Dead by Dawn

by Paul Doiron

  Now I hear the squelch of a hand-held radio. Not words. Just a series of button pushes: a wordless, indecipherable signal traveling over the airwaves to report what? That the target has been located?

  Who’s he communicating with?

  I have no time to watch and wait. I am injured and, except for the knife, unarmed. My enemy is on high alert and equipped with a long gun designed for house-to-house raids. I begin crawling into the trees.

  Only when I reach the enormous root clump of a toppled pine, do I dare stand. It doesn’t occur to me that the tangled roots offer imperfect concealment—there are holes between the interlaced tendrils—and so when a blast of buckshot obliterates the deadwood ten inches from my head, I just about leap out of my skin.

  Now I’m off at a full gallop, snapping branches and whipping evergreen boughs as I make instinctively for the one cover I remember: the narrow gap between the glacial erratic and the tree stand.

  At least Jewett doesn’t seem have brought along his night-vision goggles or an infrared gunsight. (Why didn’t he bring them along?) He’d have no need of a tactical flashlight if he could pick out my heat signature.

  I pull my injured leg over the ridgeback, only vaguely sure of my direction. To my side I see a beam of gauzy light from my pursuer’s gun. He’s hurrying, too. He should be tracking me slowly like the wounded animal I am, but he must be caught up in the thrill of the chase.

  I nearly smash myself against the boulder, I’m going so hard.

  Is this even the right rock?

  I don’t see my boot prints, but as I circle the monolith, I come to the crevice where I rested. The impression of my body, like the bed of a stag, shows as a gray-blue shadow. I recognize the sentinel oak and the tree stand above.

  I remind myself that Jewett must assume I’m armed. He can’t know that I lost my pistol in the river. Just because I haven’t returned fire doesn’t mean he can approach in safety.

  Behind me, I see the brightening glow of the flashlight beam. I hear branches snap. Jewett has discovered my trail, and now he’s moving cautiously. He is hunting me like the dangerous prey I wish I were.

  Looking up, I follow the ladder of spikes to that barely balanced chair fifteen feet above the ground.

  I don’t have the strength to climb up there.

  I need to find the strength.

  What choice do I have?

  I pause beneath the lowest rung to take a centering breath. I lower my shoulders, bend my knees as much as I can, and push against the hard ground. As I explode upward, I extend my arms over my head. My palms hit the first foot-long spike hard. My left hand closes tightly around the ridged steel, but my right loses its grip. I swing like a monkey by one arm, gritting my teeth to keep from letting out a groan.

  Even when you’re healthy and well rested, one arm chin-ups are arm-busters and back breakers. But in the gym you don’t have adrenaline powering you to save your own life.

  Engaging my arms, my core, and muscles I can’t name, I raise myself until I find a firm grip with my right hand. Then, legs swinging, I pull my chest up to the level of the spike and throw my right elbow over the rung.

  I pull hard, reaching for the next rung, until my kneecaps are balanced on the rebar. The posture is pure agony. I pull again until I am standing on the lowest spike, seven feet off the ground. I see the flashlight poking at the lower entrance to the gap. I don’t dare move, for fear of alerting Jewett to my position. All that needs to happen is for him to raise his eyes.

  But he has grown careful. Maybe the question about whether I am armed or not has begun to worry him. I see the beam of light probe the chokepoint between the tree and the boulder. It stops when it finds my blood trail. Then it rises, scanning the boulder from the base to the top.

  The radio squelches again. Jewett fumbles to kill the volume, but it takes seconds for him to find the knob in the dark.

  The distraction gives me a chance to ascend to the next rung. Now I am standing ten feet above the frozen earth, holding onto the ladder for dear life. I am afraid that if I draw my knife, I will lose my grip.

  It’s apparent that Jewett suspects an ambush. He thinks I’m crouched atop the glacial erratic. He can’t see the tree stand from the bottom of the snow-filled alley. He has given no thought to the seemingly unclimbable oak tree to his left.

  My heart is beating like a war drum.

