Paul Doiron - Massacre Pond

“I need to see Briar.” Her lip began to tremble.

“Ms. Morse,” I said. “Betty.”

She pushed herself into me, thrust her chest against mine, and pressed her head against my neck. She made no sound as she sobbed, but I could feel every muscle in her body shaking. I wrapped my arms around her, and she gave me a hug that nearly broke my ribs. I could smell the herbal shampoo in her hair. Then she collapsed. Her legs just went out from under her, and I found myself bending at the knees to ease the weight of her body gently to the earth. I held her like that for a while, huddled over her almost, as if to protect her from an airborne attack. She seemed like a small and boneless thing, unrecognizable as the powerful businesswoman I’d first met. She was a mother who had lost the only child she would ever have.

After a few moments, I felt someone tap me on the shoulder. Tears streamed down Leaf Woodwind’s cheeks.

I let go of Elizabeth Morse and let him take my place. He tossed his hat to the ground and dropped to his knees. Then he wrapped himself around the woman he’d found by the roadside so many years ago.

The moon came up while I stood guard on the perimeter of the crash scene. I’d forgotten it was nearly full. Over the next few hours, I watched the white orb rise above the treetops and then climb steadily into the night sky, causing the stars about it to fade, eclipsed by its brilliance. It looked like a heavy stone that might drop unexpectedly from the heavens and smash the world to smithereens.

Elizabeth Morse and Leaf Woodwind packed into their black SUVs with their hired guards. The ambulance took away the lifeless body of Briar Morse, which had been removed from the wreck by using the Jaws of Life. A tow truck lifted the crushed roadster onto its flatbed. The Passamaquoddy policemen drifted away. I never did see Bard leave. Lieutenant Zanadakis and several other state police officers came and went, having taken my statement and begun mapping the accident scene. They would return in daylight to search for additional evidence of the fatal chase. Sheriff Roberta Rhine, who had arrived last, was also the last to leave-except for me.

“You should go home and get some sleep.” Her breath shimmered as she spoke. She had her hands thrust into the pockets of a black windbreaker with a sheriff’s star on the breast. Her long face had grown tight from the cold. “There’s nothing more for us to do here.”

“You know what’s funny?”

“What?” she said.

“Belanger told me to direct traffic away from the accident scene, but there hasn’t been a single car all night, except for the emergency vehicles.”

She reached up to tug on a turquoise earring. “This is a deserted stretch of road even during the summer months.”

The last words she said before I climbed into my truck were, “It looks like this is a murder investigation now.”

It always was, I thought, remembering the sight of that dead moose in the grass.

* * *

When I got back to my cabin, I cleaned up after the squirrels and then, taking a deep breath, sat down to phone my stepfather. It was late, but I expected him to be awake. Instead, the call went directly to voice mail.

“Neil, it’s me,” I said with a faint stutter. “I’m sorry I missed you before. I was in the woods all day. I can’t always get a signal up here. But I’m home now, so feel free to try me again. I’m glad Mom’s chemo went OK. I promise to call tomorrow. Tell her I love her. I hope you’re hanging in there, too.”

It was only after I’d hung up that I realized I hadn’t mentioned Briar. There hadn’t seemed a point in it. She was just a name as far as he was concerned.

The phone rang just after I fell asleep. It was McQuarrie, wanting an update. He was driving back to Washington County after having been summoned away to help retrieve the corpse of a drunk boater from the lake where the man had crashed his boat. News of Briar Morse’s death was spreading fast, Mack said. Reporters and state officials were demanding information. Rivard had already been feeling pressure over his failure to solve the high-profile crime. Now the daughter of the most powerful woman in the state was dead, possibly killed by the same people who had slaughtered those moose. The meeting the lieutenant had scheduled for seven A.M. was going to be “a real shit show,” Mack said.

“Be sure to wear your ballistic vest,” my sergeant told me.

“I always do,” I replied.

This time, no one brought doughnuts.

Rivard was running late, and the mood in the crowded IF amp;W field office was tense and irritable. The unspoken question hanging over every man in the room was: What if we had caught the men who killed the moose? Would Elizabeth Morse’s daughter still be alive if we’d been faster in solving the first crime? The resident fishhead biologists had the good sense to skedaddle.

McQuarrie looked older than I’d ever remembered seeing him. “Didn’t get much sleep,” he admitted. “That poor girl. She was pretty, too. That always makes it harder, for some reason.” He dug his thumb and forefinger into his bloodshot eyes. “This case might just be my swan song,” he said.

Mine, too, I thought.

Rivard might as well have appeared in a puff of sulfurous smoke. He burst through the door, a crimson glow on his cheeks from either the cold wind blowing down from the north or too much blood pumping to his head. In his hand he held a newspaper, rolled up, as if he meant to swipe a naughty dog across the nose with it. Bilodeau slipped in behind him, looking as inscrutable as ever. Lieutenant Zanadakis came last, dressed to the nines in suit and tie, and eased the door shut behind him.

“I want to read you something,” Rivard said without bothering to remove his red wool warden’s coat or the olive fedora that was part of our dress uniform. “This is from this morning’s paper. The headline is ‘Series of Missteps in Moose Massacre Causes Outrage.’ It says here that ‘game wardens are facing new questions about their handling of an investigation into the illegal shooting of ten moose on the property of entrepreneur and environmental activist Elizabeth Morse.’” When he glanced up, the sclera of his eyes were as scarlet as his coat. “There are quotes here from people accusing us of harassment because we detained them at a checkpoint and asked to see their guns. They say our conduct is improper because we entered private property to collect cigarette butts for DNA. You’ve got Karl Khristian-Karl Khristian! — bitching because Bilodeau dug up some bullets from outside his fence. We come across in this story like a bunch of circus clowns.”

Rivard flung the newspaper away. Unrolling in flight, it struck Sullivan in the chest, causing the warden to leap back and nearly fall over a desk chair.

“That paper came out before Briar Morse died,” Rivard said. “There’s nothing in it about her driving into a tree last night. Imagine what’s going to be in tomorrow’s paper. Do you all want to see me crucified?” Before any of us could raise our hands, he continued: “The only way that’s not going to happen is if we start getting some fucking results!”

I’m not sure why it surprised me that Rivard didn’t ask for a moment of silence to remember the dead girl. Our lieutenant was unraveling in front of our eyes.

“Bilodeau, what can you tell us?” Rivard asked.

The warden investigator was wearing street clothes-fleece-lined denim jacket, flannel shirt, and dirty Carhartt pants-as if he intended to do some undercover work. “I’ve got a good feeling about those slugs from Khristian’s driveway,” he said. “Think we might be looking at a match there between them and the ones we dug out of the walls of the Morse place. Should hear about those today.”