The Poacher's Son (Mike Bowditch 1)

advantage of her kindheartedness—or pity or what ever it was—just because I was feeling so damned lonely? If we started up again, she’d just end up heartbroken like before. A month from now, I’d still be the same unresponsive bastard I’d always been and she’d be the one feeling lonesome.
    I crawled into my empty bed and was asleep in minutes.
    *   *   *
     
    When I opened my eyes the next morning, I caught a glimpse of perfect blue sky—like an antique bottle held up to the sun. For half a minute I had that peaceful amnesia you feel when you first wake up. Then I remembered my father.
    Before anything else, I called Kathy Frost.
    “I just got off the phone with the lieutenant,” she told me. “He said they suspended the search after dark. They’ll be starting again soon, but everything’s been scaled back. Charley Stevens volunteered to go up again in his Super Cub, but I can’t say anyone’s feeling hopeful about finding your dad.”
    “I’ve got to get back up there.”
    “Forget about it. The lieutenant wants you back at work. Either that or take a sick day and stay home. The sheriff doesn’t want you at the incident scene.”
    “What if they find him? You weren’t up there, Kathy. Those Somerset guys are trigger-happy.”
    “He killed a cop, Mike. What the hell do you expect?”
    “Nobody’s proved he did it.”
    There was a silence on the other end. When she spoke again, her tone was hard-edged. “He beat up Twombley and took off. That’s pretty close to an admission of guilt, in my book. Do you want me to check that trap for you or not?”
    “No.”
    “OK, then. Call me if you catch a bear.”
     
    Half an hour later I pulled into the parking lot of the Square Deal Diner. I dropped some coins into the newspaper machine outside the door. Then I retreated to my truck and spread the pages across the steering wheel to read in the sunshine.
    Just about the entire front page of
The Bangor Daily News
was devoted to the story.
POLICE HUNT FOR SUSPECT IN NORTH WOODS SLAYINGS
     
    Below was a grainy color photograph of the crash scene where Twombley’s cruiser had gone off the road. There was also a picture of my father. It was the mug shot they’d taken the night of the bar fight two years ago. He looked drunk and defiant, like a man capable of violence.
    The article identified Jack Bowditch as a fugitive wanted for assaulting a police officer and named him as the chief suspect in the murders of Deputy Sheriff Bill Brodeur and Wendigo Timberlands Director of Environmental Affairs Jonathan Shipman. There wasn’t a whole lot else I didn’t already know. Wendigo had announced a reward of fifty thousand dollars for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the killer. The article never mentioned Wallace Bickford or the standoff at his cabin.
    Deeper in the newspaper was a companion piece to the lead article:
PUBLIC MEETING PRELUDE TO MURDER
     
    A photograph, taken at the meeting, showed a stocky man with a shaved head and a goatee—identified in the caption as Vernon Tripp of Flagstaff—standing in a crowded room shaking his fist at some unseen person.
    It was the man from the Dead River Inn, the one my father spoke with the night the bikers beat the shit out of me. What had my dad called him—a “paranoid militia freak”? The paper reported he’d been thrown out of the public meeting after he threatened Shipman.
    Tripp was identified in the article as the own er of the Natanis Trading Post. “We have someone from outside trying to dictate our lives and businesses,” he was quoted as saying. “Everything we do now is controlled by them.” The article noted that he was facing charges of criminal trespass and theft of ser vices for protesting a Wendigo checkpoint earlier in the summer.
    As I looked closer at the photo, I noticed something else. Seated in the background was another face I knew. It was pretty blurry, but I definitely recognized the bowl haircut and dragoon mustache of Russell Pelletier, the man who ran Rum Pond Sporting Camps. Pelletier never mentioned that he’d been at that public meeting. As a leaseholder facing eviction, it made sense he was there, but still, seeing him in the photograph raised goose bumps along the back of my neck.
    “You people think you can draw an iron curtain across the Maine North Woods,” Tripp said before he was evicted from the meeting. “You’re about to learn a hard lesson. Just wait and see.”
    No wonder they