the war it commemorated, Fort Kent seemed more of an afterthought than an important chapter in U.S. history.
I checked my watch and decided I had time to bandage up my Scout before my clandestine meeting. I paid a visit to a hardware store and filled a shopping cart with everything I would need to keep out the weather.
* * *
After I had taped up the window, I drove to the small wooded park that surrounded the fort and parked the Scout out of sight. Inside the vehicle, under the still-functioning dome light, I checked my Beretta, then dropped three fifteen-round magazines into the pockets of my Fjallraven jacket where I could grab them in a gunfight.
I tested the razor edge of my knife against the hair along the back of my hand. It was a Gerber 06 automatic that my friend Billy Cronk, Logan’s dad, had carried with him in Iraq and Afghanistan. Occasionally when I was sharpening it, I would experience a disquieting sensation that made me think Billy had killed a man in combat with this blade.
The last weapon I took was the baton Maglite I had used as a patrol warden. The thing was as long as my forearm and required six D-cell batteries, but it could light up the eyes of a raccoon across a football field. As a last resort, the metal tube could serve as a makeshift club capable of shattering a nose.