KILLING MAINE

by Mike Bond

  I trekked back to Lexie’s in a better mood. Dawn was beginning to tint the distant treetops; coyotes called hungrily from a far valley. Thank you I said back to them, to the one who’d called and saved my life. It might have just been accidental, but I’ve known enough animals to think it may have been intended.

  Coyotes often understand people better than people do. Which may explain why people shoot, trap and poison them.

  By the time I crawled into my bunk at Lexie’s I was half-frozen and dizzy with exhaustion, and gray day was upon us.

  That’s when the cops called.

  Welcome to Vacationland

  OFFICER HART, the same paunchy sarcastic Augusta cop on my phone. “It’s now been three days she’s gone, or whatever she’s done. We want you down here, make a statement.”

  “Statement?” I pried open one eye. Then the other. “What the hell for?”

  “Once it’s this long we have to investigate. Even if we don’t think there’s nothing to it.”

  “I can’t do it right now.”

  “Be here by ten or we come get you.”

  I sleep till nine, shave and brush my teeth with soap, find something half-clean to wear and bolt down Lexie’s coffee and doughnuts. Rocinante doesn’t want to start, perhaps nervous about what lies ahead. Leaving a bilious wake of smog and particulates we finally wander, slip and slide our way to the Augusta cop shop, where they invite me to a back room with a dirty floor, faded walls, speckled casement windows, metal chairs and a metal table. The paunchy cop, C. Hart, and a tall skinny one with a Hemingway moustache whose badge said “F. Dilfer”, plus a video recorder and another camera high up on the wall. I’m afraid for a moment and wonder should I say nothing without a lawyer? Don’t be silly, I tell myself, we’re trying to find Abigail. You’re not a suspect.

  So I tell them about seeing her at the Capitol cafeteria, that I’d thought I’d met her somewhere.

  “What day was this?”

  I tried to remember; yes, it had been a Sunday night when she’d come home with the maroon Subaru , so Monday morning when I followed her to the Capitol and set up our little meeting. “Last Monday.”

  “What were you doin there?” the skinny tall cop with the Hemingway moustache said.

  What could I say? I wasn’t going to bring up Bucky, or Abigail’s husband’s death, or tell them why I was really here. “I was wandering around the Capitol, doing the tourist thing.”

  “In fucking February?”

  I remembered there was a library across the parking lot, a museum. “I went to the museum, lady at the desk said there’s a cafeteria at the Capitol… I was having a doughnut and coffee when Abigail came in.”

  “That’s a nice museum,” C. Hart says.

  “Yeah.”

  He leaned toward me, belly against the table. “What’d you see there?”

  “Don’t remember much, just took a glance around.”

  “Really? That morning? Monday, February 9?”

  Sweat was running down my ribs. “Yeah.”

  “Funny,” he sat back. “Museum’s closed on Mondays.”

  “So maybe it was Tuesday! This is bull shit – I ask for help finding this woman and you start implicating me?”

  “You’re a perp. Perps often start the search for someone they’ve done in.”

  I laughed. “You saying I killed Abigail?”

  He gave a sardonic sigh. “Heavens no.”

  “I wouldn’t hurt anybody. I like her. I’m afraid for her.”

  “You wouldn’t hurt nobody?” C. Hart said. “You shot that woman –”

  “She was dying. Burned alive. Begged me to do it.”

  “Yeah. Right.” He clasped his hands, elbows on the metal table. “So you met Abigail at the Capitol cafeteria?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What then?”

  “I ran into her next night at Slates. She was singing Irish songs. Playing the guitar.” It was very beautiful, I wanted to say but no way he’d understand. She was very beautiful. She was…

  “So you talked to her?”

  “Yeah. After she was done.”

  “Where was this?”

  “At my table.”

  “She sees you, comes over?”

  “I sent her a drink. She came over.”

  “What next?”

  “We spent a long time talking.”

  “Then what?”

  “Went to her place.”

  “So you were screwing this dame? Who’s now disappeared?”

  “That’s her business. And mine.”

  “And he was the last one to see her,” Hart says to Hemingway.

