by Paul Doiron
The forest flashed by my windows in a green blur. My heart was pumped so full of blood, it made my ribs ache. I tried to control my breathing and prepare myself mentally for a range of possible scenarios, from an armed standoff (likely) to a peaceful surrender (fat chance).
What I found on Jerusalem Road was the last thing I would have expected. In the failing light, I saw Billy Cronk’s truck parked before Karl Khristian’s gate. My friend stood beside it, his hands loose at his side, as still as a statue. Above the wall loomed a man with a rifle. Khristian must have constructed elevated walkways so that he could patrol his fenced property from a great height: the better to assassinate the blue-helmeted storm troopers.
Before I could even report to dispatch that I had arrived on the scene, I heard a gunshot and saw a spray of sand at my friend’s feet. Billy didn’t even flinch. He seemed utterly unafraid. Inside the walls, ferocious-sounding dogs were barking. I grabbed the Mossberg and threw open the door, using it as a body shield as I drew a bead on Khristian’s vulture head.
“Get down on the ground!” KKK was screaming in a shrill, scratchy voice.
“Police!” I said. “Drop the weapon, Khristian!”
Billy remained motionless: a six-foot-five-inch target.
“Get down on the motherfucking ground,” the little man screeched, “or I’ll blow your nut sack off!”
I had the shotgun sling wrapped around my left hand to steady it and was using the edge of the door to hold the barrel still. “I said, ‘Drop the weapon!’”
Khristian’s rifle wavered. “He’s a trespasser!”
“If you shoot him, Khristian, I swear to God I am going to shoot you next! Put the rifle down.”
“Castle doctrine! Castle doctrine!”
The castle doctrine, or the defense of habitation law, holds that a home owner has the right to use deadly force against an intruder without becoming liable to prosecution.
“He’s the one who did it, Mike,” said Billy in a calm voice. He hadn’t turned his head since I had arrived, so I didn’t know how the hell he knew it was me, unless he’d recognized my voice. “He shot the moose.”
“Goddamned liar!”
“I’m not going to say this again,” I said. “Put the rifle down, Khristian!”
Suddenly, the bald head disappeared. One second, he was there; the next, he was gone.
Oh shit. I could only imagine the secret holes in Khristian’s walls where he could aim a gun at an intruder. My spinning blue lights made me feel as if I were watching these surreal events unfold from inside a kaleidoscope.
“Billy, I want you to get down on the ground.”
“He’s not going to shoot me, Mike.”
“Yeah, well, I might shoot you if you don’t listen to me.” I scanned the fence, looking for any sign of movement behind it, anything to indicate KKK’s intentions.
“He’s the one who killed those moose,” said Billy.
“At the moment, that’s not my concern. Just get down on the ground so we can both get the hell out of here. I don’t want to tell Aimee I watched you get shot.”
His wife’s name seemed to touch a nerve. His head dipped, and he dropped to his knees in the sand. His braid swung back and forth along his shoulders.
“All the way down,” I said.
“Sorry, Mike. This is as far as I go.”
My truck belt wouldn’t stop shrieking. Inside the fence, the dogs continued their hoarse and horrible barking. I could easily imagine KKK opening his gate and unleashing his hellhounds on my friend and me.
“Goddamn it, Billy.”
“I’m not afraid of that kook.”
“Khristian!” I shouted. “I need you to step out here!”
From somewhere on the opposite side of the fence came a shout: “I claim castle doctrine!”
“That law doesn’t apply after a police officer is on the scene,” I said. “Just get your ass outside and tell me what happened.”
The next noise was that of a man yelling at a dog, followed by a canine squeal, as if it had been kicked. Then the fence gate slid open wide enough for a man to slip through the gap. KKK stepped out with a black AR-15 carbine on a sling over his shoulder. He seemed even shorter than I remembered, a beardless Rumpelstiltskin.
I trained my ghost-ring sights on his torso in case he did something stupid. “Put the rifle down, Karl,” I said.
“I am a sovereign citizen with the right to bear arms guaranteed by the Second Amendment.”
