The Bone Orchard

by Paul Doiron

  Kathy had been shot by a gun loaded with metal pellets designed to kill turkeys. I kept telling myself that I wasn’t superstitious, but how could I not view the freak appearance of this bird in my headlights as anything but an omen? I drove a little more cautiously the rest of the way.

  In Presque Isle, I took a left at the stoplight on Academy Street and soon found myself leaving a suburban neighborhood of neo-colonial homes and ranch houses for the wide-open agricultural fields at the edge of town. There was a thin sliver of moon dangling like an ornament in the night sky. It wasn’t bright enough to obscure the wheeling constellations overhead: Hercules and Scorpius and Leo. There were no streetlights along the Lake Josephine Road, and it felt like I was driving across the High Plains.

  The homes stood far apart from one another here, as if the people who owned them were standoffish and didn’t want anyone to know their business. I glanced at the GPS and saw that the address given for Decoster indicated the house should be coming up soon. I topped a small rise and found myself looking across a bowl-shaped expanse. On the far side of the bowl was a lighted building.

  The lot had been carved out of the still-brown fields, with only a line of trees in the back to serve as a windbreak. The house itself—a featureless two-story structure, big enough for a large family—appeared to be new. In the yard were several young evergreens that might have been dropped into waiting holes that very morning. There was an attached garage, also lighted, with open doors revealing two big pickups parked inside, one of which had a raised suspension for mudding. There was a separate shed for the owner’s snowmobiles and ATVs.

  I rolled slowly to a stop about a hundred feet down the road. There was no traffic out here in the middle of nowhere, and I saw no obvious way to approach the home on foot and unseen. The only option I could see was to sit and wait. Either Soctomah would call me back or Decoster would take off in his truck and I would give chase, hoping that the poky little Cutlass could keep up with his big V-8 engine. I thought longingly of my Walther PPK/S in a locker at the state police headquarters and of Deb Davies’s LadySmith revolver lying in toxic muck at the bottom of a quarry. I had never felt so frustrated.

  Although the moon wasn’t that bright, I found that I could see quite a distance under the stars. From this vantage, I had a view of the backyard, which was outfitted with one of those elaborate wooden play sets that had replaced the metal jungle gyms of my childhood in backwoods Maine. For a moment, I thought I saw two bobbing lights flickering in the tree line, and then they were gone. They had looked like the headlights of an all-terrain vehicle.

  I peered over the steering wheel to survey the road ahead. Several hundred yards in the distance there seemed to be another rise. If I parked beyond the ridge, I might be able to get down to the line of trees and move in secret to the spot where I’d glimpsed the four-wheeler.

  I was reaching for the keys when the front door of the house opened and a woman stepped outside and stared intently in the direction of the Cutlass. She seemed to pose in the glow of the floodlights mounted above her head, as if she wanted me to see her watching the car. She was short, dark-haired, a little overweight. She was wearing a puffy pink jacket and acid-washed jeans tucked into farmer’s boots. Her hands were in her coat pockets. I had no doubt it was the woman I’d spoken to on the phone: Decoster’s wife.

  She took her hand out of her jacket, and I saw she was holding something. It was a phone. Was she calling the cops about the suspicious vehicle parked down the road from her house? Was she giving the license plate number to the dispatcher?

  The woman nodded, then put the phone back in her pocket and started down the concrete steps, headed in my direction. She didn’t seem in any hurry to approach the car. In fact, she seemed to be almost literally dragging her feet. I couldn’t blame her for being cautious.

  She hardly looked threatening, but I felt an urge to restart the car and hit the gas. Instead, I stuck my phone in my pocket and rolled down the back window, since the driver’s was still stuck. A chilly breeze blew the smell of newly turned earth into the car. I shivered and waited for the woman to come closer. She paused a while in my blind spot and then came near the vehicle, approaching it via the middle of the road, right where the snowplows had shaved the center line down to nothing. She stopped just behind the rear door. Eklund had managed to knock the side mirror a-kilter, so I couldn’t see her there. I was forced to turn my head.

  “Are you OK, mister?” She had a tremor in her voice that hadn’t been there when I called about the house.

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to make you nervous. I just pulled over to talk on my phone.”

  “We didn’t know what you were doing out here.”

  “Just taking a call.”

  “You’re the guy who called about the house, ain’t you?”

  In the faint starlight, I couldn’t make out her features clearly, but I could tell that she had a fat lip. One corner of her mouth was as purple as a crushed plum.

  Like father, like son, I thought. I had been angry before, but now my heart was burning, as if it had been tossed onto a fire. The son of a bitch. The murdering, wife-beating son of a bitch.

  “I’m the one who called,” I said.

  She started to tremble. It was as if a cold wind had come up, causing her to shiver. But there was no wind.

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.”

  She seemed so scared. I wanted to help her. “It’s OK.”

  She reached into the pocket of her jacket again, and this time she drew out a small black pistol. She pointed it at my head.

  “No, it’s not.”

  38

  “Get out of the car,” she said. “I’m a good shot. Don’t think I won’t shoot you.”

