by Paul Doiron
As I drove east beneath low-hanging clouds, I looked out at a world that had seemingly grown old overnight. The hills had a grayish cast from the exposed trunks of the hardwoods, and the color was draining out of the fallen leaves at their feet. Where once there had been splashes of brightness along the forest floor—yellows and reds and oranges—now there were just varied shades of brown that would eventually darken into a uniform russet. Defoliation had swept across the land like a forest fire or a plague, stripping all but the oaks and beeches of their ragged leaves. In the hollows and along the riverbanks were dark islands of conifers, but even these seemed more black than green this morning. Soon it would be winter.
I had to remind myself that this was just a seasonal change and not a permanent transformation. The color and warmth would return in April, and the majesty of these woods would reannounce themselves to a doubting world. In the meantime, I needed to keep faith, knowing that this seeming wasteland was the same beautiful place Elizabeth Morse believed must be preserved at all costs—if she even believed that anymore. Would she return to Moosehorn Lodge now that Briar was dead, or would the regret be too much to endure? There were other wild places she could save: forests and lakes that were not stamped with bad memories. I wondered if I would ever speak with her again.
The parking lot of the Crawford Lake Club was largely empty. Between the end of foliage season and the arrival of the first snowmobilers was a quiet period for the shoreside restaurant. The speedboats and Jet Skis were all gone from the marina, and the ice-fishing cabins the owner rented by the hour were just waiting for the lake to freeze before they could be hauled out again. The club was the only establishment serving decent food for miles in either direction. I should have known this was where Skillen would take Stacey on a lunch date.
I pulled into the space beside his newly washed and waxed GMC and got out.
The owner of the club had decorated the front porch with tall plastic palms. The whimsical trees were almost famous in the vicinity. Travelers would snap photos of one another with them, laughing and holding tropical drinks with miniature umbrellas. If the earth continued its crazy weather, I wondered how funny the joke would be in ten years.
I passed through the lounge to get to the hostess station. Someone had started a fire in the big fieldstone fireplace. A young girl with a handful of laminated menus asked me if I wanted to be seated, but I told her I was meeting people and pointed at a table against the window overlooking the lake, where two men and a woman were silhouetted against the natural light streaming into the room.
“Good morning, Warden,” said Merritt Skillen. I hadn’t expected the father to be dining with them.
“Mike, what are you doing here?” Stacey asked with a bemused smile.
“Hi, Stacey.” I tried not to make eye contact with her. “I’m here to see Matt.”
Matt Skillen leaned back from the lacquered table. “Me? What’s this about, Mike?”
“Maybe we should talk outside.” I could feel the other diners in the place watching us.
“That sounds ominous,” Merritt said, pulling out an empty chair with his strong hand. “Why don’t you have a seat?”
“I’d prefer to stand, sir.”
Stacey knitted her brow. “Mike, you’re acting really weird.”
“How did you know where to find us?” Matt asked.
“Your gatekeeper told me. I really think it would be better if you and I continue this conversation in the parking lot.”
His expression had darkened, as if he was beginning to guess what was about to happen. “You sound like you’re asking me outside to have a fistfight.”
“I would if I could.”
“What is that supposed to mean, young man?” the father asked.
I kept my gaze locked on his son’s dark eyes. “I know you paid Todd Pelkey and Lewis Beam to kill those moose.”
“What?”
“Pelkey and Beam are dead, so we’ll never get them to admit why they did it. Right now investigators are calling it a random act of violence against a woman who makes enemies easily. But there was nothing random about it. Elizabeth Morse once told me, ‘In the end everything comes down to money.’ It was obvious from the beginning that the motive behind the shootings was to intimidate her into backing off her proposal. The mistake everyone made was in not seeing there was a bigger plan here. Lots of people don’t want Morse to create a park, but your family is the one with the most to lose financially.”
“That’s an outrageous accusation,” said Merritt, removing his napkin from his lap and resting it on the table.
