Knife Creek

by Paul Doiron

  “They’re all arguing about what to do when a ‘Good Samaritan’ comes along. His name is Dakota Rowe. He’s a local boy they met at Hodge’s Campground their first night on the river. Rowe was working for the Hodgkinses that summer. Casey’s girlfriend says he was hitting on them both pretty hard when he came to check their campfire. ‘He seemed harmless,’ she said. But she was surprised to find him following them in a beat-up kayak.

  “So anyhow, Rowe agrees to go with Casey. He stashes his kayak in a ‘secret place’ in some bushes, and the two of them set off upstream. Later, her friends claim they all had a bad feeling about this guy, but evidently, it wasn’t bad enough to keep them from letting Casey paddle off alone with him.

  “The friends decide to pull their canoes out of the water to wait. An hour passes. Then another hour. They notice black clouds on the horizon. Pretty soon, they’re hearing thunder. The National Weather Service issued a report afterward that said it was a severe storm with sixty-mile-per-hour gusts and multiple lightning strikes: nothing you’d want to be outdoors in.

  “So Casey’s friends are all scared shitless and sobering up fast, and they decide to call 911. Of course everyone else on the river that day was doing the same thing. I know some of the campgrounds and rental companies sent out boats to help their customers get off the water and find shelter. The Fryeburg police sent out patrols along the side roads to do the same.

  “The storm passes after a couple of hours, and it doesn’t look like anyone was electrocuted or drowned. But Casey’s friends are more panicked than ever because now it’s getting dark. They try to convince the Warden Service to send an airboat, but the wardens don’t want to go on a wild-goose chase at night. ‘Those two are probably just curled up somewhere waiting for it to get light’ is what they’re told.

  “The next morning, though, a couple of wardens show up at the landing and talk to the UNH kids. Casey’s friends convince them to take an airboat up the river to Oxbow Island. Halfway there, what do they find? Casey’s canoe stuck in some alders and half-full of water. So now they have two missing persons to locate—Casey and the Good Samaritan.

  “The Warden Service sends in a second airboat, and pretty soon it’s like the Everglades in there, with airboats roaring up and down the channels. The Forest Service is about to send over a helicopter. There’s a massive search under way when guess what happens?”

  I couldn’t hazard a guess.

  “Dakota Rowe strolls into work at Hodge’s Campground for his evening shift as if nothing has happened and no one is searching for him. The Hodgkinses call 911, of course. The wardens show up, and the Fryeburg police send a couple of officers to get Rowe’s statement.

  “He claims that he and Casey paddled easily back up to Oxbow and she found her mom’s diamond ring after about an hour of searching. They decide to turn around and go back downstream when the storm hits. According to Rowe, he suggests that they pull off at a path he knows that leads back to the main road because it’s not safe to be out on the water during an electrical storm. But he says Casey is acting all weird—like she doesn’t trust him—and wants to keep paddling. He says, ‘Fine, good luck,’ and has her drop him at the trail. And that was the last he saw of her, he says. His story is that he hitchhiked home and spent the night alone.

  “Of course, the wardens want him to point out where this all happened, so they take him out on an airboat and he shows them Oxbow Island and the path where he claims Casey dropped him. But there’s still no sign of her anywhere. Meanwhile, the Fryeburg cops are calling in the state police. One of their officers knows Rowe from having busted him on some juvenile stuff, and they all think the kid’s story sounds fishy.

  “Menario is the detective who gets the case, and right away he has suspicions about Rowe. He talks to Casey’s friends and gets their take on the guy as a creep. Then he talks to the campground owners. They have nothing good to say about him, it turns out. Pretty much they accuse him of taking the kayak without their approval.

  “By now, another wave of storms is coming through, so the wardens decide to postpone the search until the next morning. At this point, people are still hopeful that they’ll find Casey hunkered down somewhere in the swamp. But Menario isn’t so optimistic. He’s already begun to form this hypothesis in his head. He has a hunch that Dakota Rowe killed Casey and hid her body somewhere.