  I had let my anger make me stupid. Driving here unarmed. Allowing this woman to approach the car. And then dropping my guard while I indulged my sympathy for an abused wife. I would deserve whatever happened to me.

  Her hands were shaking. That was not good. Being terrified made her more likely to pull the trigger. I needed to calm her nerves while I came up with an escape plan.

  I raised my hands from the wheel so she could see them. “Easy.”

  “Get out of the car.” Her words didn’t have any force behind them. She seemed to be acting on someone else’s orders.

  “I need to reach down to open the door,” I said.

  “No! I’ll do it.”

  She lunged for the door handle with one hand, keeping the other gripped tightly on the pistol. I believed her when she said she was a good shot. She lifted the door latch and jumped back as if a firecracker had been thrown at her feet.

  Keeping my bandaged hands raised, I slid my knees out from beneath the steering wheel, placed my feet firmly on the asphalt, and rose to a standing position with my back to the car.

  “You don’t have to do this,” I said.

  “Do what?”

  “Follow Jason’s orders.”

  Her sorrowful laugh told me all I needed to know about how she viewed this suggestion.

  “Walk around the front of the car,” she said.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Walk out into the field and keep walking until I tell you to stop.”

  I was bigger and stronger than she was. It occurred to me that my chances would be fair if I spun around and threw myself at her without warning. But I wasn’t yet willing to risk my life on one desperate gamble, not when I still had time to assess the situation without getting my head blown off.

  I took a step onto the sandy shoulder and then another into the salt-killed weeds along the irrigation ditch.

  “Stop!” she said.

  I turned my head slowly and saw that she was staring at my back. I was wearing Soctomah’s windbreaker. I had forgotten that there was a word stenciled in white across the shoulders.

  “You’re a cop?”

  I felt that I had play now but wasn’t sure how to use it. “I am.”

  “Where’s your gun?
”

  “I’m not wearing one.”

  “Stop right there!”

  I was hesitant to turn my neck to see what she was doing. I stood as motionless as a mannequin. There was a long moment when I wasn’t sure what was happening.

  “He says he’s a cop,” she said into her cell phone.

  The overloud mumble of a man’s voice carried through the speaker.

  “Where’s your badge?” she asked, repeating the phrase like a parrot.

  “Back in the car. Do you want me to get it for you?”

  “He says it’s in the car.” She paused, listening to her husband’s instructions.

  She directed her next words at me: “Just keep walking.”

  The ATV lights snapped on again in the distance, directly in front of us. I took another step into the furrowed potato field, heading for the tree line.

  “What’s your name, ma’am?” I asked.

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “The state police are on their way here now. They know what you and your husband did.”

  “I didn’t do nothing!”

  I could hear her footsteps behind me and judged that she was following at a distance of ten to fifteen feet. The soil had soaked up a lot of rain and was tacky beneath my boots.

  “You helped your husband kill a man name Kurt Eklund. He went to Marta Jepson’s house because he suspected her death was connected to the shooting of a game warden named Kathy Frost, and he was grasping at straws. He saw the phone number on the ‘For Sale’ sign and called here, but he didn’t realize he was talking to the son of Jacques Decoster. You and Jason lured Kurt out here, and you killed him. Then you helped your husband dispose of the SUV.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “We found the abandoned vehicle in the rest stop where you two left it. I’m guessing your husband drove down to Medway in the Nissan, with you following in one of your trucks. You turned around there and started north again to that parking lot. Then your husband jumped into your pickup and you headed back to Presque Isle. Jason wanted the police to think that Kurt Eklund never made it up to Aroostook County. That’s how we know you were his accomplice.”

  I was trying to walk as slowly as possible to let my words settle in.

  “Did you help to dispose of the body, too?” I asked.

  “Shut up!”

  “Kurt Eklund is buried in this field, isn’t he? After I called you, Jason got scared. That’s what he’s doing down there, digging up the body of the man you two killed.”

  “I didn’t kill no one!”

  She was so pumped full of adrenaline now that even the slightest flinch might cause her to pull the trigger. I was taking a big risk, getting her so worked up.

  “But your husband did,” I said. “He killed Kurt Eklund. And he pushed his own mother down her stairs. Her death wasn’t an accident, was it?”

  She remained silent

  I decided that the time had come to take a gamble. I stopped in my tracks but kept my hands raised.

  “Keep walking!” she said.

  I needed to find what the self-defense instructors called a “break state”: a split second where her mind was diverted from pulling the trigger. “What kind of man murders his own mother?”

  “She shouldn’t have called the cops on her husband. That’s what Jason always says to me.”

  “He says that when he hits you?”

  Her voice went soft. “Jason doesn’t know his own strength sometimes.”

  I saw her shadow grow larger beside me on the ground. She was almost within reach. I pivoted toward her, keeping my hands raised.

  “Don’t turn around!”

  “How many children do you have?” I asked.

  She didn’t answer, but the frown on her face told me the Decosters had a family.

  “What do you think’s going to happen to your kids when the state police get here?”

  She glanced at the house but kept the pistol barrel leveled at my chest.

  “If you kill me—or if Jason does—you’re never going to see them again. Do you think they let cop killers see their babies in prison? You’re going to die inside the Supermax without even seeing their faces one last time.”

