Massacre Pond

37

I stopped at the gate and rolled down my window, letting in a blast of bitter air. An old guy with bifocals was perched atop a stool inside the gatehouse, doing crosswords. “Morning, Warden,” he said. “What seems to be the trouble?”

It was the same greeting he’d given me the last time I’d come here with Stacey.

I flashed a harmless smile. “I’m looking for Billy Cronk. His wife told me he had a job interview here this morning.”

“Can’t say I know the feller,” the gatekeeper said. “He’s not on my list anyway. And Mr. Skillen isn’t hiring at the moment. Are you sure you’ve got the right place?”

“This is where his wife said he’d be.”

He showed teeth that were heavily stained from coffee and cigarettes. “You don’t think he might have fibbed to the missus?”

“Is Mr. Skillen around today? Maybe he can shed some light on this.”

“I can call him, I guess.” The old man’s fingers hovered over the phone.

“Tell him it’s Warden Mike Bowditch,” I said.

He shrugged and made the call. With the window down, I could smell the familiar odor of the mill. The friction from the spinning blades chewing through logs caused the sawdust to give off the harsh smell of burning wood.

“He’s gonna come down,” the gatekeeper said, pointing at the lot. “Pull up over there next to that silver Tundra.”

He pushed a button and the gate rolled open on its wheels, sliding back into the tall mesh fence. I wasn’t sure why I’d asked to see Matt Skillen after vowing to avoid the man for the foreseeable future. He and Stacey were clearly in love, and the best thing I could do was wish them well. I would send a card when they got married in Bar Harbor or Bermuda or whatever fancy place they chose for the wedding. And then, hopefully, I would never see them again.

I had my head down and was checking the messages on my BlackBerry-nothing more from Neil-when a face appeared at my window. When I’d asked for “Mr. Skillen,” it hadn’t occurred to me that the gatekeeper might think I meant Merritt Skillen and not his son. I’d been under the impression that the father didn’t spend much time at the mill now that it had fallen on hard times, and yet here he was in all his kingly silver-haired eminence.

“What can I do for you, Warden?” he asked in a voice that was considerably deeper than his son’s. Everything about him, in fact, seemed more substantial than Matt. He was taller and bigger boned, with large, calloused hands, and he carried himself with none of his son’s natural looseness. His noble face was wrinkled around the mouth and eyes, as if he’d spent many years worrying over important matters.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Skillen,” I said. “I was expecting your son.”

“Matt’s not here today. Is there something I can do for you?”

I removed my sunglasses to be polite. “I’m looking for a man named Billy Cronk. His wife told me he came here for a job interview.”

“If he had, Earl would have just sent him on his way. We have no openings at present.” He peered in at me a bit closer, pursing his lips. “Do you and I know each other, young man?”

I saw no point in reminding him that I’d been the warden who’d asked Jeff Jordan for a.22 round that day at the checkpoint. “No, sir. I’m the warden in the next district over.”

“Is there anything else?”

I glanced around the crowded parking lot and saw quite a few pickups but no black Nissans.

“You wouldn’t be able to tell me if two of your employees are working today? A Todd Pelkey and a Lewis Beam? You must have a lot of people who work for you, so maybe you don’t know each of them personally.”

“I know all of my employees,” he said with a hint of offense. “What do you want with them?”

“They have information for me about some possible poaching activity,” I said with a deadpan expression.

He reached for a cell phone clipped to his belt. “I’ll find out for you.” He turned his broad back so I couldn’t overhear the whispered conversation. Unlike his son, the elder Skillen looked like a guy who had personally chopped down a fair number of trees in his life. I’d never met Matt’s mother, but from the evidence, I assumed she must be a slender, delicate-boned beauty. Merritt turned back to face me. “They’ve gone home sick, I’m afraid.”

“Both of them?” Men who worked at lumber mills did not, as a rule, leave work during their shifts except on ambulance gurneys.

“It would seem so.” He reattached the phone to his belt. “I trust you’re being honest with me, and Todd and Lewis are not in some sort of trouble.”

“I’d just like to talk with them,” I said. “Thank you for your time, Mr. Skillen.”

He stuck his hand through the open window. His palm was calloused, his grip like a vise. “Call me Merritt.”

Billy had lied to Aimee when he’d told her he was applying for a job at the sawmill. Either that or he had been waylaid before arriving at the gate. The two men he had named as potential suspects in the moose shootings had mysteriously gone home sick-both of them, at the same time. I didn’t know what to make of these coincidences except that they couldn’t possibly be coincidences. Billy was up to something.

