by Paul Doiron
With the help of his entourage, we loaded the boxes into the bed of my truck.
“Hey, Rick,” I said. “You remember how I mentioned Casey Donaldson before?”
“That girl who vanished? Did you guys find her skeleton or something?”
Knowing how the kid could gossip, I chose to play it coy. “I’m not allowed to say. What did you hear happened to her?”
“Cops say Dakota Rowe killed her.” In true Maine fashion, Ricky pronounced the name “decoder.”
“What can you tell me about him?”
The butcher dropped his cigarette butt onto the floor and reached into his shirt pocket for the pack. “Guy’s a piece of shit. Rich as hell but likes to come across as a badass. He gets off on people being afraid of him. You want to hear a story—off the record?”
“You know I do.”
“His folks have a cottage over on Kezar Lake. Someone on the other side had a dog that kept barking all night. So rumor has it, Dakota goes over there and scatters Raisinets up and down the road. I don’t know how many dogs got sick or died from eating them. All to shut up one yappy schnauzer.”
Chocolates can sicken dogs. Raisins can cause kidney failure. “Do you know where I can find him?”
“First off, I wouldn’t go looking! But if you do, he still works at Hodge’s in the summer.”
“Even after what happened with Casey Donaldson?”
“The Hodgkinses are afraid to fire him because they think he’ll poison their well.”
“Why does the guy even work? I thought he was rich?”
“Yeah, but that river is a nonstop pussy parade in the summer—if you know what I mean.” Ricky knocked a loose cigarette onto his palm and brought it to his lips. “Do me a favor if you run into Dakota and don’t mention my name. I don’t need trouble from that cocksucker.”
“I know, Rick. You’re a lover, not a fighter.”
He brightened up. “You got me pegged there.”
“One more question before I go.”
“Why are you asking me all these questions? I ain’t Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius.”
“But you always know something we don’t. Don’t you?”
He smiled. “Pegged again!”
“You wouldn’t know a couple named the Cobbs, would you? They live over on Rankin Road in Birnam. The wife has a pointy chin.”
“They the ones whose crib burned down? Yeah, I heard about that explosion.” He raised his eyes to the hazy summer sky and sucked speculatively on his cigarette. “No, I never heard of those people.”
“Thanks, Rick. For everything.”
“No sweat, Warden. Like my old man used to say, ‘Service is our success.’”
I had forgotten about the kid’s missing finger until we shook hands. Then I watched Ricky Elwell—all five feet two inches and 120 pounds of him—swagger back into the darkness of the barn, pants sagging below his waist, trailing a plume of smoke.
* * *
My plan was to store the meat in my freezer at home until we’d gotten a sample back from the lab saying it was safe for human consumption. Then I would distribute it to the food pantries throughout my district. I’d eaten wild boar at a fancy restaurant with my mother and stepfather and remembered it tasting juicy and succulent, almost like a cross between pork and beef, but at twice the price. The needy people who got first dibs on these chops and hams were going to be enjoying a rare delicacy indeed.
I found Stacey on the back patio, barefoot, and dressed in shorts and a MISS CONGENIALITY T-shirt that showed off both her sense of irony and her awareness of how she was viewed by all too many men.
She leaped to her feet to embrace me the moment I stepped through the sliding door. “I’m so glad you’re all right!”
No one had ever hugged me harder than Stacey Stevens.
“I tried calling you from the scene,” I whispered in her ear.
“I had my phone off because I was in meetings.” She sniffed my uniform collar. “You smell like the inside of a chimney.”
“My ears are still ringing from the explosion. Every muscle in my body aches. I need to sit down.”
“Do you want some iced tea?”
“I’d prefer a beer.”
While she went to fetch the drinks, I unstrapped my ballistic vest and examined the burn hole in the fabric. Then I draped my gun belt across the picnic table. When I collapsed in one of our Adirondack chairs, I thought I heard it creak under the weight of every other damned thing I was carrying.
If only I had recognized Casey Donaldson when I first saw her.
I knew her face seemed familiar.
I shouldn’t have walked away from Becky’s belligerence. But I hadn’t had any legal authority to push my way into the house, no warrant or probable cause of law breaking. In the old days that wouldn’t have stopped me. I would have connived a way to do what I wanted to do and taken my licks for it later.
Instead I had acted “responsibly.” And had abandoned Casey Donaldson once again to her personal hell.
And here I had just applied to become a warden investigator, a job I wanted more than almost anything else in the world. Some investigator I was. Some detective.
Stacey emerged from the house with two bottles of Molson. She dragged another heavy chair over to face me, scraped it across the slate. She reached out and grasped both my hands in hers. Her tan face made her jade-colored eyes all that much more vivid.
“Tell me what happened today, Mike. The explosion was all over the news, and people were talking in the office, but I didn’t know what to believe.”
“It’s horrible, Stace. It may be the most horrible thing I’ve ever come across.”
She squeezed my hands tighter. “Tell me.”
There was nowhere else to begin except at the beginning.
18
After I’d finished my story and answered her questions, Stacey told me to go inside and take a shower while she put my smoky uniform in the washing machine. When I came out of the bathroom, I found her spread across the bed, naked except for some strategically draped sheets.
