the Poacher's Son (2010) (17 page)

"He was baiting it."

"What?"

"He was putting out food for it." She motioned for me to follow her around the pigpen. Inside the fence was a heap of trash. I saw an empty tin for a canned ham and a Dunkin' Donuts box and other refuse that I hadn't noticed before.

I stood there gazing at it. "Son of a bitch."

Kathy came up behind me. "There's something else we need to talk about, Mike. The reason I was out this way was because we got another call from Anthony DeSalle. Have you lost your mind? You know better than to have contact with someone who's made a complaint against you."

There was a buzzing sound in my head and I was having a hard time hearing her. It was the sound of the flies amplified about a hundred times.

"It comes across as a pattern of harassment," she said. "Mike, are you listening to me?"

"He was trying to lure it in," I said.

"What? Who?"

"Thompson. He knew I had a trap out there, but he was trying to lure it in so he could shoot it himself."

"The bear killed the man's pig," she said. "Cut him some slack."

"That was three days ago."

"He's allowed to shoot a wild animal destroying his property."

"Not three days later he's not." I turned and started walking in the direction of the house. "He baited that bear and he shot it illegally. He broke the law."

Two medics came out of the kitchen door carrying Thompson on a stretcher. His pant leg had been scissored off, and his wound was wrapped in a new white bandage.

I stepped in front of the EMTs, blocking their way. Thompson gave me a confused, boozy smile. "Is it dead?"

"It's dead."

"You shot it?"

"Yes."

"Can I have the skin? I always wanted a bearskin rug."

It was all I could do not to punch him. "You didn't tell me you were putting bait out. That's illegal, you know."

His smile drooped at the corners. "It killed my pig."

"I don't care."

"It was self-defense."

"The hell it was. You baited that bear."

"Excuse me, Warden," said one of the medics. "Can we continue this conversation later?"

"Get out of the way, Mike," said Kathy Frost from behind me.

"The man needs to go to the hospital," said the other EMT.

I pointed my finger at Thompson's nose. His eyes bounced back and forth from my face to the shotgun in my other hand. "You broke the law, Thompson, and after they stitch up your leg, I'm taking you to jail."

"No, you're not," said Kathy in her hardest voice. "Come on, Mike. Let these men do their jobs." Her fingers dug like talons into my shoulder. "Let these men do their jobs."

I stopped resisting and let her pull me back a step.

We watched the EMTs carry Thompson to the ambulance. When they'd closed the back door and started the engine, Kathy released my shoulder. "You were out of line back there."

"Sorry," I said. "Drunks just piss me off."

"You're off duty. As of now."

"What? I said I was sorry."

"Fine. I accept your apology, but I still want you to go home. You're on vacation as of tonight."

"What the hell does that mean? Are you suspending me?"

"Only if you force me."

I opened my mouth to speak.

She held up her long, callused hand. "We're not discussing this. You're going home, and you're going to get some rest. You have tomorrow off, and then you're on vacation for a week. We'll talk about the DeSalle complaint when you get back. Maybe by then you'll have your head together."

"What the hell does that mean?"

"It means we're all sorry about your father, and we understand how freaked out you must be about it. But if the situation's screwing up your judgment, then it's better if you're out of uniform for the time being."

"What about the bear?"

"I'll take care of it." She gestured at my truck. "Go home, Mike. I mean it."

Her expression was unflinching. I knew I'd crossed some sort of line with her, and I wasn't sure how it had happened.

Halfway across the lawn I turned and said, with half a smile, "You wouldn't really suspend me?"

But the look on my sergeant's face gave me no comfort.

That night I got really drunk for the first time since I'd become a game warden. I took out a half-empty fifth of Jack Daniels a college friend had left behind the last time he'd rolled through town, and I sat on the porch. A mist was rising off the marsh, and the smell of tidal mud and sea salt was thick in the air. A killdeer kept flying back and forth along the creek making a hysterical cry as if it had lost something irreplaceable.

When I awoke the next morning, I found myself inside, lying facedown on the couch. The phone was ringing, and it took everything in me to stumble across the room to answer it. Sunlight, flooding through the windows, burned my eyes.

"Hello?"

"I need to see you," said my mother.

T
he town of Scarborough is where I'd spent the second half of my childhood after my parents divorced and where my mom and stepfather still lived. It is only a two-hour drive south along the coast, but it always feels longer because the land changes so much with every passing mile. These days, southern Maine is just an extension of the Boston suburbs.

When we first moved to Scarborough, right after the divorce, there were still cornfields and thick oak forests that stretched for miles. Then the houses really began to sprout, first along the country roads heading down to the beaches, and then in vast subdivisions wherever there was enough land for building. Soon the weedy fields where I'd caught garter snakes became a grid of neocolonial homes and impossibly green lawns. Woods where Wabanaki Indians had once hunted deer were cleared to make way for "Indian Woods Estates."

