The Precipice (18 page)

He sat up. “Where?”

“You’ll see.”

I followed the eastern shore of the lake for a quarter mile, passing the sign for the Greenville Airport, until I came to Village Street. Up ahead was the Maine Warden Service’s sprawling regional headquarters: a collection of tan buildings with green metal roofs. As promised, Lieutenant DeFord had moved the circus here, and now the paved lot behind the sliding chain-link gate was packed with the same vehicles I’d seen earlier in Monson: Warden trucks and police cruisers, vans used by the search-and-rescue teams, horse trailers, and even the Salvation Army chuck wagon, where someone was now handing out tuna sandwiches to the weary volunteers emerging from the woods. Two television news vans with jutting antennas had joined the ragtag fleet.

I found a parking spot beside a familiar black Escalade in front of the IF&W office and turned off the engine.

“What are we doing here?” Dow asked in a low voice.

“I thought we’d get something to eat before I took you to jail. I’ve heard the food in lockup is pretty nasty. Follow me.”

A rack of sun-blanched moose antlers hung above the entrance to the main building. I held the door open for Stacey and Troy Dow. She gave me a questioning look as she passed, but I kept the deadpan.

Dozens of employees of the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife—wardens and biologists—worked out of this office, but on any given day, most of them were in the field. It was unusual to encounter so much human noise inside the building. At the reception desk, I asked a plump blond woman I hadn’t met before if I could bother Lieutenant DeFord for a few minutes. She directed a glare at Troy Dow that told me he and she were acquainted—an observation that he quickly confirmed.

“Hey, Megan,” he said. “You’re looking good. Have you lost weight?”

“Go to hell, Troy.”

“Ouch, baby.”

Megan tossed her hair as she picked up the phone and pressed it to her ear. “Let me see if the lieutenant is free.”

She turned her back so that we couldn’t eavesdrop on the conversation. A sudden groan from my stomach caused Troy Dow to break into laughter. I often forgot to eat when I was focused on something; it was a habit I’d had since I was a teenager, sitting all day in a deer stand, listening for the rustle of hooves in the fallen oak leaves.

The receptionist put down the telephone. “The lieutenant said to go on back to the conference room.”

“Stacey, why don’t you get something to eat. I’ll track you down when I’m done.”

Her mouth drooped. “Sure,” she said after a long pause.

“Hold out your hands,” I told Troy Dow.

I unlocked his cuffs.

He massaged his wrists, as if the manacles had caused him discomfort. “So does this mean you’re not going to charge me with shooting that bird?”

I motioned for Troy to follow me, and we headed down the hall. The door to the conference room stood open. There were maps, binders, and half-empty cups of coffee on the table. DeFord and the FBI agent, Genoways, were huddled over a laptop, conversing in hushed tones.

Genoways shut the laptop before we’d even entered the room. His black eyes had their usual fierceness.

DeFord was still wearing his dress uniform, but there was a sheen of perspiration along his forehead and half-moons under his eyes from lack of sleep. The fluorescent lights didn’t flatter him.

“What’s going on, Bowditch?” DeFord said. “Oh, hello, Troy.”

“Lieutenant.”

I should have realized that Troy Dow was a well-known personage among the local wardens.

“Mr. Dow gave Chad McDonough a lift out of the Hundred Mile Wilderness this morning,” I said. “He told me that McDonough was nervous and in a hurry to leave. We need to find him, sir. I think he knows something about what happened to Samantha and Missy.”

DeFord and Agent Genoways exchanged glances.

“Is that true, Troy?” the lieutenant asked.

Dow settled into one of the chairs and folded his hands across his chest again. His nails were black. “Maybe—but there’s a misunderstanding I’d like to clear up first.”

I explained to the lieutenant about our wild ride through the forest and the dead grouse Stacey had found in the bushes. “If I let him go, Mr. Dow says he’s willing to be of assistance to our investigation.”

“Jesus Christ, Troy. Two girls are missing.”

“Those twats aren’t my concern.” His raspy voice had never sounded so unpleasant.

The FBI agent leaned over to DeFord and whispered something into his ear.

