Widowmaker (6 page)

“What are you up to today?” Pulsifer asked.

“A woman in Pondicherry swears she saw a wolf chase a deer through her backyard.”

“Good luck with that!” The mischievous lilt returned to his voice. “So you're not going to tell me why Amber came knocking on your door? You said you didn't know her, so why did she pick you to be her knight in shining armor? You've got me intrigued.”

“Good-bye, Pulsifer.”

“I've missed seeing you at Loudermill hearings. You were always my favorite shit magnet, Bowditch.”

“That isn't funny.”

“It's a little funny,” he said. “Seriously, I've been hearing good things about you lately. It made me wonder if there might be two Mike Bowditches. If you are ever up this way, give me a call and we'll grab a coffee.”

After I'd hung up, I sat in my cold truck, watching frost form on my windshield. On the one hand, Pulsifer had confirmed my suspicion that Amber shouldn't be trusted. On the other hand, everything he'd told me about Adam's character—his cockiness, his fighting temper, his marksmanship with a deer rifle—made me think the missing man really might be my father's second son.

 

6

The driveway of the next house hadn't been plowed, and there were no lights in the windows or smoke coming from the chimney. I gave it a pass. The same with the one after. The homes along Pondicherry Pond seemed to be mostly seasonal cottages.

Toward the end of the camp road, I came upon an old guy in a green bathrobe, sweatpants, and pack boots. He was pushing a snowblower that was throwing an arc of glistening powder high into the air. When he spotted my warden truck at the end of his drive, he turned off the gas and leaned his weight against the handles in lieu of a walker. He studied me as I came around the front of the vehicle.

“Morning!” I said.

“Morning, Warden,” he said in an accent that eschewed all
r
's.

“Beautiful day, isn't it?”

“A mite chilly, I'd say.” He had a roseate nose, a scruffy beard that was more like a really bad shave, and was probably bald under his fur-lined bomber hat. “What can I do for you?”

“You wouldn't have a dog, would you?”

“Used to.”

“What about any of your neighbors along this road?”

“Some do. Some don't.”

I could see how this conversation was going to unfold unless I took the initiative. “Any of them let their dogs run free? I got a call from a woman down the road saying a dog was chasing deer through her yard. It killed a little yearling in the woods back of her property. I'm trying to find the owner.”

“Was it that lady with all that artsy crap in her dooryard?”

I nodded. “That's the one.”

“Didn't know you wardens was moonlighting as dogcatchers,” he said.

“Only when the dogs chase deer.”

His bathrobe opened when he straightened up and revealed a faded T-shirt with a Green Beret logo on the front and the Latin words
De Oppresso Liber.

“Think Carrie Michaud might have a new dog,” he said. “Some kind of shepherd or husky mix, I think. Black as the Earl of Hell's waistcoat. Saw it riding in the truck with her the other day. Thought I heard it howling the other night, too.”

“What do you mean,
howling
?”

“You know,” he said, and let loose with a loud and shockingly accurate wolf call.

I was getting a churning feeling in my stomach that told me my strange day might yet take a stranger turn. “You sure it wasn't barking?”

He gave me a look as if the question was the most asinine thing he'd heard.

“Which house is Carrie Michaud's?” I asked.

“Blue one at the corner. Got lots of yard art out front. You can't miss it. Don't tell her it was me who told you, though. Carrie's a little thing, but she can get worked up pretty good.”

“I won't.”

Before I could thank him for his help, he restarted the blower. I watched him shuffle along behind the noisy machine, smelling the heady gasoline exhaust on the cold air and wondering what this old Green Beret's story was. You never know who you'll meet holed up in some backwoods shack. I suspected that it might take a long time to pry this man's tale out of him, and then I would be disappointed to learn he had bought the T-shirt for two bucks down at the Goodwill store.

*   *   *

Some breeds of dogs bark; others bay. I had heard dogs moan or wail when they were hurt or unhappy. They were capable of all sorts of unexpected vocalizations. But the old man had perfectly imitated a wolf's howl, and unless he was having fun with me, which was a distinct possibility, it meant that I might owe Gail Evans an apology.

