One Last Lie

by Paul Doiron

  “Pierre Michaud branded everyone who participated in the killing,” I said. “That way, they couldn’t lie and claim they weren’t there for the murder.”

  “They could still rat him out, though,” said Charley. “I have no doubt that Mr. Egan was tempted to do so. But the prosecutor would’ve had a problem getting a reduced sentence for a self-identified cop killer.”

  “Pierre Michaud was a shrewd man.”

  “One of the coldest and most ruthless men I’ve come up against.”

  “But not shrewd enough to escape.”

  “He underestimated the wrong person.”

  For the past few minutes, I had felt like I was having a conversation with a dangerous stranger, a man whose actions I couldn’t predict, possibly someone capable of unprovoked violence. But I recognized something of the old Charley as he spoke those words.

  He underestimated the wrong person.

  He wasn’t referring to himself. He was talking about the person who’d told him where to look for Pierre. It hadn’t been a coincidence that he and Nick had spotted the poacher king crossing Beau Lac that night. They had been tipped off.

  I understood now.

  This trap hadn’t been set for Roland Michaud.

  42

  As I processed this revelation, I listened to the rapids below us in the darkness, the steady rush of falling water. It was an ominous sound that spoke of dangers impossible to see or avoid.

  “You’re not going to kill Egan,” I said.

  “Scott was like a son to me,” Charley said, his voice creaking. “More than you even.”

  It would have broken my heart if I didn’t know better.

  I knew what I had to do next. I hardened myself to do it.

  “I’m cutting him loose. Then I’m taking him back to Fort Kent. He’s going to give a full confession to Zanadakis. I won’t tell anyone what you did to him, Charley. And Egan won’t either, will you?”

  Once more, the gagged man tried to signal his enthusiastic compliance.

  “I can’t let you arrest him, Mike. He has to pay the price for what he did.”

  “He will.”

  “Blood is the only currency that matters.”

  I knelt down on the hard-packed sand beside Egan with the knife in my grip. He was sweating hard. The odor coming off him was the uniquely sour smell that comes from fear.

  Charley rose to his feet, bulky in those ridiculously loose coveralls. “Get away from him, son.”

  I rose to my feet, feeling the breeze again on my sweaty neck. “I won’t do that.”

  Charley raised the revolver at me. The barrel was aimed at my kneecap. Those old Smith & Wessons were massive guns. A .357 Magnum round would have amputated my lower leg.

  “Back away.”

  “No.”

  He cocked the hammer, curled his index finger around the trigger. “Please, Mike. I don’t want to do this.”

  “You won’t be able to live with yourself if you do.”

  “Don’t test me!”

  I pulled down the gag over Egan’s chin. He coughed, gasped out a few ragged breaths, and then spoke a single tortured word. “Forge.”

  Of course. It was what the investigators had feared at the time, why they’d found no evidence. Why we never would. Pierre Michaud, trained blacksmith, had dismembered Pellerin and burned him, piece by piece, in his smithy.

  Charley’s lip curled with contempt. “You saw Pierre do it?”

  Some of the capillaries in Egan’s eyes had popped, giving him a hobgoblin gaze. “We all did.”

  “Who’s ‘we’?” I asked, unable to contain my contempt.

  “Me, Roland, Zach.”

  Most killers would have wanted as few witnesses as possible, but Pierre Michaud had seen the wisdom of incriminating his entire crew. He knew the butchery would haunt the men who followed him. He was confident in his ability to intimidate them into lifelong silence.

  “And then Pierre gave you those brands so you’d all be implicated?” I said.

  Egan worked his jaw, sore from the rag he’d had stuffed between his teeth. “He said he’d do himself last, but he didn’t. Never planned on doing it. What were we going to do, though? Pierre would’ve killed any of us who challenged him.”

  I snapped my head around at Charley. “Are we done?”

  The old man’s features remained stony. But he eased down the hammer, slid his finger from the trigger guard, and turned the barrel of the revolver back to the sand.

  “Yes,” said Charley in a voice softened by shame and grief.

