by Paul Doiron
“I wouldn’t be so certain,” I said.
“It is Jewett’s self-disgust that you must focus on,” she said. “That is the reason he killed the professor.”
“Oh, please,” said Bibi with a flourish of her nicotine delivery device. “The man who can’t accept his sexual identity—it’s a total cliché.”
Mariëtte cocked her chin. “Some stereotypes are true.”
“For the love of God, Mother.” Bibi put her head in her hands.
“I want to return to your accusation, Mrs. Chamberlain,” I said. “Based on what you’ve told me, I believe you’d be better off speaking with someone from the state police’s Unsolved Homicide Unit. I can give you the name and number of a victim witness advocate.”
Mariëtte slapped the arm of the sofa so hard she awakened Plum again. “You don’t think I called them already? It was a waste of time.”
“As a warden, I am not authorized to pursue a murder investigation, ma’am.”
“What about the search then? You can review the failures of Lieutenant Rivard.”
“Marc Rivard is no longer with the Warden Service, as we discussed.”
“But your agency could still be held liable in court.”
I tucked away my notebook and pen. “In that case, I would recommend your next conversation be with an attorney. I’ve heard you out, as I agreed to do. There’s nothing more I can do for you.”
The strapping woman shot to her feet. “There’s something else! An important detail not in the report. Tell him, Bibi.”
The daughter steeled herself with another draw from her vape. “I was supposed to have tagged along on the duck hunt that morning. I never told Rivard or any of the other game wardens about it.”
There had been no mention of this in the file. Of that, I was positive.
“Why didn’t you go?” I said.
“Because I was hungover. You have to remember it was four in the morning and still dark and freezing. I’d been out with friends the night before. But I got dressed because I’d promised Grandfather and even went down to the boat. Bruce made a comment about how green I looked. He took out a pint of Peach Schnapps and asked if I wanted some ‘hair of the dog.’ A minute later, I threw up. Grandfather suggested I return to the house and go to sleep, which I did.”
I quickly scribbled down this information into my notebook.
“Why didn’t you tell Lieutenant Rivard about this?”
“Because I didn’t go, did I? And it wasn’t like I had any idea where they planned on hunting or anything that happened between them after I went to bed. And to be honest, I felt guilty because maybe if I’d gone, I would’ve stayed with Grandfather all day, and he wouldn’t have died.”
“You can be certain that if I had known any of this,” the mother said, “I would’ve spoken out at the time.”
I directed myself to the daughter. “Do you have any idea why Jewett never mentioned it?”
“I assumed it was because I was obviously grieving, and he didn’t want the authorities raking me over the coals. I don’t like the man—God knows I find his beliefs abhorrent—but in my eyes he did me a kindness.”
“The idea that Jewett might’ve had something to do with your grandfather’s death never occurred to you?” I said.
“Bruce had an alibi—and there was a witness.”
“You had no suspicions whatsoever.”
The young woman looked at the carpet.
“Tell him, Bibi. Tell him what you told me.”
“Two weeks ago, my mother and I were discussing my inheritance. The house and property belong to me. I have been thinking of selling the place and moving to Los Angeles. An ex of mine lives in Venice. And there are career opportunities for me in Hollywood. Mother was horrified. She asked what Grandfather would think. I told her I knew Eben Chamberlain a hell of a lot better than she did. I said, ‘You don’t even know what he told me before he died.’”
Mariëtte had been biding her time, waiting for this moment. “If I had, you can be sure everything would have been different!”
The daughter put her elbows on her knees and hung her head.
“What did Professor Chamberlain tell you before he died?” I asked.
Without looking up, she answered in a choking voice, “He said it would be good having me along on the hunt. He said he needed my opinion of Bruce.”
“There!” said Mariëtte Chamberlain. “There it is. She’s been sitting on this information for four years as if it doesn’t matter when it proves the professor had misgivings about the man.”
