the Poacher's Son (2010) (20 page)

He paused and gave me an appraising look up and down. "Mike," he said finally, "I'm going to ask you a question, and I'd like you to answer with the truth. If I go up to that cabin there, what am I going to find?"

A jacklighted deer, I wanted to blurt out. The words were literally at the tip of my tongue. But when I spoke, it came out as, "Nothing."

He shook his head and let out a sigh, and I realized the expression on his face wasn't displeasure so much as disappointment. Even though we had never met, he had expected better of me. "I'm afraid I'll have to have a look, anyway."

He brushed past me and had taken two steps up the stairs when my father's voice sounded above us in the darkness: "Kind of late for flying, isn't it?"

Charley squinted up at the moonlit silhouette looming at the top of the stairs. "Is that you, Jack?"

"What's going on?"

"I thought we might sit down and have a cup of coffee."

"I'm all out of coffee, Charley."

The warden smiled. "Maybe you can help me with some detective work."

My father laughed. "Is that so?"

"You see, I've been flying tonight and--maybe you saw my plane earlier?"

"I saw it."

"The thing of it is, we've had a bad problem with night hunters out this way. So I thought I'd fly around a bit, what with the moon so bright, and see what I could see. And wouldn't you know about a half hour ago I saw a pair of headlights over on the King and Bartlett Road. The funny thing about them, though, was that they weren't moving. In fact, it looked to me like maybe what was going on was that somebody was jacking a deer over there. You know what also gave me that impression? The minute I swung over in that direction, those lights just snapped off all of a sudden."

"What does that have to do with me?"

"Well," said Charley. "The coincidence is that the truck I saw bore a resemblance to that old Ford you drive."

"That's quite a coincidence."

"It occurred to me it might actually be your truck, in fact."

"I've been here all night. Ask the boy."

The warden looked at me. "Is that true, son?"

I nodded.

"You mind if I have a look at your truck, anyway? Just so in the future I can learn to tell it from the other one."

"How about showing me a warrant first?"

"What do you say I just have a look around so we can clear up any misunderstanding." The warden took another step up.

"Don't come up here!" said another voice.

Charley froze. I saw his hand drop down near his holstered sidearm. "Now who would that be?"

"Truman Dellis," I said.

"I'd like a look around, Jack," Charley said. There was a new hard edge to the warden's voice.

"Not without a warrant," said my father.

"Go away!" shouted Truman.

I heard my father hiss, "Put it down. What's wrong with you?"

"What's going on up there, Jack?"

"Nothing. It's just too late for this bullshit, Charley. Why don't you just get out of here?"

"Please." I wasn't even aware that I had spoken, but Charley Stevens turned to me. Something in my eyes must have told him of the danger he was in.

"All right," he said after a long moment. "I'll come back in the morning."

"Bring a warrant!" shouted Truman.

Charley smiled but didn't answer him. Instead, he turned to me. "I'll see you later, Mike."

Standing rigid as a statue, I watched the warden pilot descend the remaining stairs and wade back out into the shallows to his plane. He tapped his forehead, a gesture of good-bye to me, and then climbed into the tiny cockpit. Moments later, the propeller began to turn and the plane taxied off to deeper water. I watched it take off until its shadow passed across the moon.

Only then did I realize that I had been holding the bullet the whole time. I opened my fist and saw it gleaming there in the moonlight. Quick as I could, I tossed it into the lake.

Later I learned that Truman Dellis had been aiming a rifle at Charley Stevens while he stood on the stairs.

My father chewed him out about it. "What were you going to do? Kill him over a damned deer, you fucking idiot? What the hell's wrong with you?"

I was unimpressed by this sudden show of conscience or
rationality or whatever it was, especially since we spent the rest of the night getting rid of the deer parts. Truman and my father carted the meat and bones away to bury in some secret spot in the forest while I scrubbed the kitchen clean.

The next morning, while I was working at the sporting camp, Charley Stevens returned with another game warden to inspect my father's camp and truck. Russell Pelletier was pissed about it, but he told me they didn't find so much as a deer hair. Truman Dellis spent the next day with a smug grin on his face, but I knew my father had been humiliated by having the wardens search his cabin. And he hadn't even been able to keep the deer.

A few days later, I told him that I wanted to go home.

"It's about the other night, isn't it?"

"No."

"That Truman is a crazy son of a bitch when he's drinking. I don't know what the hell got into him."

"That's not it."

Color rose to his face. "So what is it, then?"

"This isn't what I expected it would be."

"I'm not driving you to Waterville."

"That's all right. I'll hitchhike."

He thought it over a bit, then said, "Pelletier's going to Augusta tomorrow. Maybe you can get a ride out with him."

"I'd appreciate it."

"I never promised you anything," he said.

"No," I said. "You didn't."

D
riving home from my mother's house, I remembered that the funeral of Deputy Bill Brodeur was scheduled for sometime that afternoon at the Colby College gymnasium in Waterville. On my cell phone I punched in Kathy Frost's number. "I want to apologize for last night."

"Save it, Mike."

"So what did you do with the bear?"

"I sent the head to Augusta for a rabies test and buried the rest just to be safe. Look, I can't talk now. We're all getting ready for Brodeur's memorial service."

"What time is that, anyway?"

"Noon." There was a pause on her end. "I hope you're not thinking of showing up. Malcomb would throw a shit fit if he saw you there."

"I just want to pay my respects."

"Then stay home. Nobody wants to see you there, Mike. You might not like it, but that's just the way it is."

"I'll think about it," I said, hanging up and turning off my phone before she could slip another word in.