  “Stop it!”

  I heard an engine roar to life in the distance. Jason Decoster was getting nervous about his wife. I was running out of time.

  “It doesn’t have to be that way,” I said. “If you surrender, the prosecutor will take it into account. You still have a chance to watch your babies grow up.”

  The roar of the ATV grew louder and louder. I moved my head toward the line of trees and saw the headlights—like the close-set eyes of a mechanical monster—bearing down on me. I had hoped to distract Jason’s wife long enough to grab the pistol away from her, but now I saw her stumbling away, nearly falling backward to get herself clear of what she knew was about to happen.

  I turned and planted my feet as the four-wheeler barreled down on me. I held my arms out and lowered my center of gravity. The trick was to time my leap to the last-possible second.

  Jason Decoster revved the engine and charged me like a bull driven to madness in the bullring. The man riding it was nothing but a huge shadow. I could see the outline of his humpbacked shoulders and his enormous head. Then the machine was upon me.

  The ATV had a winch and a metal cargo rack on the front. I must have struck my foot on it as I threw myself clear of the vehicle. Pain shivered up the nerves of my leg from my ankle to my thigh. And I landed face-first in the dirt.

  Decoster was an experienced rider. He pulled the handlebars around sharply, causing the rear wheels to spin out, like a hot rodder doing a doughnut on a darkened stretch of highway. In seconds, he managed to turn the machine in a complete circle, but now he was only yards away, and I was lying prone on the ground with a barking ankle.

  As he accelerated, I somehow managed to roll to one side. I saw his front wheel pass, and then his motorcycle boot resting on the footrest. The back tire spit mud in my face as he missed me for the second time.

  He braked hard and turned the handlebars as far as they would go. I knew this was my last chance. As the four-wheeler swung around broadside, I pushed myself up onto my arms, raised one of my knees, and used the leverage of the earth to hurl myself at him. He hadn’t expected the attack, because he barely had time to raise his elbow to protect his head. I grabbed him around both shoulders and we toppled over the ATV.

  The man was enormous. If he hadn’t been standing on the footrests with his ass hanging over the seat, I doubt I could have unhorsed him. Both of us landed awkwardly: Decoster on his shoulder and bent arm, me with half of my body on top of him and my legs dragging in the dirt. My forehead knocked the side of his skull, hard enough that a phosphorous flash exploded in my eyes.

  Decoster didn’t seem to have had any self-defense training; he was probably too big to have ever needed any. From a young age, he had learned that all he had to do was use his considerable size and weight to maneuver his opponent around beneath him. Just pin the poor kid’s arms down with his knees and start whaling away with both of his rocklike fists.

  My body registered what he was trying to do without the recognition even traveling through the neurons of my brain. It was all muscle memory on my part, gained through hours of practice. My body still belonged to a cop, and that was how I reacted.

  Decoster pushed with his free arm into my chest, trying to flip himself on top of me. Rather than get pinned under his weight, I moved my arms from his shoulders to his neck. I pushed myself up onto my knees so that we were facing each other. For a split second, I found myself staring into the eyes of a living caveman who had stepped out of a museum diorama. He had greasy hair, a heavy brow that could shatter your knuckles if you threw a punch against it, deep-set brown eyes full of rage, and a huge stubbled jaw.

  I reared up on my knees, wrapped my left arm around his neck, and grabbed my left hand with my right. He drove himself i
nto me until I was flat on my back, but that was what I’d wanted. I had my arm against his windpipe now. I brought my legs up around his fat ass, crossed my ankles together, and extended my thighs. The move is called a guillotine choke. Slowly, I was stopping the flow of air to his brain. He tried using his fat chest to crush my rib cage, but the angle was wrong. Then he began clawing at my face with his clumsy fingers. I turned my head away, craning my neck as far as it would go, and kept pushing my arm against his trachea, hoping to hear the cartilage crack.

  Decoster was growing desperate. No one had taught him how to escape this chokehold. He should have been pushing my legs away from his hips, not fumbling for my face. Eventually, he began clutching at my right hand, hoping to break the grip, but by then it was too late. He could no longer breathe at all.

  He thrashed and flailed his arms and tried to roll over, but the guillotine works whether the attacker is lying on his side or on his back. I never heard a crack—his windpipe was too well protected by the blubber in his neck—but his movements began to slow, as if he had lost conviction. I didn’t know if he knew was dying, but I wanted the thought to pass through his brain before it ran out of oxygen.

  Eventually, he stopped moving altogether. I wanted to kill him. The desire to strangle him to death was nearly overwhelming.

  But I couldn’t. It was as if some gentle hand was pulling me off the man and a soft voice was whispering “Enough” in my ear. When Decoster had finally stopped struggling and I was sure he wasn’t playing possum, I found myself releasing my grip and letting my legs fall loose.

  I’d had my eyes squeezed shut through most of our wrestling match, afraid he might gore them out. When I opened them, I saw his wife standing over us with her hand over her mouth and a look of shock on her face. The pistol hung at her side.

  “Did you … Did you kill him?”

  As out of breath as I was, I had difficulty spitting out the word no.