by Paula Munier
Troy smiled back.
“It’s true we haven’t heard much from Wayne in a while, not since his mother reported him missing. But I’m surprised that he might be our vic,” said Thrasher. “I always thought he hightailed it into Canada to get away from her.”
The widow Herbert had moved to Vermont with her grown sons from Maine after her husband died. Which was why Troy didn’t know them from school. But he did know that since he’d joined up, the Herberts had been suspected of running dogfights, not that they’d caught them at it yet. “Queen of the Pit Bulls.”
“Exactly. But we’ve never been able to prove anything.”
“We will.” The only thing Troy hated more than poaching was dogfighting. He found himself clenching his fists at the very thought of it.
Thrasher grinned. “Give her my regards.”
Troy wasn’t sure what he meant. It sounded like the captain wanted him to check out the Herberts on his own. The state police wouldn’t like that.
The game wardens of Vermont Fish and Wildlife were supposed to stick to, well, fish and wildlife. Everything else—even search and rescue—technically fell under the jurisdiction of the Vermont State Police. Oh, the staties could call the game wardens in to help when they thought they needed them. But too often they didn’t.
That arrogance had cost a hiker his life a few years back. When the young man failed to return from an early evening walk in the woods, his family reported him missing. The staties failed to notify even their own search-and-rescue unit in a timely manner—and the teenager died during the night.
Thrasher was convinced that his game wardens, who knew the woods better than anyone, could have saved him—would have saved him—if they’d only known. He was right—and everyone knew it. The staties were quicker to include game wardens in searches now, but that did not satisfy the captain. He didn’t trust them to handle what went wrong in his woods. Neither did Troy.
“I guess you’d better see about that anonymous tip,” said Thrasher.
Troy nodded in understanding. “Those Herberts are bear baiting again.”
“Indeed.” The captain paused. “Watch your back. And your dog.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And then get on to the fishing license checks.”
* * *
WAYNE HERBERT’S MOTHER, Florence “Flo” Herbert, lived with her two younger sons north of the Lye Brook Wilderness in a double-wide manufactured home on twenty acres two miles off a hilly dirt road that angled off another hilly dirt road that angled off another hilly dirt road in southwestern Rutland County. Troy and Susie Bear bounced along in the truck, circumventing the bumpy backroads so typical of the state. Two-thirds of the roads in Vermont were unpaved—a whopping 8,600 miles—a nightmare in mud season but by this time of the year they were at least dry, if rutted.
Not that this could stop a game warden, for whom impassable terrain was often a given. The worse the road, the bigger the challenge. The Herberts’ road was a challenge.
Eventually the rough drive petered out at a six-foot-high chain-link fence, which surrounded the vinyl-sided manufactured home and its outbuildings on about a square acre of the family’s land. They got out of the truck. Susie Bear stood at his side, alert, tail wagging, snout up—ready to work.
Red and white Private Property/No Trespassing signs were posted every dozen feet along this rusted barricade. A new lock hung on the big gate fronting the road entering the compound, but the smaller lock on the slim, people-wide gate was busted. Troy let himself in through that gate, Susie Bear on his heels.
All was quiet at the house. It was after nine o’clock now; maybe the night-hunting Herberts were sleeping in. The yard—calling it a yard was a compliment—was cluttered with junk, an old broken-down wooden rowboat, a torn trampoline, a rusted swing set, and an assortment of snowmobile, ATV, and car parts. To the left of the Herbert home stood a chicken coop, chickens long gone, and to the right a metal toolshed, its door hanging loose and clanging in the strong wind that swept through the pines surrounding the property. The only bright notes on the compound were the twin blue Dodge Ram trucks and a two-story steel prefab barn. Considering everything in the yard, Troy had to wonder what they kept in the barn.
A murder of crows sailed over them toward the trees. Sure sign of a carcass somewhere nearby.
“There goes the captain’s anonymous tip,” he said to Susie Bear, who was poised to follow them. “Sorry, girl. Not yet.”
The makeshift porch, built of overturned split logs, held uneven piles of firewood. The path to the front door was strewn with timber in various stages of harvesting.
They had picked their way about halfway through the wreckage to the house when the front door swung open and two enormous snow-white pit bulls charged out, hurtling toward them.
CHAPTER TWELVE
“TRUCK!” TROY YELLED AT SUSIE BEAR. The pit bulls stumbled among the junk in the yard, slowing down long enough for him and his dog to retreat behind the fence. He slammed the gate shut just as the beasts flew at him. Pit bulls were great athletes. The warden knew one Schutzhund-trained pit bull named Buck who could jump a ten-foot fence, no problem. He wondered how high these two could jump.
A sharp whistle stopped the dogs cold. They barreled back to the house, disappearing inside. Troy hightailed it back to his vehicle, and he and Susie Bear took cover. He needed to calm the situation down before the Herbert boys did something even more stupid than setting their dogs on him. At least until he could explain why he was here. He pulled the megaphone from the back of the cab just as the first rock cracked his passenger headlight. Too late, he thought, looking up at the open window from where he believed the rock had come.
