“Mike,” said Kellam. “Do you know Chief Plourde?”
“No, but I have heard of the investigator,” said the police chief in heavily accented English. I’d met more than a few Francophones since I’d arrived in the Valley, but Chief Plourde was the first who struck me as someone who’d clung to his accent as a point of cultural pride. “Your exploits have made the news, even up here.”
“We’re headed over to the Swamp Buck,” said Kellam with disconcerting friendliness. “How’d you like to tag along, Mike?”
The only thing I’d had to eat all day was a granola bar. I kept a box of them in my truck because I so often found myself in the woods, miles from the nearest store or restaurant.
“Why not?”
“Do you need a ride?” Kellam asked. “Mike flipped his vehicle out on Route 161.”
“I was driving too fast in the rain.” For the time being, I had decided to stick with my cover story.
“That’s a treacherous road,” agreed the chief.
“The Scout ran fine all the way here. Even if it looks like I stole it from a junkyard.”
Kellam insisted on showing Plourde my vehicle up close. “Chief, you’d better give your boys a heads-up about Mike’s truck so they don’t pull him over for a busted taillight.”
Plourde chuckled, but his good humor didn’t seem to be at my expense.
The sight of my battered Scout hurt in more ways than one. It made me remember the physical aches and pains I’d managed to forget during the interrogations. The agony of knowing my trusty ride was likely headed for the scrap heap hurt worse.
At least the engine turned over. I might need to tape up the passenger window with some plastic sheeting to keep out the rain, but I was still mobile for the time being.
I found a new text from Kathy Frost waiting:
Temperature down to 100 degrees and steady.
Sleeping now.
Her family’s here wondering where you are.
What should I say?
Kathy would have done her best to explain, but an explanation is not an excuse, and Dani’s mom and brothers had a right to question what kind of boyfriend I was.
In the past I had dated civilians who hadn’t appreciated the demands of my job. With Dani Tate, I could take comfort knowing that, as a cop herself, she would understand.
Wouldn’t she?
Fort Kent was a small town, and there was no missing the Swamp Buck. The restaurant, on Main Street, had the aura of a local institution. The first sound I heard, coming through the door, was boisterous laughter. True to the name, there were antler light fixtures hanging from the ceiling and moose horns mounted on the walls.
Plourde and Kellam had arrived before I did and been given a seat of honor near the window, where the chief could see and be seen. The older officers sat side by side, forcing me to face them across the table. Clearly they had questions.
Roland’s and Egan’s interrogations might have been over for the day, but mine was just beginning.
The young woman who came to our table greeted the chief in French, then switched automatically to unaccented English when she addressed Kellam and me. She looked to be all of fifteen years old and gawky as an egret.
The chief ordered a swamp burger with a side of poutine and a cup of King Cole tea.
Kellam ordered something called a sour cream salad and a twenty-ounce glass of Molson Golden.
I asked for a tuna sandwich and a cup of coffee. “And a side of ployes.”
These were thin buckwheat pancakes, served with butter: the traditional accompaniment to any Acadian meal. My grandmother used to make them whenever I visited their humble mill worker’s house. Both she and my grandfather had died of the blood cancer that seemed epidemic in Maine factory towns that had processed pulp into paper.
Our server couldn’t have been more apologetic. “We don’t serve ployes here. I’m sorry.”
I had been looking forward to the French Canadian delicacy. I missed my barely remembered grandparents.
Chief Plourde registered my disappointment. “How can you have a restaurant in the Valley that doesn’t serve ployes? I tell you, we are losing our culture. The children, they don’t learn French at home. Families don’t travel between countries like they used to.”
“I thought ICE had made it easier for the locals to cross.”
“In theory, yes. But there are always new agents who are strangers here—they have come from the south where there is the feeling of a war—and they do not appreciate the specialness of the Valley.”
I wasn’t sure about customs agents, but I knew that every Border Patrol agent in Maine had been trained in the no-man’s-land of South Texas, Arizona, or California. There, they were taught to regard all foreigners as prospective—if not presumptive—criminals.
Before 9/11, Americans and Canadians had crossed back and forth over the international bridge, often several times a day, with nothing more than a wave at the officer in the customs booth. They might live in Madawaska but shop in Edmundston, buy their prescriptions in Clair but gas up in Fort Kent. The collapse of the World Trade Center towers had sent shock waves that rippled all the way to northernmost Maine. With a butcher’s cleaver, the Department of Homeland Security had severed a unique and vibrant community older than the Constitution itself.
Our server returned with our drinks.
Chief Plourde emptied five packets of Splenda into his tea. “Stanley says you’re a friend of my friend Charley Stevens.”
“That’s right.”
“I thought I saw him in town last night. But the man I saw was bald.”
“Charley’s up here,” said Kellam. “He’s poking around.”
I put down my coffee mug. “I wouldn’t know.”
“Give me a little credit, Mike. Pellerin was like a son to Stevens. I’m wise to the game you two are playing.”
Chief Plourde stirred his
