The Poacher's Son

26

When I awoke the next morning, sunlight was streaming through the window beside my bed. I lay there a long time, breathing in the warm balsam smell of the forest that drifted through the screen.

Lying there, it was easy to fantasize about hiding out here from my life, enjoying Ora’s home cooking and Charley’s stories. But in my heart I knew it was a false dream. All I was doing in Flagstaff was interfering with a homicide investigation, making it less likely-not more-that the detectives would ever focus their attention on Truman Dellis, Russell Pelletier, Vern Tripp, or anybody else, for that matter. It was time I stopped playing Hardy Boys with Charley Stevens. My life back home was a mess and I needed to clean it up.

My father was somewhere far away, maybe in Canada, maybe not. He might be caught today or next week or never. My being here would make no difference. The thought that I might somehow be able to talk him into surrendering-if the opportunity ever arose-was laughable. We were strangers. We always had been. Ora Stevens was right: I couldn’t save him.

I found her sitting in her wheelchair on the porch with a cup of tea, reading Jane Austen’s Emma. She turned when she heard my footsteps and removed her bifocals and gave me a big smile.

“Did you sleep all right, dear?”

“Better than I have in a long time, actually.”

“I always sleep better in the woods myself. Charley’s out with Nimrod, but he should be back soon. There are clean towels in the bathroom, and Charley left a T-shirt that should fit you.”

Charley was sitting at the kitchen table, drinking coffee, when I came out of the bathroom. “There’s the man of the hour,” he said.

I pretended to look over my shoulder. “Where?”

“I hope you’re hungry because I’m making my world-famous, four-grain waffles.”

“It’s the only meal he cooks,” said Ora from the porch.

He gave a mock frown. “My secret’s out.”

I sat down at the kitchen table while Charley poured me a mug of coffee.

Ora rolled herself in from the porch. “What did you see this morning, dear? Anything unusual?”

“Mostly thrushes and chickadees. There was a mourning warbler singing over by that new clear-cut. And Nimrod spooked a partridge.”

“There was a red-eyed vireo outside my window,” I said.

He raised his eyebrows.

“My girlfriend taught me a few things,” I said. “Ex-girlfriend, I mean. She’s a hardcore birder.”

“What’s her name?”

“Sarah.”

“Pretty name.”

“She’s prettier than her name.” I smiled at the memory.

“What’s she do for a living, dear?” asked Ora.

“She’s a teacher’s aide, studying to be a teacher. But I think she has higher ambitions than that. She wants to change the educational system across the country.”

“And how long were you two together?”

“Off and on, four years. We met in college.”

“So why aren’t you together anymore?”

“Ora,” warned Charley.

“It’s OK,” I said. “Sarah doesn’t like what I do-what I did-for a living.” It was a simplification, a lie, basically, but I didn’t want to get into all the things I’d done to alienate her.

Charley turned around from the stove. “Why the hell not?”

“She doesn’t think being a game warden is a real career. She called it ‘a small boy’s idea of a cool job.’ ”

He laughed. “Well, of course it is! What’s wrong with that?”

As we ate I thought about how I’d bad-mouthed Sarah to the Stevens. Why was I always unfair to her that way? Maybe she did have some reservations about my job, and maybe she did worry too much about money, but she’d never actually asked me to quit being a warden. What the hell was wrong with the men in my family that we forced the women in our lives to leave us?

After breakfast, I asked to use the Stevenses’ phone. I got Sarah’s answering machine, and since she didn’t believe in screening calls-she saw it as an act of impoliteness-I knew she wasn’t home.

“Sarah,” I said. “I owe you an apology. I’ve made a lot of mistakes lately-you have no idea-but the way I treated you is the worst. I’m up at Flagstaff now. Some things have happened. I might not be a warden for very much longer. I’m not going to ask for a second chance, because I don’t deserve one. I just wanted to apologize one last time.”

