by Paul Doiron
“Bears are funny,” said Kathy as we propped open the gate. “Sometimes you’ll catch one in five minutes. Other times they’ll figure out a way to steal the bait without ever throwing the trap.”
“Dick Roberge told me he once trapped the same bear three times. He’d release him miles away and he’d keep coming back.”
“I know that bear,” she said with a laugh. “We called him Homer.”
Kathy had brought along jelly doughnuts and bacon to use as bait. “Now, your bear has a taste for pig,” she explained. “Which is why I brought along the bacon. But in the past I’ve used lobster shells and bananas, cat food and strawberry jam, suet smeared with molasses. Anything fatty and stinky, basically.”
We dropped a trail of doughnuts and bacon strips leading to the mouth of the trap. I told her about Mrs. Hersom and the Thighmaster, and she laughed and said that at least the bear was well aerobicized now. Then, as if continuing the same light conversation, she said: “Did you end up calling your old man?”
At first I didn’t know what she meant-I’d done such a thorough job of focusing on the job at hand-then it all came back to me like a remembered bout of nausea. “I tried. He wasn’t around.” I shivered as I stepped out of the sun into the shadows. I was sweating from the heat and the exertion, but a chill was rising from the forest floor. An odor of decomposition drifted up from the shadowed stretch of road leading down into the swamp. “You hear anything more about the investigation up there?”
“Just that it’s got priority over everything else. I guess the attorney general wanted to see the crime scene himself. They have Soctomah running the investigation for State Police CID. You know him?”
“By reputation. He’s supposed to be good.”
“Best in the state.”
“Good,” I said, throwing the last doughnut into the bushes. “I hope he nails the son of a bitch.”
She was quiet a long time, her eyes on mine. I had no idea what was going through her head. But her silence made me uncomfortable.
“Should we put up the signs now?” I asked.
“Sure,” she said.
The signs were bright yellow squares of plastic that we were required to tack to the trees surrounding the trap. On them was written: DANGER. BEAR TRAP. DO NOT APPROACH. When we had finished posting the last sign, we leaned against the fender of my truck and shared a bottle of warm, plastic-flavored water.
From the front seat of my truck came the trill of my cell phone ringing. We both looked at each other. The phone trilled again. I opened the door and picked it up.
“Mike? This is Russ Pelletier. From Rum Pond.”
A shiver went through me. “Yes,” I said. “Hello, Russ.”
As a teenager I had spent a nightmare summer living in my dad’s cabin and working for Pelletier and his alcoholic wife at Rum Pond. The experience had not ended well.
“It’s been a long time,” he said.
“Eight years.”
“That long? Shit, I’m getting old. Your dad says you’re a game warden now.”
“That’s right. Down on the midcoast.”
He paused. I got the impression he was smoking a cigarette. “Actually, your dad is the reason I’m calling. You left a message here this morning saying you wanted to talk with him. I suppose you heard about what happened up here last night-the shootings?”
“Yes?”
“Well, the cops were just here looking for your dad.” He paused again to take another drag on the cigarette. “They arrested him, Mike. I don’t know how else to say it.”
6
The speedometer read seventy miles per hour, dangerously fast for this country road. Every so often I would catch myself and slow down, then minutes later I’d find myself flirting with seventy again.
The cedar swamp lay miles behind me. An hour had passed since I’d crossed out of my district, headed first west and now northwest, toward the distant jail in Skowhegan where my father was being taken in handcuffs. But in my mind I was still standing under the cedars, the cell phone pressed against my ear, hearing Russell Pelletier say:
“They arrested him, Mike. I don’t know how else to say it.”
I felt the ground slide suddenly beneath my feet. “Arrested? For what?”
Pelletier said: “A deputy came out here this morning wanting to question him, and your dad lost it. I wasn’t around when it happened. But I guess there was a fight and your dad was Maced. Anyway, they’re taking him to the jail in Skowhegan. I’d drive down myself, but I’ve got a camp full of sports. Maybe you should call over there, find out what’s up.”
“The police think he killed those men? Is that what you’re saying?”
Pelletier took his time answering. “They seem to think he knows something.”
“But that’s not why they arrested him? Not for murder. It was because he struck an officer, right?”
“Like I said, I wasn’t there when it happened, so I can’t say. I just heard about it when I got back from fishing. I think you should call over to Skowhegan. Get it all sorted out.”
“It doesn’t make any sense.”
“I’m sorry for the bad news, kid,” Russell Pelletier said as he signed off.
I told Kathy my father had just been arrested, but she had gathered as much from overhearing my end of the call.
“They think he shot Brodeur?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I guess a deputy drove out to Rum Pond to question him, and something happened. They’re taking him to the Somerset County Jail right now. I don’t know what the charge is.”
Kathy came around the front of the truck and held out her hand. “Give me your phone.”
“Why?”
She punched in a number and brought the phone to her ear, waiting for a response. “If they were going to arrest your father for killing a cop, they wouldn’t send a single deputy to do it.” Someone must have picked up on the other end, because suddenly she was no longer speaking to me. “It’s Sergeant Frost with the Warden Service. I heard one of your deputies just arrested a man named Bowditch. He’s the father of one of my wardens. I wonder what you can tell me at this point.”