  “Please tell me that isn’t loaded,” I said.

  “It isn’t.”

  Egan spat and sputtered. “What?”

  “You violated all four rules of safe gun-handling there,” I said.

  “Three of them, at least,” the old man answered with a sad smile. The character he’d been playing—cruel, vengeful, crazed—had disappeared in the night. “I’m sorry, Mike. I had to be convincing. I could only hope that you would sense that I was acting and understand why.”

  Egan had begun to blink furiously, as if he had sand in his eyes.

  “It didn’t make it any more pleasant,” I said. “Where’s Roland really?”

  Charley glanced at his wristwatch.

  “If I had to guess,” he said, rubbing his hand over his head, already fuzzed white with stubble, “he’s in the custody of the Canada Border Services Agency for attempting to transport a pound of heroin into the city of Edmundston, New Brunswick.”

  Once again I found myself catching my breath. “You didn’t plant drugs on him?”

  “Yes—and no. That smack belonged to Roland, all right. I just happened to steal it from under the outhouse where he had it hidden and hide the bag in his gas tank. That was his usual MO. Dogs can’t smell narcotics through petroleum. This time, though, the Canadians had an anonymous tip to prod around in the tank.”

  “So you’re a vigilante, too? In addition to being a kidnapper?”

  Charley glanced at Egan, still bound, but no longer blinking and breathing more regularly now. “Do you plan on accusing me of kidnapping, Mr. Egan?”

  “No!”

  I crossed my forearms across my chest. “The man’s terrified. Wait till he’s free and has a lawyer to advise him. You’re in big trouble here, Charley.”

  “It’s been a while. Truth is, I kind of miss the experience. Don’t you?”

  I didn’t want to admit that I missed our unsanctioned escapades. “I hope you’re done tormenting Egan, at least.”

  “I wish I was,” said Charley. “But we’re still waiting on someone to make his appearance.”

  The breeze was picking up. Stars appeared, first hazily and then sharply, in the gaps between the clouds overhead. I actually shivered from the chill of my wet pants.

  I saw the boat that must have been Egan’s, a square-sterned Grumman sport with a two-stroke engine mounted to the transom. Personally, I wouldn’t have trusted the underpowered craft in the river at night and certainly nowhere near rapids.

  It occurred to me that I hadn’t seen another boat, canoe, or kayak on my short trip across the island. How had Charley gotten here? The question could wait.

  “You picked a vulnerable spot to set a trap.”

  “Our man wouldn’t come if he didn’t think he had us at a disadvantage.”

  “A night scope and a hunting rifle are all he needs to end this once and for all.”

  “He won’t shoot on sight, because he doesn’t know what we’ve discovered or whom we’ve told.”

  “But he has to know this is a setup. The story about the Indian flipping his canoe. Come on.”

  “Your father was a trapper,” the old man said. “Didn’t he ever set two traps, one after the other? Mr. Fox would think he was smart avoiding the first, then catch himself in the second.”

  “Who’s the fox in this story?”

  But before he could answer, we heard the sound we’d been anticipating. It was the low
roar of an outboard motor heading toward Musket Island from upstream. A handheld spotlight showed on the surface of the water, which was as black as crude oil where the channel deepened. The boatman must have launched back in Allagash.

  “How are we going to play this?” I said to Charley. “I take it you don’t have proof that will stand up in court.”

  “He’ll give us what we need if he doesn’t kill us first.”

  “You need to untie me,” said Egan.

  I put the knife back in my pocket and checked my Beretta. The pistol had gotten wet in the river, but it was the most dependable firearm I had ever owned.

  Charley flipped open the chamber of his revolver and reached into his pocket for bullets. “I guess I should load this.”

  Egan nearly burst into tears again. “It was empty?”

  “You wearing your vest?” Charley said, meaning the lightweight body armor that protected my torso beneath my shirt and rain jacket.

  “Always,” I said, tapping my sternum. “Ever since I got shot in that gravel pit.”

  He smiled and winked. “Maybe you stand in front of me, then.”

