One Last Lie

by Paul Doiron

  And few places were more remote than St. Ignace.

  Pellerin had affected his entrée into the circle of the Michauds with one of the oldest plays in the investigator’s book. He sabotaged his own truck. He then had it towed to the repair shop father and son ran as one of their several businesses. He struck up a conversation with Roland while the latter labored to diagnose the electrical problem.

  He’d come to St. Ignace, Scott told the Michauds, in the hopes of shooting a “monster bear,” but he hadn’t realized the legal window for killing one over bait (the most effective method) had almost swung shut. Roland Michaud held a commercial hunting guide’s license. He offered to take the Rhode Island rube out for the last days of the season.

  The next morning, before dawn, Roland swung by the motel to pick up his client. Pellerin appeared with a rifle that must have given the poacher an erection. The investigator had brought with him a brand-new GA Precision Gladius chambered for .308 Winchester cartridges. This scoped, camo-colored rifle retailed for more than $8,000. Pellerin claimed he’d bought it after reading the autobiography of famed “American Sniper” Chris Kyle.

  Pellerin and Kellam had obtained the weapon knowing it would prove irresistible to the Michauds and their associates—that they would fall over each other to use it—and that was indeed what happened.

  (It must have been agony for them not to steal it when they’d killed Scott, but they’d rightly realized the risks were too great. Kellam had found the Gladius at the Valley View awaiting the return of its missing “owner.”)

  By the end of his initial stay in St. Ignace, Pellerin hadn’t shot a bear, but he was regularly riding the gated roads with Roland and Zach Michaud with the sniper’s gun and a case of beer, shooting whatever could be shot. One afternoon, Roland used the scoped rifle to pulverize a ruffed grouse at a distance of one hundred yards. The bird, Pellerin wrote, “exploded into a puff of feathers.”

  His characterizations of the three poachers were highly detailed: Both Roland and Zach Michaud were clones of their father. Dark, handsome, bearish men. All the Michauds had extensive rap sheets: misdemeanor assaults, vehicular offenses, multiple violations of Maine’s fish and game laws. Zach was the lone felon among them. He had served a year and a half in the Maine State Prison for a drunk driving crash that had resulted in his female companion breaking her back.

  The outsider of the group was Jon Egan. He, too, was a felon. Under the influence, he’d exposed himself to a troop of Girl Scouts cleaning up litter along the St. John River.

  The one man whom Pellerin had failed to ingratiate himself with was the primary target, Pierre Michaud. From the start, the ringleader seemed intent on keeping his distance. During his first visit to St. Ignace, the undercover officer didn’t have so much as a conversation with the poacher king.

  When Pellerin returned to town two weeks later, he came bearing gifts. One was a massive cooler stuffed with striped bass on ice. The other was a case of Aguardente de Medronho, a high-octane fruit brandy of Portuguese extraction, popular among commercial fishermen. The choice of the colorless alcohol was smart; it allowed the warden investigator to travel with his own bottle containing water instead of eighty-proof liquor. And it was obscure enough to defuse suspicions. What Maine game warden would show up with six bottles of hard-to-obtain, harder-to-pronounce alcohol from Portugal?

  The first night the Michaud boys tried the Aguardente, they got roaringly drunk—and revealed to Pellerin the full extent of their criminal activities.

  It would not be an exaggeration to say that the Michaud gang had broken half the fish and game laws in the state, but those infractions were only the beginning. They also maintained acres of cultivated marijuana in the forests west of the Allagash Wilderness Waterway and smuggled pounds of it across the St. John River—along with moose and deer meat—into Canada. From the other shore, they brought back prescription narcotics, principally Oxycodone burgled from the homes of cancer patients by their frères criminels across the border.

  The day after the drinking party, Pellerin received a visit from the poacher king himself. He returned to his motel from gassing up his truck to find Pierre Michaud waiting in his room. A Desert Eagle handgun lay on the table within easy reach. He was drinking from a mug of King Cole Orange Pekoe. The elder Michaud never drank alcohol in Pellerin’s presence.