Her conversation was brief and hard for me to follow without hearing the other end. Mostly it consisted of Kathy trying to convince someone to tell her what was going on and him refusing. Two minutes later she handed me back the phone with a defeated look on her face.
“The sheriff’s office won’t say what happened,” she said, “but it’s pretty clear the deputy wasn’t authorized to arrest your dad. I get the sense that he went out to Rum Pond on his own to ask some questions, and tempers flared.”
“So they’re not charging him with murder?”
“I don’t know, Mike. I don’t know what they’re charging him with.”
“My dad’s a prick,” I said, “but he’s not a cop killer.”
Kathy was silent. She crossed her freckled arms.
I reached into my pocket for my keys. “I’ve got to get up there.” I climbed into the truck and slammed the door shut. The noise was like a gunshot. “You’ve got to cover my shift for me.”
“Mike.” She sighed.
“Please, Kath,” I said. “If it were your father, what would you do?”
Kathy didn’t answer my question, but then again, why should she? Her father was a retired Presbyterian minister, and chief of the volunteer fire department. Not some saloon-brawling logger with a rap sheet of misdemeanors and the public persona of a Tasmanian devil. How could Kathy Frost understand what it was like to grow up with such a man?
It seemed like I’d spent my whole life either embarrassed by him or trying to win his approval. I even became a law officer because of him-to make amends, if that was possible, for the petty crimes he’d committed against society and against his own family. That night at the Dead River Inn, when I told him about my plans to join the Warden Service, was supposed to be my declaration of independence. I wanted him to see me-and himself-in a new way. But all h
e did was laugh.
So why was I rushing to his rescue now? I guess I was still waiting for the day when he decided he needed me.
That day was today, but instead of being pleased, I was pissed off. I didn’t for an instant think he was capable of cold-blooded murder. But was he capable of waking up with a hangover and punching out a sheriff’s deputy who got in his face? Yes, he was. Self-incrimination was my father’s stock and trade. And now, for all I knew, he had both the State Police Criminal Investigation Division and the Somerset County Sheriff’s Department believing he was a cop killer. Jack Bowditch: the State of Maine’s Public Enemy Number One.
The stupid prick.
I drove fast along a newly paved stretch of forest road. It was a miracle I didn’t run my truck headfirst into a telephone pole. On the dashboard, the speedometer was back up to seventy.
7
The last time I’d visited the Somerset County Jail had been the morning after the bar fight in Dead River. Now, here I was rushing to his rescue again. It hardly felt as if two years had passed.
The jail was a brick fortress, next door to the old courthouse in downtown Skowhegan. It was a spooky building that always brought to mind a story my dad told me as a kid. Years ago, a prisoner wrapped his hands in towels and scaled the razor-wire fence that surrounded the exercise yard. He thought he could escape by swimming across the flood-swollen Kennebec River. Big mistake. A week later searchers found his broken body stuck in the dam downstream.
Now my father was a prisoner in the same jail.
I opened the glass door leading to an office. Seated behind a high counter, a lone dispatcher was taking a call, jotting down a note on a pink message slip. A police radio chattered beside him.
“Ma’am, you did the right thing,” the dispatcher said without glancing up at me. He was a harried-looking guy with wire-frame glasses and auburn hair combed and sprayed over a bald spot. Behind him was a wall of wood-partitioned cubbyholes stuffed with more pink slips. “We’ll be glad to check it out for you. I’ll send someone down as soon as I can.”
On the counter was a clipboard holding the week’s pink incident reports, left out for reporters who covered the crime beat. I leafed through them, looking for the name Bowditch. I saw nothing, but I knew how paperwork lagged in these offices. Chances were that my father was still being booked downstairs in the jail, having his mugshot and fingerprints taken.
“No, I can’t say when exactly,” the dispatcher continued into the receiver. “A deputy will be there as soon as possible. No, I really can’t say when.” He put down the phone and gave me a blank, shell-shocked expression. “What an effing morning,” he said.
Effing? “I’d like to see Sheriff Hatch, please.”
Before the dispatcher could respond, a busty woman in uniform-the redness in her eyes showed how much crying she’d done that day-appeared in the door behind me.
“Heard anything from Pete?” she said.
“I still can’t raise him,” said the dispatcher.
The woman seemed to notice me for the first time. “Can I help you?”
Her wrinkled lips were painted a metallic pink, the color of a Mary Kay Cadillac. Like the dispatcher, she was wearing a black ribbon pinned to her uniform shirt, a reminder of their murdered deputy.
“One of your deputies just brought in a prisoner,” I said.
The phone started ringing again, but the dispatcher didn’t answer it right away. The woman’s eyes directed themselves to the little name plate on my uniform.
“I believe it’s my father,” I said.
“Stay right here,” she said, and darted through the door. Through the glass wall I watched her enter the sheriff’s office.
