The Poacher's Son

7

The last time I’d visited the Somerset County Jail had been the morning after the bar fight in Dead River. Now, here I was rushing to his rescue again. It hardly felt as if two years had passed.

The jail was a brick fortress, next door to the old courthouse in downtown Skowhegan. It was a spooky building that always brought to mind a story my dad told me as a kid. Years ago, a prisoner wrapped his hands in towels and scaled the razor-wire fence that surrounded the exercise yard. He thought he could escape by swimming across the flood-swollen Kennebec River. Big mistake. A week later searchers found his broken body stuck in the dam downstream.

Now my father was a prisoner in the same jail.

I opened the glass door leading to an office. Seated behind a high counter, a lone dispatcher was taking a call, jotting down a note on a pink message slip. A police radio chattered beside him.

“Ma’am, you did the right thing,” the dispatcher said without glancing up at me. He was a harried-looking guy with wire-frame glasses and auburn hair combed and sprayed over a bald spot. Behind him was a wall of wood-partitioned cubbyholes stuffed with more pink slips. “We’ll be glad to check it out for you. I’ll send someone down as soon as I can.”

On the counter was a clipboard holding the week’s pink incident reports, left out for reporters who covered the crime beat. I leafed through them, looking for the name Bowditch. I saw nothing, but I knew how paperwork lagged in these offices. Chances were that my father was still being booked downstairs in the jail, having his mugshot and fingerprints taken.

“No, I can’t say when exactly,” the dispatcher continued into the receiver. “A deputy will be there as soon as possible. No, I really can’t say when.” He put down the phone and gave me a blank, shell-shocked expression. “What an effing morning,” he said.

Effing? “I’d like to see Sheriff Hatch, please.”

Before the dispatcher could respond, a busty woman in uniform-the redness in her eyes showed how much crying she’d done that day-appeared in the door behind me.

“Heard anything from Pete?” she said.

“I still can’t raise him,” said the dispatcher.

The woman seemed to notice me for the first time. “Can I help you?”

Her wrinkled lips were painted a metallic pink, the color of a Mary Kay Cadillac. Like the dispatcher, she was wearing a black ribbon pinned to her uniform shirt, a reminder of their murdered deputy.

“One of your deputies just brought in a prisoner,” I said.

The phone started ringing again, but the dispatcher didn’t answer it right away. The woman’s eyes directed themselves to the little name plate on my uniform.

“I believe it’s my father,” I said.

“Stay right here,” she said, and darted through the door. Through the glass wall I watched her enter the sheriff’s office.

The dispatcher answered the phone. “Sheriff’s office,” he said, keeping his eyes on me as if I might suddenly break and run

The raccoon-eyed woman returned. “It turns out the sheriff wants to see you, too,” she said to me.

Sheriff Joe Hatch sat across from me behind a dark-stained oak desk, his big-knuckled hands folded on the blotter. He had mustardbrown hair going white about the temples, a brush mustache, and the shoulders of a retired defensive tackle. Pinned to his lapel was that same black ribbon everyone else was wearing.

“I’m sorry about Deputy Brodeur,” I said.

He nodded.

“I was at the criminal justice academy with Bill,” I continued. “He was a good man.”

The metal springs in his chair creaked as he shifted his considerable weight. “What can I do for you, Warden?”

“One of your deputies just arrested my father-his name is Jack Bowditch-up near Rum Pond, and I heard he was being brought here.”

“Who told you this?”

“I got a call from Russell Pelletier. He owns Rum Pond Camps.”

I waited for him to respond, but he didn’t. One of my legs began twitching.

“Look, I don’t know what my father did-” I began.

“He assaulted an officer!”

“Russell Pelletier seems to think he’s a suspect in the Brodeur homicide.”

He smoothed his mustache. “The state police are running that investigation.”

This wasn’t going the way I’d imagined, not that I had much of a plan coming in. “I don’t know what happened to your deputy today-and I’m not making excuses for my father. I just feel like there’s the potential for a misunderstanding here, and I don’t want the CID investigation wasting time.”

“What are you trying to say?”

“I’d like to speak with my father, please.”

There was a tentative knock at the door. “Come in!” barked the sheriff.

It was his secretary again. Her mascara looked even more smeared than before. “They found him.”

Without another word, the sheriff rose to his feet and left the room. I remained seated, staring at the closed door. In the silence I could hear the rumble of traffic passing along the street outside. What was going on here? Who had they found?

They left me alone in that room for close to ten minutes.

When the sheriff returned, the first thing he did was remove his jacket and toss it onto a chair. His big body was throwing off a lot of heat. I could feel it across the desk and smell it in the sharpness of his Old Spice deodorant working overtime. “Tell me about your father. When was the last time you spoke with him?”

“Last night.”

“Hold on.” He reached into a desk drawer and removed a tape recorder. He set it on the blotter between us. “You said you spoke with him last night.”

“Not exactly. He left a message on my answering machine.” I cleared my throat. “What’s with the tape recorder?”

He gave me the biggest, falsest smile I’d seen in an ages. “We just need to clear a few things up.”

That was a line investigators fed to suspects, not fellow officers. “What’s going on here, Sheriff?”

“You say your father’s being falsely implicated in the homicide. I thought I’d give you a chance to set things straight. What was the message?”

“It wasn’t anything really. He just sort of wondered aloud where I was and then hung up.”

“And where were you?”

“On a call.”

“Did you erase the message?”

I looked out the window. Something-a fast-moving shadow-had spooked the pigeons off the next roof. I watched them scatter in a hundred directions.

“I didn’t realize it was important,” I said.

He was still all smiles, but the strain was showing in the tightness of his jaw. “So you erased it?”

“Has my father asked for a lawyer?”

His smile gave way like a dam bursting. He leaned across the desk at me. “Let me tell you something about your father”-he practically spit the word-“your father is accused of killing a cop. If I were you, I’d answer my question.”

“I didn’t come here to incriminate him.”

“I called your lieutenant. He’s on his way here.”

“Lieutenant Malcomb?”

“What do you think he’s going to say when I tell him you’re refusing to cooperate in a murder investigation?”

“I am cooperating.”

“You destroyed evidence when you erased that message.”

Everything seemed to be spinning out of control. “Maybe we should wait for Lieutenant Malcomb to get here. I feel uncomfortable saying anything else right now.”

“You feel uncomfortable?” He grabbed the tape recorder and clicked it off. “One of my men is dead and another’s on his way to the hospital. So I don’t really give a damn how you feel.”

“The hospital? What are you talking about?”

“We lost radio contact with a deputy of mine named Pete Twombley half an hour ago. I’ve had men looking for him ever since. I just got a call that his cruiser was found off Route 144. They found Twombley beat up and handcuffed to a tree. I don’t know how your father overpowered him, but right now every law enforcement officer in western Maine is out there hunting for him. Maybe you should rethink the attitude and get on the right side of this. Because, the way it’s looking, the next time you see him is going to be at his funeral.”