by Paul Doiron
How had these rednecks managed to buy snazzy new pickups when half the men they worked with were losing their jobs? What kind of spendthrifts were these guys? And where did they get their money?
Even before I could get out of my truck, I saw one of the blankets hanging over the windows being peeled back, and I got a quick glimpse of a human face before the improvised curtain dropped down again. A moment later, the door swung open and a man stepped onto the porch. He had loose brown hair that feathered down the back of his neck and one of those stubble beards guys in their twenties sometimes sport. He looked fit and flat-stomached and was wearing a canvas shirt, blue jeans cinched tightly around his waist with a big-buckled belt, and camel-colored work boots. In his hand was an aluminum coffee mug with a Big Bucks of Maine emblem.
“Good morning,” he said.
I put on my friendliest face. “Good morning.”
“What’s going on?” He had a thick Maine accent.
“Are you Todd Pelkey?” I knew he had to be one or the other, and he looked like a Pelkey.
“Yessuh.”
“I’m Mike Bowditch, the warden down in District Fifty-eight. I sometimes patrol this area, and I wanted to introduce myself.”
He eyed me as he took a sip of coffee. “I thought Jeremy Bard was covering this territory. Did something happen to him?” He pronounced Jeremy as germy.
“Sometimes we cover each other’s districts, and I figured I should get the lay of the land up here.”
Another man stepped onto the porch. He was even taller than his friend and had close-cropped platinum hair that looked white in the weak sunlight. From the back, you might have mistaken him for a much older man. There was a pink scar across his chin that looked painful. He was dressed in the very same outfit as his buddy. “Ain’t we the popular ones suddenly?” he said.
“You must be Beam.”
“That’s right,” he said. “So you’re not here about them moose? We already spoke to that investigator about them.”
“This is just a social call. I’m making the rounds before the deer season gets under way.”
“What did you say your name was again?” Beam asked.
“Bowditch.”
“Oh, yeah,” said Pelkey. “We heard about you.”
That was no surprise. My name had been in the newspapers enough over the past few years, although Pelkey and Beam didn’t strike me as the sort of guys who spent their Sunday mornings doing the New York Times crossword puzzle. More likely, they’d heard about me through the back channel of information that flows from one hunter to another when a new warden is transferred to the area.
A tiny young woman appeared in the doorway behind the two men, clutching a flannel robe tightly around her throat. She had mousy brown hair and wore oversize glasses, but with enough makeup that she could pass for pretty in this neck of the woods. “They already talked to a warden about them moose!”
“Go inside, Tiffany,” said Beam with a growl.
“Why are they coming around here all of a sudden?” she asked. I had a feeling that the nervous girl might be my best source of information if I could get her alone. It might just be a matter of circling back to the trailer after her two boyfriends left for work.
“They’re just talking to everyone with a hunting license,” said Pelkey. “Ain’t that what’s going on, Warden Bowditch?”
“I’m not even here about that,” I said.
“That’s right,” said Pelkey, who seemed to be the wilier of the two. “This is a social call.”
“I heard you guys were quite the deer slayers,” I said. “Where do you hunt?”
“All over,” said Beam. His expression was the dictionary definition of deadpan.
“Have you gotten any deer with your bows yet this fall?” I asked.
“A few,” said Beam.
“You’re welcome to have a look at the freezer,” said Pelkey, cocking one eyebrow.
“I don’t want him tearing up my house,” said Tiffany. “I just vacuumed in there.”
“Shut up, Tiffany,” said Beam.
No one seemed to be buying the bullshit I was selling this morning. “You should have Jeremy take you around,” said Pelkey. “He can show you all the stomping grounds.”
“That’s right,” I said. “Bard’s from this area, isn’t he?”
“Woodland High School,” said Pelkey with a handsome smile. “Class of ’03. Go, Dragons.”