  “It’s not much help if he aims at my head. If I remember right, he’s a good shot.”

  Charley dropped a bullet. As he stooped to pick it up, I saw BIG AL’S AUTO sewn in reflective letters on the back of his coveralls. They were two sizes too large on his wiry frame.

  “You need to untie me!” said Egan again.

  The boat was coming fast downstream. He knew the river, its channels and currents. He was unafraid of it. He kept the spotlight on our faces, blinding us the way a poacher does a deer, until he slipped alongside the island. The diminishing light of the campfire revealed him standing tall in the stern of the Grand Laker with his hand on the throttle. He let the river carry the boat past the island and then gave the outboard some gas and came straight back at us in the lee. He rammed the bow of the square-sterned canoe into the sand as if he’d done that maneuver a hundred times before.

  He probably had.

  As he was always quick to remind us, Chasse Lamontaine had grown up on this river.

  43

  The game warden we’d mocked as Dudley Do-Right was dressed in his fatigue-colored uniform, wearing his duty belt and his ballistic vest fortified with ceramic plates in the front and back. He had eschewed a personal flotation device. He kept his hand on the grip of his sidearm, a SIG P226 with a magazine holding twelve .357 rounds. He probably had a bullet in the chamber, too.

  “Charley Stevens, you’ve lost your hair.”

  “Misplaced it is more like it.”

  “There must be a mistake. I heard a distress call about an Indian getting himself stranded on this island. But instead of finding Crazy Horse, all I see are three horses’ asses.”

  Who was this man? Even his voice sounded different. Quick and confident.

  “I never knew you were funny, Chasse,” I said.

  “One of many things you didn’t know, I expect. Why’s your hand on your sidearm, Mike? We’re all fellow wardens here. No need to be jumpy.”

  I kept my hand where it was.

  “So you’ve come to rescue us, then?” said Charley.

  “Do you need rescuing? My first thought was that this was a prank you decided to play on me. I’m used to being the butt of jokes. I know wardens think I’m some naive Boy Scout.”

  “It must bother you,” I said.

  “The opposite,” he said. “People are never so dumb as when they think they’re putting something over on somebody smarter than they are. Charley, that shaved head of yours is freaking me out. Were you afraid to come back here except in disguise?”

  “More like I wanted to keep a low profile.”

  “Too low, I think, given where we are.” He cast a glance at Egan, who had gone as motionless as a fawn hoping not to be noticed by a predator in the tall grass. “You’ve looked better, Jon.”

  “Chasse.”

  “So, seriously,” said Lamontaine, “what’s this about?”

  Charley tossed a small object into the light cast by the burning driftwood. It landed with a clink on the river-polished gravel. A miniature metal shield.

  “I suppose you recognize this,” said the pilot.

  “Looks like a toy badge. You get it out of a gumball machine?”

  “It’s real enough. And you have no idea whose badge it is?”

  Chasse let out a pretty convincing chuckle. “It’s kind of hard to identify from twenty feet away.”

  “Come have a closer look,” said Charley.

  “I will when you gentlemen take your hands off your sidearms.”

  “The badge belonged to Scott Pellerin,” I said.

  “Pellerin was undercover,” said Chasse, sounding genuinely mystified. “He wouldn’t have had a badge with him.”

  “Actually, it belonged to Scott’s grandfather,” said Charley. “Emmeline Bouchard found it hidden in the room Scott was renting at the Valley View. No doubt Pierre had told her to search the place from time to time. Scott must’ve gotten careless hiding the thing.”

  “So that’s how Pierre found out that Pellerin was a warden.”

  “You’re acting like this is news to you,” I said.

  “Of course it is! Pierre never told anyone before he died, except Emmeline, of course. I’m surprised she didn’t let that slip later—when I would visit her at the motel.”

  So Chasse had had an affair with Angie’s mother, too. Emmeline Bouchard’s taste in men couldn’t have been worse.

