Who Killed Joe Daigle?

Paul Bouchard

Description

A prominent farmer is murdered, and The New Yorker’s David Nichols is assigned to solve this puzzling crime.
The New Yorker’s David Nichols is assigned to find out who killed Joe Daigle, a prominent potato farmer in northern Maine’s St. John Valley. Teaming up with local reporter Bob Dube, the pair explore various theories circulated by townsfolk and discover the complexities of not only the victim, but The Valley he resided in.

Sujets

• Thrillers
• Suspense
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: iUniverse
• Date de parution: 24 novembre 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 2
• EAN13: 9781663242334
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 4 Mo

Extrait

Who Killed Joe Daigle?
A Murder Mystery in Maine’s St. John Valley.
PAUL BOUCHARD


WHO KILLED JOE DAIGLE? A MURDER MYSTERY IN MAINE’S ST. JOHN VALLEY.
 
Copyright © 2022 Paul Bouchard.
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
 
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
 
 
 
iUniverse
1663 Liberty Drive
Bloomington, IN 47403
www.iuniverse.com
844-349-9409
 
Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
 
ISBN: 978-1-6632-3832-0 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-6632-4233-4 (e)
 
Library of Congress Control Number: 2022912770
 
 
 
iUniverse rev. date: 11/21/2022
Contents
A Murder
An Assignment
The Valley
The Victim
The Wife
La Famille
Bob Dube
A Development
The Broker
Research
An Article
A Money Request
Arbitrage
Family History
Updates
A Sojourn
November 1985
Answers

