The Poacher's Son (Mike Bowditch 1)

are you trying to say?”
    “I’d like to speak with my father, please.”
    There was a tentative knock at the door. “Come in!” barked the sheriff.
    It was his secretary again. Her mascara looked even more smeared than before. “They found him.”
    Without another word, the sheriff rose to his feet and left the room. I remained seated, staring at the closed door. In the silence I could hear the rumble of traffic passing along the street outside. What was going on here? Who had they found?
    They left me alone in that room for close to ten minutes.
     
    When the sheriff returned, the first thing he did was remove his jacket and toss it onto a chair. His big body was throwing off a lot of heat. I could feel it across the desk and smell it in the sharpness of his Old Spice deodorant working overtime. “Tell me about your father. When was the last time you spoke with him?”
    “Last night.”
    “Hold on.” He reached into a desk drawer and removed a tape recorder. He set it on the blotter between us. “You said you spoke with him last night.”
    “Not exactly. He left a message on my answering machine.” I cleared my throat. “What’s with the tape recorder?”
    He gave me the biggest, falsest smile I’d seen in an ages. “We just need to clear a few things up.”
    That was a line investigators fed to suspects, not fellow officers. “What’s going on here, Sheriff?”
    “You say your father’s being falsely implicated in the homicide. I thought I’d give you a chance to set things straight. What was the message?”
    “It wasn’t anything really. He just sort of wondered aloud where I was and then hung up.”
    “And where were you?”
    “On a call.”
    “Did you erase the message?”
    I looked out the window. Something—a fast-moving shadow—had spooked the pigeons off the next roof. I watched them scatter in a hundred directions.
    “I didn’t realize it was important,” I said.
    He was still all smiles, but the strain was showing in the tightness of his jaw. “So you erased it?”
    “Has my father asked for a lawyer?”
    His smile gave way like a dam bursting. He leaned across the desk at me. “Let me tell you something about your
father
”—he practically spit the word—“your father is accused of killing a cop. If I were you, I’d answer my question.”
    “I didn’t come here to incriminate him.”
    “I called your lieutenant. He’s on his way here.”
    “Lieutenant Malcomb?”
    “What do you think he’s going to say when I tell him you’re refusing to cooperate in a murder investigation?”
    “I
am
cooperating.”
    “You destroyed evidence when you erased that message.”
    Everything seemed to be spinning out of control. “Maybe we should wait for Lieutenant Malcomb to get here. I feel uncomfortable saying anything else right now.”
    “You feel uncomfortable?” He grabbed the tape recorder and clicked it off. “One of my men is dead and another’s on his way to the hospital. So I don’t really give a damn how you feel.”
    “The hospital? What are you talking about?”
    “We lost radio contact with a deputy of mine named Pete Twombley half an hour ago. I’ve had men looking for him ever since. I just got a call that his cruiser was found off Route 144. They found Twombley beat up and handcuffed to a tree. I don’t know how your father overpowered him, but right now every law enforcement officer in western Maine is out there hunting for him. Maybe you should rethink the attitude and get on the right side of this. Because, the way it’s looking, the next time you see him is going to be at his funeral.”

 
     
    8
     
    I sat alone in the lobby outside the dispatch office waiting for my division commander, Lieutenant Timothy Malcomb, to come through the door. The sheriff had gone off to supervise the manhunt. I felt like a kid waiting for his mom to pick him up outside the vice principal’s office.
    The enormity of what was happening was more than I could wrap my mind around. At this moment state troopers, deputies, and game wardens were hunting for my father in the woods along the Dead River. The FBI had been called in from Boston. TV news crews were probably rushing to the scene. By tomorrow morning the entire State of Maine would know the name of Jack Bowditch.
    When I applied to join the Warden Ser vice, I worried a lot about my father’s criminal record and how it might affect my application. I remembered sitting in a room with leaded windows and