When I came out of the bedroom, Ora was off somewhere and Charley was washing and drying the dishes with the police scanner going in the background. I asked him if he would fly me home to Sennebec. “I appreciate the hospitality you and Ora have shown me,” I said, “but I need to get back and face the music.”

“I understand,” he said, and I was surprised at the sadness in his voice. “I’ll go tell Ora.”

He disappeared down the hall. I stood looking out the windows at the smooth surface of the lake, a perfect mirror of the blue sky above. It was a beautiful sight, but it only made me feel more alone.

The phone rang. I heard Charley pick up in the bedroom, heard him say hello. Then he closed the door.

I waited, feeling my heart beginning to speed up.

Finally the bedroom door opened, and Charley came out. His expression was hard for me to decipher. “That was Soctomah. He just got off the line with Brenda Dean. I guess Truman got stirred up last night after our visit. He called over to Rum Pond wanting to know why Brenda was telling the authorities he killed those men. She told Soctomah he threatened her. She says she wants police protection.”

“You mean she’s still out there?” She’d told me she was just going to gather up her things yesterday and leave. If she really thought Russ Pelletier was a murderer, why did she spend the night? “So what’s Soctomah going to do?”

“He said he’d send a trooper out to Truman’s place to chat with him. And I told him I’d fly over to Rum Pond to see what’s up. That is, if you don’t mind making a stopover on the way home.”

It seemed that I was going back to Rum Pond one way or the other.

Charley had already gassed up the plane, readying it for another day in the air. Ora wheeled herself down to the dock to watch us depart.

“Well, Boss,” he said, kneeling down to kiss her. “We’re off into the wild blue.”

“Be careful.”

“You know me.”

“That’s why I’m saying be careful.”

“Thank you for everything, Ora,” I said.

“Please come back and see us again.” She took my hand in both of hers.

“I will.”

She smiled, but her eyes were full of doubt.

I climbed into the backseat while Charley gave the plane a shove away from shore, hopping after it again to land on the pontoon. He was as agile as a monkey getting in and out of that plane.

A minute later, after he’d strapped himself in and started the engine, we were skittering off across the lake. The air was dead still, but we rose as if swept aloft on a gust of wind. Charley turned so that we banked back over the cottage. I looked down and saw Ora wave at us from her wheelchair at the end of the dock. From this height she seemed so small and frail. And just like that, I felt a premonition that something very bad was about to happen.

The woods stretched out beneath us like a nubby green bedspread thrown over the hills. The glare of the sun, blazing white in the eastern sky, made it impossible to see far in that direction, but in the west I could clearly see the heavily forested mountains that marked the boundary with Canada, forty-some miles away.

Charley was uncharacteristically quiet. Every now and again he zigzagged the plane to pass over a clear-cut or to parallel a logging road for some distance. A couple of times he canted the plane completely onto its side to have a better look at something on the ground. I never saw anything but trees.

I tried to start a conversation over the intercom. “You’re awfully quiet.”

“Did you tell Brenda you’d talk to Truman?” he asked.

“No. Why?”

“I don’t like this. It doesn’t feel right.”

Between two mountains up ahead a body of brownish-blue water reflected the clouds. We came in directly over the forest gate that blocked the driveway leading from Wendigo’s logging road to Rum Pond. The stand of old-growth pines was still there. But for how much longer? I wondered. The next thing I knew we were over the water, making a sharp U-turn to approach the camp from the south. I looked for my father’s cabin on the eastern shore of the lake, but the pines hid it from view. We settled down with a splash on the water and began taxiing toward the compound of log buildings that was the sporting camp. I saw a motorboat moored at the dock and canoes drawn up on a beach, but there wasn’t a soul in sight.

As we drew up to the dock, a door opened at the main lodge and Russ Pelletier stepped out into the sun. He wore blue jeans and a paint-spattered canvas workshirt that looked too hot for this weather. On his belt was a big knife in a sheath. He didn’t raise his hand or greet us in any way, but remained standing there, smoking a cigarette on the doorstep, while the plane came to a stop.

“He doesn’t look too happy to see us, now does he?” said Charley.

