by Paul Doiron
“Is that why Mrs. Cobb’s signature is the only one on the lease?”
“Must be.”
It was hard to tell if Steven was stupid or being deliberately unhelpful or both.
“Did you ever meet Mr. Cobb?” asked Pomerleau.
Steven turned his unfocused eyes from the blaze to the cluster of emergency vehicles—fire trucks, police cruisers, and ambulances—in the road. “No, I never met him.”
The breeze shifted and pushed a cloud of pine-scented smoke in our direction. Pomerleau suggested we retreat down the road to get out of the way of the firefighters.
“Can you describe what Mrs. Cobb looked like?” she asked Steven Nason when we’d gotten clear of the fumes.
“Skinny. Brown hair. Your height.”
No mention of a crimson wig, I thought.
Pomerleau turned to the mother. “What about you, Mrs. Nason? Did you ever meet Mr. or Mrs. Cobb?”
“I certainly did not!”
“Did I say something to offend you, ma’am?”
Surgery had left Deanna Nason’s face unable to show anger, but you could hear the building frustration in her voice. “You have to understand that we own dozens of buildings and have hundreds of tenants.”
“But you admitted the possibility that the Cobbs rented from you before? Would your other son—Christopher, is it?—know if they had? You said he used to manage the business end of things.”
“I don’t understand what it has to do with Christopher.”
Pomerleau could no longer contain her exasperation. She clicked her pen a few times in obvious frustration. “We’re going to need to talk to him.”
Deanna Nason’s mask finally slipped, even if her expression remained static. “What the hell for? He’s a lawyer down in Portland. He’s busy! He doesn’t have time for this bullshit.”
“Mrs. Nason—”
“I’m not going to be sued for negligence! We’re not to blame for this. We keep our buildings up to code. If two deadbeats forget to turn off the gas burners—”
Pomerleau cut her off. “I’m sure it’s a stressful situation for you, not knowing if your tenants perished. I should have waited until later to start this conversation. In fact, I think we should continue back at my office. Can you call Christopher and have him meet us at the Troop B barracks in Gray?”
“Why are you trying to drag Chris into this? He just got that job as an associate. What will his bosses think? Are you trying to get him fired?”
“No, ma’am. Not at all. And I don’t think the partners at his new firm would find it suspicious for him to answer a few questions about his family’s tenants. Meanwhile the fire marshal can go about his investigation—”
“Investigation? I told you we’re not at fault here!”
“It’s the formal term for a review of the incident scene.”
“We came out here to be helpful and because we were concerned about Frank and Rebecca.”
A few minutes earlier, Deanna hadn’t even known their names.
Once again, I found myself unable to keep my trap shut. “Do you know Eddie Fales, who owns Fales Variety?”
“That shitty place at the crossroads?” Deanna said. “I wouldn’t set foot in there.”
“What about you, Mr. Nason?”
Steven was staring absently at a group of police officers—Fryeburg cops and county deputies—standing idly by their vehicles. A big man in a blue uniform was telling a joke that must have been hilarious based on how hard the others were laughing.
“Mr. Nason?” I said again.
His half-bald head turned slowly. “What was the question?”
“Do you know Eddie Fales? I spoke with him this morning and he said you’d told him the house was unoccupied—that you were having trouble renting it.”
Steven had the blank expression of a person being asked to solve an algebra problem in the original medieval Arabic.
“He must have been confused,” he said at last. “I was talking about a different house.”
“When was the last time you came out here?”
“Last winter?”
That was bullshit. The cedar shingles I had spotted at the rear of the building were new and hadn’t even begun to weather.
“Do you remember another woman living here at the time? Early twenties? Attractive? She might have been Mrs. Cobb’s sister.”
Steven Nason stared down at his mud-caked boots without answering.
His mother, however, eyed me up and down as if she were taking the measurements for my casket. “And who are you again?”
“This is Warden Bowditch,” Pomerleau said.
“What is he getting at?” Deanna asked, as if I weren’t present.
“It would be helpful to the fire marshal to know how many people were living here,” I said.
Deanna Nason finally let her artificially green gaze range up the slope to the fire raining embers from the sky. “I suppose that makes sense.” She glanced at her son. “Answer the warden, Steven.”
“I don’t remember a sister. Mama, don’t you have an appointment at the beauty salon?”
His mother seemed as startled by his sudden mindfulness as we were. “Yes, I do. Thank you for reminding me, baby.”
He jingled the keys in his rough palm. “Shouldn’t we go?”
“If the police will allow us to leave,” Deanna said.
“Thank you for coming over here so quickly,” Pomerleau said. “Here is my business card. If you can think of anything else about the Cobbs, don’t hesitate to call me.”
Deanna Nason accepted the card as if someone had sneezed on it. “I can’t imagine we will. As I said, we have hundreds of tenants and can’t be bothered to get to know them all personally.”
“You should expect that the fire marshal will want to have an in-depth conversation about your building.”
Deanna Nason’s fake eyes flashed. “I have to say that I resent the implication that we are at all at fault for anything here. I can’t understand why we are being made out to be the bad guys. It’s not like we wanted this tragedy to happen.”
