Rabid: A Mike Bowditch Short Mystery

by Paul Doiron

  At Helen’s Diner, Charley struck up a conversation with the superintendent of schools and verified that the family had obtained a waiver to homeschool their daughter.

  They didn’t shop for groceries at the IGA in Machias, which meant they must have driven the extra miles to Calais for some reason. Occasionally, the husband would stop in at Bill Day’s store out on the Airline Road for milk, eggs or, usually, beer, but Bill (who was a taciturn man himself) never engaged him in conversation.

  The warden asked around the Legion Post and got the name of someone with a nephew in California who had served in the same unit as the mystery man: First Battalion, Ninth Marines.

  “This feller’s name is John Hussey,” Charley said when he reached the retired Marine by phone. “He told me he was there in 1971. Might have had tattoos on his knuckles, LIFE and DEATH.”

  “Oh, that guy! I know who you mean. He married a nun.”

  Giang had been a nun? Charley knew grunts who had fallen in love with Vietnamese women, often favorite prostitutes, and had even managed to get them home to the States. But he’d never heard of anyone who’d persuaded a vestal virgin to abandon her vows. “That’s a new one.”

  “Well, she wasn’t really a nun. She was just a girl at a convent school. Came from a wealthy family who thought Hussey was the devil. She must have loved him, though. Christ only knows why.”

  In bed that night Charley told Ora about the conversation. He wondered what she thought it said about the couple.

  “Assuming it’s true?” she said, leaning her head against his strong shoulder. “I don’t know, Charley. But can you imagine what a strange life’s journey it’s been for that woman—from a cloister in Saigon to a house in the Maine woods? This must seem like an alien world to her.”

  “Or hell itself,” he said.

  * * *

  Charley was on patrol when the book arrived. Like all interlibrary loan parcels then, it came in the mail wrapped in brown paper. Ora had ordered it without telling him and the act had felt like a betrayal. She opened the mailbox and felt a sense of panic not unlike having received a ticking bomb.

  It was a sunny day in April, and the girls were playing in the dooryard. Ann was picking snowdrops from the flowerbeds and placing the white blossoms in her hair, pretending to be a fairy princess. Stacey seemed spellbound by an anthill, watching the tiny insects go about their endless, unfathomable labors.

  Ora smoothed her pants, sat down on the porch, and unwrapped the package. Like any librarian, she turned first to the pocket in back and removed the card showing how often the book had been checked out. This hardbound copy had come all the way from the stacks in Portland—the largest city in the state—and yet only a handful of readers had borrowed it over the previous few years.

  She started at the index and found a section that seemed devoted to the history of rabies in human beings. Then she flipped forward and began to read.

  “Fevers spike high during this final phase of the disease. The mouth salivates profusely. Tears stream from the eyes. Goose bumps break out on the skin. Cries of agony, as expressed through a spasming throat, can produce the impression of an almost animal bark. In the throes of their convulsions patients have even been known to bite.”

  Ora shut the book so loudly both girls looked up in alarm.

  She made her best attempt at smiling, but Stacey sensed something was wrong. “Mommy?”

  “Go on playing,” Ora said. “Mommy just needs to go inside for minute.”

  She found the scrap of paper on which she had jotted down Giang’s phone number. If John answered, she would hang up. That was her plan.

  The phone rang and kept ringing. The Husseys didn’t seem to own an answering machine. Charley was always going on about Ora’s supposed powers of precognition—which she herself discounted—but now she felt a tingle go through her nerves that spoke of some dire event having occurred.

  She opened the phonebook to the pages devoted to state agencies. She ran her index finger down the list of numbers, not sure of what term she should be looking for. Family services?

  Just then the phone rang and, without thinking, she picked up.

  “Stevens residence,” she said. “Maine game warden’s residence.”

  Charley often got work-related calls at home.

  “You just called me,” a man said. It was John Hussey. He must have dialed *69.

  “I apologize for disturbing you.” Ora was an unpracticed liar. “I dialed the wrong number.”

