by Paul Doiron
She ran a bony hand through the fur along his rising and falling chest. “He’s got a divided soul, this one. Neither wild nor tame.”
Women had described me in similar terms.
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but it’s not easy being here. I keep flashing back to seeing him after you removed the arrow. I was sure he was going to die. Thank you for saving him.”
“It wasn’t me who did it.”
I had a feeling she was referring to God.
“I wish I could give him a better life.”
“I’ve seen how he watches you. I think he knows you love him. You two are family.”
“I’m his only family. And he’s mine, if I’m being honest with myself.”
Immediately, I felt embarrassed by the intimacy of this admission.
The examination room was achingly bright and nauseatingly sterile, but the smell of the wolf—like forest loam after a rain—overwhelmed the chemicals they’d used to clean the surfaces.
Out of nowhere Lizzie said, “I’m sorry to hear about you and Dani.”
“What did you hear?”
A flush crept up her throat into her cheeks. “Her mom told me about you two breaking up. It didn’t sound like it was a secret.”
Nicole Tate lived less than a mile away from the Pennacook Hospital for Animals and brought her pets here all the time. Dani’s mother had liked me once. She even used to get a little flirty. Nicole had had a habit of stroking my biceps after she’d had a couple of glasses of Chardonnay.
But her attitude had undergone a metamorphosis over the summer when Dani had been hospitalized with a near-fatal fever. I had been working a case in northern Maine and unable to rush to her bedside. Afterward, Nicole had decided that I wasn’t the boyfriend her daughter deserved.
Maybe she was right.
Poor Lizzie Holman, though, kept getting redder and redder. She fingered the gold cross around her neck. “You didn’t break up?”
“It’s OK,” I said noncommittally.
“I shouldn’t have said anything.”
I placed a hand on Shadow’s warm, furry ribcage. His heartbeat felt strong and reassuring. “Don’t worry about it.”
She pretended to clear her throat. “I guess we should get started with his tests. It will take a while if you want to grab some lunch. The Boom Chain makes a great burger.”
“I brought a sandwich.”
I ate in my Jeep all too often. Like most wardens, I pretty much lived in my vehicle. I took the opportunity to fetch my lunch bag and thermos and found a chair in the vacant “Kitty Korner” where cat owners could sit with their felines, away from bounding dogs.
I have always found hospital waiting rooms, even those of the veterinary variety, fascinating places to people watch. While I ate, a married couple brought in an Australian shepherd with a cone around her neck and a shaved patch on her haunch from recent surgery (a dogfight?). The animal ignored the wife but kept up a whimpering communication with the husband. The couple argued under their breaths the whole time—he wanted to remove the cone, she insisted they wait for the vet.
“Do we have to fight like this?” hissed the woman. “It’s Christmas.”
“What does Christmas have to do with it?”
It was obvious to me that the dog was playing them off each other and that their relationship was on shaky ground.
The shepherd smelled my Italian sandwich and batted her eyes at me, but I was wise to her con.
My mind was on Dani’s mom. Nicole Tate was a gossip and a mischief-maker. She’d known I was headed to Pennacook for Shadow’s appointment. Had she spoken to Lizzie hoping that her words would get back to me? To what end?
I considered calling Dani to ask what her mother was scheming, until I remembered about her interview in Portland. Instead, I sent a message to call me when she had a minute.
Eventually, the unhappy couple with the manipulative shepherd was called into an examination room.
I could empathize with their plight. With Shadow, there were days I knew he was manipulating me. He’d ignore the bucket of pig’s ears I brought him until I returned with a venison haunch I was saving for myself. Then he’d make eye contact while he gobbled up the ears he’d recently disdained. He seemed to delight in taunting me.
Other days, though, I would catch sight of the wolf through the window, when he couldn’t see me, and I would watch him doing something like following an eagle soaring overhead, and his mind would seem unknowable to me. In those moments I missed having a standard-issue dog who would follow me from room to room and lick the crumbs from my floors.
