Almost Midnight

by Paul Doiron

  Ronette Landry rose from a dark-stained table to give me a hug. She wore her olive uniform under a black snowmobiling coat with a gold badge embroidered on the breast. Around her throat was a black balaclava she could pull up to cover the lower half of her face when the temperature dropped.

  “Hey, stranger!”

  “It’s great to see you, Ronette. Congratulations on winning Warden of the Year.”

  She gave a polite shrug of the shoulders in lieu of a response.

  “We missed you at the awards banquet,” I continued.

  “Thanks, but we both know they gave it to me because I’m a woman.” The light dimmed in her copper-colored eyes. “The political climate being what it is.”

  Ronette was a Franco who fit every physical stereotype. She had olive skin, brown-black hair, and a nose that couldn’t help but attract your attention. She was graying, but her complexion was flawless. Like many of the women in ma famille—my mom being the sad exception—she would probably live to be a hundred years old.

  I recalled that Ronette had given family illness as the reason for not attending the annual ceremony. “How’s your great-grandmother?”

  She sipped from a hand-turned clay mug. “I think it’s a matter of weeks now.”

  “Is she in hospice?”

  Ronette seemed taken aback by the question. “Oh, no. She’s at our home with my mom and mémère playing nursemaid. What could be worse than to die in a stranger’s bed, far from God?”

  My own late mother, born Marie Cormier, had raised me as a good Catholic boy. I often forgot what it had been like, as a young child, to be part of a culture that put family first, or second, after the Church.

  I remembered my grandparents, uncles, aunts, and numerous cousins with fondness, and it saddened me that my mom had estranged herself from them after she’d met my stepfather and married into money. She’d had no choice, she claimed. The same relatives who’d never wanted anything to do with her when she’d been hitched to my no-good father had suddenly reappeared in her life with begging bowls. They’d wanted her to invest in their self-storage businesses and their tanning salons, asked her to cosign on mortgages for houses they couldn’t afford, and pleaded for loans to buy speedboats and snowmobiles.

  As I began to sit down, Ronette said, as if in alarm, “You don’t even have coffee yet!”

  I looked around for a waitress.

  “You need to order up at the counter. The baked goods come from Dough Business in Farmington.”

  At the register, I noticed a printed announcement for an informational meeting of the Maine Prisoners’ Rights Association at the Bard the next week. I could only imagine the incendiary reaction of that group’s members to the prison attacks. No doubt they would be anticipating a cover-up. Their fears were well-founded.

  “What’ll it be?” said the man behind the counter.

  He had a full head of white hair and bushy eyebrows that would have required sheep shears to trim.

  “Just a large regular coffee.”

  “There’s no such thing as regular coffee. Do you mean dark roast? Medium roast? Light roast?”

  “Medium.” I inspected the glass case containing the baked goods. “Do you have any molasses doughnuts?”

  “Try the maple-sugar bun.” It was a command.

  “What kind did you get?” Ronette asked as I returned with my plate and mug to the table. “Is it the Kenyan? Or the Ethiopian?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  She reached out to tear a piece from my sugared pastry. “You know I’m dying to ask about what happened at the prison and the hospital. Everyone’s talking about it. But I have a sneaking suspicion it has nothing to do with why you called me. So what brings you to my neck of the woods on this shitty April morning?”

  What did I say about Ronette being a smart cookie? I appreciated not having to rehash the drama with Billy. Instead I started the story with the call I’d received from Gary Pulsifer, summoning me to Pennacook.

  When I had finished, her eyes had grown wide. “I thought those wolf sightings were all bogus. I came to the conclusion that people were seeing big coyotes and assuming they were wolves. It’s bizarre that an injured animal sought out Mary Gowdie of all people.”

  “I take it you and she are not the best of friends.”

  “Mary’s the only person I know who hunts deer with an AK. The last time I pinched her for hunting without a license I thought she was going to use me for target practice. It’s no wonder she called Gary instead.”

