Massacre Pond

20

When I got back to my truck, I called McQuarrie to get instructions on what I should do next. He told me to go home. For all Rivard’s bold talk about putting his entire division on this case 24/7, I guessed that certain budgetary realities were taking hold. Wardens could volunteer their time to assist on a particularly heinous investigation, but as government employees, we were protected against being coerced into “donating” our services for days on end. Under the Garcia law, we would need to be compensated for all this overtime.

“Do you know Todd Pelkey and Lewis Beam?” I asked McQuarrie.

“Yeah,” he said. “Met them in the woods around Talmadge a few times. Pretty good hunters. They both bag multiple deer each season. Why?”

“I think we should add their names to the list.”

“Is this a hunch, or have you got proof of something?”

“Their names came up in a conversation I had today,” I said. “Can you check them out on MOSES?” That was the computer system the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife uses to keep its records about the individuals we come into contact with during the course of our work. It isn’t a criminal records database, although it does include hunting and fishing infractions.

“I’ll give the tip to Bilodeau to check out,” said McQuarrie. “If he finds anything interesting, we’ll let you know.”

I’d been hoping to get immediate information, but my sergeant’s answer contained clear, if unstated, instructions to me: Stay focused on your own assigned duties and leave the investigation to the investigators.

I took his advice and headed home.

As I drove, I found myself having an internal argument with an imaginary version of Elizabeth Morse. She’d found a tender spot when she’d said that I was unlike my fellow wardens in some essential way-that I seemed to be pretending.

I grew up in the woods, lady, I told the out-of-focus blond image in my head.

Just until you were nine, she replied, somehow having access to the facts of my life. You really grew up in suburbia.

Yes, but even when we lived in Scarborough, I hunted and fished. I got my junior hunting license when I was twelve years old and shot my first deer when I turned sixteen. I would have taken one earlier if I’d had an adult willing to accompany me.

But you didn’t. Your father was up in the woods of western Maine, and the only sports your stepfather was interested in were tennis and golf.

My dad taught me to shoot a twenty-two in a gravel pit when I was eight years old. He took me out with him on his trap line.…

He took you out one time.

I watched him butcher the deer he brought home each season.

But he never took you hunting with him.

I was too young.

Basically, you had to teach yourself everything. You present yourself as having been this impoverished child from the North Woods, but you spent your entire adolescence in an upscale town of green lawns and new subdivisions. So who are you, really? The modern-day Huck Finn or the straight-A student from Scarborough High School?

I can’t be both?

There’s a division in your personality that everyone can see. It’s why you disobey the commands of your superiors and why your fellow officers don’t fully trust you. They sense your essential insecurity.

I know exactly who I am, Ms. Morse.

You don’t sound very convincing when you say that, Warden Bowditch, said the imaginary woman with the catlike smile.

My cell phone rang as I was pulling into my dooryard. The number was blocked. Elizabeth Morse again? I thought.

“He came back again, Mike!” said Chubby LeClair.

The late-afternoon sun was slanting through the pine boughs outside my cabin. I watched a red squirrel scamper across the mossy roof like a burglar looking for a way to sneak inside. All I wanted to do was grab a beer from the fridge and sit down on the porch and enjoy a quiet moment. The day had left me in a bad place. “Who did, Chub?”

“That other warden, Bard. He came back and asked if he could search inside my camper again. I’d just gotten everything picked up from before. I told him I wasn’t awskassu, that I didn’t want to make trouble. But I wasn’t going to let him in again without a warrant. He told me that sounded like I had something to hide.”

How had I become the confessor and therapist to this drug-dealing con artist? I took off my sunglasses and rested them on the dusty dashboard. I needed to rub my eyes. “Well, do you?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re a convicted criminal with a history of poaching. There’s a reason we’re looking at you for those shootings.”

“I thought you and me were witapiyal.” He seemed to be having a hard time drawing a breath, but then again, the overweight man always sounded as if he had a bank safe resting on his chest.

“Knock off the Passamaquoddy act, Chub.”

“I thought we were friends.”

“We’re not friends,” I said. “I don’t even like you.”

“Why are you being this way, man?”

“Because you have no regard for the law, and the word around Washington County is that you trade drugs to teenagers for sexual favors. For all I know, Bard is right and you did kill those moose.”

“I didn’t, man.” He was definitely hyperventilating now. “I’ve done some bad things. You’re right. But I’ve got a big heart. Ask anyone.”

The squirrel had disappeared. Had it found a gap between the shingles? That was all I needed. Red squirrels were known to chew on electrical wires. Half the house fires in the area seemed to have been started by arsonist rodents. “What is it you want from me?”

