The Poacher's Son

by Paul Doiron

  “He’s got you,” said Menario.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You’re his biggest defender. Seems like he’d be in touch again.”

  I was beginning to wonder whether getting me up here, asking me to speak with Brenda Dean, was just a pretext to interrogate me. Was she really downstairs, or was this all just a trap?

  “You told us he left that message the night of the murder,” said Soctomah, looking me dead in the eyes.

  “That’s right.” I tried to keep outwardly calm, but my thoughts were racing. Did they know about the conversation I’d had with Dad three nights earlier? Had they been tapping my phone?

  “We would have expected him to contact you again,” said Soctomah. “You’re a law enforcement officer and his son. It seems like he would have asked for your help before he called his ex-wife. You’re sure you haven’t spoken with him?”

  Everything I’d learned at the Criminal Justice Academy about detecting a lie flashed through my head. Liars rub their eyes. They cover their ears. They touch their lips and look away, usually upward and to the left, trying to conjure a plausible falsehood out of their imaginations. I’d learned that all but the most pathological of liars will give themselves away through certain microexpressions. An experienced interrogator-a decorated sergeant with the Maine State Police, for instance-can detect a lie nine times out of ten.

  “No,” I lied. “I haven’t spoken with him. And I resent the suggestion that I would withhold evidence from a murder investigation.” I didn’t know how much to push my luck, but I tried to muster a little indignation. “I thought you brought me up here to talk with Brenda Dean, not make cheap shots at my expense.”

  In the window an electric fan moved the hot air around a little. I became aware of Charley Stevens watching me carefully from across the room.

  “OK,” said Soctomah at last. “We’re just trying to cover all the bases. Let’s talk about Brenda.”

  “What do you want me to ask her?”

  “Just get her talking about your father. Show you’re concerned about him.”

  “I am concerned about him.”

  “Then you won’t have any trouble convincing her to trust you.”

  “I’m no lawyer,” I said, “but it seems like you’re going to have admissibility problems with anything she says to me. Did you talk to the A.G. about this?”

  Soctomah put up his hands, a halting sort of gesture “We’re not looking to make a case against her. That’s not why we brought you here.”

  “We want to find out where that son of a bitch is hiding,” said Menario.

  I leaned back, and the old chair gave a creak like it might break. “You think she knows where my dad is?”

  “If anyone does, she does,” said Soctomah.

  “Or you,” said Menario.

  It was hard working up any anger over Menario’s accusation when I felt so complicit, anyway. My dad wanted me to talk with Brenda Dean, and the detectives, unwittingly, were giving me the opportunity. But what if Brenda really did know where he was hiding? What the hell would I tell them then?

  “You’re putting the young man in a tight spot here,” said Charley Stevens.

  “We realize that,” said Soctomah. “But what’s the alternative? The longer his dad is on the run, the more likely it becomes that he-or somebody else-gets hurt. Do you want that on your conscience, Mike? Or are you willing to step up here and help us resolve this situation today?”

  “I’ll talk to her,” I said, as if I weren’t desperate to do so, anyway.

  We descended a flight of warped wooden stairs and then passed through a darkened hallway lit only by a glowing red EXIT sign. My buddy, Deputy Twombley, was standing outside a door at the end. When he saw me, his lips pulled back from his teeth like a chimp mimicking a human smile.

  “How’s she doing?” Soctomah asked him.

  “She keeps bitching about going to Rum Pond.”

  The door opened, and at first I thought no one was there. Then I saw a barefoot young woman sitting on the floor with her back against the wall and her knees drawn up in front of her. Her face was dark-eyed and angular, all cheekbones and jawline, and she was wearing blue jeans and a sleeveless top that showed her lean, brown arms. A pair of work boots lay on the floorboards beside three cans of Diet Pepsi.

  “Mike?” she said.

  “B.J.?”

  I felt like I’d been sucker punched. The last time I’d seen Truman Dellis’s daughter she’d been a shy little twelve-year-old chopping carrots for soup in the kitchen at Rum Pond. Now she was a woman, and an attractive one, too.