“Down,” he ordered his dog, who was prancing by the rear of the truck, keen to take on the attack twins, who were howling like the hellhounds they were. She dropped to all fours, but gave him a nose up that clearly communicated her disapproval. He pointed under the vehicle, and she reluctantly squirmed under its bed.
“Mrs. Herbert, this is Game Warden Troy Warner.” He kept his voice cool and calm and deep, and that sureness echoed through the megaphone. “I am here to talk to you about your son Wayne.”
A sudden movement at the window. Troy glimpsed what looked like a slingshot appear and disappear. Another stone flew through the air. He ducked back behind the vehicle, but this one was aimed not at him, but at the shed across the yard. The rock pierced the broken metal door, and it fell off with a clatter.
Guys like the Herbert brothers grew up slinging rocks at whatever moved. Troy sighed. He could call for backup, but that could take a while, and he didn’t relish the word going out over the radio that he was under threat of a slingshot. He’d never hear the end of it. He could always leave, but skulking off in defeat was rarely a satisfactory option.
“Tell your boys to put away those slingshots before I lose my patience and arrest them for assault,” he warned. “Do you want to know what happened to your firstborn or not?” Troy knew that people couldn’t help but favor their eldest child, at least that had been his experience. His parents had always favored his older brother, Tyler, without apology.
The barking and the rock slinging stopped.
Troy waited.
The front door opened again and a small, wiry little woman in her mid-fifties stepped out. She was wearing camouflage cargo pants and an army-green short-sleeved T-shirt. Her gunmetal-gray hair was chopped off right at her chin, and rattlesnake tattoos roiled up her sinewy arms.
Maybe he should have called for backup, after all.
On her heels followed two enormous young men, the Herbert brothers, he assumed, each with a slingshot sticking out of a back jean pocket.
Definitely should have called for backup.
Their father must have been a giant with seriously dominant genes.
But even as the square-built boys with arms the size of their mother’s thighs flanked her like two old-growth oaks, she was the one who commanded Troy�
��s attention. Mama’s monsters were just the window dressing, as were the pit bulls. She was the one in charge. She was the grieving mother of Wayne Herbert.
“Come on in,” she called to him in a thick smoker’s voice. “We don’t bite.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Troy allowed himself a small smile. “I’m going to bring in some documentation with me for your review.” He opened the truck door and retrieved his folder. “Don’t hurt my dog.”
He snapped his fingers and Susie Bear crawled out from under the truck. He pointed to the backseat and she whined. She didn’t like being left behind, especially when there were bad dogs and flying rocks around. But she did as she was told, lumbering into the truck with a theatrical shake of her shaggy head.
“Stay,” he said. “Good girl.”
He closed the door quietly and strode through the yard, careful not to trip on any of the scrap, scattered debris, or downed limbs.
Mrs. Herbert stepped forward at his approach and shook the hand he offered her with a grip worthy of a wrestler.
“Mrs. Herbert,” Troy said formally.
“Warden.” She nodded to the young behemoths behind her. “My boys, Louis and Paul.”
Troy shook her boys’ hands as well, each the size of hams.
“Come on in.” She waved a serpent arm at him and marched through the front door into the living room.
He trailed after her, taking his time to note the position of the dogs and the sons and the slingshots.
The dogs ran to greet Mrs. Herbert, snarling at him in passing. The sons took up residence in two matching supersized recliners the color of dried blood. Troy didn’t trust the dogs or the sons.
Delphine had two pit bulls, Lucy and Ethel, sweet-as-pie lap dogs who proved that this was an often wrongly maligned breed. But when raised by people like Mrs. Herbert, he didn’t trust them. And since she’d raised the boys, too, he’d keep an eye on them as well.
“Down,” she ordered, and the pit bulls fell back, tucking their stiff curved tails and circling onto two old brown corduroy sofa cushions in the farthest corner of the darkly paneled room.
Mrs. Herbert sat on the large faux-leather couch that sat between the recliners. It was the same oxblood color as the rest of the furniture. The space was surprisingly neat given the state of the yard just outside. The only ornaments adorning the walls—apart from the big flat-screen TV—were impressively antlered buck and moose heads. The other decoration of note was a black-skirted round table that sat under a wide window looking out onto the unsightly lawn. The table served as a shrine to the lost son.
Troy stepped over to the table to take a closer look. A sentimental tableau telling the story of a young man’s life: smiling baby pictures, surly middle school portraits, photographs of Wayne as a full-grown man—longer and leaner than his brothers, but with the same short sandy brown hair and brown eyes—posing with his mother, his brothers, his dogs, and his guns. There were other artifacts as well: hockey and football trophies, Red Sox and Bruins ticket stubs, a child’s Bible and First Communion medal, an old compass, and an expired hunting license.
“He’s a good boy, my Wayne.” Mrs. Herbert joined him at the shrine.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Why did you come here?” Her voice betrayed her fear, and her dogs growled. “You’re just a fish cop. What could you know about Wayne?”
“Please sit down.” Troy ushered her back to the sofa. “The remains of an adult male have been found in the Lye Brook Wilderness.”
“And you think it might be my Wayne.”
