by Paul Doiron
She exited the idling car as we slowed to a halt. Since we’d last seen her, she’d put on a long woolen pullover I associated with the Peruvian Andes. It was striped in multiple colors, from red to yellow to blue, with a hood she wore over her dreadlocks. Her face was shining with perspiration.
“Headed out?” I asked through the window.
“I was on my way to Farmington. I didn’t expect to see you again.”
To be sociable I stepped from the truck. “I realized I had a couple more questions for you.”
“For me?”
“I didn’t have a chance to tell you before, but I met Zane this morning.”
“What? Where?”
“Up on Alcohol Mary’s mountain. He’s not having the best day, but I’ll leave it to him to tell you about it.”
She tried not to react to this frustrating nondisclosure, but I saw a vein pulse in her temple. “That’s not a question.”
“The animal that killed Little Amos wasn’t a coyote and it wasn’t a dog. It was a wolf.”
She opened her mouth, revealing a stud in her tongue. “You’re shitting me.”
“Mary found it seeking refuge under the shelter where she stacks her firewood. It had an arrow in it.”
“That’s why you asked about crossbows. But I still haven’t heard a question.”
Ronette leaned against the warm hood of her truck, content to listen to the clashing of our lances.
“Zane tells us he saw that wolf on her property a few nights ago. I’d like to hear what he told you about it.”
“Why don’t you ask him?”
“I did.”
“What did he say?”
“That he’d glimpsed an animal in his headlights up on Number Six Mountain. How did you react when he told you about it?”
She danced easily out of my trap. “Who said he did?”
“It seems like the kind of thing he would mention.”
“You can keep trying to outfox me or you can come out with the real question you want to ask. To hell with it. I’ll do it for you. Why didn’t I mention any of this back in Anna’s kitchen?”
I couldn’t help but offer a congratulatory smile on her quickness. “You’ve asked the question. Now, how about answering it?”
“You mentioned a second wolf—which I thought were extinct, by the way. I could see Anna was getting worried because her girls were listening. I decided to leave before I blurted something out that got them even more agitated. What are you accusing me of, exactly? Being polite and discreet?”
“I’m not accusing you of anything.”
“I can tell you I’ve never killed an animal in my life.”
“What about Zane?”
She had a healthy, hearty laugh. “That man makes pacifists look like warmongers. He’s the one responsible for turning me—someone whose favorite food used to be steak tartare—into a vegan. You didn’t notice that I passed on Anna’s pie on account of the lard?”
I actually had noticed. So why was she bothering to learn to bake?
“If you think Zane is a killer, you’ve got him all wrong. The guy live traps mice in our yurt and releases them in the woods.”
“You’d prefer more extreme measures, I take it?”
“I believe every creature has a right to live, but that doesn’t mean I want to die from the hantavirus. He won’t even allow me to have a horse because he says we don’t have the right to imprison another creature.”
A gust of wind rattled the birch branches. I thought I tasted snow on the air.
The Subaru was blocking the patrol truck from driving up the hill. “How about we continue our talk back at your place?”
“I need to get to town before the bank closes. Can’t you just say what’s on your mind?”
“I believe Zane lied to me about when and where he saw the wolf.”
“He was probably blazed.”
“I didn’t have that sense.”
“I mean when he saw the wolf. Give him a fatty and he’ll tell you it’s Thursday when it’s Sunday.”
I glanced at the hillside behind her where the birches were swaying in the gusting wind. “This isn’t my home territory, but I think I have a decent sense of direction. That’s Number Six Mountain behind you.”
“So?”
“Mary’s house couldn’t be more than two miles straight up, as the raven flies.”
“A mile and a half. Zane cleared a trail last fall for his ‘commute’ when the weather improves. And don’t think I haven’t noticed you’re still playing games. What is the exact crime you are investigating and what role do you think Zane and I had in committing it?”
“Finding out who shot the black wolf isn’t my primary interest. I’m trying to find out what happened to the gray one.”
I had spoken with more passion than I’d intended, and Indigo had heard the change in my voice.
“Why?”
“I’d like to save her life if I can.”
It had taken saying those words aloud for me to understand my own motivations. Whatever I had once believed about wild wolves coexisting with humans in Maine, seeing Shadow shaved and anesthetized on that cold table had convinced me otherwise. Too many people with guns and bows would fear them, resent them, and want their pelts as trophies.
“You said ‘her.’ How do you know the second one’s a female?”
She was a sharp one, this Indigo Mazur. Baked or not.
“Zane has my card. Remind him to call if he remembers anything that might help me save the other wolf.”
22
We drove in silence for five solid minutes. Then Ronette said, “So what are you thinking? That if you find the other wolf alive, you’ll be able to trap her somehow?”
“I don’t know.”
“Mike, this is my district. I like to think I know these mountains better than anyone. The chances of locating a single canine on the move…”
I turned my face to the window. “The chances are slim. I get that.”
“Can I make an observation?”
“Why not?”
“It’s obvious how personal this is for you. Even Indigo saw it. But none of what is going to happen—either with Shadow or this other animal—is in your control.”
