Widowmaker

by Paul Doiron

  I braced myself for the possibilities and started for the door.

  Pulsifer was waiting for me in the mudroom with a displeased expression that confirmed my forebodings.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  “I just got off the phone with Jim Clegg.”

  “Did they find any new evidence in the truck?”

  “Too soon for that. Clegg and Shaylene Hawken are headed out to Pariahville this morning. In light of recent events, they want to have a chat with Foss and his flock of deviants. Clegg also reminded me that he still has a shitload of questions for you. I made the mistake of saying you were here. My head’s a little fuzzy this morning.”

  “Should I follow you?”

  “We’ll take my truck. You and I need to talk.”

  22

  In the mountains, in the winter, dawn comes late and dusk comes early. The sun hadn’t yet made its way above the Bigelow Range, but the sky had turned the color of rose gold: a promise of light and warmth to come.

  Pulsifer didn’t speak as we brushed the snow off the hood and windows of his patrol truck with our gloved hands. When we were finished, I pried open the passenger door of my Scout. I unlocked the glove compartment, removed my Walther .380, and tucked the weapon inside the waistband of my jeans. An image of Carrie Michaud wielding a knife flashed through my mind. I dropped a couple of extra magazines in my pockets.

  Pulsifer was behind the wheel with the engine running by the time I returned. He had turned up the police radio, as if to forestall our inevitable conversation. I had no intention of being the first to speak.

  The plows had done expert work clearing the road into Bigelow, not that the locals were ever slowed down by a little snow. Just about everyone in the mountains seemed to own a four-wheel-drive vehicle. Those who didn’t soon discovered how long the wait could be for AAA to come and pull you out of a ditch.

  “I want to show you something,” Pulsifer said suddenly.

  I had expected he meant that he wanted to take me somewhere nearby.

  Instead, he reached into his pocket and removed what looked like a foreign coin. He held it flat on his palm for me to look at. It seemed to be made out of bronze and was stamped with a triangle with the Roman numeral III at the center. There was a different word on each side of the triangle—Unity, Service, and Recovery—and around the perimeter there was a motto: To Thine Own Self Be True.

  “Three years, four months, and twenty-seven days sober,” he said. “Before last night.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t apologize. You’re not to blame. It’s all on me.”

  From the tone of his voice, it certainly sounded like he was blaming me.

  “Gary, I had no idea.”

  “That’s why they call it Alcoholics Anonymous. Oh, well.” He pushed the window button on the door so that it went all the way down. Then he threw the coin out onto the icy road. “Just a piece of metal.”

  I wasn’t sure what response would be appropriate under the circumstances.

  Eventually, we emerged from beneath the shadow of Bigelow Mountain. We passed a snow-covered field edged by white birches and red pines, in the center of which stood the burned-out remains of a mobile home. I almost exclaimed aloud for Pulsifer to stop but managed to catch myself in time.

  My vagabond family had lived in that trailer briefly when I was a child, before my father lost whatever job he’d had at the time. He’d come in half-drunk or mouthed off to the boss or slugged some coworker whose face he didn’t like. Maybe all three. Suffice it to say, Jack Bowditch had never been the employee of the month at any place he’d ever worked. It was no wonder I had grown up in those early years eating day-old bread from the food pantry and venison burgers from deer my dad has secretly shot out of season.

  I hadn’t noticed the torched building on my drive in, but now I found myself overwhelmed by nostalgia. Most of my memories of my early childhood were bittersweet at best, chilling at worst. But what I was feeling now, I realized, was sadness and loss. Someone had burned down my old house.

  Pulsifer didn’t notice that I’d bolted upright in my seat. He was probably thinking about what he was going to tell his AA sponsor.

  As we turned onto Moose Alley, he leaned over the wheel, peering at the road ahead. “What’s going on up there?”

  Four or five vehicles were parked in a line along one side of Route 16. A group of men and women were gathered together atop the snowbank. They were all bundled up against the cold and staring through binoculars at a dead tree.

