“Bowditch.”

  “I figured you’d be along eventually. I wasn’t sure how you’d put it together, but I knew you would solve it after you heard my message.”

  “It was good of you to drop Elmut at the hospital after busting his jaw.”

  Jack kept his head bowed, almost as if he was afraid to show his face. “Who said I did? Not Tomer.”

  “A nurse recognized your truck.”

  “I was just giving the poor man a ride. You can put away the six-shooter. You won’t have need of it.”

  “You understand why I might not be inclined to take your word on that score. Where’s Whittaker?”

  “Inside.”

  “Dead?”

  “I didn’t check.” At last, Jack raised his head, and even though he was entirely in shadow in the doorway, his eyes seemed filled with a blue light. “What’s the worst thing you saw in ’Nam?”

  “You’ll pardon me if I focus on present concerns rather than swapping war stories with you.”

  Charley took a step toward the door, but the other refused to budge.

  “I used to think it was the burnt bodies,” Jack said as he brought his cigarette up to his mouth for one last draw before flicking the filter away. “Not a worse way to go, in my opinion, than napalm frying you to a crisp.”

  Charley found himself pushing away nightmare visions.

  “I don’t know why,” continued Jack, “but mass casualties never made the same impact on me as the solitary deaths. Like once, after we’d bombed the shit out of this ville near Quảng Trị, I saw this ARVN lieutenant feeding scraps to a stray dog. Took me a minute to realize he was cutting meat off a dead VC. I said, ‘You shouldn’t do that.’ He looked up, all glassy-eyed, and nodded. And then he shot the fucking dog.”

  “Step aside, Bowditch. I’m going inside.”

  The larger man used the doorframe to gain his footing as if he’d been overcome with weakness.

  Inside, Charley recognized Warren Whittaker’s pink vest hanging in the hall. The house had an odd odor: not just the mustiness of an old building with dusty furniture and rusting radiators. It was a sharp, acidic smell.

  Ants, he thought.

  And in the same moment a memory came to him of being a boy and reading in National Geographic that the natives of the Amazon made a kind of lemonade out of crushed ants.

  Formic acid.

  Behind him, Jack called from the mudroom: “Whittaker ran into the kid outside the Bear’s Den on Tuesday night. Tomer was having a cigar and saw them talking. I got Warren to confirm it before … He said the Grindle kid was coughing and massaging his chest. Made the boy get into his Rover. Said he was taking him to the hospital in Farmington for X-rays when the kid just … died.”

  It was a plausible story, but he could tell that Jack didn’t believe it, and he realized he didn’t, either.

  “So where is Tim?”

  Jack seemed to be one of those storytellers who would not be hurried.

  “Whittaker told me he panicked. He didn’t know what had happened to the kid. He admitted that he and Grindle were engaged in certain criminal enterprises, and he thought the police might draw the wrong conclusion if they pried into the nature of their relationship. He told me he dropped the body in a cedar swamp in Freeman Township, said he could take me there. But I knew he was lying.”

  “How?”

  “Because I know what a man will say when he knows he’s about to die.”

  “Does it change anything for you that Ed Grindle confessed to the crime?” Charley asked angrily. “You and I both know it was that log he threw that really killed Tim. An X-ray will show broken bones in his chest and determine conclusively that death was caused by trauma to his heart and lungs.”

  Jack grinned. “That’s funny.”

  Charley had let the hand with the revolver drop to his side. He resisted the urge to raise it. “I don’t think so.”

  “It’s funny because you still haven’t figured this thing out.”

  “Where’s Whittaker?”

  “Basement. He was showing me around. He fell down the stairs on his way back up. Hit his head.”

  “People have a habit of falling around you.”

  “You have no idea.”

  Charley wondered how the medical examiner could determine whether someone had been thrown down a flight of steps.

  “Why don’t you lead the way, Bowditch.”

  “No, thanks.”

  “Then turn around and kneel so I can put on the bracelets.”

