Bartending obviously paid better than I’d thought.

It was standard operating procedure, before approaching what looked like a drug den, to alert fellow officers to your location. In my case that fellow officer was going to be Maine State Trooper Dani Tate who, while many miles away, had become my default go-to. I had the phone in hand when the trailer door opened and a skinny young woman stepped onto the porch.

From a distance, I could see that she was gaunt and fair, but her identifying features were mostly hidden. Her hair was bunched beneath a knit cap emblazoned with a pot leaf. Her eyes were concealed behind aviator sunglasses. She was dressed in a man’s chamois shirt, bedazzled jeans, and buckskin moccasins.

The girl’s text had preceded me.

The pale woman didn’t so much as pause but sprang lightly down the stairs and made a line for my Jeep. She had the energy of someone whose metabolism runs twice as fast as a normal human’s. I watched her hands, but they were empty.

I disengaged my seat belt (never a bad idea if you might need to reach for your sidearm) and slid down the window.

“Game warden, right?” she said. Even her words came out fast.

“How’d you guess?”

Up close, I could see that her nose and cheeks were covered with connect-the-dots freckles.

“I didn’t need Treasure to tell me. You guys aren’t as stealthy as you think you are. What do you want with Arlo? It can’t be about poaching. The dude doesn’t even hunt. You want to show me your badge and identification?”

“I’ll show you mine. How about you show me yours?”

“I don’t think so.”

I brought out the badge and the ID. “Are you Mrs. Burch?”

She made a snorting laugh, then peered at my identification closely. I had never seen someone do a double take in real life until that moment. Her head snapped up, and she removed her oversized sunglasses for a better look at me. Her eyes were the blue of faded denim. False lashes, eyeliner, and eye shadow gave her a catlike appearance. Her gaze was searching, intense, and borderline hostile.

“You’re Mike Bowditch? No fucking way.”

“Do we know each other?”

Like the teenage logger I’d challenged earlier, she looked familiar in the sense that she resembled other people I had busted. Maybe I’d arrested her brother or uncle. People convicted of crimes never forget the officers who sent them to jail. They throw our names around with disdain. Hard-ass cops, in other words, achieve a modicum of notoriety within certain social circles in Maine.

She returned her sunglasses to the bridge of her freckled nose as if to frustrate my attempt to place her.

“No, but I’ve heard about you, Mike.”

Her free and easy use of my first name was intended to get a rise out of me.