The Imposter: A Mike Bowditch Short Mystery Read online

  The sun was growing unbearably hot, as if its rays were being focused through a giant magnifying glass. I could almost feel it burning a hole through my black ball cap.

  The divers meanwhile continued their underwater investigation.

  Their first significant find was an empty fifth of Fireball Cinnamon Whisky the slogan for which is “Tastes Like Heaven, Burns Like Hell.” There was a good chance that my namesake had consumed the bottle prior to his daredevil jump into the harbor. As a rule, most vehicles that end up going off wharves are driven by individuals with blood alcohol levels in the double digits.

  The divers were unable to locate any papers in the vehicle, not even an automobile registration. Even the license plate, it turned out, had been stolen a month earlier off a security van parked outside the Bangor Mall.

  “The Law of the Sea says I should get salvage rights to that truck for finding it,” Twelve-gauge Gaynor said to his dwindling audience. “Unless our dead warden here wants to stake a claim.”

  Finding the gun took a while. The impact and influx of seawater had knocked it around the inside of the truck cab. One of the divers finally located the weapon—an old Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum revolver—wedged in a crack under the glove compartment. It was almost certainly the one the imposter had been wearing the night he stopped the girls.

  Finally, Sheriff Rhine pulled me aside. “So you don’t recognize this guy at all? You and he never crossed paths?”

  “I wish I could help you.”

  “I do, too.”

  “What about your officers, Sheriff? I can’t believe no one in your department recognizes him.”

  “Don’t take that tone with me, Warden.”

  “It was my name this man stole to commit his crimes. I think I am entitled to be pissed about it.”

  “Not with me, you’re not,” she said.

  “Any indication whether this was a homicide or a suicide?”

  “His skull was cracked, but that might have been from the impact. The medical examiner should be able make a determination. If his lungs are full of water, it means he drowned. If there’s no water, it means he was already dead when he went under.”

  “But you’re positive this is our imposter?”

  “We sent a picture to the girl driving the car he stopped. Reese Brogan made a positive ID.”

  “Is Reese Brogan the daughter of Joe Brogan who owns Call of the Wild Guide Service and Game Ranch?”

  “Yes, she is. Why?”

  “Just trying to make a connection.”

  Joe Brogan leased miles of fenced timberland that he populated with all manner of exotic animals: bison, red deer, mouflon sheep, boars, even an ill-fated zebra once. Hunters from across the country rented his cabins and paid sizable sums to shoot these essentially tame creatures. Brogan knew what I thought of his vile business. It would not be inaccurate to say we hated each other’s guts.

  I could only imagine what a violent son of a bitch like Joe Brogan might do to a half-witted punk who had terrorized his little girl.

  A bronze GMC pickup pulled up at the end of the line of police vehicles. It was Rivard’s unmarked truck. He came toward us without any of his usual strutting.

  “Sorry I’m late,” he said. “My ex-wife and I really got into it and—”

  Rhine pointed at the body bag. “We need you to take a look at the deceased, Marc.”

  Rivard stuck his hand in his pocket and removed a tin of moist snuff. He dug his fingers into the soil-colored tobacco. He wedged some of it between his cheek and gums.

  The sheriff must have sensed he was stalling. “Ready when you are, Sergeant.”

  She lifted the edge of the plastic. Rivard didn’t even need to study the face. One glance and his Adam’s apple began bobbing in his throat.

  “You know him then?” she said.

  “His name is Tommy Winters.”

  “Where do you know him from?”

  “The Narraguagus Sporting Club. His dad, Tim, is the range master there part-time. The Winters live over in Aurora, I’m pretty sure.”

  It was a hamlet in the next county and therefore out of Rhine’s jurisdiction, which partially explained why neither she nor her deputies had recognized the dead man.

  “Does this make any sense to you, Marc?” the sheriff asked.

  “Does what make any sense?”

  “Tommy Winters impersonating a game warden? Did he have a reputation for breaking the law or pulling dumb stunts? Was he an opioid addict looking for the score of a lifetime?”

