Knife Creek

by Paul Doiron

  The training for becoming a warden investigator was like a tutorial in the dark arts. I was acquiring the power of second sight. Where a regular patrol warden might see an “accidental” shooting, I could now detect the bloodred aura of murder. I was being instructed in how to read the thoughts of a guilty person in the smallest of gestures.

  This new knowledge came with a price. When I left the office that evening, my brain felt as sore as it had during the worst days of my concussion. I drove on autopilot until I hit the Cumberland County line in Casco. I was busting along at seventy miles per hour when I passed Dani Tate’s cruiser, parked in a turnaround with her radar detector pointed in the direction from which I’d come.

  She recognized my champagne-bronze Sierra as an unmarked warden vehicle. But that didn’t stop her from pulling me over.

  Instead of stopping behind me, she swung her cruiser around in the opposite direction so that we could talk through our driver’s side windows.

  “Nice truck. That classy color must have been extra.”

  “Come on, Dani.”

  She flashed me a smile that showed off her dimples. “Mike, I’m really happy for you. You’re the best person I know for that job, but you might not want to hear the reason why I think that.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re a jerk. You’re not afraid of asking insulting questions even if they make you look dumb. You use bluntness as a weapon.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh. “I guess there’s a compliment buried in there somewhere. In that case, let me ask you a blunt question. Why did you leave the Warden Service?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Why are you preoccupied with this?”

  “You owe me an answer because I saved your life.”

  “You didn’t save my life. I saved your life!”

  “Then we’re bound together in a fateful incident.”

  “Whatever you say, Shakespeare.” She shrugged. “I left because I looked around and realized I wasn’t going anywhere as a game warden. That’s all. No big secret.”

  “I always thought you were a rising star.”

  “Me? No way. You might not have noticed, but the Warden Service has never promoted a woman to a senior position.”

  “Kathy was a sergeant, before she was forced to retire.”

  “Meanwhile women in the state police are becoming lieutenants and captains. Look at Pomerleau. Kathy was opposed to me quitting. She hated to think that some of the same chauvinistic bullshit was going on as when she started. She understands my choice, but I think she’s still kind of mad at me for not sticking it out.”

  That explained Kathy’s refusal to answer my questions. “I guess I should have figured you were ambitious.”

  “Says the new warden investigator! I think ambition is something you and I have in common. One of a number of things.”

  The softness in her voice as she spoke those words caused a flutter in my chest. The reaction startled me and made me suddenly self-conscious as I had never been with her before.

  “I should be getting home.”

  “And I should be getting back to work. I’ll see you around, Mike Bowditch.”

  “Same here, Dani Tate.”

  * * *

  It was dark when I arrived at the house. It had rained briefly during the afternoon, and the puddles in the driveway reflected the motion-sensitive lights mounted above the garage. I climbed out of my new, unmarked truck and took a deep breath. The heat and humidity had finally broken as the front had moved out to sea. I paused a moment and watched a firefly bounce along in flight across the lawn. Another appeared a moment later, heading for the backyard. I decided to follow the glowing insects around the corner of the garage.

  To one side of our property was a mound of earth that the builder had cleared when he’d dug out the basement. Not knowing what to do with the spare dirt, he’d left the pile for later and had then forgotten all about it. Over the years, the hillock had been reclaimed by weeds and wildflowers: goldenrod, purple asters, and Queen Anne’s lace.

  Among those renegade flowers were hundreds of tiny flickering lights.

  Never had I seen so many fireflies at once. Some were green, others yellow, a few even orange. They flittered and bobbed about the weeds like tiny fairies holding court. I felt awed, as if I were witnessing some magical apparition, as if this gathering of lights were not meant to be seen by a mortal man.

  My mother had been a devout Catholic; my father just as devout a nihilist, although he would not have recognized the word. To her, this life was just a proving ground for the next. To him, the present moment was both alpha and omega. My own religious journey had taken me from the faith of childhood, through skepticism, and then into the darkness my father had inhabited. But lately—

  To spend as much time in nature as I did was to be confronted constantly with mysteries. Sights and sounds that defy easy explanation. The animism of ancient peoples—who saw demons in forest fires, gods in thunderbolts, and avatars in the wizened faces of trees—had become increasingly relatable to me. The natural world had so humbled me that it had reawakened some of the eagerness I had felt as a boy to believe in a universe of greater meaning.

