One Last Lie

by Paul Doiron

  “I know you’ll understand,” I wrote. “Charley has been the closest thing I’ve ever had to a real father. I owe it to Ora to track him down.”

  The old pilot had his faults. He could be reckless, scheming, secretive. He was a born actor who exaggerated his folksy Maine accent when it benefited him for a suspect to underestimate his intelligence. He had the corniest sense of humor. Nor had he handled Stacey’s and my breakup with the grace for which I had hoped. And yet he remained my hero.

  “I wish he talked more about his past,” I continued. “It seems like everything I know about his history—from his childhood in the logging camps to his service in Vietnam—I had to pry out of him or hear secondhand. We’d known each other for years before he told me he’d been shot down and imprisoned in the Hanoi Hilton. How does someone not mention something like that? God only knows what else he’s done that he’s never told me about.”

  Still, in the seven years we’d known each other, Charley had conducted the equivalent of a Ph.D. program in the flora and fauna of the Maine woods. He had taught me how to do my job, enforcing the state’s laws while staying true to my inner compass. Most importantly, he had instructed me in what it meant to be a man in a cultural moment when masculinity was presumed toxic until proven otherwise.

  “With luck, he’ll be home by the time I get there. Probably with a bouquet of flowers and some lame excuse for Ora. Same old Charley.”

  Even while I typed these words, I felt a hollowness in my chest. I could say that he was just being himself. But in running off without any explanation, Charley had behaved like someone I didn’t recognize. I was afraid, I realized. Afraid that in finding the man, I risked losing my respect for him.

  At thirty-one, maybe I was too old to believe in heroes, but I needed Charley Stevens to remain what he had always been—the best man I’d ever known.

  9

  Driving along coastal Route 1 in the summer was one of my several visions of hell. The traffic was bumper-to-bumper where the road threaded through pedestrian-clogged villages. Then on the straightaways, tourists passed one another like maniacs, desperate to get to Acadia National Park, where they could relax among the hundreds of thousands of people just like them.

  It took two hours, but I finally escaped the worst of it. Just past Ellsworth, the road opened, the speed limit rose, and soon, I was cruising through miles of rolling blueberry barrens, the bushes already in full flower. It was as if I had entered not another county but another nation.

  My second patrol district had been here, in Down East Maine. The assignment had felt like exile at first. Washington County was one of the poorest counties north of the Mason-Dixon Line and an early epicenter of the opioid pandemic that later devastated so much of rural America. It had taken time, but I had warmed to the luckless region, even came to love it after a fashion, the people especially, and had settled briefly in the county before fate announced it had different plans for me.

  When I crossed the bridge above Bad Little Falls and entered downtown Machias, I had the sensation of revisiting a place I’d known from a past life. Storefronts that had been vacant from my days as a patrol warden still had yellowed FOR LEASE signs in their dusty windows. Everyone was shopping at the three new dollar stores out on the strip, I’d heard.

  At last, I came to the Dike. On the eastern side of the road was the salt water, still brackish from the river tumbling down the falls. On the western side were dozens of parking spaces and a guardrail separating the pavement from a well-traveled ATV trail. People in this part of the world took their four-wheelers to the convenience store to buy beer and cigarettes the way people elsewhere used their cars for the same desperate errands.

  The flea market was bunched up at the north end. On this overcast afternoon, the bazaar consisted of a handful of tables and sheltered booths, plus the food truck that sold breakfast sandwiches made with apple cider doughnuts instead of english muffins. I backed my Scout into one of the many empty spaces and stepped out into the afternoon steam bath.

  Ora’s friend, the artist Carol Boyce, was an outsized woman in every way—large, lavish, and loud—who wore muumuus and used a paintbrush as a hair stick in her bun. She’d been an adjunct English professor at the University of Maine at Machias but had taken up painting in retirement. Her watercolors hung from the tent: blurry depictions of lighthouses and smeared lupine fields. It was hard to discern if Carol was an impressionist or just had bad eyesight.