  “Having met her, I’m surprised she called anyone at all.”

  Ronette arched a black eyebrow. “I’ve always figured Mary has a soft side, especially when it comes to dogs. I’ve heard a rumor that she brought her last dog, a Scottie, to a taxidermist to have him stuffed, she was so unwilling to part with the little ankle-biter. She supposedly keeps him at the foot of her bed.”

  The ease with which the image materialized in my mind told me it had to be true.

  “How about this Zane Wilson?” I asked.

  “I know he and his girlfriend live in a yurt.”

  “A yurt?”

  “They’re millennial hippies. I’ve seen them around, at the farmers’ market, other places, but haven’t had a real conversation with them. Zane is quite the hottie, as my daughter would say. His girlfriend, Indigo, seems like a firecracker. My guess is it’s her family’s money they used to buy their little patch of Dogpatch. I’ve never heard a bad word about either of them, other than people scratching their heads why young people would want to move here of all places to start a farm.”

  Her description bolstered my generally positive impression of Zane Wilson. “I’d feel better about the guy if he hadn’t lied to me. He first claimed to have seen Shadow two or three nights ago on the road in his high beams. Later, he said he saw him on the back side of the property, which is nowhere near the road. Hence Zane couldn’t have seen him in his headlights.”

  “Maybe he was confused. You did say he hit his head.”

  “No, he was definitely lying.”

  “I doubt it was Zane who shot your wolf,” said Ronette. “More likely it was a coyote hunter over a bait pile.”

  It was the logical inference. “Can you give me the names of anyone in the area who hunts for predators with a bow or crossbow?”

  She shifted her hips on the wood bench. She studied the bottom of the mug in her hands. “I can think of a few possibilities. Gorman Peaslee’s right at the top of the list. Maybe the Beliveau boys. Where do you think the shooting might have happened?”

  “I saw some fields and pastures below Mary’s property that intrigued me. They looked ideal for someone who might want to hunt predators from a blind. There were several farming homesteads with newly built houses all grouped together. Do you know who owns that land?”

  Ronette made a wincing expression.

  “Is that a yes?”

  “Those farms are owned by our new Amish neighbors.”

  I paused in licking maple sugar from my fingertips. “There are Amish people in the Sandy River Valley?”

  “Here’s a piece of trivia for you. The Amish are the fastest-growing faith group in the country. And Maine’s got the fastest-growing Amish population in the Northeast. Third fastest in the nation.”

  “I knew there were settlements up in Aroostook County—”

  “And in Whitefield and Unity. Now we’ve got three families living in Intervale. Of all the places for them to settle, but I guess it makes sense. No one else wants to buy land there.”

  “What’s so bad about Intervale?”

  “It’s where that asshole Gorman Peaslee lives, for one thing. It’s never been a place I’m wild about visiting alone. Peter, my husband, hates it and always wants to ride shotgun. And I mean that literally. Do you know who else lives there? Zane Wilson and his girlfriend. Their yurt is over near Tantrattle Stream, not far from the Stolls. They’re one of the Amish families I mentioned.”

  “What
are they like, the Amish?”

  “I haven’t had many dealings with them, but they seem like good people. Some of the locals have complained about their horses and buggies in the road: the usual small-minded crap. I am not wild about driving onto their farms to interrogate them about shooting a wolf.”

  “Do you know if they even hunt?”

  She chuckled. “The Amish might not be big on televisions and computers, but they do love their .22 rifles.”

  “How about crossbows?”

  “If their faith permits them to use firearms, I doubt they’re forbidden from using bows of any kind.”

  Finally, I had a lead.

  19

  When I opened the door of my Jeep, Ronette asked to see the crossbow bolt. She peered at the carbon-fiber shaft with a scientist’s concentration.

  “If this thing was inside a wolf for days, you’re not going to get any prints off it. You understand that, right?”

  “You never know.”

