Paul Doiron - Massacre Pond

“It doesn’t matter anyway,” Stacey said. “See that blood trail in the grass there.” She gestured with a stained finger at bent goldenrod and steeplebush. “It goes all the way back to that snag of dead firs. You’re not going to find any shell casings here, Mack, because this animal was shot somewhere else. He only happened to collapse in this spot.”

I’d missed the blood trail, along with the two bullet wounds, in my initial inspection of the moose. And Stacey had found them right off. Why should I have been surprised? Her father, Charley, was the best game warden I’d ever met, an expert tracker and investigator, not to mention a crazy daredevil pilot. I’d had the white-knuckle experience of flying with Stacey before, as well. Father and daughter were alike in many ways.

McQuarrie rubbed his chapped lips and looked at Morse. “What do you mean, it died because of you?”

Her voice sounded like she’d swallowed a bitter piece of fruit. “Some monster couldn’t bring himself to take a shot at me, so instead he drove around on my land killing innocent animals. This is an atrocity against nature-but it’s also a personal attack against me. ”

“Ms. Morse believes these shootings are an act of retaliation against her proposed national park,” I said.

Stacey gave a sudden laugh. “Well, that’s pretty obvious.”

“I don’t appreciate your tone of voice, young lady,” Morse said to her.

When Stacey rose to her feet, I saw that she was taller than the other woman. “My tone of voice?”

“Stacey,” I warned.

She ignored me, as usual. “Is it news that people around here don’t like you, Ms. Morse?” Stacey didn’t have a diplomatic bone in her body. “I’m sorry to be the one to break it to you.”

McQuarrie stepped between the two women. He was braver than I was in that respect. “The first question to ask, Ms. Morse, is have you recently received threats of a suspicious nature?”

“As opposed to threats of an unsuspicious nature?” Elizabeth Morse threw up her arms. “You people really are professionals. Yes, I have received dozens of suspicious threats. I just showed the most recent one to Warden Bowditch.”

“Ms. Morse has provided copies of all the threatening letters to the state police,” I said.

“Those documents might be the appropriate place to begin your investigation,” said Elizabeth. “But what do I know? I’m just a naive tree hugger.”

Another patrol truck came rumbling up the dirt road, raising a billowing cloud of dust. It was the first time in my life I was glad to see Lt. Marc Rivard.

The pickup was an onyx GMC with all the bells and whistles. District wardens like myself mostly drove beaters that we could bang the shit out of on patrol. The higher-ups who worked the desks in Augusta, or spent their days inside one of the five division headquarters around the state, got the fancy unmarked vehicles. Lieutenant Rivard’s new Sierra was a gift he’d given himself upon the occasion of his recent promotion.

Marc Rivard was one of the youngest lieutenants in the history of the Maine Warden Service, having risen faster through the ranks than anyone would have deemed possible, thanks to his deft political skills. In the eyes of the Augusta brass, Rivard embodied the four stated values of the service-honor, loyalty, compassion, and trust. But to the men he supervised, he was widely regarded as a grudge-holding prick. If you kissed his ass and laughed at his off-color jokes, he would bestow upon you whatever perks a district lieutenant has to give. If you pissed him off on a regular basis-by answering his questions candidly instead of the way he wanted; or by following your own ethical compass, as opposed to the politically expedient alternative; or simply by embarrassing him or, worse, outshining him in the eyes of the Augusta brass-he would fling you into a distant orbit. My own current position was somewhere out beyond Pluto.

So it was no surprise that Rivard made a beeline for Mack McQuarrie and Elizabeth Morse without tossing a glance in my direction. He removed his signature sunglasses, an act he only performed before rich and powerful people he hoped to charm.

“It’s unfortunate to meet you under these circumstances, Ms. Morse,” he said, extending a palm. “I’m Marc Rivard, the lieutenant in charge of this division. I want you to know my men are going to work around the clock to find the individuals who did this.”

Elizabeth Morse accepted his handshake, but I detected a barb in her reply. “That’s very reassuring.”

Despite being only half a dozen years older than me, Rivard had a touch of gray around the temples, which gave him a certain gravitas. He also wore a Clark Gable mustache, which three wives, at least, had found dashing. Out of uniform, he looked middle-aged and paunchy, but with his stomach flattened beneath his ballistic vest, he projected a barrel-chested manliness.

He next addressed himself to my sergeant. “Mack, I want to see each of the kill sites myself ASAP.”

“You’re going to need Bowditch for that,” said McQuarrie. “This is his case.”

It was the first time Rivard made eye contact with me. Let’s just say there was no love in his deep brown gaze. “You were the first on the scene, Bowditch?”

“Yes, sir. Billy Cronk and myself.”

“That’s Joe Brogan’s former guide? The one he fired from Call of the Wild?”

“Mr. Cronk works for me now,” said Elizabeth Morse. “He’s one of my caretakers.”

“So he has access to all this land. That’s very interesting.” Rivard stroked his mustache with his thumb and forefinger. “Ms. Morse, I’m thinking it might be best for you and me to have a conversation before we go rushing around your woods here.”

“I would welcome the opportunity, Lieutenant.”

“Mack, get the coordinates for all the kill sites from Bowditch.” He returned his sunglasses to their familiar position between his private thoughts and the rest of the world. “That’s assuming you wrote them all down,” he said to me.

“Yes, sir. I’ve got latitude and longitude for each of the shooting sites.”

“Then I want you to give the sergeant a complete report of what you found, including any evidence you recovered.”

I watched Rivard and Morse stroll down the dirt road, heads down, talking like two world leaders at Camp David.

I felt someone standing at my shoulder.

“He really doesn’t like you, does he?” whispered Stacey.

“Are you kidding? I’m his fair-haired boy.”

As the first officer on the scene, I had the most information about the case, but the lieutenant disliked the power this gave me over him. If he had the coordinates and my full report, he’d no longer need me to direct him around the Morse property on a dead moose safari. I looked hard at McQuarrie. “He’s not going to bring me in on this case at all, is he? Even though it happened in my district and I was the responding officer?”

My sergeant was fidgeting like he had a line of fire ants marching up his trouser leg. “It ain’t fair, Mikey, but you know it’s his call.”

There was no point in complaining or arguing the matter, I realized. “You want the shell casings I collected, too?”

“Give me a minute first,” said McQuarrie. “I need to use the little boys’ room.”

After my sergeant had gone off to find a private pine tree, Stacey said, “Mack must have the biggest prostate on the planet. The poor guy has to take a piss every half hour.”

Stacey Stevens wasn’t the most beautiful woman I’d ever met, or the most emotionally grounded, and God knows she wasn’t the nicest. So why did I get all googly-eyed when she was near? I couldn’t explain the attraction, except to say that she felt real to me in a way that no other woman had before. Her vices were as familiar to me as her virtues. And it pained me that she didn’t feel the same sense of recognition when she looked into my eyes.