Almost Midnight

by Paul Doiron

  Because Billy had taken beatings without fighting back, he acquired a reputation as a punk. Inevitably some of the wolves had gotten it into their heads to gangbang the cowardly new fish. Submitting to rape by a trio of likely HIV-positive thugs was one punishment Billy refused to accept. All three of his attackers ended up in the intensive care unit. One never recovered his sight.

  And Billy had landed in the Supermax. He did months in solitary confinement.

  I had never been allowed inside the Special Management Unit, or SMU, as it was euphemistically known, and Billy refused to tell me about the experience, but I’d heard plenty of horror stories. Inmates sent to the prison’s Supermax building spent twenty-three hours a day in cells smaller than my mom’s walk-in closet. Their rooms were lit constantly and blindingly, with no clocks to mark time. Prisoners in the SMU were denied books, televisions, and radios. Even toothbrushes were forbidden. Sometimes, if they created trouble for the COs, they were also deprived of blankets and even clothing. Their cold meals were shoved through a slit in the door. Insane prisoners not uncommonly sought revenge on their captors by splashing them with cocktails of feces, blood, and semen.

  Whenever I thought of the Supermax, I heard the voice of the Reverend Deborah Davies in my head. She was one of the Warden Service’s two female chaplains. Before that, she had volunteered her pastoral services in correctional facilities across Maine.

  “History is going to judge us for the six million Americans we have consigned to our gulags,” she’d told me. “And our descendants are going to hate us the same way we despise our slaveholding ancestors.”

  I had sent too many evil men to jail to hold with all of her progressive notions.

  “You’ve got to acknowledge it’s a form of torture, Mike,” she’d said.

  “That’s for someone else to decide.”

  “None of us gets off that easily, my friend.”

  I hadn’t known what to expect when Billy emerged from solitary, and I’d approached my first visit with trepidation. I was shocked to find that he had begun exercising again and had grown out his hair and beard. He had seemingly climbed out of the pit stronger than when he had been tossed into it. Except for the paleness of his complexion, he again resembled the Billy Cronk I had first met: a Norse god fallen to earth.

  After his surprising physical rebirth, had I been wrong to believe that he would emerge from prison with his mind intact, too?

  I rolled down the window to feel the slap of air against my face. Then, because I am nostalgic by nature—perversely so, according to my friends—I turned down a back road I had patrolled years earlier as a newly minted warden. Here, on the Maine Midcoast, I had made my first arrests, saved my first lives, lost my first love.

  Almost at once I noticed the difference in latitude from where I had begun the day. While the benighted forests around Grand Lake Stream were still encased in ice, the snow here had largely melted, even in the ragged shadows of the evergreens. Pussy willows clustered along the roadsides, begging to be cut for vases. Elsewhere, the reddening buds of maples added an erotic blush to what would otherwise have been a landscape of unbroken grayness.

  One other seasonal change announced itself. During my brief sojourn in the North Woods, election signs had sprouted from the rotting snowbanks and flooded lawns.

  The primary would not be held until June, but our current governor—a man nicknamed the Penguin because of his physical and ethical resemblance to Batman’s comic-book foe—was in trouble. His approval rating was underwater, and he was facing a formidable opponent, the state’s leonine attorney general. Campaign consultants had advised Henry “Hal” Hildreth III to downplay his wealth by choosing a slogan (HAL!) meant to imply he was a relatable man of the people.

  The Penguin’s roadside signs, by contrast, bore the message the governor himself had chosen for his reelection bid:

  BECAUSE FREEDOM ISN’T FREE

  I couldn’t read those words without thinking of the cage in which I had abandoned my friend.

  Again.

  My drive through these nostalgic woods had for once failed to revive my spirits. With a weight pressing on my shoulders and nowhere else to go, I headed home.

  * * *

  When it had become certain that I would be working out of the Bangor office, I had purchased a four-room cottage set amid ten acres of mixed woods in the seaside village of Ducktrap. It was one of those New England hamlets with a full graveyard and an empty schoolhouse. Half a mile from my place, a crumbling old farm had an actual family plot in its front yard. No wonder the dump had scared off potential buyers for the past decade.

