The Bone Orchard: A Novel

“We don’t want any trouble,” Mason said, his voice cracking.

Mr. Mustache let his shirt drape over his beer belly. “Then stop bothering us, a*sholes, and go find your own f*cking island.”

I was clenching my back molars so hard, I was surprised they didn’t crack. I pulled the cord on the engine and turned the tiller so that the spray arced upward in a rooster tail behind the stern. I wanted to get clear of the island as quickly as possible so that I could make the phone call to the local warden, Jeremy Bard.

For the past few months, I’d told myself that giving up the powers that came with wearing a badge was a fair trade for not being responsible for the safety and welfare of every single human being I came into contact with. I was deep inside my head, trying to tamp down my doubts and anger. It took me a long time to realize that Maddie had turned in the boat to face me. She was repeating my name, trying to get my attention, concerned that something was wrong with me.





4



When I’d told Kathy Frost that I had decided to leave the Warden Service, she’d responded with silence. The phone had gone quiet for the better part of a minute. It was an unusually cold day in early March, with the sky spitting snow showers outside the windows of my rented cabin.

“Kathy?”

“I understand,” she said at last.

I had expected her to try to talk me out of leaving. I had even prepared a point-by-point counterargument, assuming that she was actually going to argue with me.

“I’ve done a lot of thinking, and I’m trying to be honest with myself,” I said. “I became a warden for the wrong reasons. I was young and wanted to show my father what a tough guy I was, which was stupid and pointless.”

Silence.

“The only reason I held on as long as I did was because of the faith you had in me,” I said. “But I was never a good fit for the service. I was always disregarding regulations because I thought I knew better, and then when I tried following the rules, that didn’t work for me, either.”

More silence.

“I know this must come as a shock,” I said. “You probably figured I’d finally turned a corner, and we’d been talking about me moving back down south again. But I’m tired of fighting against my own nature all the time. I appreciate everything you’ve done for me.”

I waited a long time for her to speak. “Kathy?”

“I understand,” she said again.

In the time I had been a game warden, I had been investigated or disciplined for numerous infractions, from interfering in the homicide investigation of a young woman back in Sennebec to pursuing a sexual relationship with the sister of a murder suspect here in Washington County. I had been the subject of not one but two use-of-force inquiries. In both cases, the attorney general’s office had ruled that I had discharged my weapon in self-defense, but the fact remained that I had shot and killed two men.

The warden colonel himself had called me an “embarrassment to the service,” and I had been hard-pressed to disagree. His plan, in exiling me to the wilds of eastern Maine, was to make my life so miserable that I was forced to quit. Instead, I had begun to transform myself into a semicompetent officer, which was why I had expected Kathy to insist that I stay.

On the other hand, she knew better than anyone what kind of a year I’d just endured. I had recently buried my mother after a short, devastating illness. The suddenness of her death had left me feeling punch-drunk. Every time the phone rang, I expected to hear my mom’s voice calling from the great beyond.

Over the winter, I’d also testified for the prosecution in a trial against one of my best friends, who had killed two men who had deserved killing, in my opinion, and I had watched him go to prison for manslaughter. Out of guilt, I had taken to doing chores around Billy Cronk’s house: chopping firewood, replacing the short-circuited bathroom fan, changing the oil in the family Tahoe. But my penance seemed incommensurate with the problems I had brought on his wife and children. If Billy managed to stay out of trouble in the joint, which was unlikely given his violent temper, he would return to them in seven or eight years.

So maybe Kathy just looked at me and saw a person who needed to become someone else for a while, and that was why she understood.

* * *

After we got back to the ramp and I had winched the boat onto its trailer and returned my clients to the lodge, I walked down to the Pine Tree Store for a bottle of something. I didn’t drink wine normally. Bourbon and beer were my particular vices. But if Mason and Maddie were paying for my lobster dinner, it seemed the polite thing to take them. I stood in front of the wine display for several minutes with what must have been a dazed look in my eyes, because the kindly white-bearded owner finally came out from behind the counter, plucked a bottle from the cooler, and handed it to me with a sigh.

