The Poacher's Son

33

He looked like hell. He had been shot in the left arm and leg. The wound to his arm was just a bloody groove where the bullet had grazed the triceps. The leg wound was something worse. The bullet had burrowed like a worm into the meat of his thigh. It had missed the femoral artery, but even so, he was losing blood at an alarming rate. The skin of his face, beneath the red-and-violet bruises, was drained of color. His pulse was weak, his breath fluttery.

“I thought you were dead.”

I’d pulled him up onto the rocks and was now trying to stanch the flow from his leg by applying pressure with both hands. Dark-looking blood leaked between my fingers.

He winced. “Don’t speak too soon.”

“I’m going to get you out of here, Charley.”

He smiled, but his eyes were full of doubt. “I think I’m going into shock.”

“You’re a tough old geezer. You’ll make it.”

I made a pressure bandage out of my T-shirt and wrapped it tight around his leg. Then I went to fetch the canoe. I’d kicked it away leaping into the water and had to swim out to retrieve it. Getting Charley into the canoe without overturning it wasn’t easy. He passed out from the pain of being lifted up, and I had to shake him to bring him around again. He looked me full in the eyes.

Flecks of spittle clung to his lips. “What happened?”

“You passed out.”

“Shit.”

I pushed off with the paddle and turned the canoe in the direction of the sporting camp, a mile up the lake.

He tried to clear his throat, but his voice was still faint and strained. “Where’s your dad?”

“He killed himself.”

“I thought I heard a shot before. What about the girl?”

“Drowned.”

He nodded as if this explained everything. “If I pass out again and don’t come around, tell Ora I’m sorry.”

“You can tell her yourself.” The rain had stopped, but I hadn’t noticed until I’d begun paddling again. The wind had died down and a mist was rising off the slick surface of the lake. “You’re the one who told me you were indestructible.”

“Told you a bunch of lies.” He smiled and closed his eyes and folded his hands on his chest. But he was restless and couldn’t keep his fingers and feet from twitching.

“Stay with me,” I said.

“I’m not going anywhere.”

I tried to keep my strokes calm and controlled. My arms and shoulders ached as if I had done a hundred pull-ups, but I never stopped, not even for a second.

The lakeshore slid along the side of the boat, an endless wall of dripping pines and birches. We passed beneath the tumbling, talus cliffs of Holeb Mountain, its bald summit dissolving into clouds. Up ahead I saw the sporting camp take shape out of the mist. First the dock, then the lodge.

Blue lights were flashing behind the buildings. It took me forever to realize what those lights were.

Before Charley had broken off his search for Truman Dellis, he put in a call to the state police. The first trooper had arrived at Rum Pond only minutes after my father and Brenda made me step into the canoe. Now there were troopers, deputy sheriffs, and game wardens all over the scene. Wearily I watched them carry Charley away, making a stretcher of their interlocking arms. I tried to follow, but hands restrained me. I turned my head. It was Soctomah. He was wearing a navy Windbreaker over a bulletproof vest. He wanted to know what had happened. Where, he wanted to know, was Brenda Dean?

I pointed down the lake.

For an instant the detective followed the invisible line that extended from my fingertip as if the mists would part and bring her into view. Then, just as quickly, he turned back to me, his face dark with confusion and impatience. “What happened?” he asked again.

“It was my father,” I said. “He killed them all.”

Someone found a shirt for me. Someone else brought me a paper cup with black coffee in it.

After Soctomah and Menario were reassured that there was no longer any present danger-that my father had no armed accomplice lurking in the woods-they sent a boat down to the other end of the lake to find the bodies. Then they sat me down at a wet picnic table and made me describe what had happened from the moment Charley and I arrived this morning at Rum Pond. They wanted to know about my discovery of Russ Pelletier’s body and how much I had disturbed the crime scene, and they wanted to know the exact sequence of events that resulted in my shooting Truman Dellis. The entire camp was being cordoned off, they said, and the state police evidence recovery team needed to know every step I had taken and what I had touched and what I’d left alone.

“You were describing how you stood up in the canoe,” said Detective Menario, pushing a little tape recorder across the table at me. “Why’d you do that?”

“I don’t know. I guess it was the look on her face.”

“What look?”

“She couldn’t stop grinning. It made me mad.”

“So the canoe overturned?”

“That’s right.”

“And she never came up?”

“She hit her head on something underwater. It might have been a rock or maybe she came up under the canoe. I remember kicking something pretty hard when I went under. It might have been her head.”

Menario gave me an incredulous smile. “And your father was so grief-stricken he shot himself.”

“She was the reason he came back.”

