by Paul Doiron
“How about my place? I’ve got a sick dog here. I don’t know what shit Devoe fed him, but it’s been coming out both ends all night long.”
I rubbed the flakes from my eyelashes. “I’ll see you in an hour.”
“Bring doughnuts! And coffee!”
So my sergeant had somehow conned me into driving forty miles to her house in the predawn light, on my day off no less, and paying for breakfast in the bargain. What was it about women that made me agree to their most outlandish requests?
I left Sarah dozing in bed and shuffled, naked, into the bathroom. The harsh light above the mirror showed a drawn, stubbled face, making me wonder whether I’d done the Rip van Winkle thing and overslept by a decade or two. My head ached from the three whiskeys I’d consumed before bed. I needed to cut back on those, I decided. And my pubic bone was sore in a spot I rarely had reason to consider. I’d been surprised by Sarah’s sudden playfulness the night before. One moment she’d been all sad and teary, and the next she was reaching for my zipper. She hadn’t seemed like a woman worried about an unplanned pregnancy.
When I’d toweled off after the shower and was pulling on my pants, I found Sarah leaning sleepily against the doorjamb, holding the phone. She, too, was naked. “It’s for you again,” she said, yawning. “It’s Hank Varnum.”
She handed me the phone and collapsed once more onto the bed.
I took the call in the kitchen. A gauzy gray light had begun seeping through the windows. The room was so cold, I could see my breath when I spoke. “What’s going on, Hank?”
“You need to get over here, Mike!”
“I’m not on duty today. Do you want me to call John Farwell? He’s covering my district.”
“No, I want you to arrest that pervert Calvin Barter.”
I settled my aching bones down at the table. “Tell me what happened.”
“That pervert just dragged away my mailbox! I was still asleep when I heard the ATVs ride across my front yard. There were two of them, a big one and a little one, and they were whooping and hollering. I grabbed my revolver and ran outside, but they were already racing down the road, dragging my mailbox by a chain.”
“And you’re sure one of the two riders was Barter?”
“Yes! I’d recognize that big pervert anywhere.”
“Why do you keep calling him a ‘pervert’?”
“The man’s a child molester! Everybody in town knows that.”
When I’d moved to the midcoast last year, I’d reviewed the list of sexual predators—the registry of local child molesters, Peeping Toms, public masturbators, and statutory rapists—but Calvin’s name hadn’t jumped out at me. There were lots of Barters in these backwaters. It wasn’t until this conversation with Hank that I finally made the connection.
“All right,” I said. “I’ll drive over to the Barter place. I’ll arrest him on the spot if I have cause, but I can’t just haul him into jail on your say-so. Please promise me that if he comes back over here later, you won’t do anything rash.”
“I’ll defend myself and my property.”
“I don’t want this turning into a feud between you two.”
“It already is!”
With that, he hung up.
I changed out of my Carhartts and put on my wrinkled uniform. Peering into the darkened bedroom again, I saw that Sarah was snoring softly. I looked longingly at her spread-eagled backside, but instead of waking her again, I left a note on the kitchen counter, promising to be back by noon. We were scheduled to drive to Portland to visit her older sister, Amy—the one who hated my guts. Wait till she heard I’d knocked up Sarah.
The sun hadn’t even risen yet, and already this was shaping up to be one hellacious day.
* * *
Outside, there was a sting in the air that made my cheeks feel as if they’d both been freshly slapped. Clouds sagged down on the treetops, and the smell of imminent snow made me dread the long drive to southern Maine later that afternoon.
The cab of the truck always took an eternity to heat up. There were many mornings when my vehicle seemed like a four-wheeled icebox. It actually felt warmer standing outside in the open air.
On the drive over to Barter’s farm, I weighed the idea of calling Kathy or Farwell for backup. But I wanted the satisfaction of confronting Calvin on my own. Like Varnum, I was having trouble not taking this as a personal offense. If Barter wanted a fight, I’d gladly give him one. It didn’t matter if he was the size of Andre the Giant.
