by Paul Doiron
I put in a call to Sergeant McQuarrie and reached him at a backwoods butcher shop.
During the fall, moose- and deer-cutting businesses sprang up in the forested corners of the state. Most of the meat cutters were solid citizens, but a few of them viewed Maine’s wildlife laws as unnecessary limits on commerce. It behooved game wardens to drop in on these fly-by-night outfits for impromptu investigations. Mack and I had our doubts about the Butcher Brothers of Baileyville.
“Bowditch!” McQuarrie had abused his throat with liquor and tobacco for four and a half decades, and you could hear it in his voice over the phone. “I had a feeling I’d hear from you today. I was hoping it was just heartburn from Peg’s chili. What’s the rumpus, kid?” Mack spoke like a person who’d learned English by watching Jimmy Cagney movies.
I cut to the chase. “Someone shot up six moose on Elizabeth Morse’s private estate.”
“Christ on a cracker.”
“Yeah,” I said. “That about sums it up.”
“They take any meat?”
“No. It was just someone riding around and killing things for kicks.”
I heard a woman’s voice in the background, asking him a question. The line went dead for a second while Mack clamped a hand over the receiver. He came back, his voice overloud against the new sound of a bone saw starting up at the butcher shop. “So where do you want to meet?”
I gave him the directions to the new gate. He told me he’d be there in half an hour. He added that he was bringing “company.” He didn’t elaborate.
“The L.T.’s gonna fucking love this,” he said, using the division nickname for the lieutenant.
“Are you speaking ironically?”
“You’re the college boy. You figure it out.”
McQuarrie was my third sergeant in three years as a warden. The first, Kathy Frost, was the best by far: one of the only women in the service, funny, smart, and hard as nails. To this day, she remained among my closest friends, and I wished I could somehow reach across administrative divisions and pull her from the midcoast to eastern Maine to help me with this investigation. My second sergeant was Rivard, and all I could say about that experience was that it had been mercifully brief. McQuarrie didn’t strike me as a bad guy, but he was a conventional thinker who tended to follow his young lieutenant’s orders and then gripe about them behind his back. I guess that was what happened when you were pushing sixty-three and the finish line was just down the hill.
Billy Cronk was standing above the cow moose with his fists clenched, staring at the carcass the way a person looks into a campfire: mesmerized.
“Billy?”
“I’m trying to think of the assholes I know who might’ve done this.”
“Any names spring to mind?”
“Yeah, the whole fucking phone book. You know how popular Ms. Morse is around here.” He glanced at me with his lip twisted into a smile. “I ain’t so popular myself now that people know who I’m working for. Aimee’s brother won’t even talk to me. Kyle works over to Skillens’ lumber mill. He says I picked my side and I’m going to have to live with the consequences, like he’d prefer his nephews and niece just went hungry.”
I could sympathize with Billy’s plight, but I understood his brother-in-law’s argument, too. Skillens’ was the largest employer in the region, a historic sawmill built in the nineteenth century, when there were still miles of virgin forest in eastern Maine. The company had once owned the land on which we were standing, until hard times had forced it to sell out to Elizabeth Morse. I’d heard Skillens’ was losing big money since Morse cut off the supply of quality hardwood. The mood at the mill was that of a deathwatch.
Sometimes life pushes you to make hard choices. People pretend they can spend their whole lives standing on the sidelines, as if taking a stand and not taking a stand are different things, when really they are both ways of choosing. One’s just more cowardly than the other. As a game warden, I knew what it was like to be hated for no other reason than my uniform. Billy had made a choice, too, even if he didn’t fully understand the ramifications yet.
“Let’s go talk with your employer,” I said. “It sounds like it might be better if she hears what happened from me.”
“It won’t help,” Billy said.
I had a feeling he might be right.
4
Elizabeth Morse’s mansion was like nothing I’d seen before. The descriptions I’d heard around town didn’t do it justice.