Maybe I just missed having a family.
Eventually, Lizzie Holman emerged through the inner door, smiling but still looking sheepish.
She said she’d given Shadow a large bolus of fluids subcutaneously to keep him hydrated on the drive. After she’d brought him safely out of the anesthesia, she’d also administered a mild sedative—I didn’t catch the name—to keep him “mellow” for a few hours. She said not to worry about feeding him until we were home. She told me she’d call with his results, but based on his complete blood count, stool and urine tests, she didn’t anticipate issues.
The only problem areas were his teeth. Her assistant had cleaned his yellow fangs while he was under the influence of the propofol. Lizzie asked if I might try brushing them at home.
“That depends,” I said. “Do you have any ten-foot-long toothbrushes?”
“We have dental chew toys.”
“He swallowed the last one.”
“What about beef bones? Deer antlers?”
“I’ll increase his allotment.”
As a warden, I had access to a near-endless supply of deer and moose sheds. And the local slaughterhouse that provided me with the meat I fed Shadow had plenty of spare bones.
I was permitted to bring the Jeep around to the loading dock. One of her techs offered to help me lift his crate into the vehicle, but I said I could handle it. That was a mistake. A muscle in my lower back spasmed, and it was all I could do to keep a smile on my face.
Lizzie came down to see me off because she’d been obsessing about her faux pas. “Mike, I hope I didn’t cause a problem with Dani.”
“There’s nothing to apologize for.”
“Serves me right for gossiping. You’re sure it’s all right?”
“One hundred percent.”
But I kept my eyes open for Nicole’s SUV and made a point of avoiding her street on my way out of town. I could never understand why the Tates continued to reside in Pennacook after the mill closed and half of Main Street went dark. The family seemed incapable of imagining life elsewhere.
Dani was the exception. She had always been competitive and ambitious. I wondered how her interview with Chief Jemison had gone since she hadn’t messaged me yet.
Better not to dwell on the unknown.
My dashboard thermometer told me the temperature had climbed to a balmy twenty-eight degrees. The GPS told me the drive to Stratford would take less than an hour. From the interior of the Jeep came the heavy breathing of the sleepy wolf.
I engaged the hands-free speaker, instructing my phone’s virtual assistant to call former Warden Lieutenant Marc Rivard. I half hoped the number I had for him was out-of-date.
No such luck. “If it isn’t the investigator!”
“Hello, Marc.”
“When I saw it was you, I almost let it go to voicemail. But you would’ve kept calling. I know how you are.”
My former superior had always seen my persistence as a character defect.
During that brief period when he was the golden boy of the Maine Warden Service, Marc Rivard had overseen the search and rescue team. In that capacity, he’d headed up the efforts to locate Eben Chamberlain, taking over as primary on the case because he wanted the credit. And in fairness, he had a mind for searches.
He had also studied the Androscoggin: its seasonal hydraulics, its changeable river bottom. In theory
, he should have predicted the half-dozen places where a drifting corpse could get hung up. But the search had somehow taken longer than expected, nearly a week, by which time the body was decomposing.
“You must want something,” Rivard said now.
He had the faintest hint of a French accent that he’d worked unsuccessfully to rid himself of. It was an unusual personal tic in a man of my generation.
“I’m reviewing a search and recovery you ran four years ago. Eben Chamberlain. And I wondered if you have time to talk?”
“You’re shitting me.”
“The professor’s daughter-in-law is still unhappy with your findings. She’s making trouble for the department. I’m trying to smooth it over for the colonel.”
This, of course, was a lie. I figured blaming the new head of the Warden Service would give me cover.
It had been Colonel Jock DeFord—formerly Captain Jock DeFord—who had artfully maneuvered Rivard out of law enforcement.
“Screw him.”
“It’ll take ten minutes, tops.”
“I’m at work, Mike. It’s the week before Christmas. Do you know how busy we are?”