I ignored him. “The first tip-off was that they worked for you. The second was their new trucks. I visited their property and saw what a dump it was. Those assholes didn’t have two nickels to rub together, and yet somehow they both came up with the money recently to buy two thirty-thousand-dollar pickups?”
“Maybe they took out loans,” said Matt in a neutral tone. His face was utterly empty of emotion, as if he was willing himself to remain calm.
I noticed out of the corner of my eye that Stacey was no longer looking at me; instead, she had her gaze fixed firmly on her fiancé.
“I’m sure the state police will determine that they bought those Nissans with cash,” I said. “I’m also sure they won’t be able to trace the money back to you—although I bet their mourning girlfriend, Tiffany Bard, might have a thing or two to say on the matter.”
Merritt rose to his feet. “I think you should leave, Warden. You’re causing a scene.”
“Yes, sir. That is my intention.”
“Hearsay doesn’t amount to anything in a court of law,” Matt said.
Stacey leaned across the table, reaching for her fiancé’s wrist. “Matt?”
“That’s true,” I said. “But physical evidence counts for a great deal, even if it’s only circumstantial.”
A tubby, bespectacled man came up beside me. “Is everything all right here, Mr. Skillen?”
I ignored the proprietor. “I don’t know if you heard everything that happened yesterday in that gravel pit,” I told Matt. “You might not have heard that Todd Pelkey shot me. Fortunately, I was wearing a ballistic vest, or the bullet would have gone through my heart. So you can see why I am not in the mood to be diplomatic this morning.”
“Warden, can you please keep your voice down?” the bespectacled man whispered.
Stacey’s eyes were wide and darting.
“A minute before Pelkey pulled the gun, he received a call on his cell,” I said. “Someone was alerting him to the fact that I’d been asking around after him and Beam. He realized Billy Cronk was trying to set him up. I picked up the phone and checked the number. The call came from your lumber mill.”
Matt Skillen had grown quiet. I noticed his hand had closed around the butter knife.
“Anyone at the mill could have made that call,” Merritt said, his resonant voice full of anger. “How do you know it didn’t come from me? I was the one you asked about their whereabouts.”
“You’re right, Mr. Skillen,” I said. “I don’t know it was Matt who called them. Maybe it was you. But I do know it was Matt who chased Briar Morse to her death.”
“What?” Stacey said, so softly that it was hard to hear.
Matt Skillen glared at me. “That’s bullshit.”
“Briar didn’t get a good look at the truck that chased her both times. It was too dark. The only thing she noticed about it was that it made a strange noise. She said it sounded like it had a whiny engine. It made me remember something Stacey told me when we were in my truck together. She said your pickup had a loose serpentine belt, too. But I expect you’ve had it fixed by now.”
Merritt Skillen sat back down heavily in his chair. Stacey, I saw, was twirling her engagement ring around on her finger.
“Where were you the night Briar Morse died?” I asked Matt.
“You know where I was—with Stacey at her parents’ house.”
She shook
her head. “You went home. After dinner, you went home. You said you had to film a commercial in Bangor in the morning. You left right after Mike.”
“Stacey,” Matt said. There was an unmistakable warning in his tone.
“Oh my God,” she said, pushing herself back from the table so hard, she nearly toppled over.
“It might all be circumstantial evidence,” I said, finally letting the venom out. “And it might not be enough to convict you. But it’s enough to destroy your reputation in this state—and whatever else happens, I am going to make sure it does.”
“Fuck you.” He was still seated, gripping the knife tightly, but he didn’t have the guts to use it.
Stacey leaped to her feet. She was holding a hand over her mouth. Her entire body seemed to be quivering.
“Stacey,” Matt said again, this time pleading.
She shook her head no.
“It was me,” said the father.
The words caught us all off guard.
Matt Skillen whipped his head around, his mouth opening. “Dad?”