It had been built in the form of a compound, with a four-story residence overlooking the lake and a cluster of smaller guest cottages, boathouses, and work spaces built around the edges. The main building looked like the sort of grand hotel you might expect to find on the shores of Lake Tahoe. Its foundation was of great gray fieldstones carefully chosen so that all the heavy slabs fitted perfectly together without needing cement. The logs, as long as telephone poles, glowed like new copper in the morning sunlight. Two enormous stone chimneys rose from the steeply pitched roofline, and long balconies perched along the higher floors. There were windows everywhere, tall panels of glass to soak up the sunlight. The mansion had been constructed at the tip of a natural point of land, and it wouldn’t have surprised me to learn that nearly every room had a view of Sixth Machias Lake.
We had parked at the top of the bluff in an area reserved for maintenance vehicles. Two identical forest green Toyota Tacomas seemed to be waiting patiently, like unused toys. Down the hill, closer to the front door, sat a hybrid Toyota Highlander SUV, also forest green, and a shiny new Prius painted a color that made me think of metallic sand in an atomic desert. The odd vehicle out was a cherry-red BMW Z4 roadster parked at a careless angle in front of one of the guest cottages.
Billy brushed his shirt as if to remove nonexistent crumbs. “I should have called ahead,” he said. “Ms. Morse doesn’t like surprises.”
He gestured toward the entrance. A hand-carved sign hung over the double doors, bearing the inscription MOOSEHORN LODGE.
“Does Mr. Toad live here, too?”
“Lay off, Mike.” He pushed the buzzer beside the intercom. “Hello?” he said, bending over the gray box. “Anyone at home? It’s Billy.”
After a minute or so, the double doors swung open and a smiling gray-bearded man looked out. He had deep laugh lines around his eyes and a ponytail that must have gotten progressively harder to maintain as his hairline had receded over the years. He was wearing an off-white hemp shirt with a groovy tie-dyed necktie, jeans that showed dirt on the knees, and leather sandals.
“Hey, Billy? What’s the good word?”
“Not good, Leaf. This is Warden Bowditch. He’s here to see Ms. Morse.”
I’d pegged the guy as an aging hippie from his outfit and the surfer-dude inflections in his voice. But even I was unprepared when he held out a strong calloused hand and introduced himself as Leaf Woodwind.
“What’s going on, man?” he asked. I detected the herbal odor of a certain smokable plant on his clothes.
“A crime was committed on Ms. Morse’s property last night,” I said.
His bushy eyebrows fell. “Did someone fuck with the gates again?”
“Worse than that,” said Billy.
“Dude, you’ve got to tell me. You know Betty hates surprises.”
“I think it would be better if I told her myself,” I said.
“Hang on, then. I’ll see if I can find her.”
He stepped suddenly back into the room and shut the door in our faces.
“Leaf Woodwind,” I said, repeating the name for my own pleasure. “What’s he—the gardener?”
“He’s Ms. Morse’s personal assistant. Been with her forever. They used to be partners in her business when she was starting out in Cherryfield. Seems like it must be kind of weird for him, watching her get so rich. But he seems pretty mellow about everything.”
“Yeah, I smelled his mellowness.”
Minutes passed. Billy had grown quiet and inward again. I had t
he sense he was already checking the help-wanted ads in his head. I found myself gazing through the screen of pine boughs at the brilliant blue lake. I could hear a boat knocking against a dock somewhere, a rhythmic, relaxing sound.
My momentary sense of calm was disturbed by my cell phone, which gave off a sudden electronic chime that sent a pulse of adrenaline shooting into my bloodstream. The previous winter, I’d been stalked by an extremely dangerous man who called himself “George Magoon,” after a legendary Down East poacher, and who seemed to delight in tormenting me. He still sent me taunting messages from across the border in Canada, where he’d fled to escape a murder rap. Every time I heard my phone beep, I expected to find another untraceable threat.
This e-mail was from my mother:
“When one door of happiness closes, another opens, but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one that has been opened for us.”
—Helen Keller
Lately, my mom had begun sending me inspirational quotes from famous people without any explanation. We hadn’t been close in a very long time—since before the bad business with my father—and I had no idea what she was trying to communicate with these vague aphorisms. My mother spent the warm months in Maine and then moved with my stepfather to a golf-course condo in Naples, Florida, every fall. Beyond that, I knew very little of her whereabouts. She was as elusive as George Magoon in that regard.
