Massacre Pond

by Paul Doiron

  “Hey, guys,” I said.

  The Cronklets watched me silently. As soon as I had passed by up the hill, the urchins resumed their raucous play.

  Billy had cut wood from his hillside lot the previous winter and brought it down the skidder trail. The machinery had flattened the alders and poplars that had been threatening to overtake the path, but the resilient little trees had spent the summer rebounding, and so I had to push through some scratchy vegetation in places. The fallen leaves on the ground—a pattern of red and silver—reminded me of a Persian carpet. Every now and then, I came across one of Billy’s big boot prints, but I knew that his wife was right that he could vanish into the foliage whenever he chose. My friend wasn’t as expert a woodsman as my father—no one was—but I always learned a trick or two whenever I followed him into the forest.

  Aimee said he was bow hunting for wild turkeys, which meant he was probably decked out in full camo. Most turkey hunters liked to set up decoys and then settle down to call the birds into shooting range. Billy preferred to stalk them, which was a pretty good way to get yourself shot by another hunter, in my opinion. My friend scoffed at the dangers.

  “If I don’t spot another hunter before he can take a crack at me, then I deserve to die,” he’d said.

  After wandering aimlessly along the trail for a while, I decided to make things easy on myself and stood in place and started hollering his name at the top of my lungs.

  Billy appeared after a few minutes, carrying his bow over one arm, and with a dead jake turkey slung over the other.

  “That’s another stupid thing to do,” I said.

  He removed the camouflage hat and face mask he had been wearing. “What is?”

  “Toting a dead turkey on your back. There are crazy hunters who will see a flash of what looks like a moving bird and open fire.”

  “I’ll take my chances.” His pale irises were even more humorless than that night at Khristian’s. “What do you want?”

  “You’re not going to thank me for helping Aimee pick up your truck?”

  “Thank you.”

  “The last time I saw you, you were telling me what a good friend I was. What the hell happened?”

  “I spent a night in jail.”

  He lowered the turkey to the ground. It was a simultaneously handsome and disgusting creature; its iridescent brown feathers shined in the sunlight as if oiled, but its bald, misshapen head had blotches of venous blue and arterial red that made me think of a diseased old man.

  “Well, I just spent the day with your former employer,” I said. “Rivard made me Betty Morse’s personal liaison with the moose investigation.”

  “Did you talk to her about me getting my job back?”

  “Frankly, I think you’re better off that she fired you.”

  “Tell that to the power company when they come to cut off our electricity.” He ran his hand across his tanned, sweaty face. His beard needed trimming. “I’m sorry I’m in such a piss-poor mood. I just can’t see the bright side of anything today.”

  “Well, you bagged a turkey,” I said.

  He grunted and came very near to smiling. “Yeah, I guess.”

  “So what’s going on with you, Billy? You’ve been acting really strange ever since the morning we found those moose. McQuarrie asked you to stay at the gate, but instead you took off for God knows where without telling anyone. The next thing I know, you’re outside Karl Khristian’s bunker, daring him to shoot you. What gives?”

  “I didn’t want to lose my job,” he said. “I figured if I helped crack the case quick, I would be a hero.”

  I wanted to believe him, but the explanation seemed forced. “There’s something else. Stacey Stevens backtracked the first moose to the spot where it was shot. It turns out it was killed outside the gate, and right nearby was an empty Bud pounder.”

  “So?”

  “Bud pounders are what you drink. The forensic guys are going to dust that can for fingerprints. They’re not going to find your prints, I hope.”

  He clapped his hand to his shining forehead again. “They might. I litter sometimes. Cans fall out of the back of my truck. It sure as shit doesn’t mean I shot any of them moose.”

  “Billy, they already have your prints on one of the shell casings,” I said.

  “I picked that up by accident!”

  “Rivard is hell-bent on hanging someone for these killings, and because you have a poaching conviction, your name is near the top of his list.”

  “God fucking damn it!”

  For the first time since the night we’d met, I felt nervous around Billy Cronk. I had to prevent my hand from drifting down to my service weapon. “You need to tell me you didn’t have anything to do with what happened on Morse’s property that night,” I said.

  “You don’t trust me?”

  “That’s not an answer.”

  He spun around in a complete circle, nearly stomping on the head of the bird. “I can’t believe you’d accuse me of that, Mike.”

  It wasn’t lost on me that he was evading the simple question I had asked. But instead of helping him to open up to me, my approach seemed to be having the opposite effect and antagonizing him. I decided to change tactics.

  “Betty Morse is offering a twenty-thousand-dollar reward for information that leads to the arrest and conviction of the person or persons who killed the moose,” I said.

  He became suddenly still. “No shit?”

  “No shit,” I said.

  “Do you think she’d give me the money if I was the one who provided the information?” he asked.

  “I don’t see why not—as long as you weren’t involved with the crime.”

  He glared at me with a hardness that did nothing to dispel my worries. “You should talk to gun dealers.”

  “We have been. Cody Devoe has been making the rounds of the local stores, asking if they sold any twenty-twos lately.”