The drive north from the mill to the wild woods of Talmadge took forty minutes. Along the way, I passed the gravel road that led to Plantation No. 21 and Chubby LeClair’s camper (assuming the state police hadn’t hauled it away). Later, I crossed the new bridge from Princeton into Indian Township and felt the usual despair I experienced driving through the reservation. I passed the shuttered pizzeria and the seedy brick houses-each built according to the same soulless architectural plan-arranged along the shore of Lewey Lake. Most of the homes had satellite dishes and clusters of vehicles parked out front, but wadded paper blew through the yards, and white shirts waved like flags of surrender from the clotheslines. The Passamaquoddy reservation was the most depressed place I knew in Maine, and I knew all of them.

The sparkling blue waters of the lake and the distant line of evergreens along Peter Dana Point seemed fraudulent in their bright beauty. I had entered a hall of mirrors in which I could no longer distinguish what was real from what was false.

North of the rez, I took a left off Route 1 onto the tributary roads that would bring me, eventually, to the mobile home where Pelkey and Beam lived. The woods crowded closer and closer around me as I drove up into the hills.

I slowed the truck half a mile from the trailer. My loose belt was wailing like a banshee again, and I had the strong feeling it might be better not to announce my arrival in such strident terms. Better to scope out the scene first. I removed my orange safety vest and unearthed the camouflage coat I kept behind the seat, then swapped my black baseball cap for one with a Realtree pattern. I hung my new Nikon binoculars around my neck. For a minute, I considered taking the shotgun, too, but I didn’t want to appear unduly provocative. Pelkey and Beam were already wary of me.

I closed the truck door until it clicked and started on foot up the dirt road. With most of the leaves down, I could see far into the gray-brown forest on either side of me. Whatever color that remained was near the ground now: yellow carpets of leaves beneath the maples, bloody sumacs turning to rust, the same way drying blood does. Of the hardwoods, only the oaks had retained their shabby foliage. It felt comforting to have so much visibility.

As I neared the mobile home and caught the first flash of metal, I raised my binoculars. I adjusted the dial on the top until a vehicle sprang into focus. It was a blue F150 pickup.

I knew, without having to read the plate, that the truck belonged to Billy Cronk.

I felt my lungs almost fully deflate. I had resisted the idea that I might find him here. Now the only remaining question was why.

I raised the binoculars again and zoomed in on the yard. Two identical Nissan Titans were parked on the other side of Billy’s truck. I didn’t see Tiffany’s crappy little Cavalier. Evidently, she hadn’t yet come down with her boyfriends’ malady.

For a split second, I considered returning to my truck for the shotgun. I would have felt more confident having the pump-action Mossberg in my hands, but I wasn’t sure what I was even witnessing. No crime was being committed, not unless lying to your wife or playing hooky from your job had been reclassified as misdemeanors. My suspicion that Pelkey and Beam were very bad men didn’t give me cause to go stomping onto their property loaded for bear.

Still, I needed to sort this out. I stepped off the road and began carefully picking my way through the naked trees. The openness in the forest understory now put me at a disadvantage. I had almost no cover, except to crouch behind the Christmas tree-size balsams or the trunks of the larger oaks. The curled and drying leaves under my boots turned every step into an overloud rustle. What had Charley told me? Heel first and then toe. I wished the expert woodsman was with me right now.

When you stalk a deer, the trick is to imagine the slowest you can move-and then force yourself to move even slower than that. Breathe evenly. Pause with every step. Will yourself to become invisible.

Foot by foot, I drew closer to the ancient trailer. It was roughly the shape and size of a boxcar. Over the years, the sun had faded the orange paint until it was the color of human skin. It might have taken me twenty minutes-maybe longer-to cover a hundred yards. I tried to approach from an angle that didn’t put me in the line of sight of any of the windows or doors, so that only someone pressing their nose to the glass could have spotted me.

Pelkey and Beam had stacked about four cords of hardwood neatly behind the mobile home. The pile provided me with excellent cover when I was finally able to reach it. Peering over the logs, I saw one of those teardrop trailers you use to haul snowmobiles. Beside it, an overturned bass boat had been chained to a tree trunk to protect it from thieves. Two Polaris ATVs sat under an elevated crossbeam the hunters utilized to hoist dead carcasses into the air so that the blood would run out onto the ground. Pelkey and Beam must have been saving their pennies to buy those new Nissans, I thought, because everything else on their property was a piece of shit.

