Almost Midnight

by Paul Doiron

  I removed a laminated card from my wallet and read him his Miranda rights. Prosecutors preferred we read the statement verbatim as it closed off a line of attack from the defense at trial: the possibility we’d omitted an important phrase.

  Meanwhile Gorman exhausted his entire vocabulary of four-letter words at me.

  When I was certain he wasn’t going anywhere, I headed back to the ruined carriage where Zane Wilson continued to kneel above the unmoving Isaac Stoll.

  Hurrying up the road were a pack of people, all dressed in black coats. A man whom I presumed to be Mr. Stoll was in the lead, along with his son, Samuel. The women and girls, in their plain dresses and nineteenth-century shoes, couldn’t keep pace.

  The husband was at least a decade older than his wife and his brother. He was tall and rail-thin with a long face, a long nose, and a long beard the color of corn silk.

  “Is he dead?” Of all the Amish I had met, he had the most pronounced accent. Dead sounded more like debt.

  “No, he’s still alive. We’ve called an ambulance, which should arrive shortly.”

  Anna hurried to the side of her brother-in-law. Samuel held his uncle’s black hat tightly to his chest.

  Stoll glared in the direction of Peaslee and his truck. “That man ran Isaac down?”

  “Mr. Peaslee claims your brother wouldn’t move aside.”

  “Lügner.”

  “He says the horse spooked, causing Mr. Stoll to lose control and crash through the fence.”

  “That horse doesn’t ‘spook.’ Anna says you are an officer of the law. You are arresting him?”

  “I’m still tallying up the charges.”

  “Did she tell you that he killed our lambs?”

  Stoll reached into his coat pocket and produced what looked like a steel ball bearing, about half an inch in diameter. “Samuel has found these in the field, near the dead animals.”

  “You think he was using a slingshot?”

  Peaslee had to have excellent aim if he could kill a lamb from the road with such small-bore ammunition. It occurred to me that a hunter who used a weapon as primitive as a slingshot might also have a predilection for other antiquated armaments. Crossbows, for example.

  A moment later a boxy ambulance appeared, its red and yellow lights flashing. Behind it came another vehicle: a late-model Jeep Grand Cherokee. Because of the glare coming off the windshield, I couldn’t identify the driver.

  The EMTs wore blue shirts and blue pants: a uniform that brought to mind the inmates at the Maine State Prison. For the briefest of instants I thought of Dawn Richie, the alleged black widow and drug-smuggling mastermind. Then the ambulance driver, a burly man with a graying blond beard, was standing before me while his partner rushed to assist the injured man. The driver looked familiar; I was certain we had met on a mountain rescue or at some other emergency scene.

  I explained that Ike Stoll lay where he had almost certainly landed and that we hadn’t moved him out of fear that he had suffered a spinal injury. Nor had he so far awakened.

  “Did you need to stabilize his breathing at all?” the emergency medical technician asked in a voice at once deep and gentle.

  “No.”

  “That’s good. I can’t pretend we didn’t expect one of these incidents was coming. We’ve talked about the possibility around the station ever since these Amish folks moved up here. What happened to the horse?”

  “She ran off, uninjured.”

  “If that isn’t a miracle!”

  As he left to assist his partner, the driver of the unfamiliar Jeep finally emerged. It was Ronette, and she must have had the day off. She was wearing a roll-neck sweater and blue jeans under a gray puffer coat from Patagonia.

  “How is he?”

  “Bad.”

  “Did you see this happen?”

  “No, but I heard it. Peaslee ran Ike Stoll off the road. I doubt he did it for any reason other than he’s wanted to since the Amish moved in.”

  “That son of a—” She stopped herself from uttering the full curse. She was a good Catholic woman. But I had never seen her so enraged. “Where is Gorman?”

  “Handcuffed to the bottom of his truck. He resisted my commands and tried to leave the scene so I was forced to restrain him.”

  “Good. But I hope you read him his rights.”

  “I did.”

  “Good.”

