Skin and Bones: A Mike Bowditch Short Mystery Read online

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  1.

  It had snowed the night before, just a trace, but now the sky was a deep blue, and a faint breeze was blowing powder off the boughs of the pines. Spellbound by the glitter in the air, I slowed my patrol truck and thought how it might have seemed to someone more innocent than myself—a small girl, perhaps—as if I had happened upon a piece of fairyland in the North Maine Woods. Then the moment passed, and my real-world anger returned.

  I had come to the house of my friend on a mission.

  Before he’d retired from the Warden Service as chief warden pilot, Charley Stevens had patrolled districts all over the state, including the same western mountains where I had grown up. The crafty geezer was still the best woodsman I knew, which is why I had brought my problem to him.

  His old hunting dog Nimrod, having recognized the sound of my truck, came limping down the shoveled steps, wagging his tail.

  Charley was past seventy now, but he shared none of the elderly animal’s stiffness. He was just as wiry and vigorous as he’d been as a young game warden, people said. He still had a full head of hair (white where it had once been brown), a handsomely weathered face that culminated in an oversized chin, and a perpetual squint—as if he couldn’t help but view this broken world of ours with skeptical amusement. His hands were huge and rough from splitting firewood, and he just about crushed mine in a welcoming grip.

  “To what do I owe the pleasure?” he asked in a faint Maine accent.

  I gestured with my thumb toward the back of my battered GMC pickup. “I need your professional opinion.”

  I was wearing my winter uniform: black knit cap, green parka over black snow pants, and insulated boots made by L.L.Bean especially for game wardens. The hem of the coat had a zip to allow quick access to my service weapon. Keep in mind I was only three years on the job—“greener than a sprout” in Charley’s words—and expected every license check to end in a shootout.

  Charley peered into the truck bed and his grin vanished so fast he seemed to become someone else entirely: a strange and dangerous man.

  Snow from the evergreens had fallen upon the dead eagle as I’d driven through the forest, and it had coated its feathers. The bird was powdered sugary white, except for the rust-red crystals where the bullet had shattered the bones in its wing.

  “Where did you get him, Mike?” Charley asked without unlocking his gaze from the frozen raptor.

  My hot breath showed in the air. “In a cedar swamp on the north end of Third Machias Lake.”

  “Where the stream comes in?”

  “That’s the place. I got an anonymous call that an ice fisherman had shot him at dusk for no reason at all.”

  “Boredom, I expect,” said Charley. “Boredom and meanness. The bird was hanging around the ice shacks because the fishermen were feeding him chubs and such. And then one of the sportsmen decided drinking beer and watching trip flags wasn’t enough of a thrill for him. But the son of a whore only winged the eagle, and he wouldn’t go chasing after it in that dense puckerbrush.”

  He was correct in every detail. I didn’t ask how he’d deduced this sequence of events. His mind could always find a path to the truth, whatever tangle of questions he faced.

  “My informant was offended enough to call me but not so offended that he would share his buddy’s name. He said it bothered him, as a veteran, to see our national symbol treated so disrespectfully.”

  “I wouldn’t judge the man too harshly. The sight of an eagle always moves me, too, and not just on account of its magnificence.”

  My friend had been a pilot and a POW in Vietnam, I had to remember.

  “The bald eagle also happens to be a federally endangered species,” I said (which at the time it was). “I looked up the punishment for killing one—a maximum five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.”

  A pileated woodpecker passed overhead, rising and falling as they do on the wing. Charley followed the red-crested bird with his eyes. “What’s your game plan, Warden Bowditch?”

  “After I pass the eagle off to a biologist, I’m going to tear apart the ice-fishing camp on Third Machias. Want to join me, kicking down doors?”

  He gave me a look of fatherly forbearance. “Your shooter won’t be there, you know.”

  “What should I do then, Charley?”

  “Stoking that anger inside you won’t help catch the bastard. Take it from me, young feller.” He pulled thoughtfully on his chin. “What sort of man shoots an eagle for sport, would you say?”

  “An evil one.”

  “What sort of man shoots an eagle for sport but won’t claim his trophy if it means getting scratched up and wet in a beaver bog?”

  For once I wished he wouldn’t play Socrates with me.

  “A lazy and cowardly one. He was probably drunk, as you said, and got out his rifle on impulse. But after he shot the bird, he had second thoughts. Maybe his buddies laid into him for being an idiot. I bet he didn’t stay long at the camp.”

  Charley nodded his approval of my reasoning. “Do you really think he’ll be there tonight?”

  “No.”

  “Which means what?”

  “I identify the regulars at Third Machias, and then I spy on the shacks to find out which of them is missing.”

  (This was, in fact, how I later apprehended the shooter.)

  My gaze returned to the dead bird. Beneath its crystalline shroud, it looked less like a formerly living creature than a macabre sculpture. My gloved hand moved of its own volition to brush the powder off its hooked yellow beak.

  “In all your years as a warden, did you ever see something this awful?”

  The old pilot tensed beside me, enough that his dog noticed and drew close to his leg for a reassuring pat on the head.