  “In this case I do know.” She handed me back the plastic bag. “It would probably be better for the two of us to ride together into Intervale in my patrol truck. It’s clearly a police vehicle. And when they see there are two of us inside, it’ll get the message across not to fuck with us.”

  “Are you talking about the Amish?”

  She had a big smile that seemed to engage every muscle in her face. “I’m thinking about several individuals, but notably Gorman Peaslee. I’m not looking forward to knocking on his door. We won’t have any trouble with the Amish. Have you ever had any interactions with them before?”

  “Not unless you count a five-minute conversation I had with a chair maker at the Common Ground Fair.”

  “And?”

  “I was surprised by how normal he seemed. I wondered if he might be an impostor wearing a fake beard so he could charge a markup on his furniture.”

  “You’re so suspicious of everyone.”

  We left my Jeep outside the Intervale Town Hall, where it was less likely to be broken into than if I’d parked it along the Rangeley Road.

  “Someone would break into it in the middle of the day?”

  “It doesn’t take more than a second to shatter a window.”

  I climbed into her truck, which, predictably, was immaculate and somehow had a new-car smell.

  I was traveling light: just a gun, a badge, my cuffs, and a knife. It occurred to me that if I couldn’t crack this mystery by day’s end, I would have to go home for supplies and several changes of clothing. I hadn’t seen any motels, which raised the question of where I would stay upon my return.

  From the flyspeck municipal center we traveled north. Ronette drove with a practiced casualness. She braked hard and accelerated fast. She paid less attention to the road than to identifying the drivers of passing vehicles and checking posted land for signs of trespassing. I’d begun to wish we’d taken my Jeep instead.

  “So what’s going on with you and Dani Tate?” she asked as if the question had recently occurred to her and she hadn’t been waiting until the exact moment when I would be unable to escape.

  “It’s complicated.”

  “That’s a term my daughter uses about boys on Facebook.”

  “You’re better off asking Dani rather than me.”

  “If you haven’t forgotten, I was the one who played matchmaker.”

  “I haven’t forgotten.”

  “So should I be having second thoughts about you two? Relationships between LEOs can work—because you understand the stresses of each other’s job—or they can be total nightmares.” The acronym LEO stood for “law-enforcement officer.” “On the other hand, there’s a lot to be said for being married to a civilian. There are so many days I thank God I married a builder who doesn’t have a clue about the scary shit I see and do every time I go on patrol. Peter’s been so patient with me and such a good dad. He’s even a great cook!”

  “You’re lucky.”

  “I prefer the term blessed.”

  Then, without any warning, Ronette swung a right onto a gravel road that lacked a street sign. As we careened around the corner, I glimpsed several cardboard squares floating in a black ditch between the trees and the graded surface. It took me a moment to recognize the sodden objects as real estate signs that had been uprooted, knocked over, and tossed into the half-frozen water.

  I craned my neck, looking back. “Someone who lives here doesn’t want anyone buying land, I take it.”

  “Peaslee.”

  The first mile or so of the road was the usual second-growth forest, which had sprung up after the woods had been logged to the ground. Most of it was soft wetlands, not fit for anything but alders and willows, but I suspected some good cedars had once flourished in this marsh.

  Then the forest parted, and we were looking across a vast field of snow-broken cornstalks. Something like a hundred crows hopped about between the rows, oblivious to a scarecrow, whose shredded shirt flapped in the breeze, and whose sack head had mostly been decapitated by a shotgun blast.

  “Peaslee,” Ronette said.

  Up ahead we saw the first road sign since we’d left the main thoroughfare. Fluorescent yellow, shaped like a diamond, it depicted the silhouette of a horse pulling a four-wheeled buggy. Someone had blasted holes through the sheet aluminum with double-aught buckshot.

  “Peaslee?” I asked.

  “Whatever in the world makes you say that?”

  Ronette slowed as we entered a birch thicket. The land rose sharply to our left. A narrow drive led up the wooded hill. My inner compass told me this was the base of Number Six Mountain.

