Knife Creek

by Paul Doiron

  “If we’d known sooner, we could have had chops instead of mooseburgers and salmon fillets.”

  “I thought we were giving the meat to Aimee. She just arrived with the Cronklets, by the way. I guess they stopped to see Billy at the prison in Warren on their way over.”

  I said nothing, but Stacey seemed to sense my pain.

  “You have a life, Mike, a life beyond your job. You’ve worked hard to make one here with me. You should cut yourself a break and enjoy being with your friends for a few hours.”

  “It feels wrong to have a party when Casey Donaldson is being held captive.”

  Stacey studied me a while longer with those inscrutable green eyes. “So we’re supposed to put our life on hold? For how long? What if she’s never seen again?”

  Again, I had no answer.

  “You’ll be all right, Mike. Pretend to enjoy yourself and most people won’t even notice that you’re faking.”

  After she’d closed the door, steam fogged the mirror again and I lost sight of myself in the looking glass.

  * * *

  I had never seen our backyard this crowded.

  Stacey and I had been building a life together, and here it was in this collection of friends and family. With the notable exception of Billy Cronk, everyone we loved was here: Charley and Ora, of course; Aimee Cronk and her five tow-haired children; Kathy Frost and Maple (who, being a puppy, became the center of attention among the Cronklets); the Reverend Deborah Davies, chaplain with the Warden Service, and her ex-hippie husband, Burton, who ran an heirloom-apple orchard; Warden Cody Devoe and his shy new girlfriend, who clung to him the way a drowning animal clings to a log; Skip Morrison, recently promoted to chief deputy of the Knox County Sheriff’s Department; and two of Stacey’s college classmates from the University of Vermont, a married female couple named Jodi and Felice.

  I had planned to station myself at the Weber as an excuse to avoid making small talk, but Charley kept offering suggestions about my barbecuing techniques until he succeeded in displacing me from my own grill. It was all the more galling that his burgers and fish turned out perfectly cooked.

  To keep myself occupied, I took drink orders. Charley wanted black coffee (in eighty-degree heat), Ora wanted her usual whiskey and soda, the Cronklets wanted Moxie, the Reverend Davies wanted white wine, while her husband kept trying to foist off on us his homemade hard cider. Jodi and Felice insisted they could pour their own drinks, thank you.

  I felt a hand on my wrist and found Aimee Cronk smiling at me. She was short and open faced, and she carried her extra pounds with such voluptuousness that she attracted admiring looks from men wherever she went. She had a glass of Burton Davies’s cider in her hand.

  “You tried this?” she asked.

  “Not yet.”

  She leaned close to whisper. “Tastes like cat piss. And don’t ask me how I know what cat piss tastes like.”

  I’d always adored Aimee.

  “How is Billy doing? I heard you saw him on the way over.” Just saying my friend’s name made my mouth go dry.

  “Oh, he says he’s fine, but he really isn’t. You know I can read that man like a book, and I’m not talking War and Peace, either. More like the Classics comics version of War and Peace.”

  The state of Maine does not have parole, which meant that Billy, having exhausted his legal options, would not be getting out of the Maine State Prison early.

  “Aimee…”

  “It’s OK, Mike. He’s too macho to say it, but it means the world that you go visit him as often as you do. Stacey said you’re giving us a freezerful of boar meat. I didn’t even know that Sus scrofa lives in Maine.”

  “How do you know the Latin name for wild boar?”

  “Animal Planet.”

  More likely she had been reading Audubon or Smithsonian or some other magazine left behind in the waiting room at the dentist’s office where she was working as a receptionist. Aimee Cronk had never even graduated from high school, but I had always said she had one of the keenest intellects I had encountered and was more perceptive than the best FBI profilers I’d met.

  Just then, Deb Davies’s husband came along to thrust a glass of urine-colored liquid in my hand.

  “You need one of these, Mike!” the orchard keeper said. He turned to Aimee. “So what do you think, Mrs. Cronk? Pretty good, right?”

