“Does your father work at the mill?”
She exhaled marijuana smoke in my face. “How’d you guess?”
“There aren’t too many other jobs in Madawaska other than papermaking.”
“That depends on what side you’re on,” she said. “There are more opportunities on the Canadian side.”
“Which side are you on?”
“My mom was American. My dad is Canadian. I have dual citizenship.”
“Your mom is dead?”
The past tense had given her away, and she only now realized it. “She died over the winter. Breast cancer.”
“I’m sorry for your loss. Mine died of ovarian cancer. Your mother left you some money?”
“How did you—?”
“The car. Those GTIs are sweet. What was your mom’s name?”
“Emmeline,” she said. “My mom’s name was Emmeline Bouchard.”
“Was she from Madawaska, too?”
“Fort Kent.”
The town was twenty miles down the river from St. Ignace where Scott Pellerin had vanished.
“The badge you—excuse me, Meg—sold at the yard sale belonged to a man named Duke Dupree. I’m having trouble understanding how a college student from Connecticut got her hands on the badge of a Maine game warden who has been dead for decades.”
There was a touch of cruelty in her smile. “Too bad she’s not here.”
“You’re lying to me about the badge, Angie. I know it was yours.”
The door flew open behind her. A big, bearded man stood there, wearing jeans and nothing else. He had the heavy brow and the powerful chest of a cartoon caveman. Unusual for a man his age in a place like this, he had no tattoos. He did, however, possess what looked like a cattle brand on one muscular shoulder. Raised scar tissue made a circular pattern. He appeared to be late thirties, older than I was, and significantly older than Angie.
“Who the fuck is this?” he said in the same faintly French accent.
“No one, baby.”
His eyes were like those of a nocturnal animal, dark brown, alert. A creature that preys upon weaker creatures.
“I know a cop when I see one.”
“I’m a game warden, actually. And you are?”
“A friend of mine,” said Angie quickly.
The man took the joint from her but was more careful about the direction he blew smoke. He looked so familiar, and yet I was positive we had never met before.
“What do you want?” he said.
“I was asking for tips on having a successful yard sale.”
The man angled himself in front of his girlfriend, assuming that’s who she was. I kept my eyes locked on his but used my peripheral vision in case he pulled out a weapon.
“I think it’s time for you to knock on someone else’s door, Warden.”
A realization took hold of me. Why had it taken so long for me to see the resemblance? From my back pocket, I removed the snapshot Ora had found in Charley’s cigar box and held it out for them to see.
The bearded man reacted as if I’d shown him a picture of his own gravestone. The question came out as a snarl. “What the fuck?”
My intuition had been proven correct. “I assume you know who this is, then.”
“Where did you get that?”
I put the photograph away before he could snatch it from me. “It doesn’t matter. So which of Pierre Michaud’s sons are you?”
“Who the fuck are you?”
“I already told Ms. Bouchard.”
Angie put her hand on Michaud’s muscled arm but directed her words at me. “I answered all your questions.”
That wasn’t anywhere near the truth. I had dozens more for Angie Bouchard and the son of Pierre Michaud.
“Get the fuck out of here,” he said.
“And if I don’t?”
He couldn’t speak the threat out loud, but I had seen murder in enough eyes to recognize a warning. “Don’t come here again.”
Tough guys always need to have the last word.
22
Fifteen miles west of Presque Isle, I nearly drove off the road.
I was passing through green fields planted with what looked like broccoli when I spotted an enormous black shape, grazing with its head down among the plants. A horse that had escaped his corral? No, it was too tall and ungainly.
Slowing down, I spotted another, then another, then another. Moose don’t travel in herds, but that was what I saw: twelve moose, ranging in size from new calves to enormous bulls, all happily dining on some hapless farmer’s crop.
Take that, Everglades, I thought. You don’t have a monopoly on natural wonders.
I stopped the Scout and got out with my iPhone to get pictures of the moose herd. My photographic skills were adequate for the purposes of recording evidence at crime scenes, but I lacked Stacey’s eye for composition and light.
The big animals didn’t seem to notice my presence. Moose have notoriously poor vision (I once avoided a charging bull by simply stepping behind a tree trunk and kept it between us until he calmed down), but their hearing is keen, as is their sense of smell, so they knew I was there. They just didn’t care.
Each of the animals was surrounded by a swarm of blackflies. The insect clouds were visible from fifty yards away. And soon the heat-seeking bugs had homed in on me, too. I retreated back inside my vehicle.
I needed to make a phone call anyway.
I reached Nick Francis’s voice mail.
“Nick, it’s Mike. I found the young woman who sold the badge to John Smith. Her name is Angie Bouchard, and I’m pretty sure she’s from St. Ignace. Her mother’s name was Emmeline Bouchard. I had expected Charley to have found her before I did, but she didn’t react like an angry geezer had recently knocked on her door. The big surprise was her boyfriend. He’s one of Pierre Michaud’s sons. He overheard me asking Angie about the badge, and I got the feeling he didn’t know she’d sold it and was ripshit to learn what she’d done. That worries me for her sake.”
I had hoped Nick was screening his calls. I watched the moose for ten more