  In French, he told Paradis to have a seat on the bed. He then began with a series of personal questions about Pellerin’s life, starting with his childhood and leading to the moment when he’d first appeared in St. Ignace.

  He was a mountain of a man, larger even than his sons. His most noteworthy features were the severe burns on his hands. Pierre had been trained as a blacksmith and kept a smithy behind his house. At some distant time in his past, he had thrust his hands into a fire (or had them thrust in by some other man). The skin had melted like beef tallow.

  “I want to try out this fancy rifle of yours,” Michaud said in the nasal French of the St. John Valley. “We will take your truck.”

  The thought occurred to Pellerin that he was headed to his own execution.

  Before they could leave the Valley View, however, they were interrupted by the arrival at the motel of the local game warden.

  Deputy Warden Chasse Lamontaine had been summoned by Emmeline Bouchard to deal with a (fictional) rabid raccoon. Pellerin realized Pierre Michaud’s stratagem. Deputy Chasse had a reputation as the worst poker player at every table: a man incapable of bluffing. If “Scott Paradis” was an undercover warden, as Pierre suspected, Chasse would be unable to conceal his knowledge of the stranger’s identity.

  To the surprise of both Pellerin and Michaud, Chasse didn’t so much as blink when he was “introduced” to Scott Paradis. His handsome, guileless face revealed nothing except an eagerness to get on with locating the rabid raccoon.

  Reading between the lines, I could sense Pellerin’s disbelief at what had happened:

  How did he not recognize me?

  Granted, the two wardens barely knew each other. Chasse Lamontaine was still just a deputy, back when that position was close to a civilian job: a helper to a district warden who needed another set of hands and eyes. Being a warden’s assistant had paid peanuts and rarely led to a career in law enforcement. Plus, Pellerin was based out of Division A in the southern part of the state. He had also grown out his hair and beard for the assignment.

  By some miracle, Pellerin managed to avoid the first pitfall Pierre Michaud had dug for him. But there proved to be more traps set in his path.

  Next, Pierre had challenged him to shoot that jacklighted doe Kellam had mentioned. Even then, though, Scott had had the presence of mind to allow himself to be hit in the face by the butt of the rifle as the recoil drove it backward. Pellerin ended up with a bruise on his cheek—and a little more of the Michauds’ trust.

  Reading the investigator’s account of his actions made me like him even more. He was quick-witted, confident, and gifted with natural situational awareness. No wonder Charley had loved him like a son.

  In his report, there were occasional mentions of Emmeline Bouchard, often in the company of Pierre Michaud, and while Pellerin documented crimes committed by the Michaud boys and Jon Egan, he seemed never to have witnessed the motel owner breaking any law worse than possession of a controlled substance.

  Once again, I began to wonder if Emmeline Bouchard had been the one who’d discovered Pellerin’s secret and revealed his true identity to Pierre. Maybe the poacher king had used his girlfriend as bait to gather information from the stranger who had been so quick to ingratiate himself with his sons and so persistent with his questions.

  Pellerin’s report remained unfinished.

  When I reached the final page—the place where a warden would have included his summary of the investigation—there was only this:

  Friday, September 27, ____, Phone Call from Unknown Cell Phone

  At approximately 2100 hours I received a call from a number I didn�
��t recognize but had reason to believe was one used by the Michauds. The caller did not leave a message. I called the number back and heard an automated tone indicate a voice mail prompt. I did not leave a message.

  He was never seen or heard from again.

  29

  I awoke the next morning to fierce barking. I had fallen asleep rereading Pellerin’s report. Instinctively, I reached for the handgun I had concealed beneath the covers. In the process, I managed to send loose pages flying everywhere.

  I crossed to the window and pulled back the blind. The sun hadn’t yet risen. The trees near the house were filled with a gray light that had the diffuse quality of cannon smoke.

  From what I could gather from his barking, Ferox was still housebound, but something had happened to send him into a state of agitation. Kathy Frost, who had spent decades as a K-9 handler, had tried to instruct me in the subtleties of dog barks. “They use different sounds to communicate aggressiveness, defensiveness, fear, general excitement,” she’d said.