There were blankets and towels over the windows of the trailer. The occupants were either too poor or too cheap to buy actual curtains. The place reminded me of a cave. The thought of two men living inside with a young girl turned my stomach. I wondered whether Bard’s cousin Tiffany had chosen her role as their shared playmate or whether she had been cajoled by her boyfriend into sucking his buddy’s cock and then one thing led to another.

I crawled forward on my elbows and knees until I could hide behind the snowmobile hauler. As I was sitting against it, with my legs drawn up to keep them from jutting into view, I noticed a white cigarette butt lying in the dirt beside me. I reached into a leather holster on my belt and removed a single latex glove. I slid it onto my right hand. The cigarette butt came from a Salem, the same brand we’d recovered from the kill sites on Morse’s estate. I wrapped the glove carefully around the filter to protect whatever trace DNA might still be on it and slid the wad into my pocket.

If I poked around the grounds, what else was I likely to find? Some Starburst candy wrappers? An empty bottle of Miller Genuine Draft? I already knew where to find the.22 rifles.

A gunshot sounded in the distance, followed by three more.

The echoes told me that someone was firing in the gravel pit at the end of the road. Four shots usually meant target practice.

I darted from the snowmobile trailer back to the woodpile and ducked behind the peeling birch logs. In all likelihood, the mobile home was unoccupied. Billy and the two creeps were firing guns together at the pit. But it seemed prudent to sneak out of the yard as quietly as I could.

I remembered what a mess the road to the pit was. Erosion had made it close to impassable. There was also the chance I would meet the armed men on their way back down the hill. I was willing to bet my life that Pelkey and Beam had been the men who’d slaughtered those moose. The lingering questions were why and what Billy’s connection to them was. The best place to start searching for answers was the gravel pit. I plotted a cross-country course that would bring me to the rim of the excavated amphitheater. I wanted a balcony seat to watch the show from above.

Knowing where Pelkey and Beam presumably were, I could move faster now. I leaped over toppled trees and scratched my hands pushing through a tangle of raspberry bushes. Branches snapped beneath my feet. The binoculars bounced around on their strap and kept whacking me in the sternum. At one point, I surprised a grouse, which rocketed up from his covert and flapped heavily away through a cone of sunlight.

As I ran up the hill, I made a semicircle away from the road and then began to loop back, hoping I’d judged the distances right.

Three more shots sounded. My ears told me it was a high-powered rifle and not a shotgun or pistol.

I began to second-guess my decision not to return to my truck for the Mossberg.

The gunshots informed me that I’d gone too far, that I’d circled all the way around the pit and was now well above it. I slowed my pace to a steady walk and ducked my head. The last thing I needed was to find myself standing suddenly at the cliff’s edge, in full view of the armed men below.

Up ahead, I saw a curtain of light where the trees abruptly ended and the ground fell away into the pit. I dropped to my hands and knees again and began to crawl like an animal through the forest. The dangling binoculars kept snagging on branches, so I removed them and left them on a flat, mossy stone where I could find them again. I’d run too fast up the hill and my pulse was overloud in my ears. I worried that my labored breathing might give me away. I paused, closed my eyes, and focused on my breath, trying to bring down my heart rate.

I could hear voices, laughter. I flattened myself against the dead leaves and wriggled behind a small boulder that was perched atop the rim of the gravel pit. I kept my head down and listened. They were standing at the far end of the pit, maybe thirty yards away, and I had to concentrate hard to piece together the conversation.

“You like it?” said the man I recognized as Pelkey.

“Reminds me of the M4s we had in Afghanistan.” The voice was unmistakably Billy’s.

“Those Colts are sweet guns,” said Beam.

“Personally, I prefer these Noveskes,” said Pelkey. “Nothing against the Colt ARs, but the craftsmanship here is just fucking superior.”

“Three grand is pretty steep,” said Billy.

“But that includes your optics and your flash suppressor and your magazines.” Pelkey seemed to be the designated talker. “You can always build your own if you want to go low-budget-and we can help you with that, too. But my philosophy is, you get what you pay for. Now see, I can fire this Blackout all day without the barrel warping. You said you didn’t currently own a black gun?”

“No.”

