Knife Creek

by Paul Doiron

  “Finch almost did.”

  “You are shitting me.”

  “He would have figured it out. Here’s the weird element in all this, though. They tased her first. That was how they were able to get the drop on her.”

  “Finch told you that?”

  “Mike, I was the one who found Connie Fales.”

  I sat back down on the sofa and heard the springs creak under my weight. “You need to tell me what happened, Dani. You need to tell me every detail of what you saw.”

  “That’s why I am calling.”

  We were on the phone for close to an hour. My questions were like a Hydra. Dani would answer one, and then I would have two more that needed answering. She hadn’t known what Finch was thinking when he arrived, but she could imagine, based on his inability to see what was in front of his face.

  “I need to go over there this morning,” I said at last.

  “Pomerleau knew you were going to say that. She doesn’t want you anywhere near the place. Besides, the ME has taken Mrs. Fales away. And Finch has closed everything until the techs finish their work. There’s nothing to see.”

  “What am I supposed to do with myself?”

  “Keep your head down.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “As far as I can count, there are three people who have seen Becky Cobb in person. One of them, Steve Nason, is probably an accessory. The other was just murdered. That leaves you.”

  Not for one second had I considered myself in danger. I still had trouble believing that these people would be so foolhardy as to target a law-enforcement officer for execution when doing so would rain hell down on their heads. But I appreciated Dani’s concern.

  “Thanks for the warning.”

  “Pomerleau said she’ll call you later to keep you in the loop.” I heard Dani yawn on the other end of the phone. “And now, I should get some sleep. I have another patrol later.”

  “They’re not even giving you the day off?”

  “I’d prefer to work.”

  I knew the feeling.

  Stacey had heard much of what Dani and I had said to each other. She had stayed for most of my questions. But in time she had gotten distracted by her own thoughts and left me alone.

  I found her in the kitchen, drinking orange juice.

  “At least we know they’re still in the area,” I told her.

  “And that’s a good thing? I keep thinking about that poor woman. Gunned down for selling a T-shirt. It makes me worried for you.”

  “They’re not stupid enough to come after me. If there’s one thing the Cobbs have demonstrated, it’s that they’re not careless. So how do you plan to use your newfound freedom?”

  “Freedom is a nice euphemism for being unemployed. I thought I might go for a run before it gets too hot.”

  “How far are you going?”

  “I was thinking of doing half the Mountain Division Trail. What’s that? Seven miles? Not very scenic but—”

  “I might not be here when you get back.”

  She looked frightened. “What?”

  “I just meant I have to work.”

  “Oh, right.”

  “Are you going to tell me what happened with your folks last night?”

  She pulled the brim of her cap down over her eyes. “Ask my dad. He’s the one who started it.”

  After she had left for her run, I cleaned myself up and put on my uniform. I noticed that Stacey had forgotten her cell phone on the kitchen counter. I hoped she wouldn’t need it today.

  * * *

  While I was eating breakfast, I decided that I would try to find the dirt track that led from the East Fryeburg Road down the peninsula to the homeless camp and the burned-out cellar hole Charley and I had visited the day before. I wanted to speak with Prudence and Jackson Smith again and have them give me a physical description of the man who’d called himself John Blood.

  The FBI agent had dismissed the idea that there might be a connection between the impostor who’d claimed to own that land and what had happened to Casey, but my instincts told me otherwise.

  Besides, interviewing the Smiths was as close as I could come to taking part in the investigation while maintaining the pretense that I was going about my usual routine. If pressed by my superiors, I could always claim to have been poking around the dark corners of my new district.

  Even with a GPS unit and a bunch of maps, finding the road that led to the campsite was trickier than I’d anticipated. I had assumed that it branched off the main drag that zigzagged along the edge of the bog from Route 302 down to the Denmark Road. Instead I discovered that it branched off not just one but two unpaved fire lanes, so small they appeared to have no names.