  “Maybe you should have a look downstairs before you read me my rights.”

  Ever since he’d arrived, Charley had wondered why Jack Bowditch seemed different. The man he knew from the bars and the woods was cunning, arrogant: a brawler with a hair trigger. But the man who’d told the Vietnam horror story appeared introspective, shaken, even afraid.

  Charley found the door to the basement ajar and an incandescent glow rising from the stairs into the wood-paneled hallway—almost as if it was the light and not the air that carried the odor of acid.

  “You go first,” Charley said, raising the pistol. “‘No’ isn’t an answer.”

  “You won’t shoot me, Stevens. I’ve known a lot of game wardens in my time and they’ve all been cowards. I thought you might be the exception but—”

  Charley calmly fired a bullet past Jack’s ear. The sound of the explosion was magnified by the tightness of the hall. The slug wedged itself in the hardwood lintel at which Charley had aimed. Jack clutched a hand to his ringing ear.

  “Damn it, Stevens!”

  “You don’t know the first thing about me,” the game warden said. “Now: downstairs.”

  Jack descended.

  Charley followed.

  Warren Whittaker lay on his back on the concrete floor, blood haloed around his bald head. His dead eyes were seemingly focused on the naked bulb hanging from the webbed ceiling. For some reason he’d rolled up his shirt cuffs and was wearing a pair of yellow dishwashing gloves.

  Bowditch remained silent, but his gaze was focused over Charley’s shoulder.

  Slowly the warden turned. The basement was cavernous, divided by concrete pillars that held up the ceiling and the floor above. A roll of chicken wire leaned against the nearest support. A headless mannequin stood beside it. Beyond was a capped steel drum. A pry bar lay on the concrete floor as if it had been suddenly dropped.

  Charley felt drawn to the barrel. The force seemed to be coming from inside the drum. He slid his Smith & Wesson back into its holster. He was no longer worried about Bowditch. The locus of his fear had shifted.

  “I’ll admit he had a talent for it,” said Jack. “He could have learned a lot from Elmut if they’d kept up their private classes. There’s a room full of mounts upstairs. Warren did a pretty good goshawk. And that spruce grouse he got from the Grindle kid came out real nice.”

  Charley reached for the crowbar.

  The lid came off without any effort, although the harsh citrus odor caused him to gasp. He peered over the brim and saw that the barrel was full of a liquid that he deduced was a mixture of water and formic acid. Submerged below the surface was a pallid bobbing sheet. He stared at it for a long time before his mind would accept he was looking at Tim Grindle’s flayed skin.

  15.

  Charley Stevens, white-haired now and weathered, fell silent. He reached down from his rocking chair to pat Nimrod sleeping beside the woodstove. The old dog was prone to bad dreams.

  “How have I never heard this story?” I asked after I’d caught my breath.

  “I could say it was a different time, and there’s truth in that,” he said. “Back then, papers mostly reported what they were told, especially when it concerned folks like the Grindles. Even today, how much do journalists poke around when a poor feller goes missing? A pretty white girl, it’s different. But Ora was right about Tim Grindle: no one in Flagstaff or Bigelow wanted him back except his brother and his girlfriend.”

  “What did you tell Ed, though?”

  “I didn’t.”

  I came close to rising from my chair. “What?”

  “The deputy who arrived at Ed Grindle’s house didn’t arrest him. Sheriff Hatch was peeved I had left the scene, and he told his officer to let Ed sleep it off. As soon as Grindle sobered up, he found another pistol and took my ill-considered advice about sticking the barrel in his mouth. I feel bad about that, but I would’ve felt worse if he ever learned the truth about Tim. Same with Ricki Tripp. Her living with being jilted seemed preferable to her knowing about that drum full of acid.”

  “So she never found out, either?”

  “No.”

  Charley was answering my questions truthfully, I knew that much. And yet there remained a void at the center of the story that terrified me. There was a reason that I had never heard the names of these people before, a reason that went beyond lazy reporters and a convenient suicide.

