Deer Season (6 page)

“Did you know Lisa was an alum of Leiston?” asked Ray, a few minutes into the meal.

“She was telling me that before you arrived,” responded Sarah.

“But I don’t quite understand what your role at the school is now?” Lisa asked, looking at Sarah.

“After the horrible events involving the headmaster’s wife, the board decided that it would be best for Dr. Warrington to leave. At first they were going to let him finish the semester, but some of the board members just wanted him out of there. So they bought his contract.

“I ran the business operations at the school for four years, that’s my background. What I know about education, especially private school education, I’ve learned working at Leiston. But the board is comfortable with me running the school for the remainder of year. They are forming a search committee and hope to have a new headmaster in place for the next school year. At their last meeting they named Harrison Davids, our veteran social science teacher, to be acting academic dean. He’s been released from half of his teaching duties to handle the academic side of the administration, the things Ian used to do.”

“So does that make you the headmistress?” quipped Marc.

“It’s okay to kick him under the table,” said Lisa. “I do it all the time.”

“Wonderful meal, Marc, thank you,” said Ray. “And the bread is a noble experiment.”

“Does that mean it was successful?”

“Absolutely. The crust is equal to the kind you get with a steam injection oven.” Ray looked over at Marc and Lisa. “Thank you for all of this. It’s a wonderful transition into the weekend after a difficult week.”

“We had a sense of that,” said Lisa. “And those kids we saw on the news….”

“Now it’s my turn to do the kicking,” said Marc, cutting Lisa off. He looked across at Sarah. “We, the three of us, for the last several years have had dinner together at least once a week. And I always get Lisa to promise that she’s going to leave Ray alone, no work-related questions. She’s not going to ask about what she’s seen on the news or read in the paper. And she’s made good progress. This evening I was so impressed that she didn’t start her questions as soon as Ray came through the door.”

“Have they been in trouble before?” Lisa finished her question.

“No,” answered Ray. “Not even a traffic ticket. That’s unusual for three teenage boys. These guys have never been on our radar. Unhappily, we’ve got some kids their age who already have substantial criminal records.”

“The kids in serious trouble, the ones with the criminal records, at what age do you start seeing them?” Marc probed.

“Usually they’re in middle school before they do anything bad enough to involve law enforcement. In most cases it’s boys who are in trouble, although in recent years we’ve started to see girls, too. And I often hear from neighbors and teachers about these kids after the fact. They tell me they could see problems early on, often when they were six or seven.”

“Do you think that’s true or just talk?” ask Lisa.

“It’s probably true. The literature supports that a certain percentage of the prison population exhibited very negative personality traits during childhood. But these kids, the three local boys who were involved in the incident the other night, they have no previous run-ins with law enforcement. Two of them come from solid families. The kid who is in real trouble, the one who did the shooting, his home life is less than ideal. His father died when he was an infant. His mother works nights, and the kid is free to roam.”

“So what’s going to happen to him?” asked Lisa.

“I’m not sure how the prosecutor is going to play this.”

“You don’t have any kids like this at Leiston?” said Lisa in a slightly mocking tone, looking over at Sarah.

“Not at the moment,” Sarah responded, everyone at the table well aware of the irony of her response, given the recent events. “We do our best to screen out kids with serious behavioral problems, not that we always succeed.”

“Rifle season starts next week,” Marc said to Ray. “Are we going to restore some old traditions this year?”

Ray chuckled and addressed the two women. “He does this every year. Reminds me that my dad and his grandfather were deer hunting buddies.”

“Well, are you?” ask Sarah.

“When I was a kid, hunting and fishing provided most of our meat,” said Ray. “My father worked a lot of odd jobs, mostly during the summer, and they were few and far between in the winter.”

“And one of the things Ray’s father did,” continued Marc, “was accompany my grandfather deer hunting, even when he was very elderly. Ray’s father was a skilled hunter and made sure my grandfather had a good chance at getting a buck. He also made sure Grandfather got home safely.”

