Widowmaker

by Paul Doiron

  His sweater seemed to be made out of some kind of synthetic fiber. He must have gotten lipstick on the front. There was an incandescent red spot just below his throat. Then the strangest thing happened: The spot vibrated.

  I threw myself forward and knocked him to the floor just as the window behind me shattered.

  35

  I never even heard the gunshot.

  The impact of our collision knocked the wind from Mink and the back of his head hit the floorboards hard. I rolled off him and looked up to see the laser sight of a rifle moving like a jittery insect around the room. Dyer was trying to find one of us in his scope again.

  “It’s him,” I said. “He’s out there.”

  Mink moaned.

  The shot had come from the front of the cabin. The bullet had shattered the same window Mink had peeked through. I propped myself up against a wall and pumped a shotshell into the chamber of my Mossberg.

  Dyer had a high-powered rifle with a laser sight. He had the darkness to hide in and could circle the building, waiting for another shot. He had fired only once, which meant he was patient, not prone to getting overexcited. There was no way for us to contact the outside world for help. And for all I knew, Pulsifer had never even received my message telling him where I was headed.

  To put it mildly, I was having trouble identifying a single advantage we might have.

  “Is there a back door?”

  “There’s a window,” Mink gasped, still out of breath.

  I glanced at the cast-iron stove in the kitchen. Behind it was a large rectangular window. It had hinges on the top, so that it could be lifted inward. Lots of old logging cabins had these setups in their kitchens. A man could stand outside and pass logs for the stove through the open window to someone inside the kitchen.

  Mink had rolled over onto his stomach. His big eyes were following the laser sight around the room as if hypnotized by it, the way a cat might be.

  “Here’s what we’re going to do,” I said. “I’m going to provide some covering fire while you go out that back window. Here are the keys to my truck. It’s a hundred yards up the road from the end of your drive. I want you to take it and get the hell to the nearest house with a phone. Dial 911 and tell them there’s an officer who needs assistance at your address. Tell him Logan Dyer is shooting at me. That should get their attention.”

  His lipstick was smeared. His body was pressed so tightly against the floorboards, it looked like he had been squashed by a giant foot.

  I kicked him in the arm. “You’re not a coward.”

  He nodded.

  I shimmied on my elbows and knees through the shattered glass toward one of the unbroken windows. Carefully, I raised the edge of the curtain. I brought my head up, hoping to obtain a target rather than just firing blindly, but as soon as I did, the glass above me exploded.

  I rolled to the other window, raised myself onto my knees behind the cover of the wall, then swung out into the open and fired a shot at the trees. I pumped another shell into the chamber and fired again.

  I ducked behind the wall just in time to see Mink’s legs as he went tumbling through the kitchen window.

  The little man could move pretty fast if he needed to.

  The laser dot reappeared against the far wall of the cabin. I watched the quivering red light search the room. Now with two windows broken and two curtains torn, Dyer was going to have multiple angles, multiple lines of sight into the building.

  The red dot winked off.

  Maybe he was waiting for me to show myself again.

  I tried to regain control of my breathing. My ears ached from firing the shotgun.

  The laser appeared again, zipped back and forth against the opposite wall, and then vanished.

  Dyer hadn’t seen Mink go through the window or run off down the hill. This might just work, I thought.

  I moved to the other window and fired a random shot into the trees. The percussive boom of the Mossberg left my ears ringing. It took a solid minute for them to return to normal.

  In the distance, I heard an engine turn over. Mink had made it to my truck. Now he just needed to turn around and get the hell out of there.

  But if I could hear the engine, so could Dyer. He would know that I had stayed in the house to provide cover for Mink’s escape.

  I took a chance, rose to my feet, and went running across the room and into the kitchen. I threw myself through the open window and landed face-first in a pile of snow. I blinked my eyes to clear them and then grabbed the side of the building to help regain my footing. I must have knocked my knee on the sill, because a shooting pain went through it as I straightened up.