  To my half-educated ears, Ferox sounded less like he wanted to chase a squirrel and more like he’d detected an intruder and wanted to feast on the stranger’s beating heart.

  I pulled the blind wider and saw a sight that made my eyes pop.

  Edouard was running, naked except for his white underwear, across the clearing between the house and the forest. While I watched, he cast a glance over his shoulder in the direction of the darkened driveway. Then he disappeared from my field of vision into the pines.

  I dressed, laced up my boots, and tucked my Beretta into its holster under the hem of my shirt.

  Kellam shouted for the Cane Corso to shut up.

  I’d never heard a dog go so quiet so fast.

  Next came a door slam. I dearly hoped it was Kellam locking up his monstrous mastiff.

  I descended the stairs with caution and followed the natural predawn light through the rooms until I reached one of the plate glass windows, looking out at the dooryard draped in shadows.

  A game warden’s patrol truck had rolled to a stop beside my Scout. It was one of the older F-150s, so scratched and muddied it was hard to imagine what it looked like washed.

  The driver stepped out, a tall, straight-backed man, dressed in a fatigue-green uniform, a black ball cap, and neoprene boots. The ballistic vests patrol wardens wear make even skinny men look fat in the belly. But even wearing body armor, this guy had the physique of a decathlete.

  Chasse Lamontaine.

  His district lay fifty miles to the north, hard against the New Brunswick border. What was he doing at Moccasin Pond at this hour of the morning?

  The lieutenant, when he appeared in a T-shirt and pajama bottoms, seemed as surprised as I was.

  “What the hell, Lamontaine?” I heard Kellam say through the glass.

  “I got a message you called.”

  “Why would I have called for you?”

  Chasse was well into middle age, but like some blond men, his hair hadn’t changed color, and his wrinkles only served to make his features more ruggedly handsome. His natural gaze was a blue squint. Deputy Do-Right could have served as a stunt double for a midcareer Clint Eastwood.

  I chose that moment to step outside. Chasse didn’t so much as blink at seeing me.

  “Lamontaine, what are you doing here?”

  “It’s a mystery to all of us,” muttered Kellam. “I didn’t call your house, Chasse.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “What do you mean am I sure?”

  “The guy who spoke with C. J. said he was you. He said, ‘Can you tell your dad Stan Kellam needs to see him down at Moccasin Pond?’”

  Kellam ran a hand across his flattop. “Let’s go inside and have coffee and figure this out like civilized men.”

  In the kitchen, Kellam made us individual cups with one of those pod machines. Chasse asked for french vanilla decaf. Stan and I exchanged bemused glances.

  “I want to talk to your son,” said Kellam.

  “He’ll be asleep.”

  “Then wake him the fuck up, Chasse! I want to know who’s pranking us.”

  Both Charley Stevens and Kathy Frost had given me the same advice when I was a rookie. I thought it was hard-won wisdom they’d acquired on the job until I happened to read a particular Sherlock Holmes story. There on the page was the idea my mentors had been trying to hammer into my skull: “It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.”

  So while I wanted to believe that Charley, the dramaturge, was behind Chasse’s appearance onstage, I knew not to jump to that conclusion.

  Vaneese didn’t show herself. Edouard would likely remain in hiding all day.

  Kellam and I listened as Chasse, speaking French, woke up his wife. My grasp of the language was limited, but she didn’t appreciate being awakened. Nor did she appreciate being asked to wake their son.

  “Give me the phone,” barked the lieutenant. “Michelle, this is Stan Kellam. I’m sorry to get you up, but I need to speak with your oldest boy. Yes, it’s urgent.” While he waited, he addressed Lamontaine, looming in the middle of the kitchen. “How old is Chasse Jr. now?”

  “Twenty-one.”

  “What’s he doing for work?”

  “Security at the mill.”

  The just-awakened son came on the line.

  “C. J., this is Lieutenant Kellam. Your father is here at my place and said you took a call from someone claiming to be me. No, it wasn’t. Can you remember what this man said exactly? His precise words? No, that’s fine. What about his voice? Can you be more specific? Great. Thanks for your help.”