The lieutenant shrugged. “Fine. We’ll forget about the grouse. Tell us everything—and I mean
everything
—that happened this morning with Chad McDonough, and you’re free to go.”

The bushy tips of Dow’s mustache turned upward when he grinned.

“I picked him up on the KI Road around seven o’clock, over near where the Long Pond Road comes in. I was bringing a load back into town, and he had his thumb out and looked kind of beat-up, so I decided to give him a ride. Like I told Warden Bowditch, I could smell that he’d been toking up as soon as he got inside the truck. His eyes were all red, and he was wicked paranoid, looking in the side mirror the whole way. Gave me a different name from what you’ve been calling him, too. I forgot to mention that part. He told me his name was Kyle.”

“Did he say anything about why he was in such a rush to get to Greenville?”

“He said he’d gotten a call that his father’d had a heart attack and he needed to get home to New Jersey.”

“I thought he was from Massachusetts,” I said.

“He is,” said DeFord. “And his father is deceased. Agent Genoways called his house this morning and spoke with the mother.” I was eager to hear more about that conversation. But the lieutenant returned his attention to Troy Dow. “What else did he have to say?”

“He told me he hated quitting the AT because he’d hiked the whole way from Georgia in just four months, which was near record time. I didn’t believe him, on account of how fat he was. He should have burned off some of that blubber if he’d been climbing all those mountains. I asked him what’d happened to his face, and he said he’d taken a tumble on a wet boulder. I believed that part.”

“He was with you when you shot the spruce grouse?” I asked.

Dow paused, as if not wanting to admit his culpability, even though he’d already received a dispensation. “We came up on it in the middle of the road. You know how fool hens are—they just freeze when something scares them. Dumb chickens. I got out of the truck and shot it. He said he didn’t know it was hunting season yet. I said I had a special permit because I am one-eighth Penobscot Indian. He asked me which part was Indian, and I said, ‘My pecker.’”

He waited for a laugh from us, which did not come.

“Then he started going on about coyotes, and were they dangerous, and had I ever shot any.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I told him that shooting predators was my third favorite thing,” said Troy, not needing to name the other two. “I figured he was all paranoid on account of having smoked too much weed when he woke up. I didn’t put any stock in what he was saying.”

“Where did you leave him, Mr. Dow?” Agent Genoways asked. It was only the second time I’d heard his voice. He had a Baltimore accent.

“In front of the Citgo station. He asked if I would take him to get his car up on the Golden Road—offered me a hundred bucks—but I said I wasn’t a shuttle service.”

“The state police found McDonough’s car parked at Abol Bridge,” I told DeFord. “He must’ve had someone drive him back down to Monson before he started on his trek across the Hundred Mile Wilderness.”

“So the last you saw him he was headed north?” the lieutenant asked.

“No, he was just standing in the parking lot, talking on his cell phone, with his backpack on the ground.”

“Any idea who he was calling?” I said.

“Someone about a ride, I figured.”

“Probably the same person who shuttled him back from Abol Bridge,” I said. “There aren’t too many people who offer that service around here, Lieutenant. I shouldn’t have trouble tracking them down.”

Genoways whispered in DeFord’s ear again.

“You did a good job today, Mike,” the lieutenant said. “But the FBI is going to take it from here.”

He might as well have punched me in the solar plexus. I had begun to think of finding Chad McDonough as my own personal project. Now I was being told that my place was back in the woods. There is often a moment when a straight-up search for a lost person becomes a criminal investigation. Sometimes it’s only clear in retrospect when the hour has turned. I had a sick feeling that this conversation would be it.

But why the FBI instead of the state police? Calling shuttle vans to look for a person of interest seemed like a job for troopers. Genoways’s impassive face told me nothing.

“Can I get a ride back to my truck now?” said Troy.

The lieutenant folded his strong arms across his chest. “We’re not a shuttle service, either, Troy. You’re just going to have to walk back.”

“That’s, like, seven miles!”

“You still have some daylight left. You’d better get moving.”

A heavy fist began beating against the conference room door. Investigator Pinkham stuck his head in without being invited. His glasses were askew. “You need to get out here, John.”

“What is it?”

“The Reverend Mott just slapped Stacey Stevens in the face.”