I’d heard that Rivard had taken a job at his uncle’s John Deere dealership in Sabattus. He had gone from being a warden lieutenant, on the fast track to become colonel himself someday, to a junior tractor salesman.
“I’m on my way to meet Mariëtte Chamberlain at the professor’s old place in Stratford. I thought I owed it to you to get your side of the story first.”
“You’re going to meet the glamazon in person? Where are you now?”
The nickname didn’t jibe with the ornate letter in my briefcase. I’d pictured my correspondent as a pinched old biddy.
“At the moment, I’m in Canton,” I said. “I’m driving south along the river from Pennacook.”
“Why don’t you swing by the dealership. We can chat in person. Just like old times.”
The sudden friendliness in his tone set off a warning bell. “It’ll mean my back-tracking to get to Stratford later.”
“Not far though.” He paused as if to take a sip of coffee. “How long has it been, Mike? Since we chatted?”
We had never chatted. Even when we’d patrolled together in the same truck for hours on end. He had lectured me about warden tips and tricks. Occasionally he had engaged in lengthy monologues about his shrewish exes or the stupidity of our superiors. But we had never chatted.
The prospect of being in his presence again depressed me. “You just said you were too busy to have this conversation.”
“I can make time for an old friend.”
Whatever Marc Rivard had been to me over the years, he had never been a friend. Maybe because of my education—I’d graduated from Colby College while he held an associate’s degree from a vocational school—he had resented me. His disdain seemed to run deeper than that, though. It nettled him that I selectively obeyed rules and regulations, and yet still succeeded while his career tanked. Of all my colleagues, former and current, I couldn’t think of anyone who nursed such a deep hatred for me. And given the number of game wardens I’d embarrassed, irritated, and pissed off, that distinction put him in a class by himself.
“I’ll see you at thirteen hundred hours,” I said.
“I’ll be waiting.”
As I changed course for Sabattus, and my GPS went into rerouting mode, I had the suspicion that Rivard was luring me into one of his signature traps. I’d hoped to get the information I needed from him over the phone. Nothing good would come from meeting in person with the master manipulator.
7
Hypothermia is tightening its grip on me. The snow hitting my face streams down my forehead and into my eyes. It trickles down the front of my shirt.
My shivering has become uncontrollable and violent. My joints are locking up. I am the Tin Man deprived of an oil can. More and more, I lurch after the shaky light on the ground—as if chasing the beam instead of directing it.
The worst thing I can do is work up a sweat since it will depress my body temperature even further.
Even if I find shelter soon, how will I make a fire? Forget about a lighter or matches. I don’t even have a ferro stick I can use to strike a spark. Or rather, the ferro stick I always kept at hand is in the console of my submerged Jeep.
After a quick 360-degree survey of my location, I decide to follow the shore south rather than cut cross-country and risk getting turned around. Normally I have an unerring sense of direction. When I am in the woods, I feel as connected to the earth’s magnetic poles as a migrating goose. But I know disorientation is another symptom of hypothermia.
Almost instantly, I regret my decision to follow the river. I find myself clawing through thorny bittersweet and brakes of phragmites. The reedlike plants grow eight feet tall and have swaying tops like ostrich plumes.
Even when I emerge from the stalks, my path gets no easier.
Before me lies an obstacle course of fallen and half-fallen trees. Snagging roots protrude from the snow. I step gingerly over spiked deadfalls where a single slip means impalement. I duck under half-balanced widowmakers, some creaking in the wind, and hope that they won’t choose this moment to come crashing down.
I pause to rewarm my hands in my armpits. I stomp my feet like an old-time Chicago beat cop.
A noise behind me triggers my nervous system’s early warning system. I listen without turning. Gurgling river, whispering phragmites.
Slowly, I pivot and point the light at my erratic boot prints. The beam shudders and shakes. Beyond thirty feet it fails altogether.
“Shadow?”
