Widowmaker (32 page)

Suddenly, Shadow let out a howl, and I nearly hit my head on the ceiling. This was the first time I'd heard the wolf in full throat, and I began to understand why medieval villagers had cowered inside their huts after dark.

In response, Dyer's hounds began baying loudly from inside the house. Logan had mentioned using his Plott hounds to hunt coyotes. Shadow snarled—an even more ferocious sound. He had good reason to be on edge. Those big dogs were his natural enemies. Where was Dyer? He didn't seem the sort to leave his prize hunting dogs home alone.

An ambulance approached slowly from the opposite direction. Its emergency lights were off, which could mean only one thing: There was no one left to be saved in Pariahville.

I pulled against the right snowbank to make room.

The emergency medical technician at the wheel rolled down his window so we could have a chat. He was a big woodsy guy with flushed cheeks and a white beard. His partner, beside him, looked ashen.

“Have you been up there yet?” the driver asked in a deep baritone.

“No, I just arrived.”

“Imagine the worst death scene you've ever worked and then multiply it by ten. Most of them were killed in their bunks or trying to get out of them.”

“What about Foss?”

“The shooter gave him special attention.” The EMT's tired eyes grew wide as he spotted Shadow beside me. “Holy hell! What in the world is that beast with you? Is that a wolf dog?”

“
I had to confiscate him from some drug addicts,” I said. “He's a sweetheart, though.”

“I'll take your word for it!”

I was eager to return to the subject at hand. “So the state police think it was just one guy?”

“One guy with an AR-15 and a whole bunch of clips.”

That wasn't much help. Black guns, as some people called them, were as common up here now as M1 rifles used to be in the Maine woods after World War II. Their omnipresence was why the service had equipped us with Windham Weaponry MPCs; we had been in serious danger of being outgunned at every firefight.

“He was a regular Audie Murphy, too,” the EMT said. “That's what I'm hearing. The CSI guys are still mapping the scene up there. Maybe they'll find it was two shooters. They're leaving all the bodies where they fell until they can finish photographing everything. They said they'd call us again when they're ready for us to cart them away. They're going to need a caravan of ambulances for that job, let me tell you.” He scratched his woolly beard. “I didn't think I could ever feel sorry for those men, after the things they did. I used to say that prison was too good for them, but now—”

He didn't finish the sentence. He just rolled up his window and drove away.

Adam had been a good shot. I'd seen the evidence in the deer mounts on his bedroom walls. But he had taken a Glock handgun from his mother's apartment, not a semiautomatic rifle. Unless he had used the money he'd taken off Josh Davidson to buy a carbine.

Dyer had mentioned owning a black gun, too. A Smith & Wesson. I forgot which model.

But, really, the list of potential suspects was close to endless. All it would have taken was for one crackpot to have read Johnny Partridge's inflammatory column about the pampered pedophiles of Kennebago. The worst-case scenario was some unaffiliated vigilante—just a random kook with a gun—who had traveled in to do the job and had now disappeared back wherever the hell he'd come from.

As I neared Foss's gate, I came up on a cluster of wardens gathered around an unmarked patrol truck. They were all wearing headlamps and looking at a topographical map spread across the hood. Sooner or later, I would have to show Shadow to them, and I would need to explain what he was doing in my pickup, but I had sped all the way up here to find out what had happened. Show-and-tell could wait a few minutes.

I left the wolf in the truck and buttoned up my coat to join the others.

“Hey!” I said.

Pulsifer glanced up. With his headlamp, he looked like a coal miner. “What did I tell you guys? Bowditch can't help himself.”

“You make me sound like a compulsive gambler.”

“Your words, not mine.”

“Good to see you, Mike,” said Bill Gordon. He was Pulsifer's sergeant, despite being nearly a decade younger. Gordon was new to the division—he had worked up in Aroostook County for years—and had never met my father. Many of the other area wardens shared Pulsifer's hatred for the late Jack Bowditch and still treated me as the son of a cop killer. Jeff White, the other warden present, fell into that category.

“You want to bring me up to speed?” I said.

