by Paul Doiron
Stacey had sent me a text:
You bum! I was looking forward to catching up over breakfast. I was hoping to hear about you and Dani. She seems good for you. You seem good.
Ora had left me an email. While I had been en route, she’d been busy querying the other vendors who sold their wares along the Dike and had learned that the stranger hadn’t given his name. The City of Machias didn’t require sellers to obtain permits to set up their tables.
I called her now from the terminal.
She sounded brighter now that the sun was up. “Carol Boyce, who sells her paintings right next to where this man set up shop, overheard Charley arguing with him over some trinket he had for sale.”
I remembered Carol: a big, flowing woman. “Did Mrs. Boyce say what it was?”
“She couldn’t hear, unfortunately, but she said the argument got heated.”
“I guess I’ll be stopping in Machias before I head to your place. Did you happen to speak with Nick Francis?”
“He said he didn’t know where Charley might be, but he didn’t seem worried. He said I should be patient before I put out a Silver Alert on the best woodsman in Maine.”
“That’s an odd thing to say.”
“You have to know Nick’s sense of humor,” Ora said. “But I feel better knowing that you’re back in Maine. If anyone can track down that man of mine, it’s you, Mike.”
I appreciated her confidence, but I felt the task I’d taken on was weightier than I’d at first realized. Charley’s disappearance wasn’t just another investigation. It was far more important than that: potentially a matter of life and death.
I was waiting for my luggage in baggage claim when I noticed a tall, sandy-haired woman at the next carousel. She had her back to me, but I recognized her broad shoulders and the service dog sitting with preternatural stillness at her side, a tawny Belgian Malinois. The breed is a high-energy cousin to the German shepherd, and this one was wearing a red SEARCH DOG IN TRAINING vest. I happened to know this animal was well past the training stage, but the vest probably helped keep off handsy strangers.
“Kathy!”
My former sergeant, Kathy Frost, turned to me, as did Maple, her canine partner. “Grasshopper! What’s shaking?”
“My world, as usual.”
“I’m the last person you need to tell that to.”
Kathy had one of those expressive faces that is attractive because you can see the goodness of her character in it.
She had been my field training officer, assigned to hold my hand during my rookie year, and then she had become one of my closest friends. The first woman in the history of the Maine Warden Service and its first female sergeant, she’d had her promising career cut short when she’d been ambushed outside her house by an enemy she’d never known she had. The attempted murderer fired a burst of shotgun pellets into her abdomen, and it still struck me as proof of God’s existence that she had survived.
The Malinois, recognizing me as a friend and fellow pack mate, whipped her black-tipped tail back and forth. I fell down upon one knee to receive her dog kisses.
“Hey, Maple! How are you doing, girl? Have you been digging up bodies?”
“Not this time,” said Kathy. “We were at Quantico teaching a program for first responders from around the country.”
That explained her dappled complexion. Kathy’s freckles tended to multiply the tanner she got.
Before her forced retirement, she had headed up the Warden Service’s K-9 team. She now worked as a consultant for law enforcement agencies around the country and even abroad, teaching officers how to train dogs to recover corpses.
“What about you?” she asked. “Where are you coming from in your fancy linen suit?”
“Doing a background check in Florida.”
“Florida! Really?” The intensity of her curiosity was such that Maple heard the excitement in her voice and pricked up her ears. “Anywhere near where a certain wildlife biologist is living?”
Kathy had been present for the beginning, middle, and end of my relationship with Stacey, including the latter’s decampment for a new life in the Everglades. They had been friendly if not friends. Dani, on the other hand, was one of Kathy’s beloved trainees.
I spotted my bag coming around the S-shaped conveyor belt. Considering it contained my locked sidearm, I made a dash for it, glad for the interruption.
When I returned, Kathy said, “I don’t suppose you have time to grab lunch?”
“I wish I could, but I’ve left Shadow alone too long.”
“Dani, too.”
“Come on, Kathy.”
“All I’m saying is you’ve got a good thing going for once in your life.”
“I’m not unaware.”
“Hey, there’s my bag. We should get together soon, the three of us.”
“Absolutely.”
We said our goodbyes, and I began the long march to the parking lot. Almost at once, I regretted not having clued Kathy in on the mystery around Charley’s disappearance. The two former wardens had worked together for years. Maybe she had an insight. But I hadn’t wanted to betray Ora’s confidence until I had a better sense of the situation.
I threw my bags in the back of my personal vehicle, a restored 1980 International Harvester Scout. It was only the last week of June, but the air had the heaviness of hurricane season. I had traveled two thousand miles and still hadn’t escaped the hot, wet grip of the Everglades.
* * *
I’d been away for just a week, and yet somehow, I’d missed the end of spring and the beginning of summer. The lupines along Route 1 had faded. By contrast, the birches, maples, and beeches were fully leafed out. If anything, Maine looked even more verdant than Florida.