  He made a strange, lip-smacking sound when he spoke. “You said game warden.”

  “My husband is a warden.”

  “The one who came to my house that time?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did my wife call him again? Is that how you got this number? Why were you calling?”

  “I apologize for the intrusion,” Ora said.

  Through the receiver she heard him yell once last word: “Giang!”

  What had she done?

  Through pure thoughtlessness, she had put that woman and girl in even greater danger. She could call the sheriff’s office and ask them to send an officer to the Husseys’ home, but she knew how her request would sound to the deputies once she explained the reason for her concern. She knew these men and how reluctant they were—even the few who weren’t chauvinists—to interfere in domestic dramas.

  She needed to talk to her husband, she needed to talk to Charley.

  In the 1980s, Maine game wardens didn’t have cell phones. When they were away from the radios in their trucks, they were just about unreachable. Very often their own police dispatchers had no idea where in the woods they might be.

  Charley had mentioned something about helping the tribal warden do a boat patrol of bass fishermen on Big Lake. There were other, prejudiced wardens in the division who refused to work with the Passamaquoddy wardens, and it disgusted Ora to overhear the derogatory jokes these so-called peace officers made about Native Americans living on the nearby reservations in the worst poverty she had ever seen.

  She had no way to reach her husband, she thought again.

  Or maybe she did. There was a new warden working the district around Grand Lake Stream. She found his home number on Charley’s list posted above the desk. The odds of catching him were slim, it being salmon season, but many wardens came home for lunch. She held her breath, waiting for an answer.

  “Game warden,” said Mack McQuarrie.

  “Mack, this is Ora Stevens,” she said with relief.

  “Why, hello, Mrs. Stevens.”

  “Call me Ora, please. I was wondering if you could get a message to Charley?”

  “Is something wrong at home?”

  Suddenly she felt foolish for having called McQuarrie, a man she barely knew. She felt unprepared and unwilling to disclose sensitive information about the Hussey family to the young warden. If he was like most of the law enforcement officers, he would have a knee-jerk reaction against anything that smacked of interfering between a husband and wife. Even her beloved Charley, who was more progressive in his thinking than his colleagues, seemed to feel reluctance.

  “I just need to get a message to him,” Ora said. “Charley told me he was patrolling Big Lake today with Nick Francis. If you happen to run into my husband, or catch him on the radio, please tell him I got that book about rabies from the library.”

  “Ma’am?”

  “He’ll know what I mean. It’s important that he get the message as soon as possible.”

  “You’re sure there’s nothing wrong there?”

  It wasn’t her house she was worried about.

  Now what? It might be hours before Charley got the message or had a chance to call back. Ora Stevens was not prone to panic, but when she looked at her hands, she saw that they were shaking.

  She called Judy down the road and asked if she could watch the girls for an hour, and Judy being Judy, she agreed without needing an explanation.

  Ora put on a heavy sweater that she’d
just put away for the summer, but which already smelled of mothballs. Then she went into the mudroom and collected the girls’ coats, boots, and hats.

  “Mommy needs to go see a friend,” she told them, as she buckled their seat belts.

  Stacey, always the inquisitive one, asked, “Who?”

  Ora set the library book on the seat beside her and glanced at her younger daughter’s expectant face in the rearview mirror. “You haven’t met her yet.”

  Judy was waiting at the end of her long driveway when Ora arrived. The bosomy, pink-cheeked woman had twelve grandchildren and loved each as much as the next (though they didn’t deserve it equally, in Ora’s opinion). She was exactly the sort of person Ora hoped to become someday when her daughters had children of their own.

  “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” she said.

  “Take as long as you need, de-ah,” Judy said. “A mother needs her alone time.”

  As Ora set off again, the sun slid behind strangely colored clouds that reminded her of the strips of linen used to bind a mummy. The pale light gave the budding woods a softened, almost dreamlike quality devoid of shadows. Minutes earlier it had been warm enough to drive with the windows open. Now she felt a coldness that penetrated all the way to the marrow.