“I thought you said he came back to frame Pelletier and Dellis.”

“The real reason was Brenda. After she drowned, he had nothing else to live for.”

“A real romantic.”

My coffee had grown cold. I poured it onto the ground. Dusk had begun to fall. Out on the lake I saw trout rising as insects hatched out onto the surface. Soon the bats would come out to feed in the dark. “I’d like to go to Skowhegan. I’d like to wait with Ora at the hospital.”

The tape recorder clicked off on its own. Menario reached into his Windbreaker for a new microcassette. “Let’s go over this again,” he said.

“It can wait,” Soctomah said to his partner. “Why don’t you go find a ride for Mike.”

Menario looked at him sourly. Then he stuffed the recorder in his pocket and walked off.

“He’s a good detective,” said Soctomah, watching him go.

“I’ll take your word for it.”

“The A.G. is going to have to take a look at what happened with Truman Dellis. Your shooting him, I mean.”

I shrugged. “It doesn’t matter what happens to me.”

A boat motored up to the dock. We watched the state police unload two body bags, carrying them up the hill to a waiting ambulance.

I stood up. My joints felt a hundred years old. “I’d really like to get going, if it’s OK with you.”

“I understand,” he said.

My last view of Rum Pond Sporting Camps was in the mirror of Deputy Twombley’s patrol car. Once again he had been designated my private chauffeur. Lit up by the blue strobes of police cruisers and the lights brought in by crime scene investigators, the camp receded into the darkening forest. I wondered if I’d ever see it again.

Probably not. Pelletier didn’t have any children, that I knew of, no heirs except maybe his ex-wife, but it wouldn’t matter if he’d left behind a family of ten since there was no way in hell Jonathan Ship-man’s murder would stop Wendigo Timber from developing this land. There was never any chance of that happening, no matter what Vernon Tripp and the others might have hoped. The leaseholders would be evicted from their camps throughout the region and this hundred-year-old sporting camp would be sold to some hedge fund millionaire to turn into a private lakeside retreat to be used two weeks every summer.

Which meant Charley and Ora would also lose their home of thirty years on Flagstaff Pond. What would they do then? What would Ora do if he never returned from the hospital?

Twombley didn’t say a word during the drive. His puffy face was lit up by the dashboard, but I couldn’t read his expression. I rolled down the automatic window, letting the air rush in around my head, and closed my eyes.

He woke me sometime later. We had arrived at Redington-Fairview General Hospital in Skowhegan and were idling beside the ambulance bay. I started to get out, but he called after me. “Bowditch.”

“Yeah?”

He stared at me for a long time, then shook his head and said: “Never mind.”

I went inside to start my vigil.

Kathy Frost was already there in the brightly lit waiting room, talking with a forest ranger I didn’t recognize. She took one look at my bruised and bloodied face and all the toughness went out of her. For half a second I thought she might actually hug me, but instead she shook my hand hard enough to crush bones. “I’m really sorry, Mike.”

“Me too. About everything.” My throat was so dry my voice was just a rasp.

“Don’t beat yourself up.”

“You were right about my dad. I don’t know why I couldn’t see it when it was so clear to everyone else.”

“You were too close to the situation.”

“That’s what you kept telling me.”

“It’s my eternal curse not to be believed, Grasshopper.” It was the best she could do for a joke under the circumstances, but I appreciated it. She stuck her thumbs in her gunbelt, a question obviously weighing on her mind. “So what the hell happened up there?”

I could have told her about the murder of Russell Pelletier, and my fight with Truman Dellis, and the part I played in the drowning of Brenda Dean, but I was too tired. Rather than say anything more, I cut to the heart of the matter. “He shot himself.”

She would have to get the rest of the story from someone else. I glanced toward the admitting desk. “Do you know anything about Charley?”

“They’ve got him in the ICU. He has some internal injuries, and they’re worried about his heart.”

“He lost a lot of blood out on the lake.”

“You did what you could.” She reached into her pocket and handed me something. In my palm was a Warden Service I.D. card. “I guess I forgot to give this to Malcomb. Oops.”

Just then, as if summoned by the sound of his name, the lieutenant came hurrying through the emergency room door. He always looked so stone-faced, but tonight there was real fear in his eyes. He had just lost his wife last year to cancer, and now his close friend was also near death.

“How is he?” he asked Kathy in his gravel voice.

She told him what she knew.

He listened intently without even a glance in my direction. If he was concerned about me, he didn’t show it. But after Kathy finished, he turned and stared into my eyes and, after a long silence, said, “It sounds like you saved his life, Warden.”

