Almost Midnight

by Paul Doiron

  Meaning not me.

  However happy I might be, I still hadn’t clawed my way out of the hole I’d dug on Maquoit Island and probably wouldn’t find myself back in the good graces of my superiors until that case went to trial and we secured a conviction. Nor would Billy’s brave actions redound to my benefit. If anything, my presence at this homicide scene would serve as yet another reminder to my enemies in the department that I had an unerring instinct for finding the nearest tar pit.

  “I keep wondering how Peaslee got pulled into this,” I said.

  “After he was released from jail, he went around cursing your name to anyone who would listen. He wanted to know everything about you so he could destroy your life. Word must have gotten back to Donato or one of his men that Gorman knew where you were. From there it was just a matter of making a phone call.”

  I could imagine a choleric Gorman Peaslee arranging to meet with the deputy warden of the Maine State Prison who shared his hatred for me and had made a pact over the phone to collaborate with him in taking me down. Gorman must have left his house expecting to exact his revenge. Instead the bullying blowhard had gone to his death.

  Another state police cruiser rolled up, a Ford Interceptor SUV. I recognized the driver.

  Despite the predawn hour, Dani emerged from her cruiser wearing her shades and broad-brimmed campaign hat.

  “I’ll give you two a minute,” whispered Ronette.

  I dug my hands into my pockets and affected a loose posture so it would look as if Dani and I were having a casual conversation. “You made record time.”

  “It’s the advantage of driving a vehicle that scares people into slowing down and moving over. What’s under that bandage?” Her tone was businesslike, a little brusque.

  “A scratch.”

  “Any other injuries?”

  “My pride took a blow.”

  “It needed one.”

  “Ouch.”

  “Can I speak with you a minute, Warden Bowditch?”

  Lots of people were around. It was hard finding a private niche, but we did behind the Intervale Volunteer Fire Department’s pumper.

  She removed her sunglasses. Her ever-changing gray eyes had gone as soft as the lifting fog. “Thank you for not dying tonight.”

  “I did my best.” I resisted the urge to embrace her. “Listen, I’m sorry I’ve been so preoccupied.”

  “No, I get it. Maybe I’ve been pushing things too fast. We both have busy, complicated careers.”

  “Dangerous, too.”

  “Dangerous, too.”

  Furtively I took hold of her hand. It was as much contact as I dared. It wouldn’t be good for either of us if rumors of our romance started making the rounds.

  “Last night, back at the cabin, hanging out with Aimee and the kids, I kept thinking how lucky Billy is. In spite of everything, I was envious of my friend, the fugitive.”

  “What are you trying to say?”

  “I wondered if you wanted to follow me back over the mountains to Pennacook.”

  She seemed startled. “You want to meet my family?”

  “That didn’t come out the way I meant. Sure, I’d like to meet your family. But maybe not today—”

  “So what did you mean, Mike?”

  “I wondered if you wanted to meet Shadow. He’s doing really well, Dr. Holman says. I need to figure out what happens next with him.”

  And with you.

  She offered me a suspicious smile. “You want me to meet your wolf?”

  I raised her small, strong hand to my lips and kissed it. “It’s probably not what you were expecting.”

  “No. But it’s a start.”

  44

  Eleven days had passed, and back on the Midcoast, you had to squint to see that spring was actually happening.

  Sometimes I think the only way to understand the season would be to point a time-lapse camera at a frozen bog and watch the ice melt; then a purple-green spear would begin poking through the mud, growing to resemble one of those face-eating alien pods until it finally exploded into full luminescent leafiness. The skunk cabbage: Maine’s unsung herald of springtime.

  In truth there were other indications that the hemisphere was beginning to tilt toward the sun again. A heretofore unknown to me bed of crocuses and daffodils turned the sunny side of my house purple and yellow. The first palm warbler of the year alighted on my porch, bobbed his tail three times, and continued on his migration north.