It was greener in more ways than one. The state had recently legalized the recreational use of marijuana. Every few miles, a new dispensary had arisen along the coastal road:
Ye Olde Toke Shoppe
Merry Jane’s
Medicinal Mart
Cannabis Rex
Herbal Nirvana
Like the gold rush of the nineteenth country, I suspected the dope rush of the twenty-first would end in tears and bankruptcies. The real winners would be the same transnational corporations who peddled tobacco and needed a new drug to sell.
I hadn’t warned Logan Cronk that I was coming. The sight that greeted me, as I pulled into my pine-shaded dooryard, nearly made my eyes pop from my skull.
Shadow’s fenced pen was littered with small bones, piles of feathers, and tatters of fur. A trio of crows perched in the high branches of the poplars within the acre-plus enclosure, waiting for a chance to pick at the gnawed carcasses without being devoured themselves.
The recumbent wolf opened one golden eye when he heard me drive up. He recognized the telltale sound of my engine but waited for me to approach the fence to rouse himself. He gave a shake that raised a cloud of hair, dander, and pollen, then trotted down to the gate to greet me.
“What have you been eating?”
He yawned, revealing two-inch-long teeth.
“Seriously, dude, what is all this crap?”
He sniffed the wire as a signal he wanted me to offer my hand. When I did, he licked my fingertips. Maybe it was a gesture of affection, but more likely he wanted to taste the residual grease from the pizza slice I’d grabbed at a convenience store.
I heard a bicycle behind me and, turning, saw Logan Cronk pedaling hard down my long drive. His blue eyes were bright with excitement; his blond hair was so long and feathery he looked like a pop star from the last days of disco. One half of his face was crimson with a rash, as vivid as a port-wine birthmark.
“Uncle Mike! How come you didn’t tell me you were home?”
“Logan, what happened to your face?”
“It’s them caterpillars,” he said, scratching. “The ones with the poison hairs.”
He was talking about the larvae of brown-tail moths, I realized. On the drive home, I had spotted som
e of their webs in the branches of oak trees. The caterpillars had bristles—or setae—that they shed, which caused allergic reactions, not unlike those caused by poison ivy. In recent years, the moth infestations had spread northeast along the coast. It was hard for me not to see the warmth-loving pests as harbingers of a worse future.
“What’s with all the bones? You told me Shadow killed a turkey that landed inside his pen, but from the looks of things, a whole flock got in there. Plus God knows what else.”
The boy’s grin showed a crooked set of teeth. His parents lacked the money to have them straightened. “It’s roadkill.”
“What?”
“I was reading that wolves are super hungry all the time and prefer fresh meat and stuff, and I’ve been riding around with a trash bag picking up the dead animals along the side of the road.”
“You’d better not have gone inside the fence, Logan.”
“Heck no! I would never have broken the rules.” He scratched an inflamed ear. “Even though I think Shadow kind of likes me.”
I had only recently dared enter the animal’s compound myself—and that was with a can of pepper spray that I doubted would have kept the black beast from ripping out my throat.
“That’s a dangerous way of thinking,” I said. “You look into his eyes, and it feels like you know what’s going on inside his head. But that’s just a way we fool ourselves, Logan. Even with regular dogs, we need to remember that their minds work differently from ours. People are really good at convincing themselves that the things they want to believe are true.”
“Yeah, but he really likes you.”
The kid hadn’t heard a word I’d said. He was only ten. What had I expected?
“Thank you for giving him that roadkill. It added some variety to his diet. He looks big and healthy again.”
The wolf had come into my care after having been shot by a crossbow bolt that had collapsed one of his lungs and permanently damaged ligaments that he needed to chase down prey. His convalescence had lasted many months.
“Do you think he’ll ever live in the house with you?”
“It’s tough to make predictions, Logan, especially about the future.”
The wit and wisdom of Yogi Berra was lost on the ten-year-old.
“Listen,” I said, “I have to take a trip north—I’m not sure for how long. Would you consider watching him a few more days? Of course, I’ll pay you for the work you’ve already done.”
“Really?”
I opened my wallet and pulled out a twenty-dollar bill for every day I had been away, 140 dollars in all. His father had said Logan was saving for his first .22 rifle, and this windfall would be more than enough to finance the purchase. The joy in his inflamed face produced an unexpected emotion in me. I became keenly aware of not having a family of my own, nor even the prospect of one. Dani had made it clear that she had no interest in becoming a mother.
After Logan had ridden off, I looked into the eyes of the wolf and said, “I missed you, pal.”
And despite everything I’d just told the boy about the unknowability of animal minds, I could have sworn Shadow understood me.
8
I had made the mistake of closing all the windows before I’d left, not having anticipated that Maine would experience its first ever monsoon season. The trapped air had a damp, mildewed smell that brought to mind an antebellum mansion rotting away at the edge of some dismal swamp. When I turned on the light in the kitchen, a wolf spider the size of a half-dollar skittered across the floor and disappeared into a crack beneath the baseboard.
My plan was to clean myself up, pack a duffel with clothes appropriate to the bug-ridden month of June, and head for the North Woods. Charley and Ora lived alongside a remote, unspoiled pond in easternmost Maine where their only neighbors were black bears and moose. Maybe by the time I returned, the wolf spider would have moved on to happier hunting grounds and the wallpaper would’ve stopped peeling in strips from the bathroom wall.