  “Birders,” I said.

  Pulsifer hit his blues and swung in behind the last car. He jumped out of the truck before I could ask him what he was doing.

  “Folks, you can’t park here!” I heard him say.

  A man in a hat with earflaps said excitedly, “We’re looking at a Great Gray Owl.”

  I squinted up at the snag and saw an enormous bird, as big as an eagle, perched on the twisted topmost branch. Its feathers were the same color as the bark of the leafless spruce. It was the first Great Gray I had ever seen. I reached for the binoculars on Pulsifer’s dash to get a better look at the massive owl.

  “I don’t care what you’re looking at,” said Pulsifer. “You can’t be blocking the road.”

  “You don’t understand,” the man in the hat said. “This is an extremely rare bird.”

  “We’re not blocking the road,” someone else said.

  “People can still get by.”

  Pulsifer stood with his hands on his hips. “You need to move, folks. It’s not open for discussion.”

  The birders mumbled at one another. Steam from their open mouths created a single cloud among them in the early-morning air. For their sake, I hoped they wouldn’t put up a fight, but they must have agreed that discretion was the better part of valor when dealing with a pissed-off law-enforcement officer. One by one, the Priuses and Outbacks pulled away from the snowbank and started off toward Rangeley.

  Pulsifer remained standing like a statue until the last one had driven off. I don’t think he so much as glanced at the owl.

  “Some people don’t have a fucking clue,” he said as he climbed back inside in the truck.

  “Great Gray Owls are pretty rare sightings,” I said. “They don’t usually show up in Maine. I’m sure this one was reported on some bird Listserv. Birders are going to be coming from all over to see it.”

  “As if I don’t have enough to do but play meter maid to a bunch of bird-watchers.” He sneered in the direction of the dead tree. “I’m tempted to scare that bird off.”

  I was torn between keeping quiet and speaking my piece. Being me, I inevitably chose the latter. “It’s not exactly rush hour out here. You didn’t have to be such a hard-ass.”

  “Don’t tell me how to do my job, Mike. I’m not the one with the folder full of reprimands.”

  I stared straight ahead. “Fine.”

  “I thought I was doing you a favor bringing you along. But if you don’t appreciate it—”

  I put on my sunglasses because I didn’t want him to see the annoyance in my eyes.

  When it became obvious that I wasn’t going to continue the argument, he put the transmission back into drive and we lurched forward again. We went a full mile before he remembered to turn off his pursuit lights.

  * * *

  Now that the sun had risen above the mountaintops, the world had become too bright to look at. The new snow, piled high along the roadsides and clinging like cotton to every tree, didn’t just reflect the light; it intensified it a hundredfold. Soon Pulsifer was also reaching for his shades.

  We didn’t speak again until we had turned off Route 16 onto the camp road that led up to Foss’s gate. Tire marks in the snow indicated that the detective—I assumed it must be the detective—had arrived ahead of us.

  Smoke from Logan Dyer’s chimney was visible even before we saw his house. It drifted straight up above the treetops, a perfect tight spiral. As we approac
hed his property, I could smell and taste the wood burning in the stove.

  Dyer must have parked his truck inside the garage, but there was a Ford Explorer in the driveway. The SUV was the Interceptor model, issued exclusively to law enforcement and other first responders, but it was painted in the same black and silver tones as the Widowmaker company vehicles I had seen on the mountain. It was equipped with pursuit lights, too.

  “Do you know who that is?” I asked.

  “Widowmaker security.”

  “Russo?”

  “Maybe,” Pulsifer said. “The mountain has a half dozen guys who work security. A couple of them are deputized by the sheriff in case shit breaks out requiring a real police presence. Don’t tell me you met Rob Russo, too?”

  “What’s he doing there?”

  “I don’t know. Having breakfast?”

  “Ease up, Pulsifer.”

  “Maybe Clegg asked someone from Widowmaker to talk to Logan about what he’s seen recently. The guy does have a bird’s-eye view of the only road in and out of Pariahville.”