  Rivard hung his head over the wharf and spat tobacco juice into the water. “I barely remember meeting him.”

  “So this is all a big surprise to you?” said the sheriff doubtfully.

  “I honestly had no idea. All I know is this is going to break Tim’s heart. That man has had the worst run of luck of anyone I know.”

  “How so?”

  “He was a lifer at the mill in Bucksport until he took a tumble from the top of a machine to the shop floor. Then his wife Karen was diagnosed with a brain tumor. I’m pretty sure Tommy was their only child, too. If this isn’t the last nail in Tim’s coffin, I don’t know what will be.”

  I sometimes forgot that my sergeant, for all his failings, was a father himself. It was always easier for me to view him as a cartoonish villain. We never want to see the people who annoy and infuriate us as three-dimensional human beings.

  * * *

  Half an hour later, I found myself bringing up the rear of a three-vehicle caravan led by Rhine in her Crown Vic cruiser, followed by Rivard in his unmarked GMC pickup, and then me in my battered patrol truck. The sheriff had requested I accompany them to the Narraguagus Sporting Club to notify the next of kin. She hoped Mr. Winters might be able to shine some light on his son’s decision to use my name to commit crimes.

  The route took us along logging roads down which eighteen-wheelers stacked high with timber would come barreling, forcing us off into the lupines that grew with such exuberance along the gravel shoulders. By the time we turned off the main road, my recently washed pickup was coated with a quarter-inch layer of dust.

  I heard the gunshots—the pops of small caliber pistols and the rapid bursts of AR-15s—even before we pulled into the parking lot. Like most fish and game associations, the Narraguagus Sporting Club included an outdoor shooting range. As range master, Tim Winters was the man charged with keeping trigger-happy members from carelessly shooting one another.

  The clubhouse was one story and constructed of varnished logs. Its roof was orange with fallen pine needles.

  I counted four vehicles in the lot: two blue pickups, both beat to hell; a black SUV of the kind I associated with mafia dons; and a vintage red Mustang that someone had recently restored and repainted.

  “I made some calls on the drive over,” said Rhine. “Tommy Winters was twenty-one. He had five speeding violations, but no history of violence or substance abuse. He was expelled from Brewer High for an incident involving a failed attempt to conceal himself in the girl’s locker room. The consensus, among the teachers who remembered him, was that he was on the autism spectrum. His last job was at a hardware store in Ellsworth. He lasted two weeks.”

  Rivard began fiddling with his tin of Red Man snuff again.

  “Do you want me to do this, Marc?” Rhine asked.

  “Tim knows me,” he said. “I’d feel like shit if I let anyone else break the news to him.”

  We made our way around the outside of the low-slung building. There were five stalls set up along a roofed concrete breezeway. Each station had a bench where a shooter could sit and steady a gun. Each wooden table faced an open field with targets staggered at intervals. Four hundred yards in the distance a berm of bulldozed earth served as a backstop for the bullets.

  Standing in the last stall were two hairy, potbellied guys, both of whom were wearing ripped T-shirts and jeans. They were the ones firing the AR-15s. Shells jumped crazily from their semiautomatic rifles.

&nb
sp; A third man—dapper, clean-shaven, hair going silver—was the one shooting the pistol. It was a long-barreled .22 Walther GSP, the kind used for serious competitions. I followed the muzzle to the bull’s-eye fifty yards away. The marksman hadn’t once missed the center circles.

  The fourth man sat on a folding chair with his back to us, keeping watch on the shooters. Like the others, he wore ear protectors clamped over his head. This was the range master, Tim Winters.

  The dapper pistolero spotted us from his stall. He paused to stare at us through yellow-lensed shooting glasses. Then he cleared the chamber of his gun and ejected the magazine.

  Winters, alerted to our presence, turned his head. He was in his fifties, wearing a too-tight polo to show off pectorals that, despite his best efforts, were beginning to sag. He studied us without expression, then raised an airhorn from beside his chair and let off a blast.

  “Cease firing!” Winters shouted in the silence that followed.