“It could mean any number of things,” said the daughter, raising wet eyes. “You’re assuming without evidence that he viewed Mr. Jewett as a threat to his life.”
“He might have!”
“Did Jewett expect you to come along that morning?” I said. “Did he know you were joining them in the boat?”
“I have no idea.”
“Do you suspect that he offered you schnapps when you were sick to dissuade you from going?”
“I don’t know.”
I paused to take in the scene. The weak sunlight streaming in past the statuesque silhouette of Mariëtte Chamberlain. Her daughter, collapsed in her chair. The wood stove crackling. The dog snoring. The air thickening with the burnt vapors of Christmas spices.
“Can you give me his street address, Mrs. Chamberlain?”
“Halfway up Pill Hill,” said Mariëtte with a triumphant smile. “More than halfway. It’s the last house before all those wretched trailers at the top.”
Bibi rearranged herself in the love seat. “You mean you’re going to talk with him?”
“Yes.”
“He probably won’t even speak with you,” said the mother. “I tried last week but didn’t get past the gate—he has a camera and speakers. He told me to leave before I regretted it. I said I wasn’t scared of him. And he laughed. It was comical, really. He thought he was frightening me.”
At last I rose to my feet. “Where can I find my coat?”
“I’ll get it for you,” said Bibi.
“You need to report back to us after you see him,” said Mariëtte, forcefully guiding me to the door by the elbow, just as she’d forcefully guided me into the parlor. “I want to hear everything he tells you. Perhaps you can record your conversation so we can—”
“No, ma’am, I’m not going to do that.”
“I expect a full accounting, Warden Investigator Bowditch.”
I thanked her for the coffee and cookies.
Outside the air had grown colder. The sun, already low in the southern sky, had moved behind the house and the icicles along the gutters had ceased to drip.
I was surprised to find Bibi following me. She hadn’t bothered to grab a coat.
“Please don’t harass that poor man,” she said. “It’ll only provoke him.”
“If he’s so easily provoked, why don’t you believe your mom’s theory that he had something to do with your grandfather’s death?”
“Because I pity him. Bruce Jewett doesn’t know who he is. Or he doesn’t want to know.”
“That describes a lot of people who aren’t racist gun nuts.”
“Really?” She seemed genuinely surprised by this claim. “Maybe I take it for granted because I’ve always known who I am—and what I am. I suppose that was my grandfather’s greatest gift to me. Acceptance.”
“You’re lucky then.”
She seemed to take the remark as patronizing. “You don’t exactly strike me as someone who struggles with self-knowledge.”
Little did she know. Most mornings, the sight of my reflection still ambushed me in the mirror.
13
Sparks shoot upward from the fire and are caught in the moving air and carried outside with the smoke. The pink fiberglass near the entrance grows black with creosote. The plywood floor has begun to darken beyond the pink circle of insulation. I break branches and toss them onto the embers to feed the flames.
My instinct tells me
I am pushing my luck, staying here when I should be running. But Shadow seems so exhausted. And my parka could use twenty more minutes to dry.
I know I am rationalizing.
Softwood hisses as steam escapes from the burning gas. The flames change color depending on what has ignited. Orange for pine and birchbark, yellow for maple branches, blue for cellophane, monofilament fishing line, and assorted trash gathered from the floor.
With swollen fingers, I reach up to feel the polyester fabric of my undergarment armor, hanging from a nail, and find it damp. There is nothing to do but slide the plates into place and shrug on the vest again. When I pull the sweater over my head next, I smell woodsmoke baked into the wool fibers.
My jeans have dried a little, but not enough. “Cotton kills” is another of my mentor Charley’s backwoods sayings.
My insoles seem warm when I slide them into my boots. But within minutes of tying up the laces, the cold clamminess returns.
The wind has changed direction, swung around from the northwest, causing smoke to back up inside the shack. I want to give the wolf a chance to get warm, but the urgency to flee while I can begins to build again.
How visible the blaze is from across the river continues to worry me.