“You sound like Gary Pulsifer.”
Now it was her turn to bristle. “I’ve never been accused of that before!”
“His new mantra is ‘Let it go.’”
“That seems like good advice.”
I was tired and, despite knowing that Ronette had only the best of intentions, was in no mood to be psychoanalyzed. “I’m going to come back here in the morning with some supplies.”
We drove along in silence.
“It’s a hell of a way to spend your vacation. I can’t think of a worse month to tramp around in the woods here. What isn’t frozen solid is a quagmire.”
“Can you recommend a clean, cheap motel?”
Ronette was done asking me what I hoped to accomplish with this mad mission of mine. Now she looked at me in mock surprise. “You want clean and cheap?”
“Cheap then.”
“There’s nothing much open this time of year between Farmington and Rangeley. I can recommend a nice bed-and-breakfast over in Strong, though.”
“I’m not sure a B and B suits me. I expect to be keeping odd hours. And I might be returning to the room pretty dirty, as you noted.”
She eased up on the gas. “How do you feel about rustic accommodations?”
“Rustic I can deal with. I’ll take a drafty lean-to over a sleazy motel any day of the week.”
“Then have I got a place for you.”
She refused to tell me where we were going. Back in downtown Avon, she dropped me at my Jeep and told me to follow her. As soon as she took the second turn off an already-dodgy road, I began to worry. To call this overgrown trail of mud, potholes, and fist-size rocks “unimproved” would be to oversell its condition. With the trees pressing in so closely, I couldn’t im
agine how we could possibly turn around if we reached a deadfall or other unforeseen obstacle.
I had to laugh in amazement when Ronette’s brake lights came on and stayed on as she put the truck into park. An actual steel gate was up ahead, as if the dirt track itself weren’t enough of an impediment to entry. From the warmth of my Jeep, I watched her get out with a ring of keys that would have made a high school janitor feel inadequate. It took her a minute to find the one she wanted and another to heave the metal gate open on its rusted axis.
She idled her pickup through the entrance, and I followed, leaving the gate ajar behind me.
Deep in the woods, higher up, and in the near-constant shadows of the mountains, a hard pack of frozen, melted, and refrozen snow remained on the ground. It provided better purchase for my tires than the ice had. The road bore the tread marks of snowmobiles and ATVs, which entered where a designated sled trail crossed. The weight of those vehicles had further tamped down the snow.
After several minutes, I began to glimpse, through the evergreens to my right, a gray-and-white expanse that could only be a pond with an eggshell coating of ice. Then the shadow of a small wooden cabin, perched on the edge of the water, loomed in Ronette’s high beams. The surrounding trees had been cleared to create a dooryard wide enough for us to park side by side. We had arrived at our destination—wherever the hell we were.
When I stepped out, I could see my breath like my spirit leaving my body. The temperature was at least fifteen degrees colder than it had been in the bottomland.
I pulled on a pair of gloves. “If you brought me out here to kill me…”
“Don’t make jokes about things like that.”
“I wish I could say that I knew what body of water that is, but I don’t have a clue.”
“It’s Tantrattle Pond, and I’m not surprised you’ve never heard of it. It’s so shallow that it freezes down to the mud during hard winters, meaning it’s a bad place for fish. The state built this cabin back in the late 1980s to house a crew of trailblazers who were going to build a new hiking path up Mount Blue. But then the economy went to shit, and the old Bureau of Parks and Lands was strained maintaining the existing system.”
In the failing light, the cabin looked solidly built. The chimney, straight and square, bore the handprints of an experienced mason. The roof shingles, or what I could see of them peeking out from beneath the snowcap, didn’t appear to be warped.
“What’s the deal with all the snowmobile and ATV traffic on the way in?”
“Some riders have taken to detouring over from Route 89 of the Interconnected Trail System to have a look at Tantrattle. This cabin used to be quite the place for parties. It was getting vandalized every winter, until my husband, Peter, and his crew made the building harder to break into. Would you like to have a look inside, or have you already decided it doesn’t meet your delicate standards?”
“What are you talking about? This is my dream cabin!”
Ronette reached back into the door well of her Sierra for a Maglite. I removed my little SureFire from the pocket of my coat. We circled around the side of the building. Quite a few bootprints showed in the remaining snow, no doubt from intruders looking for a way in to steal whatever there was to steal.
Ronette straightened up. “Damn it!”
In the beam of her Maglite I saw the cabin door. More precisely, I saw the rectangular hole where the door had been battered, kicked in, and smashed to pieces. I followed a visibly irate Ronette into the dark void.
A sour odor overwhelmed me even before the flashlight revealed the source. Urine. The determined vandals, having rammed their way inside, had left yellow stains the way predators mark their territory.
“This was recent,” I said.
Ronette was an experienced warden. She’d noticed what I’d noticed. “If it had happened weeks ago, there would’ve been windblown snow heaped inside the threshold.”
“Exactly.”