  She peered up at me when my shadow fell across her sketch pad.

  “I know you,” she said with an undertone of accusation. “You’re our dear departed game warden.”

  “That makes me sound like I’m dead, Mrs. Boyce.”

  She smelled of rose water. “I expect you’re here on account of Ora Stevens.”

  “How did you guess?”

  “You and Charley were always as thick as thieves. She called me to ask about the strange vendor here the other day, the one who argued with her husband.”

  “Can you describe him?”

  “He was but a ruin of a man.”

  “Could you be more specific?”

  “‘It was the careless powerful look he had, in spite of a lameness checking each step like the jerk of a chain.’”

  I didn’t realize she was reciting a quote until my vacant expression exposed me.

  “Did you never read Ethan Frome, Warden?”

  “In high school, I think.”

  She slapped closed her sketch pad. “It seemed to me that this man you’re looking for had been in a pretty bad smashup, the way he dragged himself around. I would say a motorcycle was involved, based on the tattoos and the grungy affect. But you want specifics. He had a kerchief around his bald head and a scraggly beard, more gray than black; wore dungarees and a flannel shirt, no sleeves. He never removed his sunglasses, but they looked cheap, like ones you might choose from a rack at the gas station.”

  Her detailed description made me wish more of my witnesses were visual artists. “Did you catch his name?”

  “I went over to have a look at his wares and be sociable, as I always do, but he refused to introduce himself or even say where he was from! We’re a community here on the Dike. We have manners and mores. The things he had for sale seemed fishy, too. Not the usual culch.”

  The term is Maine lingo for the knickknacks you find in attics and basements after an aged relative passes away.

  “How so?”

  “It was an assortment of items you don’t see for sale at souks like this. There was some taxidermy but also an electric guitar. Three mink coats. Even an espresso maker! Who sells an espresso maker at a place like this?”

  “It sounds like the kinds of items you’d find in a pawn shop.”

  “That’s exactly right! It was as if he were a pawnbroker.”

  “What about his vehicle?”

  “One of those cheap Plymouth minivans. The ones with the flaking paint on the hoods. The color was, or had been, cerulean blue.”

  “I take it you didn’t see the license plate.”

  She lifted a Japanese hand fan from the table and began to wave it vigorously in the air. “I’m a watercolorist, not a state trooper.”

  “Did you happen to overhear any of Charley’s conversation with the stranger?”

  “The only part I heard was when Ethan Frome shouted at Charley, ‘You can’t take that! Not without paying.’”

  Finally.

  “Did Charley say anything in response?”

  “Yes, he said, ‘I’ve got your number.’ The look on his face when he passed my table—I’ve never seen Charley Stevens that mad before. Normally, I consider him to be a handsome man. Not all my female friends do. But this was the first time I remember thinking he looked ugly—ugly with anger.”

  “Do you know what Charley took from his table?”

  She considered the question with real thoughtfulness. “Whatever it was, it was small enough to fit in his hand.”

  “I’m sor
ry to keep pressing you on this, Mrs. Boyce, but you said you looked at the items on this man’s table. What did you see that might have fit in Charley’s hand?”

  “Earrings, watches, jackknives.”

  My cell phone rang at that moment. I pulled aside my coat to reach for my back pocket. When I saw whose number it was—Major Shorey’s—I let the call go to voice mail and turned back to the watercolorist.

  “He also had a badge,” Carol Boyce said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “He had a badge for sale. Seeing yours made me remember.”

  In reaching for my phone, I had exposed the badge clipped on my belt.

  “It was a game warden’s,” she said, “only smaller and tarnished. And it had a number on it. Don’t bother asking me what the number was. I just happened to have noticed because the digits were so clumsily engraved in the metal.”

  “You’ve been extremely helpful, Mrs. Boyce, I wish there was something—”

  “You could buy one of my paintings.”

  I waited to see if her deadpan would crack, only to realize she was completely serious.