  “I didn’t know your name was Brenda,” I stammered.

  “Brenda Jo.” I could see she had just been crying. “Who were you expecting?”

  Soctomah loomed over my shoulder. “What’s going on, Mike? You said you didn’t know her.”

  “We worked in the kitchen together at Rum Pond when we were kids. I thought her last name was Dellis.”

  She rose to her feet, pushing against the wall to get there. “That’s my old man’s name. I use my mom’s.”

  Suddenly I made the connection. “You’re my dad’s girlfriend?”

  She lowered her eyes and nodded yes.

  How old was she now? Twenty? Twenty-one? I’d seen my father charm some younger women, but none as young as this. The idea made me queasy. “He never told me.”

  “So you two have a history after all,” said Menario, not even bothering to hide his animosity. In his mind we were all covering up for a murderer.

  Brenda glared up at the detectives with tear-reddened eyes. “This is a pretty cute trick. I should’ve figured a ride home from jail was too good to be true.” She raised her chin in Soctomah’s direction. “You jerks are still going to bring me to Rum Pond, right?”

  “That’s what we agreed,” said Soctomah.

  “We’ll leave you two to get reacquainted,” said Menario.

  When he closed the door, it seemed to suck all the air out of the room. I heard muffled conversation from the hall, a harsh laugh, then echoing footsteps moving away.

  There was a single, cobwebbed window at ground level, above her head. It let in a little dusty light that left most of the room in shadows. There were filing cabinets and bookshelves with heavy ancient volumes gathering dust. Brenda and I studied each other.

  “So I guess they haven’t found Jack yet,” she said.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “You wouldn’t be here otherwise.” She gave me a smile that was more sad than happy. Her front teeth were slightly crooked. “I can’t believe you didn’t know who I was. That’s pretty funny.”

  “Hilarious,” I said. “When did you stop using ‘B.J.’?”

  “When I figured out why men liked saying it so much.”

  That made sense. I’d heard more dirty jokes at Rum Pond than anywhere else in my life. “So now it’s Brenda.”

  “It’s always been Brenda. My mother never called me B.J. It was my old man who started that.”

  I pictured Truman Dellis’s pie-dough face, eyes that went from dopey to dangerous in a heartbeat. “How is Truman?”

  She ignored the question. “You don’t have a cigarette, do you?”

  “I don’t smoke. Soctomah said you had something to tell me.”

  She started to tear up again. “This is all so fucked up. First, Jack being accused of killing those guys, and then the cops coming after me. They put me in jail, and I didn’t even do anything. I never heard of a material witness before.”

  “They can’t hold you anymore,” I said. “Not without evidence.”

  “So what am I doing here?”

  “They were just delaying you until I arrived. They thought if we spoke it might clear some things up. That’s why I’m here. It’s the best way to help yourself-and my dad.”

  She rubbed the back of her neck and glanced longingly at the dirty window. “Can’t we talk outside? It’s like an oven in her
e.”

  “We can talk here.”

  “They probably got this room bugged.”

  “It’s not bugged, B.J.”

  “Brenda!” For an instant her face was contorted with anger, and then, just as quickly, became mild again.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, ashamed at my own clumsiness. The truth was that I found the whole situation disorienting, the idea of this good-looking woman being the skinny girl I once knew, and the realization that she now shared a bed with my father. “It’s hot, and I’m tired and not thinking straight. Let’s just talk for a while, and then I’ll get you a ride back to Rum Pond.”

  “So you’re on their side then?”

  I almost laughed out loud at the absurdity of it all. She thought I was on the side of the cops, and the cops thought I was on my father’s side. In reality I was just the rope in a tug-of-war.

  “It’s not funny,” she said. “You don’t care about him.”

  “Of course I do. He’s my father.”

  “Then why are you trying to help them catch him?”

  “Because if I don’t, some cop is going to shoot him. As long as he’s on the run, he’s in danger. I’ve spent the past five days trying to protect him. As far I can tell, I’m the only person in the state who thinks he’s innocent.”

