by Paul Doiron
After Charley cut the engine, the only sound was the wind buffeting the fuselage. When I opened the door, I was surprised by how balmy the breeze felt. It was at least ten degrees warmer on Maquoit than it had been on the mainland. Dead leaves whipped past, and I had to raise a hand to keep the windblown dust from my eyes.
“I guess we wait,” said Charley.
He was dressed in his usual “uniform” of green Dickies, green button-down shirt, and green ball cap. It was the sartorial legacy of the thirty years he’d spent as a warden.
Landry wore the real-deal uniform: military-style fatigues with an olive-green ballistic vest, blaze-orange watch cap with the Maine Warden Service logo, black boots, and a black leather belt equipped with the typical tools of the police trade, most notably her big SIG Sauer P226 chambered for .357 rounds. She’d also brought along a laptop, a hard case containing a space-age surveying device used for forensic mapping called a total station laser, and duffels filled with any and all equipment we might need to process the death scene.
Looking at Ronette, dressed like a true game warden, I felt yet again like a phony.
I had wanted so desperately to become a warden investigator, but now I couldn’t pass a mirror without seeing an impostor.
I buttoned the top button of the wool peacoat I wore over my fisherman’s sweater and corduroys. Most days now, I wore a jacket and tie to work, but not when I was going this far into the field. It still seemed weird not to put on a uniform in the morning, strange to run my hand through hair that was short by most standards, but longer than the buzz cut I’d worn for years. My supervisor, Captain Jock DeFord, had explained my new station this way: “As an investigator, Mike, you are for all intents and purposes a plainclothes detective. When someone looks at you, the last thing we want them to see is a game warden.”
Then he’d taken away the snazzy patrol truck I’d briefly been assigned. My new ride was a nondescript, no-frills Jeep Compass.
Charley’s carry-on luggage consisted of a trapper’s basket made of woven strips of ash with leather shoulder straps. A Native American friend of his had made it for him.
I’d brought my own gear, as well as an emergency change of clothing, in a canvas rucksack and a battered leather carryall. Clipped to my belt was my badge and my SIG Sauer P239: a new sidearm for a new job. It was a compact version of the gun Ronette carried. I readjusted the paddle that cushioned it against my side.
“You never finished your story about the deer,” Klesko said to Charley.
The old man relished nothing else so much as spinning a yarn. “They didn’t swim out here, although I did see a deer cross Moosehead Lake once. Twenty miles of salty seas would’ve been past the limit of even that powerful buck. Back in the fifties, the State of Maine, in its wisdom, decided the poor people of Maquoit might enjoy deer hunting as much as the landlubbers. So some biologists trapped thirteen deer and ferried them out here in crates. Two died on the sea voyage. Three died their first week on the island. The rest prospered.”
I chimed in, “That’s putting it mildly. My ex-girlfriend told me—” I caught myself as Charley’s face began to harden. But it was too late for me to stop. “My ex-girlfriend used to be a Maine State wildlife biologist, and she said that the prime carrying capacity out here would be ten deer per square mile. The current estimate for Maquoit, based on our most recent survey, is seventy deer per square mile.”
The detective spit out his peppermint gum. “No wonder they’re eating seaweed.”
“And most of the deer are infested with Lyme-disease-carrying ticks,” added Landry. “I’d recommend you check yourself regularly, Steve.”
Klesko glanced down at his shiny wool pants with concern.
Landry reached into one of her bags and found blaze-orange safety vests for us to wear. “These won’t help against the ticks, but they might save us from the same fate as Ariel Evans.”
I didn’t know Ronette Landry well, but we had a couple of mutual friends: my former sergeant, Kathy Frost, now retired; and Dani Tate, who had transferred to the state police because of chauvinism she had encountered in the Warden Service. Their departures meant that Ronette was one of only three female game wardens in a force that numbered over 130 officers.
I removed my phone from its belt holster to call my supervisor to tell him I had arrived on the island. As head of the Investigation Team, Jock DeFord was among the many wardens at the scene in Berwick. I landed in his voice mail and kept my message brief.
