was no more beer-stained, the furniture no more ripped, the dirty dishes no more scattered. But a cockroach could have lived like a king there.
Donnie Drisko (also shirtless) was sprawled on the couch in front of an improbably large-screened plasma TV set. In my experience, the poorest people always seemed to find money for cigarettes, booze, and home electronics. The movie he was watching seemed to be a poorly filmed documentary on mammary glands of the largest kind.
The younger Drisko raised his shaggy head. He, too, had a wimpy mustache and pants that hung below the band of his tighty whities. If forced to guess, I would have said the father was somewhere in his late thirties and the son somewhere in his early twenties, but I might have been off the mark by years.
“Hey, it’s Warden Bowden. How’s it hanging, man?”
“Bowditch,” I said, correcting him. “How are you doing, Donnie?”
“I’m cool. Just mellowing out.”
“You want some Sanka?” Dave asked from the kitchenette. “Maybe a splash of coffee brandy?”
“I’m fine, Dave.” I positioned myself against a plastic-paneled wall, keeping both father and son in view. But honestly, there wasn’t a hint of hostility or suspicion about them. The vibe in the room was one of elation, fueled no doubt by coffee brandy. “Donnie, you mind pausing the movie there for a second?”
“No problemo.”
“So what brings you to our neck of the woods on this fine morning?” asked Drisko the Elder.
“I thought you might be able to help me with something. You guys ever go wheeling over near Hank Varnum’s property?”
“Hell no. That land’s posted,” said Dave, lighting another American Eagle.
“We don’t ride on posted land,” agreed his son.
“Then you wouldn’t know who cut down two of Hank’s big oak trees, one on either side of the trail.”
The Driskos looked at each other as if they were about to burst out giggling. “Hell, man, it could be anyone,” said Donnie from the couch. “You’ve got all kinds of lowlifes around here. You talk to Calvin Barter? Now that dude’s a shitbag.”
My throat and lungs were beginning to convulse from the smoke. I hadn’t expected to get anything useful from the Driskos on the Varnum front, so I changed gears. “I’ll check up on Barter. So tell me: What did you guys do with the deer?”
I could see Dave Drisko’s pectoral muscles tighten. “What deer?”
“The one you picked up last night on Parker Point Road.”
The two Driskos stared at each other, and I could easily believe they were communicating telepathically, like two space aliens from a rogue planet. “You lost us there, Warden,” Dave offered at last.
“You guys were listening to the scanner and you heard that a woman hit a deer on Parker Point. So you jumped in your truck and shot over there to grab it before the cops arrived.”
“Must have been someone else,” said Dave.
“We were watching movies all night,” Donnie volunteered from the couch.
“So it’s just a coincidence I found fresh deer blood and hair on your truck?”
Again, the Driskos engaged in the Vulcan mind meld. I waited for them to get their stories straight via ESP. “I thought you said you wasn’t here to pinch us,” muttered Dave.
“And I won’t arrest you if you come clean about what really happened last night.” I peeled back a brittle window shade to look behind their mobile home. It was unlikely they had the deer suspended from a tree in the backyard, but criminals tend to have walnut-sized brains. I glimpsed a couple of plywood sheds in the curtilage (the yard, essentially) that could have hidden any number of things. “Was the woman still at the accident scene when you guys arrived?”
“Why don’t you ask her?” Dave said.
“Maybe I will.”
“Maybe you won’t.”
I met his eyes. They were as flat as two dirty old pennies. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means nobody’s going to say they saw us on Parker Point last night, because we weren’t there.”
“Then you don’t mind if I poke around. Just so I can cross you off my list.”
Dave inhaled about half his cigarette before he spoke. “Yeah, we do mind.”
I’d figured that might be the answer. “Maine law says I don’t need a warrant to search private property for illegally obtained game if I have probable cause of a wildlife violation.”
Dave called my bluff. “You’re going to have fun proving probable cause to a judge.”
“When did you get a law degree, Dave? I was unaware you were an attorney.”
“Let’s just say we know our rights.”
Donnie propped himself up on the sofa. “And you might want to watch out for Vicky while you’re in the yard. She doesn’t like strangers.”
There were a few ways for me to handle this scenario. As best I could tell, Drisko the Younger had just threatened to sic his dog on me. My instinct was to respond with a profanity, get out my Cap-Stun pepper spray, and prepare for a fight. But I suspected that my division commander wouldn’t appreciate me escalating a minor beef into a major melee. Theft of roadkill was what, a Class E misdemeanor? Besides, two against one weren’t favorable odds. For Sarah’s sake, if not my own, I decided to play the diplomat.
“I still have to take an evidence sample from your truck,” I said. Maybe the smoke was finally getting to me, but I felt a sudden urge to cough up a lung. “You’d better hope the DNA doesn’t match the blood and hair I found at the accident scene.”
Dave Drisko twirled his mustache. He couldn’t decide if I was bullshitting about the lab tests; he didn’t know whether to be worried or not. “Go right ahead.”
“We ain’t going to stop you,” said Donnie. He restarted his porn movie as I stepped outside.
His father followed me through the door, out into the frosty March morning. “You don’t mind me watching you?”
I coughed, trying to force the noxious smoke out of my system. “Just as long as you leave your dog chained.”
I returned to my patrol truck and searched around until I found two paper bags. I plucked a few hairs from the Driskos’ flatbed and collected a shaving of frozen blood. Then I sealed, tagged, and labeled the evidence containers to put in a cooler. Eventually, I would have to fill out a chain-of-custody report when I submitted the samples for DNA testing.
Dave watched me like a starving jackal the entire time. “You’re not going to come back with a bunch of wardens and bust down our door tonight?” he asked as I was packing up to leave.
“If I do, I’ll be sure to knock.”
“Because I’ve got enough going on in the legal department right now. Human Services is saying I ain’t really disabled. They say I should be able to go back to the trap mill.”
“What’s wrong with you?” It was a question with a thousand plausible answers.
He put a hand against the small of his back. “Back pain, man. My spine’s all fucked to hell. And I got migraines like you wouldn’t believe. If they take away my disability, me and my family are screwed royally.”
Looking at him, I had no doubt that Dave Drisko could heave a truck tire ten feet in the air. I wondered where he stashed the neck brace he brought out when the social worker visited.
I could hear the feminine moans from the younger Drisko’s porn movie through the thin walls of the trailer. “What about your son? What’s Donnie doing for work these days?”
“Oh, him. He’s on disability, too.”
7
I decided to eat my lunch in the parking lot of the Montpelier museum in Thomaston. It was a fake mansion constructed to replicate the home of Gen. Henry Knox, a portly hero of the American Revolution and George Washington’s secretary of war. The museum perched atop a hillside overlooking a cement plant on one side and the