  “Did Tomer Elmut know what Whittaker was doing in that basement?”

  “If he had, he would have told your dad. Jack went to see him again after he got out of the hospital. Tomer fled the area soon after.”

  I glanced out the frosted window. A flock of redpolls has taken over a chokecherry bush near the porch. From its safety, the songbirds made quick forays to the thistle feeder in case a Cooper’s hawk was waiting in ambush.

  I realized I had forgotten all about the eagle in my truck while Charley had been talking.

  “What you’re telling me is there was a cover-up,” I said. “Someone decided the story of Warren Whittaker skinning a boy was too horrific—that if it ever got out it would doom Maine tourism.”

  “Not exactly.” He cleared his throat. “How many times have you driven through Kingfield? What did the Whittaker house look like the last time you saw it?”

  I paused to ransack my memory. “When you were telling me the story, I realized I couldn’t remember ever having seen it.”

  “The next owner cleared away all the debris after the fire. It gutted the building even before the first pumper truck arrived. The state fire marshal spent days poking through the wreckage before he found what was left of Warren Whittaker. Apparently, the taxidermist was trapped in the basement when the electric panel shorted out. Setting a fire like that is nothing to a former Ranger.”

  I felt like Tim Grindle being stuck in the chest by a fatal object.

  “Charley, no.”

  “When I saw what Whittaker had done,” he said wearily, “I realized I wasn’t going to arrest your old man for pushing him down the stairs. Not that the detectives would’ve found clear evidence of murder. You know how your father was. The more grievous the crime, the more careful he was to protect himself. I went outside to call the state police on my radio, but for the longest time, I just couldn’t bring myself to do anything but sit there. I should have known better than to leave your old man alone in the house. I figure my subconscious understood perfectly well what he would do.”

  A piece of wood sizzled in the stove between our chairs.

  “My father burned it all down,” I said.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a place go up faster. I remember watching your dad come flying through the smoke like the proverbial bat out of hell. He had this look on his face. Like he knew I wouldn’t stop him from driving off—and he was right.”

  “None of the neighbors saw you there?”

  “The Whittaker house was at the edge of the village, as I said, and we were parked behind the building, out of sight. I told the firefighters who answered the call that I was driving past and happened to see the smoke, but that I wasn’t quick enough to save Warren Whittaker.”

  “The fire marshal found no trace of Tim Grindle inside?”

  “Warren had only kept the skin. That’s all he needed for his little project. Maybe he really did dispose of the rest up in Freeman, like he told your dad. Technology wasn’t as advanced then, you need to remember.”

  I found myself parched and took a sip of coffee from the mug I’d barely touched. It was cold as ice water.

  “You had a duty to report what happened,” I said.

  “A legal duty, sure. But when I heard about Ed Grindle’s suicide, I couldn’t think who would be better off hearing the truth. This is the first time I ever told the story from start to finish. Even Ora doesn’t know every detail, but that’s because it’s her choice.” His eyes had misted up, but he was unembarrassed by the tears. “If you’re judging me harshly, it’s no worse than I’ve judged myself—both for what I did and what I failed to do. Will you forgive me, Mike?”

  “Me? I’m not in a place to judge you, Charley.”

  “I just need to hear the words spoken.”

  I reached for his hand. “I forgive you.”

  He allowed me to squeeze it briefly, then withdrew. He was a man of his generation in that regard. “I’m grateful for that.”

  “I’m surprised my father never tried to blackmail you somehow.”

  “Your dad had his own code of justice, as I said. And in his mind, he alone was responsible for Tim’s death. We never would’ve gone to the Grindle house if he hadn’t brought me that eagle. He rationalized everything he did afterward as making things right. Your father was a self-involved, self-justifying man, and I don’t think it occurred to him to think about how I was affected. Jack Bowditch saw himself as a punishing fury. I have no doubt he would have flayed Whittaker alive if he’d searched the basement before he pushed him down the stairs.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because it was just the skin from Tim’s body in that drum. Whittaker must have been afraid the boy’s hair would fall out during the pickling process. I found the face and scalp in a Tupperware container over the laundry sink.”