“You’re a gutless coward who shot six defenseless animals,” said Billy.
Khristian’s whole body seemed to quiver like a metronome that had been struck. “Liar!”
“Billy,” I said, “I would appreciate you shutting the fuck up now.”
Behind me, I heard the faint sound of approaching sirens. KKK squinted and cocked his head like a suspicious bird. Billy took the arrival of another police officer on the scene as a sign that he could now rise to his feet.
Khristian disagreed. “Get back on the ground!”
Two things happened next that seemed simultaneous: The old man swung the assault weapon off his shoulder as if to bring the barrel up again, and Billy Cronk sprang forward like a jungle cat. He must have covered twenty feet in a single second, because by the time I had stepped out from behind my truck door, he had thrown KKK to the ground. I came running up, aiming the shotgun at both of them, shouting for Billy to stop. Dust drifted around their struggling bodies in the headlights of my vehicle. I feared that Khristian might manage to get a shot off from the AR or produce a hidden pistol to blast a hole through my friend’s mighty heart.
I needn’t have worried. By the time I cleared the distance, Billy Cronk had the sovereign citizen pinned to the ground, flattened beneath the weight of his long body and with both of the man’s spindly arms splayed out to the sides.
“You piece of shit,” Billy snarled. “I ought to break both your arms.”
“Get off me! Get off me!” The old man could barely wheeze out the words under Cronk’s crushing weight.
The approaching siren had grown shrill, and I heard the roar of a V-8 engine and pebbles scattering beneath skidding wheels. I kept my Mossberg trained on both bodies.
“Let him go, Billy,” I said.
“Not until he says he did it.”
“Didn’t do a goddamn thing,” KKK hissed.
I heard a car door open and someone come running up. When I finally turned my head, I found myself blinded by my own headlights.
“What the hell is going on here?” said a woman with a deep, gruff voice.
I didn’t need to see her long, handsome face or black ponytail to know who she was.
“He attacked me,” wheezed KKK.
“I wasn’t talking to you, Wilbur,” said Roberta Rhine. “I was addressing Warden Bowditch.”
By blinking repeatedly, I had managed to clear my vision, and I now saw Washington County’s chief law-enforcement officer standing at my shoulder, holding a pistol at her side. She was wearing shorts and flip-flops and a chambray shirt thrown on over a white tee. Her hair was wet and loose, as if she’d just stepped from the shower.
“I’ve got it under control, Sheriff,” I said.
“It sure looks that way.”
She kicked Billy’s leg with her painted toes. “Get off him, Cronk.”
“I think you should check him for concealed weapons first,” said Billy. “I feel something underneath me, and it ain’t his boner.”
The sheriff looked at me. “Warden?”
I slung the Mossberg over my shoulder and crouched down beside the two men. Billy released Khristian’s limbs one at a time in order for me to remove first the Bushmaster AR-15, which was trapped under the old man’s bony shoulder, then a Colt 1911 holstered inside his pants and a pocket Glock secured to his left ankle. I placed all three firearms on the hood of my shuddering pickup. Then I watched Billy Cronk rise from the ground, lifting his adversary along with him. He held Khristian alof
t by both arms, as if the other man was one of his children and this was a game, but there was no smile on my friend’s handsome face, just naked contempt.
“Let him go, Billy,” I said.
KKK dropped to earth and fell hard on his bony ass.
Rhine inhaled deeply and blew out a breath. “Bowditch, can you tell me what I just witnessed?”
“Sheriff,” I said, “I have no idea.”
11
One of Rhine’s deputies arrived next, a new hire I didn’t recognize, followed by a local state trooper whom I knew all too well. Earlier that year, he had taken my statement after I chased a suspected murderer across a frozen lake. I had ended up fighting for my life in icy water while my quarry swam to safety. The state police officer’s name was Belanger, and he was nearly as tall as Billy Cronk, with a chin you could break your fist on.
“I had a report of a man with a gun,” he said from beneath the tilted brim of his blue Smokey the Bear hat.
“We’re still trying to sort it out,” the sheriff told him.