“CID is controlling the death scene,” said Gordon. “They want as few people as possible disturbing it, which is why we're down here. Word is it was a regular bloodbath.”

“More like a turkey shoot,” said White.

“And none alive to tell the tale,” added Pulsifer, as if quoting some famous novel I didn't recognize.

“So most of them were shot in their bunks?” I asked.

“All of them except Wallace Bickford,” said Pulsifer. “He must have been out taking a leak, because when Clegg found his body, the old dude's wang was hanging out of his union suit.”

Poor Wally, I thought. A pathetic ending to a pathetic life.

“What about Foss?” I asked.

“Clegg found him outside his trailer,” said Pulsifer. “Don must have heard the shots and screams, because he came out with a big old Ruger 500. Got a couple of pops off, too, before the shooter made Swiss cheese out of his face.”

“Any sign that the shooter was wounded in the exchange?” I asked.

“No,” said Gordon. “This guy knew what he was doing. He made sure to walk on the road and keep to the heavily traveled paths. It's going to be wicked tough picking out his boot prints from all the others.”

“What about tire tracks?”

Pulsifer removed his glove and used his index finger to trace a wavy line on the snow-dotted map. “My guess is he took a snowmobile up here. There's a spur trail a quarter mile away that goes across a bridge over the Dead River and up past Kennebago Settlement. It connects with Route Eighty-nine of the ITS on one end and the Black Fly Loop on the other. I can ride from my house here and cross only two paved roads.”

“Which means he could have gone anywhere,” said Gordon. “And he has a full day's start on us, too.”

“What did he use for rounds, .223's?” I asked.

“No, .300 Blackouts,” said Jeff White.

Now that was interesting. I hadn't come across many hunters who used that particular cartridge. “Aren't .300 Blackouts supposed to be a good fit for a gun with a suppressor?”

“Quieter than a vulture's sneeze,” said Pulsifer.

“His choice of cartridges is distinctive,” I said. “Maybe the detectives can use that.”

Jeff White turned his head toward me, blinding me with his headlamp. He was a veteran officer who worked out of Kingfield and was one of the wardens my father had bested time and time again. “Maybe you should go up there and help them out.”

I tried to pretend I hadn't heard the insult. “Has anyone spoken with Logan Dyer yet?”

“Can't find him,” said Gordon.

“I heard his dogs baying inside his house.” I turned toward Pulsifer. “Doesn't that seem strange to you? That he would leave them alone?”

Pulsifer adjusted the strap of his headlight. “Yeah, I'm sure we're going to get word that he's a person of interest. Adam Langstrom, too.”

“Langstrom?” asked Jeff White. “Isn't he dead?”

“Someone with his blood type bled a lot in his truck,” I said.

“I heard he and Foss had a fight,” said Pulsifer. “Maybe he came back looking to even the score.”

“By massacring everyone?” The disbelief in my voice seemed strident in my own ears.

And where had Pulsifer heard that Adam had tussled with Foss? Gary hadn't been in the room for my conversation with Wallace Bickford. And I had never mentioned the black eye to him.

“For all we know,” I said, “what happened to Langstrom could have been a dry run for what happened here last night.”

“You mean someone's on a rampage, executing sex offenders?” said Pulsifer. He sounded more excited than horrified.

“Just once I wish things would happen like they do on TV,” said Jeff White. “You know, the killer leaves a partial thumbprint on the dead man's eyeball.”

“Except Foss doesn't have eyeballs anymore,” said Pulsifer.

“There is that,” said Gordon.

 

32

What was so surreal was that it had become a beautiful night: the snow drifting through the beams of the headlamps, the frosted boughs of the evergreens, the pools of violet shadows at the edge of the light. The dreamlike scene reminded me of a Japanese woodblock print I had seen at the Colby Museum when I was a student there. Those college days seemed so long ago now. I had traveled so far since then.

I had to remind myself of the horrible event that had brought us all here. Up the hill, out of sight, evidence technicians were snapping photographs. A K-9 and its handler were running tracks between the buildings, searching for something, anything. Some unlucky cops had been given the task of bagging the dead bodies. The senior officers were on their phones with state police headquarters and the FBI, planning next steps. Because of the darkness and the absence of leads, the manhunt hadn't yet begun.