  Read on for a sneak peek of Hatchet Island, coming soon!

  © Paul Doiron, 2022

  Prologue

  Every night, no matter how many drinks he’d had or joints he’d smoked, he would awaken to the screams of birds. For an instant, he would think he was back on the island. Then his hand would find the lamp beside the bed and the light would expose the messiness of his dorm room.

  The odd thing was he’d never had trouble sleeping on Baker Island, where the chatter of gulls and keening of terns had lasted from dusk to dawn. The night terrors had only started afterward—once he’d returned to the mainland. Now insomnia was short-circuiting his central nervous system.

  Through the fall and winter, he’d shuffled around campus until the administration and his mother had decided it would be best for him to return home to Maine. He had pretended to agree with their judgment, but the truth was he had lost the will to fight.

  Then one morning in March, for reasons he could only guess at, he awakened to find that he’d slept through the night. He’d risen with a clear head and an appetite for real food, and now he was driving north on Route 1 with the window cracked and music blasting. Someone on the Maine birding listserv had reported a rare boreal owl in Bar Harbor, he’d told his mom, and he had decided to “twitch” it in the hopes of getting photographs.

  “What time will you be home?” she asked, thrilled to see him showered and dressed in clean clothes.

  “That depends if I see it!”

  “Before dark?”

  “It depends, Mom.”

  On the passenger seat beside him was the expensive camera she had given him for Christmas: a Nikon D5 with a Nikkor super-zoom telephoto lens. It amused him to think that the setup was worth more than his beater Subaru with its leaking head gasket.

  One reason he felt better was because he’d finally replied to Maeve. Since well before Thanksgiving, she had been sending emails pleading with him to return to Baker Island for another summer internship. The woman was, if nothing else, relentless, and the seabird colony was, without question, his favorite place on earth. Maeve understood he wasn’t himself but swore everything could be cured by holding a puffin chick again in his hands.

  The weather was also acting as a balm on his spirit. Maine was enjoying one of its freakish thaws that make March such a roller-coaster month. Officially, spring was still a week away, but with the streams choked with runoff and pussy willows budding, a person could fool himself into believing winter had been banished and it would never snow again.

  He’d been watching for early migrants, as he always did behind the wheel, but had seen nothing of note. The most interesting thing, from an ornithological standpoint, was a lone raven lingering beside a massive bloodstain in the road, the remains of a deer or possibly a young moose whose carcass had been crushed to bonemeal. Ravens weren’t usually so bold as to scavenge in traffic.

  He’d taken the coastal route from Brunswick to Belfast, thinking it would afford him good views of the sea, forgetting that the road consisted mostly of commercial strips between gray stretches of woods. Occasionally there would be a seaside village, still hibernating. Lots of “see you in the spring” notices on signboards. He’d desperately wanted to see the ocean again and felt cheated.

  He was trying not to think of Maeve or the refuge, but the scenery wouldn’t permit him a moment’s peace. Every few miles, he would pass another random business named for the comical little bird she had helped bring back to Maine. Puffin Plumbing, Puffin Pizza, and most absurdly, the Huffin’ Puffin cannabis dealership. He used to find these things funny.

  Past Belfast, dark clouds spread across the sky, and he found himself fidgeting, unable to get comfortable in his seat. Wasn’t that the same black BMW behind him since Rockland? It was March, there was almost no traffic on Route 1, and how many black BMWs were there with tinted windshields and Maine plates?

  In the distance now, he glimpsed the two towers of the Penobscot Narrows Bridge rising above the evergreens. But his gaze kept returning to the mirror. The BMW wasn’t tailgating him exactly, just keeping pace. When he sped up, it sped up. When he slowed down, it slowed down and refused to pass. After the morning’s reprieve, he felt the familiar anxiety returning like someone had cranked up the voltage in his nerves.

 

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