In time the female stopped or moved higher up the icy slopes where I could no longer hear her laments. The foolishness of my obsession to capture her overwhelmed me. By the time I returned with a culvert trap, she could be a hundred miles from here. I could only pray that providence would lead her north, farther and farther away from men with guns and bows and snares, and that she would lead a long if lonely life. These were presumptuous prayers, I realized. The wolf was free, and that meant her fate was also beyond my ability to control.
Too wired to sleep, I returned to the cabin.
As I was squatting beside the stove, I glanced into the woodbox. To assist me in fire building, Peter had brought over some newspapers along with kindling and firewood from his barn. I had presumed the papers had been old editions, but there was the front page of that morning’s Lewiston Sun Journal.
In a photograph the Penguin stood at a podium looking flushed, sweaty, and full of rage.
GOVERNOR PROMISES “TOTAL ENEMA” AT MAINE STATE PRISON
Always a class act, our chief executive.
The Penguin had uttered these words in a speech at a breakfast meeting of some chamber of commerce. He said, “While it would be premature to place blame on senior prison officials,” he seemed eager to do just that. Why wait for an investigation when there were political points to be scored?
I thought of Deputy Warden Angelo Donato, and the concerns he had expressed about his job being in danger in that oddly solicitous email. It seemed to me that his boss, the prison warden, would be more likely to take the fall. But the governor didn’t seem to rule out slaughtering a whole herd of scapegoats.
A sidebar article dealt with the process by which the governor could unconditionally pardon any individual convicted of having committed a state crime. A lawyer on the chief executive’s staff would need to draw up a pardon warrant for submission to the Maine secretary of state. In the case of a person who was still imprisoned, such as Billy, a second document—a warrant of commutation—also needed to be drafted and certified. Copies of those two official documents would then be forwarded to the warden of the institution in which the pardoned person was incarcerated, at which point the door would open and Billy Cronk, in this case, would walk free.
I was curious to learn how soon that might happen, but the story jumped to another section of the newspaper. I rummaged through the stack, but the pages were missing. I tried to find the answer on my smartphone, but there was no signal.
In choosing this cabin over lodging with modern amenities, I had hoped to escape the digitized, interconnected world and find some old-fashioned solitude.
Be careful what you wish for.
34
Despite the adrenaline in my bloodstream, I drifted off again and awoke at first light.
The new snow had reset the calendar and returned the forest to winter, or so it seemed from inside the cabin. When I ventured outside to visit the privy, I was surprised by the mildness of the air upon my skin.
The temperature was already climbing—into the forties, if I had to guess—and a mist was rising from the layer of slush underfoot and drifting off between the trees. The fog obscured the far side of the pond, but I could hear the otherworldly sounds the ice made as it began melting in the morning heat.
On the cast-iron skillet I made pancakes from a mix only to realize I had forgotten to bring syrup. Considering the hundreds of sugar maples I had seen nearby—from Mary Gowdie’s operation to the more humble efforts of the Amish—my absentmindedness seemed all the more inexcusable. I had to content myself with a lather of butter.
Paul Panagore’s voice mail had been tossing and turning in my brain all night. The bolt that had pierced Shadow’s lung had been purchased individually and not as part of a pack. Someone had applied a price tag to the fletching. The only friction ridges on the shaft had been left by a person with small fingers.
Using water I heated atop the stove, I washed my crucial areas but didn’t bother shaving. I put on a green chamois shirt over an oatmeal Henley, tin-cloth logging pants, and the L.L. Bean boots I wore every day during Mud Season. I attached my holstered P239 and badge to my belt along with my handcuffs in their clip-on case. Then I buttoned over everything the last gift my mom had given me before she died: an expensive Fjällräven trekking jacket I would never have purchased on my own. I wore the raincoat as a reminder of her, just as I wore my father’s dog tags on a chain around my neck in bittersweet remembrance of a man I had both loved and hated.
If anything, the fog had grown even thicker since I’d last ventured out. When I reached the gate, I realized I should have checked the woods around the cabin for new game cameras. Knowing Ronette Landry, she had installed a full complement, hidden in spots even a squirrel would be hard-pressed to find.
By the time I turned south onto the Rangeley Road, the morning commute—such as it was—had begun. The residents of Phillips, Avon, Intervale, and the upriver townships were headed into Farmington and perhaps as far away as Waterville and Augusta. It was Friday, I realized.
I arrived at Fairbanks Firearms mere minutes after my uncle Denis had opened the store for the day. As before, a buzzer went off when I pulled open the door. This morning, the shop smelled of dead fish.
I found my uncle in the corner using a broken-off pool skimmer to ladle dozens of dead shiners from one of the bait tanks.
“Did the aerator give out?”
“Either that or these fish committed mass suicide.” He was wearing glasses this morning, shooting-style yellow specs. “What
