by Paul Doiron
“Wildlife biologists don’t score much higher. If you’re driving a state or federal vehicle, you’re considered an automatic asshole.”
“You don’t have to tell me,” I said. “Someone let a skunk loose in my trailer last winter.”
“Yeah, I remember that. You really stank that morning in my dad’s plane. Did you ever catch the jerks who did it?”
“It was Joe Brogan, the guy who used to own Call of the Wild Game Ranch.”
“My dad told me the ranch was for sale.” She kept massaging her sore neck. “I wonder what Brogan’s up to these days. Rivard’s probably going to want to check him out. A disgruntled ex–hunting guide—sounds like a suspect to me.”
“In Rivard’s book, everyone is a potential suspect.”
“What’s his problem with you anyway? I can guess, but I want to hear your version.”
The little jab she’d given me stung, but I didn’t let it show. “I was involved with the sister of that drug dealer who fell through the ice on the Machias River. She had a pretty serious substance-abuse problem of her own, it turned out. But the real reason is that I solved a homicide everyone thought had already been solved, and Rivard didn’t like me getting the credit. I’m just focused on doing my job these days. I’m not going to let myself get dragged into Warden Service politics.”
She gave a sharp laugh, which caused me to glance her way. “So you’ve turned over a new leaf? No more troublemaking? Or pissing off everybody you work with?”
“Something like that.”
“I’ll believe it when I see it.”
I turned my head back to look at the road. “Where do you want me to drop you?”
“Skillens’ Lumber,” she said.
For some reason, I’d had a suspicion we were headed to her fiancé’s place of business.
* * *
The Skillen family had been original settlers in northern Washington County, during a time when virgin forests blanketed the land as far as the eye could see and Passamaquoddy Indians, dwelling in seasonal camps along the St. Croix River, speared salmon as they leaped free of the tumbling falls. Amos and Harlan Skillen opened their first small stave mill in 1879 on the East Machias. The brothers cut the pines with axes and crosscut saws, and they filed their blades by lantern light.
Flash forward a century and the Skillen Lumber Company was the seat of a small woodland empire. The family owned forty thousand acres of its own forests in Washington and Hancock counties and bought logs from another hundred contractors to mill at their plant in Wesley. Five generations of Skillens had outfitted their factory with state-of-the-art machinery: debarkers and chippers, circular sawmills equipped with band resaws, planer mills, kilns, and bark processors. Each year, the company planted twenty thousand balsams to harvest as Christmas trees when the saplings reached five feet in height. In the fall, before the first snows, it sent forth dozens of “tippers”—men and women who ranged through the woodlots to snap the tips off fir boughs to weave into holiday wreaths and ship to market in Boston and New York. In a part of the world where the only other industry was commercial fishing—which itself seemed to be suffering the first stages of a fatal decline—the Skillens employed hundreds of people and were seen by all accounts deservedly as benign feudal lords.
Then came the collapse. In his rush to grow the company, Merritt Skillen, the current CEO, had overcut his own lands, just as his outside suppliers discovered it was more profitable to send their logs across the border to Canadian mills. Repeated spruce budworm infestations laid waste to the Skillens’ young Christmas trees. The mechanization that had seemed so wondrous a decade earlier soon led to layoffs. Men who had gone straight from high school in Calais to jobs with six-figure salaries found themselves being handed pink slips on Friday mornings. They woke up in late middle age to discover that their services were no longer needed and, furthermore, that the decades they had spent working the debarker had prepared them for absolutely nothing else in life.
Merritt Skillen began cutting select parcels to the bone and then selling them off for quick cash to keep his line running and his trucks rolling, hoping to save what jobs he could. It was this same stubbled land—acres that had once been the heart of a logging empire—that Elizabeth Morse had snatched up for a song. The shell-shocked Skillens had no idea what hit them the morning Betty Morse called a press conference to announce that she had acquired not just most of their land but also that of their neighbors and planned to donate it all to the U.S. Department of the Interior to create what she hoped would be called Moosehorn National Park.