Just as I was finishing, two pickups came rumbling over the hilltop from the direction of town. The first was a piebald Toyota Tacoma. It had once been white but was now extensively patched with Bondo and splotched with rust. The second was a quicksilver GMC Sierra 3500 Denali that appeared to have recently rolled off the car dealer’s lot.
The trucks pulled up beside each other, and the drivers got out.
Somehow I knew that the owner of the Tacoma was the island constable. Andrew Radcliffe had a reedy voice that had made me imagine him as a little fellow. He began waving vigorously as if we might have missed seeing him otherwise. “Hello there!”
“Radcliffe?”
“Are you Warden Bowditch?”
“I am.”
“You don’t happen to be related to the North Haven Bowditches?”
“For their sake, I hope not.”
I guessed that he was in his midforties. He had wavy brown hair and long sideburns. His complexion was milk white except for two of the rosiest cheeks I’d seen on an adult. Even though he was dressed in a Sperry yachting jacket and docksiders, he reminded me of a Yorkshire farmer who’d spent the day tending his sheep on the windblown moors.
“I apologize for being late!” He had an upper-crust Boston accent that I’d assumed had died with the Kennedy brothers. “I didn’t want to leave the scene without someone to watch over it. I had to wait for school to get out so that Beryl McCloud could take over. She was Ariel’s friend.”
We shook hands and I introduced my companions.
I had expected Radcliffe to have brought along the self-confessed shooter. On the phone, he’d left me with the firm impression that Kenneth Crowley was a teenager. I had no clue who the white-haired man with him was.
The stranger wasn’t particularly tall, but he was remarkably broad across the chest and back, almost grotesquely so, with ogre arms and two of the largest hands I’d ever seen. He wore a short-brimmed Greek fisherman’s cap, a T-shirt better suited for summer, canvas pants held up by clip-on suspenders, and XtraTuf boots. His jaw was square, tan, and framed by muttonchops.
“This is Harmon Reed,” said Radcliffe.
I said, “You led me to believe the hunter who shot Ariel Evans was a kid.”
Reed let out a booming laugh. “I didn’t shoot anybody. Nor did that whelp, Kenneth Crowley.”
This surprising pronouncement left us speechless for a long time.
Then Klesko said, “Are you saying he’s recanted?”
“Recanted is the wrong word,” said Reed. “The boy never confessed.”
The entire reason we’d come out to the island with so few people was because the case had been presented to me as open-and-shut. A young deer hunter had shot a woman, and he had confessed. The plan was for him to walk us through the scene while he provided us with a statement. I’d already arranged for a boat, the Star of the Sea, to transport the body back to the mainland and had assumed I would be taking Crowley in for booking. We were all supposed to be home by nightfall.
The spots on the constable’s cheeks blossomed into red roses. “When I called you, I was under a mistaken impression. It’s entirely my fault.”
“Has someone else come forward?” I asked.
“I’m afraid not.”
Landry stepped up. She and the constable were the same height. “It would be helpful if we could postpone these questions until after we’ve done an examination of the body and the scene. If this Crowley guy has recanted, we’re going to need to pr
eserve and record whatever evidence we can so the medical examiner can establish the time of death.”
“We need to take two vehicles,” said Radcliffe. “Gull Cottage is on the south end of the island.”
“The warden can ride with you, Andy.” Harmon Reed pronounced the constable’s name An-day. “I’ll take the rest of our guests in the GMC.”
“And who would you be, Mr. Reed?” Charley’s tone was amiable, and he had a big grin pasted on his mug. But an unmistakable challenge showed in his bright eyes.
The fisherman paused to give the pilot a close inspection. It wasn’t just their advanced ages that set them apart from the rest of us. Both of these old men had spent their lives outdoors in dangerous professions. Something unsaid passed between them.
Radcliffe let out a rabbity laugh. “Harmon’s the harbormaster. And the first assessor. And chair of the planning board. Gee, Harmon, what don’t you do out here?”