  I heard another engine off in the woods. The noise it made was almost a high-pitched whine: Dyer’s snowmobile.

  I hadn’t considered the possibility that he might give chase.

  I stumbled around the front of the cabin and looked down the steep hill. The holes my legs had left in the snow, climbing up from the road, made a zigzagging path. I took another step, felt my knee buckle, and grabbed at the woodpile for support. Birch logs rolled down, one after the other. Something else fell to the ground. It was the plastic sled Mink used to haul wood.

  I glanced at it, glanced at the hill beneath me. I let my shotgun drop; the Mossberg swung on its sling against my side. I bent over, took hold of the sled by the edges, tried to get whatever momentum I could, and then belly flopped on top of it.

  Headfirst, I went flying down the hill.

  Then my shotgun slipped over the edge and began to drag against the surface. The sled turned sideways, and I flipped over. I had a glimpse of the sled continuing on without me. And then I began rolling over and over on my side, the way kids do when they’re playing, only with less control. The sling came loose from my shoulder, and I continued down the slope, my shotgun now lost.

  I came to rest fifteen yards from the snowbank at the end of the driveway. My parka and pants were as white as if I had rolled in powdered sugar. Snow was packed into one of my ears. I had lost my knit cap, too.

  I crawled on hands and aching knees to the bottom and pulled myself over the frozen bank. I staggered out into the road, then turned in a circle. I looked up the road and down the road. I cupped my hands around my stunned ears and listened.

  Two engines: a truck above me and a snowmobile below.

  The truck was revving and revving. Mink must have gotten himself stuck while trying to turn around.

  Meanwhile, Dyer was moving to cut us off.

  I limped uphill on my gimpy knee. My right hand fell to my hip. At least I hadn’t lost my SIG, too.

  The sound of the snowmobile began to grow louder. Dyer was speeding straight up the road behind me.

  I came around the corner and saw, through a sheer curtain of snow, my precious patrol truck wedged sideways in the road. The headlights showed how deeply the front was buried in a snowbank. The tires spun purposely, turning snow into ice. The Sierra wasn’t going anywhere without being winched free.

  Mink kept pumping the gas, revving the engine, spinning the wheels.

  I staggered toward the driver’s door, when suddenly I saw my shadow stretched out before me.

  The snowmobile had turned the corner, too, and now its headlights were aimed directly at us, illuminating this tragicomic scene.

  I glanced over my shoulder as the sled came to a stop. I couldn’t see past the glare, but I knew what was about to happen.

  “Get down!” I shouted as I grabbed the frame of the truck bed.

  I pulled myself over the edge and tumbled onto the liner, my head knocking Shadow’s carrier. I could have sworn I felt something brush my pants leg, but I didn’t hear a shot. The wolf dog let out a growl.

  The term most people use for suppressors is silencers, but that is a misnomer. A gun, fitted with a sound moderator, isn’t silent, nor does it make that muffled thwump that you might have heard in movies. That noise is the invention of Hollywood sound engineers. An AR-15 rifle fitted wi
th a suppressor makes a popping sound, less intense than the typical blast of an unmuzzled barrel, but loud enough to be heard from a distance of thirty yards, which was how far Logan Dyer was from my truck when he began unloading on us.

  I heard the driver’s window explode first and then a second round took out the spotlight. The third bullet pierced the door. The fourth and the fifth were directed at me. Both of them tore clean holes through the steel frame of my vehicle, mere inches from my boots.

  The shooting stopped.

  “Mink?”

  To my right, I heard the sound of the passenger door opening and then the thud of a body falling to the ground. I heard movement, clawing in the snow. At least the truck was between Mink and the vigilante.

  Inches from my face, Shadow had his fangs bared. For a moment, I wondered if the wolf had been hurt. The growl coming from deep within his chest made the hairs rise along my arms. I pulled my .357 loose from its holster and readied myself to sit up and begin squeezing off what were likely to be the last shots of my life.