  “He is innocent.”

  “Do you have proof?”

  “I was with him that night at Rum Pond. He wasn’t near Dead River or that meeting.”

  “You already told the detectives that. They think you’re lying. They say they have evidence that puts him at the scene.”

  “What evidence?”

  I knew I probably shouldn’t tell her what Charley had confided in me, but I wanted to hear how she explained it. “Tire tracks from his pickup. And a boot print. There’s also the fact that he assaulted a police officer and is now a fugitive from justice.”

  She reached down for the can of Diet Pepsi on the floor, pretending like she hadn’t heard me. “He had no reason to kill that paper company man.”

  “Soctomah thinks he was pissed off. Wendigo was closing down Rum Pond Camps and kicking him out of his cabin. He wanted to scare them, make them think twice.”

  “That’s stupid. He doesn’t give a shit about Rum Pond or that cabin.”

  “Maybe someone put him up to it. Someone like Pelletier?”

  “Jack wouldn’t piss on Russ Pelletier if he was on fire.”

  This was news to me. Pelletier had been brusque at the funeral, but I figured he was just mad at me. “I thought they were friends.”

  “Friends.” She said the word as if it carried a bad taste. “Where have you been?”

  “Living my life-until this happened.”

  And now that life might be over. I’d sacrificed my relationship with Sarah for my career as a warden, and now that career was in shambles. What would I do if I lost my job?

  Brenda leaned back against the cinder-block wall and looked at me through half-closed eyelids. “You’re mad at him.”

  “Of course, I’m mad. Who wouldn’t be? He’s made my life miserable, but I keep trying to help him. And all it gets me is more aggravation.”

  “Poor Mike.”

  “This is a waste of time.” I turned toward the door. “They’re going to charge you with hindering apprehension, B.J. When you’re both in prison, you can write love letters to each other back and forth.”

  “Screw you!”

  “You’re a fool,” I said. “And I’m a bigger fool for saying I’d talk to you. He said you’d give him an alibi.” The words were out of my mouth before I knew what I was saying.

  “You spoke with him?”

  I froze with my hand on the doorknob. What had I just admitted? I tried to change the subject. “Look, it’s clear you’re not interested in helping him.”

  “When did you speak with him?” She sensed the change in me, and she knew. If the detectives found out that I’d spoken with my dad and not told them-I was facing an accessory charge, no different from Brenda. “He called you, didn’t he? Is he OK? What did he say?”

  There was no use in denying it even if it gave her a weapon against me. “He said someone was trying to frame him.”

  “Did he say who?”

  “He suspected someone, but he wouldn’t say who it was.”

  Her eyes were so dark they looked black, but behind them something was going on. She was tougher and smarter than she seemed. And I was definitely dumber.

  “I know who it was,” she said at last.

  I waited. “Well?”

  “My old man.”

  “Truman? I don’t believe it.”

  “He changed since you knew him. He had a bad accident in the woods, lost an eye. Then he moved to town. He didn’t want to be near your dad anymore. They had-what do you call it?-a falling-out.”

  “Over you?”

  She lowered her eyes again as if the subject shamed her. “Me-and other things.”

  “What other things?”

  “It doesn’t matter. What matters is he turned mean, even meaner than before. He rents a room over Vernon Tripp’s barn. You know the Natanis Trading Post on Route 144? ‘There’s a big wooden Indian out front and another one up in the barn.’ That’s Tripp’s joke.”

  Tripp was the guy the police originally suspected, the bald one from the Dead River Inn. “Was Vernon Tripp in on it? My dad seemed to think there might be more than one person involved. Some sort of conspiracy.” In spite of myself, I felt a surging hopefulness.

  “Maybe. All I know is he hates Wendigo.”

  “But why would Truman want to kill Jonathan Shipman?”

  “His accident happened when he was working for Atlantic Pulp & Paper. He couldn’t work for a while. Then, when he could work again, Wendigo bought the land and they wouldn’t hire him on account of his disability.”