  A house was under construction at the second fork. If I hadn’t slowed to look at it, I would probably have missed the peninsula road altogether. The home had the look of a place that the owner had started to build and then run out of money halfway through construction and was waiting for his coffers to refill before he could put siding over the TYPAR walls and nail shingles to the exposed roof decking.

  Rural Maine was dotted with these sorts of structures, many of which would start to decay before they were ever finished—not just abandoned buildings but abandoned dreams.

  As I drove down the peninsula, going slowly since the trail was as ridged as corduroy, with exposed rocks waiting to rip a gash in my oil pan, I marveled at how the Smiths and their fellow drifters could ever have found their way here. I concluded that the inaccessibility of the place was its greatest virtue. If you’re a squatter looking to hide from anyone who might evict you from your makeshift camp, it paid to go past the point where a sane person would turn around.

  I hadn’t gone far, however, before I noticed a troubling sign: fresh tire marks led out of the woods but none went in.

  Sure enough, when I finally arrived at the clearing where the Smiths had parked their truck and pitched their tent, all I found were trampled weeds and a pile of dirty diapers. Cans of Dr Pepper lay scattered about the crushed bracken and other ferns. The only conclusion I could reach was that, for reasons unknown, the Smiths had felt they needed to clear out of these woods in a hurry. Maybe Charley’s and my arrival on the scene had panicked them.

  I wandered over to the cellar hole.

  A wood-pewee, a species of flycatcher, called from a stand of pines nearer the swamp. Based on the mosquitoes and deerflies that immediately descended on my exposed skin, the bird was about to enjoy a banquet.

  I didn’t see the cat until I felt her rub against my pants leg. The white-mittened feline had silently snuck up on me while my attention was fixed on the garbage dump.

  “Hey, Puddin.” I squatted down to stroke her spine from head to tail.

  She purred contentedly.

  “How could your people abandon you?”

  The cat continued to vibrate beneath my hand.

  Now I was certain that the Smiths had fled in a hurry. If they had been willing to abandon their pet to certain death at the talons of an owl or the fangs of a fisher, then the couple had been seriously spooked.

  I couldn’t leave the poor thing here to be eaten. I reached down carefully, afraid she might bite or scratch, but she allowed me to pick her up without resistance. Ever since the prior winter, I had carried a kennel in the bed of my Sierra, in case I had to transport some strange animal, wild or otherwise. Puddin started to struggle when she saw the jig was up, but I got her inside the crate and closed the cage door before she could slip past me.

  I had just started the engine and was turning the pickup around when my phone rang. It was Pomerleau.

  “Did Tate get in touch with you?”

  “She did.”

  “So you know about Connie Fales?”

  “I don’t suppose Finch found anything helpful? Mrs. Fales told me the security cameras outside the store didn’t work. It had to have been the Cobbs, you realize.”

  “Finch and I are proceeding from that assumption.�
�

  “It means they have another hiding place nearby.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Birnam.”

  I expected her to launch into a series of questions to determine what I was up to. Instead she said, “I need you to come over to the barracks in Gray.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “Tom Donaldson is here. When we told him we had news about his daughter, he wanted to come in rather than have us visit him at his house. We’ve just informed him Casey is alive.”

  “How did he take it?”

  “Not the way we expected.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She lowered her voice. “The bottom line is he wants to see you.”

  “He wants to see me? Why?”

  “Because you’re the only one of us who saw his daughter. I think he has questions only you can answer.”

  The truck gave a jolt as I hit a rock. What choice did I have but to go face the man?

  “It’s going to take me an hour if he doesn’t mind waiting.”

  “Based on the conversation we had, I don’t think he’ll mind.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  I did pause, however, at the fork in the road. I put the transmission into park and tapped a text message to Dani Tate:

  Talked 2 Det. Pom. Can u do me favor? Can u keep eyes peeled for blue Toyota T100 w/ a white cap and PA plates: FAR4401? Owners IDed themselves 2 me as Prudence & Jackson Smith.

