I’d already done my Googling. I knew more than a bit about Special Agent Carla Rosetti. A few highlights, collected from various websites and newspaper archives.
• At the age of eight, a pigtailed Carla Rosetti placed third in a pumpkin-growing contest in Blacksburg, Virginia. 246 pounds. A massive, massive gourd, my friends.
• Thirteen-year-old Carla Rosetti was a member of her high school’s Model UN team. She represented Bhutan. Presumably, she rocked that shit, and for at least an afternoon, Bhutan was the greatest country in the world.
• In an 87–34 drubbing of Christianburg High, Ms. Rosetti, then a senior, but only fifteen years old (!), scored a game-high 27 points. In your face, Christianburg!
• At the University of Maryland, criminal-justice major Carla Rosetti was quoted by The Diamondback as saying the refurbished student center was “pretty boss” and that it seems like a “chill place to hang with friends.” Thanks for the heads-up, Car-Car. If I’m ever down that way, I’ll check it out. Definitely sounds boss. Totally chill.
• After nabbing the infamous “Pawtucket Pyro,” FBI newbie Carla Rosetti received a commendation from the governor of Rhode Island. It may be the smallest in the Union, but they sleep better in the Ocean State thanks to our favorite up-and-coming field agent.
• Carla Rosetti rocks a purple taffeta bridesmaid dress. Congrats on the nuptials Jamir and Heidi. What a beautiful farm that was! What a beautiful wedding! And that picture of you two hugging the llama? Priceless.
• Carla Rosetti has killed a man.
Okay, this one needs a bit more background. The guy’s name was Gordon Laramie and he was one of those mouth breathers with an Armageddon hard-on. A few years ago, he was hiding out in the remote woods of northern New Hampshire, stockpiling Chunky Soup in an underground bunker he’d built out of shipping containers. He’d laced the perimeter with land mines acquired from some shady French Canadians. When a couple of hikers lost their way one foggy autumn morning, they stumbled upon Mr. Laramie’s hideout and over one of the aforementioned land mines.
A land mine is a lot lazier than a spontaneous combustion. By that I mean it doesn’t always finish the job. In this case, it blew the right leg off one hiker and the left leg off the other. Luckily, they were both paramedics and had the Rolls-Royce of first aid kits on hand. They managed to shoot themselves full of morphine and apply tourniquets to each other’s stumps. Then they strapped their bodies together with belts and duct tape and used their two good legs to walk a mile to a logging road, where they flagged down a guy on a quadrunner who strapped them to the back, alongside the nine-point buck he’d just bagged. He rushed them to a ranger station, where they called in a medevac helicopter and the FBI.
Because of her experience with arsonists and explosion enthusiasts, Carla Rosetti arrived that evening with a bomb squad and SWAT team in tow. She commanded the team from a distance—stationed in an ATV decked out with video surveillance—and they stormed the underground bunker aided by assorted gizmos.
Of course, Gordon Laramie proved to be wilier than assorted gizmos. Expecting their arrival, he had devised a ruse. Earlier that day, he had kidnapped Ruben Howe, owner and proprietor of the Grahamville General Store, and locked him in the bunker. The SWAT team was rocking infrared goggles, so when they detected movement underground, they assumed they had their man.
Their man, however, was creeping through the woods, donning the skin and antlers of a recently killed moose as a disguise. As the SWAT team was descending into the bunker, Laramie was creeping up on Rosetti and her small team of unarmed technicians, his makeshift crown of antlers rattling against the low-hanging branches.
Now, I’m not sure how many people have had a good old-fashioned shootout with a man wearing a moose skin and antlers, but I’m guessing it’s only one.
You know who.
The details of the shootout are sketchy at best. In interviews she did for an extended piece about the case in Salon, Rosetti described the situation as the “fog of war,” and repeatedly talked about “simply doing her job.”
Well, she simply did her job pretty damn well, because that evening they carried Gordon Laramie out in a body bag and a hyperventilating, but safe, Ruben Howe out in a stretcher. Apparently they found a manifesto of some sort, but Rosetti never shared that with the press. After all, you don’t want anyone else influenced by the rantings of a madman.
Reading the Salon piece, I imagined the moose-frocked Laramie running at Rosetti with a shotgun blasting, her diving behind a tree, and chunks of bark exploding in the frosty air. I imagined Rosetti pulling a pistol from her boot, rolling over and unloading—pop-pop-pop—as the fog settled in. I imagined the fog clearing, and Rosetti standing over Laramie’s dying body and pulling out an e-cigarette, taking a drag and it lighting up all blue at the tip as she said, “Moose season is officially . . . over.”