It was unusual, but not unprecedented, for a warden to be stationed in the district where he’d grown up. The plus side was that you knew the territory and the players; the downside was that you were frequently in the awkward position of having to give tickets to your friends and family members.
“The three of us go way back,” said Beam with a smirk. I wasn’t sure if it was an insinuation or a threat.
Pelkey finished off the coffee in his mug. “How’s things down in your district? I heard you got a lot of poachers running wild down that way.”
“Everyone says your district is totally polluted,” said Beam. He and his buddy seemed to have a Mutt and Jeff act going.
“The poaching hasn’t been bad so far this fall,” I said. “Except for what happened to those moose on Elizabeth Morse’s land.”
“We heard all about that from that investigator,” said Pelkey. “Sounds wicked cold-blooded if you ask me. You wardens got any suspects?”
“A few.”
“But you ain’t here to talk to us about that, right?” Pelkey dumped the dregs of his coffee on the ground. “Hey, Lew, we’d better get to work. Don’t want to be late, or old man Skillen will have our hides.”
Beam gave a grunt that signaled he agreed.
Pelkey turned to Tiffany. “Give me some sugar, baby.”
He held her by both shoulders and kissed her hard on the lips. I watched with fascination and disgust as, a moment later, Lew Beam did the same thing. Anyone who thinks that country people are the salt of the earth needs to go on patrol with a game warden.
“Bye, baby,” the pale-haired man said to her.
“Bye.”
“Come on, Warden,” said Pelkey, offering me another of his dashing smiles. “We’ll ride out with you.”
I glanced at the dense, wet mass of alders and sumac that surrounded the property. “Maybe I’ll poke around a bit farther up the road.”
Pelkey set the mug down on the porch railing and came down the steps, jingling his keys in his hand. “There’s nothing up there ’cept an old pit.”
McQuarrie had ordered me to inspect the area gravel pits for spent .22 shells. Reason suggested I should check it out. If I caught any flak for driving up to Talmadge, I could argue that I’d merely been following my sergeant’s instructions to leave no pit unsearched.
“You have a good day, Warden,” said Pelkey, climbing into one of the Nissans.
Beam merely scowled at me as he started up his own vehicle. He pushed the gas pedal to make it growl.
I had to move my patrol truck for the men to get out. I waited for them to drive off down the muddy road, but instead they idled their engines. I turned the wheel and began creeping farther up the rutted lane in the direction of the gravel pit they had so helpfully mentioned. I gazed in the rearview mirror, wondering if they might come after me: a sure sign they were afraid of what I might find in the pit. Both trucks headed, however, in the opposite direction.
The road beyond the trailer was a mess. It was like driving up a streambed. Rocks the size of footballs scraped the undercarriage of my pickup, and the ruts from the freshets were deep enough that I worried my wheels would get stuck. There is nothing more embarrassing to a Maine game warden than having to call for roadside assistance in the back of beyond. I decided to walk the rest of the way.
There were a pair of ATV tracks in the wet sand. I hadn’t spotted four-wheelers in the dooryard of the trailer, but just about everyone in Washington County seemed to own one of those machines, and I was willing to bet money that these pri
nts belonged to my two new friends. I had a feeling they would lead me where I wanted to go, and they did.
The gravel pit hadn’t been used in a long time; you could tell from the spiky weeds and bushes pushing up from the bottom. It was shaped like a large amphitheater, with sloping walls that were fringed at the top with a row of young pines. Someone had decided the place would make a convenient dump. There were a few of those big wooden spools that power companies use for electrical wire, along with an assortment of junked appliances, a wheel-less and burned-out Monte Carlo that was now rusting into the landscape (it looked almost sculptural), and numerous bags of trash that had been well plundered by the resident raccoons, coyotes, and foxes.
Near the back of the pit was an improvised shooting range. Someone had propped up a piece of plywood against the gravel wall and stapled various paper targets, which had largely rotted away or been shredded into bits by gunfire. But you could tell from the groupings of the holes that this was a destination for shooters.