“I was the one who paid Pelkey and Beam to shoot those animals,” Merritt Skillen said, rising to his feet. “I was the one who called to warn them yesterday. I followed Briar Morse in my truck. I only meant to frighten her. I didn’t mean for her to die. I take complete responsibility for everything. If you’re going to arrest someone, arrest me.”
Matt Skillen reached for his father’s hand. “Dad, no! You don’t have to do this. There’s no proof.”
Merritt squeezed his son’s hand. His eyes gleamed with tears. “I’m not going to see your life destroyed, Matt.”
“But you didn’t do those things!”
“I love you, son.” Then he raised his eyes to mine and said with all the dignity he could muster, “Warden, I am prepared to make a formal confession.”
This was wrong. This wasn’t what I wanted. Matt Skillen was the guilty one.
Merritt held his wrists out for me to cuff. I knew it was unnecessary; the old man posed no danger to me. But I wanted his son to see the consequences of his actions. I reached for the handcuffs on my belt, the ones I had used to restrain my good friend the day before.
As I did, I caught sight of Stacey disappearing through the door of the lounge. I didn’t know where she was intending to go on foot, out here in the middle of nowhere. But I saw that she’d left her diamond engagement ring on the table.
39
The old man didn’t speak to me on the long drive to the jail. He sat with his big cuffed hands folded in his lap, staring out at the miles of timber that had once been his family’s feudal kingdom. I fancied he was asking himself again how he had managed to lose his birthright, just as he was now about to lose his reputation and, maybe, his freedom. There was only one thing of value remaining in Merritt Skillen’s life, and whatever else happened, he had made the decision not to lose that, as well. Despite my general dislike of the man, I couldn’t help but admire his willingness to sacrifice himself for his son. My only worry was that he would be successful in his deception.
Matt Skillen followed us into Machias in his gleaming GMC, his newly repaired truck as silent as a shark.
The sheriff came down from her office in the courthouse to the ill-smelling booking area. A white-nosed golden retriever padded along behind her. “Can you explain to me what’s going on here?” Roberta Rhine asked as she pulled me aside.
“He wants to confess,” I said.
“To what?”
“To everything.”
I laid out the whole story to her, including my certainty that the old man was taking the rap for his murderous son. “Merritt wasn’t driving his son’s truck the night Briar died,” I said. “But I can’t prove that he wasn’t the one who chased her, either.”
She turned her head to watch one of her deputies taking the mill owner’s fingerprints. “Do you think Zanadakis can persuade him to give up his boy?”
“No.”
“Me, neither,” she said.
The Washington County Jail was lit by cold fluorescent bulbs and smelled of the chlorine the inmates used to swab the floors. Somewhere behind the locked door that led deeper into the ancient prison, another door swung shut with a loud metallic clang. The sound seemed to echo in my heart. “Is Billy Cronk still here, or has he been transferred?”
“He’s still here,” she said, pulling on her long black braid. “The AG made the decision that we’d be the ones to hold him until his trial. He’s asking the judge not to set bail, and after seeing what was left of Beam’s melon, I expect the judge will agree. Billy’s going down for manslaughter.” She studied my eyes as if they were one-way mirrors she couldn’t see through. “Would you like to see him?”
I reached down to scratch the neck of the old dog. My hand came away with a fistful of hair from the shedding animal.
“I have to go,” I said, rising to my feet.
* * *
When I got back to the cabin, I found Kathy Frost waiting in the dooryard in her unmarked patrol truck. It was a new GMC with the same teal paint job as McQuarrie’s. It made me wonder whether all the division sergeants were getting the same new Sierras.
“You don’t call, you don’t write,” she said.
She was a fortysomething woman with a tall, athletic body that she kept in shape by running triathlons and playing smash-mouth basketball with a men’s team at the YMCA in Camden. She wore her hair in a sandy bob beneath her black baseball cap, and she was holding two large cups of coffee, one of which she offered me. Her grizzled coonhound, Pluto, lay asleep on the pine needles beneath her feet.
