The Precipice (31 page)

“Are you OK, Mike?” DeFord asked.

My mouth tasted of regurgitated coffee. “No, sir. I’m angry.”

“So am I.” Wes Pinkham had been a mentor to him, too. “What the hell happened?”

“I didn’t see it,” I said. “I came up the hill a different way. I found another bomb at the edge of the woods—similar to the one that killed Pinkham—but I got past it without triggering the explosive. I must have given myself away in one of the Dows’ game cameras, though, because I found Trevor Dow waiting for me with an AR-15. I managed to disarm him and then handcuffed him to an oil tank.”

“Good man.” The lieutenant’s voice sounded distant.

“There’s one other thing, sir,” I said. “Troy Dow got away. I saw him ride off into the woods on an ATV.”

“In which direction?”

“North. Back toward Monson.”

“Put Fitzpatrick back on.”

I handed the phone to the detective. He pressed it to his ear and turned away from me. Whatever Fitzpatrick had to say to DeFord, he didn’t want me to hear.

I looked over at Chamberlain and saw that the mob had dispersed except for a single barking dog, which had decided its responsibility was to continue sounding the alert. The Dows had all vanished inside their trailers or taken flight down secret trails into the woods.

Pinkham had been a good man and a good warden. He’d had a wife, children, and grandchildren. He hadn’t deserved to be murdered by cowards like Troy and Trevor Dow.

No one deserved that.

I wanted Trevor to contemplate spending the rest of his life behind bars for what he and his family had done. I wanted to parade the whole goddamned clan past Wes Pinkham’s lifeless body. I started walking toward the oil tank to fetch my prisoner. A red haze obscured my vision.

Greasy smoke began to rise from inside the compound. One of the Dows was trying to get rid of incriminating evidence.

A siren wailed in the distance. Half a minute later, a black Ford SUV bearing the insignia of the Piscataquis County Sheriff’s Department came screaming up the hill. It slid to a stop on the gravel, and a female deputy jumped out holding a pump shotgun.

“Deputy!” I pivoted so she could see the badge on my belt.

The woman sprinted toward me. She had short brown hair, and she was wearing a ballistic vest over a chocolate-colored uniform.

“I heard there’s a man down,” she said, already out of breath.

“Wes Pinkham. He’s dead. Over there.”

“Jesus.”

“I need you to do something for me. Do you know Trevor Dow?”

The muscles around her eyes began to twitch. “I know him.”

“Well, this is his rifle. I took it away from him after he pointed it at me. He’s handcuffed to an oil tank on the other side of that barn. I need you to go get him for me. Here are my keys.”

She stared at the keys as I dropped them into her palm. “You don’t want to do it?”

“I don’t trust myself with him at this point.”

More sirens sounded, coming up the road. I turned and began walking with the rifle toward the gate into the compound.

“Where are you going?” she called after me.

“I need to find someone.”

“They’ve already killed one warden. You’re going to get yourself shot!”

Wes Pinkham would have told me not to risk my life to locate Toby Dow. But then, it no longer mattered what he wanted. I tightened my grip on the AR-15 and kept marching. It was completely reckless, but I felt armored by my anger.

As I passed through the gate, I could feel their eyes crawling over me. A wheel-rutted lane meandered between the mobile homes, garages, and sheds toward the farmhouse at the center of the compound. It was a rambling three-story structure—no doubt the ancestral Dow manse—and it dominated its surroundings like a feudal castle among grass-thatched huts.

A barn cat trotted across the space in front of me and ducked under a boat trailer.

My gut told me that the worst of the Dow men had fled, afraid to be found violating bench warrants or in possession of firearms as felons. But there might still be a teenaged boy around, looking to make his bones by assassinating a Maine game warden with a deer rifle. And I doubted that the Dow women were harmless.

Smoke spiraled up from a long, flat-roofed building. The windows had been sprayed with black paint, but I could see flames glowing behind the opaque glass. The Dows had constructed their drug warehouse apart from the trailers in the event it needed to be razed in a hurry.

I kept advancing toward the farmhouse. Someone else could worry about the fire. A porch stretched the length of the first floor and was littered with blue and yellow toys, potted tomatoes, and mismatched chairs. Pushed up against the back was a ratty sofa, and seated on it, out of the sun, was a tiny old woman. I knew who she was: the witch of the castle.

