Wanda Barter, dressed in a shapeless smock that might once have been a circus tent, came storming down the hall. She already had a cigarette fired up and tucked between her cracked lips. Her reddish gray hair was fastened forcibly back from her forehead by a cruel array of pins. She shoved her son by the head, so that he stumbled away from the door. Then she stepped forward as if to block my entrance should I consider barging into the home. I felt vaguely like Theseus up against the Minotaur.
“What do you want?”
“I know your husband’s inside, Mrs. Barter.” Glancing behind the barrel-shaped woman, I saw the boy down the hall. I raised my voice so that it could be heard throughout the house, in case someone was eavesdropping from the top of the staircase. “We’ve got another warden in the woods behind the house, so Calvin can forget trying to give us the slip again.” It was a blatant lie, but I was sick of Wanda’s bullshit.
She studied me through the wafting cigarette smoke. “I guess you didn’t see the ‘No Trespassing’ signs we put up out front. Or maybe you don’t read so well. You didn’t strike me as the intelligent type the other day. Those signs mean the same as ‘Keep Out.’”
When you grow up in poverty, as I did, you develop a complicated attitude toward the destitute, the shiftless, and the genuinely needy. You remember your own frequent visits to the food bank and the squalor of your playmates’ mobile homes, and you feel an upwelling of sympathy that lasts until the moment some redneck spits in your face. And then you start thinking that ultimately we all deserve the hand we’re dealt.
I counted to ten. “Someone just committed criminal mischief on Hank Varnum’s property for the second time in a week. I know it was your husband who did it.”
A random redheaded toddler wandered out of the shadows and stood behind its mother, or grandmother, or whoever the hell she was. There were too many homes in these parts where the family trees defied easy diagramming.
“Calvin’s away on business,” she said.
Business? The man didn’t work. “We both know I’m going to catch up with Calvin sooner or later. Do I really have to get a warrant to talk with him?”
“Yep.” She blew two massive lungfuls of smoke in my face. “You really fucking do. Now why don’t you get the fuck off my property before I really lose my fucking temper.”
She didn’t close the door on me, just crossed her brawny forearms and made it clear that the conversation was officially over. We both knew that I had no recourse. She hadn’t threatened me, and without a warrant specifying probable cause for a search, I had no business lingering on private property. Once again, Wanda Barter had me by the short hairs, and she damn well knew it.
“I’ll be back,” I said, but the threat sounded hollow even to my own ears.
She merely leered at me while the blank-faced toddler peeked out from between her formidable legs.
I didn’t fully turn my back on the house until I had climbed into my truck. I swung around the circular driveway fast and accelerated through the leafless orchard, furious and tempted to take out a few fence posts along my way. My spinning tires churned up loose gravel, which rattled around the underside of the chassis, and for an instant, I thought I heard a pinging sound.
It was only fifteen minutes later, as I was getting out of the vehicle at the Square Deal to buy Kathy her doughnuts, that I realized where the noise had come from. My side window was cracked in an unmistakable spiderwebbed pattern, one that could only have been produced by a pellet gun.
20
I was never cut out to be a comedian. I know only one Maine joke, and it happens to be tasteless. “What does a Maine girl say during sex? ‘Ease up, Dad. You’re crushing my smokes.’”
There were too many houses I visited where the truth behind that punch line lurked in creepy silhouettes behind drawn window shades. Wanda Barter’s farm was one. Two days ago, I had found the woman and her redheaded band of offspring vaguely amusing. Now the thought of Barter and his brood gave me a major case of the willies.
I needed to nab this asshole. Most game wardens were assigned all-terrain vehicles, but budget cuts and the geographical peculiarities of my district-all those rocky peninsulas and marshy rivers-had precluded me from getting one. Maybe I could borrow Kathy’s, I thought. I relished the possibility of meeting Calvin Barter alone on a darkened trail.
Whatever the expression on my face was as I entered the Square Deal Diner, it caused Ruth Libby to blanch. “What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Could I get a dozen doughnuts to go? And two large coffees?”
“We’re calling them ‘grande’ coffees now.”
“You are?”
“Heck no.” She winked, trying to lighten my mood.
I appreciated her intent, but I wasn’t especially eager to let go of my rage. Like the men on my father’s side of the family, I seemed to enjoy getting angry-the heat of the blood pulsing through my temples affected me like a dangerous intoxicant.
Out of the corner of my eye, I became aware of a couple watching me from a corner booth, the very same booth Charley and I had occupied the previous day. They were an older, mismatched couple. The man had a shock of white hair and glasses with thick black rims. He wore a black blazer over a black polo shirt that hugged his heavy paunch. The woman was whip-thin, with close-cropped gray curls, a long nose, and deeply set eyes that put me in mind of a stalking heron. As I waited for Ruth to fill my order, the man and women consulted each other in whispers and then rose ceremoniously to their feet. I saw that the man was lugging a file box that looked stuffed to overflowing with documents.
“Oh shit,” whispered Ruth. “Those are the ones who were asking about you.”
“Warden Bowditch,” said the woman in a thick Down East accent I instantly recognized. “My name is Lou Bates. I spoke with you on the telephone. This is my associate, Mr. Oswald Bell.”
“Call me Ozzie.” His voice was parched and raspy, probably from a lifetime’s worth of cigarettes. His own accent said Rockaway, New York, rather than Rockport, Maine.
“We’re here on behalf of my nephew, Erland Jefferts,” explained Lou Bates.
I noticed they were both sporting white buttons on their lapels with the words FREE ERLAND JEFFERTS. I tried to muster a modicum of politeness. “As I told you yesterday, I can’t talk with you, Mrs. Bates.”
“Five minutes of your time,” said Bell. “You can give us five minutes, right?”
“No, Mr. Bell, I’m afraid I can’t.”
“Make it three minutes, then. You’ve got that. While they ring up your order.”
“This isn’t a negotiation,” I said. “How did you know to find me here?”
“Our sources told us that you frequent this establishment on a daily basis,” said Lou Bates.
“Your sources?”
“My nephew is being wrongfully incarcerated in the Maine State Prison for a crime he didn’t commit.”
“Basically, we consider Mr. Jefferts a political prisoner,” declared Bell.
Lou Bates continued: “It is our belief that you have evidence that can help exonerate him and secure his full pardon and release.”
Bell raised the heavy cardboard box in my direction, as if he expected me to accept it as a gift. “If you’ll just look at these files, you’ll see Erland has gotten royally shafted. There are state secrets in this box-information the prosecution refuses to make public.”
“I told you that I can’t talk with you.” The entire diner had fallen silent. A voice in the back of my head told me to cool down fast, before the consequences spiraled out of control. “I need to use the rest room.”
All eyes followed me into the bathroom. Inside, I leaned both arms against the sink and stared into my own burning reflection. Did these J-Team nuts really think that I was some sort of crusader for the unfairly accused? I started the tap water running and splashed my face. Get a grip, Bowditch. Pay for your doughnuts and hit the road.
When I opened the bathroom door, I found everyone in the restaurant gawking at me. But Ozzie Bell and Lou