“So every year,” said Ray, picking up his part of the conversation again, “Marc asks when we’re going to restore that old tradition, that bond of the hunting brotherhood. In truth, I don’t think either one of us is nostalgic for the joys of deer camp.”

“Is deer hunting still a big thing around here? I’ve been isolated from what goes on by living on campus,” Sarah noted.

“It’s a big part of the region’s economy, but not as much in this area. There’s been so much development since we were boys. We don’t get the hunters like we used to. I think most of the dyedin-the-wool hunters want to go somewhere that’s more remote, like the tip of the mitt or the U.P. That said, many of the locals still hunt deer. Some of the farmers get their buck right on their own property. But we’ll still see a lot of hunters when rifle season starts in a few weeks.”

The conversation moved to lighter topics as coffee and dessert were served.

“This tart is wonderful,” remarked Sarah.

“Marc really hit it,” said Lisa. “He spent one fall perfecting it. He experimented with different apples and recipes for the custards and crusts. I think I gained about five pounds while he was trying to find the perfect combination. But the final result….” She looked across the table at Marc. Ray noted the affection in her smile. He admired their joy in being a couple.

“I hate to break up the party,” said Ray. “But I’m starting to fade.”

“Understood,” said Lisa, rising from the table.

After clearing dishes, glasses, and silver to the counter and the hugs and goodbyes, Ray and Sarah walked into the cold winter evening. After Ray helped her brush the snow off her vehicle, she caught him in an embrace.

“I have someone covering for me at school. I’m not expected back at Leiston tonight. In fact, I could be gone all weekend.”

Ray pulled her close and kissed her gently. “That would be wonderful.”

Ray had barely attacked the waiting pile of paperwork when he was interrupted for the first time. Jan, his secretary, who also shared duties as the department’s receptionist, called to ask if he could be interrupted. Lynne Boyd, a local TV anchor, was here to see him. He peered at the work in front of him, and then told her to send Lynne in.

Ray was always surprised when he saw Lynne Boyd face-to-face. In real life she looked quite different from the face he occasionally saw at six and eleven on the local news. Without the makeup and TV lights, Lynne was a bit less glamorous, but Ray liked her unadorned look. In person she was more animated and expressive; she used her hands, body, and face as she communicated. He always found Lynne effusive, genial, and very pleasant. “Hi, Ray,” she said, her voice warm and resonant. “Your gatekeeper said you weren’t to be disturbed.”

“Obviously you charmed your way past her. I see you’re going to be a hunting widow in a few weeks,” Ray said holding an Away From Duty form up for Lynne to see.

“Dirk’s annual Thanksgiving trek to the woods with his

brother and some friends.”

“In the U.P.” said Ray looking at the form.

“They’ve got a big old dilapidated log cabin in the woods near Seney. I’ve been there a couple of times in the summer— swamps, woods, mosquitoes, black flies, and an occasional black bear rummaging for food—not my cup of tea.”

“What can I do for you?” asked Ray, changing the subject.

“Mind if I shut the door?” she asked.

“Go ahead,” Ray responded.

Lynne pulled a chair close to his desk and sorted through a large designer bag. She pulled out a small pack of envelopes held together by a rubber band and set it on the desk in front of Ray.

“These came in the last few days. I’ve never had anything quite like this before.”

“How so?” Ray asked, peering at the envelopes. Then he reached into a desk drawer and extracted a pair of latex gloves from a cardboard carton. As he pulled them on, he waited for her answer. Lynne seemed lost in her own thoughts, like she was considering her response. She hooked some of her long blond hair between her thumb and index finger and brushed it away from the right side of her face.

“I was going to say that I’d never gotten a death threat before, but that’s not quite true.” She gave Ray a knowing glance.