  “What’s going on, Marc?” Winters’s hair was dyed that reddish brown color that never fools anyone. He carried a holstered .45 on his hip. “What’s with the retinue?”

  “Hey, Tim. Any chance you can shut down the range for the rest of the day?”

  “They all paid for the hour.”

  “It’s important we speak with you alone, Mr. Winters,” said Sheriff Rhine.

  “Let me talk to the guys, make sure they’re good with this. You all can go inside. Help yourself to soft drinks.”

  I didn’t know what to make of the fact that he hadn’t asked us why we’d come. It would have been my first question.

  Rivard led the way into the darkened interior. The room resembled an empty restaurant, a cheap one, with plastic tables and chairs. There was a shellacked counter with a cash register and a display rack of chips and pretzels. Behind it were shelves of ammunition for sale and assorted guns to rent. The log walls were decorated with posters from the National Rifle Association and framed targets, some human-shaped (one resembled Hillary Clinton), riddled with tightly clustered bullet holes.

  A question had been nagging at me, and I took the opportunity to confront Rivard about it. “Marc, how come you didn’t tell me that one of the girls Tommy stopped that night was Joe Brogan’s daughter?”

  “Because I knew you and Joe had history,” he said sharply. “I knew it would just get you worked up.”

  The sheriff said, “Are you suggesting, Mike, that we should be looking at Brogan as a suspect?”

  “Joe’s no murderer!” Rivard said.

  “What about that crazy Viking who works for him?” I said. “Billy Cronk?”

  The sheriff cleared her throat with great and sudden force.

  Winters had appeared in the doorway. His broad shoulders were backlit by the bright July afternoon. It was only as he stepped inside that I noticed how he lurched when he walked.

  “I’m going to sit down if you don’t mind,” he said. “Goddamn back acts up when I stand too long.”

  There was absolutely no physical resemblance between father and son. Tommy was the stereotypical ninety-pound weakling. Tim looked like a former power lifter whose muscles had turned to fat.

  “Let’s hear it,” he said. “What did the kid do now?”

  As police, we had been taught how to deliver a proper death notification: which words to use, which words not to use. Never resort to euphemisms, we’d been told. Always emphasize to the recipient that their loved one is dead, deceased, expired so there is zero confusion. People have difficulty accepting the worst.

  Rivard removed his hat. “I’ve got bad news, Tim. I’m afraid Tommy is dead.”

  The clock on the wall was one of those battery-powered models that loudly ticks off every second.

  Winters’s voice was flat when he finally spoke. “How’d he do it? How’d he kill himself?”

  I did my best to hide my shock at the cold-bloodedness of his reply.

  “The medical examiner hasn’t yet determined the cause of death,” Rhine said, “so we can’t say with confidence.”

  The clock ticked off another twelve seconds.

  Winters fidgeted, seemingly bothered by the pain in his back. “You’re the Washington County sheriff, correct?”

  “Roberta Rhine. I wish we were meeting under better circumstances.”

  The range master turned his craggy face in my direction next. “And who are you?”

  Rivard interjected before I could introduce myself, “This is Warden Bowditch.”

  I watched for an indication that my name meant something to Tim Winters, but he didn’t so much as blink. He returned his attention to the sheriff. “So where did he do it? Where did he kill himself?”

  “His truck went off the dock in Roque Harbor.”

  “So he drowned, you’re saying?”

  “It’s too soon to tell,” said Rhine. “Tommy’s on his way to Augusta for an autopsy.”

  “Is that absolutely necessary?”

  “An autopsy is legally required when the cause of death isn’t immediately apparent.”

  “I suppose I have to go down there to identify him.”

  “That won’t be necessary. I can show you a photograph.” She produced her cell phone, brought up the pictures she’d taken on the wharf, but hesitated before she handed the device to Winters.

  “Yeah that’s him.”

  “Was your son depressed recently?”

  “Depressed? Of course he was depressed. His life was shit.”

  Once more I bit my tongue. Amazingly, I felt offended on behalf of the young man who’d stolen my identity.