20

The lieutenant ran out to the parking lot. People began to hurry past the open door.

Troy Dow gave me a toothy grin. “I want to see this.”

“I don’t think so.”

“The lieutenant said I was free to go. Do you want to come with me or not?”

I couldn’t stop him, and it sounded like Stacey might need my help. We followed the other curiosity seekers out into the sunshine. The sudden brightness blinded me. The breeze blew the froggy smell of the lake across the asphalt.

“Who is this person? What is she doing here?” I heard a man yell.

“Reverend, please!” another man replied.

If I squinted, I could make out a scrum gathered around the Salvation Army wagon. I picked out Missy’s mother first, the heavyset woman in the pleated green skirt. The distinctive gold pompadour of the Reverend Mott caught the afternoon light. I couldn’t see Stacey at all over the heads of the others, but I could hear her voice.

“No, I am
not
going to apologize.”

“Would everybody please calm down!” DeFord said. “Wes, can you help me out here?”

“Go back inside, everyone,” Wes Pinkham said. “Let’s get back to work.”

I circled the wagon to get a clear view. Except for Missy’s mom, who seemed borderline catatonic, everyone looked livid.

“It was just a simple question,” Stacey told the lieutenant.

“What is this woman’s position here?” Mott asked. He had a rich, resonant voice, as if his throat were coated with honey. “Are you her supervisor, Lieutenant?”

DeFord stood between Stacey and Mott, like a referee in a ring with two boxers. The reverend had removed his sharkskin jacket at some point since I’d last seen him. His handsome, haughty face was the color of an unripe tangerine.

“The families are already in anguish without being insulted, too,” he said.

“I’m sure Ms. Stevens didn’t mean to offend anyone,” DeFord said.

“Then she needs to apologize.” Mott seemed to expand in size as he drew in his breath. “And then she needs to leave.”

Pinkham raised his arm to block my way. “Go back inside, Bowditch.”

As the person who had brought Stacey to Greenville, I felt responsible for her, but I needed to know what was happening before I intervened. Not that she ever seemed to need rescuing.

“Stacey’s with me,” I said.

Pinkham’s high forehead shone with perspiration. “Then you need to get her out of here.”

“I am not going to apologize, because there’s nothing wrong with what I asked,” Stacey told DeFord.

The lieutenant hissed something at her.

Stacey turned to the families, her arms open, her tone pleading. She had a red mark on her cheek, probably from where the reverend had slapped her. “There’s nothing wrong with your daughters. They’re not sinners. They’re not going to hell.”

Suddenly, I knew the question she’d asked the parents—and why the reverend was so incensed.

Beside me, Troy Dow muttered, “This is awesome.”

I wanted to slug him, but DeFord caught my eye.

“Stacey?” I said. “Come on. Let’s go.”

She hadn’t noticed me until that second, but I was the only person present to whom she could turn for support. Her only ally. Her mouth tightened, and she began opening and closing her hands, working the blood into her fingers.

“I’m sorry,” she told the Boggses and the Montgomerys. “I hope you find your daughters. I will be praying for you.”

She put her head down and started off across the lot.

“That isn’t good enough!” Samantha Boggs’s father called.

I hurried to catch up with her. I hadn’t realized that one of the television camera crews had been photographing the confrontation from a discreet distance. A man dressed in a polo shirt and khakis was trying to press a microphone on Stacey, but she practically elbowed him aside.

“Get away from me!”

I followed her through the open gate. She stopped abruptly before she reached my truck, as if she’d reached the end of a leash.

“I don’t believe this shit,” she said.

“What did you say to them, Stacey?”

“I asked them if anyone had reason to hurt their daughters,” she said. “They said no. So I asked if there was somebody who might have hated them for being gay.”

“Did Mott actually slap you?”

She touched her rosy cheek. “Can you believe it? He acted like I was some mouthy kid. I would have slapped him back if I hadn’t been so shocked.”

I glanced back at the lunch wagon and saw Mott and the families glaring in our direction. I knew DeFord expected me to return Stacey to her vehicle back in Monson. It would be better for everyone, herself included, if she didn’t stick around the search area tonight. “I think we should get moving.”

She yanked the pickup door open and slammed it shut behind her.