by Paul Doiron
“Keep in mind that this all began with Chasse’s ambition. He became a deputy warden with an arrangement already in place with the Michauds. But even with the money he was getting from Pierre, he wanted more. He realized he could improve his clout and his financial situation if he could become a full-time officer. It was Chasse who convinced the local warden to complain to Kellam about the Valley being overrun with poachers, not realizing the lieutenant would send in an undercover operative without his knowledge.
“After Emmeline found the badge and Scott’s cover was blown, Chasse had a chance to tell the Warden Service. He could have saved Scott’s life. But he was worried that the investigator had learned of his side deal with the Michauds, and so he stood aside as Pierre killed him. Chasse’s shoulder doesn’t have a burn scar, by the way—but it does show signs of plastic surgery, Zanadakis told me.
“Chasse’s predicament, following the raid on St. Ignace, was that the Michauds could still turn on him and expose him as an accessory to murder. My theory is that he shepherded Pierre into that ambush. I think Chasse was the one who suggested the escape route across Beau Lac.”
“Why would Pierre have believed him?”
“Desperation,” Charley said. “Pierre couldn’t be positive that someone in his gang wouldn’t crack. He needed to get out of Dodge. Maybe he gambled that Chasse wasn’t smart or ruthless enough to turn on him. Pierre Michaud wouldn’t be the last man to underestimate Chasse Lamontaine.”
“So let me get this straight,” I said. “Chasse’s plan was to go with you to Beau Lac and make sure Pierre died. Either he would shoot the fugitive or you would. If everything went like clockwork, he would eliminate the man who could link him to Pellerin’s death and come out as the hero who took down a cop killer.”
Charley nodded that big noggin of his. “The one flaw in his scheme was that he assumed there would be a seat for him in my Super Cub.”
“So instead of being the man who shot Pierre Michaud, it was you who got the glory.”
“That’s an empty word for it, but yes, people congratulated me for what happened, even though it meant we never learned what Pierre had done to Scott. Emmeline had been kept in the dark about the details of the murder, I honestly believe. Michaud’s sons refused to break, and I think Egan was terrified that if he revealed his part, he’d spend the rest of his life in a cell. Another tidbit I learned this week was that Egan suffered sexually during his first stint in the Maine State Prison—endured abuses I don’t care to imagine.
“In the end, Chasse got his promotion even if he didn’t get a medal for shooting Pierre Michaud. He went on to have an undistinguished career, probably because he’s been on the take the whole time from assorted lowlifes on both sides of the border. Pellerin’s death was safely in the past until I came across Dupree’s badge on John Smith’s table.”
I glanced at Charley with dismay. “You forgot it! Back on the island.”
Grinning, the old man reached into his pocket and produced the metal shield.
“I went back for it while you were disarming Stanley Kellam.”
Amazingly, this was the first time I’d seen Duke Dupree’s badge up close. It was smaller than mine, but it felt oddly heavy in my hand. It seemed like a malevolent artifact.
The badge had inspired young Pellerin to become the warden his grandfather never was and restore the family honor. And yet this same piece of metal had been Scott’s undoing, too. It had given away his identity when Emmeline found it hidden in his motel room.
Truth be told, I was glad to give it back.
“I wish you and Scott could have known each other.” Charley Stevens was not a man inclined to tears, but I could hear emotion in the sudden softness in his voice. “He’d be forty-two now, and maybe he could have taught you some things. You could have taught him, too. More is likely.”
I understood that he had a story worth listening to, and so I stayed quiet.
“He showed me this badge, second or third time we met,” Charley said. “Told me about his grandfather’s disgrace. Of course I had heard all about Warden Duke Dupree, and there were some details I could’ve added to the tale, but I could see the young man needed to believe in his granddad’s tragic fall. It wouldn’t have helped to tell him what an ass Duke was. Scott carried the badge everywhere as a good-luck charm. I warned him against bringing it undercover, but he laughed at me and said, ‘Charley, you worry too much.’
