But he never made it across.
My imagination easily conjured the scene. A full moon appearing and disappearing behind ragged clouds, a man paddling for his life across water black as spilled ink. And then, out of nowhere, a floatplane. The pilot spots the fugitive. The plane descends. It skates on its pontoons across the surface until it is within thirty yards of the canoe. Gunshots follow. The fugitive leaps into the forty-degree lake, believing he can outswim death. He miscalculates.
My friend had kept the picture of this evil, bear-faced man in the same box as his war medals. Charley disdained trophies. I thought I understood the meaning of the snapshot now. It was a reminder of a failure he wouldn’t allow himself to forget. And the Hindu inscription on the back? A spell to ward off the furies who assailed his conscience by night.
As I put away Pierre’s picture, I saw through the rain the shape of a person in a lighted window in the house across the road. Then the curtain fell. I could have knocked and asked to know what happened here fifteen years earlier, but I already knew the answer I’d receive.
Silence.
I engaged my wipers to clear the glass. I pushed the transmission into first gear and began creeping forward again.
Less than a mile down the road, I came to the Valley View Motel. The sign rising from the side of the road was a charming patois:
BIENVENUE!
VALLEY VIEW MOTEL
CHAMBRES RENOVE
WELCOM SLEDDERS
Snowmobile season had ended three months earlier, but from the boarded windows of the cabins, it was obvious the motel had been closed a lot longer than that.
This morning, the parking lot overflowed with visitors. The state police, the Aroostook County Sheriff’s Office, even the Fort Kent Police Department had sent representatives, as had the U.S. Border Patrol. The proximity to Canada—just a rifle shot across the river—must have engaged the interest of the feds.
I parked along the roadside, grabbed my raincoat and warden cap, and made my way up the string of vehicles. I passed Chasse Lamontaine’s warden truck. It was even muddier than before. The bastard had taken a shortcut and beaten me here.
A deputy, charged with shooing away nosy neighbors and blocking reporters when they arrived, tried to stop me until I showed him my badge.
A crowd of officers milled outside the tape barrier. Standing off to one side was Chasse Lamontaine. He had his back to me, but his height and wingspan made him impossible to misidentify. The warden was on his phone, speaking to someone in French. It sounded like an argument. I slipped past before he recognized me.
I found Nico Zanadakis in conversation with a man in blue coveralls: one of his evidence technicians. This morning, the dapper detective was wearing a black trench coat. Beneath it was a charcoal blazer with a gray shirt, a black satin tie, and a silver pocket square. Also nitrile gloves to keep from contaminating evidence. He smelled of eau de cologne and DEET.
“Bowditch?” His tone was not welcoming.
“I have information about Angie Bouchard you need to hear.”
“Of course you do.”
“It would be best if we speak in private.”
He dismissed the technician and extended an arm toward the motel dumpster. Someone had deposited the carcass of a road-killed deer inside it, and the air was alive with the buzzing of flies and the stomach-turning stench of rotting flesh. We retreated to a safe distance.
Zanadakis was neither the best nor the worst detective in the state police. He could connect puzzle pieces when he had a pattern to work from.
“This has something to do with what happened at Hook Lake. Your confrontation with Smith.”
For the first time, I had an unimpeded view of the back lot. Angie’s Volkswagen, dirty with pollen paste, was parked in the far corner. Evidence techs had opened the doors to shoot videos and photographs.
“I met with Bouchard yesterday at the house she was renting in Presque Isle.”
Zanadakis raised an eyebrow. “Go on.”
“Her boyfriend was there. Roland Michaud, son of Pierre Michaud. I’m sure that name rings a bell. You need to start with Roland.”
“No, I need to start with you. What the fuck have you been doing up here? First you visit an amateur fence who tries to kill you. Then you drop in on a girl who turns up dead.”
“I wasn’t entirely forthcoming when you and I spoke at Hook Lake.”
“You lied, you mean.”
“By omission.”
“I’m not your fucking priest, man. I don’t care about categories of sin. I care about being misled by an officer who swore an oath to uphold the law. Did you think I wouldn’t find out it was Charley Stevens who beat the piss out of Smith? How is the old man mixed up in this?”
“Smith had a warden badge for sale along with his other stolen stuff at the Machias Dike.”
He raised the collar of his trench coat against the piss-warm rain. “And Stevens took offense?”
“The badge belonged to a warden named Duke Dupree.”
“I don’t know him.”
“He died a long time ago. His grandson was Scott Pellerin.”
His response was terse but to the point. “Fuck me. This is all connected to that clusterfuck in St. Ignace?”
“The reason I didn’t tell you at Hook Lake was because I didn’t know who Dupree was or that the badge had anything to do with Pellerin’s disappearance. For all I knew, Charley had just gone off on Smith because he was a scumbag.”
The pomade in his wavy hair caused the water to bead up. “So where did Smith say he came by the thing?”
“He bought it from Angie Bouchard at a yard sale. Scott Pellerin stayed at this motel when he was undercover. Angie’s mother, Emmeline, owned and ran the place then. My guess is