  “When was that?” Hemingway says.

  “Night she disappeared,” Hart answers. “They had a fight at Slates, she left in an angry hurry and he followed her out. Nobody seen her since.”

  Hemingway leans back, hands clasped behind his head. “No shit.”

  “We got three witnesses at Slates, two waiters and the guy at the cash register.”

  “Jealousy?” Hemingway turns to me. “Found out she was screwing other guys, got upset? That’s what’s usually going on when guys kill women.”

  I stood up. “What are you insinuating?”

  He smiled at me. “Nothing. For the moment.”

  “What are you doing to find Abigail?”

  “We’re checking,” Hart said.

  “Checking what, for Chrissake?”

  “Where the fuck she is.”

  I wanted to hit them both. “Please try to find her.”

  “One thing we have found,” Hemingway said, “is a paper napkin with your name and number. In her office.”

  “I gave that to her.”

  “Really?” He raised his eyebrows.

  “One way or the other we’ll find her,” Hart adds. “But in the meantime, till she shows up, you’re a person of interest in her disappearance.”

  “Fuck you. I’ll get a lawyer.”

  “You go right ahead,” Hemingway said. “But we don’t want you leaving Maine.”

  “Right,” Hart said. “Welcome to Vacationland.”

  That’s when Pa called.

  PA WAS A SEAL in Vietnam, where he learned as I did later in Iraq that defending freedom ain’t always what it seems. This also explains why I love the Seals though when I was younger I often got in fights with them. They were the people I grew up around, quiet guys with that far look in their eyes. And when you punched them it hurt your fist not them.

  Later I’ll explain you some of what happened in Nam, and how Pa and millions of other people paid for it. By the time he got home in ‘73, when for the U.S. it was all over but for the last screams of the wounded, he’d had his brains removed and replaced with the most horrifying video game you can imagine.

  It took him nine years to find Ma, a person I remember deeply though she was killed by a drunk driver when I was seven. As I got older he’d had plenty of women but never lived with one. So in my youth I was coddled and loved by many different smart and interesting women, most of whom it appears found Pa too hot to handle, but who were all lovely and caring to me. From which maybe comes my love of women. Or it’s just DNA.

  He spent the next thirty years as a professional diver, not the kind who takes you out on a reef tour, but the kind who gets called when a plane goes down in five hundred feet of ocean and somebody has to go to that depth. Or for a problem on a drill rig in Indonesia or the North Sea, or to check out a damaged hull in Singapore. After those thirty years he retired to a hut on posts in the verdant upper reaches of Waipio Valley, one of the loveliest places on earth.

  And now I’m standing outside the cop shop in a bitter wind, that 808 area code lighting up like a beacon from home. 11:12 in Maine is 06:12 in Waipio – before sunrise, a little early for Pa.

  “Hey,” he says, “how is it back there?”

  I explain him a bit about Bucky. “This the guy what nailed you?” Pa says.

  “He thought he was doing the righ
t thing.”

  “And this was the girl you was with before he nailed you? The one I met?”

  “Lexie? Yeah, till I got the twenty years…”

  “Your own damn fault you got that.”

  “What was I going to do, Pa, with that Afghani girl writhing in agony? She was dying anyway –”

  “Yeah but then to shoot her dumbfuck husband?”

  “He’s the one who lit her on fire!”

  “So what? Nearly every Muslim believes this whacked-out shit about women! You gonna shoot them all?”

  “Pa, what the fuck you call about?”

  “Call about? Oh yeah, I forgot. Went to the doctor yesterday. Can you believe that? How many years since I been–”

  “Yeah?”

  “So I realized I should call you.”

  Oh shit. “Yeah?”

  “Have to go into Hilo, do some tests.”

  “What kinda tests?”

  “They’re gonna to look down a tube in my stomach, some other stuff.”

  “Pa, what do they think it is?”

  “Hell, they don’t know. Most everybody in Nam got exposed to Agent Orange. Just matters can you survive it. You know the VA.”

  Overworked, underfunded and understaffed, the VA moves slowly. “How soon?”

  “They’re having me do it right away.”