Raggedy oak leaves spin and flutter on their branches. They are one of the few deciduous trees in Maine that don’t lose their foliage in the autumn. The dead leaves make a dry, papery rustle.
“Come out, big guy.” The cold has given me lockjaw. “It’s OK.”
And suddenly there he is: eyes glowing yellow at the outer edge of my light. The wolf’s heavy coat is chunked white with ice from his dip in the river. He appears to be his own ghost.
Maybe he really did drown?
If I were not hypothermic, if my mind were functioning properly, I would understand the idea is ludicrous. The steam rising from his open mouth is evidence enough of his corporeality.
“It’s good to see you,” I manage to say.
He doesn’t so much as twitch. And a crazy thought enters my mind. Is he stalking me for food?
Whatever else Shadow is, he is no man-eater. Wolves are almost never dangerous except in fairy tales. And yet isn’t this where I am now—in a German folktale?
I peel up my sleeve to check my watch again. Six minutes and counting. When I raise my eyes, the wolf has receded into the night.
I start forward, quickening my pace. Not caring about the cold sweat rolling down from my armpits. The sensation of being chased becomes overwhelming. If not by the wolf, then by what the wolf represents.
In my carelessness, I miss the drop-off ahead. The Andro, in one of its rages, has chomped a bite out of the land. The result is a deep, sandy undercut. I stumble and fall four feet onto a sheet of ice as hard as a concrete slab.
Once again I have the breath knocked from my lungs. My SureFire slips from my grasp and drops between two floes the river has pushed against the shore. In a panic I reach my whole arm after it. My numb fingers brush the aluminum barrel and succeed in pushing it deeper down the hole. The bulb shines into my eyes, mocking me. I can’t reach it, can’t move these heavy, interlocked sheets. I have no choice but to leave it behind.
I crawl up the bank, blind, frustrated, but not yet defeated.
When I pause for breath at the top, I realize I am no longer shivering. That’s a bad sign.
I have to wait for my eyes to adjust. Ice crystals reflect light even in the darkest of places—and this is one of them. Hard as it is to believe, I am lucky it is snowing. The paleness of the snow contrasts against the shadows of the trees.
I
grab a sapling and pull myself onto my knees, then onto my feet. Something catches my eye on the cutbank above the water’s edge, near where I lost the light. It seems to be rectangular in shape, and I assume it is another figment of my deteriorating mind.
Or is it?
As I pick a route up the bank through the scratchy puckerbrush, I am afraid to blink, lest the structure disappear on me like a mirage.
It’s real, all right. Too small to be a house or even a cabin.
Recognition comes slowly: It is an ice-fishing shack. And the reason I didn’t recognize it is because it is lying on its side. It probably washed down the river and came to rest below. Then someone went to the trouble of hauling it into the trees.
I drop to my knees. I crawl toward the structure like an infant.
Shelter. Salvation.
8
Sabattus Tractors had gone all out for Christmas. The banner above the door advertised: “BLACK FRIDAY SAVINGS ALL MONTH LONG.” Inside the entryway was a semi-circle of bright green landscaping machines, outfitted with snowplows, arranged around an artificial tree that was bedazzled with tinsel. Each of the shiny machines bore a big red bow.
Marc Rivard had to be the mastermind behind this over-the-top display. The man had never known where to stop with the pizzazz. The one constant in his life had been a relentless commitment to self-advertisement.
He was the second sergeant I’d had in my career. My first, Kathy Frost, was a teacher, a mentor, and a lifelong friend. Rivard, by contrast, was a taskmaster, a bully, and a politician. He was so naturally deceitful, he seemed unable to differentiate between objective truth and the lies he told to make himself look good.
Since we’d worked together, I’d read that sociopaths were more common than scientists had once believed. Something like one in a hundred people met the standard for antisocial behavior and utter absence of conscience. If Marc Rivard didn’t fulfill the textbook definition, he came close enough for discomfort.