I probably spent the better part of an hour scouting for shell casings beneath the fog-shrouded sky. Just as in the previous pits I had inspected, I found rounds from a wide variety of firearms—everything from little .32 ACP handguns to big .30-30s that could have taken down a charging bull moose with one shot. What puzzled me was what I didn’t find. Although there were .22 shells aplenty, there were no .22 long rifle or .22 Magnum shells. The odds alone should have dictated that I would find a few.
So intent was I on my work that I didn’t hear Jeremy Bard creep up behind me. One minute I was bent over, picking up casings from a pile of pebbles; the next a shadow appeared beside me, and I straightened up with a start.
“What are you doing here?” He had the flattened face of a bulldog and a barrel chest that could probably have benched four hundred pounds with ease.
“I didn’t hear you,” I said.
“You weren’t supposed to. What’s going on? I got a call you were poking around up here.”
“I wanted to meet Pelkey and Beam before opening day. Billy Cronk told me they were worth getting to know.”
“What else did he tell you?”
“Hey,” I said. “I’m not trying to step on your toes here.”
“Too fucking late for that.” He crossed his powerful forearms. “I know what you’re doing, Bowditch. You’re bored with the job Rivard gave you, and now you’re trying to get in on the investigation by interrogating Pelkey and Beam. You just can’t follow an order, can you?”
“One of my ‘jobs’ has been hanging out in gravel pits, looking for shell casings.”
A muscle in his thick neck twitched. “That’s not why you’re here, and we both know it.”
“I already cleared this with Bilodeau,” I said. “He didn’t have a problem with me coming out here.”
“Yeah, well, I have a problem with it. This is my district, and I don’t want you harassing people here.”
“I wouldn’t call the conversation I had with Pelkey and Beam harassment.”
“That’s not what my cousin says.”
“Your cousin?”
“Tiffany.”
So that was how Bard knew I was here. Tiffany hadn’t wasted any time getting on the phone with her warden cousin. “It doesn’t bother you, her shacking up with those two lowlifes?”
He took another step closer. One more and he could have thrown a punch. “That’s my family you’re talking about now.”
“All right,” I said. “I’ll get out of your hair. But maybe you can do me a favor.”
The request seemed to amuse him. “Why should I do you a favor?”
“I’m getting calls from Chubby LeClair,” I said. “He says you’re basically stalking him.”
“The fat ass is at the top of our shit list.”
“I’m not defending him. I just don’t like getting his phone calls every day. He seems to be having a nervous breakdown. If you’re going to make a case, you’d better do it fast, because he’s going to have a heart attack before you can bring charges.”
“Is that all?”
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s all.”
Bard followed me back to our trucks, and we drove out together. He rode my bumper, as if to literally push me out of his district. I thought he might tailgate me all the way to Route 1, but instead he stopped at his cousin’s trailer, while I continued south down the branching roads. I wasn’t sure what I’d just learned in Talmadge, but the experience wasn’t sitting well in my stomach.
26
It made sense for me to enter the Morse estate from the north, rather than circling around to the Sixth Machias gate at the edge of my own district. I left the main drag in Indian Township and drove eight miles into the woods. The little village of Grand Lake Stream was jammed, as usual, with late-season salmon fishermen. Guys in waders and vests were hanging around outside the Pine Tree Store, laughing and sipping coffee, and I saw fly anglers packed shoulder-to-shoulder when I crossed the little bridge over the gin-clear river.
At Morse’s north gate, there was no security guard waiting, although I noticed a new video camera twenty feet up a red pine, focused on the entrance. I put the squealing truck into park and called Elizabeth’s personal number.
A man answered. “Yes?”
“Hello,” I said. “I’m calling for Elizabeth Morse. Is this the right number?”
“Who is this?”
“Mike Bowditch, with the Maine Warden Service.”
“This is Spense. What can I do for you, Warden?”
“I’m at the north gate,” I said. “Ms. Morse is expecting me.”