  I unlocked the kitchen door and called, “Stacey, come quick.”

  A minute later, she appeared, dressed in her workout clothes, T-shirt and running tights. “What is it?”

  “Look!”

  I pulled on her wrist and led her around the garage to the flickering wall.

  “Have you ever seen anything like this? So many fireflies at once?”

  “It’s beautiful,” she admitted. “They must have been waiting for the rain to stop before they came out.”

  I stepped behind her. She smelled sweaty, but not unpleasant, from her exercise. I wrapped my arms around her waist. But she didn’t relax at all into my embrace.

  She turned her head toward me. “You’re never going to leave Maine, are you, Mike?”

  There was no answer I could give that would satisfy her, and we both knew it. After a while, she tapped me on the hand I’d pressed to her abdomen. It was, unmistakably, a sign to let her go.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  I must begin with a confession. Feral swine are not invading Maine. Not yet, anyway, although there is an honest-to-goodness breeding population of wild pigs in central New Hampshire, as Mike Bowditch notes, and some intrepid stragglers may yet wander across our man-made border.

  Beyond introducing rampaging boars to Maine, I may or may not have exaggerated some of the excesses that occur on the Saco during the height of summer, but the river’s regular paddlers will recognize that I have altered its environs and current course for my own purposes. There is, for instance, no Oxbow Island. Nor does the town of Birnam exist.

  Patrolling the Saco is as demanding a job as exists in Maine law enforcement, and the presence of certain unsavory characters in this novel should not be viewed as disparagements of any real-life police officers. By almost all accounts, the Saco offers a safer, better-managed recreational experience than it did in decades past, and credit should be given to the Fryeburg PD.

  I have fully exercised my artistic license elsewhere in Knife Creek, but I will leave it to readers to identify those occasions.

  As always, I have many people to thank for having made the writing and publication of this book possible.

  I am grateful to Corporal John MacDonald of the Maine Warden Service for fielding my many, often ridiculously nit-picky, questions about the job he and his colleagues do.

  Thank you to Sgt. Scott Gosselin of the Maine State Crime Laboratory for giving me an extensive behind-the-scenes look into Maine’s state-of-the-art forensics resources.

  Judy Camuso, Wildlife Division Director of the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, helped me speculate how Maine might deal with a feral swine apocalypse.

  To my friend and police consultant, Bruce Coffin, retired Portland Police Detective and accomplished author of the John Byron crime
novels: I owe you a breakfast.

  At Minotaur Books, I am grateful to Charles Spicer, April Osborn, Sarah Melnyk, Hector DeJean, Paul Hochman, and Andrew Martin for having stuck with me from the beginning. Thank you to the incredibly supportive crew at Macmillan Audio, not to mention my unsung series narrator, Henry Levya.

  Agent Ann Rittenberg, I couldn’t do this without you.

  To my first readers—Kristen Lindquist, and David and Vicki Henderson—I appreciate your helping me work out the knots and kinks.

  Bless my family.

  And Kristen, this one again is for you.

  ALSO BY PAUL DOIRON

  The Poacher’s Son

  Trespasser

  Bad Little Falls

  Massacre Pond

  The Bone Orchard

  The Precipice

  Widowmaker

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  PAUL DOIRON, a native of Maine, attended Yale University, where he graduated with a degree in English, and he holds an MFA in creative writing from Emerson College. The Poacher’s Son won the Barry award and the Strand award for best first novel, and has been nominated for the Edgar, Anthony, and Macavity awards in the same category. He lives on a trout stream in coastal Maine with his wife, Kristen Lindquist. Visit him online at www.pauldoiron.com, or sign up for email updates here.

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  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Author’s Note

  Also by Paul Doiron

  About the Author

  Copyright

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  KNIFE CREEK. Copyright © 2017 by Paul Doiron. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  www.minotaurbooks.com

  Cover design by David Baldeosingh Rotstein

  Cover photographs: landscape © Habrda / Shutterstock.com; wild boars © AP Photo / Matthias Schrader

  The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

  ISBN 978-1-250-10235-5 (hardcover)

  ISBN 978-1-250-10237-9 (e-book)

  e-ISBN 9781250102379

  Our e-books may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension 5442, or by e-mail at MacmillanSpecialMarkets@macmillan.com.

  First Edition: June 2017