by Paul Doiron
Aimee Cronk was the last person who would let me use a financial gift as a balm for my conscience, especially when she knew I’d done nothing to earn my newfound riches.
I became aware of a car creeping up behind me, heard the burp of a police siren, turned, and saw a powder-blue Ford Interceptor Utility with its light bar flashing. The brand-new vehicle had been built on the same platform as the civilian Explorer model with one major difference: under the hood of this unassuming SUV was a monster 3.0-liter, turbocharged V-6 engine capable of accelerating to one hundred miles per hour in less than fourteen seconds. Dani had given me all the specs when she’d been handed the keys two weeks earlier.
She leaned out the window. “Please clear the lane, sir!”
I circled around to her side of the idling vehicle. “I was wondering when you were going to get here.”
Smiling, she removed her shades, and the sun hit her unusual irises, which seemed to change from one shade of gray to another, depending upon the quality of the light. At the moment her eyes were the color of pebbles washed up in the surf.
“I had to wait for the governor’s motorcade. I expected to see you in line to shake his hand.”
“Very funny.”
“I’ve been getting updates on the drive over,” she said in a soft speaking voice that bore no resemblance to the gruff tone she employed as a trooper. “It sounds like a real mess for the prison. Hal Hildreth has already come out calling for hearings. I think the AG sees the incident as an opportunity to attack the governor’s oversight of the Department of Corrections.”
“Are politicians born without souls or do they lose them during puberty?” On cue, the wind blew the sulfur smell of the clam flat to my nose. “On the positive side, Billy’s surgery went well. He looks like he’s fit to cut a cord of wood.”
“Wait a second. They actually let you in to see him?”
“Not exactly.”
“You used subterfuge then?”
“I suppose you want to know all the gory details?”
“Actually”—she flashed her dimples—“I had something else in mind. You want to go somewhere and make out?”
10
Dani raced me back to my house and beat me by a mile.
I’d always been impressed by her reflexes behind the wheel. If she had chosen a different path, Danielle Tate could have been a champion NASCAR driver.
Or a mixed-martial-arts fighter.
Dani held a black belt in Brazilian jiujitsu that wasn’t some phony honor handed out by a storefront sensei. She had recently tossed me onto the bed using something she called an uchi mata throw: a judo technique for which I had zero defense. Nor had I wanted one.
She might also have considered a career as an Olympic marksman.
During her last qualification, she had scored highest in her troop using the standard semiauto, the shotgun, and the AR-15.
Because of these achievements—or to diminish them—she had acquired the nickname of Bulldog, which she wore with sullen acquiescence. The name was meant as a friendly tribute to her tenaciousness, her male sergeant had told her. But Danielle Tate was a woman, and she understood what was really going on.
When I pulled into the driveway behind her, she was already standing beside her cruiser with a triumphant grin. She was still properly dressed in her trooper’s blue uniform, but she had left her Dudley Do-Right hat on the passenger seat and pulled off the scrunchie she used to secure her hair. The sunlight brought out the honey-gold streaks amid the darker blond.
The men who thought this self-confident, vivacious woman was a dog were blind as well as chauvinists.
“Took you long enough.”
“Keep in mind that my Scout doesn’t have a rocket under the hood.”
“As long as there’s a rocket in your pants.”
The last time I had blushed in the company of an attractive female was at a junior high school dance, but Dani’s aggressive sense of humor turned me red as a beet.
We were all over each other before we’d made it inside the mudroom door. Laughing, we unlaced our boots and kicked them across the dirty floor. Then she was in my arms. At five-four, she was one of the shortest women I had been with. Standing embraces were difficult for us. After a few seconds of fumbling, she decided “To hell with it” and leaped up and wrapped her strong legs around my waist.
I laid her down on the kitchen table and unbuckled her leather gun belt and draped it creaking over the back of a chair. I had to remove my badge, cuffs, and holstered weapon before she could yank my pants down, lest the loaded gun drop to the floor.
Like all police these days, she wore a ballistic vest under her shirt, which had definitely not been designed for afternoon romps. I needed her help to get it off. The woven Kevlar had flattened her pear-shaped breasts. Because of her daily sessions at the punching bag and weight bench, she had acquired a muscular back and shoulders. She would have resembled a professional gymnast from behind if not for the broadness of her hips.
She sat up, pulled the fleece over my head, and laughed with delight at the sight of my bare chest and abdomen. Then her gaze fell lower and she laughed again.
“I shouldn’t have worried about that rocket.”
* * *
An hour later, we were lying in bed, naked, but with the bunched covers down over our bare feet. Dani rested her head against my chest and kept one hand flat on my stomach, which was still rising and falling from the exertion of our second bout. She wasn’t even out of breath.
“How were you able to do that on no sleep?” I said in genuine amazement at her stamina.
“I’m younger than you.”
“What? I’m only three years older than you are.”
“Yeah, but you’re thirty and that’s officially middle-aged.”
“I hope not.”
She tickled my chest hair. “I’m starving.”
“Do you want me to get up and make something?”
“Not yet.”