“We’re trying to determine the identity of the deceased at this time.” Troy paused.
“So you’re not sure.” She slowly sank onto the couch.
“No, ma’am, but he died around the same time that your son disappeared three years ago.”
“That could be just coincidence.” Mrs. Herbert lifted her chin. She straightened on her seat, her pale lips a thin hard line.
“Maybe,” he said gently. This was the worst part of his job. The part he hated. The part that made him feel completely inadequate. The part that broke his heart. Thrasher always said that if love didn’t break your heart, life as a warden would. This was what he meant. “But preliminary forensics indicate that when the victim died, he was about the same size and age of your son.”
“Victim?”
“The deceased was the victim of foul play.”
“How?” The woman closed her eyes against the news she’d hoped never to hear.
“The victim died of a gunshot wound.”
Her eyes snapped open. “How, exactly?”
He sighed. “A bullet to the brain. He wouldn’t have suffered.”
“People always say that,” she said. “How can that possibly be true?”
Troy plowed on. “There was evidence that the victim suffered a broken femur earlier in his life.”
Mrs. Herbert gripped her hands together as if in prayer. A very tense prayer. “Which leg?”
“The left,” he said.
She looked down, away from him. “Wayne broke his left leg playing hockey when he was ten years old. He had a bad fall, going for the puck. He was in a cast for two months.”
“I’d like to show you a picture of an object found among the remains.” Troy pulled the photograph of the pewter belt buckle from his folder and held it out in front of her.
A sharp intake of breath, and Mrs. Herbert sagged, her body crumpling into middle age right before the game warden’s eyes. All that pent-up energy, spent. All that tension that gave her the look of a coiled spring, released. She seemed ten years older. And ten years sadder.
Her sons, who had remained apart and silent, came and sat beside her then on the sofa, one on each side, each opening one of her clenched palms and cradling it in his huge paw.
“He was very proud of that buckle,” she said, her voice ragged and hoarse. “Said it was specially made by a master jeweler. Can’t recall his name. But Wayne told me the buckle was one of the last ones he made before he retired and went back to Ireland.”
Troy drew a pen and notebook from his pocket. “And when was that?”
“Three, four years ago. Maybe five. I don’t know.” She frowned. “What about the belt?”
“Belt?” There had been no belt found at the scene, at least as far as Troy knew.
“Wayne said a buckle that fine deserved a good belt,” she said. “So he went down to the Mad River Valley Crafts Fair and got one made out of bison leather. Hand-tooled by Clive Barton. Remember, boys?”
Her sons nodded.
Barton was a familiar figure among Vermont artisans, known for his leatherwork.
“I’d never seen anything like it. Told him it was a complete waste of money.” Mrs. Herbert blinked back tears.
Troy waited. Paul and Louis waited.
“When can we bring our boy home?” she asked, her voice thick with resignation.
“It could be a while.”
“I’ve been waiting a long time.”
“I understand. We’ll need to confirm that the remains are Wayne’s.” Troy paused, considering the evidence so far: the timing, the bones, the broken femur, the pewter belt buckle. The odds were that the victim was indeed Wayne Herbert. “Compare dental records, conduct DNA testing.”
“The police asked me for his dental records and his hairbrush for DNA samples when he went missing. In case…” She trailed off.
“Good. That should help facilitate things.”
“I never thought they’d really need them.”
Troy realized that she’d never believed that her son was dead. Like Thrasher, she thought he’d simply up and left. “Where did you think your son had gone?”
She sighed. “I don’t know. Canada, maybe. Or someplace warm. Mexico.” She pulled her palms free of her sons’ fists and raked her nicotine-stained fingers through her thick gray hair. “He was always talking about making a fresh start. Ever since that slut Francie Godette ran away to Ohio.”
“Francie?”
“His ‘fiancée.’” Mrs. Herbert made quote marks around the word fiancée. “At least until her parents found out. The Godettes thought she was too good for my boy. The father’s in insurance. Like that’s so special. So he encouraged her to hook up with this actuary from Akron.” She let out a little snort. “Who runs away to Ohio?”
Troy wasn’t sure what to say to that. He’d never been to Ohio. Not that it would matter. What he’d seen of the world when he was in the military was enough to convince him that Vermont was the place for him. When he and Madeline moved home after he left the service a couple of years ago, he was happy to be back in Northshire. He’d never seriously considered living anywhere else.
The Francie Godette outburst seemed to exhaust her. Mrs. Herbert closed her eyes again. Her sons looked at each other, then at Troy. He was wearing out his welcome. But there were still a few things he’d like to ask the family about.
As if she’d read his mind, she opened her eyes, now dark with sorrow. “What else do you need to know?”
“Did your son have any enemies?”
“Everyone loved Wayne,” she said.
Everyone except for Francie Godette, the game warden thought.
Paul and Louis didn’t say anything, deferring to their mother, but he could see by the way they glanced at each other over her head that they knew more about their brother’s activities than their mother did. Or at least more than she was willing to acknowledge. But they might not say anything in front of her. Unless pressured.
Troy addressed the sons. “So, guys, can you think of anyone who might want to hurt your brother?”