If I hurried, I might still make the service. I stopped at a gas station and bought a razor and shaved quickly in the restroom, cleaning myself up as best I could. Then I put on the spare field uniform I kept in my Jeep for emergencies.

When Kathy first told me about the Flagstaff homicides, I'd assumed I'd be part of the formal retinue of uniformed officers--game wardens, municipal and state police, sheriff's deputies, firefighters--who always attend the memorial services of a fallen law officer in Maine. But after my father lit out for the hills with a target on his back, it became clear that my presence at Brodeur's funeral would be unwelcome. Now that I was unofficially suspended, I found myself unconcerned about such matters. If I really believed in my dad's innocence, I had no reason to hide my face.

Road construction kept me from getting anywhere fast. Sunlight angled through the driver-side window as if through a magnifying glass. I blasted the air-conditioning until a mist formed on the inside of the windshield and goose bumps rose along my neck. The dashboard clock clicked off the minutes toward noon and I was still too many miles away. I thought of my fellow wardens gathering at Division B, all of them solemn and quiet in their red-and-green dress uniforms. In my mind I saw a parade of green patrol vehicles heading north in a procession up the interstate while I approached alone in my Jeep.

I hadn't been back to the Colby campus since graduation. As I negotiated my way through downtown Waterville, heading up Mayflower Hill, I felt a nervous excitement, as if I were returning to a new year at school. I saw brick buildings rising against a blue sky, and green lawns where summer students sprawled reading books and listening to music. I saw Miller Library with its white bell tower. Sarah and I once enjoyed a quickie in one of its darkened classrooms.

The funeral was well under way by the time I arrived. The parking lots between Seaverns Field and the gym were jam-packed with civilian vehicles and police cruisers. But my eyes went immediately to the green trucks bearing the emblem of the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife that were scattered among the other vehicles.

There was no room in any of the near lots. Finally, after driving around for ten minutes I found a space halfway across campus. Then I had to jog.

When I reached the gym, I found the foyer empty, but I could sense the proximity of a crowd in the next room. A large group of people gives off an energy like the buzzing of a hive of bees. Still, I was unprepared for what I saw. There must have been close to a thousand people seated in that gym. Rows of folding chairs, holding dozens of law enforcement officers in their multicolored uniforms, were arranged on the parquet floor, and still more officers occupied the lower bleachers. Civilians sat above them with only the highest benches on either side unoccupied. Basketballs hoops had been folded up to the ceiling to give everyone a better view.

Brodeur's flag-draped coffin rested on a platform surrounded by flowers at the front of the auditorium, and hanging behind it were other flags and banners. A podium and microphone stood nearby, and Sheriff Hatch, dressed in his uniform today instead of a sport coat, was reading from a prepared speech.

I hung inside the doorway at the top of the stairs and listened.

"Bill was what you might call soft-spoken," Hatch was saying. "But as they say, still waters run deep. Even though he was new to the department, I believe he was becoming a role model for other officers to follow. You can never accurately predict a man's potential, but I believe Bill Brodeur had as bright a future as any deputy I have seen in thirty years of law enforcement."

The sheriff cleared his throat and then took a long moment trying to find the place in the text where he'd left off. "Bill gave his life in defense of another human being. Too often certain actions of law officers are called heroic by the media when really they are just part of doing our job. That's the way Bill felt about it. If he heard you call him a hero, I'm sure he'd just look over his shoulder to see who you were referring to because he surely wouldn't recognize himself in that word. We, however, can recognize Bill's valor for
what it was, an act of sacrifice and courage. William Brodeur was a genuine hero, and it was my privilege to know him for all too short a time."

On the floor of the auditorium I was able to pick out the red dress jackets of Lieutenant Malcomb, Kathy Frost, and dozens of wardens I knew seated together in a row. Among the police officers on the dais I saw Deputy Twombley. His dress uniform was as tight around his middle as a sausage casing. His cherub cheeks were shining with tears.

The next speaker was Father Richard Pepin, a thin, bespectacled guy with a French accent, who identified himself as Brodeur's parish priest. He recalled the deputy in the sort of vague terms that made me think he knew the family well but the young man not at all. He asked that everyone remember the other man killed that night, Jonathan Shipman, of Wendigo Timber, whose family must also be grieving, and he ended with a prayer for the assembled law enforcement officers, asking God to "protect these brave men and women, grant them your almighty protection, unite them safely with their families after duty has ended. Amen."

"Amen," we all said.

The service went on like that. Family and coworkers of the dead man talked emotionally about him, but the shapeless anecdotes they told--of his love of snowmobiling and NASCAR--left me without a sense of who Brodeur had been as a man. I realized, too, that no one had mentioned a girlfriend. The picture that emerged was of a quiet, responsible, yet unremarkable young man. His death seemed senseless and unlucky--he truly was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The service drew to a close. While a bugle and bagpipes played taps, the pallbearers lifted the flag from the coffin and folded it in military fashion into a tight triangle and presented it to Brodeur's mother. She clutched it to her breast. Then, along the aisle, an honor guard formed a corridor of uniformed bodies. Everyone
stood as the dead man's coffin floated on the shoulders of the pallbearers down the aisle and outside into the sunshine.

I watched the auditorium empty. I knew that Brodeur would be given a twenty-one-gun salute as his coffin was loaded into the hearse. Then uniformed officers would line the roadway down Mayflower Hill. Outside, afterward, there would be a crowd of familiar faces. My gut felt like a knot of worms.

"Warden Bowditch!"

I hadn't realized anyone was behind me. I spun around and came face-to-face with a wiry old man in an ill-fitting black suit. He had a hawk nose and fierce green eyes that held my own without blinking. I almost didn't recognize him without his warden's uniform.