  “What did he say?” Chasse asked.

  “That’s one observant boy you’ve got there,” Kellam said. “Tell me something, Lamontaine. You didn’t think it was out of the ordinary that I summoned you here without explanation? Or that I called your landline instead of your cell to do so?”

  “I assumed you had your reasons.”

  Kellam sat down heavily at the breakfast table. He cupped both hands around his mug. Finally, he looked up with a scowl in my direction. “Was it you?”

  “You think I called Chasse?”

  “You were reading those files all night. I saw a sliver of light under your door.”

  “Hell no it wasn’t me,” I said. “Why would I even want him here?”

  “Because you’re a fucking enigma, Bowditch. You always have been. Maybe you read something in the report and decided to pull some mischief to expose us. The little Belgian detective gathers the suspects together…”

  “What report?” asked Chasse, showing an actual flicker of interest.

  “Bowditch has decided to reopen the Scott Pellerin investigation for reasons he refuses to share.”

  “Did someone find something new?”

  “I’ve been reviewing some cold cases,” I said. “And St. Ignace is the Great White Whale.”

  Chasse cocked his head the way a baffled dog does. “What’s left to solve? Pierre Michaud killed Pellerin. Charley Stevens shot Pierre as he was trying to get across Beau Lac to New Brunswick. Open and shut.”

  “There’s the small matter of Pellerin’s body never having been found,” I said.

  Chasse leaned against the counter. “I always figured Pierre cut him up and burned the pieces in his forge.”

  The blunt brutality of the statement stunned me.

  Kellam didn’t seem surprised or bothered by the callousness of his former subordinate. “If that’s what’s happened, we’ll never know, Pierre’s property having burned to the ground.”

  “I hope you’re not planning on poking around St. Ignace,” said Chasse.

  Poking?

  “Why not?”

  “There are still people in the Valley who are angry about what happened. Game wardens aren’t exactly popular. It could be dangerous.”

  “You’re still there,” I said. “It can’t be that dangerous.
”

  “I grew up in Frenchville. Everyone knows me. They understand I had nothing to do with what happened. I never even knew about the investigation.”

  “It was my decision to bring in Pellerin,” said the lieutenant. “And my decision not to inform Chasse.”

  Because he was afraid of Dudley Do-Right blowing his cover.

  I remembered that section in the report where Emmeline lured Chasse to the motel to see how he reacted when he met the mysterious Scott “Paradis.” It had been one of Pierre’s tests.

  “In his account, Pellerin said that you two met,” I said to Chasse. “He was baffled that you failed to recognize him. Care to explain that for me?”

  He didn’t seem put off by the veiled accusation but gave a self-deprecating smile and shrugged his wide shoulders. “Honestly, I don’t know. I’ve wondered about it. C. J. was in trouble a lot back then at school. Pellerin had a beard and long hair. I’ve always been better with names and dates than with faces. Do you mind if I use your bathroom, Lieutenant?”

  “You know where it is.”

  Out on the lake, a loon began to yodel. Another answered. Two males. Destined for a fight.

  I waited until I heard the bathroom door close and lowered my voice. “I saw Edouard bolt when Lamontaine came down the hill. The poor guy was in his underwear.”

  “He hears a strange noise and assumes it’s ICE coming to get him.” Kellam lifted the mug and hefted it, almost as if preparing to throw it at me. “There’s something you’re not telling me about why you’re really here. I can’t figure out what it is, but I know it’s not in my best interest.”

  Chasse returned to the kitchen looking as guileless as ever.

  “Can you think of anyone who might’ve gotten their kicks sending you on a wild-goose chase?” Kellam asked him.

  Before Chasse could respond, his phone rang. He looked at the screen. “It’s Michelle again.”

  “Allo?” he said. “Quoi? Calme-tu. Respire. Où? Et la police est sûre que c’est elle? Oh, mon Dieu, c’est horrible. Si le bureau du shérif appelle à nouveau, dis-leur que je me rendrai directement au motel. J’taime.”