“After he went missing, I told the detectives to be on the lookout for it. I said it might be the most important clue they found to his whereabouts. But I figured Pierre wouldn’t have risked its discovery. That’s why I was so gobsmacked to see it on Smith’s table in Machias.
“I felt that providence had placed the badge before me and presented me with a second chance to do right by Scott. We all assumed that the truth of what had happened had died with Pierre, but if someone had the badge all this time, maybe they knew the whereabouts of Scott’s remains, too. They might even have taken this thing off his body as a souvenir. The way I figured it, the only person who could’ve had this badge was one of the coconspirators. They’d stayed quiet before—but not this time, by God. I am an old man, and what did I have to lose from leaning on them beyond the limits of what the law allows?”
“You could have lost your liberty,” I said. “You could have gone to prison.”
“I was so beset with anger, I wasn’t thinking straight. I rushed up to confront Smith without even the ghost of a plan. You saw how that turned out.”
“I saw it up close,” I said.
“Afterward, I knew I needed help—someone calmer than me—so I asked Nick to be my second, so to speak. Not once in all the years we’ve known each other has that man let me down. The name Angie Bouchard connected us back to the Valley View. We hadn’t heard Emmeline had passed. It seems we would’ve been better off following your lead and speaking with her daughter.”
“You didn’t need to,” I said. “You only had to wait for me to show up.”
“We knew that Roland was there—I was watching the house while you met with Nick—and figured your appearance on the scene might flush him into doing something careless. But when you left for Kellam’s place, we had to make a decision. Nick followed Roland to Edmundston in my truck, and I followed you in his Jeep. It ended up costing Angie her life.”
“I feel like I have her blood on my hands, Charley. If I hadn’t knocked on her door—”
He squeezed my arm. “You can’t take responsibility for C. J. Lamontaine’s evil act. Guilt is a temptation. It’s understandable, but in this case, don’t fall prey to self-reproof. It won’t make you a better man, I can tell you from hard experience.”
The breeze blew puffs off the dandelions in the field, each seed a white parachute. I saw the shadow of a bird pass along the ground and, looking up, spotted a raven riding the wind, silent and watchful. Those intelligent black birds didn’t miss a thing.
“You used me, Charley. You used me to flush out Roland, and then you used me to interrogate Kellam.”
He was watching the raven as it made another reconnaissance of us.
“I hope I have a chance to make amends for that. It was just that we knew that Stanley knew something more than he was telling, and there was no way he would share his information with me after our falling-out. When you accuse a fellow warden of negligent homicide, by which I mean Scott’s, he’s unlikely to take you into his confidence again.”
“As it turned out, Kellam wasn’t keeping any dark secrets. My visit with him was a bust, looking back.”
“Not so! You saved him from killing Chasse.”
“Maybe that was another mistake.”
“Take it from a POW, a quick death is a gift compared to life in prison. In C. J. Lamontaine’s case, we’re talking about a long time with nothing to think about except his bad decisions. And his father, too, is facing charges that might end up as a life sentence, hopefully will.”
“When did you be
gin to suspect Chasse?”
“From the first. See, over the years, I had allowed myself to believe that I understood the whole story. The only mystery was Scott’s final resting place. That’s why seeing the badge shook me. I thought it was buried forever. But somehow it had gotten loose into the world and had ended up with this John Smith jackalope. How was that possible?
“The badge told me that I knew less than I’d thought. So I went back over everything again in my mind. And I remembered Chasse’s ‘suggestion’ we take a ride up to Beau Lac. With the advantage of hindsight, it occurred to me that Warden Lamontaine had been the only one who’d come out of the tragedy better off than before. But there was nothing to connect Chasse to Scott’s murder—and I didn’t want to get ahead of my evidence.”
“Do you think Chasse sent his son to kill Angie?”
