by Paul Doiron
“Possible, I guess. I found a Ruger American in a .30-06 and a Winchester 76 in .30-30. Both with boxes of ammo. I didn’t see signs of an AR-15, and Amber didn’t mention his having any other rifles.”
Clegg raised his face to the falling snow. I could tell he was trying to work through a puzzle in his head.
“I heard that you found .300 Blackout rounds up there,” I said.
Clegg lowered his eyes. “That’s right.”
“Nothing else?”
“Nothing except some casings from Foss’s revolver.”
I got a look at Russo in my peripheral vision. He was standing stock-still. “Detective, I’d like to talk with you about Logan Dyer,” I said.
“We don’t know where he is,” said Clegg.
“Dyer didn’t show up at work today,” interjected Russo. “Usually he calls if he’s sick, but he didn’t this morning. I just knocked at his door, and his dogs are inside. That’s very unusual for Logan, to leave his dogs alone.”
My jaw nearly dropped. Russo had just laid out all of my suspicions as if they were his own.
“We did a check on his house,” said Clegg. “Made a sweep around the exterior, looked in the windows, but we didn’t have cause or authorization to go inside. We saw the dogs. They look mean as hell. What breed are they?”
“Plott hounds,” I said before Russo could jump in. “Detective, when Gary Pulsifer and I last talked with Dyer, he mentioned going coyote hunting with a Smith & Wesson AR-15.”
“What caliber?” asked Clegg.
“He didn’t say.”
“Do you remember the model?”
I tried to transport myself back to that conversation. Tried to visualize Dyer standing outside the window of Pulsifer’s idling truck.
“Smith & Wesson M&P 15 Whisper,” I said.
For the first time since we’d met, Russo showed a real expression. He was astonished, whether at the specificity of my memory or about the implications of what I had just said, I couldn’t be certain. But his mask had finally fallen.
“I know that gun,” he said. “Dyer showed it to me. It’s chambered in only one caliber: .300 AAC Blackout.”
Clegg removed his phone from his pocket and began tapping in numbers. I didn’t have to guess who he was calling or why. The detective was going to ask a judge to sign off immediately on a no-knock warrant. Russo had just provided a cause for the police to break down Logan Dyer’s door.
33
In real life, suspicious deaths are rarely mysteries. A wife dies in what looks like a botched robbery; her husband probably did it. A child falls down the stairs and breaks her spine; look first to the baby-sitter. Most criminals are morons. They don’t have the mental capacity to plan elaborate schemes worthy of Professor Moriarty or Hannibal Lecter. With few exceptions, the simplest explanation for a crime is the correct explanation. The butler almost always did it.
Police officers are human. Sometimes, because we want our work to be more exciting, or because we have a need to demonstrate our brilliance to the public and colleagues (and especially our superiors), we reach too far in our theories. Catching the guy who robbed the bank without a mask probably won’t get you promoted. Catching the Night Stalker or the Green River Killer will turn you into a living legend.
Dyer was a loner who loved guns. He had recently been showing signs of instability, according to Russo. He had a legitimate grievance against his neighbor, Foss, for making it impossible to sell his family house and begin life anew somewhere else, where people didn’t associate his name with a fatal chairlift accident. Motive, means, and opportunity—what more did you need? Nothing, in the eyes of the law.
To me, this realization carried extra sadness. It meant that Adam Langstrom was almost certainly dead—likely the first of Dyer’s victims. The caginess with which Logan had evaded my questions about my missing brother suggested as much. Would we find Adam’s dead body inside the darkened farmhouse?
* * *
I returned to my truck to put on my ballistic vest and get a gun. I didn’t care that I hadn’t been cleared to return for duty. With officers spread across two counties, protecting sex offenders, Clegg needed every available man now.
For the sake of my truck, I moved Shadow back into his carrier. He whined and bristled his fur. He wasn’t some mythological creature, I had to remind myself. He was a living animal, and he was unhappy.