  The newly fallen snow gave the house and yard a cheerier aspect, although it couldn’t help the flaking clapboards, and the dark, wet shingles showed how much heat was escaping through the underinsulated attic.

  “Poor Logan,” said Pulsifer. “He’s never going to find a sucker willing to buy his house. I told you he’s even unluckier than you.”

  As we passed by, Dyer’s hounds began to bay inside: a loud and mournful noise that was nearly a kind of howl. The Plotts must have heard our vehicle with their supersensitive ears. If nothing else, they were effective watchdogs.

  The road up the hill was slick, but the studs in Pulsifer’s tires bit through the surface ice. When we got to the steel gate, we found it standing open. Two sets of tire tracks led in, but none led out.

  “Have you ever been up in here before?” I asked.

  “Not since before Foss started running his home for wayward creeps.”

  We were driving now through a majestic stand of old-growth pines. Very often the old lumber camps were surrounded by groves of massive trees like these. The loggers kept the big evergreens standing for scenery around their bunkhouses and kitchens, while they cut the surrounding forest down to the nub.

  “How does Foss even make money?” I asked.

  “The man cuts a shitload of wood.”

  “How? I couldn’t even find a phone number for him.”

  “He doesn’t need to advertise his services. The big developers know how to get ahold of him. Foss always comes in as the low bidder when a developer needs land cleared to build ski condos or whatever. It’s one of the advantages to having ex-con employees who can’t get a job anywhere. He can pay them pennies on the dollar and then turn right around and get his money back charging them room and board.”

  “It sounds like a sweet deal if you don’t mind treating your workers like plantation slaves.”

  “Maybe in his mind he’s helping them,” Pulsifer said.

  “What do you think?”

  He raised an eyebrow to tell me how stupid my question was. “I think the guy’s a genius.”

  Snow was dropping in clumps from the evergreens where the sun was shining, but it clung tightly to the trees that remained in shadow.

  After a few minutes, we came to the first building. It was a generator station in a clearing, with a big solar panel on the roof and wires leading off through the tree limbs. I could feel the vibration of the machine in my fillings.

  The next structure was a trailer, no different from those used at construction sites, with a satellite dish mounted on the roof. Two state vehicles, a Franklin County Sheriff’s Department cruiser and a late-model Chevy sedan with state-government plates, were parked out front. I recognized the former as the car Clegg had been driving the night before. I figured the latter must belong to Adam’s probation officer.

  Pulsifer unfastened his seat belt. “Have you ever met Shaylene Hawken?”

  “Not in person, but we had a pleasant chat on the phone the other day.”

  “Isn’t she a charmer?”

  As I stepped out of the vehicle, I heard a fast-paced chittering overhead and saw a mixed flock of birds swoop and settle into the cone-laden branches of a pine. They were Red and White-winged Crossbills. Those bird-watchers Pulsifer had chased out of the road would have paid money to get such a good look at those elusive winter finches.

  Pulsifer took no notice. He made his way to the door and rapped on it three times.

  No answer.

  When he glanced back at me, I pointed to the snowy ground outside the door. There were boot prints all over, as you would expect, but three distinct sets of fresh tracks led farther down the road. I set off in that direction while Gary hurried to catch up.

  Pulsifer didn’t strike me as a poor woodsman, exactly. He just seemed to be wearing blinders all the time. He was so focused on the job at hand that he failed to notice disturbances in the landscape around him. The more time I spent with him in the field, the more I understood how my poacher father had managed to outwit him for so many years.

  23

  Up ahead was a complex of buildings: garages, a dining hall, a bunkhouse, and assorted sheds. The usual construction equipment, too: skidders, crew vans, pickups, a bulldozer, and a flatbed truck for hauling logs. In short, Pariahville resembled just about any other logging operation you might find in the forest.

  Pulsifer and I approached the dining hall. A single voice was issuing from inside the building. Loud, resonant, and commanding—it belonged unmistakably to Don Foss. Pulsifer didn’t bother knocking.

