Knife Creek

by Paul Doiron

  “And why do you need to talk to me?”

  His tone hardened as if I had offended him by my question. “Because you need to stop spreading rumors.”

  “I’m not spreading rumors, Detective. I’m not doing anything.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “I suggest you talk with Pomerleau.”

  “I’m talking with you. I know you like playing detective, trying to show how much smarter you are than all of us in the state police. This time, I am not going to fucking allow it. Do you understand me?”

  “Maybe you should wait for the DNA evidence to be tested. If I’m wrong, you can call back and insult me for as long as you like.”

  “Let me tell you something, Bowditch. Maybe it will change your mind if that’s even possible. It has to do with my last day on the job.”

  “All right.”

  “There was no party. There was no cake. There were no speeches or toasts. Everyone I worked with knew I didn’t want any of that shit. I worked a normal day, same as any other. I only did one thing unusual, and that was, before I turned out the lights, I made a copy of a case file to bring home with me. Guess which one?”

  “Casey Donaldson’s.”

  “Bingo. I understand that Detective Pomerleau told you about my investigation. What she didn’t do, I hear, is show you the complete file. I would like to do that. And from what I know about you, I suspect you would be extremely interested in seeing the documents that Major Crimes has never shared with anyone outside our unit. That’s true, isn’t it?”

  Stacey began cleaning up the dirty dishes. I carried the phone out into the hall to escape the clattering plates and the running faucet. I stood under a deer skull I had found intact in the woods of my first district, up on the midcoast. I’d mounted the bones to a plaque and hung them on the wall as a memento mori. Not that I had ever needed one.

  “Why would you show the file to me?” I heard the doubt in my voice.

  “Because otherwise you’re going to be running around saying the Donaldson girl is still alive. You’re going to be sowing doubt where there should be no doubt. You’re going to be jeopardizing my ability to secure a conviction against the scumbag, piece-of-shit lowlife who killed that poor defenseless girl. The reason I will show you the file—the only reason—is to shut you the fuck up. Meet me at the Good Life Café in Fryeburg at seven thirty tomorrow morning.”

  He hung up before I could squeeze in another word.

  I wandered back out to the kitchen, where Stacey was scrubbing the burned chili pot.

  “So that was your old buddy Menario? What’s his beef now?”

  “He doesn’t seem too happy that I have found Casey alive.”

  She dropped the ball of steel wool. “What? Why? You’d think he’d be thrilled.”

  “He doesn’t believe the woman I saw was really her. And he’s worried that my sketch is going to spread enough doubt that this Dakota Rowe—the guy he believes ‘killed’ Casey—will walk if he ever goes to trial.”

  She rubbed her wet hands on the thighs of her jeans instead of using a dishrag. “So what are you going to do?”

  “I am going to meet him, of course.”

  * * *

  The next morning I rose before dawn again and got dressed without waking Stacey. Ever since the morning we’d shot the pigs, her insomnia seemed to have transformed itself into a deep sleepiness that was just this side of a coma.

  But when I kissed her cheek, she batted her eyes open.

  “I’m leaving to meet Menario. Don’t be late for work.”

  She yawned into the back of her hand. “Remember that my folks will be here tonight.”

  Charley and Ora would be staying with us for the July Fourth holiday. Tomorrow was our first-ever house party. A bunch of our friends would be coming—Stacey’s friends, mostly, since I had so few—and we weren’t remotely prepared for the cookout.

  She flopped onto her back and closed her eyes again.

  “Don’t fall back asleep.”

  I lingered a minute to look at her face, tracing it with my eyes as I might have with my fingers.

  In the truck I took a few minutes to get myself organized before I set off for Fryeburg. Charley Stevens had taught me never to go into a possibly confrontational situation without some kind of a plan, even if I might need to change it halfway through.

  “Always know why you’re there,” he’d said. “Know what you need to know.”

  Presumably Menario intended to show me some document—an interview transcript, an evidence report—that, in his mind, categorically proved Casey had been murdered. His goal was to convince me that I had sketched the face of the missing woman’s doppelgänger by coincidence. In his mind, the real Casey Donaldson was long dead, her flesh rotting down to the bones beneath some undercut bank in the river, beneath a shroud of mud.

  And what was my goal?

  To have him fill in the gaps for me in Casey’s story. To learn one new thing that might point me in the direction of finding her now.

  The thunderstorms of the night before had broken off clumps of leaves and scattered green acorns across the road. I had to swerve around some larger branches that the winds had hurled onto the asphalt.

  Halfway to my destination, I came upon several vehicles stopped along the roadside at the edge of Hancock Pond. Several people were wading in the shoals, some with their pants rolled above their knees, others stripped down to their skivvies. They were bent over and gathering floating objects from the water’s surface and dropping them in all manner of containers. I pulled over beyond the line of cars and trucks and got out to have a look.

  Lakes in the summer have a distinctive smell—froggy, but also heavy with algae and often gasoline fumes from outboard motors—but the warming air above Hancock Pond was close to overpowering with the odor of fish. The weedy shallows were full of floating corpses: largemouth and smallmouth bass, hornpout, fallfish, even some brown and lake trout, not to mention red-breasted sunfish, pumpkinseeds, yellow perch, pickerel, and all manner of minnows.