  Billy shook his head. “I mean the private dealers, the ones who sell under the table. When I worked for Call of the Wild, we bought some used guns from these two guys named Pelkey and Beam. They work with my brother-in-law over to Skillen’s, but they’ve got a sideline dealing guns for cash.”

  “Lots of people do around here,” I said. “Besides, two nights ago, you were convinced Karl Khristian was the shooter.”

  “I’ve been thinking what you said about it being two guys. That fucker KKK doesn’t have a friend in the world.”

  “Where do these Pelkey and Beam guys live?” I asked.

  “Talmadge,” he said. “They live together.”

  “Together?” I held up two fingers, one twisted around the other. “As in together?”

  “Some chick lives with them, too. But who knows what they all do behind closed doors.”

  “So what made you think of them in particular?” I asked.

  “I went with Joe Brogan to their trailer a couple of times to try out some deer rifles. We wanted to get some cheap thirty-thirties and thirty-aught-sixes—you know, big-caliber rifles for guests who weren’t the best shots and could use the extra stopping power. The weird thing was, this Pelkey guy kept trying to talk us into buying twenty-two Mags instead. He said it was more of a challenge using the smaller caliber. Brogan told him our clients were challenged enough without using squirrel guns.”

  “What’re their full names?”

  “Todd Pelkey and Lewis Beam. Will I get the reward if it turns out to be them?”

  I thought about how to answer his question honestly, knowing the consequences of being truthful here. In the end, I decided that, however cagey he was being with me, Billy Cronk was my friend, and I wasn’t going to lie to him. “If it’s just your bringing forward their names, I’m guessing it would be no.”

  He nodded but didn’t speak.

  “Don’t do anything stupid, Billy,” I said.

  He reached down and grabbed the turkey by its long scaly legs. As he passed, I caught a whiff of the dead jake. I had forgotten
how much turkeys stink.

  “Where are you going?” I called after him.

  “I’ve got to tag this bird down to Day’s store before Aimee can cook it,” he said. “Don’t want any game wardens to accuse me of poaching it!”

  The odor of the dead bird left a bad taste in my mouth.

  20

  When I got back to my truck, I called McQuarrie to get instructions on what I should do next. He told me to go home. For all Rivard’s bold talk about putting his entire division on this case 24/7, I guessed that certain budgetary realities were taking hold. Wardens could volunteer their time to assist on a particularly heinous investigation, but as government employees, we were protected against being coerced into “donating” our services for days on end. Under the Garcia law, we would need to be compensated for all this overtime.

  “Do you know Todd Pelkey and Lewis Beam?” I asked McQuarrie.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Met them in the woods around Talmadge a few times. Pretty good hunters. They both bag multiple deer each season. Why?”

  “I think we should add their names to the list.”

  “Is this a hunch, or have you got proof of something?”

  “Their names came up in a conversation I had today,” I said. “Can you check them out on MOSES?” That was the computer system the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife uses to keep its records about the individuals we come into contact with during the course of our work. It isn’t a criminal records database, although it does include hunting and fishing infractions.

  “I’ll give the tip to Bilodeau to check out,” said McQuarrie. “If he finds anything interesting, we’ll let you know.”

  I’d been hoping to get immediate information, but my sergeant’s answer contained clear, if unstated, instructions to me: Stay focused on your own assigned duties and leave the investigation to the investigators.

  I took his advice and headed home.

  * * *

  As I drove, I found myself having an internal argument with an imaginary version of Elizabeth Morse. She’d found a tender spot when she’d said that I was unlike my fellow wardens in some essential way—that I seemed to be pretending.

  I grew up in the woods, lady, I told the out-of-focus blond image in my head.

  Just until you were nine, she replied, somehow having access to the facts of my life. You really grew up in suburbia.

  Yes, but even when we lived in Scarborough, I hunted and fished. I got my junior hunting license when I was twelve years old and shot my first deer when I turned sixteen. I would have taken one earlier if I’d had an adult willing to accompany me.

  But you didn’t. Your father was up in the woods of western Maine, and the only sports your stepfather was interested in were tennis and golf.

  My dad taught me to shoot a twenty-two in a gravel pit when I was eight years old. He took me out with him on his trap line.…

  He took you out one time.

  I watched him butcher the deer he brought home each season.

  But he never took you hunting with him.

  I was too young.

  Basically, you had to teach yourself everything. You present yourself as having been this impoverished child from the North Woods, but you spent your entire adolescence in an upscale town of green lawns and new subdivisions. So who are you, really? The modern-day Huck Finn or the straight-A student from Scarborough High School?

  I can’t be both?

  There’s a division in your personality that everyone can see. It’s why you disobey the commands of your superiors and why your fellow officers don’t fully trust you. They sense your essential insecurity.

  I know exactly who I am, Ms. Morse.

  You don’t sound very convincing when you say that, Warden Bowditch, said the imaginary woman with the catlike smile.

  * * *

  My cell phone rang as I was pulling into my dooryard. The number was blocked. Elizabeth Morse again? I thought.

