1
“I’ll buy the test tomorrow,” Stacey said from the sofa. She had kicked off her moccasins and stretched out across the cushions with her stocking feet inches from the woodstove, and she had a book of Rick Bass’s essays tented on her chest. “But honestly, I’m not that late.”
“You said it’s been two weeks.”
“Which has happened before. I’ve never had the most regular cycles in the world. And the odds of my being pregnant—”
“But you switched up your birth control after our honeymoon.”
Stacey had long brown hair and almond-shaped green eyes that made some people wonder if she might be Eurasian. She’d always been rail thin, and lying down, her body looked the same as ever.
“And we were extra careful during that time. Mike, I know you hate not knowing. But we’ll have an answer tomorrow. Besides, I thought we agreed we wanted kids.”
“But now doesn’t seem like the ideal time.”
“There is no ideal time. All my friends have told me that. Besides, I’m sure this is a false alarm. I don’t know why you’re freaking out.”
“I’m not freaking out.”
At which point, Shadow glanced up from the rug with his sulfur-yellow eyes and growled at me. It was not a sound I took lightly from the 145-pound wolf dog. Hybrids are unpredictable, which was why I had a special permit to own this coal-black brute. I was under no illusions about the wildness lurking in his unknowable heart.
That said, Shadow had been getting more indoor time since Stacey had moved in. Prior to our marriage six months earlier, I’d kept the half-wild animal in a fenced pen with supervised visits inside the house and occasional sleepovers if he was well behaved. But some ineffable quality in my new wife seemed to soothe the savage beast. Frankly, I was a little jealous of how quickly they’d bonded.
“Well,” she said softly, “Shadow seems to think you’re ‘exercised a mite,’ as my dad might say.”
I did my best to calm my voice. “Sorry about that, buddy. Everything’s chill here.”
It was a lie, of course. Because I was indeed freaking out at the possibility of Stacey being pregnant—in my experience, anyone who claims not to be freaking out is, by definition, freaking out.
I’m not even sure I should have a child, based on my own warped upbringing.
Fortunately or unfortunately, I was prevented from blurting out my cri de coeur by the ringing of the phone in my home office, down the darkened hall.
* * *
My state-issued cell identified my caller as the game warden assigned to the Rockwood district—a remote area of commercial timberland and nature preserves northwest of Moosehead Lake. Brandon Barstow was twenty-six and had recently graduated from the Advanced Warden School. I was the investigator who’d done his background check prior to his hiring.
“Hey, Mike,” he said. “I think I might possibly have a missing person case maybe.”
Might? Possibly? Maybe?
“That sounds serious, Brandon. Should I marshal the entire search and rescue team?”
I hadn’t bothered to turn on the desk lamp. I listened to the downpour outside. It had rained all through April and now into the first week of May. The raindrops were coming down as hard as hailstones.
“You’re being a wiseass,” he said after a pause.
As in nearly all law enforcement agencies, it was part of the culture of the Warden Service to haze rookies, but I realized I was taking out my anxiety about Stacey on poor Brandon. He might well have an emergency on his hands and was looking to me, as an experienced game warden investigator, to provide guidance, not jokes.
“Tell me what’s going on, Brandon. How can I be of help?”
“Well, OK. There’s this guy, he’s rented a cabin up at Seboomook Farm. His name is Hammond Pratt, and I guess he’s from Idaho, according to the license he showed Ivan Ivanov when he checked in.”
Ivanov was one of those oddball characters who populated the North Woods: a Russian emigree who’d chucked his career as an aeronautical engineer to buy a hunting lodge that stirred his nostalgia for his childhood in the wilds of Karelia.
Brandon, meanwhile, was rattling on: “Pratt’s car is a rental out of the Bangor airport, nothing special, full-size Toyota sedan. And anyhow, when he checked in, he asked Ivan if he could arrange to rent an ATV.”
Maine game wardens are responsible for finding anyone who goes missing in the woods—the trick is determining whether someone is truly missing or not. Lots of folks are bad at informing others of their half-baked plans. Wardens waste tons of time searching for people who aren’t lost at all but merely noncommunicative and inconsiderate.
“Something tells me Mr. Pratt doesn’t have a lot of experience with all-terrain vehicles.”
“Why do you say that?” Brandon said edgily as if he thought I was mocking him again.
“It’s been raining for a week,” I explained, “and Pratt wanted to go mudding alone in some of the roughest country in Maine? Also, the fact that you’re unsure if he’s missing or not means he didn’t leave a trip plan with Ivanov. Most of the logging roads between Moosehead and Jackman are gated and off-limits through mud season—even the roads normally open to four-wheelers. Not to mention that the designated ATV trails in your neck of the woods must be impassable after a long winter followed by a month of rain. There’s been no time for the crews to clear away the deadfalls.”
“That’s all true! I mean, like, one hundred percent.”
The young man couldn’t suppress his astonishment at what, to me, were basic deductions.
“How did you guess all that?” he asked.
“I’ve had a lot of experience.”
The last time I’d seen Brandon Barstow had been at his graduation, when the commissioner of the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife—the agency that oversees the Bureau of the Warden Service—had sworn him in, along with seven classmates. What I remembered most vividly was how impossibly young he’d looked in his red-and-olive dress uniform: wide-eyed and beaming, with an ill-timed case of acne on his forehead and a smooth chin that probably didn’t require shaving more than twice a week.
Has it really been ten years since I’ve taken that same oath?
