“I’m fine, Ruth,” I said, keeping my eyes on Nappi. “Thank you.” Over my shoulder, I said to DeSalle. “Your driver’s license, please, Mr. DeSalle.”
This time he gave it to me. I wrote up the ticket and held it out for him. He grabbed the paper from me and said in a soft voice, “Your career is over, asshole.”
I climbed to the top of the boat ramp and stood beside Ruth Libby and her boyfriend while DeSalle and Nappi loaded the powerboat onto the trailer. All the while, the boy, forgotten by his father, watched me. I couldn’t tell from his expression what he was thinking. Maybe he wanted me to rescue him, maybe he wanted to kill me. The blood was still pounding in my ears, very loud. I knew my face was red with it, too.
“Those guys were rude,” whispered Ruth’s boyfriend.
“They’re pricks,” said Ruth. “We missed you the last few days at the diner, Mike.”
My mouth tasted of the dirt-dry parking lot. “I’ve been busy. Tell your mom I’ll be around one of these days.”
“Tell her yourself,” she said.
My pager went off as I was sitting in my parked patrol truck, trying to get my paperwork together while I cooled down. I didn’t recognize the phone number that came up, but I dialed it, anyway. The department didn’t reimburse us for cell phone calls, even when they were made for job-related reasons, but most of the wardens I knew continued to carry personal cells and pay for the privilege out of their own pockets.
“This is Mike Bowditch with the Maine Warden Service. You just paged me.”
“Thanks for returning my call. My name’s Rob Post, and I’m a writer with
“I’m on duty, sir.”
“Your father is the suspect in a double homicide and the subject of an international manhunt. Can’t you take five minutes to talk with me? I think your family should be given an opportunity to respond to the things being said about him.”
I closed my eyes and leaned back against the seat. “I have nothing to say.”
“It will help your father if you talk to me, Mike,” said Post.
I laughed.
He knew he was losing me. “I understand you were present at the search scene last night. How did it feel being a warden involved in hunting for your own father?”
“Don’t call me again, Mr. Post.”
“Do you think he killed those men?” he asked before I hung up.
I looked out through the windshield at the mirror surface of Indian Pond, the pearl-gray sky above. My brain could scarcely form a thought-it felt like it was wrapped in cotton batting. I drove back to my empty home.
16
I heard the phone ringing inside the house. The sound carried through the screen to the back porch, where I’d gone to watch the sunset. I couldn’t have told you how long I’d been sitting there, but mosquitoes had raised welts along both my arms. The phone summoned me back to myself from a faraway place. I got up and went inside and picked up the receiver.
“I shot it!” said a man’s slurred voice. “I shot it!”
“Mr. Thompson?”
“I shot the bear!”
“It came back to your farm?”
“Yeah, it came back. Came back just now.” I could practically smell the liquor on his breath through the phone.
“And you say you killed it?”
“Hell, yes.”
“You’re sure it’s dead?”
“Come see for yourself.”
I picked up my gunbelt from the tabletop where it lay beside Sarah’s empty beer bottles. Then I went out into the last minutes of daylight.
I drove fast along the Beechwood Road, feeling the frustration inside me building to anger. All the hours I’d put into trapping the bear had been for nothing. The animal was dead, and I didn’t even know why I was speeding.
The sun had just disappeared behind the ridge as I came up on Bud Thompson’s farm. I saw the dirty clapboard house, the broken-backed barn, the rickety chicken coop. It seemed ages since I’d last visited this place. I was startled to realize it had only been three nights earlier.
Bud Thompson was nowhere to be seen. I’d expected him to be waiting for me on his front porch or at least to come running when my truck pulled into the driveway. Most of the windows were dark, but deep within the house I saw a faint light, like a dying ember.
I circled around the house to the backyard. Thompson hadn’t bothered to repair the pigpen; the pieces of the broken fence still lay scattered where the bear had tossed them.
I looked back at the house. The mudroom door was wide open.
“Mr. Thompson?”
There was no answer. I heard the chickens scratching about in the coop. A car rushed past the house and down the hill.
“Mr. Thompson? It’s Mike Bowditch with the Warden Service.”
The inside of the house smelled of stale beer and mothballs. I flicked on the kitchen light. Thompson’s.22 rifle lay on the table amid a bunch of empty beer cans and stock car racing magazines. There was a smear of blood on the cracked linoleum floor leading down the hall.
“Mr. Thompson?”
I heard a whimper. The bathroom door was ajar, light spilling out through the crack. Inside, Thompson was seated on the toilet. He had rolled up his pant leg and was clutching a bloody towel to his calf. He looked up at me with red, tear-filled eyes and shuddered. He smelled like he had showered in malt liquor.
“What happened?”
“I thought I killed it.”
“It bit you?”
“I went out to have another look. I must’ve only stunned it.” He shook his head sadly. “I hit it in the head. I thought I killed it.”
“Let me see your leg.”
“It’s bleeding pretty heavy.”
He peeled back the towel. Blood began pumping out from the torn flesh. The bear had torn an egg-sized chunk of meat from the muscle of his calf.
“It’s bad, isn’t it?” he asked.
“You’re going to need some stitches, but you’ll be all right. Keep pressing hard against the wound.”
He nodded and shuddered again.
“What happened to the bear?”
“It went off into the woods.”
“Great,” I said.
I left Thompson and went back to my truck to request an ambulance. With the sun down, the sky was turning violet and shadows were creeping out from beneath the trees at the edge of the forest. I didn’t have much time. I removed my Mossberg 12-gauge from its locked holder and ejected the buckshot shells from the chamber and magazine. Then I loaded the shotgun with heavy deer slugs and hooked my Maglite on my gunbelt.
When I came back inside the house, I found that Thompson had dragged himself out to the kitchen. He was seated at the table, with a new towel knotted around his leg, and he was gulping down a can of beer like a man dying of thirst.
I reached out to take the beer can away from him, but it was already empty. “If you move around, you’re just
