Dead by Dawn

by Paul Doiron

  I nodded at the second terrarium. “What’s that green one there? I recognize the boa and the Burmese python.”

  “Emerald? She’s from Australia. We bought her in New Hampshire. Reptile Warehouse. You ever been there, Mike?”

  She seemed to take pleasure in saying my name. “No, but I’ve rescued a few animals that came from that business.”

  Her face was magnificently freckled. The skin beneath was as thin and pale as rice paper, but the sheer number of freckles on her forehead, nose, and cheeks made her look almost tan.

  “Really?”

  “One was a pit viper that got loose in its owner’s garage. Unfortunately, it killed the guy’s dog before we managed to capture it. You know, Tori, it’s kind of rude not to tell me your last name. You have me at a disadvantage.”

  “Do I?”

  “You do.”

  Her blue eyes held mine a moment, drifted away around the room, then came back to me. “It’s Dillon.”

  “Tori Dillon?”

  “Don’t wear it out.”

  I heard a door open down the hall, fast footsteps, and then a second woman stood in the threshold between the living room and the kitchen.

  She was wearing a terrycloth robe bearing the insignia of a fancy Portland hotel and a purple towel wrapped around her wet hair. She had the same height, build, and general coloring as Tori, but she lacked the freckles, and her nose was distinctively pink. She wore a copper ring in one roseate nostril.

  “So you’re the famous Mike Bowditch. In our fucking house. What are the odds?”

  She, too, spoke as slowly as an auctioneer.

  “I’m hardly famous.”

  “We’ve seen you on the news,” said Tori, cracking her can of Twisted Tea. “Tiffany saw your picture and thought you were hot. Didn’t you, Tiff?”

  Tori and Tiffany?

  Tiff Dillon reached for the unopened can of booze. “You’re older-looking in person, though.”

  “Sorry to disappoint. You two are twins, I’m guessing.”

  “Gee, what gave us away?” said Tiff. Her rabbit nose twitched when she smiled.

  “Mike here is a warden investigator,” said Tori. “That’s like a detective, right? Only your cases involve dead moose?”

  “And occasionally a dead hunter.”

  “Ain’t you funny,” said Tiff in a faux Maine accent. Her eyelashes and eyebrows, not yet made up, were rusty red. “He’s a smaht one, ain’t he, sistah?”

  “He thinks he is.”

  From the back of the house came a crashing sound.

  Then: “Shit! Ouch! Damn!”

  Half a minute later, Arlo Burch blundered into the room, dressed in nothing but a towel and cupping one elbow in the palm of his opposite hand.

  “I hit my funny bone!” he said, shaking his arm. “Don’t you hate that? The tingling.”

  He was a tall man, slim, but well-muscled. His skin was tanned from a tanning bed, and one arm was inked from shoulder to wrist in a sleeve of well-drawn tattoos. (More snakes, intertwined.) He hadn’t shaved for several days, and his stubble beard was darker than his curls. His eyes were extraordinarily large, friendly, and empty of intelligence.

  “When Tori said we had a warden visitor, I expected it was my man, Rivard.”

  “This is Mike Bowditch,” said Tiff.

  “Nice to meet you.” He advanced on me with a warm smile and an outstretched hand, calloused from a weight bench. “Welcome to my abode. Have a seat.”

  “I’m fine, thank you.”

  “Did the girls offer you a beverage?”

  “He can’t drink, Arlo,” said Tori. “He’s on duty.”

  “He can drink a Muscle Milk.”

  “No thanks. I’m fine. This is quite the place you’ve got here.”

  His voice dropped to an intimate level, “Do you think it’s over-the-top? I worry that it is. There’s a line between luxury and tacky. The girls and me—I trust their taste, but we don’t always see eye to eye. I worry it’s over-the-top. Hey, did they introduce you to my snakes?”

  He now presented the three serpents: Babe (the boa), Emerald (the Emerald python), and Lucifer (the Burmese python).

  “You sure you don’t want a Muscle Milk? Or a Gatorade?”