“This is the third time we’ve been together in my bed and the third time you’ve passed on my cooking. Kathy told you I was a bad chef, didn’t she?”
I was referring to our mutual friend Sergeant Kathy Frost. Dani had begun her career in law enforcement as a game warden. She had taken over my Midcoast district after I had been transferred to the windswept barrens of Down East Maine. Kathy had been the field-training officer to each of us in turn, and we remained close, even after she had been medically retired because of a gunshot wound.
Dani neither confirmed nor denied what she’d heard about my culinary capabilities. “That’s not the reason I want you to stay in bed.”
“I think I might need a break before I can go again.”
She lowered her hand to my groin. “I’m not so sure about that.”
The moment didn’t last. She rolled off me and sat up, using a pillow to prop her back against the headboard. The expression on her face told me an intimate disclosure might be forthcoming.
“We’re having fun together, aren’t we, Mike?”
“God, yes.”
“The thing is—I need to know—is that all this is?”
Her question tied a knot in my tongue. “You know I care for you, Dani.”
“No offense, but that’s a bullshit answer.”
“I’m enjoying myself. I hope you are, too. Beyond that, I’m not trying to get ahead of things. I think you know why.”
Her gray eyes became granite. “I remember Stacey. The problem is, I care for you, too.”
“Can’t this be enough for a while?”
“I thought so at first. But I want more.”
“Oh.”
She’d shaken her own self-confidence. “This is the time when you say maybe we should take a break.”
“I don’t want to hurt you, Dani.”
“It may be too late for that. One of the reasons I drove all the way over here was to have this conversation in person. That and the sex.” She smiled shyly as she lifted my ha
nd off her arm. “I’m not asking you to lie to make me feel better. I know you’re not an irresponsible man—at least when it comes to other people’s emotions—and I know that it’s natural for you to want to enjoy some freedom after being with Stacey. But I waited such a long time for this.”
“You waited longer than I would ever have expected.”
She seemed to perceive something in my remark that bothered her. “Just to be clear, I didn’t save myself for you or anything.”
“I get that.”
“But I can’t deny that I waited. Ask yourself why I did that.”
I knew why.
“You don’t need to say anything. But the way I see it, Mike, you’ve got all the information you need to make a decision. I should try to take a nap. I won’t be any good tonight if I go on patrol after no sleep.”
I tried to rise. “You should eat something. I’ll make sandwiches.”
She pushed me against the mattress. “Better let me.”
“You don’t even trust me to make a sandwich!”
Her response was to swing her legs off the bed and pad naked out to the kitchen. I lay there feeling my heart flop around my chest like a caught fish.
* * *
While Dani slept, I took a shower, put on some jeans, and closed the bedroom door.
She hadn’t exactly given me an ultimatum, but she’d made it clear that the status quo could not and would not continue.
When we’d first met, just after she’d graduated from the academy, I had dismissed her as a girl with a chip on her shoulder.
Then, over the years, I’d noticed Danielle Tate becoming more self-assured, less impulsive, harder to read. I’d watched her grow into herself as a person. She was a woman who knew what she wanted, and she had wasted no time making her move after my relationship with Stacey had ended.
I made a pot of coffee and sat at the table with a steaming cup. A feeling of serenity passed through me, as it always did, looking at the world outside my window.
I wondered if I would see those foxes again. I needed to install game cameras around the property to capture all the nocturnal goings-on. They might also provide some small security if a villain from my past came sneaking out of the woods.
That thought brought to mind Dawn Richie again and the enormous effort she must have taken not to leave traces of herself online. Which in turn made me curious about the circus that had accompanied the governor’s visit to Pen Bay Medical Center. I understood the Penguin well enough to know he would want pictures and video of himself congratulating the brave guard. Richie’s carefully kept anonymity was finished as of today.
I opened my laptop and brought up the site of a news station out of Portland. As I’d expected, the prison attack was the big story. The video began with the reporter, a recent college grad with bleached hair and that staccato pronunciation they teach in broadcasting schools, setting the scene inside the hospital.
Then the video cut to the governor standing over a bed, deep in conversation with an injured person. Except the patient he was addressing wasn’t Dawn Richie. It was Billy Cronk. Aimee and the Cronklets stood crowded together at the edge of the frame.
“Holy shit,” I said aloud.
Next came a close-up of the Penguin speaking into the camera, his gin blossoms all aflower. “The people of Maine know I call things like I see them. Sometimes it gets me into trouble, being too honest.”
The newbie reporter tried to ask a question and the Penguin snapped, “Don’t interrupt me, please! Now everyone has heard what happened at the prison this morning. The investigation has already begun, I can assure you. When I arrived at the hospital, I asked for an update, and the first thing I learned was that a convict was nearly killed because he stepped in to save a prison guard. And I thought, ‘How can that be? The man is a criminal!’ So I asked to see this inmate’s record. And here is what I discovered. Not only is the man a decorated combat veteran, but the reason he is in prison is because he used his constitutional rights to defend himself against two drug dealers.”
Pelkey and Beam were actually dealers in illegal guns, but the Penguin wasn’t far off.
