Almost Midnight

by Paul Doiron

  “Well, are you going to come in or not?” she asked as if we had already resisted several invitations.

  I glanced at Pulsifer, and he gave me a wink. We entered the house.

  With so little light filtering in through the unbroken windows, the space was as murky as a cow barn and had something of the same smell. The curtains were of red or purple velvet, gone gray with dust. The wall-to-wall carpets were scarred with burns from dropped cigarettes.

  Alcohol Mary seemed to be a collector—hoarder might be the more accurate term—of antique bottles. Every flat surface was packed with glass containers of all colors and shapes that had once held patent medicines and other elixirs.

  “Would either of you wardens care for a pick-me-up?”

  “I don’t drink on duty,” I said.

  “Come on, Gary. I know you’d like a tipple.”

  He squared his shoulders, drew a breath. “I’ve given it up.”

  “Once a drunk always a drunk.”

  He took a moment to collect himself but responded with a smile that seemed genuine. “People can change, Mary.”

  “Like hell they can.” She turned her squinty gaze on me. “How about you, Warden Bowditch? Did you inherit your old man’s thirst along with his baby-blue eyes? I can give you the ten-cent tour if you’d like. Samples are free. There ain’t no one who comes up here who doesn’t want a look at my potent potables.”

  This was some sort of personal test, I realized. She was trying to determine whether I was some kind of hard-ass who might cause her problems with the state.

  “I’m sure if I worked for the Bureau of Alcoholic Beverages, I’d find it fascinating. But being a warden, I’m only interested in seeing where you found the wolf.”

  “That’s a pretty answer.” She pushed up the brim of her fedora and examined me, with one eye open and the other half-shut. “How old would you say I am?”

  Another test.

  This time I tried a smile. “My mother taught me never to guess a lady’s age or weight, Mrs. Gowdie.”

  Her expression became one of elaborate disgust. “Your ass must be pretty jealous of all the shit that comes out of your mouth.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “If you’re scared of an old bat like me, you can’t be much of a warden.”

  She might as well have been prodding me with a spear.

  “You’re sixty-one years old, Mrs. Gowdie.”

  Her chapped lips parted. “How the fuck did you know that?”

  “Lucky guess.”

  In my peripheral vision I saw Pulsifer staring at me, slack-jawed.

  After a tense moment, Mary let out another of her guttural coughs. “Are you sure you’re Jack Bowditch’s boy? How come you don’t talk like him? You got his face and muscles, but there’s something off about your comportment.”

  “I mostly grew up with my mother.”

  “Down in Portland, I bet.”

  “Scarborough actually.”

  “I knew you was a flatlander,” she said as if she’d bested me in a parliamentary debate.

  Having put me in my place, the big woman led us down a darkened hallway lined with photos of a Scottish terrier, through an ill-smelling kitchen where a Walmart boom box was playing a song by Elvis Presley, to a mudroom that hadn’t been mopped since the previous fall. The ancient door at the end stuck when Mary Gowdie tried to open it. She threw her brawny shoulder against the frame and nearly shattered the glass panes forcing it ajar.

  Behind the house, the ground was dappled with snow and mud. The white-and-brown pattern brought to mind the coat of an Appaloosa. Mary had arranged a series of planks so she could hopscotch from the house to the woodshed without wading through the mire. The boards sank under my weight as I made my way to the roofed, unwalled structure.

  The firewood was neatly stacked, and there must have been five or six cords of it. I removed my SureFire from my pocket, and I shone the flashlight at the wet wood chips covering the ground. Shadow’s blood was visible as tacky brown spots on the clumped sawdust. I crouched down on my heels like a baseball catcher and moved the beam around.

  “When did you find him?”

  “Last night, about ten, when I came out to get a load of wood for the stove. Thought he was a bear at first, he was so big and black. Scared the everlasting shit out of me, let me tell you.”

  “Do you have livestock here?”

  “Chickens.”

  “How about pets?”

  “Chickens.”