“Does this go with lobster?” I asked him.

“Rosé goes with anything.”

There was no price sticker. “Can I afford it?”

“I’m not sure there’s anything in here you can afford, based on the size of your tab.” He was a jolly old elf of a man.

“I’m going to pay it off this month.”

“That’s what you said last month. Fortunately for you, I am an incurable optimist.”

“In that case, can you give me a pint of Jim Beam, too?”

On the way back to the lodge, I made a stop at my Ford Bronco, parked in the wet grass behind the kitchen, and found a wrinkled but clean flannel shirt in the duffel bag I kept behind the passenger seat. I took it into the bathroom and used a bar of Lava soap to wash the fish smell from my heavily calloused hands. Having had a crew cut for years, I wasn’t used to having shaggy hair or a beard. Not having a comb, I did the best I could with my fingers.

Looking at myself in a mirror had become an uncanny experience. It wasn’t so much that I didn’t recognize the reflected image. The blue eyes and scar on my forehead were still markers of my identity. But when I saw my bearded face now, I was reminded of someone else. I just couldn’t tell you who it was.

I took a swig of the whiskey and felt the warm liquid slide down my throat all the way to my heart. My pulse was still thumping from the confrontation I’d had with the men on Bump Island. I tucked the bottle in my back pocket.

Mason and Maddie were waiting for me on the screen porch. They had both showered and changed. Mason was reading a dog-eared copy of Fortune magazine with a raised eyebrow.

“I wonder how many people lost their shirts buying that stock last year,” he said.

“Hindsight is always twenty-twenty,” Maddie said.

“Is it?” I asked.

Maddie glanced up with a chemically brightened smile. With her blond hair pinned back, I could finally recognize her as Sarah’s former prep school roommate. It was like seeing a familiar portrait that had been heavily retouched.

She must have been experiencing a similar sensation looking at me.

“I still can’t believe it’s you,” she said. “You were always so clean-cut at Colby.”

I felt self-conscious in my grease-stained jeans and scuffed L.L.Bean boots. “And now I look like a lumberjack?”

“You wear it well, though.”

There was a shine in her eyes that made me think the cocktail hour had already started back at their cabin.

I offered her the bottle of wine. “I brought this.”

She glanced briefly at the label. “We already have a couple of bottles of Pinot Grigio chilling in the fridge. But we can drink this one tomorrow.” It was my understanding they were leaving in the morning. She set the bottle down on the lacquered table beside her chair as if it was something she planned on leaving behind. “Did you ever reach the game warden about those scary guys?”

“I left another message.”

It didn’t surprise me that Jeremy Bard was ignoring my calls, given our mutual dislike for each other. I’d probably made a mistake not contacting the state police dispatcher directly and reporting the men for criminal threatening.

“I’ve never had anyone pull a gun on me,” Mason said from his armchair. “It felt like something out of the Wild, Wild West.”

“More like the Wild, Wild East,” Maddie said.

Mason removed a neatly folded handkerchief from his chino pockets and used one of the corners to clean his tortoiseshell glasses. “You must have seen stuff like that all the time. How long were you a game warden, Mike?”

“Three years, more or less.”

“What made you decide to change careers?”

His girlfriend scowled at him. “Mason!”

“It’s all right,” I said. “I realized that being outdoors was what I loved most about the work and that there were other jobs where I could be in the woods without having people shoot at me.”

He leaned forward. “You were actually shot at?”

“From time to time.”

I wasn’t going to tell him that one of the bullets had found its mark. Mason would just want me to roll up my shirt so he could see the scar on my chest—more like an indelible bruise really—where my ballistic vest had stopped a 9mm round from a Glock 19.

“I’m fascinated by police work,” he said. “I think it’s because I could never imagine going into such a dangerous profession myself. I prefer to take risks with my client’s money rather than with my own life.” He had a disarming smile. “Did I just call myself a coward?”