  “In what way was his life shit?” Rhine asked.

  Winters counted the reasons on his fingers. “He got kicked out of high school for being a Peeping Tom. He couldn’t keep a job. He was still a virgin, as far as I knew. He wanted to join the army but failed the GED three times. Do you know how severely stupid you have to be to do that?”

  I tried to remind myself that anger was a fairly common reaction to news of a suicide. Of all human emotions, grief is the most mercurial. It can take a thousand different forms.

  The sheriff said: “Do you remember Tommy acting differently recently?”

  “The kid was always different. ‘Special,’ his mother said. She always made excuses for his failures.”

  “Did Tommy use drugs, Mr. Winters?” Rhine asked.

  “I wouldn’t know. Probably. Half the kids his age are druggies. More than half.”

  “Did he own a gun?” the sheriff said.

  “Smith and Wesson .357 Mag. Couldn’t shoot with it for shit. He was scared of the recoil.”

  “Did he ever dress in army fatigues?” Rhine asked. “Or own any police gear?”

  Beads of perspiration popped from the pores on the man’s forehead. “You’re welcome to search his bedroom. I left him to himself. I have enough problems of my own.”

  The sheriff leaned forward. “What kind of vehicle did your son drive, Mr. Winters?”

  “Silverado. Green.”

  “What about money? Did you notice him making any big purchases recently? Items he shouldn’t have been able to afford?”

  A wet splotch had appeared on the front of Winters’s shirt, over his sternum. “I told you the kid couldn’t keep a job. What does any of this have to do with him killing himself?”

  Rhine drew herself up to full height. “We have reason to believe your son was impersonating a law enforcement officer.”

  “Is this some kind of joke?”

  “Your son was identified by a girl whose car he pulled over, allegedly for speeding. He identified himself to them as a game warden. He did the same to a man whose trailer he robbed.”

  The range master rubbed his big forearm along his wet brow and shook off the moisture. He slid from the stool. “I need to use the facilities.”

  None of us spoke as he limped into the next room. We heard a door close and a muffled fan start up.

  “He’s really lost weight since I last saw him,�
�� said Rivard. “Twenty, thirty pounds.”

  “You’re kidding.” To my eyes Tim Winters was borderline obese. I leaned close to the sheriff. “He’s really perspiring. More than normal. Have you noticed?”

  “I have.”

  “It’s a hot day for Christ’s sake,” said Rivard. “And his son just died.”

  We heard the toilet flush and then water running from a tap.

  When Winters reappeared, his forehead and forearms were dry. He seemed to have composed himself in the bathroom. And he had changed his shirt to a polo with the club logo on the front.

  An idea must have come into his head while he was cleaning himself up because he glared at Rivard.

  “You’re one who planted the idea in his head. The last time you were here, he grilled you about becoming a game warden, wouldn’t stop asking questions.”

  The sergeant moved the tobacco in his mouth around with his tongue. “I don’t remember that.”

  Rhine reached into her pocket and removed a folded piece of paper. She opened it to reveal a mug shot of a man with eyes like a dog’s and a chin bristling with black stubble. The only features Dylan LeBlanc had in common with his cousin Alvin Payne were pointed ears—except that they looked more demonic than elfin on the drug dealer.

  “Do you recognize this man?” she said.

  Winters accepted the picture from her. “Yeah, I recognize him.”

  “You do?”

  “He’s come out here to shoot a few times with a couple of guys. Who is he?”

  “His name is Dylan LeBlanc and we believe he’s a drug smuggler. You wouldn’t happen to know when he was here? Presumably you had them show identification and sign in.”

  “April maybe? I can check my files.”

  “Do that, please.”

  Winters disappeared into his office for five minutes. When he returned, he had sign-in sheets with three names from April 24, 26, and 28, none of which belonged to Dylan LeBlanc. “I’m pretty sure this was them. They gave me fake IDs, I’m guessing.”

  The fact that the men had used aliases didn’t seem to surprise Sheriff Rhine. “Do you remember if your son was ever here the same time Mr. LeBlanc was?”