“It’s just as possible he only wanted to find out what she suspected. And so he dispatched C. J. to get the information. But the father should’ve known his son well enough to realize how violent he was.”
“As long as he suffers for her death.” I began to count off the charges that could be brought against Chasse Lamontaine on my fingers: “Accessory to homicide, criminal conspiracy, multiple counts of attempted murder—”
Charley reached out to close my hand. “They’re both going to pay, Mike.”
“But not for Chasse’s original crime. He’s going to get away with being a party to Scott’s murder.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure,” my friend said with a hint of the old mischief. “Roland is facing mandatory sentences on drug trafficking charges. He’s likely to be more amenable to a plea than he was fifteen years ago, especially when he learns it was Chasse who betrayed his father.”
“Speaking of which…” I found the waterlogged square of paper in my wallet. Pierre’s bearded face had already begun to dissolve. “I’m afraid your photo got wet.”
He pointed at a garbage can beside the fence. “Throw it in the trash where it belongs.”
“I have a question about the inscription on the back.”
The ink had run, but I was able to read the words to him: “‘In battle, in the forest, at the precipice in the mountains, on the dark great sea, in the midst of javelins and arrows, In sleep, in confusion, in the depths of shame, The good deeds a man has done before defend him.’ Ora says that’s a quote from the Bhagavad Gita.”
“I got it out of a biography on Robert J. Oppenheimer,” he said, almost with embarrassment. “The head of the Manhattan Project. It was a favorite verse of his. I figured the man who brought the atom bomb into the world knew more about shame and self-doubt than most people. The picture was so I would remember what I had done, and the quote was so I would forget.”
A flock of black-capped chickadees landed in the bushes at the edge of the dirt parking lot. Among them was a bird who sounded as if he had a sore throat.
“Hear that?” Charley said, whispering lest he scare them off. “There’s a boreal chickadee in there with his black-capped cousins. You only get that species up north.”
“I know, Charley. You taught me that a long time ago.”
“Right.”
He coughed and looked at the grass beneath his boots.
“Was it worth it?” I asked. “Angie Bouchard dying? Kellam facing prosecution? Edouard Delhomme staring at deportation, now that his protector is gone? Was it worth it for you to have closure?”
He raised his eyes to meet mine. “You’ve never had a son, Mike.”
“Neither have you.”
“That’s not true. I have had two of them. Someday, when you’re a father yourself, you’ll understand.”
47
When Stacey arrived in Charley’s plane, I wasn’t sure if she was going to punch him or hug him. She did both. The punch was playful but not light, delivered to the old man’s sternum. It was the hug that caused him pain. He’d received a bruise in the back from the impact of C. J. Lamontaine’s bullet against the steel plate in his body armor. It was a good thing his daughter didn’t see the grimace when she tightened her arms around his torso.
“You scared Mom and me half to death—again,” she said.
Charley groaned an apology.
“And your bald head!” She couldn’t resist running a hand over her father’s stubbled skull. “It’s hideous.”
“We never knew what a master of disguise your dad was,” I said.
Stacey spun around at the sound of my voice. “And you!”
I wasn’t sure what treatment I was going to receive, but I prepared myself for the punch. Instead she wrapped her arms around my waist and pressed her face against my neck so that I was looking down at the top of her head. Her thick brown hair smelled of the lavender shampoo I remembered having used in her shower.
“Thank you, Mike,” she said in a voice close to choking. “Thank you for being here when he needed you.”
I disengaged myself from her embrace.
“He’s done the same for me,” I said. “More times than I can count.”
“Nick and I had it all in hand,” said Charley. “But we appreciated the young man’s help.”
Nick, hoping to head off an embrace, had lit another American Spirit as a diversion. He held out his free hand for Stacey to shake. She took it in both of hers. Nick Francis was clearly not a hugger.
“I’m sorry to have brought you all the way up here from Florida,” said Charley.
