“Hoo, baby! This one’s a swamp donkey. Look at her kick!”
I hit the Mute button on the remote.
In the quiet my mind drifted back to the Fort Kent air strip, before Stacey had arrived in the Cessna.
Standing at the edge of the runway, Charley had held out an arm to indicate a faint path, more like an accumulation of footprints in the grass, crossing the landing strip. The prints led to a line of trees, lush and green in the morning sun.
“Follow that trail a short ways and there’s a nice waterfall,” the old man had said. “Used to be a sure place to catch salmon and trout. Then the muskies got into the watershed, and they cleaned out most of the native fish. They’re apex predators, muskellunges. They’re here to stay, like it or not.”
“There’s always someone bigger, someone hungrier,” I had said.
“What’s that?”
“I was remembering my visit to Florida. Before I left, you told me, ‘Never trust a man without secrets.’ What did you mean by that?”
“Are you still chewing on that chestnut?” He was back to being the folksy old woodsman I knew and loved. “Every human being has secrets. If a person doesn’t seem to have any, it just means they’re devious at covering them up. Your man Wheelwright, for example.”
“Not just him.”
“No,” he’d said, catching my meaning. “Not just Wheelwright.”
Both of us had fallen silent then. Across the strip of grass, the dry wind, gusting down from Canada, blew ripples in the treetops like waves across a green sea. The humidity had broken, but it would return soon enough. It was only June, after all, with the hottest months ahead.
Eventually, the Cessna appeared, no bigger than a fly in the southern sky.
I hadn’t been thinking about Stacey before I saw the plane, hadn’t been anticipating seeing her, hadn’t felt excitement stirring inside me. Those were the lies I told myself.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
My connection to the St. John Valley is indirect. While the people of the Valley and I share a common heritage, I grew up at the southern extremity of the State of Maine, part of another community of displaced Acadians. However, my great uncle, the Reverend Romeo Doiron, served as the longtime parish priest at St. James in the town of St. Agatha, and is well remembered there. On every visit I have made to the Valley, I have been welcomed like family.
Thank you to my friends at the Long Lake Public Library in St. Agatha, especially the late Maude Marin, and to Lise Pelletier at the Acadian Archives of the University of Maine at Fort Kent. I learned much about the unique culture of the Valley from Don Cyr of the Musée culturel du Mont-Carmel in Lille.
To readers interested in the history of the Valley, I can recommend no better resource than Imaginary Line: Life on an Unfinished Border by Jacques Poitras.
As is the case with all of my novels, you will find most of the places mentioned here in your Maine atlas, but not all of them. (St. Ignace is a prime example.) In some cases a real location may appear under an assumed name. In others, an actual place—for instance, Moccasin Pond—won’t be where it appears on maps; it has grown restless, gotten up, and moved while tripling in size along its journey. Consider this another reminder that One Last Lie is a work of fiction and should be read as such.
As always, I owe a debt to the staff of the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, especially to Commissioner Judy Camuso. Thank you to the warden investigators I interviewed (and whose names I promised not to advertise) and to Corporal John MacDonald for answering my questions.
Thank you to my terrific team at Minotaur Books: Charles Spicer, Andy Martin, Sarah Melnyk, Paul Hochman, Kelley Ragland, Joe Brosnan, Holly Rice, and Sarah Grill.
Ann Rittenberg, I wish every author were as fortunate to have an agent with such well-honed editorial expertise.
As ever, my family’s support means everything to me. Mom and Dad, thank you for being my self-appointed public relations team.
Kristen, you are my world.
ALSO BY PAUL DOIRON
Almost Midnight
Stay Hidden
Knife Creek
Widowmaker
The Precipice
The Bone Orchard
Massacre Pond
Bad Little Falls
Trespasser
The Poacher’s Son
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
A native of Maine, bestselling author PAUL DOIRON attended Yale University, where he graduated with a degree in English. The Poacher’s Son, the first book in the Mike Bowditch series, won the Barry award, the Strand award for best first novel, and has been nominated for the Edgar, Anthony, and Macavity awards in the same category. He is a Registered Maine Guide specializing in fly fishing and lives on a trout stream in coastal Maine with his wife, Kristen Lindquist. You can sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Epigraph
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Author’s Note
Also by Paul Doiron
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
First published in the United States by Minotaur Books, an imprint of St. Martin’s Publishing Group
ONE LAST LIE. Copyright © 2020 by Paul Doiron. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Publishing Group, 120 Broadway, New York, NY 10271.
www.minotaurbooks.com
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-1-250-23507-7 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-250-23508-4 (ebook)
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