“I’m sure you didn’t,” Pomerleau said, letting sarcasm creep into her voice for the first time.
“Then again, maybe this is a blessing in disguise,” the mother said almost wistfully. “With the insurance we should be able to build something nicer here. Maybe a multitenant building. What do you think, baby?”
“We could charge more for rent,” he said.
People think that predatory landlords are city-dwelling monsters, but the Nasons proved that they can flourish in the backwoods, as well.
I don’t know how we held our tongues until the Nasons had returned to their SUV and driven back down the road.
Then Dani let one fly: “What a bitch!”
Pomerleau turned her pale eyes on the young trooper. “Come on, Tate. You know that’s not right.”
“For all we know, two or more people died in that explosion, and all she cares about is the insurance settlement.”
“You don’t understand. I wasn’t disagreeing with you. I meant that you weren’t using the right word. A woman like that requires the proper adjective. Deanna Nason isn’t a bitch. She’s a goddamn bitch.”
13
Because Birnam had no municipal water, tankers had to be brought in, one after the other, to feed the hoses. I saw the fire chief hurrying past. His face was smudged with creosote.
“So who did call the Nasons?” I asked Pomerleau after she returned from a brief consult with the Fryeburg police.
“Deanna and Steven must have at least one friend who’s a cop. Hard as it is to believe.”
“Those slumlords need a friend on the force to look the other way on their infractions,” said Dani. “You are going to interview them again?”
“Of course I am, Tate,” Pomerleau said. “But I want to see what I can find out about Frank and Rebecca Cobb first. Weird that no one has ever seen the husband. Don’t you think?”
“It’s weirder that Steven lied when he told Eddie Fales the house was unrented,” I said.
“What did I tell you about going on hunches?” said Pomerleau. A sheen of perspiration that shimmered like baby oil was on her translucent skin. “Obviously there are a lot of things here that don’t add up.”
“Did the Fryeburg chief know anything about the Cobbs?” Tate asked.
Reflexively, I glanced over at the spot where the idle police officers were gathered. The huddle was breaking up. I saw the Fryeburg chief and one of his men—an enormous specimen of a police officer—climbing into a garish cruiser. The Fryeburg prowlers were dark blue with orange and red swooshes along the side: a paint job that better belonged on a stock car, in my opinion, than on a patrol vehicle.
“The Fryeburg cops don’t get down this way as a rule,” said Pomerleau. “I’ve got to call the Oxford County sheriff’s department. There’s got to be a deputy who patrols this road and has seen the Cobbs coming or going.”
I glanced at my watch. The crystal was smeared with dirt. I needed to call Stacey before she heard about the explosion from someone else.
“So now what happens?” I asked.
“Now you follow me back to Gray to help make a sketch of the two women you saw. If they really did blow this house up, it would be nice to have more than a couple of aliases to go on.”
“I should call my sergeant, let him know what I’ve been doing.”
Pomerleau grinned as if she had decided she liked me after all. “He must be under the misapprehension that it was warden’s work.”
“He knows me better than that.”
“What do you need me to do, ma’am?” asked Dani.
“I want you to knock on doors from here to the crossroads. See what the neighbors know about the Cobbs. Go back to Fales Variety and hang out there a while. Ask questions of the customers.”
“What about Mrs. Fales?” I asked.
“I want to be the one who interviews her,” the detective said, “since she seems to be one of three people to have actually seen Becky Cobb in the flesh. Steven Nason, Connie Fales, and our own Warden Bowditch.”
Being on such a short list made me uncomfortable, I had to admit.
I drove back out to the main road to get clear of the emergency vehicles and the general chaos. Two Fryeburg police cruisers were parked in the lot of Fales Variety. No doubt the officers were helping themselves to free coffee.
What I would have given to stop there myself. But Pomerleau would have skinned me like a mink if I started asking questions before Tate had even arrived. I didn’t want to risk losing the detective’s newfound respect for my judgment.
On a whim I made a pit stop at the Knife Creek trailhead. It was quiet there in the green light of the pines. I rolled down my window and took a breath of balsam-scented air to clear the foulness of the house fire from my lungs.
Two mourning doves alighted in the parking lot, their wings whistling as they settled to the ground. I watched them strut along like animate bobbleheads pecking here and there for who knew what.
I tried Stacey on my phone, but the call went directly to voice mail. “So you know that house I told you about on Rankin Road?” I said. “It kind of blew up. It was a propane explosion. But I’m OK! I wanted to tell you before you heard the news from someone else and started freaking out. How did things go this morning with Barstow? I love you, Stace.”
After I hung up, I wanted to kick myself. How did things go with Barstow?
I had nearly died—again—and instead of sharing anything real about my experience with the woman I loved, I had shrugged it off. Then I’d asked a perfunctory question about her job. Had I wanted her to be furious with me?
On the other hand, my question might have been perfunctory, but my concern for Stacey was sincere.
In Maine government, as in most bureaucracies, it is remarkably difficult for supervisors to fire a problem employee who is a member of the state union. In my early days as a game warden I had stretched the limits of acceptable conduct so far I’d begun to wonder if they were made of rubber. But if anyone could contrive to get himself or herself canned from the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, it was the one and only Stacey Stevens.