  “He didn’t even call 911, Ronnie.”

  She covered the bottom half of her face with her hand. Without looking at me, she said, “These people are never going to be safe as long as he’s still living here.”

  One of the EMTs called across the windswept field, “Can you give us a hand, Warden?”

  “Come on, Ronnie.”

  “The four of you men should be able to handle it,” said Ronette. “I’m going to go keep Gorman company.”

  At the time, I thought nothing of this.

  I went to help the medical technicians steady and secure Isaac Stoll’s head in a brace so they could slide him onto a stretcher. Ike groaned and parted his eyelids as we lifted him out of the field. I had never studied head and spinal injuries, but I knew that a return to consciousness is never a bad sign. When we had carried the litter back to the road, the EMTs released the catch on the wheeled legs so they could roll him into the back of the ambulance.

  “Tilda? Where’s Tilda?” the injured man kept asking.

  His sister-in-law squeezed his good hand. “She is uninjured, Ike. She was not hurt.”

  “Where is Tilda?” he asked as if Anna hadn’t spoken.

  32

  Gorman sat on the road, his muddy knees drawn up, the back of his blazer against the side of his pickup, to which he remained cuffed.

  Ronette came toward me. To my surprise, she seemed ecstatic in the religious sense of having been touched by a divine light. She held something in her hand. It was a silver object pinched between her thumb and index finger.

  “Look what I found!”

  The broadhead was meant to be screwed into the shaft of a hunting arrow or crossbow bolt. It consisted of four razor blades that met at a point like the sides of a pyramid.

  “Where did you find it?”

  “In the bed of Gorman’s truck.”

  He let out a snarl. “I told you it ain’t mine!”

  I lowered my voice. “We don’t have a warrant, Ronnie.”

  Of course, I hadn’t had legal justification to search the man’s phone either.

  “It was in plain view. It couldn’t have been any plainer.”

  “It ain’t mine!” insisted the handcuffed man. “Somebody must have planted it. Everyone’s heard that you’re looking for a guy who owns a crossbow.”

  “And you don’t?”

  “Fuck no.”

  “What about a slingshot,” I asked, thinking of the dead lambs.

  His gaze went sideways for a moment. He had no intention of answering that question.

  “So you’re telling me someone randomly planted a Spider-Bite broadhead in the back of your truck.”

  “I’m saying it ain’t mine, and I have no idea how it got there. And what’s the big deal anyway? Suddenly the government doesn’t want us to own bows and arrows either? It’s not enough you’re taking our guns?”

  “No one’s taking your guns.”

  “Damn right, you’re not.”

  It was like listening to a radio and trying to argue with the talk show host.

  “So where did you go today?” I said.

  “I ain’t telling you!”

  “If someone planted the arrowhead, I’d like to know where it might have happened. Understand?”

  “No place special. I drove into town to check on my businesses. I like to make sure the guys know I’m watching them. Grabbed lunch at McDonald’s. After that, I had to stop at the hospital to settle a billing dispute. The fuckers overcharged me for my PT again. On the way back, I stopped in at Denny Cormier’s place.”

  “You stopped at Fairb
anks Firearms?”

  “Yeah. Why?”

  My uncle had a perverse sense of humor. He would know that Gorman was a person of interest and that he and I were bound to cross paths again soon. But why would Denis pull such a potentially fateful prank on a man he considered a friend?

  “Can you help me get him up, Warden Landry?”

  “Where are you taking me?”

  “To the jail in Farmington for booking.”

  “On what charges?”

  I recited the list. “I can add resisting arrest if you make this difficult.”

  “What about my truck?”

  “Warden Landry is going to take some photographs of the scene here,” I said. “We need to document where your truck was coming from and where the buggy crashed through the fence. The state police will want to do the same. After that, I’m sure someone can have it towed for you.”

  “You’re going to impound my vehicle?”

  “Well, we can’t leave it blocking the road now. Can we?”

  I thought he’d called me every dirty word in the dictionary, but he seemed to have kept a slew of them in reserve.

