“I found an old warden badge from an antiques dealer, and I want to know whose it was.”
I hated lying to her, but it didn’t stop me. I was committed to protecting Charley at all costs to my other relationships.
“How old?” she asked.
“Not sure, but it’s shaped like the current badges. Smaller, with the district number stamped on the bottom. The number is 113.”
“Offhand, that doesn’t ring a bell. If you want to hang on a minute, I can look it up in my files.”
“Weren’t you supposed to leave those files behind when you retired?”
She gave one of her hearty laughs. “Everyone takes something when they leave. I’ll call you back in five minutes with what I’ve found.”
While I waited, I struggled with whether to come clean with Kathy. She had saved my career when I was set on blowing it to pieces, and I trusted her with my life. If my investigation had involved anyone else but Charley, I would have already spilled my guts to her.
“A few guys had that number over the years,” she said when she called back. “But I’m guessing the badge you found belonged to a warden named Duke Dupree. That was his actual first name, before you ask. He worked out of Clayton Lake and Churchill Depot during the Depression.”
“Never heard of him.”
“That’s no surprise. His service was, shall we say, abbreviated.”
“Did he die in the line of duty?”
“You’ve been to the memorial enough times. Do you remember seeing his name on it?” She meant the granite monument in Augusta on which were carved the names of every Maine police officer who had perished while carrying out his or her job. “Dupree fell asleep at the wheel and plowed his cruiser into a couple of sweethearts outside Ashland. Lucky for him, he lived in a time before social media. The Warden Service hushed it up. But Dupree lost his job. They must have let him keep his badge as a memento—policies weren’t so strict back then. I’m not surprised it ended up at a yard sale. Where did you find it?”
I had to take a breath before I could lie again. “Presque Isle.”
“What are you doing there?”
“I thought I’d do some fishing up in the Debouille reserve. I figured it would be cooler in the County. My mistake.”
“Because there’s no more enjoyable time to land a few arctic char than peak blackfly season. Are you sure you want to stick with that story, Grasshopper?”
“No, but I’m going to.”
“Give my best to Chasse while you’re up there.”
“Who?”
“Remember Chasse Lamontaine? He’s the warden up that way. It’s a shame he’s such a Boy Scout. My God, what a handsome hunk he is. Good luck with the ‘fishing’!”
Kathy knew me too well. We are always more transparent to our friends than we are to ourselves.
18
The summer solstice had just passed, the days were as long as they would ever be, but the thunderheads had brought a premature dusk with them. The pole lights outside the truck stop blazed brightly enough to illuminate a stadium. I decided to grab a meal at the diner before calling Ora with an update. She had been good about not messaging, but the silence on her end was ominous, too. It meant that she hadn’t heard anything from her missing husband.
My phone rang as I crossed the puddled parking lot. I didn’t recognize the number, but the location of the caller was given as Indian Township.
“Mike, it’s Nick Francis.”
“Thanks for calling back.”
“My granddaughter said you stopped by the house looking for me.” His Passamaquoddy accent was incredibly faint: noticeable in the dropping of g’s at the end of his present participles.
“She said you were headed up to Houlton.”
“Yeah, I’ve been dealing with my boy. Probably will be for a couple of days.”
“Really? I’m in Houlton now. I am at the truck stop near the I-95 exit. Have you had supper?”
“It’s four o’clock. I may be old, but I ain’t one of them early birds.”
“I’ll pick up the tab.”
“Whatever you want from me must be expensive.”
“Just some background information about a personal case I’m working.”
“Ain’t nothing more expensive than information.” His tone was light, but I could sense that he was debating accepting my invitation. “Look, I know you’re looking for Charley. I already told Ora to give the man some time. He’ll show up eventually—he always does.”
“Then why not get a free meal out of me?”
I heard him suck on a cigarette while he considered the offer.
“I guess I could use a diversion from the family problems I been dealing with. I’m down at the hospital now. Should take me fifteen minutes to get there.”
“The hospital? Are you all right?”
He replied with a laugh tinged with sadness. “I’ll see you in fifteen.”
When they were young men, Nick and Charley had worked investigations together, on and around Down East tribal lands, including several cases that Charley refused to discuss with me. One involved the notorious gang rape and murder of a Passamaquoddy girl at Pleasant Point. The five alleged perpetrators—local white men—were never arrested or brought to trial, but I gathered that their identities had been all but confirmed.
“It was a different era,” Charley had said. “There were different standards of law for whites and Indians in Washington County.”
He refused to say more—which had only increased my interest.
Researching the case, I had learned that both the gang’s ringleader and his sidekick had died when their fishing boat had sunk in Cobscook Bay. The Coast Guard and Maine law enforcement agencies had conducted an investigation that had lasted months—just about every Indian in Pleasant Point seemed to have been interrogated—but had come up empty.
Charley wouldn’t have been a party to murder, but Nick Francis? I wasn’t so sure.
I was on the verge of ordering supper when in through the diner door came a squat but handsome man in his seventies. Despite his age,