She had pink skin the color of a dog’s belly and long frizzy hair that had once been red but was now mostly whitish yellow. She wore a biker’s leather jacket over a cotton nightdress. Her legs were so short they dangled clear of the floor, and on her feet was a pair of doll-size moccasins. She sipped from a can of Mountain Dew.

Tempest Dow wiped the soda from her thin lips. “Who the fuck are you?”

“Mike Bowditch, with the Maine Warden Service.”

“That gun you got looks familiar.”

“I took it off your son Trevor when I arrested him.”

“Arrested on what charge?”

“Assaulting an officer. You seem pretty relaxed here. You didn’t notice an explosion just now?”

When she smiled, she showed how few teeth she had left. “My hearing ain’t as good as it used to be.”

“One of the bombs on your property just killed a game warden investigator. That’s first-degree murder, Mrs. Dow.”

“I ain’t never been married.”

“You and your family are in a lot of trouble, and that’s before we start searching your buildings. God only knows what we’re going to find. You can help yourself by answering some questions for me.”

Her manner was utterly relaxed, as if a man hadn’t just been blown to bits outside her fence and a building wasn’t going up in flames a hundred feet away.

“I don’t know nothing about no bombs,” she said. “It ain’t my property, neither.”

“Whose is it, then?”

“Everything’s in my grandson’s name. Lawyer down in Dover-Foxcroft said I should transfer it over to him for tax purposes. Keep the government from taking it all when I croak. What will you give me if I answer your questions?”

“I’ll put in a word for you with the attorney general,” I said.

Tempest Dow knew enough about the criminal justice system to realize how much my word would be worth.

“I’m looking for a young woman,” I said.

“You must be hard up if you came here for a date.”

I ignored her joke. “Thin, brown hair, driving a green IF&W truck. Have you seen her?”

“Oh, yeah. I know the one you mean. The biologist in Monson. My boys told me about her, said she was a real bitch.”

My hands tightened around the rifle, but I did my best to stay cool. “She hasn’t been here?”

“No,” Tempest Dow said. “What else do you want to know?”

“Where can we find your son Troy?”

She took another pull from the Mountain Dew can, then let out a burp. “He’s down in Massachusetts on business.”

“I just saw him. He took off on an ATV seconds after Warden Investigator Pinkham was killed.”

“You must be confused about who you saw, Warden. Troy’s been gone since last night. Everyone here’ll swear to it.”

I had just about reached my breaking point. “Where’s your grandson Toby?”

For the first time, a flicker of worry showed in her expression. “What do you want with that retarded boy?”

“Is he inside the house?” With the tip of the AR-15, I pointed at the door. “How about we go find him together.”

She scratched the bottom of her chin with cracked fingernails. Then she tilted back her head. “Tara!”

An obese woman opened the screen door and peered angrily out at me. She had the same pink skin as her mother; her hair was the color and texture of rusted steel wool. She wore a nightgown that revealed cleavage deep enough to hide a kitten.

“What is it, Mumma?”

“Go get your boy. The warden here wants to talk with him.”

The breeze shifted and I could smell the smoke again. “You’ve got a building on fire, you know?”

She turned her head but showed no real interest. “Really? Where?”

“Near the fence. I hope there’s nothing precious inside.”

She showed me the gaps between her teeth again.

After a minute, the younger woman, Tara, threw open the screen door and shoved Toby Dow onto the porch. “You answer the warden’s questions, Toby!”

The doughy young man stood there in his Monson T-shirt, which was a size too small, stretch jeans rolled up half a foot around the ankles, and Velcro sneakers. His thin hair fell into his upslanted eyes.

“Here you are, baby!” Tempest Dow took his soft hand. “How’s my little man this morning?”

He opened and closed his mouth soundlessly, like a fish.

The old woman twitched her nose. “What do you got to ask my grandbaby?”

“Toby,” I said. “Do you remember me?”

He gazed at the gun in my hands with fear. “We met at the Monson General Store last week. I gave you a Snickers bar.”

“Answer the man, Toby!” his mother commanded from behind the ripped screen.