Then I called the IF&W office in Ashland again.
“Is Stacey back?” I asked the same woman I’d spoken with before.
“She stayed overnight in Clayton Lake. Do you want the number for McNally’s?”
It was a sporting camp outside the flyspeck village, not far from where the helicopter had gone down. Presumably, the owner was providing lodging to the investigation and recovery team.
I dialed the camp. A woman with a creaky old-sounding voice answered. “McNally’s.”
“I’m trying to reach someone who is staying with you. She’s a wildlife biologist with the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife. Her name is Stacey Stevens.”
“Is she the pretty one?”
“Yes.”
“She’s not here, dear. She left to go back to Ashland a couple of hours ago.”
I thanked her and tried to decide what to do. Stacey was speeding along on a snowmobile in the dark on the Reality Road, as out of touch as a person could be. I dialed her cell phone and waited to leave a message.
“It’s me,” I said. “I am in Kennebago again and about to go on a raid into the house of a man named Logan Dyer. You’re going to hear about him soon. He murdered eleven people up at Don Foss Logging. I think he killed Adam, too. He’s on a vigilante crusade to kill sex offenders. Anyway, he’s dangerous. Stacey, I am so sorry for having lied to you before. And I know you must be grieving for your friends in ways I can’t even imagine. But I just wanted you to know, in case something happens to me tonight, that I love you.”
I felt sick to my stomach when I hung up. But there was nothing more to do now except to get ready. I attached my service weapon, a SIG Sauer P226, to my belt. I unlocked my Mossberg 590A1 from its case and hung it from its sling over my shoulder. I took up my catch pole with the noose on one end. Then I removed my brand-new talonproof glove from behind the seat. I had thought I might need the bite sleeve for Shadow.
Strange the way things work out.
I found Clegg putting on his ballistic vest at his vehicle. He seemed to have gained weight since he had last adjusted the Velcro straps holding it in place. He was having trouble getting the fit right.
“Did you get the warrant?” I asked him.
“Got the warrant. Also put out a BOLO.” The acronym had replaced APB in police jargon. It stood for “Be on the lookout.”
“Can I help you with that?” I asked, meaning his vest.
“No, I’ve got it.”
“How well do you know Dyer?” I asked.
“Logan? I’ve know him his whole life. I started my career in law enforcement just like Russo, doing security up at Widowmaker. I knew Logan’s dad. Scott was a good man right up until the crash that killed his wife and daughter. Afterward, he was broken. He did his best, but you could see it in his eyes, hopelessness. The chairlift accident was what pushed him over the edge. He’d tried to get the owners to shut that lift down, but they’d refused. It didn’t matter. Everyone blamed him, and he blamed himself.”
Having finally secured his vest, the detective pulled his parka back on over it. His face had turned a shade of purple from the exertion.
“Logan wasn’t more than eighteen when Scott shot himself,” Clegg continued. “Eighteen or nineteen. And then suddenly his father was dead, and he was living alone in that big house. I hadn’t seen him in a while before the other day. But I noticed he’d let himself go. He used to be a handsome kid. Shy as hell, though. Scott told me once that if a girl ever winked at Logan, he’d probably faint dead away.”
“Detective!” someone called from th
e darkness.
But Clegg wasn’t finished saying what he needed to say. “I knocked on his door first thing this morning, before I found the carnage up at Foss’s, but there was no answer. I heard the dogs barking, though, and thought that seemed strange. Later, when we were searching outside his house, I didn’t want to admit to myself what I already knew. Sometimes I think the best part of this job is getting to know the people in your community. It’s also the worst thing.”
I knew what he meant.
“Let’s go get this over with,” the detective said, moving past me down the hill.
If Dyer was at large, hunting sex offenders, then it was unlikely we were going to be charging into a firefight. Some criminals had been known to booby-trap their properties—I knew so firsthand—but I suspected the biggest danger we would face, breaching the building, would be Dyer’s two hounds.
