“I must have driven through with my girlfriend after we’d finished paddling the Allagash, but I don’t remember it.”
“You wouldn’t. Is that the same girlfriend who’s Charley’s daughter?”
“Stacey, yes.”
“I remember when she was working on that moose survey out of Clayton Lake. We saw each other in the Ashland IGA. She was a spitfire, everyone said. Beautiful eyes, though. Smart, too. I don’t know if you were a damned fool for letting her get away or the luckiest man alive.”
I had once asked myself the same question, but since Dani and I had gotten serious, it had become moot. As Kathy had recently reminded me, I had a good thing going for once in my life.
“Anyway, Michaud and his crew—I’m talking about Pierre Michaud, not his jackass sons—they were running circles around my wardens. It made us look like the Keystone Kops. In those situations, all you can do is send in an investigator. Has DeFord had you work undercover yet?”
“He says my profile is too high.”
Kellam grunted his agreement. “It was my decision to try young Pellerin. He’d infiltrated a poaching ring down in Dresden, on Merrymeeting Bay, and secured convictions across the board. Also did good work in coordination with the Rhode Island Department of Fish and Wildlife on an interstate case, involving some guys who used to come up here from Providence to poach. That being said, I had doubts about him. You want a beer?”
“No, thanks. What kind of doubts?”
“He was too damned cocksure, in my estimation. To give you an example, he made hundred-dollar bets with guys in my division that he’d complete his investigation and secure indictments in a month. This was before he’d even met the Michauds.”
I thought I felt a tug on my line, but it was only a submerged branch.
“His cover name was Scott Paradis,” said Kellam. “You always want to use your real first name to avoid slipping up when you’re tired or distracted. And then you choose a last name that’s close to but not the same as your real one. You already know this. I can tell I’m boring you.”
“No.”
“His cover story was supposed to be that he lived in Rhode Island, because he’d spent time there when we’d worked that interstate case. Plus he had a sister in Providence. He claimed to be a commercial fisherman who’d been ‘injured’ on the job and was collecting fraudulent disability checks. When he was getting to know the Michauds, he gave them some frozen stripers he said he’d caught off Block Island to help back up his story. He said he was interested in shooting a black bear even though the season wasn’t open. He asked around if there was a guide in town who might bend the rules. Pierre Michaud thought for sure he was an undercover warden and tested him, but damn if Pellerin didn’t win over the SOB.”
“What kind of test?”
“Oh, you know. They all went out together at night, drinking and driving along the logging roads behind the gates, and when they happened on a deer, they jacklighted it. The doe was mesmerized by the spotlight. Pierre Michaud gave Pellerin a rifle and told him to shoot the deer to prove he wasn’t really a warden. Of course, Pellerin had been pretending to be drunk all night. He’d been pouring out beers when they weren’t looking. So he deliberately missed by a mile, and they thought it was because he was shit-faced.”
I had begun to sweat under my rainjacket. Despite the occasional storms, the humidity seemed to be ever building, never breaking.
“Do you remember the names of the guys in Michaud’s crew?”
“Pierre’s twin sons, Roland and Zacharie. We pinched Roland on some misdemeanors the night of the raid. He did thirty days in jail. Zacharie, though, was a felon prohibited by law from owning a firearm. Zach hanged himself in county lockup while awaiting trial.”
“He committed suicide in jail?”
Kellam’s smile lasted the briefest instant. “That was the state’s official finding.”
A law enforcement officer had disappeared and was presumed to have been murdered, and one of the suspected cop killers had taken his own life—it hadn’t taken a spoonful of sugar for the public to swallow that story.
But at least it cleared up which of Pierre’s sons Angie was dating. It could only be Roland.
“The fourth member of the ring was a guy named Egan,” said Kellam. “Little guy. Reminded me of a red squirrel. You know how chattery they are and absolutely unafraid of anything. He was a felon, too. Sex criminal. Afterward, he did a stint in the Maine State Prison for the evidence Pellerin gathered. Drug stuff, in his case. Selling to teenagers. But like Roland, he stonewalled us and got away with it.”
“And Pierre escaped,” I said.
“Would have escaped if not for Charley.”
Just then, I felt a jerk on the line, and the reel—my sturdy old Hardy—let out a series of clicks as the fish I’d hooked took off away from the boat. I lifted the rod tip to keep tension on the tippet and watched yard after yard of my line disappear beneath the pewter surface of the pond.
“What test leader have you got on?” Kellam asked, growing red with excitement.
“It’s 4X.”
“He’s going to break you off.”
“Like hell he will.”
“I’ll bet you twenty bucks he does.”
There are techniques to playing a big fish, but ultimately, it all comes down to what the fish decides to do. If it dives deep, it can snap your leader or tippet at its weakest point—usually the knot. If it circles and charges back toward the boat, it can create slack that allows the fly to work free. If it jumps into the air, it can shake the hook from its jaws in dramatic fashion.
This one tried all three strategies.
It dove hard, which made me think it was a lake trout (or togue, in local parlance).
Then it swung around with such speed that it had me thinking it was a landlocked salmon:
