by Paul Doiron
“Good day, ladies.” Probert extended his long fingers to be licked.
I judged the pen to be about an acre in size, maybe an acre and a half, with an island of short firs in the center. From the depths of the evergreens, a third wolf dog peered at us. It had the recognizable long legs and snout of the wilder mixes.
“That’s Macduff,” said my guide. “He’s a little shy. Bad story there. Terrible abuse and neglect. The people who had him in Pennsylvania never changed his collar, and so as he grew, it began to strangulate him. Amazing that he even made it here. Macduff has the distinction of being the only one of my brothers and sisters to bite me. It happened as I removed him from his crate, and no, I haven’t yet become a werewolf.”
Brothers and sisters? I wasn’t so sure Probert didn’t howl at the moon occasionally.
The wolves had grown louder since I had arrived. The arrival of the newcomer, Shadow, was causing a commotion.
“How many animals do you have here?” I asked above the howls.
“Thirty-seven at the moment. Housed in six pens. Each is a perfect pack structure, with an alpha and beta pair running the show. The way of the wolf.”
“And you run this entire refuge yourself?”
“My apprentice, Kara, is off on a ‘meat run,’ as we call it. A slaughterhouse generously gives us its scraps. Wolves prefer the company of females to males. They associate our sex with death and danger, I have come to believe. And with good cause.”
“They seem to like you.”
“That’s because I have taken the time to learn their language. Wolves communicate in all manner of ways, from their posture to their facial expressions. Their vocalizations are more nuanced than they might seem to the untrained ear, more complex than that of dogs. What you hear as yips and yaps, I hear as full sentences. But if you really want to see into the soul of a wolf, you need to look into its eyes.”
Dale Probert and Don Foss couldn’t have been any more different physically, and yet they both shared an inflated sense of self-importance and a mannered way of speaking, as if they had attended the same preschool eons ago. But whereas I had doubts about Foss’s motives, it was clear Probert sincerely cared for his wolves. As run-down as this refuge might appear, he seemed to be doing his best to create a true sanctuary. Unlike Pariahville, this was a place of protection and caring, not exile and exploitation.
It’s the word sanctuary that’s tripping me up, I told myself. I was drawing a false equivalency between the two operations. What mattered was finding the best home for Shadow, and if this was it, then so be it.
Meanwhile, overhead, the ravens wheeled.
30
Probert continued his lecture as we tramped from pen to pen. He told me horror stories of animals that had lived their lives in dark cellars before coming to him or had arrived with gruesome wounds he had been forced to stitch himself. (“I am an autodidact and a veterinarian self-taught,” he declared.) The wolf dogs looked healthy enough, and clearly the old man had devoted his life to this makeshift shelter.
“This is our transitional pen,” Probert said as we finished our circle. “This is where I’ll introduce our newcomer to his new pack members.”
A longhaired dog rushed up to the fence as we drew near, and if I hadn’t known better, I would have sworn it was a purebred collie. Its tail was swaying and its mouth was open, but there was a desperate look in its eyes, as if it had been falsely imprisoned. Couldn’t I see that it was here by mistake?
“Luna is low content, but we love her just the same,” Probert said.
Suddenly, the pager on my belt began to flash and beep. There was a reason the Warden Service still used those antiquated messaging devices: They worked even when you were well out of range of a cell tower. I recognized the number as Gary Pulsifer’s.
“Can I use your telephone?” I asked.
“As long as you’re not planning on calling Timbuktu.”
“No, just Maine.”
“We’re practically standing on the Maine border here,” Probert said. “The state line isn’t even a mile to the east.”
Probert lit another cigarette, using the smoldering butt of one to ignite the next.
I made my way into the nearby trailer. The smell of smoke had penetrated every swatch of fabric: curtains, carpets, and furniture. The walls were paneled with fake wood and decorated with snapshots of assorted wolf dogs, along with a disorienting number of pages torn from past Sports Illustrated swimsuit issues. An old rotary telephone sat on a desk beside an overflowing ashtray.
“Gary, it’s Mike.”
“Where are you?”
“New Hampshire.”
“Where?”
“I’m over in the Mahoosucs. There’s this sanctuary for wolf dogs.”
“I’m not even going to ask,” he said. “You need to get over here. Something’s happened at Foss’s place.”
“What do you mean?”
“Clegg was heading up to the compound again, but no one answered at the gate, so he decided to walk in. A hundred yards up the road, he found one of the sex offenders shot dead. Clegg hightailed it back to his car and called for backup. I’m heading out there.”
“Wow.”
“I know. You need to get over here.”
I calculated the distance in my head. “Gary, I’m more than an hour away.”
“You spent the past few days poking around Pariahville, trying to find out what happened to Adam Langstrom, and now there’s been at least one murder there. Do you have other plans or something?”
“By the time I get there—”
“Who knows what will be happening. But we might just need you.”
This was Pulsifer at his most devilish. The man knew exactly how to tempt me.
“It’s your choice,” he said, and hung up.