The dogs were baying even more loudly and aggressively. Their supersensory hearing had picked up the sound of approaching vehicles and voices. Back up the hill, in the bed of my truck, Shadow responded with occasional howls, which had officers looking at one another with startled expressions.
A fresh-faced deputy, whom I’d never met, took a look at my gloves and catch pole and said, “You on dog duty?”
“I will be if needed.”
The young guy had his shotgun already in his hands and wasn’t practicing particularly good muzzle control. His name tag said Cauoette. “Man, I am pumped. It’s like an adrenaline high.”
I had a hunch about him. “When did you graduate from the Academy?”
“I’m scheduled to go this spring. Is it as tough as they say? I’m hoping it is. What’s that term? Crucible of fire?”
If Cauoette didn’t wash out after the first week, I would be surprised. I stepped clear of the rookie and made a vow to myself that as we entered the building I would stay behind him, where he couldn’t mistakenly blow a hole in my back.
Clegg turned to face the assembled officers. I counted seven besides myself: two state troopers, four officers from the sheriff’s department, and a state police forensics technician who would not be part of the assault.
Then it hit me: Russo was missing. Where had he gone? I hadn’t noticed his SUV leaving, but I had been distracted with Shadow and thinking about Stacey. I would have thought a competitive shooter, currently employed as a glorified security guard, would have been eager to get in on a no-knock raid.
“Gather round, people!” said Clegg. “So here’s how we’re going to do this. We’re going in two teams.”
“Aren’t there three doors?” asked a trooper behind me.
“We’ll have a team posted outside the third one. But we have dogs to deal with inside and only two officers with bite sleeves.”
“Why can’t we just shoot them?” someone behind me whispered to himself.
Clegg must have had good hearing. “Those dogs are not to be killed unless an officer is at risk of dire injury. We’ve got television reporters lined up along Moose Alley in both directions. I don’t want to be the one who goes in front of the cameras and explains why we had to shoot two of this guy’s pets.”
The detective spent five minutes laying out his plan. One officer would breach the door with a sledgehammer and then step back, allowing two others to enter: one armed with an AR-15 carbine and one assigned to subdue the canines. I had never wrestled a dangerous dog before, but I had seen it done on occasion, in person and in videos, and hoped I could manage the jujitsu involved. We would move quickly to clear the house. Once it was secured, the forensics guy would assume responsibility for searching the premises.
“Everybody good?” Clegg asked after he had finished separating us into teams. “You understand your assignments?”
“Hoo ya,” said the overeager rookie, Caouette.
I followed a deputy holding a sledgehammer to the front door and took my place beside a trooper armed with a carbine. Given the tight quarters, I decided to leave my catch pole propped against the house.
I didn’t expect Clegg to give the signal as fast as he did, but the next thing I knew, the deputy was swinging the hammer and the door went flying inward off its hinges. A trooper with an AR-15 stepped quickly into the breach, and I followed just in time to see both hounds lunging for him. I threw myself between the man and the attacking dogs. I shoved my padded glove into the open mouth of one of the animals and kicked at the other, catching it in the haunch.
The dog began shaking its head viciously, and I felt tendons and ligaments straining to move in ways they were not supposed to move. The other hound went for my calf, but the trooper beside me knocked it on the head with the butt of his gun. It howled in pain and retreated out of my line of sight.
I was totally focused on my own attacker.
The Plott was incredibly strong for its size and weight. I tried manhandling it away from the door to give myself more room to maneuver, and nearly tripped over a coffee table. Flashlight beams crisscrossed the room in a geometrical pattern as I wrestled with the hound. I heard shouts and then an explosion.
Someone had fired a gun.
I lurched upright, pulling the dog free of the floor, and then thrust my arm forward, twisting my wrist. It landed on its back, its ribs and soft belly exposed, its four legs clawing at the air. I dropped my knee on its stomach and felt its fangs loosen as its lungs emptied of air. Immediately, I spun the hound back over and grabbed its collar, pulling and twisting. I straddled its back and pressed my knees tightly against its haunches. The dog shook its head and snapped, but I didn’t stop squeezing.
