by Paul Doiron
“But it goes to reason, right? You think someone who was upset about the Wendigo deal snuck out of the meeting to set up an ambush.”
“I really can’t speculate. And I’ve already said too much.”
“I appreciate the courtesy.” Actually, I was surprised by the detective’s willingness to say anything at all, considering what was happening with my father. Maybe he was the straight shooter Kathy said he was.
Soctomah smiled again. “I’d be asking the same questions if I were in your place. You want to help your father, so you need to know exactly what’s going on.”
I started to say, yes, but caught myself. Was he suggesting that I’d cover up for my dad to protect him? “I just don’t want you guys wasting your time on a dead end,” I said.
“That’s the last thing we want, too. We’re fortunate to have your help in this.” He glanced up at the sky. “Man, it’s like a sauna out here. What say we get out of the sun?” He gestured toward the mobile crime unit parked across the lot.
This guy is pretty slick, I thought.
Sure enough, when we’d settled down inside the motor coach and he’d grabbed us a couple of bottled waters, out came the tape recorder. “You understand about this, right?”
“Yeah,” I said.
We went back over the subject of the answering machine message again, this time for the record, and then moved on to my father’s views on corporate ownership of the North Woods, his marksmanship with high-powered rifles, and general proclivities for violence. Midway through the conversation another detective appeared, a spark plug with a snub nose and a do-it-yourself buzz cut, who sat in the back of the vehicle, watching me with a sullen expression. Detective Menario, I presumed.
“How would you describe your relationship with your father?” asked Soctomah.
“What do you mean?”
“Were you close? Distant?”
“I lived with him, on and off, until I was nine years old. But after my parents got divorced, I only saw him occasionally. I spent a couple of months with him at Rum Pond when I was sixteen, working at the camp, washing dishes, that kind of thing, but it didn’t work out.”
“What happened?”
“I was a kid. I had unrealistic expectations.”
“About what?”
“About everything,” I said. “He had his own lifestyle, and I didn’t fit in.”
“Does he have any friends in this general vicinity? Someone he might turn to if he got himself into trouble?”
“I don’t know. The only friends of his I met were Russell Pelletier and a guide named Truman Dellis. That’s a guy you should definitely talk to. He’s violent and alcoholic, and I wouldn’t put it past him to shoot a cop.”
The detective ignored my suggestion. “Anyone else?”
“There was another guy. I’m not sure he was a friend exactly. I saw my dad talking to him at the Dead River Inn. He had a shaved head and a goatee. My dad called him a ‘paranoid militia freak.’ ”
“Would your mother know about your father’s acquaintances?”
The possibility hadn’t occurred to me before. “You’re not going to drag her into this.”
“Where does she live?” asked the agitated detective, Menario.
“Scarborough. She’s remarried. And she has a different name now, Marie Turner.” I gave them her phone number. “She’s going to freak out when you call her.”
“Why’s that?”
“She’s got a new life, a new family. She doesn’t like to be associated with my dad anymore. It was a bad time in her life, and she’d rather forget it.”
“She’s an ex-wife.” Soctomah gave a knowing smile. “Mike, I understand how difficult this situation must be for you. You’ve dedicated your life to enforcing the law, and now your father’s a fugitive. But I don’t have to tell you that your dad’s a lot better off if we can find him quickly and get him to surrender. So if there’s anything else you can think of, any other piece of information that might help us, we need to know about it.”
“Only this,” I said. “He didn’t murder those men.”
Soctomah blinked, clearly taken aback. “Why do you say that?”
“Because I know what’s in his nature. He may be a son-of-abitch-I know that better than anybody-but he’s too smart to kill a cop. I don’t expect you to believe that. But the man you’re looking for is some sort of terrorist kook. He killed that V.P. from Wendigo to send a message. My father wouldn’t do that.”
“So if he’s innocent,” asked Menario, “then why’d he run?”
“I don’t know.”
A look came into Soctomah’s eyes that I didn’t recognize at first. Then I realized: He was embarrassed for me. He thought I was deluding myself, and he felt pity.
“I know it looks bad,” I said. “But you’re mistaken about him.”
Soctomah stood up in such a way as to make me stand up, too. “Thanks for taking the time to talk with us, Mike,” he said, escorting me to the door. “We’ll keep you posted.”
“You know where to find me,” I said, putting on my sunglasses to face the daylight again.
10
The search got under way and I had nothing to do. Lieutenant Malcomb said I’d be an observer, and that’s exactly what I was: a spectator forced to watch while a platoon of heavily armed officers was deployed into the wooded hills east of the Bigelow Mountains.
When I was a teenager I used to have nightmares about being a ghost. In my dreams I’d float around like a phantom watching my family and friends, unable to speak to them, unable to interact. It was the worst thing I could imagine, and it was exactly how I felt now. Stuck in a crowded room, forced to follow the search on topographic maps, hearing the bloodhounds only in my imagination.
