the Poacher's Son (2010) (9 page)

We went inside. There must have been twenty uniformed officers crowded into that dimly lit space. But the one I zeroed in on was Sheriff Hatch. He was leaning over a topo map spread out across a table, the center of attention. The room smelled of too-warm bodies and coffee brewing.

Dim as it was, I kept my shades on, not wanting to make eye contact.

The sheriff glanced up at me and scowled. "What's he doing here?"

"You want to step outside for a minute, Bowditch," said the lieutenant.

"No problem."

Why was I so surprised by their reactions? As a family member of a suspected cop killer, I should by all rights have been barred from the scene--would have been barred if not for the lieutenant. Uniform or not, I was the son of the fugitive they were all hunting. My loyalties were necessarily suspect.

I drifted over to the nearest spillway. A slanting roof covered the sluice. Beneath the rippling surface of the water the blurred shapes of rainbow trout flashed like silver coins at the bottom of a fountain. I closed my eyes and imagined myself on the Kennebago
River casting an emerger over a quiet stream, caddis flies rising around me, the sun hot on my neck.

"Mike Bowditch?"

I turned around. It was a man I'd never seen before. He was a muscular guy--a weekend weight lifter, by the looks of him--maybe forty years old, with a graying crew cut and close-set brown eyes. He wore a short-sleeved dress shirt and a navy tie still tightly knotted despite the heat of the day. There was a holster and a badge clipped to his belt.

He held out his hand for me to shake. "I'm Wayne Soctomah."

"You're investigating the homicides."

"Detective Menario and I are. The sheriff told me you spoke with your father last night."

"Not exactly. He left a message on my answering machine."

"You mind if I ask you a few questions about it?"

"No."

I expected him to pull out a tape recorder, just like the sheriff did, but he didn't even take notes. He asked exactly what I'd heard on my answering machine, and I told him, word for word.

"Do you have any idea who the woman was with him?"

"A girlfriend, I'd imagine. My dad is something of a ladies' man." I nearly said
lady-killer
.

"No one in particular?"

"Not that I know about. But we haven't spoken in years."

"Do you remember him ever mentioning Wendigo Timber?"

"No. The last time I saw him, this was still APP land." I decided to see how far I could push my luck. "Look, I know your investigation is ongoing, but can you tell me anything about what happened up here last night? I read in the paper about the meeting at the Dead River Inn. Do you think it was connected to the homicides?"

He grinned, amused at my brashness. "In other words, what do we know about how and why those two men were killed?" He
considered this for a moment. "I'm not going to say anything to compromise the investigation, but I can tell you that Jonathan Shipman and Deputy Brodeur were gunned down last night about five minutes after they left the Dead River Inn. They were trying to slip away from the crowd by driving down a logging road instead of going out the front way, and it appears that someone was waiting for them and opened fire on the deputy's cruiser. I won't say there's a direct connection between the meeting and the homicides."

"But it goes to reason, right? You think someone who was upset about the Wendigo deal snuck out of the meeting to set up an ambush."

"I really can't speculate. And I've already said too much."

"I appreciate the courtesy." Actually, I was surprised by the detective's willingness to say anything at all, considering what was happening with my father. Maybe he was the straight shooter Kathy said he was.

Soctomah smiled again. "I'd be asking the same questions if I were in your place. You want to help your father, so you need to know exactly what's going on."

I started to say, yes, but caught myself. Was he suggesting that I'd cover up for my dad to protect him? "I just don't want you guys wasting your time on a dead end," I said.

"That's the last thing we want, too. We're fortunate to have your help in this." He glanced up at the sky. "Man, it's like a sauna out here. What say we get out of the sun?" He gestured toward the mobile crime unit parked across the lot.

This guy is pretty slick, I thought.

Sure enough, when we'd settled down inside the motor coach and he'd grabbed us a couple of bottled waters, out came the tape recorder. "You understand about this, right?"

"Yeah," I said.

We went back over the subject of the answering machine message
again, this time for the record, and then moved on to my father's views on corporate ownership of the North Woods, his marksmanship with high-powered rifles, and general proclivities for violence. Midway through the conversation another detective appeared, a spark plug with a snub nose and a do-it-yourself buzz cut, who sat in the back of the vehicle, watching me with a sullen expression. Detective Menario, I presumed.

"How would you describe your relationship with your father?" asked Soctomah.

"What do you mean?"

"Were you close? Distant?"

"I lived with him, on and off, until I was nine years old. But after my parents got divorced, I only saw him occasionally. I spent a couple of months with him at Rum Pond when I was sixteen, working at the camp, washing dishes, that kind of thing, but it didn't work out."

"What happened?"

"I was a kid. I had unrealistic expectations."

"About what?"

"About everything," I said. "He had his own lifestyle, and I didn't fit in."

"Does he have any friends in this general vicinity? Someone he might turn to if he got himself into trouble?"

"I don't know. The only friends of his I met were Russell Pelletier and a guide named Truman Dellis. That's a guy you should definitely talk to. He's violent and alcoholic, and I wouldn't put it past him to shoot a cop."

The detective ignored my suggestion. "Anyone else?"

"There was another guy. I'm not sure he was a friend exactly. I saw my dad talking to him at the Dead River Inn. He had a shaved head and a goatee. My dad called him a 'paranoid militia freak.' "

"Would your mother know about your father's acquaintances?"

The possibility hadn't occurred to me before. "You're not going to drag her into this."

"Where does she live?" asked the agitated detective, Menario.

"Scarborough. She's remarried. And she has a different name now, Marie Turner." I gave them her phone number. "She's going to freak out when you call her."