  When I refused, he sat down in his towel on the couch between the women, extended his arms along the top, and spread his legs. If he shifted position by a matter of centimeters, he was going to give me a show I didn’t want to see. I would have thought Burch was showing off—“Dude, look at me, I’ve got two women sharing my bed, and they’re twins!”—if he didn’t seem like such a good-natured dimwit. My first impression of Arlo Burch was that he was an entity I’d formerly considered mythological: the man without a care in the world.

  “First I want to say,” he began, growing solemn, “that my second cousin is a cop over in Nashua, New Hampshire. So I’ve got a lot of respect for you guys. Police, I mean. Wardens included.”

  “We appreciate your support.”

  “Tori said you wanted to ask me something about Professor Chamberlain. What can I do for you, man? Ask and you shall receive.”

  Putting on some clothes would be a start.

  “The Warden Service is taking another look at the Eben Chamberlain case. My superiors gave it to me for some fresh perspective. I’ve reviewed the file and been briefed by Lieutenant Rivard.”

  “Former lieutenant,” said Tori.

  I hadn’t been surprised that Mariëtte Chamberlain had heard about Marc’s fall from grace. But how the hell did Tori Dillon know about it? Maybe I wasn’t the only warden whose career she followed. That seemed like a stone worth turning over—but not at present.

  I locked eyes with Burch. “I understand you were the last person to see the professor alive the day he disappeared.”

  “That’s what people tell me. But I mean, someone else might’ve seen him alive after me, and I wouldn’t know, right?”

  Tori grabbed a handful of his chest hair.

  “Ouch!” he said. “What did you do that for?”

  “Because you’re being a tool. You were the last one to see him. Don’t pretend it’s some unknowable mystery.”

  Still scowling, he snatched her can of booze and took a swig. “I’m only trying to be helpful. Have you talked to Bruce, yet? Bruce Jewett, I mean. He was a friend of the professor’s. You would’ve passed his place here. Old farmhouse behind a stonewall.”

  “Of course, Mike spoke with Bruce first,” said Tiff between clenched teeth.

  “What did he tell you about us?” said Tori. “I can only guess. That nutcase thinks he’s living down the road from the Manson family.”

  I kept my attention focused on Burch. “Can you tell me about the day Eben Chamberlain died? When and where did you see him?”

  “It was about eleven o’clock,” he said. “I was headed into work. At the pullout I saw a man alone in a boat.”

  When I removed a notepad and pen from my pocket, his mouth tightened. People get squirrelly when a law-enforcement officer starts writing their words down.

  “How far were you from this man?” I asked.

  “Three hundred yards.”

  “You sound pretty certain.”

  “I played quarterback in school. I estimate distances in terms of football fields. But I’m just a simple bartender now.”

  “He’s a mixologist,” said Tiff, sounding affronted on his behalf.

  “I pour drinks,” he said with a self-effacing smile. There was something of the golden retriever about his shining hair and eagerness to please. “You know the Brass Monkey on Mechanics Row in Auburn? Come in some night when you’re off duty. First round is on me. Maker’s Mark, Belvedere, whatever you want.”

  “Getting back to Professor Chamberlain.…”

  He nodded and tried to look serious. “Right. He was alone in his duck-hunting boat, like I said. It was too far to see any details, but I knew it was Professor Chamberlain. And he was alone, like I said.”

>   “How did you recognize him?”

  “I’d see him working in his orchard, and he would wave at me so I stopped sometimes, and we’d shoot the shit, you know? The prof would always give me a bushel of apples.”

  “The professor liked Arlo,” said Tiff with her usual deadpan. “He liked him a lot.”

  I bet he did. Burch could have worked as an underwear model.

  I clicked my pen a few times. “There’s one thing I don’t get. If you were three hundred yards from him, how did you notice that he wasn’t wearing a life vest?”

  “Huh?”

  “The professor was duck hunting, and I understand from the file that his personal flotation device was a Mustang MIT. Those vests are thin and light until they get wet, then a sensor goes off, and the automatic gas canister fills the internal bladders with CO2. I wear mine every time I’m on the water. So did Professor Chamberlain, according to his granddaughter.”