He remembered their first meeting; Lynne was being stalked by Jesse Buehle, a college boyfriend who had flipped out when Lynne broke up with him when she first took the anchor job at the local TV station. The stalking had gone on for months before Lynne finally came to Ray and asked for help, and then only after she had become acquainted with him over the course of several news conferences and interviews. Ray had guided her through the court system to get the proper legal safeguards in place and then put her in contact with Charlene Stoddard, an ex-nun who ran the local women’s resource center. Lynne moved into a safe house owned by the group, and seldom traveled alone.

But just as Ray thought the problem was contained, the situation spun tragically out of control late one snowy evening when Lynne was driving home from the station alone. Buehle rammed her car and forced her off the road. The officer responding to her frantic 911 call, Dirk Lowther, confronted the stalker, who by that time had smashed the passenger-side window of her car, unlocked the door, and was in the process of trying to pull her from the vehicle.

In the ensuing battle, first to free Lynne from her assailant, and then to suppress and cuff him, Lowther’s side arm was fired. Lowther later testified that Buehle had managed to pull the weapon from its holster, and the pistol had gone off as he struggled to regain control of it. Moments later Buehle was dead from a single shot that had pierced his heart.

In the subsequent investigation of the shooting, conducted by the prosecuting attorney of a neighboring county, Lowther was exonerated and found to be acting within the guidelines of the department. But Ray was always a bit bothered by the incident, not that he could find anything in the final report that suggested Lowther had deviated from department procedures.

But then Ray had never been comfortable with Lowther, one of the officers he had inherited from the previous sheriff who had staffed the department with relatives and cronies. In the first couple of years of his administration, Ray had done his best to counsel most of the veteran officers into early retirement or other careers.

But he couldn’t retire or fire everyone as he rebuilt the department with younger, better-trained officers. He looked on Lowther as the best of the worst, someone he could put up with if he had to. That said, Ray felt Lowther possessed most of the negative characteristics often ascribed to law enforcement by its critics. Lowther was arrogant, often hostile, and ruthless. His politics seemed to be a weird blend of conspiracy theories and longstanding prejudices. He preferred working the third shift, 11:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m. And Ray was happy with that arrangement. The long nights on road patrol in a rural area meant that Lowther would have little contact with the public, keeping possible problems to a minimum.

Lowther—tall, muscular, with a rough-hewn profile and thick salt and pepper hair and mustache—was a good-looking man. And Ray knew many women found him rather charming, at least initially. He was also a braggart and a notorious womanizer, with several marriages and numerous girl friends in his past. Shortly after the shooting incident, Ray was surprised to learn that Lowther was dating Lynne Boyd. Ray thought she must be at least twenty years younger than Lowther, and he couldn’t imagine that theyhad much in common. He was even more surprised when he learned that they had wed, the nuptials following the shooting by only a few months.

“And these letters, it’s not only the threats. It’s…” Lynne paused a long moment and then continued. “Well, look at them. I think you will know what I mean.”

Ray removed the rubber band holding the letters together. He carefully examined the top envelope and then noted the others. They were all standard size white business envelopes, all addressed using a poor-quality inkjet printer.

He removed the first letter. The text was composed of letters and words cut from newspapers and magazines. The note was obscene, threatening, and violent. Ray looked at the rest of the letters. As he worked his way through them, he saw that they were all constructed in the same way, assorted print pasted haphazardly and then Xeroxed. The messages were all variations on the same theme. While the writer’s meaning was clear, Ray was struck by the almost childlike quality of the letters.

“Well,” he said, “I understand your concern.” He looked at the postmarks. “So these have all come in the last few days?”

“Yes. The first one I sort of laughed off. But when they kept coming I became rather frightened.” As she was talking, her phone chirped. She looked at the screen and then back at Ray without answering the call.

“The writer seems to be referencing something you did on gun control?”

“I did a series a few weeks ago on gun deaths in America involving children and adolescents. It was in five parts and ran each day during the news at 6:00 and 11:00. Do you know what I’m talking about? Have you seen any of these?”