I had never met Merritt Skillen, but I’d seen him interviewed on television and had once caught sight of him across the room at the Crawford Lake Club. In the dim light of the restaurant, with his face illuminated from below by a flickering candle, he looked careworn and haunted. He was still handsome, with a straight nose, a forceful jaw, and a crown of silver hair. Somehow, though, the regalness of his bearing seemed to make him an even more tragic character, and I thought of a fallen king out of Shakespeare, wandering, adrift in his former kingdom.
His son, Matt Skillen, I knew better. He was, after all, Stacey’s fiancé. Recently, he had become the public face of the company, appearing in television ads to promote Skillen Lumber’s commitment to clean energy and its new line of pinewood homes—the initiative the family hoped would save its business. He was as good-looking as his old man, but with none of the desperate sadness. On TV he came across as magnetic, well-spoken, and genuine: the kind of bright young businessman the entire state of Maine was rooting for these days.
The mill complex was hidden from the road by a castle wall of evergreens. All that was visible was the sign—SKILLEN LUMBER COMPANY: SINCE 1879—and the plume of white smoke feathering up from somewhere in the trees beyond. We drove down the long, wooded lane, wide enough so that two logging trucks could pass each other, one carrying logs in, the other carrying boards out. Even with my squealing engine, I could hear the loud industrial rumbling of machines ahead.
Eventually, we came to a gatehouse, where an old man in bifocals sat on a stool with a book of crossword puzzles. “Afternoon, Warden. What seems to be the trouble?”
In Washington County, no visit from the local game warden was ever assumed to be less than worrisome. “No trouble,” I said.
Stacey leaned across my body to wave. “Hey, Earl,” she said.
The old guard sat up straighter. “Hello, young lady. I didn’t see you in there.”
“We’re just picking up my car.”
“Go ahead, go ahead. I don’t know if the boys are done detailing it, though. I’ll tell Matt you’re here.”
The guard pushed a button, which caused the gate to roll back ahead of us, retreating on squeaky wheels back inside the high wire fence that surrounded the mill. We pulled into the enormous parking lot, which was notable for two things: the relative scarcity of vehicles and the weeds pushing through the cracked asphalt. Mountains of unprocessed logs were piled ahead of us, like wooden bulwarks meant to thwart an attacking army. Behind them rose the buildings of the mill—tall and largely windowless gray structures that seemed large enough to contain a fleet of 747s. The air smelled acridly of burning wood. A red light blinked atop the fuming smokestack that towered over everything in that vaguely menacing way industrial structures do.
I turned the wheel to avoid a forklift carrying an impossibly high stack of pine boards toward the section of the complex where the processed lumber was waiting to be carried away. The mill might have been a shadow of its former self, but there was considerable activity: forklifts darting back and forth, men entering and exiting the buildings in hard hats, a crane lifting logs from the back of an eighteen-wheeler to drop onto the pile. The place was as busy as an anthill.
“Is that my car?” Stacey said. “I wouldn’t even recognize it.”
I followed her line of vision to a Subaru Outback that looked newly washed and waxed. The metal surfaces had been polished to a mi
rrorlike brightness. It was parked at the edge of the lot, away from the hustle and bustle.
I parked beside the wagon and she climbed out. She gazed toward the open bay of one of the buildings expectantly. There was an enormous smile on her face.
“I guess I’ll get going, then,” I said. I was eager to depart before Matt Skillen appeared on the scene.
“Thanks for the ride.” She bent over again to push her head through the window. “You really do need to call my dad. It would make his day to hear from you.” She straightened up again. “Here comes Matt.”
Now I had no choice but to stay. I watched a slender young man advance across the parking lot. He had an easy gait, the way natural athletes do, and to look at him, you could imagine that he’d excelled in college track and field. His hair was black and wavy, and he was wearing a white T-shirt with some sort of red-and-blue logo on it, faded jeans, and fawn-colored work boots.
A small boy, maybe eight years old, dark-skinned, and wearing the same T-shirt, trailed along behind him.
“Hey, Beautiful,” Matt said to Stacey Stevens.