The door opened again, and Leaf Woodwind stepped out, shoulders sagging noticeably. “Betty and Briar are out back. I’ll take you around.”
So we were not going to be given the grand tour after all. Too bad. I was curious to see what half a billion dollars bought you these days. I put away my cell phone and followed.
Woodwind led us along a flagstone path, past raised flower beds set within rock retaining walls. The rhododendrons had flowered and gone by months ago, but someone had brightened things up with an assortment of orange, yellow, and pink mums. Out of the sunlight, you could smell the autumnal odor of rotting vegetation, and the chill brought goose bumps to my exposed arms.
We emerged from the shadows onto an enormous stone patio, roughly the size of a baseball diamond. In the center, two Adirondack chairs flanked a fire pit in which no fire was burning. Two women were sitting in them, looking down the length of the lake. We seemed to have caught them in the middle of morning tea.
The younger one remained seated, her head turned away, but I had that impression you sometimes get, when you glimpse a stranger for a split second, of youthful attractiveness. I saw bare brown legs, thick dark hair, and a heart-shaped face hidden behind enormous sunglasses.
As we approached, the older of the two arose. Elizabeth Morse didn’t remotely resemble an ex-hippie. Instead, she projected an air of aristocratic confidence, as if she’d just stepped off a yacht. She had sun-streaked blond hair, cut and curled to accentuate an attractive face that reminded me, somehow, of a cat’s. She wore no makeup that I could see and minimal jewelry, just a simple gold locket and bangles at the wrist. She wasn’t particularly tall or heavy, but she looked solid. Underneath her expensive outfit—sepia-tinted sunglasses, cream linen shirt, shiny brown slacks, open-toed sandals—she still had the physique of someone who rose at dawn to till the earth.
“Good morning, Billy.” Her voice was firm, with a faint Brahmin inflection, as if the muscles in her jaw were clenched.
Billy inclined his head. “Hello, Ms. Morse.”
“Leaf says we had another incident but that you’re being very mysterious about it.”
“This is Warden Bowditch. He’s with the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife. He can explain it better than me.”
“I know what a game warden is.” She turned her golden head to me. “People seem to forget that I used to have a homestead in the woods around here. I wasn’t always the titan of industry that I am today.”
I couldn’t stop from myself from smiling, but the worried expressions never left the faces of Billy Cronk and Leaf Woodwind.
“You seem to be the only one who gets my sense of humor, Warden,” said Elizabeth Morse. “But you’re not here for my comedy routine. What’s this about? Not good news, obviously.”
“No, ma’am,” I said. “It’s not. This morning, as Mr. Cronk was driving onto your property, he discovered evidence of a pretty heinous crime.” I held out my business card with my name, title, and phone number. I felt that she was measuring me from behind those shaded glasses.
“You don’t have to sugarcoat things for me, Warden Bowditch. I am tougher than I appear.”
“Someone shot a young moose near your Sixth Machias gate.”
She removed her sunglasses and let them dangle between her fingers. We locked eyes for a while; hers were almond-shaped and a spectacular shade of hazel. Then she said, “A poacher?”
“No, ma’am.”
“What, then? Some sort of vandal?”
“That’s what it looks like. The person—or persons—killed the moose for the sake of killing it. So you could call it vandalism.”
She waited. “Go on.”
“There were five others,” I said.
Elizabeth Morse’s brilliant eyes softened. I could tell that she was trying to absorb the impact of my words. She blinked several times before looking away. “I see.”
It was the young woman who spoke next. “Six moose! Oh my God!”
Billy had mentioned that Morse had a daughter by the odd name of Briar. I didn’t detect much of a resemblance. She was wearing bright red lipstick, and she had painted her toenails red to match. Her sleeveless smock was white—to show off her toned arms—and her shorts were made of some shimmering black material that looked expensive. Around her neck hung an elaborate wooden necklace that made me think of tribal people living in a distant jungle. “I think I’m going to be sick,” she said.
