Paul Doiron - Massacre Pond

There was no way in hell that Rivard had ever considered delegating the liaison job to another warden. This case was a career maker for the lieutenant, his next step on the road to colonel. You could hear his excitement in the raised pitch of his voice.

It hadn’t dawned on me until now what an ungodly spectacle was going to take place in these woods once the media got hold of the story. Elizabeth Morse was already front-page news across Maine, and that was before some psychos started murdering moose outside her mansion. Rivard had probably already called the television stations in Bangor, encouraging them to send out news vans with satellite antennas to broadcast from the scene. The only thing I cared about was busting the men who’d shot these animals, no matter who got the credit. Nothing Rivard was saying gave me confidence that we shared the same priorities.

The lieutenant took a deep breath, as if considering the best way to conclude his stem-winder. “You might not know this,” he said. “But in China, they use the same word for crisis as they do for opportunity . I believe we have an opportunity here to make history as conservation officers. Someday, I expect this investigation will be taught to every recruit at the Advanced Warden Academy. So I am not exaggerating when I say this will be a textbook case.” Suddenly, his face broke into a grin that made his mustache wriggle. “OK. That’s enough hot air from me. The day is already hot enough, and we have lots of work to do. Bilodeau and I will be meeting with the sergeants now, and they will be responsible for assigning specific duties to each of you. Understood?”

I raised my hand. “Can I ask a question?”

This time, Rivard chose to ignore me. “Make me proud, Wardens,” he said.

Cody Devoe came over, with his dog trotting close to his knees. “What question were you going to ask?” he whispered.

“I wondered if he knew the Chinese word for clusterfuck .”

8

The actual question I’d wanted to ask Rivard was whether he was bringing in a pilot to scout for additional moose kills. Charley Stevens lived just a few townships away. Despite being officially retired from the Warden Service, he was constantly volunteering his aerial assistance on search-and-rescue missions and other details requiring eyes in the sky. Knowing Stacey’s dad the way I did, I expected the old bird already had his Cessna gassed up and ready to go. All he needed was a formal invitation from the lieutenant.

I understood that Rivard needed to formulate a plan, but the sun was lobbing itself across the sky, and we weren’t any closer to finding the shooters. And where had Stacey disappeared to? I hadn’t seen her drive off with anyone.

Cody Devoe’s dog sniffed my knee. I bent over and scratched the panting K-9 behind her velveteen ears. “How are you doing, Tomahawk?”

“She doesn’t like the heat,” Devoe said.

“She’s not the only one.”

He waved absently at a yellow jacket that was noisily circling his head. “So everyone is saying you were the first one on the scene here.”

“Me and Billy Cronk.”

“I saw Billy on the way in. I didn’t know he was working for Queen Elizabeth. That’s an odd couple to be sure.”

I straightened up and brushed the dog fur from my hands onto my pants legs. “You shouldn’t call her that, Cody.”

“Why not?”

“It seems disrespectful.”

Devoe shrugged, ceding the point. My friend had the blocky shoulders and heavy brow of a caveman, but he was no Neanderthal. Anyone else might have needled me for defending Elizabeth Morse, but not Cody. “How do you think the shooters got in here anyway?” he said. “There are gates on every access road coming in.”

“Billy says he supervised the construction crew who built the gates, and he thinks they might have missed an old tote road or two.”

“No way,” said Cody. “I used to hunt these woods hard for partridge and woodcock. They didn’t miss any roads, so I don’t know what Billy’s talking about.”

I chewed over this nugget of information, unsure whether to swallow it. McQuarrie had stationed Billy at the Sixth Machias gate to let in whatever law-enforcement vehicles arrived on the property. For a moment, I considered hopping in my truck to go press my friend on this point, but I reconsidered when I saw my sergeant coming toward us across the field. Mack’s face was as red as a canned tomato, and his uniform was splotched with perspiration.

He whistled with his fingers. “OK, Wardens, time to get to work!”

In his job, McQuarrie supervised six men, only five of whom happened to be present. He gathered us together like a coach assembling his basketball squad before a game. “Here’s how it’s going to go,” he said. “Bayley and Sullivan, you get moose A. The lieutenant wants you to retrieve whatever lead or bullet fragments you can from the carcass. The site’s been pretty trampled, but do a sweep again to see if you can pull anything out of the weeds. Use Polson’s metal detector. Devoe, I want you to take your K-9 and see if you can backtrack the moose to the point where he was shot. That’s assuming Stacey is right about it not being killed here.” He turned his head. “Where is our pretty little biologist?”

“She disappeared,” I said.

“What do you mean she disappeared?”

“She wandered off while the rest of us were listening to the lieutenant’s rousing speech.”

“Hopefully, we won’t need to send out a search party.” He spat toward the ground and accidentally hit his own boots. “Bard, I want you to drive out to the gate and get a statement from Billy Cronk.”

“Shouldn’t I be the one to do that?” I asked.

“The L.T. wants Bard to do the interrogation, since you and Cronk are so chummy. Tibbetts, your job is to inspect every gate along the Stud Mill Road. See if anybody’s fucked with any of them. We’re looking for signs of forced entry. I’m going to take the lieutenant around to the kill sites using Mike’s map.”

“Doesn’t it make more sense for Mike to do that?” asked Cody.

I was relieved that I didn’t need to ask the question myself.

“We’ve got another job for Bowditch.” McQuarrie looked me in the eyes and, without blinking, said, “We want you to check out the gravel pits.”

“What gravel pits?”

“All the local ones. You’re looking for anyplace where these guys might have done some target practice beforehand. Check around for twenty-two shell casings. If we can get a match on the brass these guys used, we might be able to link their guns to the ones used to kill the moose.”

I clenched my molars together to keep from spitting out an expletive.

Again, Cody Devoe did my speaking for me. “Isn’t that kind of a shot in the dark, Mack?”

“This case is going to live or die on whatever circumstantial evidence we gather.”

The other wardens turned their heads in my direction. For reasons that made no sense at all-beyond the fact that Rivard disliked me-I was being deliberately marginalized from my own case. Even more than that, I was being assigned a task so obviously useless that the insult was plain for anyone to see. The lieutenant wanted me to waste my time. His treatment of me was a warning to other wardens who might choose to think for themselves. But instead of telling Mack McQuarrie what he could do with his gravel pits, I turned and walked toward my truck.

“Hey, Bowditch!” said Bard, a classmate of mine from the academy who was widely known to be one of Lieutenant Rivard’s pet poodles. “We’re not done here.”

“Let him go,” I heard McQuarrie say. “It’s OK.”

I noticed the ravens circling high overhead as I drove back toward the gate, small black specks twirling against the deep blue sky. There were two of them again, probably the same two. And I knew they were ravens, because crows do not soar.