  “You don’t mind taking your free time to document this?” I said to Ronette when I’d gotten Gorman inside my Scout and chained to the D ring I’d had installed on the floor for occasions like this one.

  “I’m going to leave this one to the state police crash-reconstruction team. Gorman and I have history, and I don’t want to mess this up even a tiny bit. That dirtbag needs to go down for this, Mike, and he needs to go down hard.”

  The remaining members of the Stoll family milled about the field. It appeared that the father must have ridden in the ambulance with his injured brother. I glanced around for Zane, but he had vanished. Perhaps his emotions had gotten the better of him. The man’s skin was as thin as rice paper.

  I climbed inside the Scout beside my muddy, cursing prisoner. He wore a strong cologne that wasn’t so powerful it covered the smell of fear in his perspiration.

  “I gotta pee.”

  I started the engine. “You’re going to have to wait till we get to the jail.”

  “I could always just wet my pants all over your nice seat.”

  “Don’t push your luck, Gorman.”

  “I told you to call me—”

  “And I said, ‘Don’t push your luck.’”

  * * *

  For the first ten miles or so, I thought Gorman Peaslee might actually have wised up and decided to heed his legal right to remain silent. Instead he had been using the time to think of ingenious ways to torment me.

  “I bet it was that bitch Landry who planted the arrowhead in my truck.”

  He was bent over in his seat, his handcuffs fastened to the floor between his legs, so he had to angle his bald head to make eye contact.

  “What?”

  “It makes total sense, the two of you entrapping me like this. Because you know I’m in the clear on that crash.”

  My first instinct was to rush to defend my fellow officer (and to a lesser extent myself) from his slander. I couldn’t think of a warden less likely than Ronette Landry to pull a stunt like that. The woman had studied the code-of-conduct book the way other people do the Bible. I had never seen her take an action that was even borderline unethical.

  But Gorman Peaslee had succeeded in planting a seed of doubt. I felt ashamed for even entertaining the vile notion. Yet the improbable accusation stayed with me.

  This is what sociopaths do. They trick you into distrusting your judgment. That’s how a serial killer or a pedophile continues committing his crimes under the noses of people who sense that something is amiss but can’t bring themselves to believe their kindly, personable neighbor is a monster.

  For once, I did the smart thing and bit my tongue.

  But Gorman wasn’t finished poking me in the eye. “You know who my attorney is?”

  “I don’t know and I don’t care.”

  He recited a name that made no impact on me whatsoever.

  “Never heard of him.”

  “He’s the best lawyer in the state! ‘Always hire the best lawyer, the best accountant, and the best doctor’—that’s what my old man used to say.”

  “Your father sounds like he must’ve been a font of wisdom.”

  That really riled Gorman up. “You want to know why I didn’t help that neckbeard? I’ll tell you why. Because I knew, no matter what I did, I was going to get blamed anyway. These days, you can’t say a bad word about a black or a gay or a transgenerate, but a middle-aged white American like me? It’s open season on us.”

  “I believe Isaac Stoll is also a middle-aged white American.”

  “He’s a religious kook.”

  “As enjoyable as it is discussing politics with you, Mr. Peaslee, I won’t object if you’d like to exercise your right to remain silent for the remainder of this drive.”

  “When I’m done beating this rap, I’m going to have my lawyer sue you and the state for false arrest and police brutality. I don’t even care if I win as long as my suit forces you to pay for your own attorney. Do you want to know the best thing about being loaded? It’s having the financial resources to take revenge slowly. Drip, drip, drip. That’s the sound of your life savings going down the drain, Bowditch.”

  * * *

  When we arrived at the Franklin County Jail, we entered through a series of locked doors in the rear of the building. In one of the anterooms, I was required to secure my sidearm in a special box. Then and only then were we allowed through the sallyport into the booking area.

  I had been threatened in more sinister ways by more fearsome characters than Gorman Peaslee, so I didn’t worry about his intention to bankrupt me. But I can’t claim that the friendly way he was greeted by the county turnkeys didn’t give me pause. They all seemed shocked to see the great man arrive at the facility in chains.

