Paul Doiron - Massacre Pond

I leaned back in my creaking chair. “I thought you didn’t like her.”

“I don’t! I think she’s nuts, but she’s a strong woman, and strong women make insecure men feel weak. That’s the story of my fucking life.”

“Language,” said her mother.

Skillen patted Stacey’s hand, the one with the engagement ring. “I guess that means I’m not insecure.”

She placed her free hand on his. “You have the opposite problem.”

Ora looked at my half-finished plate. “Mike, would you like some more pie?”

“No, thank you,” I said. “Can you excuse me for a second?”

I pushed my chair back from the table and went into the bathroom. The face in the mirror was fierce and uncompromising. I could stay here mooning over a woman I would never possess, or I could go back to work and find the men who murdered those moose. Maybe I wasn’t cut out to be a game warden, and sooner or later I would need to make that decision. But this wasn’t the time to play Hamlet. I had a job to do, and Charley was right that this case would haunt me for the rest of my life unless I did my part to solve the crime.

Somewhere in Boston, my mother was lying in a hospital bed, her body racked by disease and flooded with strange and potent chemicals. In my gut, I knew she’d been thinking of me as the doctors inserted the needle, thinking about my future. It seemed important tonight for me to act like the man she’d always wanted me to be. I owed her that much.

I flushed the unused toilet, ran water in the sink, and returned to the dining room table.

“I’m afraid I need to get going,” I said.

“So soon?” said Ora.

“I got a text from Sergeant McQuarrie. He wants me to meet him.”

Charley rose onto his overlarge feet. “Duty calls, then.”

“Yes,” I said.

Matt Skillen also stood up, but Stacey remained seated in her chair, studying me with an odd, confused expression. Her fiance stuck out his arm, and we shook hands.

“It was a pleasure.” For the first time, I heard the booze in his voice.

I smiled tightly but didn’t speak. I kissed Ora on the cheek and thanked her for her hospitality, and she reached out to touch the side of my face. “You are always welcome in this home,” she said.

“Good night,” I said to the room.

Stacey didn’t reply. She sat at the table, looking at her empty wineglass, while Charley walked me out the door and down the ramp. The wind was changing direction, swinging around from the north. The air seemed colder than it had since springtime.

“Keep me posted about the investigation,” he said. “I depend on you to satisfy my boundless curiosity in these matters.”

I told him I would and opened my truck door. Then I looked back, unable to stop myself from asking the question. “Do you know what was the matter with Stacey just now? Did I say something to offend her?”

“We don’t have cell coverage at the house,” he said, stroking his long chin. “Something about the hills around the lake. I’m sure she was puzzled how you could have gotten a text message in the bathroom. Stacey can be willful as all get-out, and she doesn’t always see the light right away. But in the end, not much gets past that girl.”

There were two ways back to my cabin. The longer one looped through Grand Lake Stream, acquiring a coating of asphalt along the way, turned east for eight miles to Indian Township, and then veered south again along Route 1 through Princeton and Woodland before it joined up with the highway that would carry me back into the familiar confines of District 58 and, eventually, the long dirt lane that led to my cabin.

Then there was the direct route. Unpaved and frequently blocked by toppled trees, it tunneled through the forest without passing a single secluded residence. A driver could break down on that remote logging road and wait twelve hours, or longer, for another vehicle to pass by. If he was lucky, the vehicle wouldn’t be a truck full of pill smugglers.

I chose the road less taken because I needed to get my head together.

Charley and his daughter had seen through my fraudulent excuse for leaving. After I got over the initial embarrassment, I thought about her silent, sullen reaction. My presence hadn’t even seemed to register with her over dinner, so why had my abrupt departure caused her to act that way?

The question didn’t merit an answer. I’d just promised myself to stop obsessing over Matt Skillen’s future wife. Instead, I needed to focus on the things that truly mattered now: my mother’s cancer and the investigation that might yet determine whether I would decide to leave my job with the Maine Warden Service.

By choosing the forest route, I had put myself out of the reach of cell phones for a solid hour. I wouldn’t get a signal again until I intersected with Route 9 outside Wesley. In retrospect, this had been a dumb move, since I’d wanted to call Neil to check on my mom’s condition. In researching chemotherapy online, I’d read that many people didn’t experience any of the most-feared side effects-nausea, vomiting, fever-until twenty-four hours or more after their first injection. I found myself praying that my mother was sleeping soundly at the moment.

My lower legs were cold; I hadn’t realized it until now. The heat wave didn’t seem to be breaking so much as shattering like a sheet of dropped glass. I hadn’t turned the heater on for months, and the vents gave off the musty odor of an abandoned nest.

A pair of yellow eyes flashed in my high beams, and I stepped hard on my brakes. A coyote-gray and reddish brown-bounded across the dirt road at the edge of the light. In Maine, they grew as big as wolves, and this one was as large as any I’d ever seen. I let my heart return to its normal rhythm before continuing on again.

My BlackBerry chimed as I was cresting the ridge above the Chain Lakes. I stopped the pickup in the center of the dark road and checked the phone’s lighted display. I was still miles from civilization and couldn’t imagine the possible vectors of radio waves that would have allowed a transmission to reach this spruce-blanketed hilltop.

I saw that I had received three missed calls from the same number, my stepfather’s, but Neil had not seen fit to leave a voice mail. He had, however, sent an e-mail message an hour ago:

Mike-

Tried your number a few times. I understand your work takes you out of cell coverage sometimes but had expected to hear from you before now. Your mother got through the procedure fine. The oncologist said it couldn’t have gone any better, although he said she had more questions about losing her hair than about anything else. You know how she is about her hair. She woke up nauseous a little while ago. So far no vomiting. This regimen is very aggressive, the doctor said. He expects significant side effects from the chemo, and there is always the risk of infection in these cases from bacteria in the GI tract. I’d appreciate a call when you get this. Day or night. Please.

— Neil

I pushed redial on the last-received call. The phone started to ring and then the signal dropped. I tried a second time and got the same result. The single bar had disappeared, and the display now showed no coverage, even when I plugged the phone into the booster. Such were the vagaries of mobile communications in the Maine North Woods. I decided I would try him again once I hit the highway.

Fifteen minutes later, the phone rang again. I snatched it up without looking at the display and said, “Neil?”

“Mike?” The voice belonged to a woman.

“Briar?”

“I’m having trouble hearing you.”

I raised my voice, as if that would somehow make a difference. “Briar, I’m here. Are you OK?”