  “Charley?”

  “I’ve seen something … similar.”

  “What happened?”

  He took a step back and tucked his bare hands inside his snowmobile bibs. “I don’t know as it would be wise to tell you the story.”

  “Why not?”

  He considered my question a long time. A fresh gust filled the dooryard with shimmering snow particles that no longer seemed magical.

  “Because it involved a man by the name of Jack Bowditch,” he said finally.

  “My father? He shot an eagle?”

  “You know your dad was a poacher, the most cunning and elusive poacher I ever chased. But Jack never killed a critter that he didn’t eat or give away to someone hungry. He wasn’t Robin Hood—we both know that—but he followed his own code, I guess you’d say. Jack was like a lot of combat vets I’ve known; he thought the system was rotten, and laws were just excuses fat cats made up to keep poor people down. I don’t know as he believed in God, but he believed in justice, however queerly he defined it. And he felt almost a compulsion to deliver it himself.”

  This preamble could only mean my father had done something despicable. I had spent most of my life in childish denial about my dad’s capacity for violence. Then, several years earlier, Jack Bowditch had led the Maine State Police on the biggest manhunt in its history, and I had been forced to let go of my innocence—or so I’d thought.

  “What did he do, Charley? I deserve to know the truth.”

  “It’s not what he did. It’s what I did, too.”

  These words, coming from the mouth of my trusted mentor, sent a chill through me. “I don’t understand.”

  He glanced at the house in the pines. The face of his wife, Ora, showed in the front window. She was a woman of high morals whose conscience Charley relied on when his own failed him.

  “Let’s go inside for this,” he said. “It’s a story better told in its entirety and by the fire. But I should warn you first.”

  “Warn me of what?”

  “You might not like how it ends.”

  2.

  Twenty-three years earlier, Charley was driving home after a long day checking ice-fishing licenses on Spencer Lake when a pickup came roaring up behind him, as if the driver were intent on ramming his tailgate and forcing him off the frozen road.

  Such an attack was not unthinkable. The game warden, being good at his job, had collected more than his share of enemies, and this stretch of the Lower Enchanted Road, lined with old-growth pines, was a prime spot for an ambush, especially after dark. But panic was an alien emotion to Charley Stevens, who had flown O-1 Bird Dogs through fusillades of AK-47 rounds.

  He had his snowmobile in the bed of his truck, the weight of which limited his maneuverability. He downshifted, pressed his brake pedal gently, and turned on his hazards for good measure, coming to a smoo
th, slow stop.

  The truck behind him braked too fast, slid, and swerved on the ice. It only stopped when its front bumper kissed Charley’s tow hitch. The proximity of the two pickups prevented the high beams of the pursuer from shining into the warden’s cab; hazy light merely leaked from between the vehicles. Even so, Charley was taking no chances. He slid across the bench seat and popped quietly out the passenger door between the truck and the snowbank.

  He crouched alongside his bed and listened to his pursuer exit his own pickup and advance, crunching on the snow. He was headed toward the driver’s window of the patrol truck.

  Charley snuck around both vehicles (he recognized the battered Ford F-150 at once) and emerged onto the road with his revolver drawn, while the man who had been chasing him stared in confusion into the empty cab. The tall, broad-shouldered silhouette matched the owner of the Ford.

  “Something I can do for you, Jack?”

  The response was the last thing the warden expected from the man, a known poacher and bar brawler. Instead of spinning around with a drawn handgun, Jack Bowditch broke into laughter.

  “That’s one hell of a trick, Charley. You mind if I borrow it?”

  “Just as long as you don’t try it on me.”

  The lightness in his voice disguised his wariness. Like himself, Bowditch had seen combat in Vietnam—assignment to the 101st Airborne, then two tours with the Rangers doing long-range reconnaissance—before a grenade explosion sent him home with a Purple Heart. Charley Stevens knew better than to assume anything around a man who’d done and seen that much killing.

  “While you’re back there,” Jack said, shaking a cigarette out of a pack of Marlboros, “have a look in my truck bed.”

  Charley shifted his eyes to see an oblong object swaddled in a blanket. His first, errant impression was of a mummified tomcat.

  Bowditch was close enough now that Charley could see him clearly in the vehicular light. Ora claimed Jack was the most handsome man in three counties. Blue eyes blazed out of a deeply tanned face, and even his beard, which started just below his cheekbones, couldn’t hide the strength of his jaw. He stood half a foot taller than Charley and was dressed in oil-stained canvas and denim work clothes that smelled now of the glandular lures he concocted to bait his bobcat, mink, and fox traps.

  “Unwrap it,” he said.

  Charley holstered his pistol. “I’ve never cared about opening presents—to the deep disappointment of my girls.”

  “How are Anne and Stacey?”

  The fact that Jack knew the names of his young daughters put Charley back on his guard. It was a power play. The warden knew Bowditch had a wife and son but was frustrated he couldn’t recall their names.

  He tilted his chin at the bundle. “What do you have for me that’s so important you nearly killed us both in a collision?”