I had accrued three days of comp time while investigating Wheelwright. The state required me to take it in lieu of cash. God forbid that I should ever be paid for the actual hours I worked. I sent messages to inform my coworkers that I would be away. I assured my supervisor, Captain Jock DeFord, that I was ready, willing, and able to return to duty should the need arise.
I put my service weapon in the gun safe and removed my personal handgun and three magazines. It was a Beretta PX4 Storm Compact. With regret, I had retired my beloved Walther PPK/S that had seen me through so many adventures. The little .380 lacked the stopping power I needed when dealing with charging moose and charged-up men. The Beretta was harder to conceal but I rarely missed with it.
Loading the magazines with hollow-points, I gazed out my window at the leafless oaks. The nests of the invasive moths looked like spun sugar in their bare branches. In a few years, some of these trees would be dead from the defoliating infestation.
The phone rang.
It was Tom Wheelwright. I didn’t want to answer but feared he would keep calling—perhaps even call Major Shorey—if I didn’t pick up.
“Captain Wheelwright.”
“Tom, please.” Even his voice projected manly self-confidence.
“It’s better that we don’t communicate except through established channels.”
“Totally understand. Listen, I just got a call from an air force buddy of mine, Joe Fixico. He said he spoke with you yesterday. I have to give you an A+ for thoroughness, Mike. I didn’t even realize he was living in Miami-Dade.”
“Captain, we can’t be having this conversation.”
“No, I understand. But you need to know that Fixico has mental problems. Don’t get me wrong. He was a hell of an electronic warfare officer. But he was in an automobile accident a while back. It did severe damage to his brain.”
He still thinks he’s getting the job, the cocky SOB.
“Captain, I spoke with the women.”
He didn’t miss a beat. “Which women are you referring to?”
“Captain Wheelwright, I am going to hang up now. Please don’t call back or attempt to contact anyone else on the search panel. We will be in touch.”
Five seconds after I hung up, I had my supervisor on the phone.
“I just got your email about heading out of town,” said Jock DeFord. “Is there something you forgot to add?”
“It’s Wheelwright.”
“I read your report,” he said. “Those are serious allegations. I don’t like it, but the major thinks we owe him a chance to defend his name.”
“Jock, he just called me.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean I just hung up on him. He’s gotten wind of the conversation I had with Fixico and is trying to control the damage. Aside from the call being completely inappropriate, there is no way in hell we can hire this guy. His application needs to be shitcanned immediately.”
“He shouldn’t have reached out to you. Agreed.”
“Even allowing this to proceed risks blowback from the press.”
“I think you’re exaggerating, Mike.”
“Because I understand the danger Wheelwright poses to our credibility. You need to make sure Shorey doesn’t sway the hiring panel.”
“I think you’re selling the rest of us short. We’re all on the same page about Wheelwright.”
“Not Shorey.”
“Pat is going to be Pat, but he doesn’t have the purview to hire whoever he wants. There’s nothing for you to worry about.”
That was easier said than done.
When I was a teenager, the Warden Service had weathered one shit storm after another. First, an instructor at the Advanced Warden Academy had been fired for hazing cadets with his own urine. Then an undercover warden busted a well-liked fishing guide on some rinky-dink charges. The guide claimed entrapment, and the story somehow found its way into The Wall Street Journal. Afterward, all charges were dropped against the guide.
The bad p
ress had reached its peak fifteen years earlier in a raid on a town along the New Brunswick border. An undercover warden investigator had disappeared somewhere around the village of St. Ignace and was presumed to have been murdered by the poaching gang he’d infiltrated. In the first hours of the house-to-house search, three residences had burned to the ground. The fire had almost certainly been set by the man who’d killed the investigator, but the media—goaded on by opportunistic politicians—had accused the Warden Service of engaging in storm trooper tactics.
Those scandals had occurred before the advent of social media and the #MeToo movement. I could guess what Twitter might do with a serial predator like Tom Wheelwright.
* * *
Before I left home, I wrote an email to Dani. I knew she wouldn’t see it until she finished qualifying at the range. She would have it in her head that I would be driving over to western Maine to stay at her house. I wanted to prepare her for disappointment. And the situation with Charley was too complicated to explain via a chain of text messages.
We had been dating long-distance for more than a year now. Door to door was a two-hour drive, but the excitement of visiting her made it seem shorter. Dani was, in a word, fun. She was go-go-go. She liked racing snowmobiles across frozen lakes and speed-hiking to the tops of four-thousand-foot mountains. She had given me private lessons in Brazilian jiu-jitsu that always seemed to end in our having sex.
Less successfully, she had tried to interest me in video games we could play against each other while physically apart (Mario Kart was her current favorite), but I couldn’t get into them. I had always been an old soul. Alone, at night, I preferred a good book. Dani’s personal library consisted of her old textbooks and motivational guides by Stephen Covey and Anthony Robbins.
In my email, I laid out the meager information I had about my mentor’s sudden disappearance.