I had no trouble finding Carrie Michaud's house. The front yard was littered with snow-covered appliances and rusting scrap metal. By “yard art,” the old geezer hadn't meant sculptures like those outside Gail Evans's house. He had meant junk.

The house itself wasn't much better. Someone had once painted its cedar shingles bright blue, but the color had faded and had now turned a color I associated with the lips of people who'd frozen to death. The blinds were all drawn, as if whoever lived behind them was allergic to sunlight. A yellow plastic sign posted to a pine warned against trespassing. Another said
BEWARE OF DOG
.

In the driveway were parked two trucks: a Suzuki Equator and a Mitsubishi Raider, both painted black.

As I climbed out of my own truck, I removed my gloves and felt without looking for the canister of pepper spray on my belt. There were no dogs visible, but I did see prints in the snow, big ones like those I'd found in the woods behind Gail Evans's house, and, the pièce de résistance, an enormous pile of shit.

They hadn't bothered to shovel the walkway, but had worn a path from the drive that required me to place one foot in front of the other. I heard music pounding through the front door. Screeching guitars and machine-gun drums. I pushed the glowing doorbell and waited. I gave it a minute, then banged with my fist.

Eventually, the door was opened by a skinny guy who looked like he'd just walked off the set of a postapocalyptic horror movie. He had bleached hair, disk earrings that had stretched holes in the lobes wide enough to stick your finger through, and a bone-white complexion. He wore a sleeveless purple T-shirt, cargo pants, and leather boots with a surplus of nonfunctional buckles.

When Goth fashion had finally come to Maine—everything came to my rural state long after it was passé elsewhere—it had lost something in the translation.

“You wouldn't happen to own a dog, would you?” I said.

He turned and yelled over his shoulder into the darkened, thumping interior of the house. “Carrie!”

“What?” came a shrill voice.

“Do we own a dog?”

“What?”

“There's a game warden at the door.”

The music stopped, as if a plug had been pulled. I heard staccato footsteps on a staircase.

“What's your name?” I asked the Goth.

“Spike.”

“You don't know if you have a dog, Spike?”

“It ain't my house, man.”

A moment later, a woman elbowed her male friend aside to face me. She stood no more than five feet tall and weighed, I was guessing, no more than ninety pounds. She had a pixie haircut (dyed black), a painful-looking sore on her lip, and bile-green eye shadow. Like her beau, she was outfitted for the end-time in a leather vest, with no shirt underneath, and black jeans rolled above her bare ankles. She also happened to have a new tattoo on her forearm. It was poorly drawn and still scabbed, but it was unmistakably the silhouette of a howling wolf.

“Didn't you see the sign!” she said in the overloud voice people use who are hard of hearing. Her eardrums must have still been stunned from all that metal. “No trespassing!”

“That doesn't apply to law enforcement,” I said. “I also saw the ‘Beware of Dog' sign. What kind of dog is it?”

“Why do you want to know?”

“A dog killed a deer down the road from here.”

One side of her mouth—the side with the sore—twitched. “I don't have a dog no more. That sign is old. Who told you I have a dog?”

“You're Carrie Michaud, aren't you?”

“So what?” Everything about this hostile, manic, hollow-eyed person shouted
narcotics.

“Look, Carrie, I know you own a dog. There are dog tracks and urine stains all over your yard. There's a big pile of dog shit next to that snowbank. You need to stop lying to me. Now, why don't you go get your dog?”

“So you can give me a ticket? Ha! No way!”

I was tired of playing coy about my suspicions. “It's a wolf dog, isn't it?”

Before I could say another word, she slammed the door in my face.

Wolf dogs are the hybrid offspring of wolves and domestic dogs, bred, mostly, for people who want the thrill of saying that they own the baddest animal on the block. They rank above pit bulls in that regard. They also happen to be illegal to possess in the state of Maine.

I backed slowly away from the front door and looked at the windows. Sure enough, one of the blinds was lifted, and I saw the Goth's tubercular face peering out.

I made sure to be loud. “Open the door, please.”