Stacey lifted her aviator sunglasses and positioned them on top of her head. In the strong morning light, her eyes were the palest shade of jade.
“Didn’t Mike tell you? I’m applying for the position of chief warden pilot. I heard the lead candidate was forced to drop out. Who better for the job than the daughter of the best man ever to hold it?”
“Stacey!”
I hadn’t seen Charley look that excited in years, not since he’d learned his daughter and I were dating.
She brought a hand to her mouth. “No, Dad.”
“What?”
“I was joking. Me, a game warden? That’s nobody’s idea of a good idea. Besides which, the department fired me, remember?” Once more, she turned her green gaze on me. “They don’t need another troublemaker on the state payroll, not when they have Bowditch here.”
“I do my best,” I said. “Is it true about Wheelwright being eliminated from consideration?”
“Mom heard it directly from the colonel.”
Maybe Major Pat Shorey had had a moral awakening. More likely others had persuaded him that hiring the hotshot pilot wasn’t worth the risk to the service’s reputation.
Stacey hugged her dad again. “If it’s any consolation, I’m thinking of sticking around for a while.”
Her father couldn’t suppress his eagerness. “How long?”
“Indefinitely.”
She didn’t look at me when she spoke the word. She seemed to make an effort to avoid doing so. But I felt as if she’d whispered it into my ears.
“What about the panthers?” Charley said.
“It’s going to take more than one woman to save them.” None of us had asked for an explanation, but she must have been preparing her speech on the flight up. “You know, I used to think I could win every battle if I fought hard enough. But Florida has made me realize how close I am to becoming a casualty of war. I guess I’m tired of fighting everything and everyone all the time.”
I hadn’t had to think about Stacey while she was in Florida. No decisions were required of me. Her returning to Maine didn’t need to affect my relationship with Dani. I made a vow to myself that it wouldn’t.
“How’s Buster?” I asked.
Stacey grinned. “To be honest, I think his nose is going to be improved by the surgery.”
“Her friend was bitten in the face by a python.”
“Let’s hear the story!” said Charley.
“I’ll tell it on the flight.” Stacey returned her aviators to the bridge of her nose. “We have to get you home
to Mom. She’s been waiting long enough.”
“You need to drop me in Portland first,” I said.
“What’s in Portland?”
Charley leaned in close to his daughter and whispered something I couldn’t hear.
* * *
Dani was awake when I arrived at her hospital room. I was in need of a shave and a shower, but I had purchased a bouquet of red roses from the shop downstairs.
She had tubes and wires attached to her arm, but she was sitting up in bed. Usually, she wore her shoulder-length hair in a ponytail, but now it was spread across the pillow. Her face looked like it would scorch my hand if I touched it.
The television mounted to the wall was tuned to one of those Saturday bass fishing shows that I abhorred. Nicole was keeping vigil beside the bed, with a copy of Us Weekly magazine open on her lap. More Harry and Meghan.
“Hey, stranger,” Dani said as if I had just returned from a quick trip to the cafeteria.
“Hay is for horses.” It was one of our jokes.
I leaned down and kissed her on the forehead. The skin felt as hot as it looked.
“You just missed Kathy,” she said. Her eyelids were heavy. Her throat sounded scratchy.
Nicole Tate rose to her feet as if in indignation, but it was only to take the inadequate bouquet from me. “Kathy Frost has been here a lot,” she said, emphasizing the last word so the message was unmistakable.
I leaned over the bed again and looked into Dani’s tired gray eyes. I had expected to see fear in them, but I didn’t. In her place, I would have been terrified. “You look good.”
“For someone whose brain was about to explode, you mean?”
“I’m sorry, Dani.”
“Why?”
“For not getting here sooner. I should have—”
“Yes!” said Nicole.
“Mom, can you give us a few minutes?”
“They’re going to be coming soon to take you for those scans, Danielle.”
She exerted herself to raise the arm with the IV from the mattress. “I’m not going anywhere.”