An hour later, I was sweaty enough for another shower. I lay on my back on the bed while she curled against me with her leg thrown over mine. Her hand was flat against my chest as if she were trying to detect my racing heartbeat through the nerves of her palm. I stroked her firm, sun-browned arm with the tips of my fingers. The positioning of our bodies was at once intimate and distant: lying that way, we couldn’t see each other’s face.
“I need to ask you a question,” she said softly. “Please don’t take it the wrong way.”
“Go ahead.”
“Are you absolutely positive that girl you saw was Casey Donaldson?”
“As positive as I can be. I’d risk my career on it.”
She made a chuckling noise. “You’ve risked your career lots of other times, Mike.”
I tried to twist my neck around to look her in the eyes, but my muscles were too sore. All I could see was the top of her head. She was sunburned where her hair naturally parted. “Yeah, well, I’ve never been this close to becoming a warden investigator. But if you want me to say I’d risk my life on it, I will.”
She went quiet for a long time. I couldn’t hear her breathing, but I could feel the air going in and out of her lungs. “I sometimes forget how ambitious you are.”
“And you’re not?”
“Not according to Barstow.” She started playing with the hairs on my chest.
I had been so distracted by thoughts of Casey that I had forgotten about Stacey’s own problems at work. “So what happened today? Did he ream you out for yesterday?”
“I never met with him.”
My neck twinged again as I tried to make eye contact. “What?”
“Barstow and I were supposed to talk this afternoon. But then I heard the news. The governor wants to cut hundreds of state jobs to pay for tax cuts. You wardens are safe, but we may be losing five field biologists. Evidently, the department isn’t going to rehire th
e positions that opened up when Graham and Marti died in the chopper crash. So that’s pretty much the end of my moose study. Three years of scientific work down the drain so that a few dozen rich people can get even richer.”
I finally disengaged myself from her embrace. I propped myself on an elbow and gazed down at her flushed face. “I hadn’t heard. I’m sorry, Stacey. That really sucks.”
“Yeah, it does. I ended up leaving early. I needed to get out of Augusta before I said or did something I would regret.”
For my compulsively impulsive girlfriend this qualified as a hopeful display of good judgment.
“But your job is safe?”
“I’m not sure I really give a shit at this point.”
“Stacey.”
“Ever since my friends died in that crash, I don’t even know who I am anymore.”
“It’s called survivor’s guilt.”
“You don’t understand. There’s more to it than that.”
“So explain it to me.”
“Have you ever heard that saying by Albert Einstein? I don’t remember the exact words, but it’s something like ‘Men marry women thinking they won’t change, and women marry men thinking they will. They both end up disappointed.’”
“I’m not disappointed in you, Stace.” I smiled and touched her chin. “Besides, we’re not married yet.”
“I feel like I’ve changed. And not in the best way.”
“That’s not true.”
“You know it is.”
“People change. It’s OK. I’m sure I’ve changed since we met.”
She smiled for the first time since we’d begun talking. “You’ve become a better man.”
A laugh exploded out of me. “Right!”
“I’m serious. My dad used to say that you might be the best man he’d ever met—or you could be if you worked at it—and I would think he was getting senile. You seemed like this immature, reckless, stubborn—”
“You can stop there.”
Her smile grew wider, and she gripped my biceps tighter. “What I’m saying, Mike, is that my dad was right about you. I was focused on who you were, but he saw who you could become.”
“I don’t know what to say to that.”
“Have you thought of getting out of here?”
“You mean moving to a different house?”
“I’m talking about chucking everything and leaving. We could go out West. Colorado, the Pacific Northwest, even Alaska. I could become a river guide again. Do raft trips through Cataract Canyon and the Grand Canyon. Or become a bush pilot. You could get a job with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. You’ve always wanted to do undercover work.”
At first I had thought she was kidding around, but her face was serious, her eyes gleaming with excitement.
“That’s why I applied for the investigator position.”
“You don’t owe the Warden Service anything, Mike—not after the way they treated you.”
“Colonel Malcomb gave me a second chance.”
“And where has it gotten you? The state police still won’t take your word about having seen Casey Donaldson. I hear things other wardens say about you behind your back, Mike. Your reputation isn’t what you think it is. I don’t think you should get your hopes up about that promotion.”
“That’s encouraging to hear.”
She dug her nails into my arm now. “There’s a big world out there beyond Maine, you know. Wouldn’t you like to go be part of it? I don’t want to be like my folks and grow old here.”
“Your folks seem pretty happy to me.”
“It was the right life for them: staying here.”
“But not for you?”
“No,” she said slowly. “I’m not sure.”
“Maine is my home, Stacey.”
“Mine, too. And trust me, it’ll still be here—and still be the same—when we’re ready to come back.” She rose from the bed without covering herself. “Just think about it. OK? That’s all I’m asking.”
I watched her walk naked into the bathroom to take a shower. Then I went downstairs to begin typing up my report.
* * *
A warden friend of mine, Gary Pulsifer, the one who sent me the photos of Shadow and the other wolf, is a recovering alcoholic. He says that drunks have a name for the idea that moving to a new place will free them from their enslavement to the bottle. They call it “the geographical cure.”