“How’s the recoil?” Beam asked. “Pretty gentle, right?”

“Firing one of these puppies makes it hard to go back to a bolt-action,” said Pelkey. “My thirty-aught-six kicks like a fucking mule, and the two-forty-three ain’t much better.”

“What about twenty-twos?” said Billy. “You guys got any of those?”

“We’ve got everything, man,” said Beam.

“I thought we were here to discuss ARs.” Pelkey sounded suspicious. “On the phone you said you were looking for a black gun.”

“I am.”

“So why ask about twenty-twos? You want one of those, go to Wal-Mart. We took time away from work to come out here today.” Pelkey’s voice rose.

“I was just asking,” said Billy. “I’ve been thinking about getting a twenty-two Mag, too.”

Suddenly, I realized why my friend was here and what he was trying to do. He’s not smart enough to pull it off, I thought. They’re going to see right through him if he keeps asking questions.

Pelkey had already adopted a different, more brittle tone. “What are you planning to use a twenty-two for? Squirrels?”

“Coyotes. Maybe deer.”

“You need to be a wicked good shot to bring down a buck with a twenty-two,” said Pelkey. “Why not stick with a big-ass thirty-thirty?”

“I’m looking for something … quiet.”

“Check it out, Lew. Billy here is a poacher.”

“Takes one to know one.”

Shut up, Billy. Stop talking, I ordered silently.

Out of nowhere, a song started to play, a few bars of music. Led Zeppelin’s “Black Dog.” A ringtone. “I gotta take this,” Pelkey said.

“So are you interested in this Noveske or not?” Beam asked with some heat. “Because we’re busy men.”

“Maybe you should take it easy,” Billy said.

“Maybe you should shut your mouth.”

As formidable as Billy Cronk could be, two against one is never good odds, especially when one of your adversaries is armed with an assault rifle. I reached my right hand down and pressed the thumb lock, releasing the SIG Sauer from its holster. There were fifteen.357 SIG cartridges in the magazine. I pulled the hammer back into single-action mode.

I stuck my head around the rock and spied down into the pit. Billy and Beam were standing toe-to-toe. I’d forgotten what a hulking guy Beam was and how white his platinum-blond hair looked in the sunlight. From this angle and distance, he resembled an albino ogre. The black AR rifle hung on a sling over his shoulder.

Billy was wearing the same camo jacket I’d seen him in the night before, probably the same clothes. Except that he’d strapped his KA-BAR knife to his thigh.

Pelkey had paced away a few steps to have a private conversation. He was dressed in his mill clothes: canvas shirt and pants, a Carhartt carpenter’s jacket. When he turned around again, there was a pistol in his hand. Aimed at Billy.

I rose to my knees, pointed the SIG into the pit using a two-handed grip, and shouted, “Police! Put the guns down!”

Then all hell broke loose.

Pelkey fired a shot, which caromed off the boulder beside me.

I squeezed off a round that must have clipped his jacket, because he raised his left arm as if to get a whiff of his deodorant.

Beam tried to swing the barrel of the Noveske up, but Billy grabbed the rail with both of his big hands and drove his forehead into the other man’s skull. It sounded like two rams knocking horns. As Beam fell over, he drove his boot into Billy’s groin. My friend let out a howl but somehow kept hold of the rifle, and both men fell hard to the ground.

My pistol had drifted off target from the force of the recoil. I brought the barrel down again, blew out half the air in my lungs, as I’d been trained to do, held my breath, and took aim squarely at Todd Pelkey’s center mass.

But he was a much faster and better shot than I was.

I saw the blur of his hand coming up and then felt a pain in my chest, as if someone had driven a sledgehammer into my ribs. I found myself staring up into an achingly blue sky that seemed to be getting farther and farther away, as if my body were dropping down a mine shaft. It’s true that you don’t hear the bullet that gets you.

Holy shit.

The wind had been driven from my lungs by the concussion.

I’ve been shot.

Barely able to breathe, I clutched at my chest and found a smoldering hole in my shirt, just inches from my heart. I held my fingers before my wobbly eyes, expecting to see blood, but there was none. The bullet had flattened itself against the ballistic vest I wore beneath my uniform. A little lead pancake fell loose as I rolled onto my side. I tried to gulp down air, but expanding my chest only made my ribs ache.

Through the pain, I heard a shot fired. Then another.

Billy.