  “What happened to that little dog of yours?” Pulsifer asked.

  “None of your beeswax!”

  She then explained that the henhouse and fenced yard were on the far side of the building. The chickens might have drawn Shadow to the property initially, since they would have made for easy meals, but it didn’t explain why the injured wolf had sought out this woodshed to die.

  “So you hadn’t seen him around before?”

  “I didn’t, but Zane did.”

  “Who’s Zane?”

  She had a craggy laugh. “Zane Wilson. Calls himself my apprentice. Came up here one day asking if I could teach him how to boil sap and make ’shine. He moved up to the valley with his girlfriend, both from Brooklyn. I thought we were done with those foolish people back in the seventies, but now there’s a new crop of wannabe hippies.”

  “Did he happen to mention if the animal appeared to be injured?”

  “Not to me, he didn’t.”

  “Did he happen to say anything about seeing a second canine nearby? This one would have been gray.”

  “He didn’t.”

  “I’ll need his number.”

  “No, you won’t.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You won’t need it because Zane and Indigo don’t own a phone. Not to mention the kid should be here any second. Today I’m going to have him char the insides of my oak barrels. Heh, heh.”

  I straightened up, careful not to knock my head against the ceiling timbers. “There’s been one particular question on my mind. Why did you call Warden Pulsifer and not your district warden, Ronette Landry?”

  “Fuck her and her French family.”

  “I’m half-French.” By which I meant Franco-American. My mother’s family had hailed from Canada.

  “Good for you.”

  “I am required to ask this, Mrs. Gowdie. I hope you won’t take offense, but it’s a routine question and not meant as an accusation. I need to know if you own a crossbow.”

  “Who do you think I am, Maid Fucking Marian?”

  “I had to ask.”

  “If I’d shot that animal, why would I phone the fucking game warden to bring it to the animal hospital?”

  Her argument was watertight. But I’d had no choice except to ask the obvious question. In criminal cases, unvoiced assumptions are what always sink you at trial.

  When I failed to respond, she threw up her gnarled hands. “No, I don’t own a crossbow! I own a fucking AK-47, plus this little number.” From her coat she produced a blued Smith & Wesson Model 10 revolver. “And I’m a keen shot, I’ll have you know.”

  “Probably best to put the gun away,” said Pulsifer.

  “I’m just making a point to you numbskulls.” She shoved the heavy handgun back into her coat. “Now are we done? I’ve got real work to do—unlike certain state employees I could name.”

  I always got a kick out of criminals who prided themselves on their work ethic. We watched her plod off to an outbuilding across the yard. It had a steel pipe for a chimney. I assumed the wood structure contained her still.

  The wind had begun to blow from the northwest. Pulsifer tucked his hands under his ballistic vest for warmth.

  “I’m surprised she didn’t kick us off her land,” I said.

  “Give her a minute.”

  “I’m going to follow these tracks.”

  The snow had repeatedly melted to mud, then repeatedly refrozen every night. But the canine trail wasn’t hard to follow. It led
across the mottled yard in the telltale pattern of a wolf—in a direct line or what trackers called registers—until it disappeared into the budding saplings and thornbushes at the edge of the clearing. I wasn’t dressed to go bushwhacking down the mountainside.

  My supervisors would never allow me to pursue an official investigation into the shooting, however heinous. Under Maine law, the killing of a coyote was encouraged and the reckless shooting of a stray dog was a minor offense. With only four investigators in the Warden Service, I already had a full workload. But my hope was that my boss wouldn’t object to my conducting an off-the-books inquiry in my free hours. Most wardens had pet projects they pursued in their spare time.

  Pulsifer came across the yard, heedless of the muck in his rubber-soled boots. “Quite a view, isn’t it?”

  I’d been so focused on my forensic work I hadn’t appreciated the vista. There, below us, was the Sandy River Valley. I saw a patchwork of brown fields and pastures that were empty of animals but looked the right size for sheep or goats. Beyond the valley loomed a range of snowcapped mountains, above which dark clouds were building. The largest of the peaks I recognized as Sugarloaf, the second-highest mountain in Maine and home to the state’s largest ski resort. With the intermittent warm spells we’d been experiencing, their season would be ending soon.