“My car looks incredible!”
“Do you like it? The guys just finished detailing it.” He turned to the little boy, who had the flat features of the Central American migrants who came to work in the Maine blueberry barrens, and said, “Diga hola a Stacey, Tomás.”
“Hola,” said the boy. The logo on the T-shirt they were both wearing read BIG BROTHERS, BIG SISTERS OF WASHINGTON COUNTY.
Stacey crouched down so she was at the child’s eye level and held his small brown hands in hers. “Hello, Tomás. Did you have a fun camping trip?”
“Sí.” His voice was so soft, I could barely hear it.
“We roasted marshmallows and told ghost stories,” said Matt with a smile. “Tomas even got to swim because the water was still so warm. It was pretty crazy, though, with only four adults and thirty kids. I was up all night taking them back and forth to the outhouse.”
“I’m sorry I had to work, or I would’ve gone with you,” said Stacey.
“Maybe next time.” Skillen suddenly seemed to notice my presence inside the truck. He peered through the open window at me. He had long eyelashes that would have made his face seem feminine if not for the strength of his stubbled jaw. “Who’s that in there?”
“It’s Mike Bowditch,” she said.
“How are you doing, Matt?” I said.
“I’m good, Mike.” He straightened up and leaned his body close to his fiancée’s. “I thought you were going out with McQuarrie today,” he said, a hint of confusion in his voice.
“I got waylaid.”
His nose twitched. “What’s that smell?”
“I’ll explain later.” She flicked her eyes in Tomás’s direction to indicate the story wasn’t appropriate for all age levels.
“I’m going to hit the road,” I said.
Stacey leaned back in through the open window. “Thanks again for the ride. And I’m serious that you’d better call my dad. If you don’t, you and I are going to have a problem, Warden.”
“Understood,” I said, shifting the truck back into drive.
I watched the two of them in the rearview mirror as they walked around the glimmering Outback, admiring its renewed beauty. The little boy held Stacey’s hand. Then I looked down at the passenger seat. Just as Stacey had warned me, she’d left a wet, muddy imprint there in the shape of her ass.
10
By late October, the sun sets early in Maine. It takes a more southerly trajectory across the sky than it does during the summer. If you happen to find yourself standing in a shadowy north-facing place—a gravel pit, say, surrounded by high walls of pebbles and sand—you might find yourself needing a flashlight by four in the afternoon.
It was my third pit of the day, and I had already collected hundreds of shell casings and cigarette butts. Along the way, I’d discovered ripped bags of trash, plundered by raccoons that had eaten everything except the dirty diapers; a putrid gut pile that had once been the inner organs of a deer before a poacher carved them out; weather-stained paper targets in the shape of human torsos stapled to splintered pieces of wood; thousands of cigarette butts; crushed beer and soda cans; and more used condoms than I cared to count.
I found shell casings from every caliber of firearm known to man amid the litter: a lot of .30-06s, Remington .223s, the two popular Winchester loads—.270s and .308s—but also plenty of handgun shells: .45s and 9 × 19 mm Parabellums, .380 ACPs like the kind I used in my off-duty Walther PPKS, .40 Smith & Wessons, .357s (both Magnums and SIGs), and more than a few .38s fired from snub-nosed revolvers. Not to mention all the red, yellow, blue, and green shotgun shells. The .22 casings alone were beyond belief. Gravel pits were the places many Mainers learned to shoot, and the guns that beginners used tended toward easy-kicking .22s, either rifles or handguns.
The work had been hard and hot in the direct sunlight. Then the sun dipped below the edge of the cliff, and it was as if someone had opened a refrigerator door behind me. I shivered and reached for the SureFire flashlight I carried on my belt.
I was down on my hands and knees, bagging and tagging yet another assortment of brass shells while carefully avoiding the shards of broken glass that had already sliced a hole in my knee, when I heard my call numbers come over the police radio. I’d left the windows rolled down to clear the fetid bog smell from my truck, but also so I could listen to life happening back in the real world. I’d never expected to hear myself called to a 10–32.