  Charley and Ora flew down for the big day. I picked them up at the boat launch over on Pitcher Pond, where the old pilot had managed to set down his Cessna with the precision of a duck landing in a swimming pool. Now we were watching Billy finish the last touches on the acre-and-a-half pen he’d built in the woods on my property. The sea air coming up the river was cool, but the sun was strong, and Billy had his shirt off. His golden hair and beard shone as if forged from precious metal, and he’d built up a serious sweat.

  “I know how jealous you can get, Charley,” said Ora Stevens from her wheelchair. “But if I were fifty years younger, I would be all aquiver watching that beautiful man.”

  “What’s the word I’m searching for?” said her husband. “Harumph?”

  The wiry, wizened man was wearing his usual uniform of green Dickies, green button-down shirt, and green ball cap with the insignia of the Maine Warden Service Association.

  His beautiful snowy-haired wife had on a jade sweater that matched her eyes. As usual she kept a wool blanket draped over her paralyzed legs. Only her white tennis shoes peeked out.

  It was hard for me to meet Ora’s green gaze without thinking of their daughter.

  “Have you heard from Stacey lately?”

  “Last week,” said her mother. “Her work has been hard. Two panthers were hit by cars in Florida in the past month. They put up signs and fences and other barriers, but it’s simply a math problem: too many people want to live where the cats do.”

  “At least she’s met someone,” said Charley.

  Ora gripped his hand as a signal to shut up.

  Maybe he had meant those words to sting. Maybe he hadn’t. I knew he was still heartbroken that their beloved daughter and their surrogate son had broken up.

  But I was with Dani Tate now, and the Stevenses knew it, even if their absent daughter haunted this otherwise celebratory scene.

  Dani’s nonattendance had a more prosaic explanation. This was one of the days of the month that she spent at the Cumberland County Courthouse testifying in criminal cases in which she had been the arresting officer. The Department of Public Safety didn’t give troopers days off for housewarming parties.

  “What’s Kathy’s ETA?” Charley asked after a long pause.

  “She should be here anytime now.”

  “What’s this I’ve heard about her finding someone, too?” asked Ora, ever curious.

  “He’s a mystery man is all I can tell you. But I think he’s someone she met doing one of her K9 rescue-and-recovery seminars. The one thing we can be confident about is he isn’t a cat man.”

  “I’ll pry the details out of her,” Ora said. “Don’t you worry.”

  “She means it,” said Charley.

  “I know she does.”

  I had turned to Kathy Frost to help me map out the dimensions of the pen. The enclosure was made of ten-foot-high steel posts and a chain-link fence that stretched between them. The wire apron extended five feet into the ground. We’d been forced to dig a trench around the entire enclosure and fill it with cement to keep my new lodger from digging his way out his first night in residence.

  “I hope those foxes you mentioned aren’t denned up in there, too,” said Charley.

  “I tracked them. They’re holed up down by the river. But I doubt they’ll stick around when they get wind of the new tenant.”

  “What about your human neighbors?”

  “I went around telling them they might soon hear howling. I said they shouldn’t be alarmed. But I watched a l
ot of faces go white.”

  “It’s good you don’t have anyone living right nearby,” said Ora.

  “For now,” I said.

  The Stevenses weren’t going to settle for an enigmatic comment.

  “That shack down the road, the one with the family plot in the front yard that no one would buy,” I said. “I bought it.”

  “Bless your heart, Mike Bowditch,” said Ora, who was so emotionally intelligent she needed no further explanation.

  Her husband, however, required a more forthright response. “You’re giving that dump to the Cronks?”

  “In exchange for their fixing it up, I’ll credit them as making payments toward the principal. Aimee is uncomfortable with anything that feels like a handout, but I’m trying to make it as fair as I can. It’ll be nice having them nearby. The Cronklets are eager to help me with Shadow.”

  Ora winked at me. “As long as they don’t get eaten.”

  “You bought that house?” said Charley Stevens in amazement that may or may not have been mock. “I seem to remember a time, not so long ago, when you made a church mouse look wealthy.”