  “Zane Wilson and his girlfriend, Indigo, live up there in their yurt,” she said.

  We continued on until the road was again passing through open cropland. I recognized these as the plowed fields and fenced pastures I had seen from above. In the first plot, three killdeers, having returned from their winter migration, ran hither and yon, unable to locate insects in the clumped soil. In the next, a small herd of mixed sheep nibbled whatever plant matter they had missed on their prior forages. As we passed the fence, a donkey approached to bray at us.

  “Better than sheepdogs, my farmer friends tell me,” Ronette said. “Donkeys are naturally aggressive toward canines. They bite, stomp, and kick. If I were a coyote, I’d give these lambkins a wide berth.”

  Now the first farmhouse came into view. Immediately apparent, even from a distance, was its newness. The white clapboards reflected the sun like snow atop Sugarloaf. An enormous barn, carpentered from unpainted wood, rose behind it.

  “This is the Stoll place,” Ronette said. “Instead of driving onto the property, I think it would be more polite to walk.”

  The house had been built in the shade of a cluster of ancient red maples, all of which had been tapped for sugaring. Someone must not have informed the Amish that red maples don’t yield the best sap even under ideal weather.

  We had gotten out and were standing beside the vehicle when we heard the roar of a truck engine coming from the direction of the main road, behind us.

  “Shit.”

  I didn’t have to ask Ronette to elaborate on that remark. The Dodge Ram 3500 Laramie model was already among the largest pickups on the road, but this one had been modified with monster tires and a lift kit that raised the chassis another half foot off the ground. The driver must have returned from a mud run because the entire exterior looked to have been finger painted in dog shit.

  The Ram stopped on a dime and the window slid down. The big man behind the wheel was not at all what I had expected. He had a face like a baked ham—his head was shaved—and he was wearing a blue blazer and a white button-down shirt opened at the collar to let loose an effusion of gray chest hair.

  “What are you doing here?” he said in the voice of a man who enjoyed his whiskeys.

  “And a good day to you, Gorman,” said Ronette.

  “It’s my land and I’ve got a right to know.”

  “In fact, this
is a public way, and our business is none of your concern.”

  “Did one of the neckbeards poach a deer?” The thought made smile lines radiate from the corners of his piggish eyes.

  “I hope you’re not referring to one of your Amish neighbors,” I said.

  “Excuse me, pretty boy, I ain’t talking to you.”

  I had heard a lot of insults, but that was a new one.

  “Game warden investigator.” I raised my badge. “You call me that again and I’m going to pull you down out of that truck.”

  “Ooh, scary.”

  Ronette waded into the fray. “Why don’t you move along, Gorman.”

  “Because I have a right to be here. You said it’s a public road.”

  “A public road you happen to be blocking,” I said.

  “But it’s OK when the neckbeards drive their little carts down the middle of it?”

  “I warned you about using that term,” I said.

  “This town is being overrun by religious fanatics, and I’m the bad guy.” He pitched his voice high in mockery of someone, perhaps me. “‘Oh, but the Amish are peaceful people who want to be left alone.’ What happened to my rights? How come my personal liberty matters less than the Children of the Corn? My family founded this damn town.”

  “When we’re done here,” I said, “we’ll be visiting your house, so don’t go anywhere.”

  “Not without a warrant you won’t be.”

  He scanned the inside of the truck, rummaged around (for a moment I feared he was reaching for a gun), and held up a thin white booklet. He waved it in the air.

  “You might want to read this sometime. Schools used to teach it. But now it’s considered politically incorrect.”

  He tossed the slim pamphlet at my feet. “Don’t come onto my land. I’m not even joking.”

  Then he lifted his foot from the brake and slammed it on the gas pedal. The Ram shot forward, leaving us choking in a cloud of exhaust.

  I squatted down on my heels to retrieve the booklet from the mud. It was a pocket edition of the U.S. Constitution.