  “You remember what a cold-blooded bastard Pierre was,” Lamontaine continued. “Killing that man was the best thing you’ve done. I know you’re too ‘honorable’ to admit that. Or maybe that’s another lie you tell yourself.”

  “I’ve told myself plenty, that’s true.”

  “Maybe you don’t like to remember what you did.”

  “Maybe,” Charley said. “It’s true my memory’s gotten more selective. But I remember one thing from that manhunt as clear as last night. It concerns you, Chasse. I remember how it was you who kept asking to go with me in my plane to look for Pierre. You said you knew this land better than any outsider, even though you were just a deputy warden back then.”

  “It was the truth. I know every inch of this river and its tributaries.”

  “I hurt your pride when I refused. I told you there was only room in the Cub for two and I trusted Nick Francis.”

  He shrugged his broad shoulders. “It was your prerogative.”

  “What I didn’t admit—to myself or to you—was that I already had a sneaking feeling about you.”

  “Why was that?”

  “Because of how insistent you were that we fly over Beau Lac. You said Pierre kept an old canoe chained to a tree there. You said he would try to cross before the clouds cleared and the moon came out. Nick and I thought you were just trying to prove your own importance. We were surprised when we actually flew up that way and there was a man in a canoe trying to slip across. I’m not sure we gave you the credit, though.”

  “No,” he said, sounding piqued. “You didn’t.”

  “Not that you wanted it, I’m guessing. It wasn’t the moment for you to call attention to yourself.”

  “Charley, are you accusing me of helping Pierre Michaud escape?” The suggestion seemed to amuse him.

  “The opposite! You wanted to make sure Pierre didn’t escape.”

  “And why would I do that? He deserved to die for what he did to Pellerin. I believed it then, and I believe it now. Why else did you shoot him if you didn’t agree?”

  “Nick and I did everything in our power to save that son of a bitch’s life—despite his horrible crimes.”

  “Sure you did.” The Boy Scout had turned out to be as cynical as a career criminal. “Suppose what you’re saying is even half-true. Suppose I had a hunch where and when Pierre was going to try crossing the border. So what?”

  “The word you’re looking for is complicity,” I said.


  “Shut up, Bowditch,” he said. “No one cares what you think.”

  “You stage-managed Pierre Michaud’s death,” I said.

  “Prove it.”

  “We can’t,” said Charley.

  He actually laughed at that. “So what are we all doing here?”

  The gravel rustled as Charley shifted his weight. “I consider myself a pretty fair actor. I can play as dumb as Lieutenant Columbo when the situation calls for it. But you, Chasse, have a true gift for letting people believe you’re a numbskull.”

  Lamontaine’s voice hardened. “Did you come all the way up here to insult me, or are you accusing me of something? I had nothing to do with Scott Pellerin’s death.”

  “I think you did,” said Charley. “I think you went to work as a deputy warden with an agreement to cover for Pierre Michaud. You promised him protection in exchange for a cut of his profits. You’ve always boasted how you grew up here and know everyone in the Valley.”

  “I was just a deputy. I had no authority.”

  “But you had information about where the wardens would be laying their ambushes. You made it easy for the Michauds to stay one step ahead—and then you tried to use the situation to secure a full-time job where you would’ve been even better positioned to protect their illegal activities.”

  The accusation amused Chasse. “Are you accusing me of being Pierre’s mole in the service?”

  “Not a good one. He must have been pissed that you failed to recognize Scott Pellerin when you met,” I said, taking a shot in the dark.

  Chasse’s reaction—his refusal to rebut the statement—confirmed my guess.

  “If you guys are accusing me of being a party to a criminal enterprise, let alone a cop killing,” he said with a sneer, “then go ahead and prove it. You won’t be able to.”

  “How about showing us your shoulder, then?” I said.

  “My shoulder?”

  “I suspect you have a brand on it from the hot iron that Pierre used to implicate the men in his crew.”

  “Fuck you, Bowditch.”

  “It had to be you, Chasse. When I showed up at Angie Bouchard’s house, asking about the badge that linked her mom to Scott Pellerin’s death, who did she seek out for advice?”