  “That’s no reason to kill one of their vice presidents. Not to mention a sheriff’s deputy.”

  “Money’s a reason.”

  “So who hired him, then?”

  “Pelletier.”

  “Russell Pelletier’s not that stupid. He knew killing Jonathan Shipman wasn’t going to stop Wendigo from evicting the lease holders. There’s nothing gained by it.”

  “What else could he do? They’re taking his whole life.”

  Sweat rolled down into my eyes. The room was insufferably hot, and I was having a hard time processing all the details. Brenda didn’t seem sharp enough to spin such an elaborate lie. And yet I distrusted any theory that dovetailed so neatly with my own hopes. “I want to believe you, Brenda. But the detectives can’t make a case without proof.”

  “All I know is my old man hasn’t been out to Rum Pond in three years, and then the day before the murder I looked out the kitchen window and saw him behind the boathouse talking to Pelletier. If they weren’t planning something, what was he doing all the way out there in the woods?”

  “If you think Pelletier is a murderer, then why the hell are you going back there?”

  “I need to get my stuff.”

  “You said my father had a beef with Pelletier. They used to be buddies. What happened between them?”

  “A few years ago, Russ started coming on to me pretty regular. It was after him and his wife separated. One night he got drunk and tried to do something. Jack beat the shit out of him. He said if Russ didn’t leave me alone, he’d kill him. After that, Pelletier’s been too scared to fire him. He’s left us alone, though.”

  “How old were you?”

  “Seventeen.”

  She wasn’t a whole lot older now. I couldn’t exactly view my father’s behavior in chivalrous terms, even if she did see him as Sir Lancelot. “And my dad waited until you turned eighteen? Is that it?”

  Once again her face was distorted with anger-it happened in a heartbeat-but this time her eyes shined with tears. “Who are you to judge my life? You didn’t grow up with a bunch of disgusting creeps calling you names. Jack’s the only real man I’v
e ever known.”

  It made sense that my dad wanted to protect her, but did she really need protecting, or was Brenda Dean a lot wilier than she let on? “So what you’re saying is that Pelletier and Truman conspired to kill Jonathan Shipman and Deputy Brodeur and frame my dad.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why didn’t you tell Detective Soctomah this story?”

  “It’s not a story.”

  “Why didn’t you tell him?”

  “He wouldn’t have believed me. Besides, Jack told me not to. They’d just cover it up, he said. If I told you, maybe you could convince the cops to look into it, being a warden and all.”

  Not for long, I thought. Not the way things were going.

  She looked up, her eyes still shining. She was genuinely gorgeous, I thought, when the hardness passed from her expression. Under the circumstances, it made me uncomfortable to find her so attractive.

  “You’ve got to do something,” she said. “I’m afraid the cops are going to kill him if they get the chance.”

  “Not if he gives himself up. He told me he was in Canada. Did he ever take you anywhere remote up in Quebec, someplace he might use as a hideout?”

  “No,” she said with such firmness I suspected she was lying.

  “All right,” I said. “There’s just one more thing I don’t understand. If Pelletier nearly raped you, why did you stay there at the camp, working for him all these years? It doesn’t make sense.”

  She shrugged. “Where else would I go? Rum Pond’s the only home I’ve ever had since my mom died. Besides, with Jack I felt safe. He wouldn’t let anyone hurt me anymore.”

  I was still trying to process that remark when I heard the echoing sound of footsteps coming quickly along the hall. The door opened behind me. Menario stood there, his face aglow. “Hey, Bowditch. Your sergeant is on the phone, and she’s ripshit. How come you didn’t tell us you were suspended?”

  22

  I followed Menario back up the creaking stairs to the clerk’s office. In the corner of the room, Charley Stevens was perched on a desk, sipping from a styrofoam cup of hot coffee, of all things. Soctomah, brow furrowed with annoyance, was holding a wireless phone to his ear. “He’s here,” he said to the person on the other end. He handed me the phone. It was slick from his sweaty hand.