The dogs had picked up my dad’s trail easily enough at the crash scene. But my father was a professional trapper, and he knew about scents and how not to leave them. His boots were always rubber-bottomed because leather and canvas leave a human odor. And he knew how to zigzag across streams and find paths of bare stone more or less impervious to smell. He scrambled through bogs so choked with fallen trees-spiked branches everywhere-that the dogs cut their pads to shreds trying to follow. He knew he probably couldn’t outwit the hounds, but he could definitely exhaust their handlers and gain himself some time.
The reports came back by radio. Trail lost. Trail found again.
The tension got to people in different ways. I drank coffee until my stomach burned. The officer in charge, Major Carter, of the state police tactical team, kept checking his watch. The sheriff left the room every fifteen minutes to piss. Lieutenant Malcomb found a pack of Lucky Strikes on a desk and stepped outside.
I found him behind the building, standing beside a bubbling spillway, lighting a cigarette. “Lieutenant,” I said. “I know what we talked about before, but I’d like to be posted into the field. Let me direct traffic or something. I can’t just stand around like this, waiting.”
“We’re all waiting.”
“But you need more men out there.”
“The governor’s got the National Guard on standby.” He dropped the cigarette and crushed it beneath his boot. “I think we can spare you, Bowditch.”
There was nothing to say to that. Overhead I heard a faint drone and then saw a small airplane flash in the sun. It banked and swung westward into the deepening shadows beneath Little Bigelow and disappeared from view.
“That’s Charley Stevens,” said the lieutenant, as if identifying a species of bird. He left me staring up at the darkening peaks. In the mountains you really do run out of daylight early.
The Bigelows were named for Major Timothy Bigelow, who came through here with Colonel Benedict Arnold on his march to Quebec in 1775. It was a chapter of the Revolutionary War nobody talks about much anymore, but I remembered how jazzed I was as a kid to learn that my hometown was near a site of historic significance. My dad told me that Arnold brought a thousand men from the sea up the Kennebec
River in leaky bateaux, portaging the heavy boats over Pleasant Ridge to the Dead River, then along the Chain of Ponds, heading overland again across the Height of Land that fences the border with Canada, and finally down the Chaudiere to storm the ramparts of Quebec. It was a daring plan and a complete disaster. Hundreds of soldiers deserted, drowned, starved, or froze to death along that long march. More died on the Plains of Abraham in the snow beneath of the walls of the city. It was the first major defeat of the revolution, but I was captivated by the story anyway-the courage of the men fighting their way through a wilderness of impassable forests and wild rivers-and I remembered how crestfallen I was to hear afterward about Arnold’s treason at West Point. How could my hero have become a traitor?
I watched the sun dip below the summit-the colors changed in an instant as it dropped from view-and I thought about all the lessons we fail to learn from history.
I was still outside half an hour later when officers came pouring out of the command post. Suddenly the parking lot was awash in blue lights and sirens. The sheriff made a beeline for me. Behind him were Lieutenant Malcomb and Major Carter, who was fastening on a Kevlar vest.
“We’ve got a situation,” growled the sheriff. “Your father’s gone barricade.”
“He’s taken a hostage,” explained the lieutenant.
He motioned me to come with him in his truck, and I did.
“Who’s the hostage?”
The lieutenant cranked the engine. “An old recluse named Bickford. The dogs tracked the scent to his cabin. And when troopers approached the door, they were fired at.”
“Shit.”
“I hope we can talk your old man out of there, Bowditch.”
He’s dead if we don’t, I thought.
It was like a high-speed caravan. As we raced through the woods, our emergency lights turned the roadside trees blue and red-carnival colors that had no place in the natural world.
My father had traveled far since morning, more miles than seemed possible for an injured man on foot, and not in the direction anyone expected, either. Instead of making for the major roads, he’d gone north, turning away from the village of Dead River and moving deeper into the industrial forest now owned by Wendigo Timber.
The state police tactical team had thrown up a perimeter at the end of a dirt road, beyond rifle range of the cabin. This was their show now, and if the troopers couldn’t induce my dad to give up his hostage and surrender, they would go in with tear gas and automatic weapons.
The sheriff and the others were waiting behind an improvised barricade of police cruisers.
“What’s the situation?” asked the lieutenant.
“One shot fired.”
“Anybody hurt?”
“No.”
“Is he contained?”
“Completely.”
The cabin was a sorry-looking structure fashioned of red-painted boards and plywood, with silver Typar holding it all together like so much duct tape. There was only one crooked window in front, a cockeyed angle on the world. A rusty Nissan pickup was parked beneath some pines. A rutted ATV track ran up the hill into the woods.
“How do you know my father’s in there?” I asked.
“The dogs were indicating all over the place when they got here,” said Major Carter. “There’s no exiting scent trail, as far as we can tell.”
An FBI agent I hadn’t met stepped forward. He was African-American, which immediately set him apart from all the white faces around us. “What do we know about the hostage?”
“He’s a local hermit named Wallace Bickford,” said the sheriff. “I’m told he’s retarded.”
“He’s brain injured,” said Lieutenant Malcomb. “A tree fell on him ten years ago, and he lives off Social Security and worker’s comp.”