  My home wasn’t in such dire shape, but it definitely needed some love. Its pine floors were warped and its joists leaned every which way but upright. On the plus side of the ledger: the fieldstone foundation was solid, the roof didn’t leak, and a nearby nest of Cooper’s hawks kept the red squirrels from invading my attic.

  Best of all, a river flowed along the bottom of the property. Every fall, a dwindling population of Atlantic salmon returned to the Ducktrap to spawn—one of the last places this still happened in the United States—but the brackish waters also held sea-run brook trout, striped bass, even a few shad. In the woods I found the tracks of occasional bears and wayward moose. At night, sitting on the porch, gazing up at the sky, with the stars as sharp as diamonds, I could persuade myself I lived someplace wild and remote.

  I parked my Scout in the dooryard beside my government-assigned vehicle, an unmarked Jeep Compass. I missed the truck I used to drive when I was a patrol warden. My promotion had come with costs as well as benefits.

  When I stepped through the mudroom door and continued into the kitchen, I realized that something was amiss. Someone had been inside my house during my vacation.

  I found the explanation on the table in the form of a note:

  I was in the neighborhood.

  Check your refrigerator.

  You’re welcome.

  The message was unsigned, but the identity of its author was no mystery.

  Danielle “Dani” Tate and I had been dating for two months. She was a state trooper assigned to southwestern Maine, close to the New Hampshire border, so our relationship was by circumstance long-distance. Having a two-hour drive between us was also my preference.

  Not long before, I had been living with the daughter of my friends Charley and Ora Stevens. Stacey and I had been together for years, and the expectation was that we would get engaged and married. But she was fighting inner demons more powerful than she was.

  I knew how that felt. I also knew that I couldn’t help her.

  I still loved Stacey. I doubted I would ever stop loving her. She would always have a claim to some piece of my heart.

  For that reason, I had been trying to take things slow with Dani. Only now did I understand that my giving her a set of house keys had, perhaps, sent a different message.

  She had stocked the refrigerator with greenhouse greens, locally pressed apple cider, and cream in a glass bottle from the dairy down the road; the freezer contained two organic chickens. My year’s supply of microwave burritos had been forcibly evicted. Dani wasn’t the only woman in my life horrified by the junk I ate. But she was the first to take aggressive action against my bad habits.

  I was simultaneously shocked and tickled. I checked my watch and realized that she would still be asleep. When she worked the eight-to-eight overnight, she normally rose at five P.M. I sat down with my phone and brought up her contact.

  The screen showed the picture of a woman with a square face, blond hair, and stone-gray eyes. Few people would have called her beautiful. But in this rare photograph she was beaming. She had the most amazing dimples that only appeared when she was happy.

  I smiled, clicked on the image, and began typing:

  I didn’t realize that when you said, “You need to start eating better,” you meant immediately.

  After I pressed send, I immediately second-guessed myself. />
  Dani and I hadn’t communicated since I’d gotten the panicked call from Aimee. In prison, Billy had all but begged me not to share what he’d said with my new girlfriend, the state trooper. He and I both knew that Danielle Tate wouldn’t look the other way where the laws of Maine were involved.

  Yet I had to explain why I was home when I’d planned on spending the next three days fishing in Washington County.

  Seriously, though, thank you for the food. I’ve had an interesting day. I need to tell you about it.

  Interesting?

  I deleted the adjective and typed in weird. Then crazy. Then insane.

  Upon further consideration, I erased everything and sent Dani a two-word message:

  Call me.

  I took a quick shower, then wiped a window in the foggy mirror so I could see myself to shave.

  I missed having a buzz cut. When I’d been promoted the year before, my captain had asked me to grow out my hair in the event I was called upon to do undercover work. The truth was, my frequent appearances in the news had made it all but impossible for me to conduct covert operations within the state of Maine.