  “Do you know who owns those pastures there?”

  He spat on the ground. “I already told you this isn’t my district.”

  “Did Mary get under your skin?”

  “If I’m being honest, yes,” he said. “But I’m learning to let things go.”

  “You seem like you’re in a good place, Gary.”

  “I am today, which is all I can ask for. On another topic, I never knew you were psychic. How did you guess Mary’s age?”

  “I didn’t guess. Back at the Boom Chain, while you were in the bathroom, I ran her name through the system. She’s got quite a record of fish and wildlife violations. It explains her hatred for Landry. It seems Mary Gowdie enjoys poaching almost as much as she does making maple syrup and moonshine.”

  15

  A pair of ravens swept into view above the valley. The black birds were silent, but I identified them by their wedge-shaped tails, shaggy throats, and rowing wingbeats. Also they were soaring. Crows don’t soar. Finally one of the two let out a scolding quork—directed at me it seemed—and they continued on toward the next town over, where ravens were said to have a special attachment to a professor who had spent his life studying them at his cabin in the woods.

  I roamed the edge of the field pondering a mystery. Why had Shadow taken refuge in Alcohol Mary’s woodshed of all places? He had been hemorrhaging blood, barely able to breathe, with an arrow through his lung.

  He’d been raised by people, and maybe he still associated them with care and comfort, but he’d lived in the wild the past several years, avoiding hunters, bait piles, and snares. If he had been wounded by a human, it would have made sense for him to avoid all contact. How come he hadn’t found a den as far as possible from his enemies to await the coming of death?

  I would likely never know the answer. But surveying Mary’s land, so near Tumbledown Mountain—a place frequented by snowshoers and cross-country skiers—made me increasingly certain that Shadow had been attacked at a lower elevation, somewhere in the valley below. Those visible pastures especially intrigued me. For reasons of his own, he had made the difficult climb up Number Six Mountain. Let no one tell you that nothing wounded goes uphill.

  When I checked my phone, I found that I had a stronger-than-expected cell signal. There was a new message from Aimee Cronk:

  Our lawyer says this pardon thing is for real. It might take a few days though. When the docs think Billy’s strong enough they’re sending him to the Farm. They figure he’ll be safer there from any buddies of Chapman or Dow looking for payback.

  The Farm was the nickname for the minimal-security Bolduc Correctional Facility on the floodplain of the St. George River, a mile or so below the prison hilltop. The Farm had no fences. An inmate could walk away from the jail, but since most of the prisoners there were nonviolent offenders facing imminent release, few ever did. I doubted that the legendary Killer Cronk would have anything to fear from the check kiters and car thieves at Bolduc.

  I replied:

  That’s great news! Work’s taken me to the Sandy River Valley but I’ll swing by the hospital when I’m back there.

  Aimee was online and her reply came fast:

  If you feel the need.

  This much was clear: it was going to be a while before Aimee Cronk let me off her shit list.

  With a heavy heart, I tried the number of someone I hoped would be happier to hear from me.

  Kathy Frost answered with her usual salutation: “Grasshopper!”

  “Are you ever going to stop calling me that?”

  “Do you want me to?”

  “No.”

  Kathy had been the first woman in the history of the Maine Warden Service. Then its first female sergeant. Less noteworthy from a historic standpoint, she had been my mentor before a horrific gunshot injury had forced her into early retirement.

  These days, she worked as a consultant to law-enforcement agencies across the country, teaching first responders how to train K9s to become better rescue and recovery dogs. In her spare time she traveled, as a volunteer, to disaster zones with her Belgian Malinois to search for missing persons.

  “I heard about Billy Cronk. I was going to call you, but I’ve been … occupied.”