  “At the rate I’m spending my inheritance I’ll be a mouse again soon enough.”

  “Can you two men excuse me for a moment?” said Ora.

  “Do you need a hand, Boss?” said Charley.

  “Thank you, but I should be all right.”

  After she’d wheeled herself through the sliding door, leaving her husband and me alone on the porch, the old man leaned against the rail.

  “So Billy’s in the free and clear.”

  “That’s what his lawyer tells us. He won’t even be considered a felon for the purposes of voting or owning a firearm.”

  “I didn’t want to vote for the damned Penguin in his reelection bid, but now I have to, I guess.”

  “That’s what I said!”

  “Ora accuses us of being cut from the same black cloth.”

  A clanging came from the yard where Billy was testing the double set of doors. He’d joked about how, as a former prisoner, he should get into the fencing business, given what he’d learned on the inside.

  I glanced at the sliding door in case Ora was coming out. “No one must be happier about what happened to Donato and his coconspirators than Dawn Richie. Now everyone knows how corrupt things were inside the prison. The state will be desperate to settle her lawsuit.”

  “She’ll have a long wait before she sees any money, I wager,” said Charley. “And who knows what might yet happen to upset her best-laid plans.”

  “Getting stabbed has worked out pretty well for her so far. First she arranged to secure a transfer for herself and Rancic out of Machiasport before the governor closed it. Then she started rumors about exposing Donato, causing him to miscalculate and overreact.”

  “I was convinced Rancic was Donato’s stooge,” said Charley.

  “Me, too. Instead he was just another of Richie’s puppy dogs. Loyal to the end.”

  “We’ll see about that.”

  From that comment I could tell he was itching to tell me a secret. “What have you heard, Charley?”

  “The DEA has taken an interest in the recent goings-on at the prison.”

  Unlike the local authorities, the Feds could not be ignored, slighted, or shrugged off. Their arrival on the scene offered the first faint glimmer that Dawn Richie and Novak Rancic might yet get their comeuppance. First though, the agents would need to find a wedge to drive between them. Richie seemed unlikely to succumb, but Rancic was a cocky bastard, quick to action, and a man could always hope.

  A hundred feet away, Billy had paused to wipe off the perspiration and quench his thirst with a pint of Foster’s lager.

  What was unusual about the pen was that Kathy had told us to build it in a stand of birches, popples, and cedars. Shadow, she said, would want cover where he could conceal himself from watchful eyes. On my behalf she had contacted wolf biologists and operators of wolf dog sanctuaries in the United States and Canada, and she’d come back with a warning. Even though Shadow had been raised in a human home, his years as an apex predator in the wild had changed him in ways no one could predict—and wolf dogs were already notorious for being dangerously erratic. Hard as it was to accept, I might never be able to enter that pen in safety.

  As he always did, Charley was reading my mind.

  “How sure are you he won’t rip out your throat someday when you’re in there rubbing his chin?”

  “There are worse ways to go.”

  “That’s true. He could always disembowel you and eat you alive.” Charley paused as Ora wheeled herself back out onto the porch. “Even with your warden buddies giving you carcasses, your pet-food bill is going to be higher than most folks’ mortgages.”

  “Kathy knows the owner of a slaughterhouse who can cut me a deal on offal.”

  “Welcome to your glamorous new life,” said my old friend with a slap on the shoulders.

  “There’s Kathy now,” said Ora, leaning forward in her chair.

  Sure enough, a Nissan Xterra SUV was idling down the drive, the slowness being deliberate so that the Cronklets could run along behind in excited expectation. I had warned them against shouting lest they disturb Kathy’s passenger.

  Charley and I carried Ora in her wheelchair down the porch stairs (I needed to hire Billy to build me a ramp) and we all convened beside the open gate.

  Kathy swung down out of her vehicle, looking years younger than the last time we’d seen each other in person. She’d lost her spleen to a gunshot and still carried pellets inside her that threatened to work their way to her heart. But in that moment, standing in a beam of sunlight, she seemed to be the freckled, sandy-haired, former college basketball star I remembered from my first day as a game warden.

