I called her now from the terminal.
She sounded brighter now that the sun was up. “Carol Boyce, who sells her paintings right next to where this man set up shop, overheard Charley arguing with him over some trinket he had for sale.”
I remembered Carol: a big, flowing woman. “Did Mrs. Boyce say what it was?”
“She couldn’t hear, unfortunately, but she said the argument got heated.”
“I guess I’ll be stopping in Machias before I head to your place. Did you happen to speak with Nick Francis?”
“He said he didn’t know where Charley might be, but he didn’t seem worried. He said I should be patient before I put out a Silver Alert on the best woodsman in Maine.”
“That’s an odd thing to say.”
“You have to know Nick’s sense of humor,” Ora said. “But I feel better knowing that you’re back in Maine. If anyone can track down that man of mine, it’s you, Mike.”
I appreciated her confidence, but I felt the task I’d taken on was weightier than I’d at first realized. Charley’s disappearance wasn’t just another investigation. It was far more important than that: potentially a matter of life and death.
I was waiting for my luggage in baggage claim when I noticed a tall, sandy-haired woman at the next carousel. She had her back to me, but I recognized her broad shoulders and the service dog sitting with preternatural stillness at her side, a tawny Belgian Malinois. The breed is a high-energy cousin to the German shepherd, and this one was wearing a red SEARCH DOG IN TRAINING vest. I happened to know this animal was well past the training stage, but the vest probably helped keep off handsy strangers.
“Kathy!”
My former sergeant, Kathy Frost, turned to me, as did Maple, her canine partner. “Grasshopper! What’s shaking?”
“My world, as usual.”
“I’m the last person you need to tell that to.”
Kathy had one of those expressive faces that is attractive because you can see the goodness of her character in it.
She had been my field training officer, assigned to hold my hand during my rookie year, and then she had become one of my closest friends. The first woman in the history of the Maine Warden Service and its first female sergeant, she’d had her promising career cut short when she’d been ambushed outside her house by an enemy she’d never known she had. The attempted murderer fired a burst of shotgun pellets into her abdomen, and it still struck me as proof of God’s existence that she had survived.
The Malinois, recognizing me as a friend and fellow pack mate, whipped her black-tipped tail back and forth. I fell down upon one knee to receive her dog kisses.
“Hey, Maple! How are you doing, girl? Have you been digging up bodies?”
“Not this time,” said Kathy. “We were at Quantico teaching a program for first responders from around the country.”
That explained her dappled complexion. Kathy’s freckles tended to multiply the tanner she got.
Before her forced retirement, she had headed up the Warden Service’s K-9 team. She now worked as a consultant for law enforcement agencies around the country and even abroad, teaching officers how to train dogs to recover corpses.
“What about you?” she asked. “Where are you coming from in your fancy linen suit?”
“Doing a background check in Florida.”
“Florida! Really?” The intensity of her curiosity was such that Maple heard the excitement in her voice and pricked up her ears. “Anywhere near where a certain wildlife biologist is living?”
Kathy had been present for the beginning, middle, and end of my relationship with Stacey, including the latter’s decampment for a new life in the Everglades. They had been friendly if not friends. Dani, on the other hand, was one of Kathy’s beloved trainees.
I spotted my bag coming around the S-shaped conveyor belt. Considering it contained my locked sidearm, I made a dash for it, glad for the interruption.
When I returned, Kathy said, “I don’t suppose you have time to grab lunch?”
“I wish I could, but I’ve left Shadow alone too long.”
“Dani, too.”
“Come on, Kathy.”
“All I’m saying is you’ve got a good thing going for once in your life.”
“I’m not unaware.”
“Hey, there’s my bag. We should get together soon, the three of us.”
“Absolutely.”
We said our goodbyes, and I began the long march to the parking lot. Almost at once, I regretted not having clued Kathy in on the mystery around Charley’s disappearance. The two former wardens had worked together for years. Maybe she had an insight. But I hadn’t wanted to betray Ora’s confidence until I had a better sense of the situation.
I threw my bags in the back of my personal vehicle, a restored 1980 International Harvester Scout. It was only the last week of June, but the air had the heaviness of hurricane season. I had traveled two thousand miles and still hadn’t escaped the hot, wet grip of the Everglades.
I’d been away for just a week, and yet somehow, I’d missed the end of spring and the beginning of summer. The lupines along Route 1 had faded. By contrast, the birches, maples, and beeches were fully leafed out. If anything, Maine looked even more verdant than Florida.
It was greener in more ways than one. The state had recently legalized the recreational use of marijuana. Every few miles, a new dispensary had arisen along the coastal road:
Ye Olde Toke Shoppe
Merry Jane’s
Medicinal Mart
Cannabis Rex
Herbal Nirvana
Like the gold rush of the nineteenth country, I suspected the dope rush of the twenty-first would end in tears and bankruptcies. The real winners would be the same transnational corporations who peddled tobacco and needed a new drug to sell.
I hadn’t warned Logan Cronk that I was coming. The sight that greeted me, as I pulled into my pine-shaded dooryard, nearly made my eyes pop from my skull.
Shadow’s fenced pen was littered with small bones, piles of feathers, and tatters of fur. A trio of crows perched in the high branches of the poplars within the acre-plus enclosure, waiting for a chance to