Ever since I’d learned the blood in Adam’s truck matched his rare blood type, I had been positive he’d been murdered. I’d let my suspicions harden into certainties. But what if he had survived whatever had happened inside his pickup? I could easily picture him returning to Foss’s place to exact some kind of vengeance.
My father’s face appeared when I shut my eyes. His face, my face, Adam’s face.
Not again, I thought. It can’t be possible.
I stepped out into the cold air to the excited howls of wolves. While I had been on the phone, a pickup had descended into the refuge and parked beside me. The driver was a woman, early thirties, on the heavy side, and even from a distance I could tell she was no beauty. But Probert was beaming at her as if she had stepped straight from one of his bikini posters. They were both leaning over the bed of my truck, cooing to Shadow.
The old man straightened up. “Warden, this is my apprentice, Kara. Kara, this is Warden Bowdoin.”
“Bowditch. Nice to meet you.” The blood was rushing so quickly to my head, it was making my brain ache.
“Your wolf is gorgeous!” She was wearing heavy rubber gloves that I associated with dirty jobs done in dirty places.
“He’s not mine,” I said. “Listen, I’m afraid I have to go. Something important has come up.”
“And miss feeding time?” said Probert.
He stepped to the other pickup and, with all the theatricality of a birthday party magician, pulled loose a blue tarp that had been covering the contents of the bed. Kara’s truck was filled with severed pig heads.
“Disgusting, I know,” he said, “but the wolves consider them to be delicacies.”
“I had pig cheeks once,” said Kara. “Kind of rubbery, but not bad.”
“I really have to get going,” I said again.
“Then we should introduce your passenger to his new family,” said Probert. “Did your lady friend mention how reliant we are here on donations?”
Without thinking, I reached for my wallet and removed three twenties, leaving myself with a few ones.
“Thank you.” The old man crushed the bills in his tight fist. “Kara, can you help the warde
n get that kennel out of his truck?”
“I can do it,” I said.
I jumped up into the bed and unlashed the cords that held the plastic box in place. Shadow had begun to grow restless. He was twitching his tail and making a strange noise that reverberated from deep inside his powerful chest.
“He doesn’t sound happy,” I said.
“He’s just excited,” said Probert. “He knows this is the first day of the rest of his life.”
I squatted on my haunches and stared through the grate at the wild animal inside. Ever since I had arrived here, I had begun to think of him that way: not as a wolf dog or a wolf hybrid. Shadow was a wolf.
I rubbed my chin and then my eyes. I shook my head as if in disagreement with someone I alone could hear.
Probert was the self-professed wolf whisperer. What did I know about these animals? Once again, Shadow and I locked eyes. His irises were streaked with dark flecks I hadn’t noticed before. His pupils were as black as Pleistocene tar pits.
I climbed to my feet. “You know, I think I am going to take him with me.”
“Huh?” said Probert.
“I don’t mean any offense, but this isn’t the best place for him.”
“I can’t imagine where you think he might be better off,” said the old man. “This refuge is the best of its kind in the world.”
I certainly hoped that wasn’t true.
“He’ll be happy here, you’ll see,” said Kara. “Come visit him in a few weeks.”
“He belongs among his own kind, Warden,” said Probert. “Your lady friend told me he would be euthanized unless we gave him asylum. Perhaps you’ve grown too attached to him and are not thinking through the consequences of your actions.”
I laughed out loud.
“Excuse me?” he said indignantly.
“It’s nothing,” I said. “It’s the story of my life.”
* * *
Driving down out of the mountains, I was overwhelmed by the foolishness of what I had just done. I had lied and connived to rescue Shadow, and then, when I had finally found a sanctuary for the wolf, I had upended my plans, and for what? Because he had communicated telepathically that he didn’t want to be imprisoned in one of those sad pens with a wrongfully accused collie?
The idea of becoming one of those people who projects their personal emotions on animals depressed me. Even more so when I reflected on the death sentence the wolf still faced if I didn’t succeed in finding an angel willing to care for him. It seemed like every possibility had already been exhausted.
I’d even paid Probert sixty dollars for the privilege of changing my mind. The old man would undoubtedly put the money to good use. Buy some more pig heads or renew his subscription to Sports Illustrated.
For the moment, I had more pressing concerns.
If Clegg had gotten no response when he phoned Foss’s office, it suggested multiple casualties might be waiting for the first responders. The cops arriving on the scene would have to assume the presence of an active shooter. It was every police officer’s worst nightmare.
Before the Columbine shootings in 1999, police had been taught to respond to active shooters by securing a perimeter around the scene and waiting for a tactical team to arrive. The folly of that approach only grew more and more apparent as massacres began to multiply at high schools, on college campuses, in churches, and outside women’s health clinics.
At the Academy, I had been taught the new standard: immediate action rapid deployment. The term was fancy jargon for swarming the shooter. Don’t sit around waiting for a negotiator. Mass murderers don’t negotiate. Sure, SWAT teams are highly skilled, but how many more innocents might die while the first officers on the scene sit on their hands? Pulsifer and the others would have no alternative but to rush into gun sights, while all I could do was say a silent prayer and do my best not to collide with a deer.