The dispatcher answered the phone. “Sheriff’s office,” he said, keeping his eyes on me as if I might suddenly break and run
The raccoon-eyed woman returned. “It turns out the sheriff wants to see you, too,” she said to me.
Sheriff Joe Hatch sat across from me behind a dark-stained oak desk, his big-knuckled hands folded on the blotter. He had mustardbrown hair going white about the temples, a brush mustache, and the shoulders of a retired defensive tackle. Pinned to his lapel was that same black ribbon everyone else was wearing.
“I’m sorry about Deputy Brodeur,” I said.
He nodded.
“I was at the criminal justice academy with Bill,” I continued. “He was a good man.”
The metal springs in his chair creaked as he shifted his considerable weight. “What can I do for you, Warden?”
“One of your deputies just arrested my father-his name is Jack Bowditch-up near Rum Pond, and I heard he was being brought here.”
“Who told you this?”
“I got a call from Russell Pelletier. He owns Rum Pond Camps.”
I waited for him to respond, but he didn’t. One of my legs began twitching.
“Look, I don’t know what my father did-” I began.
“He assaulted an officer!”
“Russell Pelletier seems to think he’s a suspect in the Brodeur homicide.”
He smoothed his mustache. “The state police are running that investigation.”
This wasn’t going the way I’d imagined, not that I had much of a plan coming in. “I don’t know what happened to your deputy today-and I’m not making excuses for my father. I just feel like there’s the potential for a misunderstanding here, and I don’t want the CID investigation wasting time.”
“What are you trying to say?”
“I’d like to speak with my father, please.”
There was a tentative knock at the door. “Come in!” barked the sheriff.
It was his secretary again. Her mascara looked even more smeared than before. “They found him.”
Without another word, the sheriff rose to his feet and left the room. I remained seated, staring at the closed door. In the silence I could hear the rumble of traffic passing along the street outside. What was going on here? Who had they found?
They left me alone in that room for close to ten minutes.
When the sheriff returned, the first thing he did was remove his jacket and toss it onto a chair. His big body was throwing off a lot of heat. I could feel it across the desk and smell it in the sharpness of his Old Spice deodorant working overtime. “Tell me about your father. When was the last time you spoke with him?”
“Last night.”
“Hold on.” He reached into a desk drawer and removed a tape recorder. He set it on the blotter between us. “You said you spoke with him last night.”
“Not exactly. He left a message on my answering machine.” I cleared my throat. “What’s with the tape recorder?”
He gave me the biggest, falsest smile I’d seen in an ages. “We just need to clear a few things up.”
That was a line investigators fed to suspects, not fellow officers. “What’s going on here, Sheriff?”
“You say your father’s being falsely implicated in the homicide. I thought I’d give you a chance to set things straight. What was the message?”
“It wasn’t anything really. He just sort of wondered aloud where I was and then hung up.”
“And where were you?”
“On a call.”
“Did you erase the message?”
I looked out the window. Something-a fast-moving shadow-had spooked the pigeons off the next roof. I watched them scatter in a hundred directions.
“I didn’t realize it was important,” I said.
He was still all smiles, but the strain was showing in the tightness of his jaw. “So you erased it?”
“Has my father asked for a lawyer?”
His smile gave way like a dam bursting. He leaned across the desk at me. “Let me tell you something about your father”-he practically spit the word-“your father is accused of killing a cop. If I were you, I’d answer my question.”
“I didn’t come here to incriminate him.”
“I called your lieutenant. He’s on his
way here.”
“Lieutenant Malcomb?”
“What do you think he’s going to say when I tell him you’re refusing to cooperate in a murder investigation?”
“I am cooperating.”
“You destroyed evidence when you erased that message.”
Everything seemed to be spinning out of control. “Maybe we should wait for Lieutenant Malcomb to get here. I feel uncomfortable saying anything else right now.”
“You feel uncomfortable?” He grabbed the tape recorder and clicked it off. “One of my men is dead and another’s on his way to the hospital. So I don’t really give a damn how you feel.”
“The hospital? What are you talking about?”
“We lost radio contact with a deputy of mine named Pete Twombley half an hour ago. I’ve had men looking for him ever since. I just got a call that his cruiser was found off Route 144. They found Twombley beat up and handcuffed to a tree. I don’t know how your father overpowered him, but right now every law enforcement officer in western Maine is out there hunting for him. Maybe you should rethink the attitude and get on the right side of this. Because, the way it’s looking, the next time you see him is going to be at his funeral.”
8
I sat alone in the lobby outside the dispatch office waiting for my division commander, Lieutenant Timothy Malcomb, to come through the door. The sheriff had gone off to supervise the manhunt. I felt like a kid waiting for his mom to pick him up outside the vice principal’s office.
The enormity of what was happening was more than I could wrap my mind around. At this moment state troopers, deputies, and game wardens were hunting for my father in the woods along the Dead River. The FBI had been called in from Boston. TV news crews were probably rushing to the scene. By tomorrow morning the entire State of Maine would know the name of Jack Bowditch.