  “He came back again, Mike!” said Chubby LeClair.

  The late-afternoon sun was slanting through the pine boughs outside my cabin. I watched a red squirrel scamper across the mossy roof like a burglar looking for a way to sneak inside. All I wanted to do was grab a beer from the fridge and sit down on the porch and enjoy a quiet moment. The day had left me in a bad place. “Who did, Chub?”

  “That other warden, Bard. He came back and asked if he could search inside my camper again. I’d just gotten everything picked up from before. I told him I wasn’t awskassu, that I didn’t want to make trouble. But I wasn’t going to let him in again without a warrant. He told me that sounded like I had something to hide.”

  How had I become the confessor and therapist to this drug-dealing con artist? I took off my sunglasses and rested them on the dusty dashboard. I needed to rub my eyes. “Well, do you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re a convicted criminal with a history of poaching. There’s a reason we’re looking at you for those shootings.”

  “I thought you and me were witapiyal.” He seemed to be having a hard time drawing a breath, but then again, the overweight man always sounded as if he had a bank safe resting on his chest.

  “Knock off the Passamaquoddy act, Chub.”

  “I thought we were friends.”

  “We’re not friends,” I said. “I don’t even like you.”

  “Why are you being this way, man?”

  “Because you have no regard for the law, and the word around Washington County is that you trade drugs to teenagers for sexual favors. For all I know, Bard is right and you did kill those moose.”

  “I didn’t, man.” He was definitely hyperventilating now. “I’ve done some bad things. You’re right. But I’ve got a big heart. Ask anyone.”

  The squirrel had disappeared. Had it found a gap between the shingles? That was all I needed. Red squirrels were known to chew on electrical wires. Half the house fires in the area seemed to have been started by arsonist rodents. “What is it you want from me?”

  “Call him, man. Tell Bard to stop harassing me.” His tone had turned babyish, as if he was on the edge of tears. “I can’t take it. I’m going through a rough patch, you know? It’s like a very, very bad time for me.”

  “I’m not going to do that,” I said.

  “But he’s outside the house!”

  “What?”

  “He’s been sitting there in his truck for the past hour, just sitting and watching my windows. I’m afraid to go out there.”

  Leave it to Bard to make me feel sorry for a blubbering pedophile. But the last thing I was going to do was call up another warden, especially one in the good graces of the lieutenant, and tell him to cut out bullying a prime suspect in the worst wildlife crime in Maine history. My reputation didn’t need another nail in the coffin I had nearly finished carpentering.

  “I’m sorry, Chub,” I said, “but I can’t help you here. If you have a problem with Bard, call the Maine Warden Service in Augusta and report him for misconduct.”

  He gave one last sob before he hung up the phone.

  I had spent the first two and a half years of my career as an insubordinate troublemaker. McQuarrie had told me my life would get better if I’d just start being a team player and did everything by the book. At the moment, I couldn’t say that approach was exactly working for me, either.

  * * *

  When I opened the door, I heard the scratching sound of tiny claws digging into wood and caught sight of a furry tail slipping through a crack between the fireplace and the ceiling. A hole had been chewed through the loaf of bread I’d left on the counter beside the sink, and there were hard black pellets of squirrel shit on the kitchen table. I’d have to get the ladder out and climb up onto the roof in the failing light and attempt some emergency repairs. I needed to act quickly to stop this infestation.

  But first I got a Molson out of the refrigerator and opened it using the Leatherman multitool I wore on my belt. I’d gone through a period after
the end of my relationship with Sarah when I had worried about my alcohol consumption, so I had stopped drinking altogether, but I had started having an occasional beer again over the winter and had managed to keep my life (and my drinking) under control.

  I noticed a new message waiting on my answering machine. “Were you ever going to call me back?” My stepfather, Neil Turner, rarely sounded enraged, but his voice was as superheated as any time I could remember. “I know we haven’t been close for a while, but I think you owe me the courtesy of returning my phone calls, especially where your mother is concerned. Call me at the office, call me at home, or call me on my cell. But please, Michael, just call me today.” And he left the three numbers at which he could be reached.

  My stepfather was right. It had been rude of me not to call him back, no matter how preoccupied I’d been with the moose investigation. It was almost as if I had been eager to forget about him. Why was Neil so worried about my mom? I hadn’t received any of her inspirational e-mails all day, I realized. Now the fact that she’d fallen silent sent a shiver through my central nervous system.

  I set the beer down and called my stepfather back on his cell. “Neil? It’s Mike.”

  “Oh,” he said with formality. “Hello. Thanks for calling. Can you hold on a minute?”

  I had the sense that he was leaving one room and entering another. When he came back on the line, he was whispering, but there was consternation in his voice. “I’d expected you to call sooner.”

  “I’ve been working a pretty big case.”

  “Oh?”

  “You’ve probably heard about it. Ten moose were killed on Elizabeth Morse’s land in Washington County. It’s been all over the news.”

  “I must have missed it,” he said. “I’ve had other things on my mind.”