  The passing motorists had stopped to harvest the seemingly unexplainable bounty the lake was offering on this windless morning.

  A man in an office-casual outfit, his chinos rolled up to his knees, waded toward me with an inane grin and a bucket full of fish. “Have you ever seen anything like this, Warden? It’s like something out of the Old Testament. What happened here?”

  “Lightning strike. A bolt must have struck the lake last night. Water is a good conductor of electricity. So the current radiates out from the point of impact, frying all the fish for dozens of yards.”

  “Really? That’s wild!”

  “I don’t suppose you have a fishing license.”

  His grin dropped. “I don’t need one to pick up dead fish.”

  “I’m afraid you do, and you can only keep the fish allowed under the state’s regulations.”

  Some of the other gatherers had paused to listen to our conversation. “But these are just gonna rot!” said a leathery woman in yellow shorts.

  “Rules are rules.”

  The foragers collectively groaned. Most dumped their finds back into the water. Those with licenses began sorting through their buckets and bags, tossing out the small fry and prohibited species.

  Fortunately, several cormorants and loons had stealthily floated in from the deeper water to feast on the castoffs. I heard a family of ospreys chirping and whistling overhead, ready to dive as soon as the last humans cleared out. Better that the feathered scavengers ate their fill, I thought.

  The unexpected stop delayed me close to half an hour. By the time I found a parking space in Fryeburg, I had begun to wonder whether Menario had even bothered to wait.

  The Good Life Café was a bright little place with lots of hanging plants. The walls were plastered with posters from past years of the Common Ground Country Fair. Behind the counter and waiting on the tables were only women. Their mix-and-match uniforms consisted of kerchiefs wrapped ar
ound their heads, hemp shirts, ripped jeans, and sandals.

  The people bunched up at the door, waiting for one of the six small tables, and those already eating, had a more upscale air about them, based, at least, on their clothing labels: Patagonia, Horny Toad, prAna, et cetera. Against this crunchy backdrop, I had no trouble spotting Detective Menario.

  He was short for a cop, always the shortest guy in the troop photograph, and so always in the front row. He had compensated for his insecurities about his height through rigorous strength training that had thickened his neck and given his body the squat muscularity of a man who takes out his aggressions on a heavy bag chained to the rafters in his basement.

  He wore a white polo shirt that was tight around his tanned biceps, charcoal-gray golf pants, and tasseled loafers without socks. A pair of aviator sunglasses perched atop his head. He looked grayer than the last time I’d run into him, and pouches had formed under his eyes. But he still wore a cop’s buzz cut. Nothing about his appearance suggested he was the kind of person who frequented hippie cafés.

  Menario didn’t beckon to me; he expected that I would come over. Several dirty plates in front of him told me he had already finished breakfast. Neither of us moved to shake hands.

  I sat down across from him. His white polo was so sheer I could see the curling black hairs on his chest through the fabric.

  “Good morning.”

  “You’re late.”

  An unsmiling waitress came over with two carafes. She seemed displeased by the heavy black firearm on my belt. As did everyone else in the establishment, judging by the frowns I was getting.

  “Chicory coffee or Jasmine Sunrise tea?” she asked.

  “Coffee. Thank you.”

  After she’d moved on to the next table, Menario smirked. “Have you ever had chicory coffee?”

  I took a sip. It tasted like scorched hazelnuts. “So where’s this file you want to show me?”

  “In my car. It’s not the sort of thing you open up in a place like this. Get the tab, will you? I’ll meet you outside your truck.”

  The waitress seemed to be making a concentrated effort to ignore me—not a fan of law enforcement, I guessed—but I finally got her to deliver the bill. Menario’s organic breakfast cost me twenty-three dollars, not including the tip.

  20

  Menario was waiting on the corner, wearing his mirrored shades and with a leather portfolio tucked under his gorilla arm.

  “Now what?” I said.

  “Open the door.”

  To make room for him in my patrol truck, I had to push aside the swinging laptop stand. He frowned at the muddy floor mats and pollen-covered dashboard. When he was finally inside, I waited for him to unzip the portfolio, but he fastened the lap belt across his chest.

  “Start driving.” His breath smelled of the strange spices in his breakfast.

  “Where?”

  “The river.”

  I turned on the engine and checked my mirrors. “What’s with the cloak-and-dagger stuff?”

  “You’ll see.”

  We started off down Main Street, passed the prep school that was famous for attracting students from around the world, continued north till we came up on the fairgrounds, then kept going toward the bridge across the Saco. Two big canoe-rental businesses and campgrounds were there, on either side of the river, but before we reached the water, my passenger told me to take a right.

  “We’re going to Krasker Pond?”

  “No.”

  Only after I saw the sign for Hodge’s Campground and Canoe did I understand: Menario was guiding me to the place where Casey Donaldson and her friends had embarked on their ill-fated float trip. The retired detective had a flair for showmanship. We passed the pond and then he told me to take a left. The pavement ended abruptly and gave way to wet sand that I could hear sticking to my tires and gumming up my treads.