“Call him, man. Tell Bard to stop harassing me.” His tone had turned babyish, as if he was on the edge of tears. “I can’t take it. I’m going through a rough patch, you know? It’s like a very, very bad time for me.”

“I’m not going to do that,” I said.

“But he’s outside the house!”

“What?”

“He’s been sitting there in his truck for the past hour, just sitting and watching my windows. I’m afraid to go out there.”

Leave it to Bard to make me feel sorry for a blubbering pedophile. But the last thing I was going to do was call up another warden, especially one in the good graces of the lieutenant, and tell him to cut out bullying a prime suspect in the worst wildlife crime in Maine history. My reputation didn’t need another nail in the coffin I had nearly finished carpentering.

“I’m sorry, Chub,” I said, “but I can’t help you here. If you have a problem with Bard, call the Maine Warden Service in Augusta and report him for misconduct.”

He gave one last sob before he hung up the phone.

I had spent the first two and a half years of my career as an insubordinate troublemaker. McQuarrie had told me my life would get better if I’d just start being a team player and did everything by the book. At the moment, I couldn’t say that approach was exactly working for me, either.

When I opened the door, I heard the scratching sound of tiny claws digging into wood and caught sight of a furry tail slipping through a crack between the fireplace and the ceiling. A hole had been chewed through the loaf of bread I’d left on the counter beside the sink, and there were hard black pellets of squirrel shit on the kitchen table. I’d have to get the ladder out and climb up onto the roof in the failing light and attempt some emergency repairs. I needed to act quickly to stop this infestation.

But first I got a Molson out of the refrigerator and opened it using the Leatherman multitool I wore on my belt. I’d gone through a period after the end of my relationship with Sarah when I had worried about my alcohol consumption, so I had stopped drinking altogether, but I had started having an occasional beer again over the winter and had managed to keep my life (and my drinking) under control.

I noticed a new message waiting on my answering machine. “Were you ever going to call me back?” My stepfather, Neil Turner, rarely sounded enraged, but his voice was as superheated as any time I could remember. “I know we haven’t been close for a while, but I think you owe me the courtesy of returning my phone calls, especially where your mother is concerned. Call me at the office, call me at home, or call me on my cell. But please, Michael, just call me today.” And he left the three numbers at which he could be reached.

My stepfather was right. It had been rude of me not to call him back, no matter how preoccupied I’d been with the moose investigation. It was almost as if I had been eager to forget about him. Why was Neil so worried about my mom? I hadn’t received any of her inspirational e-mails all day, I realized. Now the fact that she’d fallen silent sent a shiver through my central nervous system.

I set the beer down and called my stepfather back on his cell. “Neil? It’s Mike.”

“Oh,” he said with formality. “Hello. Thanks for calling. Can you hold on a minute?”

I had the sense that he was leaving one room and entering another. When he came back on the line, he was whispering, but there was consternation in his voice. “I’d expected you to call sooner.”

“I’ve been working a pretty big case.”

“Oh?”

“You’ve probably heard about it. Ten moose were killed on Elizabeth Morse’s land in Washington County. It’s been all over the news.”

“I must have missed it,” he said. “I’ve had other things on my mind.”

“It’s the worst wildlife crime in Maine history.”

“I’m sure it is,” he said.

He was going to make me ask, I realized. I took a swig of beer for courage. “Neil, what’s going on with Mom?”

“She has something she’d like to speak with you about.”

“What is it?”

“It would be better if she told you herself. Can you come down here tomorrow?”

“Can’t she just tell me over the phone?”

“It would be best if you came to the house.”

“I’m working this major investigation,” I said. “I’m not sure I can get away.”

He paused a long time, as if counting to ten. “I think this takes precedence.”

“Now you’ve got me worried. I can drive down tonight if it’s that important.”

“Tomorrow morning would be best. I haven’t told her that I’ve been in contact with you. We’ll look for you around nine o’clock, all right?”

Living in Greater Portland with few reasons to venture north except to ski, Neil had no idea how big Maine was: roughly the size of all the other New England states combined. He seemed to have no clue that I was practically based in Canada here and facing a four-and-a-half-hour drive to get to Scarborough.

“All right,” I said. “But I wish you’d tell me what this is about.”

“We’ll see you at nine, Mike.”

By the time I’d hung up the phone, I had given up any idea of climbing onto the roof to prevent any more incursions by the local squirrels. I wasn’t sure what excuse I would give Rivard about taking a personal day in the middle of his career-making investigation, but with Morse away in New York, the lieutenant probably wouldn’t care about my whereabouts. I didn’t imagine I would be missed.