  “When the airboat gets back, Menario takes Rowe aside and starts grilling him. He asks the kid why he didn’t stay with the girl if she was in danger, and Rowe says because he wasn’t going to risk his life for some hysterical bitch he just met. Menario asks him why he didn’t at least want to fetch his kayak, and Rowe has an answer for that, too. He says he planned on driving back later to pick it up, that he didn’t figure anybody would find or steal it in a thunderstorm.

  “That’s when Menario plays his trump card. He asks Rowe again about what happened when they first got to Oxbow Island, how long the two of them were there together, where they found the missing ring, et cetera. He lets Rowe repeat his complete statement and then he says, ‘I have proof that you’re lying, Dakota.’ And he pulls something out of his pocket. You’ll never guess what it is?”

  Pomerleau had planned on answering the question herself, but there was no need.

  I had already figured it out: “A diamond ring.”

  16

  Pomerleau couldn’t hide her surprise. “How did you know? That information was never made public.”

  “I just had a hunch.”

  She let out a big guffaw that made me like her even more. “Touché.”

  “Where did Menario find the ring?”

  “Casey’s friend Noah gave it to him. It dropped out of a tarp in his canoe, and he was too embarrassed to tell anyone while the search was in progress. Menario swore the kid to silence, saying it would be the only way to secure a murder conviction since it was definitive proof that Rowe was lying about what happened.”

  An ant, foraging for crumbs, crawled across my hand. I shook it off. “And what did Rowe say when Menario showed him the ring?”

  “He said Casey told him she’d found it. He had no idea why she would have lied. Maybe she was tired of his company. Menario told him he’s been caught in a lie and had better come clean. That was a mistake, threatening him that way. The kid comes from a wealthy family. Lake cottage on Kezar Lake. Ski condo at Widowmaker. The Rowes, as it happens, have lots and lots of attorneys. He told Menario he wouldn’t say another word until he saw one of them.”

  Anthills were everywhere in the soil beneath the table. I watched the tireless insects scurrying into the mounds with bits of food and then emerging with sand pebbles they’d excavated from some new tunnel. Something about their purposefulness was mesmerizing.

  “Here’s what I don’t understand,” I said. “How was Casey pronounced dead if they never found her body? I thought it takes seven years for a missing person to receive a death certificate in absentia.”

  Pomerleau applied a coating of zinc to her lips. The white lipstick made her look like a lifeguard. “Seven years is how long it takes for the presumption of death to be triggered. But it doesn’t have to take that long. If there’s a preponderance of evidence that leads the state to believe a missing person is deceased, the process can take as little as four years, which is how long it’s been since Casey vanished. Menario has been waiting a long time to see homicide charges brought against Dakota Rowe, and it’s about to happen very soon.”

  “Wait a minute. I thought you said Menario had retired.”

  “Let’s just say he was encouraged to retire.”

  “What did he do?”

  “He had a dustup with Rowe last year. The colonel gave Menario the option to ‘retire’ instead of losing an appeal to the disciplinary committee.”

  “But you’re saying he’s still got a hard-on for the case.”

  “You’ve met Menario. The man is a walking hard-on. Before he retired, he arranged with his buddies in the AG’s offi
ce for the arrest and indictment to go forward as soon as the state issues a death certificate for Casey Donaldson.”

  In my time, I’d met a few retired officers like Menario who walked out of their retirement parties with gold watches and boxes full of case files they’d never been able to close. Being retired, they had all the time in the world to chase loose ends. Some of these obsessed ex-cops made Captain Ahab look easygoing by comparison.

  One of the ants was exploring the hairs of my forearm. This time, I let it roam.

  “So the state hasn’t declared Casey dead yet?”

  “Legally speaking, she is still alive.”

  “Legally and actually.”

