Paul Doiron - Massacre Pond

“You’ve seen my file of death threats.”

“I have,” said the detective. “But I’m wondering if there were any unusual instances you can recall. Were you and Briar ever at a store or restaurant together and noticed someone looking at you in a menacing way?”

“Many times.”

Zanadakis tried again. “Maybe there was a truck parked outside your property recently-on the road to Grand Lake Stream-and you assumed it belonged to a hiker? Sometimes people notice a detail that doesn’t seem important at the time.”

“Sorry. No.”

“Is it possible that Briar was meeting someone outside the gate?”

“My daughter despised this place and the people here.” She paused and flicked her eyes at me. “With the exception of a certain game warden.”

I felt my face flush.

Zanadakis wrote something in his notebook. “According to Warden Bowditch, Briar could only describe the truck as ‘dark’?”

“That describes half the vehicles you see around here. I take it no one was detained last night in such a vehicle.”

“No, ma’am,” said Zanadakis.

“What about physical evidence?” said Morse, clawing with several fingers at the fabric of her armchair. “Can’t you take tire marks from the road?”

“The road there is gravel, so it doesn’t show prints that are usable,” he said. “We were able to determine that Briar did apply her brakes and she overcorrected as she lost control of her car. She was traveling at a high rate of speed.”

“ Overcorrected, ” said Morse, almost to herself. “What is it with police officers and euphemisms?”

“There’s nothing else?” said Dexter Albee, raising his voice suddenly. “You can’t find any other evidence?”

Zanadakis flipped through his notebook, but he already knew the answers. “Her car shows no sign of having been sideswiped. There are no dents or scuff marks on it to indicate another vehicle actually pushed her off the road. I have some men out there this morning searching the foliage up and down the road. It’s possible that the pickup might have scraped the trees and underbrush alongside the road. If so, we’d hoped to find some paint we could match to the truck.”

Elizabeth Morse stretched her arms along the top of the chair and planted her feet wide. It was very much the posture of a monarch on a throne. “There’s really no reason for optimism, then.”

“You shouldn’t give up hope,” said Rivard.

She glared at him with those handsome hazel eyes. “Warden Bowditch can tell you how I feel about being patronized, Lieutenant.”

Albee shot to his feet. “Well, what about the rest of this-the killing of those moose, and the attack on Elizabeth’s house? Are you saying none of this is connected? Because it strikes me as the work of the same sick individual.”

“We’re investigating that possibility,” said Zanadakis, looking up at him calmly. “At the very least, we have gathered some high-quality ballistic evidence that we can use to match the firearms to the two incidents.”

“Those firearms are at the bottom of a lake,” muttered Spense from the doorway.

Rivard frowned in his direction. “We don’t know that.”

The bodyguard didn’t budge. “You won’t find them.”

“If there’s one thing I’ve learned as a warden,” Rivard said, “it’s that criminals can’t keep their mouths shut. Sooner or later, these guys are going to get drunk and start boasting about what they did. When they do, word will get back to us.”

Elizabeth pushed her highlighted hair out of her face. “So the best-case scenario involves you hearing some drunken gossip in a bar and piecing together a case out of circumstantial evidence.” Her eyes fixed on mine. “How reassuring would you find that approach if you were me, Warden Bowditch?”

“Not very reassuring, ma’am.”

I felt Rivard’s shoulders tense beside me.

Elizabeth gave me an affectionate smile. “My brave teller of truths. I have too few of those in my life. It’s the price of being rich. People start telling you what they think you want to hear.” She returned her attention to the arm of her chair, which seemed to require more scratching. “So what should I do now, then? Should I order Mr. Spense to continue fortifying my bunker while I wait for some drunk in a bar to confess he killed my little girl?”

“Is there somewhere else you can go for a while?” asked Zanadakis.

She gave a snort. “Because my presence here is a provocation? I’m not the type to back down from a fight, Detective.”

“Just temporarily,” offered Rivard.

“It’s what I have been advising, ma’am,” said Jack Spense. “The first rule of conflict prevention is to do everything you can to avoid it.”

“It’s a little late for Sun Tzu, wouldn’t you say, Mr. Spense?”

I had a feeling that Jack Spense’s services would be discontinued very soon.

Dexter Albee circled around a coffee table until he was standing over his patron with his palms up in a beseeching gesture. “Betty, you can’t let these bastards win! What you have planned for this national park is historic. It’s your legacy. We’ve worked so hard and invested so much to make your vision a reality. I can’t believe that Briar would have wanted-”

She raised a single index finger. “My daughter didn’t give a shit about Maine, Dexter, and you know it. In fact, it would probably have given her pleasure to know her death made me give up on this godforsaken place.”

“Betty, please, don’t make a snap judgment you’ll live to regret,” said Albee.

She pushed herself up to her feet, using the arms of the chair for support. “I need to be alone. I need to think about what’s important to me from now on.”

The rest of us also rose. It was clear we were being dismissed.

But Elizabeth Morse wasn’t done with me. She called to me at the door. “Warden Bowditch?”

“Yes, ma’am?”

“I hope we meet again.”

“Me, too, ma’am.”

Rivard decided to use this opening to make a case for himself again. “We’re going to find the person who did this, Ms. Morse.”

“Tell me something, Lieutenant,” she said, her eyes flat and hard. “When I put up that reward for information about the killing of those moose, didn’t you tell me then that criminals can’t keep their mouths shut? I believe you said we’d get a flood of tips.”

“And we did,” Rivard said with more heat than he intended.

“None of which seem to have panned out. So if I offered twenty thousand dollars for those moose, how much do you suggest I put on my daughter’s life?”

We found Leaf Woodwind waiting for us in the shady place where we had parked our vehicles. If Elizabeth Morse had internalized her grief, then her former partner was wearing his emotions for all the world to see. His hair was an uncombed mess, his eyes were raw, and there was gunk in his beard that had dribbled out of his nose and mouth. He looked like one of those mourners out of the Bible: a wild, wailing man on the verge of rending his tie-dyed garments.

“Well?” he screamed at us. “Have you found them? Have you found the fuckers?”

I had no doubt he had spent the night dosing himself with THC-the smell was baked into his skin-but the pot had done nothing to blunt his sharpened nerve endings.

Zanadakis and Rivard seemed taken aback by the display, so I stepped forward.

“Leaf,” I said. “Please calm down.”

He balled his hands into knotty fists. “Don’t tell me to be calm! That’s all you’ve been saying ever since you got here. ‘Be calm. Let us do our jobs.’ And instead, everything’s all gone to shit, man. You guys are fucking useless!”

Rivard’s nose twitched, and I had a bad feeling that my lieutenant was going to arrest the man because he felt personally offended. “I think you need to go sleep off whatever magic carpet ride you’re on, sir.”