  A livery van pulling a trailer meant to haul canoes and kayaks came barreling straight at us. The road was so narrow we passed each other with probably an inch of clearance, and even then I heard moose maples slapping at the right side of my pickup.

  The entrance to the campground was coming up and I flicked on my blinker to signal the turn.

  “Not here. Keep going straight and then veer right.”

  The right he’d indicated was not even a real road, just a cleared area in the underbrush that had been progressively beaten back by the passage of trucks and SUVs. The dirt was worn down into ruts between which long weeds sprouted. The grass blades bent and scraped the undercarriage, but at least they brushed off some of the sand.

  I saw increasing light through the pine boughs and the oak branches, which told me we were approaching a clearing. It was a good thing I decreased my speed because a moment later a steep bank appeared before us. I braked hard but slid on the sand almost, but not quite, to the edge.

  I pushed the transmission into park and gazed down at the tea-colored water of the Saco. “You could have warned me we were about to do a Thelma and Louise here.”

  “You don’t know this road? I thought this was your district.”

  “If you’re done busting my chops, maybe you can tell me why you brought me here.”

  He unzipped the portfolio finally, and a luxurious leather smell arose from within. The contents consisted of a single overstuffed manila folder secured by a fraying red rubber band. He removed the band and slid it over his wrist for safekeeping. Then he wetted his index and middle fingers and began leafing through the contents inside. He came to a stack of photos paper-clipped together.

  “I wanted to start with the pictures. This is Casey.”

  He handed me a photograph that had been printed on regular copy paper. It showed a beaming, dark-haired girl with a spectacular tan, standing knee-deep in the river. Her eyes were hidden behind drugstore sunglasses in the shape of hearts. She was wearing a bikini top that showed off her cleavage, cutoff jeans around her waist, and that telltale diamond ring on her right hand.

  I removed my own sunglasses and examined the portrait closely. She was certainly lovely. Her arms and legs were slender; she had none of the paleness or the doughiness of the woman in the crimson wig. This person was happy, healthy, and likely intoxicated. The one I’d seen reminded me of some bloodless creature that had evolved to live in dark caves deep underground.

  There was, however, one significant similarity: the mole on her cheek.

  “This is the woman I saw in the house.”

  “You are shitting me.”

  “I’m telling you it’s her.”

  “Take a look at these.” He began handing me photo after photo: Casey’s high school yearbook page; a posed holiday picture of her and her stepfather, a flabby, bespectacled man who might have appeared in a child’s picture book to illustrate his profession of plumber; Casey with her teammates on the UNH field-hockey team; Casey in selfies, both alone and with her male and female friends; and finally snapshots taken during that final float trip. Pomerleau had mentioned another girl had been along—a stocky blonde who might have been a fellow field-hockey player—and three guys. One was black, one might have been Latino, and the third was white or would have been if he hadn’t been sunburned the most painful shade of pink I’d ever seen.

  “I don’t know what I can tell you.” I handed all the photos back. “The woman I saw was Casey Donaldson. She’s paler now, kind of sickly looking, and she’s put on weight, but I have no doubt in my mind it was her.”

  Menario flipped to another photograph. It showed a young man who looked as if he spent serious time under a barbell. He had a hipster haircut and a waxed mustache that belonged on a bare-knuckles boxing champion from the nineteenth century. Unsurprisingly, the gym rat was shirtless. The picture revealed some truly artful tattoos on his arms and torso, not your usual redneck ink done by a self-taught artiste. A well-drawn hawk spread out on either side of his sternum, the outstretched wings covering both pectoral muscles, with the outermost pinions extending up to
his shoulders. His arms were covered in full sleeves, the interwoven patterns so intricate I would have had to see them up close to pick out the individual images.

  “This is Dakota Rowe?”

  “Bingo.”

  “I was under the impression that you had proof positive to convince me I was mistaken with my ID.”

  Menario rifled through his portfolio again, and this time he produced a folded document that he opened carefully across his lap. It was the most detailed topographic map of the Saco River I had ever seen. My guess was that the Warden Service had made it during the search using one of our sophisticated mapping programs. The detective stuck his index finger on an X at a place called Mad Tom Point.

  “This is where Casey and her friends spent their second night.” He traced a winding course along the river as it snaked its way to the south, often coiling back upon itself in channels and dead-water loops. His finger stopped on a second X. “And this is Oxbow Island, where they camped and went skinny-dipping the next day.”

  The island or sandbar was deep in the marshy area to the east of the main channel of the river. Finding it would have required intimate knowledge of the Saco. It was hard to believe a quintet of mostly out-of-state college kids would have ventured so deep into the backcountry to swim naked, especially when nudity was so common along the river.

  “This is where Casey thought she lost her mom’s ring,” I said.

  “It’s where Rowe claims she found it, too.” A grin spread across Menario’s face. “There was only one problem with his story.”

  “I know. One of Casey’s friends found the ring in the bottom of his canoe.”

  Menario deflated like a pricked balloon. “Who told you that?”

  He’d intended the disclosure to be his secret weapon. Surely, it would make me start questioning myself.