Light snow had begun to fall. It sparkled like broken windshield glass from the patches of bare pavement. I drove fast along Route 16, well over the posted speed, until a light came on my dashboard telling me I was close to running on fumes. I stopped for gas in Errol, New Hampshire, the last town of any size between Berlin and Rangeley.
I leaned over the side of the truck bed to have a look at Shadow. He was adapted to live in subzero temperatures, but I hated the thought of keeping him cooped up in that cramped box. Every time he opened his mouth, steam escaped from between his fangs.
“Are you going to run off if I let you out?” I asked him.
That old geezer in the Green Beret shirt had told me he’d seen Shadow riding in Carrie Michaud’s truck. I decided to risk it.
I found a bag of beef jerky in my rucksack and waved it outside the kennel gate so he could get a whiff of the dried meat. Shadow began to whine and saliva dripped from his ragged black lips. As I opened the gate, I wondered if he would snatch the bag from my hand—or my hand from my wrist—and sprint away into the nearby woods. But I managed to lure him out with scraps of jerky. I led him from the bed, around the side, and into the passenger seat.
“Good boy,” I said, as he hopped up into the Sierra.
He stared hard at me until I dumped the rest of the jerky at his feet.
A man I hadn’t noticed before came over from the next gas pump, holding a quart cup of fountain soda. “What kind of dog is that?”
“Have you ever read Jack London’s White Fang?” I asked.
“My wife reads. I don’t have time for it.” He sipped loudly through the straw from the ice at the bottom of his cup.
“It’s a good book.”
“Look, mister,” he said, “if you don’t want to tell me what your dog is, that’s your business. But you don’t have to be a dink about it.” Then he wandered off.
I got back behind the wheel and looked over at the hundred-pound wolf sitting beside me, steaming up the windshield.
31
Dusk was creeping up fast as I crossed the state line into Maine. I turned up the police radio. Multiple officers, identifiable by their call numbers, were arriving on the scene in Kennebago. An ambulance from the Northstar base in Rangeley was en route. Two other wardens I knew in Division B—Bill Gordon and Jeff White—radioed in. And I had miles yet to go.
My father’s dog tags swung back and forth before my eyes like a hypnotist’s watch. Shadow seemed mesmerized by them, as well.
“What do you think?” I asked the wolf.
He paid me no attention.
“Is Adam still alive? He can’t be, right? With all that blood in the truck?”
Shadow sighed through his nose and then began licking one of his sooty paws.
“You’re not going to help me, are you?”
The wolf raised its eyes back to the white road.
Even with lights and sirens clearing the way through downtown Rangeley, it took me another hour to arrive in Kennebago.
The side road up to Foss’s compound was blockaded by two police cruisers. Their drivers—sheriff’s deputies in brown parkas and reflective safety vests—stood on Moose Alley, directing traffic past the scene. Despite the best efforts of the dispatchers, the radio chatter had brought out the inevitable rubberneckers.
As I came up on the first shivering deputy, I rolled down my window. He had red cheeks from the cold, which made me think of a father who had let his little daughter put makeup on his face.
“What’s the situation?” I asked.
“They’re still counting bodies up there.”
I had feared as much. “Any of our guys?”
“No.”
That was a relief. “And the shooter?”
“Gone with the wind.”
“Any idea who we’re looking for?”
“Man, I’m just directing traffic. What kind of dog is that?”
“Belgian Malinois,” I said, not wanting to start a conversation.
“Big fellow! Hang on a second and I’ll let you through. A bunch of wardens are already up there.”
&
nbsp; I had beat the television news vans at least. But the media would soon be descending on this spot like ravens on a dead moose. The mass murder of sex offenders at a remote camp in the Maine woods was a national story—an international story, in fact. The information officer for the Department of Public Safety was soon going to be the most sought-after interview in the state.
The deputy backed his car up to let me through. Within a hundred yards, I began encountering emergency vehicles of all sorts parked along the road. I passed Logan Dyer’s house and noticed that the windows were dark and the garage door was closed. Dyer was the nearest thing Don Foss had to a neighbor, which made him both a potential witness and a suspect, since there had been no love lost between them.
Suddenly, Shadow let out a howl, and I nearly hit my head on the ceiling. This was the first time I’d heard the wolf in full throat, and I began to understand why medieval villagers had cowered inside their huts after dark.
In response, Dyer’s hounds began baying loudly from inside the house. Logan had mentioned using his Plott hounds to hunt coyotes. Shadow snarled—an even more ferocious sound. He had good reason to be on edge. Those big dogs were his natural enemies. Where was Dyer? He didn’t seem the sort to leave his prize hunting dogs home alone.
An ambulance approached slowly from the opposite direction. Its emergency lights were off, which could mean only one thing: There was no one left to be saved in Pariahville.
I pulled against the right snowbank to make room.
The emergency medical technician at the wheel rolled down his window so we could have a chat. He was a big woodsy guy with flushed cheeks and a white beard. His partner, beside him, looked ashen.
“Have you been up there yet?” the driver asked in a deep baritone.