  Ora had no idea what she was going to do. She couldn’t very well knock on the door and wait for a potentially ill and definitely violent man to answer. And yet if she was being honest with herself, she very much wanted to see John Hussey again with her own eyes. The extent of his deterioration would tell her what she must do.

  She parked the Wagoneer at the top of the drive. Now that she had arrived, she felt the house pulling on her like gravity. She glanced around the vehicle for something that might offer protection. Unlike most wardens, her husband had no particular interest in firearms and only grudgingly wore his service weapon. There was no pistol in the glove compartment. There was, however, a tire iron. She concealed the long metal rod up her sleeve and started down the hill.

  As soon as she came within view of the house, she saw that the front door was open.

  The black flies hadn’t yet begun hatching from the brooks, but there were other bugs about. No one in Down East Maine left their door ajar this time of year. She clutched the hidden tire iron for reassurance and continued on across the dooryard, trying to approach from an angle that allowed her to see as deeply as possible into the interior. It seemed to her that the birds had gone silent, but in truth, she’d stopped hearing them.

  Twenty feet from the door, Ora was brought up short. She thought she heard a moan. Then a small shadow detached itself from the others within. She shook the tire iron loose from her sweater sleeve and into her hand. Then she took a step forward, onto the stoop. Despite her better instincts, she whispered: “Giang?”

  It took Ora a moment to realize her mistake.

  The figure wasn’t Giang.

  It was Lisa.

  The child staggered toward her covered in blood.

  * * *

  Out on Big Lake, a chop had picked up with the wind, and now the bow of the Grand Laker was throwing so much spray in his face, Charley wished he’d worn a raincoat.

  Aside from being drenched, he’d had a pleasant morning patrolling Big Lake with Nick Francis, the tribal warden for Indian Township. They hadn’t witnessed any gross violations or written any tickets, but they’d enjoyed a wide-ranging conversation that covered everything from the ineptitude of the Bureau of Indian Affairs to the proper way to prepare fried clams: battered versus breaded. Nick had given Charley a brief tutorial in the Passamaquoddy language, and then they’d debated the chances of the Red Sox finally winning the World Series. Charley was certain this would be the year. Nick was doubtful.

  “I’m an Indian,” the handsome young man had said. “Pessimism is self-preservation for my people.”

  Charley threw back his head and laughed with characteristic abandon. But his good humor evaporated the moment he saw Mack McQuarrie’s green patrol truck waiting at the boat launch. If another warden had personally come to fetch him, it could only mean bad news.

  McQuarrie climbed out of his pickup and waved as Nick killed the outboard motor. He was a barrel-shaped young man with hair thicker than a beaver’s pelt and a perpetual bulge in his cheek from chewing tobacco.

  Holding the bowline, Charley leaped into the water as the boat glided toward the shallows.

  “What’s wrong?” he shouted.

  “Just thought I’d see how you made out,” McQuarrie said. “How many Indian salmon poachers did the Lone Ranger and Tonto pinch today?”

  Francis busied himself bringing the boat to shore as if he hadn’t heard the insult.

  Charley scowled. “Don’t be a jackass, Mack. What’s going on?”

  The younger warden spat a nicotine stream onto the slanted boat ramp before he spoke. “Your wife called to say your library book was in.”

  “What?”

  “She said you’d know what it meant.”

  Charley stood in the water, holding the rope, while Nick Francis went for his trailer. “That’s all she said?”

  “I figured it was some sort of secret man-and-wife code you two used.”

  Charley was no expert on females—far from it he would admit—but Mack McQuarrie’s ignorance was a bottomless pit. Library book? He stroked his chin and stared across the windswept lake. Ora had ordered a book about rabies for Giang Hussey. But why would she need her husband to know that it had arrived?

  Unless she was planning some mischief.

  “Hey there, Mack,” Charley said, splashing onto dry land. “What are you doing this afternoon?”