Carrie Michaud appeared in the next window. “Fuck you!”

So much for negotiation.

I retreated back to my truck and turned the key in the ignition. Once hot air was finally blowing through the vents, and my face was feeling less like a death mask, I picked up my phone and dialed a friend.

“Kathy? It's Mike.”

“Grasshopper! Long time, no speak.”

Kathy Frost had been my field training officer and sergeant when I joined the Warden Service. For years she had headed all of the Warden Service's K-9 teams, until she was forced to take early retirement due to injuries she'd sustained from a gunshot. She still helped us out during search-and-rescue operations, directing the efforts of dog teams to cover the most ground in the fastest amount of time. No one I'd ever met knew more about dogs than Kathy.

“How's retirement?” I asked.

“I'm thinking of buying a metal detector. What does that tell you?”

“That bad?”

“Worse.”

“Listen. What can you tell me about wolf dogs?”

“They're illegal to possess without a permit.”

“I'm wondering how I can identify one.”

“You can't,” she said. “Not by sight. I mean, you can look for certain features—long legs, slanted eyes, small ears—but you still might be looking at an animal that's one part Siberian husky, one part Malinois. Breeders have gotten good at making fakes, since people will pay top dollar for an honest-to-Jesus timber wolf.”

“What's top dollar?”

“Two grand for a high-content animal. Generally speaking, the more wolf DNA it has, the more expensive it is. Why do you want to know?”

“I've got a situation with some tweakers. I think they're keeping a wolf dog, and I am going to have to confiscate it. I was hoping there was a way I could tell if it was the real thing or not.”

“The only way to know for certain is to do a lab test.”

“I know it's been chasing deer,” I said. “It killed a yearling this morning.”

“That doesn't prove anything. But it gives you cause to take it to a shelter. They can test it for you.”

“What happens if the results come back positive—that it's a high-content wolf dog?”

“Usually, the department would try to find someone to adopt it. But if yours killed a deer, it'll probably be put down.”

“Anything else I should know?”

“Are you going to try wrangling the animal yourself?”

“I don't have a carrier or catch pole with me today, so I'll probably be calling an animal control agent.”

“Be careful,” Kathy said. “There's a reason why wolf dogs are illegal. Most of them are unpredictable and pretty near untrainable. They are superintelligent. I read somewhere that training a dog is like training a toddler. Training a wolf dog is like trying to train a thirty-five-year-old man.”

“Thanks, I'll let you know how it goes. When are you going to get a new puppy, by the way?”

“I just haven't met the right dog yet.”

Kathy had once owned a coonhound named Pluto, whose nose was the stuff of legend, but he had died the night she herself was shot, and she hadn't yet adopted another young dog to train. I had thought her grief for Pluto would abate over time, but as her period of mourning had stretched on and on, I began to worry about her.

“Let me know how it goes,” she said.

“Ten-four.”

I glanced back at the house, certain that they had been watching me the whole time, worried about what I might be doing. That was good: I wanted them to be spooked. For my plan to work, they needed to panic.

I put the transmission into gear and started forward. I drove a hundred yards, until I was well out of sight of Carrie Michaud's house. The snowplows had carved out a wide spot in the road where they could reverse direction. It was the perfect place to hide my truck. I wasn't sure how much time I had, but I didn't want to miss my chance. I reached into the backseat and rummaged around until I found the white poncho I used as wintertime camouflage. I pulled the hood over my head and got out.

Moving from shadow to shadow, I made my way back along the frozen road, expecting to see one of the pickup trucks come roaring in reverse out of the driveway at any moment. When I reached the tall snowbank at the end of Carrie's drive, I threw myself against it, then squirmed into position so I could peer over the top.

I didn't have long to wait. Within a matter of minutes, Spike emerged from the house, pulling a magnificent black animal behind him on a leash. Each dark hair in its coat seemed to shimmer as it padded along. Long legs, slanted eyes, small, sharp ears—I understood Kathy's caution about jumping to conclusions, but there was absolutely no doubt in my mind that this creature was, in any meaningful sense, a wolf.