  Shadow growled again. The return fire was bound to strike the carrier. In my carelessness, I had doomed this hapless animal, as well. For the briefest instant, the sound transported me back into Dyer’s house as I’d charged through the door with the bite sleeve on my arm. An idea came to me.

  “I have your dog, Dyer!”

  There was no response.

  I tried again. “Your dog is in the back of this truck with me! I have it in a carrier! Listen!”

  I knocked the side of the crate with the barrel of my pistol and Shadow let out another snarl.

  “You’re going to kill it if you keep firing,” I said. “Or maybe I will.”

  I heard the crunch of boots on snow. Heard him advance a few more yards, then stop.

  “Let her go,” Logan Dyer said.

  “No way! You’ll just start shooting again.”

  “I won’t! I swear.”

  I pretended to mull over his promise. “I have your word on that?”

  “Yes!”

  Now if only the angry wolf wouldn’t bite my face off. I repositioned myself in the truck bed, made sure the grip on my weapon was secure. Then with my left hand, I reached up and squeezed the lock to open the carrier gate.

  Shadow came charging out and leaped gracefully over the edge of the truck onto the road.

  “What—” I heard Logan Dyer say.

  As he recoiled from the shock of seeing a wolf coming toward him instead of his hound, I sat up, took aim, and fired a shot into his chest. He toppled straight back. The carbine went flying.

  I pulled myself out of the truck bed and barely managed to maintain my footing. I kept my weapon leveled at the man on the ground. My knee twinged with every step. And I was pretty sure I’d popped my stitches.

  Shadow had gone bounding past Dyer, seemingly intent on making his escape, but to my surprise, the wolf had stopped in the road and turned. He was now watching me as I advanced on the unmoving vigilante.

  I heard footsteps behind me. “Holy moly! Did you get him?”

  “I got him. Are you all right?”

  “I’m all right. Is that a freaking wolf?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “Holy moly!”

  I kicked the AR-15 away from Dyer’s outstretched arm. I stood with my gun pointed at his heart. His foot twitched, and then his hand, and then he let out a moan. For an instant, it seemed he might be rising like a zombie from the dead.

  I bent down and poked his chest. There was no blood. My finger touched some kind of hard plate.

  Damn, if the son of a bitch wasn’t wearing a bulletproof vest.

  * * *

  I dragged Dyer to a birch at the side of the road and handcuffed him with his arms wrapped around the trunk. Shadow had retreated farther down the hill, but he continued to watch. I had a brief thought that if I left the helpless vigilante alone, the wolf might devour him. It would have been a fitting punishment in my opinion, but I was already going to have a hard time explaining the events of the past few hours.

  So it had been Dyer after all. All the signs had pointed to him. He’d left a signed confession on his kitchen table. Who else had I been expecting?

  I slapped his stubbled face to get his attention. “Dyer! Wake up!”

  He groaned. When he opened his mouth, I saw his stunted tongue.

  “Where’s Adam?” I said.

  “Fuck you.”

  “What did you do with Adam Langstrom?”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Talk to me. Tell me where he is.”

  He started to giggle. I slapped him again—this time just for the hell of it.

  Mink perched himself atop a snowbank and offered a running commentary that was heavy on constructive criticism on what I should be doing.

  “You sure he can’t slip out of those cuffs? I knew a guy who could dislocate himself. How come your truck doesn’t have bulletproof glass? He shot it all to kingdom come. I’m lucky he didn’t hit my liver or some other organ. This has been an unusual night!”

  “You lost your wig,” I said.

  He clapped his hand atop his head and let out a curse. Then he slid down from his place of observation and began searching in and around the truck for his red-haired mop.

  I told Mink to keep an eye on Dyer.

  “Where are you going?” he asked, looking up from his hands and knees.

  “I’m taking his snowmobile down the road until I can get a signal. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  “What about that freaking wolf?”

  Good question.

  Dyer had a nice sled, a Yamaha Phazer—vintage, but he had maintained it well. When I opened the throttle, I needed to hang on for dear life.