  Happily, my phone chose that moment to ring again.

  It was Dani, calling presumably from the firing range.

  “Sorry, but I need to take this one,” I said, already backing away. “It’s my girlfriend.”

  The artist waved her paper fan in the dead air. “A likely story!”

  * * *

  “You have perfect timing,” I told Dani.

  “I can never tell when you’re being a wiseass.”

  “I’m serious! You rescued me from being forced to buy a painting by one of the least talented artists in Maine—and that’s saying something.”

  Cars and trucks rumbled and roared past. I cupped my hand to my opposite ear to hear her better.

  “I got that long email you sent. I was looking forward to seeing you. Of course you have to go up there to help.”

  “Thanks for understanding,” I said.

  “Where are you?”

  “At the Machias Dike. I have a theory about what set Charley off the other day.”

  I gave her a quick rundown of everything Carol Boyce had told me.

  “You think it was an old warden badge?” Dani asked.

  “That’s my best guess.”

  “It’s not illegal to sell those. They come up for sale on auction sites all the time. Why would Charley get pissed off about running across one?”

  “I can think of two reasons,” I said. “The first is the stuff the guy was selling. It sounded like the kinds of things burglars steal from people’s houses.”

  “That’s a real thing,” Dani said. “Thieves fencing their stolen merchandise at flea markets. It’s especially bad in big cities. We’re supposed to be on the lookout for anything that looks suspicious. What’s the other reason?”

  “Judging from how Charley responded, I believe the badge belonged to someone he knew.”

  “But warden badges don’t have personal identification on them.”

  “The really old badges did. They had district numbers engraved on the front.”

  “So it might’ve been somebody Charley knew as a young man?”

  “Possibly.”

  “What do you think Charley meant when he told the guy, ‘I’ve got your number’? Like he knew the creep was fencing stolen property?”

  “Maybe, but I’m guessing he meant something else. If you had been in Charley’s shoes, what would you have done to find out his identity?”

  She sighed with embarrassment. “Looked at his license plate.”

  “A person can’t just find out who owns a vehicle by typing a license plate number into a website; you need help from a dispatcher. But that wouldn’t be a problem for Charley, who still has friends in law enforcement. That’s another question for Ora, I guess.”

  “That’s where you’re headed next?”

  “Knowing Ora, she’s going to insist I stay for dinner, which means I’ll probably end up spending the night.”

  “I understand,” she said. “I miss you, babe. It’s been a long week.”

  Gulls chattered out on the flats, pecking for bloodworms in the acres of exposed mud.

  “How did you shoot today?” I asked.

  “Not my best. My head is splitting. I think it’s the flu. If you’re sleeping at Sixth Machias Lake tonight, who’s taking care of Shadow?”

  “Logan Cronk.”

  “This is going to end with the wolf eating him.”

  I would have laughed if it wasn’t a real fear of mine.

  She became quiet again.

  “Dani?”

  “You need to promise me something, Mike. You need to promise to keep in touch. I want to be your partner, not just your friend with benefits. I know you’re trying to be honest and open with me, but it’s not in your nature to ask for help.”

  It was an accusation that had the problem of being true.

  “I promise.”

  10

  The boondocks, the williwaws, the backcountry—none of these terms properly described just how deep Charley and Ora lived in the woods. Late in life, they had built a house and a guesthouse on the shores of Sixth Machias Lake, a body of water so remote and insignificant no one had ever constructed so much as a fishing camp there. Charley’s friend Nick Francis had told him that the Wabanakis, who had originally occupied all the land from Lake Champlain to Cape Breton Island, had named the lake Walcopekuhsis: “little puddle.”

  The Stevenses might have relocated somewhere even more isolated if not for Ora’s health problems, some of which were lingering aftereffects of the plane crash that had paralyzed her; others of which were part of the normal process of aging. Her husband seemed impervious to physical decline. For Ora’s sake, they had been forced to build a gated road into the lake so they could drive her wheelchair-accessible van to hospitals and pharmacies.