  “Purrr-fect.”

  I pretended to sip, murmured a compliment, and then excused myself. I passed through the busy kitchen (dumping the cider down the drain) and into my cluttered office, where I could think without being disturbed. I didn’t realize that Kathy was following me until she appeared in the doorway.

  Her face was dark with disappointment. “I just got a call from Ellen Pomerleau. She wants me up at the state crime lab at seven tonight for a meeting. That dead baby you found was Casey Donaldson’s? You knew I worked that search. When did you plan on telling me?”

  “After the party.”

  “You could have pulled me aside.”

  I said the first thing that came into my mind. “Where’s Maple?”

  “In her crate—which is where I’d like to shove you at the moment.” Kathy stepped inside my office. “Grasshopper, you need to tell me what’s been going on here. I don’t want to be the only person in the room without a clue. Pomerleau said I am supposed to drag you along, by the way. I asked her if she meant that literally.”

  31

  Kathy leaned against the door with her arms crossed and her neck tense enough for me to see individual muscles flexing beneath the skin. But as I told my story, the furrows in her brow disappeared, her lips parted, and her hands dropped to her sides. You could see the pain take hold of her. But she never came close to shedding a tear. Sergeant Kathy Frost had always been harder than her male colleagues—at least outwardly. It had been the price she paid for being the first female game warden in Maine history.

  “I’m sorry. I should have said something as soon as I got home.”

  “Forget about it.” She tapped the expensive Suunto GPS watch on her wrist. “We should get a move on. And you should change into a uniform. The bigwigs will take what you say more seriously if you’re dressed like a warden.”

  “Can you answer one question for me, first? Four years ago, during the search, did you really believe Casey was dead?”

  “I told myself I believed it. Pluto didn’t indicate once out in that swamp. I should have taken it as a sign he might be getting too old for the job. I’m not the only member of the search team who is going to have to live with abandoning that girl.” She reached behind her back for the doorknob and gave it a twist. “I’ll see you in Augusta, Grasshopper. I’d normally suggest we carpool, but I need some time to wrap my head around this.”

  It hadn’t hit me before what a neutron bomb this news would be when it exploded in the press. Kathy was retired on a disability pension, safe from consequences, but other wardens and police officers still on the job would be called to task for what they did and didn’t do to find Casey Donaldson. Careers would end in disgrace. Or in lawsuits.

  I slipped upstairs to change my clothes, then returned to the backyard in uniform.

  The Cronklets were still swinging like gibbons from the monkey bars. I envied them their innocence.

  The Reverend Davies stood up from the picnic table. “Is everything all right, Mike? Kathy said she had to leave.”

  “She had to run up to Augusta for a quick meeting.”

  “Now?” The warden chaplain always had her antennae up for accidents and emergencies that might require her ministerial services. “What’s going on?”

  “I’m not allowed to say. But I’ll fill you in when I get back.”

  “You mean you’re going, too?”

  “My presence has been requested.”

  We both knew I wouldn’t be back until long after the party was over.

  I found Stacey in the corner of the yard watching the Cronklets at play. “I’m sorry about this.
”

  “It’s not your fault,” she said with more resignation than I had anticipated. “It’s part of the job. And the job is who you are. I’ve always known that.” Then she hugged me good-bye with surprising intensity. “You need to find that girl, Mike. If she’s still alive, you need to find her.”

  Charley was waiting for me in the driveway, hanging off my truck as if I had caught him in the act of trying to stow away.

  “Don’t forget to mention that cellar hole,” he said.

  “The one at the homeless camp?”

  “That cabin burned down two or three years back—you can tell from the height of the willows growing up from the ruins. Now, it might be coincidence that it went up in flames the same as the house on Rankin Road. Or it might not. Either way, Pomerleau needs to check out this so-called John Blood who says he owns the land and find out why he’s willing to let campers dump their garbage there.”