  But at least my longer hair concealed the scar on my upper forehead. It was a reminder of a bar fight I’d been in when I was twenty-one, at a backwoods roadhouse called the Dead River Inn. At the time I had no clue how many scars I would acquire in the rough-and-tumble years ahead:

  A star-shaped burst of permanently bruised capillaries from the impact of a bullet against my ballistic vest.

  A white line on my forearm where a meth head had cut me to the bone.

  A permanent lump at the base of my skull from a baton that had slammed me into unconsciousness.

  A cluster of dead nerves in my hand where I’d torn ligaments in an ATV crash.

  So many scars. Not all of them external.

  I put on a pair of Levi’s and a faded COLBY MULES T-shirt, started a fire in the woodstove to banish the spring chill from the house, and popped the lid off a bottle of Molson Export ale. Craft brewing had become a big thing in Maine, but I’d found I had no palate for spice notes and fruity undertones.

  For dinner, I grilled a couple of deer-meat burgers in a cast-iron pan that smoked so intensely I had to open a window. Afterward, I poured myself three fingers of bourbon and settled down in the living room to decide what to do with my remaining vacation days. I could drive back in the morning to Grand Lake Stream. But what’s the old quote about how you can’t step into the same river twice?

  There would be no way, after my visit to the prison, that I could enjoy myself catching salmon. What I needed, I realized, was a project. But spending my vacation unpacking boxes and repairing holes in the drywall seemed a poor use of my precious time off.

  I slugged down the liquor, pushed around the embers in the stove with a poker, then threw on an oak log that would take the whole night to burn.

  As I was dusting my hands, my phone vibrated on the side table. I expected it to be Dani.

  Instead it was a text from the mentalist Aimee Cronk:

  Shame on you, Mike Bowditch.

  3

  I tried to message her back, but she wouldn’t respond. Nor did she pick up the phone when I called. She’d said everything in that simple scalding text. I had failed her husband when he needed me—and not for the first time.

  I slouched in my leather armchair, listening to the fire hiss and crackle inside the stove like a caged imp. Instead of refilling my glass with bourbon, I went into my mostly unpacked office and removed a cardboard box from a desk drawer.

  After Billy’s sentencing, I had obtained a copy of the trial transcript. My intention had been to search for a legal loophole he might be able to exploit in his appeal—or so I had told myself. The reality was that I had acquired this document as an instrument of self-torture. I was as much of a masochist as my friend.

  The relevant pages were dog-eared and grease-stained from my fingertips. The dramatis personae of the courtroom were identified by our roles: the Prosecutor (Attorney General Henry “Hal” Hildreth), the Court (the Honorable Martha Meade), the Defense (Mark Clark, Esq.), and the Witness (me).

  PROSECUTOR: Warden Bowditch, where were you when the defendant shot and killed Todd Pelkey?

  WITNESS: I was on the top of the gravel pit.

  PROSECUTOR: And you had an unobstructed view of the bottom?

  WITNESS: Yes.

  PROSECUTOR: And you knew he was dead?

  WITNESS: I suspected he was dead.

  PROSECUTOR: Where was Lewis Beam relative to the defendant at that time?

  WITNESS: On the ground. Ten to fifteen feet away from Billy.

  PROSECUTOR: And what was he doing?

  WITNESS: Crawling away.

  PROSECUTOR: It was the defendant who had broken his arms, correct?

  WITNESS: It was a life-and-death struggle. Billy was just defending himself.

  THE COURT: Witness is instructed to answer the question.

  PROSECUTOR: It’s all right, Your Honor. The witness has affirmed that the defendant was the one who shattered Mr. Beam’s arms, rendering him helpless to defend himself.

  DEFENSE: Objection. The prosecution is assuming facts not in evidence. We can’t know whether Lewis Beam was helpless or not. Neither could my client at the time.

  THE COURT: Sustained.

  PROSECUTOR: Warden Bowditch, did you see any weapons on Mr. Beam?

  WITNESS: At that point, no.