  Sitting Duck

  GOING CRAZY about Abigail I kept looking. Wrapped in a horse blanket in Bucky’s 150 I drove the streets of so many Maine towns but never saw her white Saab. Like a penitent pilgrim I wandered every shop and café, every Dollar Store, Hannaford, mini-mall and hippie market.

  No Abigail.

  Sometimes it hit so bad I hate to admit but I choked up, holding it in and trying to look normal, saying to myself I will not get emotional. But when you really care for someone in danger you’ll do anything to help them. No matter the cost.

  Not that I knew what that would be. Not yet.

  “YOU NEED A LAWYER.” Lexie came back from the reefer with two glasses of ice and Tanqueray, shoved one across the table at me and raised hers. “To the old days.”

  “To the old days,” I said, unconvinced. We’d had dinner and I’d washed the dishes while she planned tomorrow’s biology class but it was far too early to sleep. I’d shown her the list of names I’d taken from the Missalonkee Hard Riders clubhouse, and she’d known fifteen out of fifty-one. “I’ll narrow it down,” she said, looking mean.

  I loved it when she looked that way but I was too worried about Pa – now the cops were restricting me to Maine, what if the tests turned out bad and he needed me?

  She downed her gin in a long languorous swallow, slapped the glass on the table and leaned forward smiling into my eyes. “Remember how we were?”

  That made my privates tingle. “I remember.”

  “So get over it already.” She took my hand. “You and I, we’re going to get Bucky out. Then we’re going to ride off into the sunset together.” She slid her fingers between mine. “And when we do I’m going to be riding on your lap.”

  This was one of the infinite things I’d loved about Lexie, that she liked to be on top. “Why do I need a lawyer?” I said defensively.

  “Why?” She looked at me the way she used to sometimes, as if I’d proven once again I had no brain at all. Her voice went up an octave, “Why?”

  “Yeah. Why already.”

  “Why? Because the cops don’t care who did what or who’s guilty. If they cared about guilt they’d arrest all the lobbyists and half the Legislators in Augusta. If Abigail turns up dead they want a suspect so they look good on TV. You’re a recidivist – if Abigail stays missing, of course you did it.” She refilled her glass to the brim. “Here,” she shoved the bottle at me. “Get some sense.”

  “Why?” I repeated.

  “Why?” She went up another octave. “Because they want you. Just like they wanted you last time! When they didn’t give a damn why you had to kill that dying woman in Afghanistan! They didn’t give a damn, the Army and the Pentagon and DOD and Colin Powell and Donald Rumsfeld and Cheney and that smarmy little turd Bush – they didn’t give a damn! They wanted you as a poster child showing we punish war crimes – that we’re going to crucify you while we perpetrate real war crimes elsewhere.” She dropped her head a moment, long hair on the table, then raised up and looked into my eyes. “I won’t go through it again.”

  I bit my lip. “Nobody’s asking you to.”

  Tears flooded her eyes. “I’m not losing you again.”

  I felt miserable, hemmed in, afraid. I didn’t want more jail time and didn’t want to be monogamous either. If I ever got out of jail.

  Twice I’d learned how the law can kidnap you from your life into its soul-annihilating horrors. So I had lots of fear knowing it can grab you just because it wants to. Particularly if you satisfy some political or financial goal.

  “The Pussy Riot girls are in trouble again,” I said.

  “Putin wants to look tough on Ukraine.”

  “I love those girls,” I added, with a certain longing. In my mind they were all lovely, naked and irate, a wonderful combination.

  She refilled her glass, looked at me through it. “If all the pussies on the planet rioted there’d be no more war.”

  “True.”

  “Speaking of Pussy Riot,” she caressed my fingers, “Abigail had this thing about doing guys only one night, you said?”

  “Yeah but she did it again with me.”

  “If she was doing guys only once, then she’s not somewhere with a guy. Unless they’re really into tantra.”

  “Even then…”

  Lexie grinned, a little high. “How was she?”

  “Fantastic. The all-night kind of thing.”

  “You and I had lots of those.”

  “Stop taunting me. We’re not going to do it.”