I drove past the NO TRESPASSING signs and through the orchard of bony apple trees to the dooryard of the farmhouse. Most of the windows were dim, but I saw a light in a lower room, probably coming from the kitchen. I got out of the truck and carefully closed the door, not wanting to spook Barter into fleeing again.
The cold snap had hardened the mud underfoot. The frozen earth was contoured and crusted into waves that crackled with every step I took. I pounded my fist against the flaking front door. I heard muttering inside and saw a light flick on in the entryway.
The door opened, and Barter’s teenaged, redheaded, chicken-shooting son glared out at me from the hall. He wore muddy jeans and nothing else. His jutting ribs reminding me of an inmate recently released from a concentration camp.
“What do you want?” he sassed.
“Go get your father.”
“He ain’t here.”
“I don’t believe you, kid.” The mud-splattered pants told me who Barter’s ATV companion had been.
The boy pushed a heavy red bang out of his eyes and sharpened his sneer. “Didn’t you read them signs?” he asked.
“I read them. Now go get your father.”
“You don’t tell me what to do.”
“Travis!”
Wanda Barter, dressed in a shapeless smock that might once have been a circus tent, came storming down the hall. She already had a cigarette fired up and tucked between her cracked lips. Her reddish gray hair was fastened forcibly back from her forehead by a cruel array of pins. She shoved her son by the head, so that he stumbled away from the door. Then she stepped forward as if to block my entrance should I consider barging into the home. I felt vaguely like Theseus up against the Minotaur.
“What do you want?”
“I know your husband’s inside, Mrs. Barter.” Glancing behind the barrel-shaped woman, I saw the boy down the hall. I raised my voice so that it could be heard throughout the house, in case someone was eavesdropping from the top of the staircase. “We’ve got another warden in the woods behind the house, so Calvin can forget trying to give us the slip again.” It was a blatant lie, but I was sick of Wanda’s bullshit.
She studied me through the wafting cigarette smoke. “I guess you didn’t see the ‘No Trespassing’ signs we put up out front. Or maybe you don’t read so well. You didn’t strike me as the intelligent type the other day. Those signs mean the same as ‘Keep Out.’”
When you grow up in poverty, as I did, you develop a complicated attitude toward the destitute, the shiftless, and the genuinely needy. You remember your own frequent visits to the food bank and the squalor of your playmates’ mobile homes, and you feel an upwelling of sympathy that lasts until the moment some redneck spits in your face. And then you start thinking that ultimately we all deserve the hand we’re dealt.
I counted to ten. “Someone just committed criminal mischief on Hank Varnum’s property for the second time in a week. I know it was your husband who did it.”
A random redheaded toddler wandered out of the shadows and stood behind its mother, or grandmother, or whoever the hell she was. There were too many homes in these parts where the family trees defied easy diagramming.
“Calvin’s away on business,” she said.
Business? The man didn’t work. “We both know I’m going to catch up with Calvin sooner or later. Do I really have to get a warrant to talk with him?”
“Yep.” She blew two massive lungfuls of smoke in my face. “You really fucking do. Now why don�
�t you get the fuck off my property before I really lose my fucking temper.”
She didn’t close the door on me, just crossed her brawny forearms and made it clear that the conversation was officially over. We both knew that I had no recourse. She hadn’t threatened me, and without a warrant specifying probable cause for a search, I had no business lingering on private property. Once again, Wanda Barter had me by the short hairs, and she damn well knew it.
“I’ll be back,” I said, but the threat sounded hollow even to my own ears.
She merely leered at me while the blank-faced toddler peeked out from between her formidable legs.
I didn’t fully turn my back on the house until I had climbed into my truck. I swung around the circular driveway fast and accelerated through the leafless orchard, furious and tempted to take out a few fence posts along my way. My spinning tires churned up loose gravel, which rattled around the underside of the chassis, and for an instant, I thought I heard a pinging sound.
It was only fifteen minutes later, as I was getting out of the vehicle at the Square Deal to buy Kathy her doughnuts, that I realized where the noise had come from. My side window was cracked in an unmistakable spiderwebbed pattern, one that could only have been produced by a pellet gun.