  “I thought I’d scope out the Hatchery Pool. I know there’s at least one bastard there using worms.”

  “Change of plans. I need you to come with me.”

  “To get a frigging book?”

  Charley didn’t bother replying. He climbed behind the wheel of his truck, started the engine, and radioed the dispatcher, asking her to try calling his wife at home. As he’d expected, she came back on the air a few minutes later and told him there’d been no answer at the house.

  Charley knew his wife well enough to know where she was headed.

  It was a solid half-hour drive from Indian Township to Whitney, where the Husseys lived, and McQuarrie badgered him nonstop on the radio, asking where they were going and what the hell was really happening.

  “There’s a lady in danger,” Charley finally admitted.

  He hated being so blunt on the public airwaves, knowing what proportion of the citizenry in Down East Maine owned police scanners.

  By the time the two wardens reached the Snake Lake Road, the muscles in Charley’s neck and forearms ached from the tension of driving so far at high speed.

  He hit his blinker a quarter mile before the fire road to give McQuarrie advanced warning that they would be making a sharp turn. Even so, Charley hit the corner so hard he nearly whacked the side of his pickup against a pine tree standing sentinel at the intersection. He overcorrected and scraped evergreen boughs on the far side of the road. The drive twisted again almost immediately, and he hit the brakes. A good thing, too, or he would have slammed into the back of Ora’s parked Wagoneer.

  She had left it at the top of the hill, near the first of the POSTED signs.

  Charley blew out his breath as if he’d just dived to the bottom of a deep quarry. He was the reckless one in the family. Ora was supposed to be sensible. What could possibly have compelled to her venture alone and unarmed down to that cursed house?

  Then he saw the little girl sitting in the front passenger seat of the Wagoneer.

  He circled around to the side of the vehicle. The window was rolled down, but if Lisa Hussey heard his footsteps on the gravel, she didn’t show it. She was as motionless as a department-store mannequin.

  “Honey?” Charley whispered.

  Her face was the shape and profile of her mother’s, oval and flat, but her hair had some of her fat
her’s curls. Her eyes seemed unnaturally heavy and unfocused.

  He heard McQuarrie’s heavy step behind him. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed that the younger warden had drawn his .357 Smith & Wesson revolver.

  Charley tried again. “Honey? Are you all right?”

  The girl finally moved. She blinked and lifted her fingers to her mouth absently. Only then did he notice that her hands were covered in blood. The words came out slurred: “She said to stay here.”

  Now he understood what had made Ora take such an uncharacteristically dangerous risk.

  He turned to McQuarrie, wishing he had been more forthcoming about the situation. He pulled the other man out of hearing range of the girl. “My wife is down there. I think this little girl’s father just killed her mother.”

  “Jay-sus,” the young warden said.

  Now that he had an idea of what he might be facing, Charley had grown calm. It was his natural reaction to stress: the same genetic good fortune that had saved his life during the war and many times after.

  “Get on the horn with Dispatch,” Charley said. “Tell Nora to send the nearest trooper and an ambulance.”

  “You don’t want me to go with you?”

  “It’s important you stay with this child, Mack. Keep her safe. I’ll be back directly.”

  He didn’t run. He walked at a deliberate pace. The revolver in his hand felt as if it weighed twenty pounds. Charley’s grip was strong, and his heartbeat was steady, but he was aware of the adrenaline flooding his bloodstream. The trick, he had learned long ago, was to acknowledge the hormone but not be overcome by it: to focus the mind on one’s surroundings.

  Even before he saw the house, he saw the red of the Peterbilt tractor through the stricken forest. He removed his own revolver from its creaking holster and raised his arm at the elbow, pointing the barrel ahead of him.

  No need for stealth, he told himself. Only caution. And clearness of mind.

  When he came around the truck rig, he noticed that the front door of the house was standing open. No light issued from inside. It was just a rectangle of emptiness.

  He took a breath, let it out, breathed in again, and stepped forward.