  Pomerleau let out a sigh. “Until we have physical evidence that your woman in a wig was Casey, we’re going to have trouble convincing Barrett to open a new investigation. No disrespect, but the face you drew could be any one of a thousand women in this state. Haven’t you ever run into someone who could be your doppelgänger?”

  “You said we. Does that mean you believe me?”

  “I know more about you than I’ve let on, Bowditch. Lots of people still think of you as the idiot rookie who almost let a cop killer escape. But your record of success since then is, well, pretty mind-blowing. But you made a bad first impression in the law-enforcement community that you might never outlive. You’re like the Boy Who Cried Wolf.”

  “Only the wolf was my father.”

  “Honestly, I’m not sure what to hope for here. If you’re wrong, we still have to find that infant’s parents, which won’t be easy, but it will be just another shitty case. But if you’re right…”

  Pomerleau didn’t need to finish the sentence for me to grasp the ramifications of Casey Donaldson’s having been alive all this time.

  Since she had seemingly been a happy girl who would never have run off on her own, then the only conclusion one could logically draw was that she had been kidnapped and left for dead by Maine’s finest. To be held captive while the world forgot about you; to be forced to give birth to a child and then watch it perish or be murdered; and then to stand by while your dead daughter is buried in the mud for pigs to eat—it was hard for me to imagine a worse nightmare.

  I could taste the vinegar from the potato chips in my stomach coming up as acid in my throat. “Is Donaldson’s DNA in CODIS?”

  The acronym stood for Combined DNA Index System. It is the national database in which are stored the genetic markers of millions of suspected and convicted criminals, victims of crimes living and dead, missing persons, their family members, and probably many other unsuspecting Americans. The armed forces have a separate database for their 3 million members, nicknamed the Repository, whose stated reason for being is to assist in combat-death identifications, but only a naïf would believe it couldn’t be covertly accessed by top-level law-enforcement agents in high-profile cases.

  “I would think her DNA would have to be in the system,” Pomerleau said. “Menario would have gotten hair samples.”

  “Then crime-lab analysts will be able to compare her DNA against that of Baby Jane Doe.”

  “They will.”

  “Casey Donaldson was the mother of that infant, Pomerleau. And there’s no doubt in my mind that she’s still alive somewhere, still waiting to be rescued.”

  Pomerleau sat up on the bench as an unmarked cruiser pulled into the lot. “There’s Barrett. I’m not looking forward to the conversation we’re about to have.”

  “Do you think he’ll believe me?”

  “I’m not sure I would.”

  * * *

  We had to wait fifteen minutes before the lieutenant would see us. Then Pomerleau, Finch, and I walked in a solemn procession to his meticulously maintained office.

  Barrett had a runner’s build, thinning salt-and-pepper hair, and a no-nonsense demeanor. Framed photos of him in a U.S. Navy flight suit were on the wall.

  Pomerleau went first, laying out the elements of the case, then asked me to take over. Barrett listened without interruption, examined the photograph of Casey Donaldson and compared it side by side with the Identikit sketch, then sent me out of the room while he conferred with his detectives.

  He didn’t ask me a single question. I found that ominous.

  While I was waiting back in Pomerleau’s office, my phone rang. It was Ricky Elwell.

  “So I got your pork all butchered and wrapped up nice. You want me to throw it in the freezer or you want to pick it up today?”

  A random thought thrust its way into my mind. The butcher boy seemed to be one of those connectors you find in all social networks: those uncanny people with the gift of knowing just about everyone. Ricky was a greasy-haired spider sitting at the center of a vast web that extended across the Saco River floodplain.

  “I’ll come pick it up. Tell me something, Rick. Do you happen to know anything about a girl named Casey Donaldson?”

  “That college chick who disappeared? Dude, everyone knows that story.”

  I suspected that Ricky Elwell might know a few details others did not. “How long are you going to be there this afternoon?”

  “Well, I got an appointment to get my nails done and my balls waxed at four. Otherwise my social calendar is wide-open.”

  “You aren’t old enough to have hair on your balls, Rick.”

  “Dude, that is cold!”