“What are you doing here?” I asked. She lived three hours away to the south, along the Maine midcoast.
“I heard about your showdown at the gravel pit. I want to see your bruise.”
I thought she was joking, but she actually made me unbutton my shirt and remove my vest. My chest was wrapped with bandages to hold the broken bones steady, but my ribs ached every time I took a deep breath. Goose pimples rose along my neck and arms from the damp autumn breeze. Rain was coming.
She pressed the purple flesh above the bandage with two fingers. “That is truly disgusting, Grasshopper.”
“Ow.”
“What are you doing on duty? Shouldn’t you be in bed, resting?”
McQuarrie had told me to place myself on sick leave, but I had decided to postpone my time off until I had it out with Matt Skillen. “I had one last thing to do today.”
“I want to hear all about it.” She peered up at a red squirrel that was perched at the apex of my cabin roof, watching us. “How about you let me inside so I can use the little girls’ room. I’ve had three cups of coffee today, and I didn’t want to pee in your yard.”
“I appreciate it.”
Kathy was one of only a handful of female wardens in the state and the lone sergeant. She had been a trailblazer in the service, resented at first by the old-school chauvinists like McQuarrie, but she had demonstrated her mental and physical toughness over the course of two decades. She’d dedicated her life to arresting scumbag poachers who boosted their incomes selling oxycodone to middle schoolers. She’d located the dead bodies of more raped and murdered women than anyone should ever be forced to see. And she’d shot a three-hundred-pound wife beater to death in self-defense. I had decided long ago that if I ever heard one of my colleagues make a sexist crack about female wardens, I would pop him in the nose on Kathy’s behalf.
Inside, I started a fire in the woodstove, and we sat down across from each other at the kitchen table. Pluto plopped his tired old body next to the heat and fell back asleep in seconds. Kathy and I looked at the dog as he started snoring, and then we smiled at each other. She picked up a squirrel pellet and made a comment about how at least I wasn’t living alone anymore. She took a sip of coffee and put the cup down, and suddenly she was all business.
“So this Cronk guy saved your life?” she said.
“Yes, he did.”
&nb
sp; “That will count for something at sentencing. You must have had a few tense moments in that pit. I would have wet my undies.”
“No, you wouldn’t, Kathy.”
She leaned forward and rested her forearms on the table. “You did good, Mike. While everyone else was patting each other on the back, you went out and found the guys we were looking for. Don’t think that will go unnoticed.”
I hadn’t told her yet about Matt and Merritt Skillen. As glad as I was to see Kathy, I didn’t seem to be in a talking mood. I kept picturing the diamond ring Stacey had left on that table. It seemed like the one hopeful thing I could cling to at the moment.
“Rivard is going to be demoted,” she said. “Word around Augusta is that the colonel is hanging him out to dry for everything that went wrong with the investigation. Queen Elizabeth has too much money and too many powerful friends. If Rivard had done his fucking job and not zeroed in so fast on Khristian and LeClair, there’s a good chance her daughter would still be alive.”
“It’s nice to think so.”
“You’re having doubts about the Warden Service.” She scratched her freckled nose. “I know you, Grasshopper. This whole fiasco has left you wondering whether you made the right choice. I fought hard for you those first two years when you were hell-bent on getting yourself fired, and I’m not going to watch you quit now.”
“I don’t know, Kathy,” I said. “I just don’t know.”
“What if I try to pull some strings and get you reassigned?”
My cell phone rang on my belt. I reached for it and saw that the number belonged to Neil. His silence had been another blade hanging over my head.
“Excuse me a minute,” I said.
I got up and walked into the bathroom and stood over the sink, looking at my gaunt reflection in the mirror. “Hi, Neil,” I said. “How is she doing?”
“I’m sorry I didn’t call you back, it’s just that—”
“What’s wrong?”