20
I was never cut out to be a comedian. I know only one Maine joke, and it happens to be tasteless. “What does a Maine girl say during sex? ‘Ease up, Dad. You’re crushing my smokes.’”
There were too many houses I visited where the truth behind that punch line lurked in creepy silhouettes behind drawn window shades. Wanda Barter’s farm was one. Two days ago, I had found the woman and her redheaded band of offspring vaguely amusing. Now the thought of Barter and his brood gave me a major case of the willies.
I needed to nab this asshole. Most game wardens were assigned all-terrain vehicles, but budget cuts and the geographical peculiarities of my district—all those rocky peninsulas and marshy rivers—had precluded me from getting one. Maybe I could borrow Kathy’s, I thought. I relished the possibility of meeting Calvin Barter alone on a darkened trail.
Whatever the expression on my face was as I entered the Square Deal Diner, it caused Ruth Libby to blanch. “What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Could I get a dozen doughnuts to go? And two large coffees?”
“We’re calling them ‘grande’ coffees now.”
“You are?”
“Heck no.” She winked, trying to lighten my mood.
I appreciated her intent, but I wasn’t especially eager to let go of my rage. Like the men on my father’s side of the family, I seemed to enjoy getting angry—the heat of the blood pulsing through my temples affected me like a dangerous intoxicant.
Out of the corner of my eye, I became aware of a couple watching me from a corner booth, the very same booth Charley and I had occupied the previous day. They were an older, mismatched couple. The man had a shock of white hair and glasses with thick black rims. He wore a black blazer over a black polo shirt that hugged his heavy paunch. The woman was whip-thin, with close-cropped gray curls, a long nose, and deeply set eyes that put me in mind of a stalking heron. As I waited for Ruth to fill my order, the man and women consulted each other in whispers and then rose ceremoniously to their feet. I saw that the man was lugging a file box that looked stuffed to overflowing with documents.
“Oh shit,” whispered Ruth. “Those are the ones who were asking about you.”
“Warden Bowditch,” said the woman in a thick Down East accent I instantly recognized. “My name is Lou Bates. I spoke with you on the telephone. This is my associate, Mr. Oswald Bell.”
“Call me Ozzie.” His voice was parched and raspy, probably from a lifetime’s worth of cigarettes. His own accent said Rockaway, New York, rather than Rockport, Maine.
“We’re here on behalf of my nephew, Erland Jefferts,” explained Lou Bates.
I noticed they were both sporting white buttons on their lapels with the words FREE ERLAND JEFFERTS. I tried to muster a modicum of politeness. “As I told you yesterday, I can’t talk with you, Mrs. Bates.”
“Five minutes of your time,” said Bell. “You can give us five minutes, right?”
“No, Mr. Bell, I’m afraid I can’t.”
“Make it three minutes, then. You’ve got that. While they ring up your order.”
“This isn’t a negotiation,” I said. “How did you know to find me here?”
“Our sources told us that you frequent this establishment on a daily basis,” said Lou Bates.
“Your sources?”
“My nephew is being wrongfully incarcerated in the Maine State Prison for a crime he didn’t commit.”
“Basically, we consider Mr. Jefferts a political prisoner,” declared Bell.
Lou Bates continued: “It is our belief that you have evidence that can help exonerate him and secure his full pardon and release.”
Bell raised the heavy cardboard box in my direction, as if he expected me to accept it as a gift. “If you’ll just look at these files, you’ll see Erland has gotten royally shafted. There are state secrets in this box—information the prosecution refuses to make public.”
“I told you that I can’t talk with you.” The entire diner had fallen silent. A voice in the back of my head told me to cool down fast, before the consequences spiraled out of control. “I need to use the rest room.”
All eyes followed me into the bathroom. Inside, I leaned both arms against the sink and stared into my own burning reflection. Did these J-Team nuts really think that I was some sort of crusader for the unfairly accused? I started the tap water running and splashed my face. Get a grip, Bowditch. Pay for your doughnuts and hit the road.
When I opened the bathroom door, I found everyone in the restaurant gawking at me. But Ozzie Bell and Lou Bates had disappeared.