As a teenager, I fought the future as best I could. Rather than taking up soccer or skateboarding, I cast for striped bass in the Spurwink River. Instead of playing video games I read
The Last of the Mohicans
. I watched the pavement spread under my feet and dreamed of moving to the North Woods and becoming a game warden. As if you can ever really escape what's coming.

My mother had received a call from my father, and she was in a panic. She didn't want to go into the details over the phone. "I need you here," she said.

It was a brilliant morning. The blue of the sky and the green of the leaves looked like colors from a child's picture book. After two hours on the road, I pulled into the driveway of my mother's beautiful new house. Next door, a rainbow haze drifted across the lawn from the neighbor's sprinkler system.

I rang the bell and waited. After a while, I had the sense of someone on the other side of the door, studying me through the peephole, and then it opened and there was my stepfather. Neil Turner was a tall, flat-stomached man with a full head of dark hair going silver at the temples. He wore a lime-colored polo shirt and khakis and was clutching his cell phone. He smiled awkwardly and extended a hand for me to shake. "You really didn't have to drive all the way down here."

"It's OK," I said.

"Is that Michael?" my mother called from the second floor.

"It's me," I said.

She appeared at the top of the steps. She was barefoot, and she was wearing white shorts and a striped blue cotton shirt. A small gold crucifix hung at the base of her throat. She hurried downstairs to embrace me. "It's so good to see you."

I smelled shampoo in her hair as she hugged me. "It's good to see you, too, Mom."

She held me at arm's length. There were dark circles under her eyes. As she studied me, her forehead became wrinkled, the only lines in an otherwise perfect oval face. She touched my cheek. "Michael, what happened to your chin?"

"I scratched myself going through some bushes. I want to hear about the call you got from Dad."

She glanced at Neil, who was now standing against the relocked door.

"Why don't we go out into the living room," he said.

They sat together on a couch holding hands, and I sat across from them. It was a cream-colored room with Scandinavian furniture, and sheer curtains that let in some gauzy sunlight. On the coffee table was a book of Matisse paintings and a framed picture of Neil with his daughter from his previous marriage. They'd redecorated since Sarah and I were last here at Christmastime.

"I shouldn't have called you," said my mother. "Neil told me not to, but I was in a panic." The slight French-Canadian accent in her speech seemed more pronounced than usual: a sign of stress I'd learned to recognize.

"Tell me about the phone call," I said.

She glanced at Neil, and he squeezed her hand. "He called early. It must have been eight o'clock. It sounded like he was on a cell phone. There was a lot of static."

"What did he say?"

"He said he didn't kill those men. He said he'd asked for your help, but that you wouldn't help him."

I felt a tightening in my chest. "Did he say where he was?"

"Canada somewhere. He wanted to talk with Neil."

I met my stepfather's eyes. "About what?"

"He wanted me to represent him." Neil smiled a mirthless smile and shook his head. "Can you believe that? I'm a tax attorney."

When I'd suggested my dad find a lawyer, he'd laughed at me. I guess he'd had a change of heart. But did he really want Neil's legal advice? The two men hated each other. Then again, how many lawyers did my dad know? "So what did you say?"

"I hung up on him, of course, and I called the police. I spoke with that detective--Soctomah."

"What if he wanted to surrender? How do you know he wasn't looking to give himself up?"

"The man's a murderer," said Neil.

"He was asking for your help," I said.

Neil laughed sharply. "It was probably some sort of ploy to find out if we were home. When I heard his voice, I was scared for my life."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

Neil looked at me as if he could not believe how slow-witted I was. "I thought he might come here. If he killed those two men, who knows what else he might do."

"We don't know he killed anybody. He says he's been framed."

Neil waved his hand as if to drive off a bad smell. "The evidence--"

"What evidence? Did Soctomah tell you what proof they have?"

"I was worried for your mother's safety."

I was about to interject something about his selfless concern for my mother's welfare, but she spoke first. "He wouldn't hurt me," she said, shaking her head.

Neil said, "You don't know that, Marie."

"He wouldn't hurt me," she said again.

"Well, there's nothing to stop him from hurting
me
. He threatened to kill me once. Or have you forgotten?"

My mom glanced at the window as if she hadn't heard him.

Neil was looking at me now. "It was after your mother and I got engaged. He was waiting for me one night in the parking lot outside my office. He was drunk. He told me he would kill me unless I broke it off."

"He wouldn't have killed you," said my mother softly.

"He showed me the gun!"

"Jack says things when he gets drunk," said my mother. "It's just talk."

"Why are you still making excuses for him?" He glanced back at me again. "The man's a murderer. I'm sorry, but it's the truth."

"You don't know the first thing about him," I said.

"I know the type of man he is." Neil rose to his feet, smoothing the front of his shirt. "I can't believe how naive you both are. He's
still manipulating you, and you don't even see it. I'm going to finish packing."

He left us there in that sunlit room. "Why is he packing?"

"We're going to Long Beach--to visit Jessica. Neil's afraid of Jack showing up here. We've had reporters calling. I just want to forget all this has happened. It's like a nightmare." She removed a wadded tissue from her pocket and dabbed it at her eyes.