* * *
The state police have three Major Crimes units. The southern division is housed at the Troop B barracks in the town of Gray. The building—a tidy structure as blue as a robin’s egg—is within a stone’s throw of our own Warden Service division headquarters. I thought of stopping in at HQ but didn’t want to risk running into my officious sergeant.
I could always argue that Pomerleau had commanded my presence in her office to investigate a potential homicide. It would be hard for my superiors to fault me for that.
At the barracks door, I pushed a button and gave my name to a disembodied woman’s voice that issued from an intercom. A moment later a buzzer sounded and an electronic lock opened. The door was heavy enough to have stopped a runaway cement truck.
“Detective Pomerleau wants you to go right to her office,” said the receptionist.
The building was small enough that I had no trouble finding my way. When I got to Pomerleau’s office, I understood why she hadn’t come out to the lobby to meet me. She was seated behind her desk with a smile so wide I could see the amalgam fillings in her back molars. She’d switched her phone to speaker mode, and a man’s electronically amplified voice was broadcasting from the console. She motioned for me to take a seat.
“You need to understand my brother,” said the man on the phone. “You’ve heard of the spectrum, right?”
“I am familiar with autism, Mr. Nason.” Pomerleau added the name for my benefit.
“Then you realize he processes information differently from you and me. You’re attributing evasiveness to him because he couldn’t describe one of our tenants. What you need to understand is that Stevie doesn’t ‘see’ faces at all. I grew a beard once in college, and when I came home, he didn’t even recognize me.”
Pomerleau leaned forward and swung her computer monitor around on its stand so that I could see the screen. She’d pulled up the Web site of a Portland law office and opened the page dedicated to associates. Beside a brief column of biographical text was a photograph of a pudgy, thirtysomething man in a charcoal suit and burgundy tie. His black hair was in full retreat from his forehead. And he had a grin that would have scared a small child.
“What about your mother?” asked Pomerleau sharply. “Is she on the autism spectrum, too?”
“That comment is unprofessional. And I resent it.”
“She didn’t do much this morning to ingratiate herself to us. For all we know, there might be bits of charred bodies in what’s left of your rental house. Your mother acted as if the explosion was a business opportunity to build anew.”
“I know Mama can come across as graceless. What you need to understand is that many of the people who rent from us—they’re not paragons of virtue, all right? You and I both know that. But we provide them with an affordable place to live. Look, I know we could do better about alerting you to illegal activities we suspect might be taking place on our properties.”
“I am going to stop you there,” said the detective. “At the moment, I really don’t give a crap about the drug dealing and prostitution taking place in your units. All I care about is finding the identity of a dead baby we discovered buried a quarter mile from your former rental house.”
“Are you talking about the girl in the paper?”
“I am.”
“I thought you were investigating the explosion this morning.”
“No, sir. The fire marshal is handling that investigation. I am trying to find out who left a dead infant to be devoured by wild pigs.”
“And you think there’s a connection to the fire? And that the Cobbs might be involved?”
Pomerleau held a finger to her lips for me to remain quiet. She didn’t speak a word of response to Christopher Nason.
“Detective?” he said at last. “Detective, are you there?”
She sat quietly for a few seconds more, then said, “Mr. Nason, I apologize, but I have the marshal on the other line, and I really need to take the call. Can I get back to you in a few minutes?”
“Yes, of course. But what you really need to understand is—”
“We’ll talk soon.”
She hit the end button on her console and leaned back again in her chair.
“Are you sure that was a good idea?” I said.
“Giving the Nasons added incentive to provide us with whatever information they’re withholding? I guess we’ll find out soon enough.”
14
No matter the building or the decade when it was constructed, law enforcement offices—at least in Maine—have a certain sameness. These elements are nearly universal constants: fluorescent lights that drain the color from every face, out-of-date computers humming because their internal fans never stop, government-issued posters and notices on the walls that no one actually ever reads, lingering smells of fast food hurriedly eaten at desks.
During Pomerleau’s conversation with Chris Nason, I’d had a chance to study the room, looking for personal items that might help me understand her better. I saw a framed certificate issued by the FBI showing that she’d completed a course at Quantico. Also a beefcake fireman-of-the-month calendar that must have been a gag gift from her superiors because there was no way the office HR person would otherwise have permitted it to remain tacked to the wall. Lastly, there were two portraits on her desk: of a boy, who looked to be eight, and a girl, who looked to be four. The kids had caramel-colored skin that suggested Pomerleau—who was whiter than a ghost—and her husband might be of different races. I was fairly certain that they hadn’t adopted the children since the first time I’d heard her name had been when she was on maternity leave and unable to work a case that involved me: a motorist had vanished after hitting a deer.
“Any hits on the Cobbs?” I asked.
“Not a one.”
“What? They didn’t even get gas at Fales Variety?”
“The Fales said they’ve had some people use stolen debit cards to buy gas before the cards were reported missing. We have a call in with their merchant processor. There might be something there.”
