Paul Doiron - Massacre Pond

“Anyone else got a lead here?” the lieutenant asked, setting his hat down on a desk.

Bard took half a step forward. “I’ve been sweating Chubby LeClair pretty good, and I think he might be on the verge of breaking.”

“What the hell does that mean?” Rivard asked. It was the first time I’d heard him snap at one of his acolytes.

The lieutenant’s response seemed to fluster Bard, too. “I, uh, think he, uh, might be our guy.”

“What’s that, your woman’s intuition?”

Bard stared at the floor.

“The way you build a case is with evidence. ” The lieutenant unbuttoned his coat. “You want to impress me? Come back with a fucking confession.” He tossed his jacket over the back of a chair. “I want everyone to tell me what the hell you’ve been doing for the past few days. You’d better not have been sitting around pulling each other’s puds.”

I didn’t doubt that, at his core, Marc Rivard was a decent and dedicated public servant. For all my quarrels with my superiors, I’d never had cause to doubt they had solid reasons for making the decisions they did. But watching Rivard propped against the desk with his arms crossed, throwing insult after insult at the men he was supposed to be leading, it was hard to avoid the conclusion that they’d promoted him too far, too fast. Unlike me, a lot of guys in that room had never been on the receiving end of his anger. You didn’t need a seismometer to sense the shock wave that rippled through their collective confidence.

By the time he got to me, I was braced for the worst. “Bowditch?” he said.

“Ms. Morse told me she didn’t want a liaison anymore,” I replied.

“So what have you been doing?”

“Regular patrol work.”

McQuarrie stepped in front of me to take the bullet. “That was my decision, L.T.”

“Lieutenant Zanadakis says you did everything you could to get that Morse girl to safety. He says you were helpful at the crash scene,” Rivard said.

I didn’t know how to respond, so I kept my lips locked.

“After this meeting, we’re driving out to the Morse property to brief her. We’d like you to come with us.”

I didn’t have to look around the room to know that everyone was staring at me. Never before had Rivard singled me out for praise. Not a single person envied me, either.

A different guard let us through the gate this time. I wondered what had happened to the guy from the crash scene. Had Spense turned him out into the Maine wilderness to hitchhike his way back to civilization?

The three of us rode in separate vehicles: Rivard led the way in his black GMC, the state police lieutenant followed in his steel-blue Ford sedan, and I brought up the rear in my scratched and screeching old beater. The sky was as blue as a tarp. The brightness of the sun outside belied the cold wind blowing down from Canada. The treetops whipped back and forth like animate objects placed under an evil spell, and small storms of dust cycloned in the clearings where the dirt road left the shelter of the forest.

There were fewer vehicles parked outside the mansion than I had expected. If you didn’t know better, though, you might’ve thought it was just another chilly autumn morning at Moosehorn Lodge. It was easy for me to imagine Briar shuffling sleepily down the stairs to the kitchen, where her mother would be making tea.

When I got out of the truck, I turned up the collar of my red warden’s jacket against the gusts and shoved my hands deep into my pockets. Looking through the pillars of the trees, I saw whitecaps racing down Sixth Machias Lake. I would have preferred to walk to the end of the dock and be alone with my riotous emotions: the grief I felt for Briar, the dread and regret I felt for my dying mother. But I had unfinished business inside the house that I couldn’t avoid.

Jack Spense himself opened the door for us. As a concession to the sudden arrival of autumn, he had exchanged his black T-shirt for a black mock turtleneck. He’d had the night to regain his composure, and his hard, flat face was as unreadable as the day we’d met. I didn’t want to shake his hand, but he went down the line with us as we entered, trying to crush our hands with his manly grip.

“How is she doing?” Zanadakis asked in a quiet voice.

“Better,” said Spense. “She’s a strong woman.”

The security expert escorted us into the repaired great room to wait. There was a fire crackling in one of the two hearths, giving the air a pleasantly smoky scent, as if the logs had been especially chosen for their applewood aroma. The last time I’d visited the room, the windows had all been shattered, there’d been a shimmer of broken glass on the floors and furniture, and you could’ve played connect-the-dots with the bullet holes in the wall. The transformation was a testament to Morse’s wealth. She had been intent on returning her home to normal as swiftly as possible. That would never happen now that Briar was gone.

Spense motioned for us to sit, but none of us did. Zanadakis wandered over to the wall and ran his forefinger over a place where one of the bullet holes had been. Rivard removed his fedora, smoothed his graying temples, and then returned the hat to his head.

“She sure fixed this place up fast,” he whispered.

I didn’t know what to make of Rivard’s softened attitude toward me, other than to be wary of it. Maybe, in his desire to save his job, the lieutenant was searching for whatever new allies he could charm. In his mind, I had a special rapport with Morse; she knew I’d found the moose on her land, and she knew I’d done my utmost to save her daughter.

Rivard thinks he needs me, I thought. The man is truly desperate.

Elizabeth Morse appeared a few minutes later. She had pulled on a fuzzy sweater made of unbleached wool, faded blue jeans, and rainbow-colored socks beneath her Birkenstocks. It was the first time I’d ever seen her in her hippie garb, and she looked like an impostor. She seemed to be making an effort with her appearance-she had washed her hair-but there were lavender shadows under her eyes that told the tale of the past twenty-four hours.

Behind her came Dexter Albee, who was dressed more formally: pressed button-down shirt, chinos, tasseled loafers. Put a necktie and blazer on him, and he would have been ready to testify in front of a legislative panel. Albee didn’t seem to be holding up as well emotionally, though; the absence of color in his cheeks made it seem like he was coming down with the flu.

Jack Spense hung in the doorway, a square-shouldered silhouette, not fully in the room but close enough to eavesdrop on everything.

“Thank you for coming,” Morse said in a slightly hoarse voice. “Please be seated.” She gave me a special nod. “Good morning, Warden.”

“Ms. Morse,” I said.

“Before we get started, I would like to say something,” said Rivard, emphasizing each word as if he’d practiced them before a mirror. “On behalf of the entire Maine Warden Service, I want to extend my deepest sympathies on the loss of your daughter.”

She looked at him with that inscrutable catlike smile I’d gotten to know so well. “I didn’t lose her, Lieutenant. She was taken from me. There’s a considerable difference.” Aside from a strangeness in her voice-as if the back of her jaw were wired shut and she was having trouble getting out her words-there was nothing in her body language that revealed her inner grief. “But I understand that you are trying to be kind, and I appreciate your sympathies. I am sure you have questions for me, and I have questions for you, so let’s begin.”

Zanadakis removed a notebook from his jacket and leaned forward on the couch where he had perched himself. “Briar told Warden Bowditch that she was being chased by a pickup truck last night. She had previously reported another incident like that several nights earlier. Do you have any idea who the driver might have been-any idea at all?”