But down at the gate, the woods seemed eerily serene. There was not a hint of wind. Fat flakes of snow floated nearly straight down. We were all waiting for orders, and there was nothing to do until the instructions came down from on high.

Not everyone was as spellbound as I was.

Jeff White stamped his booted feet to drive blood into them. “This waiting around is bullshit. What if this maniac is on a killing spree? He could be headed to Sugarloaf or Widowmaker next.”

“This wasn't random,” said Gordon. “Our guy has a hatred of sex offenders.”

“Who doesn't?” said White. “You might as well add half the people in the county to the suspect list, including me.”

“Are you confessing, Jeff?” asked Pulsifer, giving White one of his grins.

“I won't be crying in my pillow tonight,” White said. “I'll admit that much.”

Jeff White reminded me of Tommy Volk and some of the other wardens I knew who believed in a code of rough justice they'd picked up from watching Westerns. I had been a history major, and I had read once that the Old West depicted on-screen bore no resemblance to the reality of that era, when men voluntarily surrendered their six-shooters before going into saloons and when bank heists were rare enough to count on two hands. Men like White and Volk preferred the myths, since they validated their own violent preconceptions.

“They didn't deserve to be gunned down in their sleep, Jeff,” I said.

“Fuck you, Bowditch,” he said by way of a counterargument.

To clear my head, I decided to check on Shadow.

The wolf whined when he caught my scent in the air. I shined my flashlight inside the truck and saw a pool of urine on my passenger seat. I knew I should have let him out sooner.

“Is that him? Is that your wolf dog?” Pulsifer appeared at my shoulder as if from a puff of smoke.

“He's not mine.”

“Then why are you driving around with him?”

“Because I am trying to find him a home,” I said. “I was in New Hampshire visiting a refuge for wolf hybrids. The people there would have taken him, and they seemed nice enough. I just didn't like the vibe of the place.”

“You're too softhearted for this job,” said Pulsifer.

“I'm getting kind of sick of hearing that.”

“I hate to tell you, but Jeff is right,” he said. “Lots of people are going to cheer when they hear a bunch of sexual predators got put down. Whoever did this will end up being a folk hero.”

What if it really had been Adam? Might he have seen executing the other sex offenders as some sort of act of redemption? Hadn't he told his mother that Pariahville deserved to be burned to the ground?

Pulsifer seemed intrigued by Shadow. “What do you think would happen if you let him out?”

“I'm afraid he'd run off.”

“Or eat some little girl in a red cape,” he said.

“Doesn't the wolf eat the grandmother?”

We heard a sharp whistle. I turned and saw Sergeant Gordon waving us back up the hill. I would have to mop up the piss later.

“Listen to this,” Gordon said. “Someone shot up a house over in Eustis this afternoon. An old guy was inside watching television. Suddenly, glass started exploding everywhere and he hit the deck. Bullets were tearing up the walls, but he managed to crawl into the bathroom and hide inside the tub. The only thing that saved him was that his son and a bunch of his drinking buddies came riding up on their snowmobiles. By the time they could get the old guy to explain what had happened, the shooter was gone.”

“Who is the guy?” Pulsifer asked. “What's his name?”

“Ducharme.”

White and Pulsifer grunted simultaneously.

“Let me guess,” I said. “He's listed on the public registry.”

“Ducharme fondled his seven-year-old niece,” said Pulsifer. “He inserted various objects into her, if I remember correctly. When he got out of prison a few years back, Joe at the Bigelow General Store got a bunch of business owners together, and they banned him from entering their establishments. The only reason Ducharme probably didn't end up here with Foss is that his born-again son took him in.”

“It looks like our vigilante is just getting started,” Pulsifer said.

“He probably figured what the hell,” said White. “‘I already mowed down ten of them. Why stop now?'”

“So here's what's happening,” said Gordon. “We're all getting our own personal predator to protect.”