I could understand the impulse.
At many junctures in my life I’d wanted nothing more than to transform myself into a different person. If a genie had offered me the chance to become someone other than the damaged son of an emotionally abusive father, I wouldn’t even have asked for two more wishes. But those days had disappeared in the rearview mirror. I wasn’t the person I wanted to be—and certainly not the best man Charley Stevens had ever met—but I was inching closer. Which is all you can ask of yourself, I had come to believe.
Even at my lowest low, the idea of leaving Maine had never occurred to me. The state was as much a part of me as I was of it.
And I would be damned before I quit the place knowing that Casey Donaldson was still some monster’s sex slave.
I preferred to interpret Stacey’s proposal as a frustrated outburst. The governor was slashing funds to her department, putting years of her hard work in jeopardy. She was exasperated; she was sleep deprived; and she was still in mourning for her dead coworkers. But Stacey was still Stacey, I told myself. Her dark mood would pass. And I knew in my heart she loved this place as much as I did.
Rain spattered the window screen as I sat at my desk, writing my report of the past two days. The room had grown dark as the clouds had gathered over the foothills until the only light was the bluish penumbra of the computer monitor. When a bolt of lightning flashed over Sebago, I considered shutting down the machine to avoid an electrical surge, but instead I jammed the window down and wiped the raindrops from the sill.
I was in a race against memory now. The formerly sharp images in my mind—of the half-buried infant, of the “weird sisters,” of the foul-smelling house before it exploded—were already losing focus, growing soft around the edges.
For the longest time, I didn’t even notice that Stacey was standing in the doorway. She had put on her MISS CONGENIALITY shirt and shorts again. Her long hair was a wet, dark tangle.
“You should open a window.” She set another beer for me down on the desk. “It’s stuffy in here.”
“The rain was coming in.”
“It’s lightening up now.”
“Is it?”
I turned to the window and saw a yellowish-gray haze above the treetops.
“I was only thinking out loud about leaving Maine. Don’t take what I said too seriously. You know I would never leave here without you.”
19
The fire marshal called while Stacey was making dinner. He wanted to interview me about the moments leading up to the explosion. My answers would help him to determine if the fire had been accidental or deliberately set. I expected he might ask me to walk the scene with him, but he said we could handle things over the phone. From the shortness of our conversation he had clearly already amassed more than enough evidence to make a decision.
“Do you mind my asking if you found any human remains?”
“I’d prefer not to comment while the investigation is still under way,” he said, as if taking a question from a reporter.
“I understand.”
He paused on the other end of the line. “I will say that I’ve found nothing to indicate the structure was occupied at the time of the explosion.”
Just as I had expected. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. You were very lucky you weren’t blown to smithereens today, Warden. I’ve seen a lot of propane explosions and few that were worse. The Lord was looking out for you, young man. If I were you, I’d say a prayer of thanks before going to bed.”
I made a vague promise that I would do just that
. Then I hung up the phone and went into the kitchen.
“They’re alive, Stace! I knew that house was rigged to blow up after they left. I’m sure it was to destroy any evidence they might have left behind.”
“Maybe it would be better if she was dead.”
“You don’t really believe that.”
The tears in her eyes reflected the overhead lights. “You’d better rescue that poor girl is all I’m saying. Dinner’s ready, by the way.”
Stacey was a dreadful cook. It always amazed me how bad she was at meal making given the wonderful food her mother prepared. I’d found some bear meat when I’d been filling the freezer with the packages of pork, and she’d decided to make a chili with it. I doused my bowl with Tabasco until it was bloodred, and I still had trouble finishing dinner without choking.
Her culinary skills might have been nonexistent, but she had inherited her father’s hawklike perceptiveness. “Should I have used another onion?”
I hid my mouth behind my napkin. “Two were plenty.”
“More nutmeg?”
“I’ve never had nutmeg in chili before.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You hated it.”
“I’m not sure I would have thought of adding that particular spice to chili.”
“I was experimenting. I’m a scientist. That’s what we do.”
Not on their boyfriends, I thought.
Fortunately, I was saved from any further discussion of the defects in her recipe by my ringing cell phone.
I didn’t know the number, but it was a local prefix code. I stood up from the table to take the call. “Game warden.”
“Bowditch?” said a man whose guttural voice I thought I recognized.
“That’s right.”
“This is retired State Police Detective Menario. You might remember me.”
Someone in Barrett’s office had reached out to the former detective, just as Pomerleau and Finch had feared. The chili churned in my stomach as I contemplated what my old nemesis might want from me.
“I think you know why I’m calling.”
“I have a suspicion.”
“I need to talk with you about the Casey Donaldson homicide investigation.”
With that one word, homicide, he made it clear where he stood on the reliability of my testimony. He might not have been a trial lawyer, but he obviously viewed me as a hostile witness. For four years, Menario had been circling like a vulture around the same theory of what had happened to the missing college student. Dakota Rowe had killed Casey and disposed of her body in the marshy channels of the Saco River, and so far her killer had escaped justice.