Gasping, I found the SIG where I had dropped it and fired a wild shot into the air. I wanted them to know I was still alive, still a danger to them. I wanted to give Billy half a chance if he wasn’t already dead.

Each breath I took burned my insides, as if I were inhaling air from a blast furnace. I rolled toward the edge of the pit again and tried to see down to the gravel floor. My vision was blurred. I could make out two dark shapes thrashing about: Beam and Billy. I rubbed my eyes frantically with the back of my hand, trying to clear them. I blinked and blinked again. The AR lay in the dirt about ten feet from where the men were wrestling with each other. Billy was trying to wrap his arms and legs around his opponent’s neck and pelvis. Beam was gnawing on my friend’s forearm while his bent fingers searched desperately behind him for an eye to gouge out.

Pelkey had disappeared.

I fired a shot into the gravel near the feet of the struggling men, hoping it would cause them to stop, but they just kept rolling around.

Beam’s hand found a rock. He drove it against Billy’s forehead again and again. Even from this distance, I could see the blood. To protect himself, my friend was forced to loosen his grip, and the other man squirmed free. Beam spun around and tried to drive the rock into Billy’s nose in an uppercut motion. If he had connected, he would have sent splinters of bone into Billy’s brain. But Billy caught his opponent’s wrist with one hand and delivered a jab to the jaw that snapped Beam’s head around.

Where was Pelkey? I scanned the far end of the pit, but there was no sign of him. I hoped to hell he had run off.

I brought my left hand up to my aching ribs, but the slightest pressure caused white-hot needles to jab into my heart. I propped myself against the boulder, trying to use it as a brace to steady my aim. If Beam and Billy separated themselves by a few feet, I might get a clean shot. Panting like this, with my eyes watering, I didn’t have confidence in my marksmanship.

I saw movement out of the corner of my eye. It was just a brief impression of something blue. And then a shot echoed.

I ducked my head-as if I could actually have dodged a bullet-and brought the pistol around.

Pelkey was creeping along the edge of the gravel pit. He had scrambled up the other side and was moving from boulder to boulder. I fired and heard the round careen off stone. Pelkey showed his face for an instant, and there was a smile on it. He leveled his pistol, and I flattened myself to the ground. He didn’t bother firing this time, not wanting to waste a round.

He was getting closer and closer. I felt a bubble of fear rise in my stomach. At least one of my ribs was broken. My breath was ragged, and my hands were shaking. This man was an expert shooter. I wasn’t sure I could stop him before he drew a bead on my head. If I rose to my feet to run to the nearest trees, he would easily knock me over again, even if he failed to hit my brain. After that, it would just be a matter of delivering the coup de grace.

I peered around the boulder, but I didn’t see him. Maybe he was circling into the pines, planning to come up behind me. No, there he was. Behind that stump. I let off a shot and saw splinters fly up where the round dug into the pulpy wood.

Pelkey took the opportunity to rise to his feet and lunge across the open space between the stump and a nearby boulder. He was almost across, almost safe again from my bullets, when there was a single sharp crack. I saw Pelkey straighten up. He had the oddest look on his face; his eyes were wide and his mouth was open. I think he was already dead when his body fell off the cliff. He tumbled down the steep gravel wall as if his bones were all loose inside the skin and not connected. His lifeless corpse came to rest in a cloud of dust beside the man-shaped target they’d been using to test the AR-15.

Billy lowered the black rifle and looked at me. One of his eye sockets was swollen and bleeding. His forehead looked like it had a red dent in the middle of it. His long hair had been torn loose of the braid. And his entire body was coated with gray dust.

He threw his head back and let out a scream like nothing I’d ever heard. I didn’t know if he was back in Fallujah or Waziristan, but wherever it was, it was somewhere very far away from the warm home he shared with Aimee and his children. He spit a gout of blood on the ground and advanced on the broken man trying to crawl away from him through the weeds.

I had the impression that both of Beam’s arms were broken. It was something about the way he was using his knees to lurch along. He would get himself into a kneeling position, like a man facing Mecca, and then he would flop forward with a whine. He used his shoulders to throw his arms ahead of him, but his wrists were curled in on themselves, and his hands were boneless things unable to assist his movement.

“No, Billy,” I said. The words came out like a parrot squawk. “Billy, don’t do it.”

I watched helplessly as my friend unloaded a magazine into the back of Lewis Beam’s head, reducing it to an unrecognizable mass of red jelly.