  “Are you sure you want to go through with this?” asked the sergeant in charge of processing new prisoners.

  “He nearly killed a man. So, yeah, I’m sure.”

  The sergeant, stooped and gray-haired, was so close to a Florida retirement you could practically smell the suntan lotion on his skin. “You said he was Amish, this fellow who drove off the road?”

  “He didn’t drive off the road. Peaslee forced him through a rail fence.”

  “You probably don’t have any Amish where you live, Warden, so you wouldn’t realize what a menace those horses and buggies are on the road. We handle multiple complaints about them.”

  The time-consuming intake process, as it is called, includes the taking of mug shots, the scanning of fingerprints, the logging of personal possessions and clothing, the invasive prodding of a strip search, the furnishing of the signature orange jumpsuit, and many other indignities.

  “Do I need to bring this to the sheriff?” I said. “Or are you going to begin Peaslee’s intake?”

  “How about you stop telling me what to do?” The sergeant removed his granny glasses to ensure I had gotten his warning, then started in wheedling again. “Look, Warden, this Amish fellow, he probably won’t even press charges. Those people don’t think the way we do. They have their own laws and such. And Gorman is a respected member of the community around here. He donated a lot of money to the sheriff’s last campaign. Have you spoken to the district attorney yet? It would be a shame for you to waste your time on this only to have the DA kick him loose.”

  “I appreciate your concern, but I’m willing to risk it.”

  The gray guard tried one last appeal. “He may not look it, but Gorman Peaslee is not someone you want to have as an enemy.”

  “So he told me.”

  “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  PART 3

  The Wild, Cruel Beast

  33

  When I left the jail, I remembered to check my phone after having forgotten it inside the Scout while I’d been dealing with Gorman Peaslee.

  I’d missed three calls. I listened t
o them as I drove back toward the cabin. The sun had slipped behind the summits to the south and west. The northern peaks—Crocker Mountain, Sugarloaf, and Mount Abraham—remained in light, but a tide of darkness was moving down the valley.

  The first message had been left by Paul Panagore at the Maine State Crime Lab. I’d asked him for test results before the end of the day, and the fingerprint wizard had delivered with an hour to spare.

  “First things first. No matches. I lifted some partials from between the fletching but couldn’t match them against anything in the AFIS database. There was an overlay of blood, plus smearing and extensive scratches. The size makes me think it was left by a kid. Maybe a small woman. I’m not sure if you noticed this or not, but there was a spot of glue residue on one of the fletches, as if someone had peeled off a sticker. It had picked up dirt and blood, so I’m guessing you didn’t recognize it as an adhesive. It’s acrylic glue, not rubber-based, if that makes any difference. The location of the sticker seemed potentially interesting to me, suggesting your arrow was sold as a single retail item. I made a call to Spider-Bite, and the person I spoke to said their arrows, including the X2s, are sold in multipacks. He suggested that a retailer might have made a bulk purchase of warehouse seconds—arrows that came in damaged packaging—and then sold them individually at a markup. The big-box stores and larger online dealers don’t do that. I hope this information helps. I’m making a note to myself so the next time you try to sweet-talk me—”

  The second message was from my self-appointed operative, Charley Stevens. “I’ve hit a dead end, young feller. The widow Richie was the only guard transferred from Machiasport to the state prison at the time of the closing. One of my informed sources tells me Sergeant Richie has hired a white-shoe lawyer from Portland to sue the state for negligence, and this attorney only takes cases he knows he can win.”

  The third message was from Dani. “I got your text. Why didn’t you just call me? I didn’t know Kent Mears but heard about him growing up. He and his friends used to hang out in the graveyard, and there was a story about a girl who made a shortcut through there and something happened. She was pretty screwed up afterward and got into drugs when she was older. Pennacook is my hometown. I might even be useful if you share your suspicions instead of sending me cryptic text messages.”