But a wall of young conifers stands between the shack and the water’s edge. And the snow is coming down heavier. Maybe I am all right here.
Shadow seems to know how close he can sprawl to the licking flames without having sparks rain down on his fur.
I wish I had food for him.
I wish I had food for myself.
I decide to take a gamble and lie down several yards from his massive head. He appraises me with those inscrutable eyes but doesn’t growl or flinch. We bask together in the heat the wood is throwing off.
No one is a greater defender of wolves than I am. But there are moments when I am in the presence of this fearsome creature, when the Brothers Grimm take authorship of my internal monologue, and I feel as terrified of him as a medieval peasant hearing howls in the night.
Then this monster out of folklore will whimper in his sleep or let loose with a stinking fart, and I will remember he is just another mammal, like me; and that the evils we see in wolves are merely projections of our own moral failings. Since the dawn of history, his kind has paid the price for our ignorant self-regard, our eagerness to blame others, our persistent lack of courage. Wolves satisfy humanity’s pitiful need for villains.
The fire grows too hot for me.
Now that I am out of danger for after-drop, I grab my parka and wander down to the river to rinse my scraped hand. My night vision needs time to adjust. The falling snow looks faintly gray in the darkness, like wood ash blown from some distant fireplace. I stand motionless behind my wall of firs, not wanting to risk a wrong step.
Slowly the Androscoggin reveals itself. The river is mostly a blur, made worse by the spitting flurries. Below my feet, I can make out slags of fractured ice piled at the edge. Then a pale sheet stretching away, as smooth as a carpet: a dangerous invitation to cross.
I imagine Bruce Jewett hidden on the heights of the far shore, methodically sweeping the eastern bank with a night-vision scope. Given the extent of his armory, he must possess every modern military device. To set his ambush for me, however, he had foregone contemporary weapons and reached back to the Bronze Age.
The simplest weapons are often the best. Out of reflex, I touch the knife in my pocket.
Jewett is a clever man, I have to hand it to him. He fooled Bibi Chamberlain. And he absolutely fooled me.
Why did I even stop at his house? I could say I’d done it for Mariëtte Chamberlain. But really, I was indulging my twin vices: curiosity and arrogance. Bruce Jewett, meanwhile, had leveraged my intellectual conceit against me. He sent me on a fool’s errand up Pill Hill while he laid his steel traps below.
If I am going to survive the night, I will need to dig into my small store of humility.
I have to assume, for instance, that despite my self-assurances, my fire is visible. I have to acknowledge that in staying put I am making myself an easy target. I have to admit that I am facing a human predator who may be smarter, stronger, and more ruthless than I am.
I push through the firs into the circle of light. When forced to travel, the hunter-gatherers of the Pleistocene used to carry hot coals in the horns of aurochs. It’s far easier to bring a fire with you than to make a new one in the dark and wet. I scrounge around until I find a rust-bitten can that once contained Maxwell House Coffee. It will serve me as a bull’s horn.
Suddenly Shadow lifts his chin from his paws. His ears go up. He stares past me toward the firs along the river.
Then he bolts.
A split second later comes the gunshot.
I throw myself onto the snow.
The shack starts splintering as bullets rip apart the plywood boards. Again my body reacts without any conscious direction from my brain. Leaving behind the dropped can of embers, I begin to crawl into the trees.
Bullets rip into the flaming logs, raising sparks. The shots are coming so quickly I don’t know if it’s a single shooter with an automatic weapon or multiple shooters with semi-automatic weapons. I have to fight the urge to stand and run. I keep squirming forward on elbows and knees: making myself a low target.
Somehow I find myself among the roots of an ancient oak. Bullets bury themselves in its massive trunk. Ahead of me is the unexplored forest, infinitely dark. I keep crawling.
