Paul Doiron - Bad Little Falls

Whose house?

I don’t know. Somebody who lives in Township Nineteen. Way out in the boondooks.

Where does the word boondocks come from?

I have no clue.

Is there a real place called East Gish?

Lucas, she said. Will you PLEASE stop asking questions! I’m trying to concentrate on the road.

Where’s Randall, though? He and Prester said they was going coyote hunting, not last night but the night before.

Lucas! I’m freaking out here!

Before she started going to her Don’t Drink meetings, back when she was with Randle, she used to get all weird and dopey, but now she’s nervous or angry all the time.

We drove over the causeway in the dark. Usually there are cars parked along it, people hanging out-but not during the Storm of the Century.

We passed Helen’s and the Bluebird Ranch and they were both closed. Even the gas station was closed. It was like a NUCLEAR BOMB went off and killed everybody or maybe turned them into zombies.

Now we’re in the hospital parking lot.

I wonder how many people die at the hospital every year. Probably a lot.

All hospitals must be haunted.

I was inside the Grand Am, shivering, my teeth clenched to keep from chattering. The gym bag lay open beside me on the seat. I was trying to reconstruct in my imagination the drug deal that had taken place in this frozen swamp when I heard a loud scraping sound. I clambered out of the car and stood knee-deep in the snow, watching as powerful lights tore through the storm.

There were two vehicles: a hefty pickup outfitted with a V-shaped plow and a green warden’s truck following behind. I hoped the trucks hadn’t just flattened the buried body of Randall Cates in an attempt to reach me.

Over the idling engines I heard truck doors bang open. Three silhouettes came toward me through the headlights.

“Bowditch!” It was Rivard, wearing his green warden’s parka with the hood up.

Behind him came a shorter, thicker man: the plow driver.

And then another person with a dog.

Kathy Frost? No, she was two hundred miles away tonight in Greenville. It was her protege from the K-9 team, Cody Devoe. He had been the warden in my old district before being transferred to Washington County at his own request. Devoe is one of those natural woodsmen whose idea of heaven is being stationed in the wildest, least populated outposts imaginable, the kind of warden who spends his vacations fishing for arctic char in Labrador. He is a big bruiser with a perpetual five o’clock shadow even at five o’clock in the morning. His friends call him Fred Flintstone. His German shepherd is named Tomahawk.

The plow driver-I assumed it was Ben Sprague-was a short but solid guy. He had a hooked, beaklike nose and small, rapidly blinking eyes set close together. He wore a blue snowmobile suit covered with iron-on patches from various clubs, and a New England Patriots cap with a fuzzy pom-pom on top.

“So what’s going on?” Rivard asked.

“We’ve got a lost man out here,” I said. “It’s Randall Cates.”

“That’s what Kendrick told me. I didn’t believe it until I saw Prester Sewall lying in that bed.”

“I thought his name was John.”

“Everyone calls him Prester.”

“I think Cates and Sewall were out here on a drug deal.”

“Is that a hunch, or do you have more specific reasons for saying that?”

I showed them the gym bag full of money, and the gun. I told them about the map inside the car with our location marked in pencil. My lips were so numb, I sounded like I had a speech impediment. “I think Cates is lost out here somewhere, wandering around in the dark or collapsed in a snowbank.”

“I’m not sure how we’re going to find him in this storm,” Rivard said.

“I’d like to try running a track.” Devoe squatted down beside his dog and adjusted the little orange vest she was wearing. “Tomahawk’s pretty good in the snow. We did some avalanche training last winter up at Baxter State Park.”

“Christ, it’s cold out here.” Rivard rubbed his gloved hands together and stamped his feet, first one and then the other. The Grand Am had almost disappeared again inside the white mound of snow.

“How’s Sewall doing?” I asked.

“The paramedics were putting him in the ambulance when Devoe and I showed up,” said Rivard. “He looked pretty bad to me, but maybe he’ll pull through. They won’t be able to get him to Bangor in the storm, so they’re taking him to Machias to stabilize his condition.”

“Where’s Kendrick?” I asked.

“I left him at the house,” said Rivard. “I told him to direct assistance to our location, and I thought someone should stay with Mrs. Sprague.”

Ben Sprague stared hard at me with a trembling lip and a knitted brow, as if I’d just insulted his mother. “My wife’s had a terrible shock!”

What was up with this guy? Maybe he was just mad that his pleasant evening at home with the missus had been ruined by this freak occurrence. I couldn’t blame him-Doris Sprague had seemed genuinely upset.

“What about Larrabee?” I asked.

“Doc went to the hospital with the EMTs.”

“So who else is coming?”

“I wanted to scope things out before calling in the cavalry,” said Rivard. “I woke up Bill Day over in Aurora, but he’s going to be all night getting here. The Passamaquoddies are sending a dog handler from Princeton, along with one of their tribal wardens.” He stomped his feet again in that same methodical manner he’d used before, first the right, then the left. “We might as well let Tomahawk give it a try, but who knows if that dirtbag Cates is even out here.”

I understood Rivard’s skepticism. Pitch-dark, in the middle of a snowstorm, at a temperature where even the nose of the best-trained SAR dog in the world might as well have been wrapped in a burlap-these were hardly optimal conditions for a search. And yet I couldn’t help but feel that my sergeant’s lack of confidence was also personal. We hadn’t worked together long enough for him to appreciate my abilities, so all he had to go on was my reputation in the service: impulsive, hotheaded, too impressed with my own intelligence, book-smart rather than woods-smart, a discipline problem, not a team player. In other words, a very, very bad bet.

Devoe found a dime-store bandanna in the Grand Am and let his dog have a good whiff of it. Then he let her begin pulling him around on a leash through the snow. Tomahawk made a circle around the car and began working her way outward in a fan-shaped pattern.

Over the past two years, while on stakeouts and patrols, Kathy Frost had given me endless tutorials on the training and use of canines in search and rescue and human-remains recovery. I knew that Tomahawk was searching for a “pool” of human scent wafting through the snowpack. If she found one, she would begin to dig. And maybe, just maybe, she would discover the frozen-solid corpse of Randall Cates. I also knew that Rivard was right when he said the chances of her finding him in these conditions were slim to none.

Rivard wanted to do his own search of the Grand Am.

Ben Sprague said he was returning to his truck to warm up and wait. I decided to be neighborly and join Sprague.

I opened the passenger door and peered up at him. “Do you mind if I get out of the cold for a few minutes?”

“Be my guest.”

I slammed the door behind me and instantly felt embraced in warmth. My night in the blizzard had frozen my bones to the marrow. “The snow seems to be letting up.”

“Does it?”

He fiddled with the radio and brought up a fuzzy station playing rock and roll from across the New Brunswick border. So much for conversation.

I removed my gloves and warmed my hands over the air vents. At first my fingers were numb; then they began to throb. I rubbed the palms against my cheeks and nose. I made funny faces to loosen the tight skin.