“Alcohol Mary.”
“That’s an unusual nickname.”
“Mary’s an unusual lady. She lives alone up on Number Six Mountain.”
I wasn’t aware that anyone lived up there; I assumed that the oversize hill fell within the boundaries of the state-owned land around Tumbledown Mountain. Number Six was a camel-backed knoll that watched over the rich farmland of the Sandy River Valley. What could possibly have lured the wolf pair this far south, into the human-populated bottomlands?
“On the phone you said she found Shadow on her doorstep?”
“Close enough. He was hiding under the roofed shelter where she stacks her firewood. It baffles me why any wild animal would choose to take refuge at the home of Alcohol Mary Gowdie. It’s a wonder she didn’t shoot him and use his pelt for a rug.”
“I’m not clear on why she called you, though. Intervale isn’t in your district. Doesn’t Ronette Landry live over in Strong?”
Pulsifer raised his rust-red eyebrows, desperately in need of trimming. “Mary and I have some history.”
“You’re going to have to do better than that.”
He seemed to rehearse several answers in his mind before he looked at me with guilty eyes.
“During my drinking days, I used to buy moonshine from her. I should have had one of those punch cards, I bought so much hooch. Buy ten gallons and get the next bottle free.”
Pulsifer had been an alcoholic, then a recovering alcoholic, then an active alcoholic again. His longest period of sobriety had ended with a pint of Jim Beam we shared one night in his kitchen. I felt responsible for his slip even though I hadn’t known about his addiction at the time. Now he was sober again. It had surprised and humbled me when he’d invited me to an AA meeting to present him with a medallion celebrating two years of continuous sobriety.
“Mary’s got quite the distillery up on that mountain of hers,” he said.
“I didn’t realize a person could make any money doing that these days, booze being as cheap as it is.”
“Her stuff is 190 proof and half the price of Everclear. Mary runs a few side businesses, too. Last year she made two hundred gallons of maple syrup.” His sly smile returned. “You should see her sugar bush.”
He knew perfectly well how that old Maine term—referring to a stand of sugar maples—would sound to my modern ears.
“She seems like quite the entrepreneur.”
“Most gangsters are.” He spread both arms, winglike, along the top of the booth. “So tell me about the shitshow at the prison. It sounds like someone really wanted that female sergeant dead.”
“The men who tried to murder her are both dead themselves.”
“Thanks to your buddy Cronk.”
“Billy killed one of them—in self-defense.”
“He seems to kill a lot of people in self-defense.”
I tried not to bristle. “He nearly died of a pierced bowel, Gary.”
“I’m sorry. That was out of line. I shouldn’t have spoken that way about your friend.”
The apology shocked me into silence. I couldn’t recall the last time I’d heard Gary Pulsifer utter a contrite word.
His voice was softer when he spoke again. “You wouldn’t know this, but there’s a local connection to those homicides. The guard who got killed—Kent Mears—grew up in Pennacook. His dad still lives in town. What a miserable bastard the old man is.”
“Miserable in what way?”
“I’m not allowed to say.” Pulsifer clenched his eyelids shut. “I shouldn’t even have mentioned him.”
I realized at once that Old Man Mears must be a fellow member of Alcoholics Anonymous. Pulsifer had always been an incurable gossip. “Getting back to the matter at hand, what do you think your wolf was doing in the Sandy River Valley?”
“I told you before he’s not my wolf.”
His shrug indicated he was done parsing pronouns.
“Wild wolves have ranges of hundreds of square miles,” I said.
“What about the lady wolf he’s been spotted with? Where do you think she is?”
“Somewhere safe, I hope.”
Even though we were alone in the restaurant, he lowered his voice. “Do you know how many people have called me the past two years swearing to have seen wolves out in the woods? And I’ve had to say, ‘Must of been a couple of coyotes.’” He pronounced the word in the Western fashion: ki-otes.
“I appreciate your keeping the secret.”
“It was in my own interest! Can you imagine what would’ve happened if the press got hold of a picture of those animals? The environmentalists would have rushed to the courthouse with a petition to outlaw all hunting and trapping up here because of the Endangered Species Act.”
Pulsifer knew, as well as I did, that wolves were no longer listed as endangered for the ironic reason that they were presumed extinct in the eastern United States. How can something that doesn’t exist be threatened with expurgation?
“That’s a little alarmist, don’t you think?”
“If you ask me, the worst thing that ever happened to deer in Maine was when coyotes moved in.”
Like almost all the wardens, guides, and deer hunters I knew, Gary Pulsifer had a hatred for coyotes that bordered on the pathological. It wasn’t so long ago that the state offered self-defeating bounties on their pelts. Wildlife biologists had discovered that coyotes react to attempts at eradicating them by reproducing more prolifically.
The waitress returned with our breakfasts.
“Do you know anyone in the valley who hunts coyotes with a bow or a crossbow?” I asked after she’d left us alone.
Gary doused his breakfast with hot sauce until his plate was a bloody mess. “I know plenty of guys who have tried and failed. Bowhunting coyotes isn’t easy, even over bait.”
I ate the doughnut in two bites. The phrase wolfed it down came into my head.
“I’ll talk to Ronette and see if she can point me to the local bowmen,” I said. “Maybe canvass the sporting good stores between Rangeley and Farmington and see who sells that brand of arrow. If I’m lucky, the bolt was bought locally and not ordered online.”
Pulsifer dabbed with his napkin at the red corners of his mouth. “Does that mean you’re finally going to