  Charley couldn’t have been more pleased with his puddle. He wanted to spend his last years living somewhere off the edge of the map. He had a floatplane and an ATV and a snowmobile—what more did he need?

  It was near dark when I finally left the logging road and turned onto the unmarked jeep trail that led to their hidden pond. A mile into the uncut forest, I reached the steel gate. I had memorized the combination of the padlock but had no need of it. The gate was ajar.

  In my headlights, I saw tire prints, like the tracks of two rough-bellied snakes. They belonged to a heavy vehicle: a pickup, possibly an SUV. It had entered the property but not yet exited.

  The gate made a terrific bang as I swung it shut behind me, loud enough to frighten off a woodcock that had been hiding in the alders nearby. It rocketed into the shadows with a flurry of wingbeats.

  The house came into view slowly, not as a structure in itself but as a row of illuminated rectangles where the first-floor windows were. As I emerged from the dense conifers surrounding the main building, I saw a black Ford Interceptor parked in the dooryard. The insignia of the Washington County Sheriff’s Department reflected my high beams.

  When I was the local warden, I used to know all the police vehicles by their plate numbers, but that was years ago now. The longtime sheriff had lost her bid for reelection and had been replaced by her chief deputy, and there were many new faces in the department, all of them male.

  As I stepped down from the Scout, the front door opened, throwing light down the ramp Charley had built for Ora’s wheelchair. The silhouette of a slight, almost delicate man appeared within the frame. He wore a chocolate-brown uniform and a duty belt laden with a gun, Taser, and all the other tools of the law enforcement trade.

  I removed the badge from my belt and held it out as I advanced on the house. “Mike Bowditch. Warden Service investigator. What’s going on here?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to ascertain, sir.”

  He was slender even wearing a bulky ballistic vest. He had a wisp of a mustache, like a teenager trying to grow one for the first time,
and a hairline that started two inches above his eyebrows. The name on his chest was Young, which seemed so appropriate that part of me wondered if I was being pranked.

  Ora wheeled her chair into the lighted room behind the cop. “Oh, Mike! The deputy says Charley assaulted a man in Houlton!”

  “That’s insane.”

  “There’s a man in the hospital who swears it was Mr. Stevens,” said Deputy Young.

  He had a way of pushing his voice lower into his diaphragm. Rookies are so quick to play at being tough guys. I knew this from hard, personal experience.

  “How long have you been on the force, Young?”

  “Four months.”

  “Been to the academy yet?”

  “I’m going next term. How are these questions relevant, sir?”

  “Clearly you haven’t met Warden Stevens. If you had, you’d know this man’s accusations are bullshit.”

  “I’d prefer to hear that from the warden himself. You wouldn’t happen to know where he is, would you?”

  “Can you close the door please, dears?” said Ora. “The bugs are coming in.”

  Ora Stevens’s green eyes were somehow even paler than those of her daughter. She had the high cheekbones of a professional model, smooth skin that might have belonged to a woman half her age, and snow-white hair pushed back from her face. She wore a mint-green blouse and a hand-knitted blanket over her legs. White tennis shoes peeked out on the footrests of her wheelchair.

  “What’s the name of the man who’s accusing Warden Stevens of assault?” I asked.

  “John Smith.”

  “You’re sure it’s not John Doe?” But the deputy didn’t catch the sarcasm in my voice. “What does he say happened?”

  Young removed a mobile phone from his pocket and brought up a photograph of a bruised and bandaged man. He had a shaved skull, a scraggly beard, and deeply set eyes. He looked like he’d stepped face-first into a bus.

  “Mr. Smith says Warden Stevens threatened him three days ago at his booth at the Machias Dike. Then yesterday morning, he says, he opened the door of his residence in Island Falls to find Warden Stevens waiting. In Mr. Smith’s statement, he says the warden proceeded to assault him.”