  PROSECUTOR: Did you see any weapons on the defendant?

  WITNESS: Yes, an AR-15 rifle. He’d used it to save my life by killing Todd Pelkey before Pelkey could shoot me.

  PROSECUTOR: We’re not talking about Mr. Pelkey now, Warden Bowditch. We’re talking about Lewis Beam, who was trying to crawl to safety while the defendant pointed a loaded rifle at the back of his head.

  DEFENSE: Your Honor!

  THE COURT: Is that an objection?

  DEFENSE: The prosecutor is testifying again.

  THE COURT: Sustained. The prosecution will refrain from making speeches until closing arguments.

  PROSECUTOR: I apologize, Your Honor. Warden Bowditch, in your statement you said that you called to the defendant, “Billy, don’t do it.” What was it that you thought he was going to do?

  WITNESS: I didn’t know what he was going to do.

  PROSECUTOR: Your Honor, permission to treat the witness as hostile.

  THE COURT: I was under the impression he was your witness, Mr. Attorney General.

  PROSECUTOR: So were we, Judge. So were we.

  THE COURT: You have my permission.

  PROSECUTOR: Warden Bowditch, isn’t it true that having just watched the defendant shoot and kill Todd Pelkey, you believed he was about to do the same to Lewis Beam?

  WITNESS: What I was trying to tell Billy—Mr. Cronk—was that in my opinion Beam no longer posed a threat.

  PROSECUTOR: Did the defendant give any indication he had heard you?

  WITNESS: He seemed to be having a flashback to his time in combat.

  PROSECUTOR: Are you an expert in post-traumatic stress syndrome?

  WITNESS: I have personal experience with it.

  PROSECUTOR: And yet the defense hasn’t included you on its list of expert witnesses to testify on the subject of flashbacks in combat veterans.

  DEFENSE: Your Honor, the prosecutor is badgering now.

  PROSECUTOR: The Court has already ruled that the warden is a hostile witness. It’s understandable and admirable that he wants to defend his friend, the man whom he believed had just saved his life.

  THE COURT: Let’s hear a question, Mr. Attorney General.

  PROSECUTOR: Of course, Your Honor. Warden Bowditch, how did the defendant respond to your concise communication to him that you were no longer facing a material threat to your lives?

  WITNESS: He shot Lewis Beam in the head.

  PROSECUTOR: He blew apart the skull of a man with two broken arms. Is that right?

  WITNESS: Yes.

/>   THE COURT: Louder, please, Warden.

  WITNESS: Yes.

  As always happened after I reread the transcript, I felt as hollow as the abandoned house down the road.

  “Damn you, Billy,” I said to the empty room.

  Against my better judgment, I opened my laptop and belatedly began my search for Dawn Richie.

  I found next to nothing except for an item on the website of the Machias Valley Observer announcing Correctional Officer Richie’s promotion to the rank of sergeant several years earlier. This press release was the only evidence I could find (without accessing government databases) that the woman existed.

  There was nothing unusual in this. In Richie’s line of work, and mine, it paid to protect your privacy. Minimizing one’s cyber-footprint was simple prudence when you made enemies of dangerous and vengeful human beings.

  But I was impressed with Dawn Richie’s success at persuading others from blowing her cover. I discovered no posted real estate transactions, no social media mentions, no photographs snapped at weddings. The woman might as well have been a phantom.

  * * *

  Once again, I woke up to the sound of my cell phone.

  “Hello?”

  “I had to work a fatal over on 302,” Dani said, explaining why she hadn’t returned my call sooner.

  “What happened?” My mouth felt cotton-stuffed from the liquor.

  “A box truck veered across the median, sideswiped an SUV, which crashed into a tree and burst into flames. Then the truck flattened a Honda being driven by this little old couple. The husband and wife both died at the scene, which I guess might be a blessing. The driver of the SUV was charred from head to foot but was still alive when a couple of passersby pulled him out. And the guy who started it all, the one driving the truck, walked away without a scratch.”