The FBI man was jotting notes onto a pad. “He’s disabled?”
“Yeah, but it doesn’t stop him from poaching deer. He baits them in close to his cabin and then potshots them through an open window. Charley Stevens and I pinched him a few times over the years.”
“Are we sure it’s just the one hostage?” I asked.
“We can’t get close enough to the window to see.”
Word came that the tactical team had moved into position around the cabin. Snipers with nightscopes had all the doors and the window in their sites and were prepared to breach the building on command. Major Carter announced that he would act as tactical negotiator.
“Do we have a phone line in there?”
“No.”
“I hate these goddamned bullhorns,” said the major. He grabbed the microphone from the cruiser and snapped on the loudspeaker switch. There was an electronic crackle, and then his voice boomed out into the dusk: “John Bowditch. This is Major Jeffrey Carter. I’m with the Maine State Police. I’d like to talk to you. We are not planning an assault. You are in no danger. I repeat: We are not planning an assault.”
We waited, but there was no reply. The only sound was the static and pop of police radios from the dozen parked cruisers. A line came back to me from a video we watched at the academy: “A hostage situation is a homicide in progress.” “Call him Jack,” I said.
“What?”
“Jack, not John. He hates the name John.”
He switched on the mic again. “Jack, this is Jeff Carter again. It’s imperative that we have a conversation right now.”
I whispered to the lieutenant, “Why isn’t he asking about the hostage? Shouldn’t we find out if he’s OK in there?”
“He doesn’t want the H.T. to think the hostage has any bargaining value.”
“H.T.?”
“Hostage taker.”
The major’s voice came back over the speaker: “What I’d like to do, Jack, is give you a cell phone. That way, we won’t have to shout at each other.” He made a hand gesture to a trooper in full-combat armor to start forward. “I have a man bringing you a cell phone. This is not an assault. He’s just bringing you a phone so we can talk.”
The trooper began creeping forward, using the cover of the pines to draw close to the building.
Then came a muffled shout: “Don’t come up here!”
The trooper froze in place.
There was something about the voice that raised the hairs along my neck.
“OK, Jack,” answered the major. “Whatever you say.”
Slowly the trooper backed away from the cabin.
I grabbed the major’s shoulder. “It’s not him.”
He swung around on me. “What?”
“That’s not my father,” I said. “I don’t know who it is, but it’s not him.”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive.”
“Could it be Bickford?” asked the FBI agent.
For the first time in hours I felt something like real hopefulness. “What if he’s not in there?”
“Somebody shot at my men,” snapped the sheriff.
“What if it’s just Bickford?”
“The dogs tracked him here, for Christ’s sake.”
Suddenly the strange voice shouted again: “I hear them outside the walls! Don’t come in here!”
Major Carter switched on the loudspeaker again: “Nobody’s coming in, Jack. You have my word on that. Jack, we’ve got your son, Mike, here.”
I knew I was there to help negotiate, but the thought of actually talking my dad into surrendering left me wondering if the major knew what he was doing.
The FBI agent wondered, too. “You can’t put a family member on the horn.”
“Under normal circumstances, I’d agree,” said the major. “But Bowditch called his son last night. We have reason to believe he trusts Mike to get him out of the situation.”
“I think it’s a big mistake,” the FBI agent said.
The major started to hand me the mic but held it back a moment. “Talk slowly and normally. You’re going to tell him that you’re here, and he’s in no danger. You can vouch for that.”
“I can?”
“What if he’s not in there? What if this is just some sort of mistake?”
“You’re going to help us find that out.”
I took up the microphone. “Dad, this is Mike. You need to take the telephone, OK?” The major motioned to me: Slow it down. “It’s just a cell phone. Will you let them bring it to you?”
The trooper inched his way up the path, looking as unthreatening as a man in full-body armor can look.
OK, I thought. Throw the phone.
But the trooper kept going. I heard one of the hounds whining behind me, then a whispered hush from the dog’s handler.
The window was totally dark. If someone inside was looking out, I couldn’t see him.
Just throw the damned phone.
The trooper was now no more than ten yards from the porch. Slowly he lowered the hand with the phone in it, getting ready to pitch it underhand in front of the door. The placement had to be perfect. If my dad was inside, he’d probably make Bickford reach for the phone, but he couldn’t risk having his hostage escape.
Three things happened next. The trooper lofted the phone and it landed, too high, with a smack against the bottom of the door. At the same time the dog that had been whining before let out a sharp yelp. And just as suddenly a gunshot exploded the cabin’s window.
The trooper dived to the ground and rolled for cover behind the tail bed of the pickup truck.
The first shot had come from inside the cabin, but the next one came from the woods to my left.
Through the loudspeaker the major shouted: “Hold your fire! Hold your fire!”
I wasn’t even aware of rising, but suddenly I was sprinting forward up the dirt road. I heard the lieutenant shout my name, but I kept going until I stood at the foot of the porch, holding my arms up for all to see. Another shotgun blast splintered the boards near my head. “Stop firing!”