“This cannot be happening,” I said to my computer.
“What can’t be happening?” Dani murmured from the doorway. She had pulled on one of my dress shirts. Her gymnast’s legs looked good under the hem.
“The Penguin is going to pardon Billy Cronk.”
“You’re kidding!”
“He hasn’t said the words yet, but just wait.”
She wrapped her arms around my neck and leaned over my shoulder to watch the screen while the governor continued.
“But if he’s in prison, people will say it’s because he deserves it. Except here is what I have discovered, the secret no one wanted you to know. William Cronk didn’t receive a fair trial. The prosecutor on his case didn’t play fair. That’s no surprise when you hear it was my opponent, Henry Hildreth the Third, who prosecuted the case.”
“I think you may be right,” Dani said, her breath humid on my ear.
“The attorney general is a well-known enemy of the Second Amendment. So of course he is going to seek the maximum punishment toward a man who defends himself with deadly force.”
I hit the fast-forward button.
“You don’t want to hear the rest?” Dani asked.
“Just the punch line.”
The governor raised a finger in conclusion. “I will be instructing my office to draw up a pardon for William Cronk.” He then placed a hand on Billy’s shoulder. “Mr. Cronk, the people of Maine thank you for your service and your heroism, and we hope you and your family will forgive the actions of this rogue prosecutor, which resulted in a miscarriage of justice.”
“You mean he’s going free?” said Dani.
“I guess so. I don’t know how pardons work.”
Dani released me from her forceful embrace. “What a day!”
I let out a groan. “Shit.”
“Why are you saying ‘shit’?”
“Because now I might have to vote for the Penguin.”
11
After Dani returned to sleep, I put on a sweatshirt and padded outside with my cell phone. I considered sending a congratulatory text to Aimee but understood the Cronks would need time to process the unexpected turn of events. As did I.
Nearby a robin laughed maniacally. I caught a flash of red as he flew off through the bare trees. The hints of color were subtle in the spring woods: green buds of birches, purplish catkins of alders, maroon spathes of skunk cabbage emerging from holes in the snow they had melted with their own thermogenesis.
Billy is going free!
Every so often I would let out a whoop, startling the chickadees that had begun swooping into the feeder. My mentor, Charley Stevens, had trained a flock of chickadees to eat out of his hand, but I lacked the patience for avian instruction.
Less than a minute passed from the time Charley’s name popped into my head until the phone buzzed. I had read how the brain fools us into interpreting such synchronicities as evidence of telepathy. What happens is we forget the countless occasions when we’re thinking about someone and the phone doesn’t ring. So what was it with coincidences that they always made me shiver?
“I take it you’ve seen the news,” said the retired warden pilot.
“Seen the news? I was part of it.”
“I figured as much. You have an uncanny aptitude at finding yourself at the center of every hullabaloo. Besides, I knew it was a call from Aimee Cronk that took you away from the river yesterday.”
“Did the fishing improve after I left Grand Lake Stream?”
“Doesn’t it always?”
I knew the old geezer was waiting for me to give my full account of the past thirty-six hours. When it came to curiosity, Charley Stevens had every tomcat beat. So I indulged him. Given Billy’s change of tune about Dawn Richie, I no longer felt oath-bound to omit any details.
“Did he explain what had got
ten his hair up about Sergeant Richie in the first place?”
“We were interrupted before he could.”
“I’d surely like to know. You said this woman was from Down East before she got the job in Warren. I thought I knew most of the turnkeys at the Machiasport pen.”
“You’re going to start snooping around, aren’t you?”
“I’m retired. What else do I have to do?”
“I found it odd that the governor didn’t even mention her name.”
“My guess is her boss wants to keep Sergeant Richie out of the limelight as a protective measure. And it wouldn’t do for them to pin a medal on her only to have her turn around and sue the state for gross negligence in failing to protect its COs.”
“The way I figure it, this pardon is the Penguin’s way of sticking it to Hildreth.”
“Now I’ve gotten you calling him the Penguin, too. What a bad influence I’ve been.”
“Stacey claimed we were bad influences on each other.”
My mention of his runaway daughter seemed to suck the good humor out of him.
“You’re right that Billy’s deliverance is pure political theater,” he said after an exhalation of breath. “I’m sure Hildreth is fuming.”
“Do you think the pardon will actually happen?”
“I expect so. Tell me again about this guard you mentioned, the one who shot the prisoner he’d let escape.”
“His name is Novak Rancic, and I heard he was an experienced corrections officer. I’ve seen the process guards use to transfer a prisoner from handcuffs to hospital-bed restraints. It’s almost like Rancic went out of his way to give Chapman the opportunity to get loose.”
“Be careful of coming to conclusions when you don’t have all the evidence.”
“You’ve told me that before, Charley.”
“Have I?”
I heard the porch door open above me and saw Dani emerge buttoning up her uniform. She must have been unable to fall back to sleep. I used the handrail to pull myself to my feet.
“Meanwhile, now that Billy’s safe, I can get back to enjoying my vacation.”