When I turned back to Elizabeth Morse, I saw that she had put her sunglasses back on, and I had a sense that it was to conceal from the rest of us whatever emotions she was experiencing. Her voice turned blunt and businesslike again. She had shoved her momentary softness back beneath her rocky exterior. “So how do you plan on investigating this … atrocity? I assume there’s some sort of protocol.”
Yes and no, I wanted to say. The Warden Service was expert at wildlife forensics, but I wasn’t sure my organization had dealt with a crime of this magnitude before.
“I’d start by asking if you know who might’ve had reason to shoot those animals,” I said.
She turned to the ponytailed hippie. “Leaf, can you go fetch the folder?” Without pausing for an answer, she returned her attention to me. Her efficient manner suggested she was well practiced at running meetings. “If you’re looking for specific names, I can’t help you. Most of the people who hate me don’t bother to sign their death threats.”
“You’ve received death threats?”
“Does that surprise you?”
“No,” I admitted.
“I would like to see the bodies myself,” she said.
“Mom,” said the younger woman, “that’s gross.”
“This is my daughter, Briar,” said Elizabeth Morse.
I nodded her way. “I’d prefer to get a team of wardens on the scene first.”
“I don’t understand why I should have to wait,” Elizabeth said. “These shootings occurred on property I own and are almost certainly in retaliation for my recent land purchases.”
“I’d also prefer to hold off on making assumptions about motives,” I said.
“You haven’t read my mail, Warden.”
Briar Morse rose to her feet. As she stood beside her mother, I could see that they had similarly muscular builds. “You can’t keep us from driving on our own land.”
I took a deep breath and gave my attention again to the person who most deserved it.
“Ms. Morse,” I said. “I’m not trying to prevent your seeing the bodies for some frivolous reason. There’s evidence at each of the shootings
that might lead us to identify—and prosecute—whoever did this. I don’t want a crowd of people contaminating the scenes, because I want very much to punish the perpetrator or perpetrators here.”
“What kind of evidence?”
My cell phone rang on my belt. “Excuse me a moment. I need to take this.”
I wandered across the patio, holding the phone to my ear. It was McQuarrie. “So we’re at the gate,” he said. “Where are you, kid?”
I dropped my voice. “I’m up at Morse’s house.”
“Queen Elizabeth’s?”
“I wanted to tell her what happened before she came blundering on the scene.”
“How did Her Highness take the news?”
“Not well.”
“I got word to the L.T., and he and a bunch of other wardens are on the way. So you’d better excuse yourself and get your keister down here to let us in the gate. This is going to be the perfect shit storm, Mikey boy. And you don’t want to be the one who catches it in the face.”
It would not be a new experience, I thought.
“I’ll be right there,” I said, and hung up. I wondered again who Mack had riding with him today. It could be any of a number of people.
I paused a moment, listening to the soughing of the pines as the winds ruffled their branches. When I turned back to the people on the patio, I found that Leaf Woodwind had returned with a file folder the size of the Manhattan phone book. “Where’s the letter we got Friday?” Elizabeth asked him.
“I just printed it.”
“Billy,” I said. “Mack McQuarrie needs you to open the gate.”
“We’re coming with you,” said Ms. Morse, as if the matter had been settled.
“That’s not a good idea—for the reasons I mentioned before.”
“Yes, your arguments were very sound and well put, but the fact remains that this is my land.”
“Here it is,” Leaf said, producing a piece of paper from the stack.
The letter was a photocopy of another document. The original had been printed in one of those generic fonts that are standard on all computers.
You Fucking Bitch—
You think you can just move in here and buy up our Land and our Heritage! How many good Maine people do you plan to put out of work? Do you even care about our families, or are you only concerned about baby ducks and bunny rabbits, you naive tree hugger? Well, we have news for you, you goddam slut. We don’t want your gates. We don’t want your park & we don’t want some out-of-state cunt deciding she’s our queen. You think your money will protect you? It won’t stop us from putting a .223 round through your ugly face anytime we choose. This is your Final Warning, lady. Leave now or leave in a coffin—your choice!