Her deputy had taken custody of Karl Khristian while she and I got Billy Cronk’s side of the story.
Inside the compound, the rottweilers continued their frightful racket.
Rhine gathered up her wet hair and twisted it into a ponytail while she interrogated Billy. “So you drove here because you deduced Mr. Khristian was the man who’d shot those moose on the Morse estate?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And how did you arrive at this conclusion?”
“I always figured Karl was the one who took out Ms. Morse’s first gate, the nice cedar one,” said my friend. “I never had no proof of it, but the day after it happened, I saw him drive by while I was cleaning up the broken wood, and then afterward he used to give me this smirk whenever I’d see him at the True Value hardware.”
“A smirk,” said Rhine.
“Yeah, like he had a secret that was burning him up inside.”
“That’s your proof?” I said.
“I also got to thinking about his letters to the newspaper and how he’s such a good shot and all. That’s what people say anyway. I heard he showed up at the Wa-Co Fish and Game Club when they were having a shooting match. He wasn’t a member or anything, but he came because they was offering cash prizes, and he walked away with five hundred bucks.”
“Why didn’t you tell me any of this?” I asked. “Why did you drive over here on your own and nearly get yourself shot?”
Billy shrugged. “I knew he’d just deny it if a warden asked him. I thought maybe I could trick it out of him.”
The sheriff gave me the special look law-enforcement officers reserve for situations when we find ourselves confronted by an act of pure boneheadedness on the part of a civilian.
“So what happened when you arrived?” Rhine continued.
“I banged on his gate a few times until he finally came out to his—what do you call it?—his parapet.”
“That’s one word for it, I suppose,” said the sheriff.
Billy began scratching his beard the way he always did when he began to spin a yarn. “He asked me what I wanted, and I just started bullshitting with him at first, asked him if he was interested in selling that camouflage truck of his, ’cause I’d always admired the paint job he’d done on it. He couldn’t figure out if I was pulling his pud at first and said it weren’t for sale. And then I said it was too bad, ’cause I was hoping to get some red cedar toothpicks out of the grille. That’s when he realized I knew he’d knocked down Ms. Morse’s gate. He told me to get lost or he’d sic them dogs on me. I said he’d done some fine shooting last night, some of the best I’d ever seen, even in the military. I really laid on the butter thick, figuring that he couldn’t help himself and would accept the compliment.”
“And how did he respond?” Rhine asked.
“Like he didn’t know what I was talking about.” Billy stared down at me with a knitted brow. “But I know he did it, Mike. I feel in my bones it was him.”
“That’s not exactly evidence we can act on,” I said. “We can’t just turn over his house looking for twenty-two rifles based on your hunch. We need probable cause to get a search warrant.”
“It ain’t a hunch.”
Rhine tapped my shoulder. “Warden, can I have a word with you? Trooper, why don’t you keep Mr. Cronk company for a few minutes.”
She and I retreated back to the hood of her cruiser, a white Crown Victoria. She was a tall woman, somewhere in her late fifties. She dyed her hair raven black and had a penchant for turquoise jewelry. Some people assumed that she had Indian blood, but my own guess was that it was more of a Southwestern-style thing.
“I was surprised to see you,” I said. “I thought you lived down on the coast in Machiasport.”
“Lauren and I have a camp on Syslodobsis Lake,” she said. “I was swimming when she called me from the porch. I’m still wearing my bathing suit under this getup.”
As parochial as Washington County could seem at times, its people showed frequent outbursts of open-mindedness. With few exceptions, they had shown themselves to be welcoming to the Mexican and Central American immigrant workers who arrived each summer to rake blueberries from the barrens. And they had elected an openly gay woman as their sheriff not once, but four times.
“What’s your take on this?” she asked me.
“When I pulled up, I saw Khristian fire a shot in the ground at Billy’s feet.”
“Go on.”
“I told Khristian to put down the weapon. He said Billy was trespassing and claimed the castle doctrine as justification. Eventually, I persuaded him to come outside, where Billy tackled him.”
“Did you try to prevent Cronk from assaulting him?”