“Not really.”

We climbed out of the plane and Charley tied a rope to a cleat to keep it from floating off. Side by side we walked up to the main building.

“Morning!” said Charley.

Pelletier’s mustache needed trimming, and his oil-black hair hung over his forehead in heavy bangs. “Hello, Charley.”

“Where are all your guests?”

“Left this morning. Don’t have any more until Friday. You always said I should probably close this place in August, given how little business I get.” He gave a smirk. The full sunlight showed the nicotine stains on his teeth. “But I guess I won’t have to worry about that problem soon, will I?”

“I guess not.”

He looked at me over Charley’s shoulder. “You’re here about Brenda, right? She’s over at Jack’s cabin.”

“You fired her then,” I said.

“No, she quit. She did it in front of my guests last night. Classy as ever. She doesn’t seem to be in any hurry to leave, though.”

“We’ll talk with her,” said Charley pleasantly. “But first maybe you’ll invite us in for a cup of coffee.”

Pelletier exhaled a cloud of smoke. Was it really possible that he and Truman had set my dad up? I remembered the story Brenda had told about him-how he’d tried to rape her. At this moment, he looked capable of all the bad things she’d claimed.

“Sure,” he said finally. “Come on in.”

There wasn’t a trace of welcome in his voice.

We sat at one of the long tables in the dining room, across from him. Through the big plate-glass window that made up the southern wall of the room I could see the aluminum canoes on the beach and Charley’s plane moored at the dock.

“So I guess you’re looking for a new cook,” I said.

“Why? You want a job?” Pelletier crushed the butt of a cigarette in an ashtray. “Doreen said she’d help me out until I found someone.”

His hatchet-faced ex-wife didn’t strike me as the charitable type. He must have promised her a mint in exchange for her help. “It sounds like you won’t miss Brenda,” I said.

“And she won’t miss me. The only reason she stayed here the last couple years was Jack, the damned cradle-robber. What kind of fifty-something-year-old guy hooks up with a girl that young? It’s disgusting, is what it is.”

“She was devoted to him?”

“That’s not the word I’d use. They fought like cats and dogs, but she loved him. Women have always thrown themselves at the guy, for some reason. And I think he loved her, which was a rare thing for Jack. He’s always had some woman in his bed, but he never gave a shit for any of them.” Pelletier’s red-veined eyes met mine. “Except your mother.”

Charley took a sip of coffee and glanced out the window. “Something’s been bothering me, Russell, and I hope you can help me sort it out. You think Jack killed Jonathan Shipman and Bill Brodeur, right?”

“Don’t you?”

Charley scratched his chin. “That’s the thing of it. If he did, I can’t figure out why.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you’re the one with the grudge against Wendigo, not Jack Bowditch.”

Pelletier leaned forward. “Are you trying to imply something, Charley?”

“I’m just saying that Jack’s motive doesn’t seem all that strong to me.”

“You’ve been hanging around this kid too long. I think Jack had plenty of motive.”

“How so?”

“Wendigo is shutting me down. That means they’re kicking him out, too. I think he got drunk and pissed off, and he decided he was going to do something about it. I think it was a stupid spur-of-the-moment thing to do-which is the story of Jack’s life, if you ask me.”

I said, “So how did my father know Brodeur was taking Shipman out the back way?”

Pelletier glared at me. “What’s that?”

“Whoever killed those men knew Brodeur was driving Shipman out that logging road. How did my dad know that? Who could’ve told him?”

“How should I know?” Pelletier asked. “Charley, what the hell are you doing here? I understand why the kid cares about this, but why are you defending a son of a bitch poacher like Jack Bowditch?”

“I’m just trying to figure a few things out.”

“I already talked to that Indian detective about this.” He coughed into his hand. “Frankly, I’ve got better things to do with my time than sit here playing a game of Clue. Jack Bowditch killed those two men. I don’t know why, and I don’t care. All I know is that I’m losing my business and my home and what happened last week won’t change that.” He rose to his feet and loomed over us. “If you want to talk to B.J., you know where she is. Now I’ve got a roof to fix.”