  And here I’d thought Charley’s interest in seeing the cellar hole was another example of his crowlike curiosity. “We don’t even know that Casey Donaldson left the bog that way.”

  “Like I said, it might all be a coincidence.” He touched the brim of his cap to wish me good-bye and safe travels.

  * * *

  The Maine State Police Crime Laboratory is housed in an imposing brick building across the Kennebec River from the gold dome of the state capitol. Once it got dark enough, the national holiday would be celebrated with fireworks over the city. I doubted I would be out of the meeting in time to see the sky light up, let alone be in a mood to celebrate.

  When I pulled into the parking lot, I spotted a clutch of troopers gathered around a sports car. Dani Tate—recognizable by her signature shortness—was among them. As I walked over to have a look, I realized that the onlookers were conversing in whispers.

  The car was a brand-new Mustang Shelby GT. It had been a beautiful vehicle until someone had doused it with paint stripper. The caustic chemical had dissolved the clear coat and discolored the pigment underneath. If you had told me a flock of gulls had spent the night shitting atop the vehicle, I would have believed it.

  I hitched my thumbs under my ballistic vest like an old-time farmer lifting his suspender straps. It was an unconscious habit of wardens. The heavy vests did a job on your shoulder muscles, especially when you were paranoid like me and wore the ceramic plates inside.

  “Isn’t this Menario’s vehicle?” I asked Dani.

  “Yep.”

  “Dakota Rowe did this?”

  “If he did, he’s going to be number one on Troop B’s shit list.”

  I looked around and spotted Kathy’s Xterra parked at the shady end of the lot, once again for Maple’s sake.

  “So are you going to this meeting, too?” I asked Dani.

  “I’m a material witness, thanks to you.”

  “What do you mean ‘thanks to me’?”

  “It was you who almost got me blown up the other day.”

  “Or you could say that I was the one who saved your life.”

  “Whatever you say, Mr. Hero.” She had stopped using her fake gruff voice with me now that the others were out of earshot.

  The receptionist had to buzz us in through the door. The lobby included a small glassed display of antique forensic tools: ancient microscopes and fingerprint pads, crime-scene cameras and tape measures. A painting on one wall depicted three forensic technicians examining a bloody room in which someone had taped the outline of a recently removed corpse.

  I followed Dani into a brightly lit meeting room. Most of the seats around the rectangle of tables were already taken. Clearly this briefing was going to be more than an exercise in ass covering.

  I recognized some of the faces but not all of them. There was Pomerleau’s boss, Barrett, and her partner, Finch. The head of detectives for the state police sat beside them.

  I saw Menario, wearing his golfing polo and slacks, with his head bowed over his dossier, like a monk studying holy writ.

  Kathy sat against the wall, sipping a quart-size cup of soda through a straw. She beckoned Dani over to sit beside her, but there was no chair there for me.

  The well-tailored suit of a slim man gave him away as an FBI agent. Most Maine detectives seemed to buy their suits at two-for-one sales and never bothered to have them tailored.

  The Maine State fire marshal in his red uniform waited with his hands folded atop his report.

  Beside him, the Fryeburg chief of police slouched in his chair, looking sunburned and exhausted from a long day keeping watch over the Saco. He’d brought along one of his people: a blade-faced woman, also in uniform, who was probably the town detective.

  The medical examiner who had removed the dead baby from the pig wallow was conversing with two analysts from the lab downstairs. I expected to see the state forensic anthropologist, too, but he must have been granted a permission slip to miss the conclave.

  I didn’t know two men in plainclothes—obviously detectives from their demeanor—but imagined that they might represent the two counties where the search had taken place: Oxford and Cumberland.

  Someone tapped me on the shoulder. “Bowditch?”

  Turning, I was surprised to see the boyish face of Warden Service captain John “Jock” DeFord.

  Before I could express my surprise at seeing him, he said, “I don’t know about you, but this isn’t how I planned on spending the Fourth of July.”

  “No, sir.”