  I finally got a cell signal down past the farm where I had seen the kids chasing each other on their snow machines. I dialed the state police dispatcher and gave him the rundown. He told me there were units in the area.

  The snow, which had been falling steadily all day, had finally begun to lighten up. There were a few intermittent flakes, but whereas the night sky had been a uniform gray dome before, now I could make out the backlit outlines of clouds moving southeast across the valley. A cold front was pushing down from Canada.

  I removed my glove and ran my fingers up my sleeve and over the stitches on my arm. The threads had ripped, and there was some sort of fluid oozing from the wound. Yet another scar to remind me of yet another moment of carelessness.

  Funny, though: That night outside Carrie Michaud’s seemed an age ago now. For reasons I could not explain, the firefight with Dyer—an even closer brush with death—had unchained me from the mortal dread I had been dragging around for the past week. I felt fully alive again in body and soul.

  36

  My conservative estimate was that a dozen officers responded to my call. The road up to Mink’s place looked like rush hour with all the emergency vehicles lined up one after the other. With so many people bustling around the scene, asking me questions, offering thanks, I found it hard to focus.

  Dyer was unlocked from the birch and taken to the back of Clegg’s cruiser and left there until the detective could finish his work.

  I walked Clegg and a couple of state police detectives around the cabin, giving them the minute-by-minute replay. Another trooper escorted Mink inside to get an independent statement from him on what had happened. Even though I was receiving congratulations from deputies and EMTs whom I had never met—the hero of the hour—I knew that our accounts would be compared and contrasted, and that I might be called upon to explain any inconsistencies in our stories.

  A deputy found my shotgun buried in the snow and returned it to me.

  Shadow had disappeared into the woods. I kept looking for him at the edges of the trees, but he was gone.

  Maybe, in the future, he would be glimpsed by backcountry skiers up on Widowmaker or caught in the headlights of sledders racing at night along one of the trails to Quebec. I could imagine the dep
artment getting occasional calls from people who were insistent that they had seen a wolf—not a coyote or a dog, but a wolf. Wardens and wildlife biologists would politely take the statements of these eyewitnesses, and then they would write off the reports as cases of mistaken identity. Wolves were not secretly returning to Maine to reclaim their ancient hunting grounds. That was just a myth.

  With all the vehicles lined up along the road, I didn’t notice the midnight-blue Ford Explorer Interceptor at first. I looked around for Russo but didn’t see him in any of the clusters of cops. Eventually, my gaze drifted to Clegg’s cruiser.

  There was Russo, standing beside the open back door, talking privately with Dyer. No one else was within twenty feet of them. I glanced around, looking for Clegg, but the detective must have gone up to Mink’s cabin.

  I was seized by a sudden panic. I had the image in my head of Jack Ruby shooting Lee Harvey Oswald in the gut. As quickly as I could on my injured leg, I limped over to the cruiser.

  “Russo!”

  “Bowditch,” he said, his face as blank as usual. “Congratulations.”

  “Get away from him.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Did Clegg give you permission to talk to him alone? You shouldn’t be talking to him before the detective does.”

  Russo nonchalantly closed the cruiser door. “I think you’ve jumped to the wrong conclusion, buddy.”

  “Where did you go before?”

  “Where did I go when?”

  “You dropped this bombshell about Dyer having a rifle that fired the same-caliber bullets as those found at Foss’s, and then when the time comes to break down his door, you’re nowhere to be found.”

  “I had a call back at the mountain,” he said mildly.

  “That can be checked, you know. Whether you actually received a call.”

  I stepped forward until we were nearly chest-to-chest. The man’s body gave off no smell or heat.

  “Are you all right, Warden?” he said. “You seem confused. You might want to have an EMT check you out for a concussion.”

  “So what were you saying to Dyer just now? What were you telling him?”

  Russo paused. His expression was as unreadable as always, but I thought I saw a flicker of amusement behind his eyes.