14
The river road took me through the dead man’s orchard. Between the rows of twisted trees were frozen white paths, wide enough for a tractor to pass, and there were tracks in the snow where a heavy machine had been at work. A picker must have come through since the last storm and plucked the branches clean of every last Winesap (or whatever varietals Chamberlain had cultivated).
I shouldn’t have been surprised that the professor’s horticultural experiments continued postmortem. Mariëtte Chamberlain would never abandon her father-in-law’s studies any more than she would abandon her crusade to prove he’d been murdered.
Past the orchard was a frozen cornfield where I saw dozens of Canada geese foraging amid the broken stalks, some with their elegant necks held high, others with their white asses tilted in the air. Then the forest crept close to the road, and I had a brief view of the river, mostly ice-covered with open water cutting a slash down the channel.
A green truck crept toward me in a low gear. It was a pumper, and the driver was being careful on the grade although the asphalt was dry and free of ice. I waved, as was the neighborly custom in Maine, but he pretended not to see me. It was a septic truck, and I watched it descend in my side mirror, reading in reverse a sign on the bank of the tank.
The driver might have been pumping out a portable toilet up the hill. Although it was highly unusual for a porta potty to remain in operation when the temperature plunged below freezing. Maybe he lived on the summit.
The road drew close to the river, and I saw that the guardrail was missing. The drop wasn’t steep: no more than twenty feet. But if a vehicle hit black ice there, coming around that tight turn, the prospects of anyone surviving were grim.
The hill was steeper than it had appeared from the orchard, and near the top was Jewett’s place.
Coming upon it from below, I thought it looked like just another New England farmhouse, sitting too close to the road as the old places always seemed to, with a stone wall in front and a small yard and then the parlor door no one used unless the visitors were special guests. Flagpoles were mounted on either side of the entrance with dual banners flapping in the wind. One was the sun-faded Stars and Stripes; the other was the blue standard of the United States Navy. The house was handsome enough, but an air of neglect hung about it. The red shingles had begun to peel in the sun, showing gray wood where the paint had flaked, and the mortar was crumbling in one of the chimneys. Some of the bricks had come loose and tumbled off the roof, but it was too late in th
e year for a mason to get up there safely. A plume of woodsmoke rose from the functional chimney and was pushed sideways in the wind.
When I came level with the yard, I saw that the stone wall had bottle shards cemented to the top as a deterrent against strollers having a sit-down. I’d seen this unfriendly ornamentation in the snootier neighborhoods of Ogunquit and Kennebunkport but never in a backwater like Stratford. People walking up and down this hill must’ve been rarer than molars on a hen.
As Mariëtte had said, Jewett’s driveway was guarded by an iron gate.
I stopped short of it. Shadow was snoring again.
When I stepped from the Jeep, I felt a cold blast that sent a shiver through me. I made my way to the squawk box mounted beside the gate and pressed the red button under the keypad.
“Yeah?” The voice came through the speaker so suddenly I almost jumped.
A camera was surely watching me from a place of concealment. “Mr. Jewett?”
“Yeah?”
“My name is Mike Bowditch. I’m an investigator with the Maine Warden Service. I wondered if you might have a few minutes to talk with me about your late neighbor, Eben Chamberlain.”
“You’re pulling my chain, right?”
“No, sir.”
“Eben drowned four years ago. The investigation was closed. How can there be any more questions?”
“It’s standard procedure to review old cases.”
“Like hell it is.” He paused long enough for me to hear a crow caw as it rode the wind overhead. “Now you’ve got me curious, though. Yeah, I’ll answer your damned questions. Give me a minute. I’m downcellar in my workshop, and I’d better clean up the C4 I’m making.”
Jewett had an odd sense of humor: joking about plastic explosives to a law-enforcement officer.
While I waited, I dug my hands in my pockets and surveyed the river. The ice reflected the weak sunlight like an antique mirror. Beautiful in all its imperfections.
After a while, I heard a buzz and the gate swung inward. I made my way up the plowed drive to the house. Jewett stood at the side door, waiting for me.