  He begins creeping forward, probing the rock face with the light, illuminating the mosaic of orange and sage-green lichen. The pattern is intricate, beautiful. In the dark I never saw it.

  If Jewett’s finds the place in the snow where I leapt up, I am dead.

  But he is preoccupied with the boulder. He searches for footholds with the beam, continues its slow ascension of the rock.

  Come on.

  It takes everything in me to keep from shivering, to avoid knocking snow loose, or making the faintest noise.

  Then Jewett is beneath me. I am looking down on his black-helmeted head and snow-dusted shoulders. The barrel of the shotgun drops suddenly. The flashlight finds my deep footprints, the spot where I leapt into the sky. I can sense his thought process as he lifts his head.

  I let go of the ladder and fall as hard as I can upon him.

  22

  The crown of Pill Hill had once been forested. Now it was an exposed, windswept place. Whoever had developed the hilltop had sawed and knocked down every tree for twenty acres around the cell tower that loomed above the mobile homes. Between the huddled trailers, not a single sapling had been planted. The sheet-metal houses must have shuddered every time a storm blew through. One good nor’easter would send them all packing to the Land of Oz.

  As far as I could tell, the road consisted of a loop—one way in, one way out. At the entrance stood a mail kiosk with maybe twenty boxes. A foot of aged snow covered what must have been a lawn around it. Sunny days and subzero nights had caused the snow to melt and refreeze, and dirty boots had punched holes through the crust to the softer stuff beneath.

  Adjacent to the parking lot were two dumpsters. One was closed; the other had been left open and was overflowing with waste. Crows were hopping around inside, tearing apart trash bags and scattering pizza boxes and Styrofoam food containers in their pirate’s quest for booty. These birds must have belonged to the massive roost Charley had mentioned.

  The crows took to the air when I parked the Jeep. Three of them landed on the power lines to wait me out.

  I powered down the window and scanned the mailboxes, but only a few had names on them. Arlo Burch’s was not among them.

  Across the plowed and sanded road was a sad playground with monkey bars and a swing set. The plank seats hung from chains. They swung in the wind as if from ghost children at play.

  I hadn’t even noticed the living kids. There were two of them, and they had been lying flat on the hard frozen ground. Their hats and coats were white when they rose to their feet. They’d been trying and failing to make snow angels in the packed crust.

  I had always been bad at judging the ages of children. All I could say about these two was that they were closing in on puberty but hadn’t hit it yet.

  “Hey, kids. Do any of you know where Mr. Burch lives?”

  The boy had a moon face, dusky skin, auburn curls. The girl was so pale and blond she looked as if she’d once fallen into a vat of bleach.

  “You a cop, right?” said the boy.

  “Close,” I said. “I’m a game warden. My name is Mike Bowditch. What’s yours?”

  His broad nose was running. He sniffed hard to reverse the flow of gravity. “I ain’t telling you.”

  “His name is Levi,” said the girl.

  “Shut up, Treasure!” He returned his attention to me. “What do you want Arlo for?”

  “Can you tell me which house is his?”

  “These ain’t houses,” said the boy, Levi. “These’re tornado magnets. No one’s gonna lead you to Arlo’s crib, cop.”

  The wind spirited shoppi
ng flyers from the open dumpster and tumbled them across the open space.

  “You give me a dollar, I will,” said the girl, Treasure.

  “All right.”

  “Show it first.” Her voice was more little-girlish than she was.

  I removed a bill from my wallet. She marched to my window and held out a mittened palm.

  “Make it two dollars, you want to know so bad.”

  I pressed the crinkled bill into her hand, afraid the wind would catch it unless I held on tight. “A deal’s a deal.”

  Her eyelashes were so pale it looked like someone had plucked them out as a punishment. “Arlo lives at number four.”

  “Thank you.”

  “He’s gonna be mad, you telling,” shouted Levi. “He’s gonna whoop you, girl.”

  “Is that true?” I said, concerned I had created a potential problem. “Will Mr. Burch be mad at you?”