“I wouldn’t term it ‘assault,’ but no, I didn’t have a chance to act.” A question occurred to me suddenly. “Who called in the ten-thirty-two?”
“Neighbor down the right-of-way. I guess she drove by with a minivan full of kids and groceries. Can you imagine living next door to that fruitcake?” She brought both of her long hands to the lower half of her face and held them there for a while. “So we’ve got Cronk on a trespassing charge, and Wilbur on recklessly discharging a firearm, at the least. My instinct here is to take them both down to the jail to cool off overnight.”
My heart sank. Billy was about to lose his job. In seeking to impress his employer, he had probably just bull-rushed himself out of her good graces. That was my sense of how Elizabeth Morse would react to this news anyway.
“I could follow Cronk back to his home instead,” I said. “I think he’s learned his lesson.”
“You’re more forgiving than I am.” Rhine focused her steady gaze on me. “I’ve been on the phone with Rivard a few times today. That moose massacre sounds like some pretty bad shit. I offered my department’s assistance, but I think your lieutenant wants to keep this one for himself. I take it you saw the dead animals?”
“Billy Cronk and I were the ones who found them this morning.”
She nodded, as if this disclosure confirmed a suspicion. “Do you think he’s right about KKK being the shooter?”
I considered the question carefully for the first time. “If he was, he had help. The animals were jacklighted, and two different guns were used: a twenty-two Magnum and a twenty-two long rifle. The evidence suggests two shooters. And Khristian doesn’t strike me as the sort of guy who pals around with a buddy.”
“I told Rivard that he’d better solve this case quick or we’re both in for a long, hard fall.”
“What did he say to that?”
“Let’s just say your lieutenant doesn’t lack confidence.”
I kept my mouth shut.
“There’s been another ‘Magoon’ sighting,” she said out of nowhere. She was referring to the man who had stalked me the previous winter, the prime suspect in the murder of a local drug dealer. He had escaped across the border into New Brunswick before Rhine and the state police could close a
net around him. He’d left me to drown in a hole in the ice on a frozen lake.
“Where?” I asked, as if the information barely interested me at all.
“The Gaspé Peninsula in Quebec. The first sighting was in northern Ontario. The second one took place outside Montreal. What does that tell you?”
“He’s coming back.”
“I don’t suppose you’ve heard from your ex-girlfriend lately.”
The sheriff was referring to Jamie Sewall, a recovering alcoholic and drug addict who had fallen off the wagon while in my arms. She had never technically been my girlfriend, but we’d had a brief physical relationship, and I had formed a connection with her strange, disturbed son, Lucas. Over the course of the summer, I had done my best to forget about both of them.
“No, ma’am,” I said.
“Her house is still on the market. Nothing ever sells up here unless it’s right on the water. I know people who cut their asking price in half, and all they hear are crickets. There are no jobs, and if Elizabeth Morse gets her way, there will be even fewer.” She sighed. “Anyway, it wouldn’t surprise me if Miss Sewall reappears someday, as well. This place is like the Hotel California. You can check out any time you’d like.… You know the rest.”
“Yes, ma’am. So you’re arresting Billy?”
“Do you have a problem with that?”
I studied the back of my friend’s blond head, knowing how baffled and hurt he would be to find himself in handcuffs. He’d driven over here on a foolish quest to expose a dangerous criminal and win back a job he feared was slipping from his grasp. Now he was facing a trespassing charge instead. “No, ma’am,” I said.
“Good.”
“Do you mind if I get his truck keys first? Billy can’t afford the cost of having it impounded. I’ll make sure it gets home.”
The sheriff chewed her lower lip, considering the request. “Go right ahead. The DA will want your report on this incident as soon as possible.”
“I understand.”
While Rhine went to interrogate Khristian, I steadied myself and walked back over to where Cronk and Trooper Belanger were shooting the shit. Outwardly, the wild man and the straight-arrow cop would seem to have had nothing in common, but both men, it turned out, had done tours in Iraq. Billy had even managed to get a laugh out of the stone-faced state police officer. I always marveled at how disarming my scary-looking friend could be.