Listening to that imperious tone, I couldn’t help remembering how he’d bossed me around eight summers ago-how he’d called me his “serf” and made my life hell. I despised him all over again. He was halfway to the door when I called out, “You tried to rape her.”

Pelletier spun around. “What?”

“Brenda says you tried to rape her three years ago.”

“That’s a fucking lie!”

“She said that after you and your wife split, you started coming on to her, and that my dad stopped you. She said he beat the shit out of you, and that you’ve been holding a grudge against him ever since.”

Pelletier advanced on me, hands balled into fists. “Who the fuck do you think you are talking to me like that?”

I stood up. Charley jumped between us. “Mike’s just repeating what the girl said.”

“I never touched her!” said Pelletier.

I didn’t care what he said. “That’s not all. She claims you and Truman Dellis conspired to murder Jonathan Shipman and blame it on my father.”

“She what?”

“She says she saw Truman out here the day of the shootings, talking with you behind the boathouse.”

“That’s bullshit! I haven’t seen that drunk since I fired his sorry ass.” Pelletier turned his attention from me back to Charley. “You don’t actually believe this crap?”

It took the old pilot a few moments to answer. When he did, his voice was soft. “No, but I do believe there’s a reason the girl hates you. Something happened between you two to make her this mad.”

Pelletier became quiet.

Charley’s tone was measured. “What happened, Russ? You can’t deny it was something.”

Russell Pelletier ran his yellow-stained fingers through his greasy hair, looked away, and took a deep breath. “It was after I fired Truman-for being drunk all the time. Doreen and I were having problems. One night Brenda and I were here alone. I thought she was sending these signals. You don’t know this girl, Charley.”

Charley folded his arms. “Go on.”

“We started kissing. It just happened. The next thing I knew, she started freaking out. She said I was disgusting. She called me all kinds of names, and she ran off, leaving me lying there on the couch. All I did was kiss her.”

“She was just a girl, Russell,” said Charley.

He scowled. “Tell that to Jack Bowditch.”

“What happened next?” I asked. All the contempt I felt for him came through in those three words.

He ignored me and focused on Charley. “When I woke up, Jack was standing over me. She must have told him what she told you. We had a fight.” He fumbled in his shirt pocket for his cigarettes, found one, and lit it. “He beat the crap out of me, basically. I told Doreen I fell down the stairs, but she didn’t believe me.”

We watched him tuck the plastic lighter carefully back in his pants pocket. Again I noticed the knife sheathed on his belt.

Pelletier continued: “She started going over to Jack’s cabin after that. She’d go over there after dinner. She just seemed obsessed with him, and I wasn’t going to get in the middle of it. I had my own troubles with Doreen, by that time.”

Charley nodded slowly. “What do you think she’s got against Truman?”

“He didn’t mess with her, if that’s what you’re thinking. Or I never saw any sign of it, anyway. After Truman’s wife died, all he cared about was getting drunk. Most of the time I think he forgot she even existed.”

Charley absorbed this information. Then he asked: “You heard about Truman’s accident?”

“With the chainsaw? Yeah, I wondered if Jack might have done it to him-whipped him across the face with the blade. Or the chain might have broken in the woods like he said.” He inhaled so deeply on his cigarette that an inch of it burned to ash before our eyes. “I’m not proud of what happened that night with B.J. But I didn’t rape that girl, and I didn’t kill anyone, no matter what she says. She’s a goddamned liar, Charley.”

My head was throbbing. I was worried that Charley might be swallowing Pelletier’s story. “She told the truth about my dad beating you up,” I said. “She told the truth about your having a grudge against him.”

“Jesus Christ,” said Pelletier exhaustedly. “She uses people. She used your old man, and now she’s using you, kid.”

I heard an appliance humming softly in the kitchen, the only sound.

“I guess it’s time I had a talk with the young woman,” Charley said at last.