  Normally, the current search commander—the head of what we called our Overhead Team—would have been present for this kind of briefing. But DeFord must have supervised the initial search for Casey Donaldson on the Saco four years earlier before his promotion to captain. Hence his presence.

  DeFord rubbed his recently shorn scalp. “If you had told me last week that Casey Donaldson was still alive, I would have thought you were delusional.”

  “Four years without a sighting would have seemed conclusive to a lot of juries,” I said.

  “It doesn’t matter. We screwed up, Mike.”

  “The good news is that we can still save her.”

  From behind me, I heard Pomerleau call out, “Is everyone here? Good. Let’s get started.”

  The detective had dressed formally for the occasion, in a black pants suit and white blouse. You want to look smart when you are accompanied by the highest law-enforcement officer in the state.

  I was startled to see that the Maine attorney general himself had chosen to join us. Hal Hildreth was small in stature but had great gravitas. He wore a seersucker suit, loafers, and a gold Rolex. His cheeks and hands were tanned from yachting off Mount Desert Island. His brushed-back golden hair was reminiscent of a lion’s mane.

  One of his female assistants—I was guessing she was the prosecutor assigned to the case—whispered something in his ear as they took seats together that had obviously been reserved for them.

  The last person to enter the room was the sergeant who oversaw the crime lab.

  Pomerleau waited for him to close the door before offering her opening remarks. “Thank you all for coming here on this holiday evening. I realize what an imposition this is for you to take time away from friends and family. But as you will hear, time is of the essence. Many of you were part of the search for Casey Donaldson four years ago. Others were part of the concurrent criminal investigation that explored, at the time, whether she was the victim of homicide.”

  Menario glanced up finally from the papers spread in front of him. We made eye contact. His mouth tightened as if the sight of me was enough to cause bile to rise in his throat.

  “There are also people in this room who are only learning about Casey for the first time,” said Pomerleau. “For that reason I think the best place to begin is at the beginning.”

  She stepped aside so the head of the crime lab could start his presentation. He touched a button on a laptop and video monitors flickered on around the room. In each screen was the same image: a smiling young woman with tousle
d black hair, white teeth, and a distinctive mole on her cheek. She was seated in a red canoe with a paddle across her bare knees. The sergeant pushed another button on the computer and the image became a video. Over the speakers in the room came the sound of running water, garbled background conversation, and then laughter from the man who had been holding the camera.

  “Are you taking movies right now?” Casey said in a slurred but happy voice. “No, I’m not drunk! I only had one shot. One and a half. How do you paddle this thing again? I’m serious! Tell me.”

  Then she collapsed into a giggling fit.

  Pomerleau raised her hand toward the screen. “This is Casey Donaldson on what we’d thought—until earlier today—was two days before her death.”

  32

  Never before had I been in a meeting with so many high-powered people. The vibe felt somewhere in between the White House Situation Room and the Council of Elrond.

  “I’m not going to sugarcoat this,” said Pomerleau. “In the scheme of nightmare scenarios that Major Crimes has to deal with, this is right there at the top. Doesn’t matter how hard we worked or how thoroughly we searched for her—and I know many of you made real sacrifices looking for Casey—but there’s no way around the fact that we failed in our jobs. You can be sure her friends and family will remind us of that. And there’s a hundred percent chance this becomes an international news story. I’m talking about 60 Minutes, CNN, Fox News, the BBC.”

  “Shouldn’t our priority be finding Casey instead of worrying about damage control?” Kathy asked from the peanut gallery in back. No longer being a state employee had increased her already-considerable candor.

  Ellen Pomerleau and Kathy Frost had worked together previously, but the rush of blood to the detective’s pallid cheeks showed how little she appreciated the interruption. “That goes without saying.”

  “It seemed to me someone should still say it.”

  The attorney general, Hildreth, had a booming voice that belonged to a man twice his size. “I am going to ask that everyone refrain from interrupting Detective Pomerleau until she has finished the first part of her briefing.”