“Hold on, please.”
The security consultant put me on hold for five minutes. My whining truck belt seemed worse than ever this morning. When I turned the engine off, the sensation was similar to having a bad tooth pulled—a sudden sense of physical relief. I rolled down the window and breathed in that moldering late-autumn smell the forest gets as fallen leaves begin to decompose on the ground. The thermometer on my dashboard said it was sixty-five degrees.
By now, Neil and my mom would be in Boston. My mother would be in a dressing gown, or maybe pajamas, getting ready to receive her first dose of the powerful drugs that might or might not kill the malignant tumors growing near her womb. She might already have the needle jammed into the vein of her thin arm. I could imagine the fear my mom was feeling. It was as if our nervous systems were connected across those hundreds of miles.
“Warden Bowditch?” It was Elizabeth Morse now; those aristocratic inflections were unmistakable.
“Good morning, Ms. Morse.”
“I won’t be needing you today.”
She seemed incapable of speaking to me except as a master addressing a servant. “Are you sure? I can make myself inconspicuous.”
“I have construction crews beginning work to repair the house, and I’m going to be preoccupied overseeing them.” I heard a saw start up in the background. “Frankly, I’d prefer it if you were out looking for whoever did this, rather than just sitting around my lake house, flirting with my daughter and drinking tea. Mr. Spense is not particularly impressed with the caliber of your investigation so far. It’s been five days since you found those moose, and you haven’t made a single arrest.”
Rivard’s instructions to me had been to share as little information about the case as possible, but I knew her impatience would rise as the days went on without a break in the case. Now that she had an internationally renowned security specialist whispering in her ear, even I was falling out of favor. Having her new mansion strafed with semiautomatic-rifle fire probably hadn’t helped.
“We’re continuing to narrow the list of suspects, and Warden Investigator Bilodeau has some strong leads based upon evidence he collected last night from your property.” I had no idea if any of this was true, but I was certain that it was the sort of goulash Rivard would have wanted me to dish up for her.
“What about my reward? Have you received any tips?”
“Yes, ma’am. We’ve received a number of promising calls.” This, too, was bullshit.
“Don’t patronize me, please,” she said. “I know that Lieutenant Rivard thinks I’m some rich bitch who’s used to getting her way and needs to be ‘handled.’ He’s not entirely wrong about that. But someone shot up my house two nights ago. Tell your lieutenant that if I don’t get a call from him soon telling me that you have a suspect in custody, my next national interview is going to include a comparison of your organization with the Keystone Kops. Have I made myself clear?”
“Crystal clear,” I said.
The problem with being the messenger, I realized, is that sometimes you get shot.
* * *
I decided to drive back into Grand Lake Stream and grab a cup of coffee while I plotted my next move. What was I going to tell McQuarrie about my encounters with Jeremy Bard and Elizabeth Morse? I was astonished to find a familiar teal-colored GMC Sierra parked outside the Pine Tree Store and the man himself sitting at one of the picnic tables with a newspaper spread across the wet tabletop. It was as if, by thinking about him, I had conjured the sergeant out of thin air.
His face was even redder than usual. He had removed his black baseball hat. His swirl of white hair reminded me of meringue. “I thought you were supposed to be standing guard over at the queen’s palace,” he said, sounding as dry-mouthed as a man crawling through the desert.
“She released me from her service for the day.” I peered at the newsprint as I sat down across from him on a bench dampened by the rain. “What’s in the paper?”
Mack took a sip from a Styrofoam cup filled with steaming black coffee. “You don’t want to know.”
“Yeah, I do.”
He showed me the front page of the Bangor Daily News. The headline couldn’t have been much bigger:
SNIPER TARGETS HOME OF ELIZABETH MORSE
No One Injured in Nighttime Attack
An accompanying photograph, taken from the lake, showed Moosehorn Lodge on its piney point, but no signs of damage were evident. My guess was that it was a file photo the editors had used in a pinch.