"Why's that?"

"She's got a new life, a new family. She doesn't like to be associated with my dad anymore. It was a bad time in her life, and she'd rather forget it."

"She's an ex-wife." Soctomah gave a knowing smile. "Mike, I understand how difficult this situation must be for you. You've dedicated your life to enforcing the law, and now your father's a fugitive. But I don't have to tell you that your dad's a lot better off if we can find him quickly and get him to surrender. So if there's anything else you can think of, any other piece of information that might help us, we need to know about it."

"Only this," I said. "He didn't murder those men."

Soctomah blinked, clearly taken aback. "Why do you say that?"

"Because I know what's in his nature. He may be a son-of-abitch--I know that better than anybody--but he's too smart to kill a cop. I don't expect you to believe that. But the man you're looking for is some sort of terrorist kook. He killed that V.P. from Wendigo to send a message. My father wouldn't do that."

"So if he's innocent," asked Menario, "then why'd he run?"

"I don't know."

A look came into Soctomah's eyes that I didn't recognize at first. Then I realized: He was embarrassed for me. He thought I was deluding myself, and he felt pity.

"I know it looks bad," I said. "But you're mistaken about him."

Soctomah stood up in such a way as to make me stand up, too. "Thanks for taking the time to talk with us, Mike," he said, escorting me to the door. "We'll keep you posted."

"You know where to find me," I said, putting on my sunglasses to face the daylight again.

T
he search got under way and I had nothing to do. Lieutenant Malcomb said I'd be an observer, and that's exactly what I was: a spectator forced to watch while a platoon of heavily armed officers was deployed into the wooded hills east of the Bigelow Mountains.

When I was a teenager I used to have nightmares about being a ghost. In my dreams I'd float around like a phantom watching my family and friends, unable to speak to them, unable to interact. It was the worst thing I could imagine, and it was exactly how I felt now. Stuck in a crowded room, forced to follow the search on topographic maps, hearing the bloodhounds only in my imagination.

The dogs had picked up my dad's trail easily enough at the crash scene. But my father was a professional trapper, and he knew about scents and how not to leave them. His boots were always rubber-bottomed because leather and canvas leave a human odor. And he knew how to zigzag across streams and find paths of bare stone more or less impervious to smell. He scrambled through bogs so choked with fallen trees--spiked branches everywhere--that the dogs cut their pads to shreds trying to follow. He knew he probably couldn't outwit the hounds, but he could definitely exhaust their handlers and gain himself some time.

The reports came back by radio. Trail lost. Trail found again.

The tension got to people in different ways. I drank coffee until
my stomach burned. The officer in charge, Major Carter, of the state police tactical team, kept checking his watch. The sheriff left the room every fifteen minutes to piss. Lieutenant Malcomb found a pack of Lucky Strikes on a desk and stepped outside.

I found him behind the building, standing beside a bubbling spillway, lighting a cigarette. "Lieutenant," I said. "I know what we talked about before, but I'd like to be posted into the field. Let me direct traffic or something. I can't just stand around like this, waiting."

"We're all waiting."

"But you need more men out there."

"The governor's got the National Guard on standby." He dropped the cigarette and crushed it beneath his boot. "I think we can spare you, Bowditch."

There was nothing to say to that. Overhead I heard a faint drone and then saw a small airplane flash in the sun. It banked and swung westward into the deepening shadows beneath Little Bigelow and disappeared from view.

"That's Charley Stevens," said the lieutenant, as if identifying a species of bird. He left me staring up at the darkening peaks. In the mountains you really do run out of daylight early.

The Bigelows were named for Major Timothy Bigelow, who came through here with Colonel Benedict Arnold on his march to Quebec in 1775. It was a chapter of the Revolutionary War nobody talks about much anymore, but I remembered how jazzed I was as a kid to learn that my hometown was near a site of historic significance. My dad told me that Arnold brought a thousand men from the sea up the Kennebec River in leaky bateaux, portaging the heavy boats over Pleasant Ridge to the Dead River, then along the Chain of Ponds, heading overland again across the Height of Land that fences the border with Canada, and finally down the Chaudiere to storm the ramparts of Quebec. It was a daring plan and a complete
disaster. Hundreds of soldiers deserted, drowned, starved, or froze to death along that long march. More died on the Plains of Abraham in the snow beneath of the walls of the city. It was the first major defeat of the revolution, but I was captivated by the story anyway--the courage of the men fighting their way through a wilderness of impassable forests and wild rivers--and I remembered how crestfallen I was to hear afterward about Arnold's treason at West Point. How could my hero have become a traitor?

I watched the sun dip below the summit--the colors changed in an instant as it dropped from view--and I thought about all the lessons we fail to learn from history.

I was still outside half an hour later when officers came pouring out of the command post. Suddenly the parking lot was awash in blue lights and sirens. The sheriff made a beeline for me. Behind him were Lieutenant Malcomb and Major Carter, who was fastening on a Kevlar vest.

"We've got a situation," growled the sheriff. "Your father's gone barricade."

"He's taken a hostage," explained the lieutenant.

He motioned me to come with him in his truck, and I did.

"Who's the hostage?"

The lieutenant cranked the engine. "An old recluse named Bickford. The dogs tracked the scent to his cabin. And when troopers approached the door, they were fired at."

"Shit."

"I hope we can talk your old man out of there, Bowditch."

He's dead if we don't, I thought.

It was like a high-speed caravan. As we raced through the woods, our emergency lights turned the roadside trees blue and red--carnival colors that had no place in the natural world.