“You were sitting on your bucket,” I said. “Talking on a phone.”

“What’s your question?” Tempest Dow demanded.

“Toby, can you tell me where you got that phone? Did you find it somewhere? Did someone give it to you?”

“It’s mine,” he said.

“I know it’s yours. I just want to know where you got it.”

“Phone?” Tempest Dow said. “What phone?”

Suddenly, Toby’s face went apple red and tears started streaming down his cheeks. “I don’t want to go to jail, Gram.”

“You ain’t going to jail, baby.” The old woman leaned forward suspiciously. “Why are you asking him about a telephone? What’s this all about? Why are you trying to trick this poor boy?”

“I’m not trying to trick him. It’s just a simple question.”

Tempest Dow started to massage her grandson’s arm with both of her hard little thumbs. “Tell the truth, baby. It’s OK.”

“Who gave you the phone, Toby?” I asked again.

“No one!” He was blubbering so hard, the words melded together. “I found it!”

“Where?”

“In the big trash.”

“You found it in the Dumpster, you mean?” I said. “At the general store?”

He blinked but didn’t speak. But I could tell that was what had happened.

How had Missy’s phone ended up at the Monson General Store? She had used it to take that photograph with Samantha at the trailhead sign. Unless she lost it later and someone found it on the AT. They might have tossed it into the Dumpster after the fact. But that still wouldn’t explain why Samantha’s Galaxy was also missing.

“Is that all?” Tempest Dow said.

A siren wailed and a car rumbled to a stop behind me. I turned to look and saw a state police cruiser. Both doors opened and a trooper—not Chamberlain, but a man who could’ve been his body double—got out from the driver’s side. Fitzpatrick emerged from the passenger door.

“What the hell are you doing, Bowditch?” the state police detective asked, more confused than angry.

“Did the boy answer your question or not?” the old woman barked at me.

I had an answer all right. The problem was that I didn’t have a clue as to what it meant. Nor did I know how to explain myself to Sergeant Fitzpatrick.

36

The compound swarmed with state police troopers, deputies, and game wardens. Some of the officers were charged with rousting the Dows out of their holes for questioning. Others were searching the property for unexploded bombs and assorted booby traps. A team of firefighters had arrived from Greenville to extinguish the burning drug lab.

I handed Trevor Dow’s AR-15 to a female state police detective who had spilled coffee on herself speeding up from Augusta. We sat in her car, and I gave her a preliminary statement, with the understanding that I would submit a written report in the next twenty-four hours. Afterward, I directed a trooper with a bomb-sniffing dog along the path I had blazed from the road to the field. In the process, we discovered the game camera that had given away my position to Trevor Dow. It was a well-camouflaged Bushnell unit with night-vision infrared and wireless capability to transmit pictures to a remote computer. Aside from the IED I had almost stumbled over earlier, we discovered no more explosives. When I was done, I went looking for DeFord.

The lieutenant was watching the medical examiner take notes with a digital recorder over the remains of Wes Pinkham. An evidence technician in a blue uniform waited nearby to begin his work. There was nothing left of the device to fingerprint or swab for DNA. There was barely anything left of Pinkham.

DeFord looked even more haggard than he had during the search for Samantha and Missy. There were razor nicks on his jaw. He kept rubbing his hand back and forth through his honey-brown crew cut, the way one might stroke a nervous animal.

“There are kids here,” he said absently.

“What’s that, sir?”

“How is it possible they never blew up one of their own children?”

“Maybe they don’t let them outside the fence.”

“Or maybe there’s a kid’s skeleton buried in the family graveyard.”

A cache of weapons, a concealed locker filled with drugs, the bones of missing persons—God only knew what we were going to find hidden in this hellhole.

“Where’s Fitzpatrick?” I asked him.

“Interrogating Trevor Dow.”

I would have thought the lieutenant would have insisted on participating in the questioning. Then I realized that DeFord wasn’t going anywhere until his friend was loaded into the ME’s van for transport to the Augusta morgue. Anything less would have felt like an offense to the memory of Wesley Pinkham.

“Has anyone picked up Troy Dow yet?” I asked.

“We’ve got an alert out for him, but he knows these woods too well. My guess is that it’s going to be one of the biggest manhunts since—”