  It took Dani less than a minute to reply:

  Yr squatters? What’s up?

  Me:

  Went looking for them but they cleared out FAST. Think they’re scared of someone. Like 2 get description of man who called himself John Blood.

  Dani:

  U and yr hunches!!! Can’t promise anything.

  Me:

  10-4.

  Dani:

  Anything else?

  I listened to the yowling coming from the back of my truck.

  Don’t suppose u want 2 adopt a cat?

  36

  I dropped the cat at an animal shelter on Route 302. Puddin was the most obliging feline I’d ever encountered. She accepted the handoff with such graceful resignation it made me wonder whether being passed from person to person had been the story of her life.

  Half an hour later, the receptionist inside the Troop B barracks again buzzed me through the security door, but stopped me from proceeding past the lobby. She made a quick call to Pomerleau, whispered into the speaker. A moment later, the detective, wearing the same blouse and slacks she’d had on the previous night (the wrinkles were new), appeared in the reception room. Her hair was a hopeless mass of whitish-blond tangles.

  “Thanks for coming.”

  Anxious as I was, I tried to open with something light. “Sooner or later, you’re going to need to talk to my colonel about the time I spend on this case. It feels like the state police should be the ones cutting my paycheck.”

  But Ellen Pomerleau hadn’t heard a word I’d said. “So I’ve got Donaldson in my office. I wanted to talk with you before I bring you in there. He knows the details—most of them—and I’ve gotten him to promise he won’t go to the media since it might jeopardize his stepdaughter’s life.”

  “Mission accomplished then.”

  “Not exactly. It seems that Menario called him after the two of you had breakfast the other day. Tony wanted to warn the guy that there was a rogue warden jeopardizing the case against Rowe.”

  “So what are you saying? That Menario has convinced him not to trust my testimony? What about the DNA evidence?”

  “Donaldson hasn’t told us what’s on his mind. The man is remarkably hard to read. All he said is ‘I would like to meet this warden, please.’”

  “Haven’t you been able to explain to him that this is all good news?”

  “It’s potentially good news,” she corrected me. “His stepdaughter was alive four days ago. But she’s spent the past four years in a living hell. And there’s no guarantee that her captors won’t kill her if they fear we’re onto them.”

  “What do you want me to say to him?”

  “Just answer his questions. Be candid but discreet in your answers. The most important thing you can do is give him hope. But don’t overpromise!”

  “Piece of cake.”

  “And no sarcasm.”

  Unconsciously, I checked my uniform. I repositioned my gun belt on my hips. I tried rubbing off a spot of pine pitch on my ballistic vest with no luck.

  Tom Donaldson had the dazed appearance of a person who was having trouble waking up from a deep sleep.

  “Mr. Donaldson,” said Ellen Pomerleau. “This is Warden Bowditch, who identified your daughter.”

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you,” I said.

  The plumber used the chair arms to push himself to his feet. He was nearly as tall as I was, maybe six-one, but fifty pounds heavier. His small blue eyes were set close together behind his glasses. His strawberry-blond hair was very fine and in need of a trim. He wore a red-and-green-striped polo and pleated chinos. Only his powerful forearms and his heavy work boots hinted that he worked with his hands for a living.

  “You’re the one who saw Casey?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Detective Menario called me about you. He told me you were making trouble.” Donaldson had a Chicago accent I hadn’t expected. But it matched his deferential, Midwestern demeanor.

  “Mr. Donaldson—”

  “No, I need to finish. I had given Casey up for dead, you understand. I’d buried her in my head. I took down all of the pictures of her in the house so that my fiancée would stop asking about her. I put them in a drawer in my bureau. I wanted to move on, but Tony had told me the declaration of death was coming. He wanted me to be prepared when the state police arrested Dakota Rowe and the TV cameras appeared outside my house. And then to get a call from him, telling me about you and your history—”

  The big man was standing so close to me I could feel his body heat. I could see the beads of sweat between his nose and his lip. His eyelashes were as pale as any I had seen.