For the reporters
A Murder
O n a cold late afternoon in mid-October 1985, Joe Daigle, a prominent Frenchville, Maine, potato farmer, was slumped lifeless on the driver’s seat of his stationary, though idling, diesel pickup truck. A coroner’s report would later reveal his chest was the site of a lodged nine-millimeter bullet, while another round had pierced the right side of his face. The headlights of the GMC two-door pickup were on when his body was found, and the doors to the Quonset barn near the pickup were locked. Two weeks shy of his sixty-fifth birthday, Daigle’s lifeless body was curled up, his knees next to his chest, and on the floorboard was his wallet with five twenty-dollar bills in it. And next to the wallet was a short butt of a King Edward cigar, so often perched, when Daigle was alive, on the right side of his mouth.
An Assignment
A fter a long day of attending a conference about municipal bonds, I returned to my Manhattan hotel and checked with the front desk for any messages. This was a few days after Daigle’s murder, which I didn’t know about at the time.
“Oh yes, Mr. Nichols. You had two calls, two messages,” the hotel clerk told me, and he handed me a piece of paper with two phone numbers and two corresponding names, the first being my wife’s name while the second was that of Joel Steinberg, the managing editor of the New Yorker . I returned to my room, placed my briefcase on the queen-size bed, and called my wife, our phone conversation lasting no more than five minutes. I then called Mr. Steinberg. The Philadelphia Inquirer , where I’m a reporter, allows me to write for other publications, and I knew Mr. Steinberg from two previous articles I’d written for the New Yorker .
I dialed his number, and he immediately picked up.
“Hello?”
“Hello, Mr. Steinberg, it’s David Nichols returning your call.”
“Oh great, David. Listen, I think I have a great one for you. A farmer was fatally shot in northern Maine four days ago. The team and I picked it up on the wire, chewed on it for a while, and agreed this could make for a great story. The Bangor Daily News has been covering it. You know Bangor, home of Stephen King?”
“Yes, I’ve heard of Bangor. And who’s never heard of Stephen King?”
“Well, this killing took place two hundred miles north of Bangor. Right up on the international border, in the St. John Valley, with the valley’s southern half in Maine and its northern counterpart in the Canadian province of New Brunswick. Not to be confused with the St. John River in Florida.”
“Shucks. I prefer Florida to Maine in the fall, Mr. Steinberg.”
“Well, sorry about that, David, but we’d love for you to set up shop in that valley, snoop around, ask questions, and write a feature article. This is an unsolved crime, and it’s shocking, given that murders don’t happen too often in Maine, especially in the sparsely populated northern portions of the state. You’re the right writer for this story, David. All expenses paid, of course. Ten thousand words, max.”
“Well, maybe I can make room on my schedule next week and head up there and—”
“Fantastic. I knew I could count on you. And remember, David, solving a crime is not about peeling the onion to get to its core. It’s the other way around. Start at the core and work around it. Ninety percent of murder victims knew their killer. Find out all you can about farmer Joe Daigle.
The Valley
I flew from Philly to Bangor, then rented a car and drove two hundred miles north to Rock’s Motel in Fort Kent, Maine, to what became my living quarters while covering this story. With no motels in Frenchville (Frenchville is ten miles from Fort Kent), Rock’s Motel doubled up as an eatery for next to it was a popular small restaurant also owned by Yves “Rock” Corriveau, simply named Rock’s. Serving hamburgers, hot dogs, poutine, ployes (buckwheat pancakes served as a bread replacement), and creton (a minced pork spread served with toast or ployes), I added ten pounds during my nearly five weeks covering Daigle’s murder.
The St. John Valley derives its name from the four-hundred-twenty-mile river that serves as the northern most portion of Maine’s border with Canada. Sourced in Maine, the east-flowing river dumps into the Bay of Fundy at St. John, New Brunswick. Forty thousand Canadians make their home in the Valley while their American counterparts to the south number a third as much. French is the primary language of the Valley Canadian townsfolk, though some speak English, while northern Maine Valley residents speak English and French and a mixture of both languages called Franglais. (The word for French in the French language is Francais , while the French word for English is Anglais , thus the term “Franglais”—similar to the “Spanglish” phenomenon amongst some American Hispanics.) Small towns on the Valley’s American side, like Frenchville (population fifteen hundred), are overwhelmingly populated by descendants of French Canadians, and nearly all residents, whether on the Canadian or American side, are practicing Catholics.
For employment, the blue-collar trades of farm workers, truck drivers, and woodsmen are well represented, but the Valley’s principal employer is Fraser Paper, a Canadian corporation with a mill in Edmunston, New Brunswick, where the paper pulp is made and piped to the company’s finishing mill of the same name in Madawaska, Maine. Fraser Paper employs roughly six thousand workers, evenly split between the Canadian and American mills. Vehicles in the Valley are mostly American-brand cars and pickup trucks, and the pickup trucks often sport gun racks along their rear windshields.
At the murder scene, Joe Daigle’s GMC pickup did have such a gun rack, but it was empty, because, having just completed the annual harvest, he had been too busy to engage in his favorite pastime of deer hunting. The top of Joe’s head, however, which still sported thick, jet-black hair despite his nearly sixty-five years, had his all-familiar green John Deere cap—common male attire in the Valley, not only for farmers and farm hands, but also for loggers and Fraser Paper employees.
The Victim
J oseph Lucien Daigle was born on October 24, 1920, in Frenchville, the oldest son of Jacqueline and Guy Daigle, she a businesswoman who sold hats and women’s clothing in the general store she co-owned with her husband, a potato farmer. As a youngster, the dark-haired boy with thick eyebrows was amiable, funny, and optimistic, personality traits that would stay with him throughout his life. Deafness in the left ear was also a lifetime trait, the result of what at first was thought to be polio, but was a bout of meningitis.
In high school, he played basketball and won a penmanship award. With the Great Depression at full throttle, his summers were spent two hundred miles away at Maine’s Mount Desert Island, building roads at Acadia National Park as part of President Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps. Times were tough and money was tight, but there was never unemployment or food lines with the Daigles as Joe’s parents were successful business people who carried no debts, owning their eighty-acre potato farm outright. Activities like gardening, hunting, and fishing softened the mighty blow of the Depression and explained why the twin evils of unemployment and food lines were nonexistent in the Valley during the 1930s.