  “That’s why it’s safe to taunt you.” She took a reflective sip, running the gin round her tongue, enjoying the taste. “And if Abigail turns up safe you’re no longer at risk.”

  The thought was overwhelming but cut like a knife. I wasn’t just fearing for Abigail, I missed her, wanted her. “And then all we’ll have to do is get Bucky out.”

  Lexie leaned toward me, elbows on the table. “Hey, what if he knows?”

  “Who?”

  “Bucky.” Lexie slapped the table. “That bitch -- what if he knows where she is?”

  This made me wonder did she know Bucky and Abigail were lovers? If they were? I played dumb: “How would Bucky know?”

  “He talked to her a few times, met her at a hearing.” She shrugged. “He might have an idea –”

  I stood. The room stayed relatively stable. “Let’s go see him.” I headed for the door, pulled it open a crack to check how hard the blizzard was howling.

  “We can’t go now!” Lexie called. “It’s almost midnight!”

  “Just taking a leak.” I slid sideways through the door and yanked it shut, crossed the barnyard’s squeaky new snow and pissed against a post, the wind snatching it away.

  The problem of Bucky literally weighted down my shoulders with fear, exhaustion and defeat. Like the dangers facing Maine from its implacable enemies. Like my own dangers. I stood there taking deep breaths of frigid wind that tasted deliciously of snow and frozen forests. Even in the worst of situations, I reminded myself, there’s sometimes a way to win. The idea seemed true and irreversible as the wind.

  The turbines weren’t turning but the strobes fluttered across the snowy wastes with a ghoulish glow.

  After the icy night the kitchen was hot and stuffy. “We’ll go see Bucky in the morning,” I said. “Put your coat on, come outside.”

  We stood side by side inhaling the north wind, arms round each other’s backs like veterans returned from the wars, this woman I’d loved so much and now couldn’t have, not by my rules or hers, till we got Bucky out. It seemed a perverse version of some medieval romance, a knight sworn to save the husband of the w
oman he loves.

  Which made me think again of Abigail. Maybe Bucky did have an answer. And I’d been too stupid to ask him. I gave Lexie’s ribs a little squeeze of thanks; she squeezed me back. Lexie and Abigail – right there was enough reason to avoid monogamy at all costs. Impossible to love just one woman. And there was Erica, too.

  But right now what I cared about was Abigail.

  “DON’T YOU DARE come visit me,” Pa said when I called.

  “Cops won’t let me leave Maine.”

  “Jesus why are you always in trouble?”

  “I’m not always in trouble. Just sometimes. Anyway in a few days this’ll all be cleared up and I’ll be there.”

  “I don’t want you to come. I been ducking death a long time, now it’s my turn. I don’t mind. This pain, so goddamn bad you don’t want to live.”

  That broke my heart.

  Shooter

  IWENT BY ABIGAIL’S next morning hoping something had changed. But no, the house looked closed-up, forsaken, as if after someone’s death. I stood on the granite doorstep and peered through the leaded glass door panel. Inside seemed uninhabited, the hardwood gleaming, the Persian carpets lustrous reds and blues in early sun.

  On the floor inside the door was a pile of mail. Why hadn’t the cops picked it up? Gone through it?

  On top a handwritten envelope. Twisting my head back and forth I could barely see it through the rainbow glass. READ THIS NOW in red magic marker, above her name and address. No return address.

  I backed away, returned to the truck. Couldn’t decide whether to ask the cops to check that mail, or wait till night and do it myself.

  AT STATE PRISON Bucky still wouldn’t see me. I would’ve paid good money to strangle him. I drove back to Lexie’s feeling displaced, annoyed and weirdly nervous for my life.

  Lexie met me at the kitchen door brandishing the Missalonkee snowmobilers list. “I’ve compared it with Mitchell’s. Only three of them might’ve shot at you.”

  I slumped into a kitchen chair, weary from thinking about what I’d learned from Mildred, what Mitchell had said, even more from Abigail’s aching absence. The spider web around me, and around Maine, was growing deeper, multidimensional, and for the first time I feared it would devour me, and Maine too. I glanced at her short list. “How come these three?”