  After fifteen minutes, Pomerleau returned to her office. Now that we were back inside, she had removed the sunscreen from her lips, although white traces still showed at the corners.

  “Well?”

  “The lieutenant wants to wait for the DNA results. Also for the fire marshal’s initial findings.”

  “So he didn’t believe me?”

  “Let’s say he’s withholding judgment.”

  “What about circulating my sketches at least? Someone might have seen Becky and Casey recently, especially if they’re on the run. We don’t even need to identify the younger sister. We can just share the drawings.”

  “The lieutenant doesn’t want to open up a can of worms unnecessarily. What happens if other people notice the resemblance? What if Casey’s stepfather does?”

  I stood up. “This is bullshit.”

  “Think of it from Barrett’s perspective.”

  What had I expected? I was the only witness to an occurrence so improbable that it belonged on the cover of a supermarket tabloid, right beside a picture of President Trump shaking hands with a gray-skinned alien in the Oval Office.

  There was nothing to do now but go fetch my hog meat from Ricky Elwell.

  I paused in the doorway to offer a final observation. “The fire marshal isn’t going to find Casey’s remains in what’s left of that house. Whoever burned that place down took her with them. The girl is still alive and still being held captive. You know in your heart that I am right about this, Detective.”

  “I’ll give you a call when I hear something.”

  When I left, Pomerleau was staring at the framed photograph of her own still-innocent daughter.

  17

  As usual, a crowd was hanging around the Elwell homestead. That butcher shop was the boondocks equivalent of a Boys & Girls Club.

  I hauled my personal YETI Tundra out of the backseat and carried it into the darkened barn. I’d found I couldn’t leave an expensive cooler in the bed of the truck without someone stealing it. I could probably have left a five-thousand-dollar computer back there and no one would have run off with it. But rednecks, I’d found, have a special fondness for coolers.

  Ricky was seated on a butcher-block table, waving around an Old Gold and swinging his short legs as he held forth to a semicircle of acolytes. “Now, the thing about a bear is that it has this bone in its johnson. About as long as a pencil and just as thin. Same with a raccoon, but a coon’s is smaller and shaped like a J. My old man had a jar of dick bones. He said the orientals ground them up into powder to put in their tea so they could stay hard all night long. Now, I ain’t never tried bone dust because
I never needed the help, but— Hello, Warden Bowditch!”

  “You know, Ricky, there’s a law against lewd conduct.”

  “I’m educating these kids to the facts of life.”

  “You should leave the sex ed to their teachers.”

  He thrust the lit end of his cigarette at me. “Those dried-up old prunes don’t know half of what I know.”

  “How about ending the lesson for today and getting my pork chops.”

  “Do you got the money?”

  “I do.”

  “OK, then. But you’re going to need more than that cooler. There’s a whole lot of pork in them fridges.”

  Ricky wasn’t kidding. Before it had been dressed, the boar had weighed in at 222 pounds. Once Ricky had skinned it and removed the innards, it had tipped the scales at 180 pounds. After butchering, we were left with 160 pounds of shoulders, loins, belly, and hams. And that didn’t even include the sow.

  “I even threw in the pig’s feet in case you want to pickle them. I always give my customers maximum meat so they don’t feel like I’m ripping them off. With a pig, butchers say, the only thing you should lose is the squeal.” The joke cracked him up and he fell into another hacking fit.

  I pointed at the smoldering Old Gold clenched between his fingers. “You know those are called coffin nails for a reason?”

  “Shit, dude. You sound like my mom.”

  For all his adolescent chatter, Ricky Elwell was a remarkably talented and thoughtful butcher. He had insulated shipping boxes loaded with the meat and packed with ice for me. Every individual package had been sealed and labeled. He even presented me with a surprisingly detailed receipt.

  I wrote him a personal check rather than go through the hassle of making him wait for the state. Special reimbursement requests moved through the system like sap through a half-frozen maple. God only knew when I’d get my money back.