Rabid by Paul Doiron

Author:Paul Doiron [Doiron, Paul]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Thrillers, Suspense, Mystery & Detective, Traditional
ISBN: 9781250314178
Google: MgpaDwAAQBAJ
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2018-06-05T05:00:00+00:00

Ora shut the book so loudly both girls looked up in alarm.

She made her best attempt at smiling, but Stacey sensed something was wrong. “Mommy?”

“Go on playing,” Ora said. “Mommy just needs to go inside for minute.”

She found the scrap of paper on which she had jotted down Giang’s phone number. If John answered, she would hang up. That was her plan.

The phone rang and kept ringing. The Husseys didn’t seem to own an answering machine. Charley was always going on about Ora’s supposed powers of precognition—which she herself discounted—but now she felt a tingle go through her nerves that spoke of some dire event having occurred.

She opened the phonebook to the pages devoted to state agencies. She ran her index finger down the list of numbers, not sure of what term she should be looking for. Family services?

Just then the phone rang and, without thinking, she picked up.

“Stevens residence,” she said. “Maine game warden’s residence.”

Charley often got work-related calls at home.

“You just called me,” a man said. It was John Hussey. He must have dialed *69.

“I apologize for disturbing you.” Ora was an unpracticed liar. “I dialed the wrong number.”

He made a strange, lip-smacking sound when he spoke. “You said game warden.”

“My husband is a warden.”

“The one who came to my house that time?”

“Yes.”

“Did my wife call him again? Is that how you got this number? Why were you calling?”

“I apologize for the intrusion,” Ora said.

Through the receiver she heard him yell once last word: “Giang!”

What had she done?

Through pure thoughtlessness, she had put that woman and girl in even greater danger. She could call the sheriff’s office and ask them to send an officer to the Husseys’ home, but she knew how her request would sound to the deputies once she explained the reason for her concern. She knew these men and how reluctant they were—even the few who weren’t chauvinists—to interfere in domestic dramas.

She needed to talk to her husband, she needed to talk to Charley.

In the 1980s, Maine game wardens didn’t have cell phones. When they were away from the radios in their trucks, they were just about unreachable. Very often their own police dispatchers had no idea where in the woods they might be.

Charley had mentioned something about helping the tribal warden do a boat patrol of bass fishermen on Big Lake. There were other, prejudiced wardens in the division who refused to work with the Passamaquoddy wardens, and it disgusted Ora to overhear the derogatory jokes these so-called peace officers made about Native Americans living on the nearby reservations in the worst poverty she had ever seen.

She had no way to reach her husband, she thought again.

Or maybe she did. There was a new warden working the district around Grand Lake Stream. She found his home number on Charley’s list posted above the desk. The odds of catching him were slim, it being salmon season, but many wardens came home for lunch. She held her breath, waiting for an answer.

“Game warden,” said Mack McQuarrie.

“Mack, this is Ora Stevens,” she said with relief.

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