“No,” I said. “You didn’t.”
19
Driving home from my mother’s house, I remembered that the funeral of Deputy Bill Brodeur was scheduled for sometime that afternoon at the Colby College gymnasium in Waterville. On my cell phone I punched in Kathy Frost’s number. “I want to apologize for last night.”
“Save it, Mike.”
“So what did you do with the bear?”
“I sent the head to Augusta for a rabies test and buried the rest just to be safe. Look, I can’t talk now. We’re all getting ready for Brodeur’s memorial service.”
“What time is that, anyway?”
“Noon.” There was a pause on her end. “I hope you’re not thinking of showing up. Malcomb would throw a shit fit if he saw you there.”
“I just want to pay my respects.”
“Then stay home. Nobody wants to see you there, Mike. You might not like it, but that’s just the way it is.”
“I’ll think about it,” I said, hanging up and turning off my phone before she could slip another word in.
If I hurried, I might still make the service. I stopped at a gas station and bought a razor and shaved quickly in the restroom, cleaning myself up as best I could. Then I put on the spare field uniform I kept in my Jeep for emergencies.
When Kathy first told me about the Flagstaff homicides, I’d assumed I’d be part of the formal retinue of uniformed officers-game wardens, municipal and state police, sheriff’s deputies, firefighters-who always attend the memorial services of a fallen law officer in Maine. But after my father lit out for the hills with a target on his back, it became clear that my presence at Brodeur’s funeral would be unwelcome. Now that I was unofficially suspended, I found myself unconcerned about such matters. If I really believed in my dad’s innocence, I had no reason to hide my face.
Road construction kept me from getting anywhere fast. Sunlight angled through the driver-side window as if through a magnifying glass. I blasted the air-conditioning until a mist formed on the inside of the windshield and goose bumps rose along my neck. The dashboard clock clicked off the minutes toward noon and I was still too many miles away. I thought of my fellow wardens gathering at Division B, all of them solemn and quiet in their red-and- green dress uniforms. In my mind I saw a parade of green patrol vehicles heading north in a procession up the interstate while I approached alone in my Jeep.
I hadn’t been back to the Colby campus since graduation. As I negotiated my way through downtown Waterville, heading up Mayflower Hill, I felt a nervous excitement, as if I were returning to a new year at school. I saw brick buildings rising against a blue sky, and green lawns where summer students sprawled reading books and listening to music. I saw Miller Library with its white bell tower. Sarah and I once enjoyed a quickie in one of its darkened classrooms.
The funeral was well under way by the time I arrived. The parking lots between Seaverns Field and the gym were jam-packed with civilian vehicles and police cruisers. But my eyes went immediately to the green trucks bearing the emblem of the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife that were scattered among the other vehicles.
There was no room in any of the near lots. Finally, after driving around for ten minutes I found a space halfway across campus. Then I had to jog.
When I reached the gym, I found the foyer empty, but I could sense the proximity of a crowd in the next room. A large group of people gives off an energy like the buzzing of a hive of bees. Still, I was unprepared for what I saw. There must have been close to a thousand people seated in that gym. Rows of folding chairs, holding dozens of law enforcement officers in their multicolored uniforms, were arranged on the parquet floor, and still more officers occupied the lower bleachers. Civilians sat above them with only the highest benches on either side unoccupied. Basketballs hoops had been folded up to the ceiling to give everyone a better view.
Brodeur’s flag-draped coffin rested on a platform surrounded by flowers at the front of the auditorium, and hanging behind it were other flags and banners. A podium and microphone stood nearby, and Sheriff Hatch, dressed in his uniform today instead of a sport coat, was reading from a prepared speech.
I hung inside the doorway at the top of the stairs and listened.
“Bill was what you might call soft-spoken,” Hatch was saying. “But as they say, still waters run deep. Even though he was new to the department, I believe he was becoming a role model for other officers to follow. You can never accurately predict a man’s potential, but I believe Bill Brodeur had as bright a future as any deputy I have seen in thirty years of law enforcement.”
The sheriff cleared his throat and then took a long moment trying to find the place in the text where he’d left off. “Bill gave his life in defense of another human being. Too often certain actions of law officers are called heroic by the media when really they are just part of doing our job. That’s the way Bill felt about it. If he heard you call him a hero, I’m sure he’d just look over his shoulder to see who you were referring to because he surely wouldn’t recognize himself in that word. We, however, can recognize Bill’s valor for what it was, an act of sacrifice and courage. William Brodeur was a genuine hero, and it was my privilege to know him for all too short a time.”
On the floor of the auditorium I was able to pick out the red dress jackets of Lieutenant Malcomb, Kathy Frost, and dozens of wardens I knew seated together in a row. Among the police officers on the dais I saw Deputy Twombley. His dress uniform was as tight around his middle as a sausage casing. His cherub cheeks were shining with tears.
The next speaker was Father Richard Pepin, a thin, bespectacled guy with a French accent, who identified himself as Brodeur’s parish priest. He recalled the deputy in the sort of vague terms that made me think he knew the family well but the young man not at all. He asked that everyone remember the other man killed that night, Jonathan Shipman, of Wendigo Timber, whose family must also be grieving, and he ended with a prayer for the assembled law enforcement officers, asking God to “protect these brave men and women, grant them your almighty protection, unite them safely with their families after duty has ended. Amen.”
“Amen,” we all said.
The service went on like that. Family and coworkers of the dead man talked emotionally about him, but the shapeless anecdotes they told-of his love of snowmobiling and NASCAR-left me without a sense of who Brodeur had been as a man. I realized, too, that no one had mentioned a girlfriend. The picture that emerged was of a quiet, responsible, yet unremarkable young man. His death seemed senseless and unlucky-he truly was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The service drew to a close. While a bugle and bagpipes played taps, the pallbearers lifted the flag from the coffin and folded it in military fashion into a tight triangle and presented it to Brodeur’s mother. She clutched it to her breast. Then, along the aisle, an honor guard formed a corridor of uniformed bodies. Everyone stood as the dead man’s coffin floated on the shoulders of the pallbearers down the aisle and outside into the sunshine.
I watched the auditorium empty. I knew that Brodeur would be given a twenty-one-gun salute as his coffin was loaded into the hearse. Then uniformed officers would line the roadway down Mayflower Hill. Outside, afterward, there would be a crowd of familiar faces. My gut felt like a knot of worms.
“Warden Bowditch!”
I hadn’t realized anyone was behind me. I spun around and came face-to-face with a wiry old man in an ill- fitting black suit. He had a hawk nose and fierce green eyes that held my own without blinking. I almost didn’t recognize him without his warden’s uniform.
“Warden Stevens,” I said.
He held out his hand for me to shake. “Call me Charley.” He held my hand a long moment, looking straight into my eyes. His grip was like a blacksmith’s vise. “You going outside?”
I nodded, hesitantly. “Yes.”
“I’ll come with you then, if you don’t mind the company.”
It had been a while since we’d seen each other; I knew that he and his wife lived somewhere near Flagstaff. I