Reed kept his gaze on Charley. “I’m not usually the taxidriver. But these are extraordinary circumstances.”
“I’d like to ride with the constable as well,” said Klesko.
“I only have room for one,” Radcliffe said, almost with embarrassment.
For a split second, I worried the detective might try to usurp my place.
In Maine, hunting homicides are initially investigated by game wardens. But if the evidence begins to suggest that the killing was deliberate, responsibility passes to the state police. It was why both of us had been sent here.
Steve Klesko and I had only met a few months earlier. One of my charges as the new investigator in Division B was to get to know my counterparts in other law enforcement agencies: the state police, the sixteen sheriff’s offices, the FBI, the DEA, the ATF, the Border Patrol, the U.S. Marshals office. Anyone with whom I might have cause to work in the future. For Klesko and me this investigation was the equivalent of a blind date.
“No problem,” said the detective. “You’re the primary on this, Mike. You ride with the constable.” Klesko’s grin exposed his gray tooth. “But take good notes!”
Radcliffe’s pickup had more dents than the sole survivor of a demolition derby. As I reached for the door handle, I noticed that Charley was hanging back in the shadow of the Cessna’s wing. I told the constable to wait and made my way back to the pilot.
“You’re not coming?”
“Figured I’d stay with the plane.”
Torn clouds cast a shadow over the flattened hilltop. “I was hoping to have your help.”
“You’re an investigator now, Mike. You shouldn’t need my hand-holding.”
The words stung, even more than he might have intended. Charley almost never used my first name. He usually called me “son” or “young feller.” But that was before Stacey had bolted.
To make matters worse, he was absolutely right. I was supposed to be capable of managing a homicide investigation without the help of a seasoned warden. The state had given me the authority to do the job and expected me to do it.
“Is there a problem, gents?” Reed bellowed.
Charley scratched his lantern jaw. “Why’s he in such a god-awful hurry, I wonder.”
“I don’t buy the concerned-citizen act.”
“Nor do I.”
“There’s something strange going on here, Charley. First Radcliffe said that Crowley confessed. Now he says it was all a misunderstanding. Meanwhile, the island patriarch seems to be running the show. Every time Andrew Radcliffe says something, I check to see if Reed’s mouth is moving.”
The last bit coaxed a chuckle out of Charley. He pulled his ball cap down over his forehead as if readying himself to step out into a storm. He patted the wing of his plane the way one might a skittish horse.
Finally, he permitted himself a smile. “I guess the old girl will be all right in my absence.”
3
When I opened the passenger door, I was startled to see that Radcliffe had brought his dog with him. The midsize animal was shaggy gray with brown patches and so old that her beard had turned snowy. She had rheumy eyes glazed with cataracts. Her heavy tail thumped a few times as I climbed onto the running board.
“This is Bella,” her owner said. “She’s a Spinone. Most people hear that as ‘spumoni.’ It’s an Italian hunting breed.”
The exotic dog moved down to the carpet at my feet, and I rubbed her behind the ears as I positioned my legs around her.
I have always loved dogs. It still surprised people—no one more than me—that I didn’t own one. Most wardens did. Most wardens were also married with children. I’d come close to marrying Stacey. And I’d come close to adopting a wolf-dog named Shadow, before he escaped into the woods near Canada. There had been sightings of the magnificent black animal in the months since, often in the company of an honest-to-goodness she-wolf. Not a day passed when I didn’t wonder how the canine pair were doing.
Every inch of the cab was coated with sawdust. There were no seat belts and, I was guessing, no functioning air bags. On the mainland the Tacoma would have failed inspection in a millisecond, but the state seemed to take a laxer stance on the islands. My first patrol district had included Monhegan, where some of the lobstermen drove pickups that were held together by bailing wire, duct tape, and bumper stickers.
“So I guess I should explain about Kenneth Crowley.” The constable seemed more relaxed outside Harmon’s intimidating presence. “I apologize for the confusion. I should have gotten the full story before—”
“If you wouldn’t mind, Andy, I need you to start at the beginning.”
