Kellam had expressed a similar sentiment to me. I couldn’t be certain if what he regretted was his misjudgments concerning Pellerin or the damage that the affair had on his career aspirations. He might have felt both emotions at once.
Vaneese started clawing at her thigh again. “It was Stan’s plan to send in all those men into town at night. The politicians and the newspapers called it a ‘raid,’ but Stan said it was a rescue mission. Michaud started the fire that burned those buildings. The wardens were not responsible. But still everyone blamed Stan. And he was mad at your friend for killing Michaud before they could find out where he’d hidden Scott’s body.”
That simmering resentment explained Charley’s reluctance to confront Kellam himself.
She reached for a tissue and dabbed the wad at her eyes. “Stanley said that his career ended that night. Before Scott, he was going to be the colonel. But the politicians made sure he would rise no higher.”
“I want to get back to the phone call you overheard. You don’t have any idea who he could have been speaking with?”
“No.”
“What about the person who wants to destroy him?”
“Your friend, I think. Is that true? Does your friend wish to destroy Stan?”
She had been honest with me, and I felt she deserved the respect of a truthful answer. “It’s possible he does.”
“Why?”
“I’m not sure I can give you an answer that makes sense. Stan doesn’t know you are in Fort Kent, does he?”
“No.”
“What might he do if he finds out you came here to tell me these things?”
She reacted to this question by tensing the muscles in her face. Her eyes seemed overlarge in the dimness of the car. It was as if I had insulted her virtue.
“Stan loves me.”
“That doesn’t mean—”
“He has never hit me. He is the first man I’ve been with I can say that about. He would never hurt me no matter what I did.”
As a law enforcement officer, you meet many women who are certain that their boyfriend or husband will never hurt them, not in a million years—until he breaks their arm.
For her sake, I hoped Vaneese was right about Stan.
When I returned to the Scout, I saw that the rain had found the weak point in the plastic that I had taped up as a makeshift window. I tried to reattach the tape, but the water had ruined the adhesive. I let the wet air seep inside.
Kellam hadn’t mentioned where he was going after lunch. I had assumed back to Moccasin Pond. What would he do when he found Vaneese gone?
It pained me not to talk this through with Charley. He had said he’d been watching me. I wondered if he—or his proxy, Nick Francis—might be doing so now.
I couldn’t leave the Valley, not yet. I hoped Dani would understand my decision. But until I knew Charley was safe, I couldn’t absolve myself of the promise I had made to Ora.
I drove directly to the nearest motel. It was the one with the mile zero marker in its lot. I recognized Zanadakis’s unmarked cruiser parked at the far end. It was a two-hour drive back to the nearest state police barracks, and no doubt the detective was as aware of the danger posed by night-wandering moose as I was.
Except for a nook with coffee and a rack of pamphlets advertising local attractions, the lobby felt like the living room of someone’s French-speaking great-aunt.
“Sorry, but we are full up,” said the awkward teenage girl behind the desk.
“Your sign says ‘Vacancy.’”
“We just sold the last room a few minutes ago. I haven’t had a chance to change it. I can call around and see if I can find a place for you.”
“Is something going on in town?”
“The muskie derby.”
Back in the 1960s, biologists in Québec had introduced muskellunges into Lac Frontière at the urging of local sportsmen. The fish are relatives of northern pike but are much larger and more aggressive, reaching lengths of nearly five feet and weighing as much as sixty pounds. They can live as long as thirty years. Their teeth are long and sharp enough to snip off your thumb.
Inevitably the super-predators got into the St. John watershed and made their way downstream into Maine, devastating every native species along the way. But at least the locals had found a way to cash in on the alien invasion. Maybe the people in the Everglades, plagued by pythons, needed to get creative with their economic development efforts.
“I thought the derby was in August,” I said.
“The chamber of commerce is doing two this summer because there are so many fish. Are you sure I can’t help you find a room? Where will you sleep?”
“My truck,” I said. “It won’t be the first time.”
But in the past, the Scout still had windows to keep out the mosquitoes and the rain.
I was just about to leave when a realization smacked me in the forehead. “You’re the girl who waited on me this afternoon at the Swamp Buck.”
Her smile told me she appreciated being recognized. “This is my night job.”
“It must keep you busy.”
“I like to work,” she said brightly. “But it does get hard during the potato harvest. I have to get up before dawn to get my hours in on the farm, too.”
“Three jobs is a lot,” I said.
“It is?” She seemed genuinely baffled.
I remembered seeing a drive-in campsite on the map of the Allagash River, just upstream of where it flowed into the St. John. Chances were that muskie fishermen had already “hoseyed” it, already laid a claim. The Valley wasn’t short of clearings in the woods where I could park my vehicle for the night.
Thinking about Allagash village made me recall Jon Egan. The red squirrel lived there, I remembered.
The deep-woods hamlet was the terminus of one of America’s great canoe trips. The federally protected Allagash Wilderness Waterway was a ninety-eight-mile chain of lakes, streams, and rivers through the heart of