There is a movement across the nation in law-enforcement and emergency-response circles to dispense with the confusing jargon of ten codes in favor of what is called “plain language.” The campaign was yet another outcome of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, when police and firemen rushed to the smoldering towers from far-flung locales and found themselves unable to communicate with one another because, it turned out, different communities in the tristate area used different ten codes. This commonsense movement to speak normally over the radio had not yet reached the easternmost county in the United States, where I lived. Washington County always seemed to be at the ass end of every fad.
10–32: person with a weapon.
I just about leaped into the patrol truck. “Twenty-two fifty-eight,” I said into the mic.
“Twenty-two fifty-eight,” answered the deep-voiced Washington County dispatcher. “Ten-thirty-two in progress at Twelve Jerusalem Road. Shots have been fired. What’s your twenty?”
“I’m about ten minutes away.”
“Then you’re the nearest unit, Mike. Be advised that state police and sheriff’s deputies are on the way.”
“Ten-four,” I said.
I unlocked the Mossberg 590Al from the rack behind my head and set the heavy shotgun on the floor mat. I knew the man who lived at the house on Jerusalem Road. Every law-enforcement officer in the county did, and we’d all made wagers on when this day of reckoning would finally come. If things went as badly as I feared they might, I might need every round in my service weapon and every shell in my shotgun before the night was done.
* * *
Karl Keith Khristian had been born Wilbur Williams on an island in Penobscot Bay. He came from a long line of lobstermen, many of whom spent their entire lives within a hundred miles of their home ports. Unless they served in the military, they often went decades without encountering a person of another race. In my own life, I have learned that there is a fine line between innocence and ignorance. Some of the native islanders I met were the most open and accepting people on the planet. Others were, inexplicably, the most hardened bigots you’d ever want to meet. All you need to know about Wilbur Williams is that he left the island his ancestors had settled eight generations earlier when one of his neighbors adopted two Cambodian girls.
By the time he ended up in the deep woods of Washington County, he had legally changed his name to Khristian and acquired an arsenal capable of repelling any urban refugees from the com
ing race war, the goose-stepping United Nations troops that were sure to follow, and the zombie apocalypse that would cap the whole thing off. When it came to doomsday prophecies, KKK was an equal-opportunity paranoid. He was a bald gnome of a man with sun-damaged skin and a permanent squint that suggested irritable bowel syndrome or an undiagnosed need for reading glasses.
According to Washington County’s longtime sheriff, Roberta Rhine, Khristian’s devolution from harmless backwoods crank to potential serial shooter was complete the day we elected our first black president. She’d told us to keep a close watch on the old buzzard. My patrols took me frequently past his personal compound. Khristian lived alone in a tiny house, along with his three rottweilers, but the actual residence was hidden behind a plank fence topped with spirals of razor wire. He used the fence as a billboard to promote various political and religious sentiments:
SOVEREIGN CITIZEN OF THE U.S.A!
WE HAVE AFRICAN LIONS IN THE ZOOS AND A LYING AFRICAN IN THE WHITE HOUSE
WARNING TO BURGLARS: THIS HOUSE IS GUARDED BY A SHOTGUN THREE DAYS A WEEK. GUESS WHICH DAYS?
The sheriff had told me that Khristian kept an underground bunker beneath his house, a combination survival shelter and shooting range. “Some day,” Rhine said, “I’m afraid he’s going to have a massive coronary on his way to Cigarette City, and we’re going to find the bodies of fifteen missing prostitutes down there.”
I didn’t think she was joking.
My own encounters with the man had been fleeting, since Khristian was one of many firearms enthusiasts who had no interest whatsoever in hunting. I had seen him behind the wheel of his camouflage-painted Dodge Ram, his small head barely visible behind the wheel, and he had scowled at me a few times in the supermarket. But I had read his venomous letters in the Machias Valley News Observer, and I seemed to recall that he had spewed considerable bile over Elizabeth Morse and her proposed national park. Coincidence that this 10–32 call would come tonight? It didn’t seem likely.