“My first question,” I said, “is why did Ivanov agree to rent this Pratt character an ATV, knowing there was nowhere to ride it?”
“I guess the dude’s pretty intimidating,” said Brandon. “Ivanov told me he’s huge with a shaved head and lots of tats and a gray beard. Middle-aged, but you wouldn’t want to mess with him. I’m also thinking Pratt slipped him something under the counter for the ATV? He paid for his room in cash, which is why Ivanov doesn’t have a credit card on file.”
The story was intriguing me, I had to admit. Whatever Pratt had in mind coming to Seboomook Farm during one of the worst weeks of Maine’s most godawful season, I doubted recreation was involved.
“How long exactly has he been unaccounted for?” I asked.
“Tonight would be the second night.”
I squeezed my eyes shut from exasperation. The temperature had been freakishly warm in the North Woods, but a person soaked to the skin could succumb from hypothermia in hours.
“And Ivan only got in touch with you now?”
“The folks at the farm didn’t know what to make of him. There’s barely anyone staying at the lodge on account of the weather, but I guess Pratt was asking the staff if they knew anything about a man living with his young daughter in the woods nearby. He said they’d be keeping a low profile, this father and daughter. He was offering a hundred dollars to anyone who’d point him in the right direction.”
Like the home offices of many game wardens, mine was decorated with taxidermy. An eight-point deer head gazed down with marble eyes from the wall. A mounted pine marten held a mounted red squirrel in jaws secured with wire and cement. Being morbid by nature, I normally found nothing ghoulish or disturbing about these objects. But there was enough weirdness in Brandon’s story that I felt unsettled by their deathly stares.
“Are there a father and daughter living in the woods near Seboomook Farm?”
“Kind of.”
“That was a yes-or-no question, Brandon.”
“There’s a man from Alaska named Mark Redmond building a cabin for Josie Jonson on Prentiss Pond, near the Canadian border. I’ve never talked with the dude, but I’ve seen him come into Maynard’s a few times to gas up this monster vehicle he owns. It looks like a freaking tank, and Redmond carries himself like he’s ex-military. He has a little girl, people say. But no one’s ever seen her except Josie. You must know her, the bush pilot?”
“Josie Jonson is my wife’s godmother.”
“No shit?”
“I want to get back to the daughter—you said Redmond never brings her into town.”
“Never.”
So he leaves her alone in the woods? Why would someone do that to a young girl? In addition to being negligent, it seems unfathomably cruel.
My loud mention of Josie’s name caused Stacey to appear in the open doorway behind me. I heard the floorboards creak and, turning, saw her tall, slim silhouette against the golden light of the hallway beyond.
“Who is it?” she mouthed.
I raised a finger, promising to answer.
“Have you been in touch with this Redmond to see if he knows anything about Hammond Pratt?” I asked Brandon.
“Prentiss Pond is way off the grid. I mean, like, I wouldn’t even trust a satellite phone to reach that place. Other than driving out there—and I doubt I could make it tonight in this rain—I wouldn’t know how to reach him.”
“Have you tried calling Josie, then? She must have a way of communicating with her builder other than flying to the building site. Maybe she talks with him via sat phone or radio?”
“I was going to call her next—if you thought it made sense.”
Of course calling Josie Jonson made sense. And Brandon should have known to contact Redmond’s client before he called me. I had to take a breath and remind myself that I, too, had been a rookie, although my problem had been—and perhaps still was—arrogance rather than indecision.
“I’ll handle it, Brandon.”
“You will?”
“But I want you to call Ivanov back. Tell him that if Pratt hasn’t returned by first light, you’re going to drive up to Seboomook Farm and stand watch outside the door while the housekeepers clean his room.”
“Isn’t that illegal?”
“No, it’s inadmissible. If they find evidence that suggests Pratt’s engaged in a crime, the prosecutor won’t be able to use it. But we’re not conducting a criminal investigation into the guy. We’re trying to determine whether we have a missing person on our hands.”
“But the maids aren’t allowed to search through his personal possession, right?”
“No, but if they happen to see a map ‘in plain view,’ for example, and decide to take a picture of said item—”
“I don’t know about this, Mike.”
“If you get blowback from your sergeant or lieutenant—which you won’t—you can blame it on me. The district attorney has my number on speed dial.”
“I’m sure he does,” the young warden muttered.
“Oh, and take a few photos of the rental car—inside and out. There’s no prohibition against your doing that. And you never know what might end up being useful.”
Stacey leaned against the doorframe with her arms crossed, eavesdropping. She wore my old Colby sweatshirt over jeans that flattered her runner’s legs, and had on buckskin moccasins, handmade by a friend of ours who belonged to the Passamaquoddy Tribe.
Looking at my beautiful wife, an image of Brandon Barstow at his graduation ceremony flashed through my memory. He was married himself, with an infant daughter.
“I’ve been meaning to ask, how’s your wife taking to life in the North Woods? You two are originally from York, right? Winter in Rockwood must’ve been a new experience for a couple from southern Maine.”
“Wendi’s trying to adapt. But she says it’s hard living in the boonies, not having anyone to help with the baby.” He hesitated before he continued, worried how the admission might sound to a senior officer. “I sometimes wonder if I made a mistake.”
I knew by “mistake,” he meant accepting an isolated posting in the North Woods with a wife and young child.
Nevertheless, I couldn’t help but hear his uncertainty through the echo chamber of my own worries. I glanced back at the hall to look at Stacey. But she was gone.
Copyright © 2024 by Paul Doiron
