The Poacher's Son (Mike Bowditch 1)

while on board a watercraft.” I removed my citation book from my pocket and stepped back from the boat. “I’m citing you, Mr. DeSalle, for operating a watercraft without proper safety equipment.”
    “You think you’re pretty tough, don’t you, fucker?” said Nappi.
    “I’ve heard enough out of you, Mr. Nappi.”
    “Warden?” The voice came from the top of the ramp where the couple with the kayaks were waiting for us to move so they could put in. I had only glanced at them before, but now I recognized the young woman as Dot Libby’s youn gest daughter, Ruth, the pudgy waitress from the Square Deal Diner. “Mike? Are you all right?”
    Seeing her did something to me; all at once the fire seemed to go out in my brain. Just the sound of a woman’s voice did it.
    Suddenly it was over.
    Nappi seemed to know it, too. When he turned back to me, he was still sneering, but the muscles in his arms and neck seemed to relax.
    “I’m fine, Ruth,” I said, keeping my eyes on Nappi. “Thank you.” Over my shoulder, I said to DeSalle. “Your driver’s license, please, Mr. DeSalle.”
    This time he gave it to me. I wrote up the ticket and held it out for him. He grabbed the paper from me and said in a soft voice, “Your career is over, asshole.”
    I climbed to the top of the boat ramp and stood beside Ruth Libby and her boyfriend while DeSalle and Nappi loaded the powerboat onto the trailer. All the while, the boy, forgotten by his father, watched me. I couldn’t tell from his expression what he was thinking. Maybe he wanted me to rescue him, maybe he wanted to kill me. The blood was still pounding in my ears, very loud. I knew my face was red with it, too.
    “Those guys were rude,” whispered Ruth’s boyfriend.
    “They’re pricks,” said Ruth. “We missed you the last few days at the diner, Mike.”
    My mouth tasted of the dirt-dry parking lot. “I’ve been busy. Tell your mom I’ll be around one of these days.”
    “Tell her yourself,” she said.
     
    My pager went off as I was sitting in my parked patrol truck, trying to get my paperwork together while I cooled down. I didn’t recognize the phone number that came up, but I dialed it, anyway. The department didn’t reimburse us for cell phone calls, even when they were made for job-related reasons, but most of the wardens I knew continued to carry personal cells and pay for the privilege out of their own pockets.
    “This is Mike Bowditch with the Maine Warden service. You just paged me.”
    “Thanks for returning my call. My name’s Rob Post, and I’m a writer with
The Portland Press Herald
. I’d like to speak with you about your father.”
    “I’m on duty, sir.”
    “Your father is the suspect in a double hom i cide and the subject of an international manhunt. Can’t you take five minutes to talk with me? I think your family should be given an opportunity to respond to the things being said about him.”
    I closed my eyes and leaned back against the seat. “I have nothing to say.”
    “It will help your father if you talk to me, Mike,” said Post.
    I laughed.
    He knew he was losing me. “I understand you were present at the search scene last night. How did it feel being a warden involved in hunting for your own father?”
    “Don’t call me again, Mr. Post.”
    “Do you think he killed those men?” he asked before I hung up.
    I looked out through the windshield at the mirror surface of Indian Pond, the pearl-gray sky above. My brain could scarcely form a thought—it felt like it was wrapped in cotton batting. I drove back to my empty home.

 
     
    16
     
    I heard the phone ringing inside the house. The sound carried through the screen to the back porch, where I’d gone to watch the sunset. I couldn’t have told you how long I’d been sitting there, but mosquitoes had raised welts along both my arms. The phone summoned me back to myself from a faraway place. I got up and went inside and picked up the receiver.
    “I shot it!” said a man’s slurred voice. “I shot it!”
    “Mr. Thompson?”
    “I shot the bear!”
    “It came back to your farm?”
    “Yeah, it came back. Came back just now.” I could practically smell the liquor on his breath through the phone.
    “And you say you killed it?”
    “Hell, yes.”
    “You’re sure it’s dead?”
    “Come see for yourself.”
    I picked up my gunbelt from the tabletop where it lay beside Sarah’s empty beer bottles. Then I went out into the last minutes of