  She placed an odd stress on that last word, but this wasn’t the best time or place for small talk. Given the unpredictability of cell phones, I cut to the matter at hand. “I’ll catch you up about Billy later, but I need your help first. Do you remember that wolf dog I rescued a couple of years ago?”

  “Shadow? Of course! Did something happen to him?”

  “Someone shot him with a crossbow, Kath.”

  The pain in her voice couldn’t have been any more intense. “Please don’t tell me he’s dead.”

  “The veterinarian says he will be soon.”

  “Mike, I am so, so sorry. Who’s the vet taking care of him?”

  “Lizzie Holman at the Pennacook Hospital for Animals.”

  “I’ve heard of her. She’s got a good reputation. Have you identified the son of a bitch who shot him?”

  “That’s why I’m calling you. Shadow carried the shaft of the arrow inside him for days, until Holman removed it. I’m hoping there are fingerprints. Other than that, I don’t have much more to go on.”

  “Was he found near Pennacook?”

  “Further north. He showed up at a homestead on Number Six Mountain, next to Tumbledown. But my gut tells me he climbed here from below, from the Sandy River Valley. Intervale probably, but maybe he came from as far away as Phillips or Avon. I’m hoping you and Maple can backtrack his blood spoor for me.”

  The line gathered static.

  “Mike, you know I would if I could. But I’m not even in Maine. I’m down in Rhode Island.”

  She had no relatives there, as best I knew. “On business?”

  “Visiting a friend. You don’t know him.”

  Kathy had been widowed before we’d met and unattached for years. She hadn’t mentioned having met a man, let alone having begun a romantic relationship. I had gotten used to thinking of my friend as asexual.

  “Can you recommend a local tracker?”

  She paused again. “I could, but he’ll just tell you the same thing.”

  “Which is what?”

  “You’re not going to be able to track Shadow to the place where he was shot. K9 handlers like to play up how amazing our dogs are. But most of the time, when we find a missing person or whatever, there’s a lot of luck involved. Even my dear, departed Pluto, if I’d brought him up there, would have veered off course the second he crossed the scent path of a coyote. It might be different if you were running a track on a bear or a bobcat. I
know it’s hard to hear, Mike, but what you want is beyond the capabilities of any K9 I’ve ever encountered.”

  Frustration burned the back of my throat. “I guess it’s Plan B then. I’ll talk to Ronette Landry. See if I can get the names of the local crossbowmen. Find out which ones use Spider-Bite X2s.”

  “Whoever shot Shadow will only claim he mistook your wolf for a coyote.”

  “I’ve got to try, Kathy.”

  “I know you do, Mike. But for whose sake? Shadow’s or yours?”

  “Why does it matter?”

  “It’s something to ask yourself, is all I’m saying.”

  “I need to know what happened to the she-wolf, whether she was shot as well. If she’s still alive…”

  “What are you going to do?”

  I understood what she was getting at: Was I honestly going to search the entire mountain chain for a single wild wolf? It hadn’t been that long ago that a thru-hiker wandered off the Appalachian Trail near here, got lost, and died of exposure, thirst, and starvation. It had taken searchers two full years to find her corpse less than a third of a mile from the trail.

  “If I locate the person who shot Shadow, I’ll at least know if she’s dead, too.”

  “I understand. Be well, Grasshopper. I’ll be praying for the big guy.”

  More ravens appeared, flying in from the northwest, headed toward Weld. I wanted to believe the sight of these intelligent birds was an omen. Everywhere the two species coexisted, ravens and wolves had a symbiotic relationship. Ravens on the wing scout for carrion the canines can scavenge. In return the birds rely on the fangs of the wolves to tear open carcasses their own bills cannot penetrate.

  Stacey and I had once attended a powwow on Indian Island in the Penobscot River. The gathering was meant to be a celebration of Wabanaki culture, but like most such events, the mood was one of cultural confusion. Food trucks served up Navajo fry bread and vendors sold Ojibwa dream catchers to a crowd that consisted mostly of white men and women who toured the grounds as if it were just another carnival.