  “You mean Bibi,” said Tori with no affection in her voice.

  “You know each other then.”

  “Not really. I know she comes up here to buy her Addies—not from us, from our neighbor, Felice. I bet that isn’t in your file. That the poor little rich girl is an addict.”

  Addies was slang for the drug Adderall, prescribed to people, often young, with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. It is bought illegally and abused by adults wishing to sharpen their mental focus or seeking instant stimulation. People were known to crush the pills and snort them like cocaine.

  “She inherited all that professor’s money, you know,” said Tiff. “Is that in your report?”

  “The Warden Service concluded that Chamberlain’s death was an accident,” I said. “Do you have reason to say it wasn’t?”

  Tori, who struck me as the quicker of the two, sensed the trap. “My sister’s not saying the dyke killed him. Bibi Chamberlain is just a rich bitch who likes kiddy coke and thinks her shit doesn’t smell.”

  I was perspiring pretty furiously under my bulletproof vest. I was the only one in this hothouse fully dressed.

  “I want to talk about the professor’s PFD.” I pretended to look at my notebook as if refreshing my memory. “My Mustang MIT happens to be red, but Professor Chamberlain’s was camouflage. The pattern is called Mossy Oak Shadow Grass Blades. This is where I have another problem, Arlo. If he was dressed in camouflage, as he was when we recovered his body, and his life vest was also camo-patterned, how could you have seen or not seen it from a distance of three hundred yards?”

  “Don’t answer that question,” said Tori with the abruptness of a defense lawyer at a deposition. “He’s trying to trick you into incriminating yourself.”

  “Don’t trust him,” echoed Tiff.

  “Why not?” asked Burch.

  “Because I know all about him,” said Tori through her teeth. “Arlo, honey, this guy is as bad as they come.”

  I’d been called worse. But never by someone I’d just met.

  23

  My ambush is fucked from the start. Maybe my boots squeak, inching along the spike. Maybe a handful of snow dislodges itself from my person.

  Whatever the giveaway is, Jewett jerks his head up.

  By then, I’m dropping fast. I am 100 percent committed. But the split-second warning is time enough for Jewett to spring forward. Instead of my coming down on top of him, it’s more like I come down behind him.

  The one thing that saves me is that, lunging, he loses his footing. He lands on his kneecaps with his left arm outstretched to arrest the fall. The shotgun swings up under his right armpit on its bouncy bungee sling.

  Somehow I land in a crouch, but I don’t have time to plant my weight. Instead of springing on top of my attacker, I collapse on him. My armored chest hits his boots, the side of my face hits his butt, and my arms close like pinchers around his midsection before he can twist around.

  Now that I’m on top of him, I can feel how small he is under the padded snow suit. Jewett is a short, wiry guy, but something feels wrong. My arms have closed around a narrower waist than I expected.

  Not that my brain has time to process this information. My wrestling partner manages to glance the butt of the shotgun off my forehead. There is nothing like a hunk of synthetic fibers knocking your skull to chase stray thoughts from the mind.

  Meanwhile he’s trying to worm his way out of the grip I have around his waist. I feel clothing moving, a belt yielding, snow pants coming loose.

  The flashlight, mounted to the barrel, causes the beam to shake—a strobe light in the trees.

  I let go with my right hand, make a fist, and deliver a punch to where I hope one of the bastard’s kidneys is.

  The audible expulsion of breath tells me I hit the mark.

  He twists before I can drive my fist into his kidney again. Somehow I find myself on my back in a desperate attempt to keep him from slipping free. He presses his bony ass against my sternum while he stamps his boots on my shins.

  Under normal circumstances, I would be winning this bout, no contest. I have practiced hours for this scenario, both at the criminal justice academy and with Dani, who holds a black belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu. I have the advantages of size and strength, and on the ground, brute force matters more than martial artistry. Because if there is one iron rule in hand-to-hand combat, it’s never let a bigger opponent pin you.

  Jewett, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to have been trained in any fighting style. He’s just slippery as an eel and determined as hell.