Hearing him call me “Warden” was a surprise after everything that had happened, but I wasn’t getting my hopes up. “It was my fault he was injured.”

“I doubt Charley would agree with you.” He removed a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, then remembered where he was and stashed them back. “He’s a tough old bird. He’s walked away from crashes before.”

I got the impression that Malcomb was trying to convince himself of this. “So now what do we do?” I asked.

“We find a doctor to check you over. And then we wait.”

“Would you mind if I borrowed your cell phone first? I have someone to call.”

“Michael?” said my mother. I’d reached her at the home of Neil’s daughter in Long Beach, California, where they were staying until my father could be brought to justice. “Michael, what is it?”

“He’s dead, Mom.”

She caught her breath, loud enough for me to hear. “What-? What happened?”

“He shot himself. It’s true what the police said. He was the one who killed those men.”

“No.”

“He was guilty all along, but we were too blind to see it.”

“No.” Her voice was shaky. She was close to sobbing. “Why? Why would he do such a thing?”

I didn’t intend to be cruel to her. The truth was brutal enough. But who was I to shield her from it now? “It was all over a woman that he loved. But she’s dead now, too. He came back to Rum Pond for her, and when she died, he must have decided that he couldn’t go on without her.”

“Who was she?”

“Just a girl.”

“I always thought-” She was crying openly now, no longer holding anything back. “I always thought it would be me.”

So there it was. Fifteen years ago, after her divorce, she had expected a similar phone call, but it never came. Was it my imagination, or was she jealous that in the end he had loved another woman more?

“Michael?” It was Neil. He had taken the phone from her. “Your mother is-she’s very upset. My God, it’s horrible news.”

Holding the phone to my head, I put a hand to my other ear to cover the clamor of the hospital. What more was there to say, at this point? “You were right, Neil. You were right, about him, and we were wrong. We should have listened to you.”

He paused. “You weren’t thinking clearly-neither of you were.” He paused, and I could hear her sobbing in the background. “What’s going to happen? What are people saying up there?”

Why was I surprised that neither of them had asked about me? “I’m sure it’ll be front-page news tomorrow. If you’re worried about the media, you might want to stay out there for a few more days.” Across the room I saw more wardens streaming into the waiting room. Charley Stevens had friends beyond counting. “Neil, I have to go. Tell my mom that I love her.”

After I hung up, I took a step toward the gathering wardens, then looked down at the cell phone in my hand. Finally, I got up the nerve to call Sarah.

“I’ve been so worried about you,” she said.

I’d wanted so much to hear her voice, but then when she answered, I found that I could barely speak. “Thanks.”

“Kathy called me on her way to the hospital. She told me what happened. It’s so horrible.”

“You don’t know the whole story.” My voice broke as I said this.

She must have sensed something about my emotional state because she paused a long time before she spoke. “Mike, did he hurt you?”

“No,” I lied.

“Can you tell me what happened?”

I could feel something inside myself starting to give way. I don’t know whether it was the long day catching up with me at last or hearing Sarah’s voice again. But I feared that I might break down in the hospital corridor if I continued this conversation.

“I can’t,” I said. “I will when I get back, OK?”

“I’ll be here,” she said, and I knew it was a promise.

At 11:45 the following morning, Charley opened his eyes. It seemed like half the members of the Maine Warden Service had come by during the night, as well as assorted other law enforcement officers and citizens of Flagstaff and Dead River. Sally Reynolds was there, and so was Donna, the mousy waitress from the Dead River Inn. Most everyone left me alone. I was dozing in a corner of the waiting room when Charley woke up. He asked to see me almost immediately.

He smiled weakly at me when I came around the movable screen.

Ora sat beside the bed, as did their oldest daughter, Anne. She was an attractive brunette, about thirty, with her mother’s high cheekbones and her father’s strong jaw. She had a cup of ice chips she was feeding him to quench his thirst.

“They won’t give me water,” he told me.

“The bastards,” I deadpanned.

He grinned again, and I saw some of the old impishness in him return. “You look like shit.”

“I guess no one’s shown you a mirror.”

“They did, but darned if it didn’t crack.”

“How’s the leg?”

“Still attached to the rest of me.”

“That’s something.”

“Yes, it is.”

“He’s going to need a lot of physical therapy,” said Anne.

Charley rolled his eyes.

“I’m so sorry about your father,” Ora said to me.

I was too stunned to respond. My father was the man who had shot her husband, who had brought us all to this place of fear and waiting for death, and here she was expressing her condolences to me over his selfish and cowardly suicide.

People disappoint you so often. I hardly knew how to react when they surpassed all your hopes.