“I prefer Andrew.”
“Andrew it is.”
I removed my iPhone from my pocket, brought up the video recorder, and focused the camera on the constable. The days of paper notes were gone. These days, prosecutors wanted all of our interviews videoed.
Radcliffe eyed the device warily. “You understand I’m not a proper law enforcement officer? I’ve never been to the police academy or had any real training. I’m a wooden-boat builder by trade. Island constable is an elected office. It’s only a title you get for a couple of years until the next election. We don’t usually have any trouble or at least nothing that rises to the level of criminal offenses. Most problems we can handle ourselves without having to trouble the Hancock County sheriff. I don’t even own a handgun.”
We started off down the hill with Reed keeping his distance so as not to soil his truck with the soot from Radcliffe’s tailpipe.
Andrew seemed to be in no particular rush. “But if something happens—if there is an accident or a medical emergency—I’m supposed to be the one people call. And then I get in touch with first responders on the mainland. If it’s a medical emergency, I call the LifeFlight helicopter. If it’s a dispute that’s escalating to violence, I call the sheriff. In this case, I called the Warden Service. Maquoit is probably the last place you expected to get a call about a hunting accident.”
Incident. Not accident.
While he’d been rambling, I’d been noticing the devastation along the road. Every edible leaf and twig had been nibbled away to a height of five feet. That was the limit a large deer could reach standing on his hind legs, and it was called the browse line. I’d never seen one so pronounced. There was still plenty of vegetation, especially of the introduced or invasive variety: barberry, knotweed, multiflora rose. Species of plants that deer either could not or would not eat.
I still couldn’t understand how Radcliffe could have gotten something as important as the identity of the shooter so significantly wrong.
“How and when did you hear that Ariel Evans had been killed?”
“Harmon called me. I wrote down the time. It was eleven a.m. Sharp.”
“Reed called you?”
“Kenneth Crowley is his wife’s nephew. I misunderstood what Harmon told me. I thought that Kenneth had been the hunter who’d shot Ariel when, in reality, he just happened to stumble on her lying dead in her yard.”
“Why di
dn’t Crowley contact you himself? You’re the constable.”
Radcliffe looked confused. “But Harmon’s his uncle. Ken’s just a kid, and it seems he panicked when he found the corpse and reached out to someone he trusted. You have to understand my position out here. I’m a former summer person. My mother still owns our family cottage, Clovercroft, in Marsh Harbor. We call it a cottage, but it’s really a mansion. I’ve spent eleven winters here now, but the native islanders are never going to fully trust me.”
It was the same up and down the coast of Maine. The one thing poor Mainers had over wealthy interlopers was their ability to withhold their acceptance. “Did you speak with Crowley yourself?”
“Eventually, yes. But not until after I’d called your office. I drove to Harmon’s, and that was when I realized my mistake.”
“It didn’t occur to you to bring Crowley along to meet us at the plane?”
“We didn’t see the point. Maquoit’s an island. It’s not like Kenneth’s going anywhere. We figured you’d want to examine the body first. We told him you’d be by later to take his statement.”
I glanced into the dusty side mirror to study the truck behind us. “By ‘we’ you mean Harmon and yourself?”
He made a vaguely affirmative noise.
“When we get to this Gull Cottage, I want you to call Kenneth Crowley and tell him to get his ass on down there. I need that kid to walk me through the scene. We have limited daylight to work with, and the last thing I want is to go searching for him.”
I saw the first house up ahead: an unoccupied-looking saltbox, no doubt a summer rental, with vacant flower boxes in the windows and a dead lawn strewn with wet leaves. The salt air had already begun to dissolve the paint that had been applied to the trim earlier that spring. This far offshore, fog could be as corrosive as carbolic acid.
“How can you be sure Kenneth Crowley didn’t shoot Ariel Evans?”
“His rifle hadn’t been fired. There was still oil in the barrel.”
I fought the impulse to roll my eyes. “How do you know he didn’t clean the gun after he shot her?”