  I arch my shoulders and rock from side to side—Dani calls the move “bridging”—trying to roll us both over so I’m on top again. Finally I push up with my hips: the kind of pelvic thrust people do in booty-building classes.

  But the little bastard drives an elbow at my face. It doesn’t hit, but it causes me to shut my eyes and lose focus. Worse, it allows him to brace the butt of the gun against the ground.

  So instead of rolling on top of him, I roll off his body altogether. He might as well have thrown me clear.

  I land on my hands and knees while he scrabbles away, kicking snow. In the process he inadvertently jerks the trigger of his shotgun. The barrel flashes as an unaimed shell explodes from the chamber, scattering buckshot into the trees overhead. Broken branches and splintered bark rain down.

  The gunshot wakes me up.

  I’ve been treating Jewett the way I would treat some random asshat resisting arrest. Despite his having tried to kill me—twice!—I’m holding back. I’m pretending this is a high school wrestling match instead of a fight to the death. My restraint is going to get me killed.

  My hand closes around the knife in my pocket and presses the button that causes the blade to spring out.

  He’s struggling to get the barrel of the long gun around so he can pull the trigger again. I close one hand around his ankle. The heavy pack boot prevents me from cutting his Achilles tendon. So I go higher and slash his quad through layers of Gore-Tex and wool. I’m not aiming to sever his femoral artery. I only want to hurt him enough to gain possession of the firearm.

  He screams, a surprisingly high-pitched scream, and reflexively presses a hand to the cut. I grab hold of the bungee sling and give the elasticized strap a good yank.

  The weapon slips over his head. In the process his helmet pops off.

  I’m sitting in the snow, but this time holding the shotgun butt, while my unmasked opponent gasps for air. He has a balaclava around his head. In the darkness I can’t make out identifying features except to note the paleness of his face.

  I reposition my grip on the gun to get my finger in the trigger guard.

  With one hand he clutches his bleeding thigh. With the other he massages his throat where he was clotheslined by the strap as I pulled it over the lip of his helmet. Then he straightens his shoulders. I raise the shotgun’s sights and with it the flashlight. In the blue-white beam I see a strand of red hair peeking out from beneath the balaclava.

  That’s not Jewett.

&nb
sp; The freckled, contorted face turns to me full of pain and anger, but absolutely no fear.

  It is Tori Dillon.

  24

  Tori curled into her boyfriend’s armpit and pressed her left hand flat on his furry pectoral muscle. She was barefoot. Her toenails were painted with glittery polish that sparkled in the green light of the heat lamps.

  I have a good memory for names and a better memory for faces. The Dillon twins definitely reminded me of someone else. It ate at me that I couldn’t make the connection.

  “Are you sure we’ve never met, Tori?”

  “You’d remember if we had, Mike.”

  One of the snakes rubbed its scaled belly against the gravel in the heated box, the sound dry and rasping.

  “This seems personal for you,” I said. “Usually people get to know me before they decide they hate my guts.”

  Arlo laughed.

  The freckled twin scowled. “I’ve known you for five minutes—that’s long enough.”

  “Ease up, Tori,” said her sister.

  I found Tiff’s dead eyes hard to read. Cannabis, maybe. Or something stronger.

  Tori detached herself from Burch to reach for a pack of cigarettes. “I’m telling you, this asshole specializes in fucking people’s lives over.”

  “Anyone in particular you have in mind?” I said.

  The Bic flamed before her face as she lit her Parliament. “Those people out on Maquoit Island, for example.”

  She was referring to my first case as a warden investigator. I had been called to the scene of a hunting homicide on a remote coastal island. The woman who’d died had been an unwelcome stranger whose murder no one wanted solved. It wasn’t my finest hour. By the time I left Maquoit, the entire population hated me. If I’d stayed another day, I’m fairly sure I would have been stoned in the public square.

  “You seem to have followed my career closely,” I said.

  She exhaled at the ceiling. “A friend of mine lived out there.”

  “Who?”

  “Like I’m going to give you their name! But don’t worry, Warden Bowditch. I’m not your personal stalker.”