  When he opened the door, the room went quiet. Nine or ten men seated at picnic tables turned to see who had let in the sudden blast of arctic air. Beyond them, on a raised stage at the end of the hall, stood Don Foss, flanked on either side by Jim Clegg and Shaylene Hawken.

  Foss was wearing an outfit that Paul Bunyan himself might have bought off the rack, and in the same size, too. The big man turned to Clegg. “What’s going on here? Who are these men?”

  “The wardens are here at my request,” said the detective.

  Clegg had on his brown-and-khaki uniform and was holding his drill sergeant’s hat at crotch level, as if to protect his privates from the imaginations of the assembled sex offenders.

  Shaylene Hawken appeared strong enough to wrestle a moose calf to the ground. She had a hard red face that looked as if she scrubbed her skin with steel wool, and gray-brown hair that she had probably cut herself. She was dressed in civilian clothes appropriate for tromping around the woods but was wearing a ballistic vest with a badge pinned to the fabric. A semiautomatic pistol rested in a holster on her hip.

  “Should we expect additional visitors?” asked Foss.

  The men at the tables had contorted themselves to look at us. Most of them had faces that were young and bearded; they were the same age, more or less, as Adam. The older ones among them look prematurely aged by bad habits and more recent exposure to the elements. Almost without exception, they looked dead-tired.

  “Please continue, Don,” said the detective.

  Foss’s natural tone of voice seemed to be a bellow. “Detective Clegg and Officer Hawken will be speaking with each of you privately in the bunkhouse. I have their assurance your conversations will be confidential unless—” He turned and looked down again at the detective at his side. “I fail to see how this concerns the Warden Service.”

  “The wardens are assisting our department in the search for Langstrom,” Clegg said patiently.

  I counted ten men in all seated at the tables. So there had been eleven in the camp when Adam was here.

  One pudgy, pink-cheeked guy raised his hand. “Why are we being interrogated if Langstrom was the one who skipped?”

  “These are interviews, not interrogations,” said Detective Clegg. “We’re asking for your help.”

  “What kind of help?”

  “Information—what do you think?” sai
d Shaylene Hawken. She swayed from side to side, her hands clasped behind her.

  “So we don’t have to talk?” asked another man.

  “Fuck yeah, we do,” said a third. “You think they won’t violate your ass back to Bucks Harbor if you don’t say nothing?”

  Foss raised his huge hands in a placating gesture. “The officers have given me their word this isn’t a pretext to violate anyone’s probation.”

  “Sure, they say that now, but what happens when you ain’t there?” asked the suspicious one.

  “I will be in the room for each interview,” said Foss.

  I heard one man at the nearest table whisper to another, “He just wants to hear everything we say.”

  Foss continued: “I’ve told the officers I’m prepared to end the interviews if there is any coercion.”

  “Are they going to search our lockers, too?” asked the pink one.

  “We’d prefer not to have to do that, Dudson,” said Hawken.

  I could tell that the implied threat rubbed Foss the wrong way. “As all of you know, the officers have the right to inspect your belongings at any time. But given that the focus of these interviews is the whereabouts of Adam Langstrom, I see no need for a sweep of the bunkhouse. Isn’t that right, Detective Clegg?”

  “All we’re asking is that you answer our questions truthfully—no bullshit, no evasion—and we’ll be on our way.”

  “Yeah, right,” said one of the men at the tables

  “This is bullshit.”

  “You know someone’s going out of here in handcuffs,” whispered the quiet man near me. “They’re just looking to violate one of us so we don’t take off like Langstrom.”

  Beside me, Pulsifer had remained quiet, but I could sense the tension in his muscles, the same way you can sense when someone beside you in bed is still awake.

  Hawken had reached the end of her already-limited patience. “Don’t be shy, boys. Someone’s got to be first.”

  The pudgy man, Dudson, stood up. He articulated his words carefully, striking every syllable. “I’ll go first. Worst thing that can happen is they send me back to Bucks. At least my cell there was warm and didn’t smell like farts all night.”