  “Hell, no,” Treasure said. “Arlo lives with my mom’s cousins. They’ll give me another dollar when I tell them a cop’s on the way.”

  “You’re quite an entrepreneur.”

  “What that?”

  “A businesswoman.”

  “You’re full of shit.”

  She removed her mittens and pulled a cheap Tracfone from her coat to text her relatives about the law enforcement officer who would soon be knocking at their door.

  * * *

  Arlo Burch was the owner of the most tricked-out mobile home I’d ever seen. Underneath all the additions, it was your standard double-wide: low-slung with vinyl siding stamped to resemble wood clapboards. It sat on concrete piers with a skirt of aluminum wrapped around the crawlspace. The furnace probably lay on its side beneath the building.

  The crazy add-ons were what got me: the stained-glass door; the bow windows; the exterior porch wide enough to hold a square dance; the hot tub on said porch; and the eye-popping diameter of the satellite dish in the dooryard. Honestly, the antenna was as big around as a wading pool. It looked capable of picking up transmissions from Alpha Centauri.

  Just as impressive was the fleet of vehicles overflowing the property. A new-looking Jeep Wrangler Rubicon (the recent model); matching black Chevy Monte Carlos; a sweet Harley-Davidson street rod. I counted three snowmobiles under tarps, two all-terrain vehicles, a Jet Ski that should also have been sheltered from the elements, and a very large object under a protective coating of white shrink-wrap. My guess was that the concealed watercraft was a pontoon boat for summer cruises on Lake Auburn or wherever Arlo liked to party.

  Bartending obviously paid better than I’d thought.

  It was standard operating procedure, before approaching what looked like a drug den, to alert fellow officers to your location. In my case that fellow officer was going to be Maine State Trooper Dani Tate who, while many miles away, had become my default go-to. I had the phone in hand when the trailer door opened and a skinny young woman stepped onto the porch.

  From a distance, I could see that she was gaunt and fair, but her identifying features were mostly hidden. Her hair was bunched beneath a knit cap emblazoned with a pot leaf. Her eyes were concealed behind aviator sunglasses. She was dressed in a man’s chamois shirt, bedazzled jeans, and buckskin moccasins.

  The girl’s text had preceded me.

  The pale woman didn’t so much as pause but sprang lightly down the stairs and made a line for my Jeep. She had the energy of someone whose metabolism runs twice as fast as a normal human’s. I watched her hands, but they were empty.

  I disengaged my seat belt (never a bad idea if you might need to reach for your sidearm) and slid down the window.

  “Game warden, right?” she said. Even her words came out fast.

  “How’d you guess?”

  Up close, I could see that her nose and cheeks were covered with connect-the-dots freckles.

  “I didn’t need Treasure to tell me. You guys aren’t as stealthy as you think you are. What do you want with Arlo? It can’t be about poaching. The dude doesn’t even hunt. You want to show me your badge and identification?”

  “I’ll show you mine. How about you show me yours?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  I brought out the badge and the ID. “Are you Mrs. Burch?”

  She made a snorting laugh, then peered at my identification closely. I had never seen someone do a double take in real life until that moment. Her head snapped up, and she removed her oversized sunglasses for a better look at me. Her eyes were the blue of faded denim. False lashes, eyeliner, and eye shadow gave her a catlike appearance. Her gaze was searching, intense, and borderline hostile.

  “You’re Mike Bowditch? No fucking way.”

  “Do we know each other?”

  Like the teenage logger I’d challenged earlier, she looked familiar in the sense that she resembled other people I had busted. Maybe I’d arrested her brother or uncle. People convicted of crimes never forget the officers who sent them to jail. They throw our names around with disdain. Hard-ass cops, in other words, achieve a modicum of notoriety within certain social circles in Maine.

  She returned her sunglasses to the bridge of her freckled nose as if to frustrate my attempt to place her.

  “No, but I’ve heard about you, Mike.”

  Her free and easy use of my first name was intended to get a rise out of me.