“I told them to leave, or else I’d call the police,” Ruth explained.
“Thanks,” I said, and paid my bill.
Outside, I scanned the parked cars to see whether my two stalkers were lying in wait, but they seemed to have vanished. I approached my patrol truck, coffee and doughnuts in hand, but did a double take as I drew near. There in the bed was Ozzie Bell’s box of top secret files.
* * *
Kathy Frost, lived in a two-hundred-year-old farmhouse in the rolling hills of Appleton, at the northern edge of my district. Blueberry barrens, which turned crimson in the fall, cascaded down from her doorstep. The undulating fields were crisscrossed with stone walls and strewn with scorched boulders. In the summer, after the last berries had been raked, immigrant workers would set fire to the fields, blackening the barrens so that the bushes would blossom with greater fruitfulness in seasons to come.
I rarely had cause to visit Kathy at home. My sergeant didn’t go out of her way to encourage visitors. At Division B, she had the reputation of being an odd breed of hermit: a funny, sociable, and utterly uninhibited person who nevertheless kept her private life private. She’d been married a long time ago to some dude named Frost, but the marriage hadn’t stuck, for one reason or another. It occurred to me that I knew very little about Kathy’s social life despite having spent countless hours in cold, cramped circumstances with her on search parties, night patrols, and stakeouts. Our relationship was a strange mixture of intimacy (I knew how she smelled without deodorant) and aloof professionalism.
As I drove up to the house, a dog began baying inside. That was Pluto, Kathy’s grizzled coonhound. I took a moment before I turned off the engine, trying to get the lay of the land. She had a nice spread. There were stately old elms here that had survived a century of blight, along with some big maples fit for sugaring. Kathy’s GMC patrol truck was parked in the dooryard. I also spotted a muddy all-terrain vehicle behind the house—exactly what I’d been looking for.
The doorbell was broken, so I rapped against the glass. Pluto came loping down the foyer, barking all the way. I tried to talk soothingly to him through the glass, but he just kept yow
ling, as if we were strangers.
After a moment, Kathy appeared, tanned and grinning, and jerked the door open.
Kathy Frost was in her forties, although whether she was in her mid- or late forties, I could never have told you. She was six feet tall, with long, strong limbs. Her bobbed haircut didn’t flatter her, but she had fetching hazel eyes. She wore blue jeans, muddy work boots, and a flannel shirt that had survived a thousand trips through the washing machine. Her trip to Florida had left her with a remarkable tan, as if she’d been dipped head to toe in bronze.
“Took you long enough,” she said.
I presented her with the coffee and doughnuts. “Don’t start, Kathy. I’ve had a shitty morning.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.”
I followed her into the depths of the old house—the chilly air had a vaguely doggish scent—and into the kitchen. Pluto trailed us slowly down the hall and then collapsed with a wheeze on a hand-hooked rug beside the oven. As one of her duties, Kathy oversaw the Warden Service’s K-9 units, training officers and their dogs to assist in search and rescue operations. Pluto looked like an unassuming old pooch—thick of body and grizzled of snout—but he was a retired celebrity in law-enforcement circles. Over his working lifetime, he had located dozens of lost people, alive and dead.
We sat down at an antique table, which tilted when you set your elbows on it, and opened the box of doughnuts.
“First, I want to hear about Key West,” I said.
“It was hot and crowded. I caught a tarpon.”
“That’s it?”
“The daiquiris were overpriced. Also, I bought you a souvenir.”
She handed me a paperback book from the counter. It was Men Without Women, by Ernest Hemingway. “I saw the title and thought of you.”
“I don’t think that’s a compliment, Kath.”
She shrugged her broad shoulders. “So tell me about this dead girl of yours. I’ve got to hand it you, Grasshopper. You don’t waste any time. I go away for a week and suddenly you’re up to your crotch again in a murder investigation. And somehow you found a way to involve Charley Stevens in this, I hear. That old geezer must consider you his personal ace of spades.” She sipped from her cold coffee. “Malcomb gave me the rundown last night, but he left out the juicy stuff. Clue me in.”