The overhead lights came on. I glanced around and saw a bathroom to my right. Using all my strength, I hurled the gasping dog through the open door and pulled it shut before it could catch its breath.
“Where’s the other one?” I shouted.
“It got out!” a female voice cried from the kitchen.
Another gunshot sounded. This one came from the backyard.
All around me cops were darting into rooms. I heard heavy footsteps racing upstairs, boards creaking on the second floor, then voices shouting.
“Clear!”
“Clear!”
“Clear!”
I turned to Clegg and pointed at the bathroom. “Don’t let anyone through that door!”
The snarls coming from inside as the angry animal tried to break free made the point for me.
I made my way through the living room, noticing heavy blankets covering the windows and the pervasive smell of mildew. I passed through a formal dining room that hadn’t been used in decades and entered the kitchen, where I found a female deputy sitting on the linoleum with her hands clutched to her thigh and blood oozing between her fingers. She had cast aside the bite sleeve she had been wearing to put pressure on the wound.
“Are you all right?” I asked, crouching beside her.
“I don’t know.”
The back door was open to the night. I heard yet another gunshot in the clearing behind the house.
“I’ll be right back,” I said.
I smelled gunpowder the second I stepped onto the back porch. An officer stood in the falling snow. It was Caouette, of course. He was staring down the barrel of his shotgun at the second-growth timber behind the farmhouse.
“Son of a bitch!” I heard him say.
The hound had vanished.
“Didn’t you hear the sergeant?” I said. “No shooting.”
“That fucker bit Carly.”
“Route Sixteen is only a quarter mile from here,” I said. “The reporters are going to have heard those shots. Will you stop pointing that gun at me and start practicing some goddamned muzzle control?”
Caouette dropped the barrel toward the snow. “Where’s the other one?”
“Safe and secure,” I said.
The dog’s prints led in a straight line from the back door toward the trees. I followed them through the calf-deep snow. The light was lousy, but I found the splatter of dark spots melting the snow. T
he impact had knocked the dog off its feet, but it had regained its footing and loped down the private snowmobile trail Logan Dyer had cleared from his property to the network of interconnecting paths that Pulsifer had showed us on his map.
I knew from hard experience that nothing is more dangerous than a wounded animal. I also knew what I had to do.
I removed the talonproof glove and crossed the yard to the porch, where the hotheaded deputy stood watching me.
“Did you find it?” Caouette asked.
“No, but I will.”
“Why? What for?”
“Because you don’t leave a wounded animal to die in the woods!”
Inside the kitchen, a trooper was applying a pressure bandage to the leg of the injured deputy. Her face had good color, which was a positive sign. I continued through the house and out the front door. I was going to need my snowshoes if I was going to track down that poor dog and put it out of its misery.
34
I returned to the house with my snowshoes under my arm, bracing the single-point shotgun sling against my other side. Cops who had been part of the raid were trickling out through the busted door. The evidence tech didn’t want any inexperienced patrol officers messing up potential evidence.
I found Clegg inside the living room, conferring with a state trooper with corporal chevrons on his sleeve. Both of them had put on latex gloves. The detective waved me over when I stepped across the threshold.
“Any ideas how we’re going to get that dog out of the bathroom?” he asked me.
“Call a real animal control agent. I can recommend a good one in Pondicherry if you’re willing to pay her mileage.” I kept my hands in my pockets to avoid touching anything. “If you don’t need me, I’ve got to go track down a wounded dog.”
Clegg looked none too pleased. “I heard the shots.”
I moved my gaze around the ratty room. It was less of a man cave than a man cesspool. “Find anything interesting?”
“Logan sure likes video games,” said Clegg, pointing to the big-screen television. “First-person shooters primarily. He’s got one hell of a collection. And he drinks a lot of Mountain Dews.”