  “I’m getting that a lot today. Is Arlo home? I’m not here to hassle him or you. I’ve got a few questions about a cold case.”

  “Not that professor again.”

  “It shouldn’t take more than fifteen minutes.”

  “That’s what you guys always say,” she said, showing bleached teeth. “Arlo’s got to leave for work soon, but he might have time to answer your questions. I don’t know why you guys keep wasting your time with him. Seems a misuse of our state tax dollars.”

  As I got out of the Jeep, Shadow moaned in his sleep. In his dreams he returned often to the mountains where he’d roamed loose for several years. Sometimes he seemed to be chasing deer again through the landscape of his mind.

  The pale woman heard him. “What the fuck do you got in there?”

  “A wolf.”

  “Be serious.”

  I winked at her. There was no reason that she should be the only one keeping secrets.

  She watched me get out of the vehicle, giving special attention, it seemed, to my right side. Everyone took an interest in my handgun.

  There was a bite to the air that I hadn’t felt down in the river valley. The sun had grown pale in the windy sky.

  I towered over her by almost a foot. “Are you going to tell me your name or are you in witness protection?”

  “Tori.”

  “Tori what?”

  Her response was another snort.

  I followed her thin hips up the stairs and through the outer stained-glass door. The decorated panel showed a naked woman holding an apple while a snake, wrapped around a tree, whispered enticements in her ear. There was a second door beyond the glass one, but it was made of steel and four inches thick. The barrier would easily have stopped small-caliber bullets and maybe even bigger rounds. Security doors like this one cost thousands and weren’t readily available at your local Home Depot.

  Inside the trailer, the thermostat had been turned up to Amazon rain forest. Even the light had a greenish tint. The color, I quickly realized, was on account of the terrariums.

  There were three coffin-sized glass boxes arrayed around the living room, each with a heat lamp shining down into its steamed-over interior. Every one of the glass chambers, I was fairly certain, held a very large snake.

  “Arlo’s in the shower,” said Tori. “Have a seat, and I’ll go get him.”

  Instead of sitting, I took a tour of the terrariums, making sure not to turn my back to any doorway.

  I thought again of texting Dani, but I was too eager to see the snakes.

  The first box contained a serpent as big around as my forearm. Its color was pinkish-beige with orange
mottling. If I had to guess, I would’ve said it was a species of boa. The next constrictor species, also unknown to me, was a vivid green and equally muscular. The third snake I recognized on sight. The previous summer, I’d gotten too close for comfort with a Burmese python in Florida’s Big Cypress Swamp. It had nearly chewed a man’s face off in front of me.

  There wasn’t a proper chair in the room: just matching sectional couches arranged around a coffee table made from a barn door and littered with tabloid magazines, wine and shot glasses, and ashtrays needing to be emptied. I remained standing with my back to the nearest exit.

  I heard Tori shout, “Hey, Arlo, there’s another game warden here. He wants to talk with you about old man Chamberlain.”

  A drop of sweat rolled down the side of my face.

  Tori returned, having removed her sunglasses and overshirt. She wore a thin tee that might as well have been transparent. Her small nipples poked through the cotton fabric. She held two cans of Twisted Tea.

  “Thanks,” I said, “but I’m not allowed to drink on duty.”

  “Who said one of these was for you?” She kept an alcoholic beverage for herself and set the other on the table. “So you’re the Mike Bowditch. The warden who killed those prison guards last spring.”

  “Actually, I didn’t kill anyone.”

  “But you were an accessory.”

  “Accessories are people who assist in the commission of crimes. I was a law-enforcement officer defending innocent people.”

  She threw herself onto one of the couches. “That’s why the entire nation hates cops. You’re all so fucking racist and corrupt. You get away with shit that would send someone like me to prison for life. How many people have you abused personally? And how many of them were Black?”

  There were people I was prepared to have a serious conversation with about the state of policing in America: the problems and possible solutions. This Tori person was not one of them.

  I heard a man’s voice and another woman’s voice at the far end of the house. Their words were muffled by a door closed between us.