  Bowditch reached into the Flareside bed, drew out the mystery object, and, kneeling, set it on the frozen road. Carefully, he peeled away the layers until he had uncovered the largest bald eagle Charley had ever seen. With raptors, the females are almost always larger than the males, both men knew.

  “I measured her before she froze up,” said Jack, speaking with the cigarette in his mouth. There was bourbon on his breath as well as tobacco, just a hint of alcoholic sweetness. “Three feet tall. Wingspan of seven feet and change. I’d estimate the weight at sixteen pounds. That bird’s what you might call an impressive physical specimen.”

  The cause of death was evident: the eagle had been shot through one eye.

  Small-caliber bullet, judging by the entry hole. Probably a .22 Long Rifle. Poachers preferred the caliber.

  “I didn’t shoot it, in case you wondered.”

  “I didn’t figure you did, being as you were so eager to show it to me.”

  Unless someone saw him do it, Charley thought. And he wanted to get ahead of the gossip.

  “I’m not spinning you, Stevens,” Bowditch said, as if he had sensed the accusation.

  “I believe you, Jack.”

  The admission seemed to catch the man by surprise. “You do?”

  “I also expect you have a notion of who committed the crime.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “For one, you ended up with the carcass. For another, there’s not much people do in these woods that you don’t hear about. What I can’t square is why you came to me with the evidence.”

  Bowditch flicked away the still-burning cigarette. It seemed to explode on the road. “What do you mean?”

  “Instead of confronting the man yourself.”

  “Because it’s a public crime!” Working himself into a state of anger was never a problem for Jack Bowditch. “Yeah, I take it personally. But you’re an officer of the law, Stevens. If you can’t deal with this, then what fucking good are you?”

  Charley stood with his feet apart and rested his hands on his Sam Browne gun belt. “So who shot him?”

  “A scrawny, no-good piece of shit named Tim Grindle. You must know the kid and his asshole brother?”

  Charley did indeed.

  3.

  Tim Grindle was sixteen or seventeen and had lived with his much older brother, Ed, since their parents had died in a motorcycle crash. Charley knew the Grindle brothers professionally, in that he’d had cause to arrest them both for separate yet equally reprehensible crimes.

  Tim, the younger brother, was a poaching prodigy who refused to purchase a hunting or fishing license. He had never taken a deer in season or during the day, used a makeshift trident to illegally spear redhorse suckers on their spring spawning runs, set a wire snare for a coyote that had instead strangled a beagle before her owner could loosen the bloody garrote from around his pet’s throat.

  Ed, the older brother, was a big blob of a man whose pastimes were model trains, drinking beers by the case, and terrorizing his scrawny sibling. If he received a sunburn from float-tubing shirtless down the Dead River, Ed took it out on Tim. If his truck got a flat tire, Ed took it out on Tim.

  The boy would show up at school—back when he bothered showing up at school—and claim his cuts and bruises, sprains and breaks were from rock climbing.

  No one had ever seen Tim Grindle climb so much as a chain-link fence.

  Having visited Ed’s house on several occasions and stopped him once when he weaving all over Route 16, Charley had come to believe the older brother had no personal animus against the younger one. He was just a violent SOB and Tim was unlucky to be close at hand. The warden even harbored a controversial and unprovable belief that the brothers secretly cared for each other.

  A few light flakes of snow began to fall, gray as ash against the darkening sky.

  “Tell me why you suspect that Grindle shot this eagle,” he said to Jack Bowditch.

  “Aside from his history of doing shit like this?”

  “I need concrete proof.”

  “How about this then?” he said. “Two weeks ago, I was snowshoeing over Bates Ridge when I came upon a set of lynx tracks. I’d seen plenty of bobcat prints down in the valley, but you know how rare lynx are, and so I decided to follow them, and I came upon that Grindle kid setting a leghold trap. I crept closer and closer while he went about his business until I was near enough to jab him with the butt of my rifle. He just about jumped out of his skin when I said, ‘Boo!’”

  “What did he say he was doing?” Charley asked. “Trapping bobcat?”

  Bowditch removed a flask from the pocket of his jacket, unconcerned the warden might question his sobriety to drive a motor vehicle. “That’s where you’re wrong. He knows my reputation and he wasn’t going to lie to me. He said, ‘I got a buyer for rare critters, the harder to get the better. He paid me two hundred bucks for a frigging spruce grouse. You want to partner up to catch a lynx and split the bounty?’”

  Charley said: “I take it you declined.”

  “If you mean I told him to go to hell—then, yeah.”

  “So you think an eagle was on his shopping list, too?”

  “Both are endangered.”

  “But did you see Grindle actually shirt the bird?”

  Jack took a pull from his flask. “Didn’t need to. I know it was him.”

  “How?”

  “I was over at Grand Falls this morning when I heard a gunshot downstream. When I found that eagle, it was still warm. The kid must’ve spotted the bird across the river. Only problem was, the water’s open, and he couldn’t cross without going miles around.”