I stepped carefully and began sweeping the light around the interior. The first thing I saw was a couch with a broken back and an overturned easy chair. The cabinets had been ransacked, but Ronette said the entomologists who came to the pond to study dragonflies never left anything of value inside the cabin.
Under the circumstances I supposed it was lucky the sons of bitches hadn’t burned the place to the ground.
I searched through the rooms and found damage to varying degrees in each of them. But one bedroom—containing nothing but a card table and a set of bunk beds—had been left entirely untouched. Ronette snapped some crime-scene photos, knowing nothing would come of them, that the vandals would never be identified unless one of them boasted to the wrong person, or the criminals turned on one another to avoid being prosecuted for a more serious offense.
My hot breath drifted from my nostrils. “I don’t suppose you installed game cameras outside.”
My question made Ronette smack her forehead. “How could I have forgotten?”
Almost every unattended outpost overseen by the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife has hidden surveillance. Because these cameras are camouflaged and hidden by veteran wardens, such as Ronette Landry, they are remarkably hard for anyone but a true woodsman to locate.
Not hard enough, it seemed.
Around a handful of the local trees Ronette found severed cables lying like dead black snakes. The Tantrattle vandals had suspected cameras would be recording their actions and were woods-wise enough to find and steal them.
“That’s a tough break, Ronnie.”
When she turned, I spotted a gleam in her coppery eye. “We’re not finished yet. Can you give me a lift up?”
She motioned to a birdhouse mounted under the eaves above the door. The weathered wooden box had white guano stains that suggested it had once hosted a nesting pair of chickadees or nuthatches. Only upon reconsideration did I understand why Ronette had reacted with such enthusiasm.
She stood on my shoulders while she pried the box loose from the logs. When she had it down on the frozen ground, she popped the back open with a hunting knife. Inside was an expertly hidden Bushnell game camera.
I fingered the white paint she had dabbed on the birdhouse. “The fake guano was a nice touch.”
“The real hard part was hiding the openings of the motion sensors. That took some trial and error.”
She unlatched the camera case until she could see the little screen inside where you could review the photos or videos you had taken. She clicked through a number of shots until she came upon the incriminating pictures.
“Got you, bastards!”
She angled the screen so I could have a look. I glimpsed the shadowy outlines of three men with what looked like impressive heads of hair.
“You recognize them?” I asked doubtfully.
“They’re the Beliveau brothers. They’re trappers, and they all wear beaver hats. It’s their signature headwear. It wouldn’t surprise me if they shot that wolf of yours.”
“I hope some of your pics are in better focus.”
“I’ll take this home with me to have a look on the computer. I’ve got an Ultra HD monitor that I use for my forensic work. But I already know what it’s going to show me. Those are the Beliveaus all right. Tomorrow I’m going to go bust their skinny little asses.”
During our day together, talking about faith and doubt, anger and forgiveness, I had forgotten what a tech whiz Ronette was. She was a woman of many talents and even more interests.
I zipped up my coat. “I’d better pack my toolbox when I get home. This cabin’s going to need a lot of work to make it halfway habitable.”
My comment seemed to float about us like a balloon on the air.
Then she turned to me with a secretive smile. “We’ll see about that.”
23
Ronette said she would have a set of keys made and showed me where she would hide them, under a pulpy log outside the gate. Then we said our goodbyes. After what had been a brutal day, I was eager to g
et on the road, and Ronette was pumped up to pay a visit to the Beliveau boys.
Out of curiosity I checked to see if I had a cell signal, but my phone might as well have been dead. I could play solitaire on it or use the flashlight to light my way to the outhouse, but I wouldn’t be engaging in pillow talk with Dani Tate from my cot.
The clouds were falling on the valley now like curtains after a play. I had spent enough time as a warden living outside in all weather to know that I was in for a wild ride back home.
The highway carried me downstream. I passed again the Bard of Avon coffeehouse, closed for the evening, and the airstrip named for Charles Lindbergh. Off to my left the Sandy River looked more like the muddy river, so brown was it with run-off from the farm fields and sheep pastures.
I finally got a four-bar signal when I crossed the border into the unusually named town of Strong. Maine was famous for its weirdo place names. The state probably had twenty municipalities that had been christened after foreign countries and capitals: Peru, China, Mexico, Norway, Paris, Poland. The list goes on. It was no wonder tourists described my rural state as “quaint.” They might have rethought their adjectives if I introduced them to men such as Trevor Dow, Gorman Peaslee, and the Beliveau boys.
Or Billy Cronk, for that matter.
Among the messages I had missed was a call from the man of the hour. Someone in the Department of Corrections must have decided that they couldn’t deny a soon-to-be-pardoned prisoner the use of a telephone. Billy’s call was time-stamped midafternoon.
“Hey, Mike. I wanted to thank you for paying for my family’s motel. You’ve always looked out for them while I was inside, and I won’t forget it. They’re transferring me to the Farm this afternoon. The docs think I won’t die if I take my antibiotics and hold off on doing crunches a few days.”
I couldn’t be sure if that was a joke or not.