  “I understand.”

  “No, I don’t think you do. I don’t think you can.”

  Before I could so much as flinch, the burly man reached out and wrapped his arms around me. His bear hug felt like literally being embraced by a bear.

  “Bless you,” he said, tucking his head into my neck. “Bless you, bless you, bless you.”

  * * *

  Once Tom Donaldson was done hugging and thanking me, he started in with the questions. What did Casey look like? Did she seem healthy? Did she do anything to signal she needed help? Did she say anything? Not even a single word? What about this Becky woman? Why didn’t Casey rush past her? Might someone have been holding a gun on Casey from the other room? Had I heard anyone else in the house?

  I tried my best to be circumspect. But there was no getting around the fact that none of my answers was encouraging.

  Donaldson had started the interview leaning toward me with his big hands gripping the armrests, but the longer we spoke, the more he slouched back into the chair. He kicked his legs out in front of him. It is heartbreaking to watch hope drain like blood out of someone’s face.

  “The thing is,” Donaldson said, “I really had resigned myself. Tony Menario would call me or want me to drive out with him to the memorial on the river, and he’d talk my ear off the whole time, about how we could get a proclamation of death soon—or whatever you call it—without having to wait the whole seven years, and about how he’d been keeping tabs on Dakota Rowe because he was worried he might hurt another woman or run off to Europe. The kid is rich, you know. Every morning, Tony seemed to wake up thinking about Casey—and I didn’t. It made me feel like I was this horrible man who had failed Claire. She was my late wife, Casey’s mom.” He removed his steel-rimmed spectacles and pinched his nose between his thumb and forefinger. “Do you think I am a bad person?”

  Why ask me? “I
t seems to me that you have been incredibly brave, sir. I am not sure how I would have behaved in your position.”

  “Do you have children, Warden Bowditch?”

  “Not yet.”

  I thought he was going to warn me against becoming a parent and risking having my heart shattered like glass.

  But again Tom Donaldson surprised me. “I hope you do someday. Casey and I fought all the time after her mom died. But that girl kept me going through the worst days of my life. I hope I did the same. The priest at my church says love is a mystery. He got that right.”

  Pomerleau, I noticed, kept glancing at the photographs of her two kids.

  “I guess the shock of it still hasn’t registered,” the plumber said. “That Casey is still alive. That she had a baby who died. I’m afraid how I’m going to feel later, when it starts to sink in. I’m afraid of the emotions I might have.”

  “We can suggest people for you to talk with,” offered Pomerleau.

  “Maybe you should call your priest?” I said.

  He tugged on an earlobe. “That’s probably what I should do. The thing that I keep thinking is, what if this was another cruel joke God is playing on me, like when Claire died, and then Casey disappeared? What if she turns up dead this time?”

  “Have faith, Mr. Donaldson,” said Pomerleau.

  Without thinking, I said, “We’re going to find her.”

  Immediately I knew I had messed up. I had made a promise, on behalf of other people, that I couldn’t necessarily keep. I didn’t have to meet Pomerleau’s gaze to feel the heat of her disapproval.

  There was knock at the door. Detective Finch stuck his head in. “Ellen, can I have a word?”

  She seemed relieved to step into the hall.

  “I should get to work,” said the plumber. “Are you going to need me for anything else? There’s nothing I can tell you that I didn’t tell Tony Menario four years ago.”

  “Do you want someone to drive you home?” I asked.

  The big man rose from his chair with a tired smile. “Thanks for the offer. Please thank Detective Pomerleau for me.”

  “I’ll walk you out.”

  It wasn’t even midmorning, but the sun was already raising mirages off the hoods of the vehicles parked in the lot. The air had the bitter taste of ozone, which reminded me of Maine’s location as “America’s tailpipe,” downwind of the pollution billowing from Midwestern highways and coal-burning power plants. Every summer, tourists came to my scenic state for the clean air. No one warned them about the smog.