  “Thanks for handling the transport,” I said.

  “Lizzie Holman sent along some meds you’re going to need to put in his food. She thinks he’s past the point of infection but wants to be safe. Don’t be surprised if she stops in for a visit the next time she’s on the Midcoast.”

  “Can we see him now?” asked little Emma.

  “In a minute, honey,” said Kathy. “Did your uncle Mike already talk to you about how Shadow isn’t the same as other dogs you’ve met before?”

  Emma’s brother Aiden answered on behalf of all the Cronklets: “He said we have to tie our shoelaces and can’t wear anything made out of fur or have any dangly things hanging off us. And we have to be calm and quiet.”

  “What about your hands?”

  “Keep them away from the wolf!”

  “Sounds like Uncle Mike has done a good job with the safety course.” Kathy turned to Billy and me. “I’m going to let the stud muffins carry his kennel out of the vehicle. That animal is a heavy son of a gun.”

  Aimee came strolling down the drive at last, her cheek still bruised from where Hoyt had hit her with the butt of his rifle, and looking worried in a mother-hen fashion. “Kids, stay out of their way. OK?”

  “Don’t yell, Mom,” her son Brady said.

  “Right. Sorry.”

  Holman had given Shadow a tranquilizer for the road, but when Kathy opened the lift gate on the Xterra, he let out a terrific snarl from inside the enormous carrier in which he was imprisoned. The Cronklets scattered. Little Emma went running for the safety of her mother’s arms.

  Billy and I took hold of opposite ends of the plastic crate and lifted with our legs. The animal shifted position inside, pressing his butt to my end so he was facing the cage door, ready to attack or escape. We carried him through the gate and set the box down about ten feet in.

  “Now what?” Billy asked.

  “You get out of here. He’s not going to be happy when I open the door.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure of that.” I understood Billy was talking about his own recent experience, except that in this case Shadow was merely being released from one small cell into a larger jail.

  I’d thawed a deer haunch a
nd left it on a raised ledge I thought the wolf might claim as a throne since it offered such a sweeping view of the surroundings. With luck he’d catch wind of the meat and make a dash for it. Kathy had said it was more likely he would sprint around the entire perimeter of the enclosure looking for an exit he would never find.

  “Hold the gate for me so I can get out fast,” I said.

  “Will do.”

  I waited until Billy was clear, then I lifted the rod that held the crate door shut. I wasn’t planning on opening it for him; he’d find he could push it ajar himself. But I was caught off guard when he charged out mere seconds after I’d lifted the bolt.

  I stumbled backward, ended up catching my foot on something, and sat down hard on the ground.

  The wolf turned, the black ruff along his shoulders raised, fangs exposed. He still had that raggedy appearance from where the shaved skin for the bandages had been and where the hair was growing back. But his gold eyes were as hard as metal, and they were filled with an emotion I hesitate to name; but if I had to, I would call it grievance. He knew that he was my prisoner, and I was his jailer. His intelligent gaze seemed to announce that, whatever expectations I might’ve had about this arrangement, he would never submit, never again be a pet, would always remain wild at heart. He was no more mine than I was his.

  “Mike?” said Kathy, the warning audible in her tone.

  I heard the fence door swing on its hinges. It had to be Billy, coming to my aid.

  I made my voice a hard whisper. “Nobody else come in.”

  Shadow let out a growl that sent mice scampering up my spine.

  Using the strength of my legs, I rose to my feet with my arms low in a posture of surrender, pacification, call it what you will. “Keep cool, buddy. I’m not going to hurt you.”

  Another, louder growl. So much for the fond memories of the quality time we’d spent together in the animal hospital. So much for my fanciful notions that this creature and I had some special rapport.

  Slowly, slowly I backed toward the gate.

  As I got close, I heard the door turn on its hinges and felt Billy’s big hands on my shoulders, and the next thing I knew I was standing outside on jelly legs while Kathy clicked a padlock.