The Precipice (7 page)

“Calm down,” I said. “Both of you.”

“He insulted me!” The circles on McDonough’s cheeks grew darker as they filled with blood.

I didn’t let go of Nissen’s arm until he had settled back on his heels.

“Finished?” I said.

“I don’t feel like talking anymore,” McDonough said, putting on his ridiculous sombrero. “I’m going to bed.”

I pushed my chair away from the table and stood up. “So which way are you headed from here? In case I need to contact you again.”

“Nobo.”

Caleb translated. “He means northbound.”

“It might take me a while,” McDonough said, “but I’m going to make it to the top of Baxter Peak even with my bum knee.”

“I appreciate your cooperation, Chad.” I tried to sound friendlier than I felt.

“I hope you find those girls, sir,” he said. “They’re really cool chicks. Not your usual Bible-thumpers.”

Giving Nissen one final glare, the fat young man stumped out of the dining hall.

After I’d heard the door slam, I said, “What the hell was that about?”

“Guys like him desecrate the trail,” said Nissen. “They’re an offense to everything the AT stands for.”

“He’s just a kid, Bob,” Caleb said.

“And you can go to hell, too, Maxwell,” Nissen said before he also stormed out into the night.

Caleb shook his head in disgust before raising the coffeepot at me. “You want another jolt?”

“Sure,” I said. “This is turning into a long night.”

Nissen had called Chad McDonough “monkey mouth.” The only other person I’d ever heard use that expression was a convict at the Maine State Prison. The term is jailhouse slang for a person who yammers on about nothing. Just when I thought I was beginning to get a handle on Nissen, he slithered again from my grasp.

7

I asked Caleb if I could use the lodge’s telephone to contact Lieutenant DeFord, and he led me through a sparkling metal kitchen to an office tucked behind the reservation desk. He turned on the computer in case I needed it, then left me alone. I seated myself in his mesh-backed office chair and dialed the number at the command post.

“DeFord.”

“This is Bowditch. I’m at Hudson’s Lodge. I haven’t been able to get a decent signal before now.”

“What did you find?”

“Samantha and Missy stayed at the Chairback Gap lean-to nine nights ago. They left an entry in the logbook. I’ve taken pictures of it and will send them to you now. I ran into Dani Tate at the ford across the West Branch of the Pleasant River, and she told me that the team that searched the next two shelters didn’t find any evidence they’d been there.”

“I just got a text from Tate. It’s looking like Chairback Gap was the point last seen.”

“There’s something else, sir. I found a hiker who claims to have spent the night with them at Cloud Pond.”

He took a moment to answer, probably counting back in his head. “When was this?”

“Ten days ago. His name is Chad McDonough. He’s twenty-three, from North Adams, Massachusetts.”

“What’s he been doing since then?”

“Staying at Hudson’s. Caleb Maxwell told me he came in with a sprained knee and has been hanging out here until it healed. McDonough’s trail name is McDonut.”

“How in the world did you locate this guy, Bowditch?”

I told him about the trail names I’d found in the Chairback logbook and how I’d come to the lodge hoping to ID some of the thru-hikers. Then I recounted my conversation with McDonough.

“What’s your take on him?” the lieutenant asked.

“I’m not sure,” I said. “He comes across as this guileless pothead, but I think he lied to me about a few things in his past. He has a temper, too. This whole McDonut persona might be an act.”

“Send us his identification information, and we’ll check him out. Do you still have Nissen with you?”

I fought the urge to ask why I’d been assigned the misanthrope. “Yes, sir.”

“Head on back to Monson. Report in at the RV when you get here. I’m going to move the circus back up to Greenville tomorrow. It makes sense to be closer to the point last seen.”

“I’ll be there in an hour,” I said.

“Drive safe. We had a fatal in Rockwood a couple of hours ago. The driver hydroplaned off the road, slammed into a tree. That’s no way for anyone to go.”

“I’ll be careful.”

“Get yourself a cup of coffee,” he said. “Stay alert.”

I didn’t know DeFord well, never having served under him, but he struck me as a good lieutenant. He was on the young side for the job—early forties—but he projected a confidence that didn’t feel phony and had received more decorations for heroism than any warden in the service. People talked about him as a future colonel, and I could easily envision him in the big chair. The current holder of that office, Timothy Malcomb, had taken over in an acting capacity while the commissioner conducted a search, and he had also made it known he didn’t want the position long-term. (Nor was he a favorite of Maine’s hot-tempered governor.) Maybe DeFord had the political instincts to survive in the capital snake pit. If he hoped to rise to the colonel’s office, he would need to find Samantha Boggs and Missy Montgomery first—preferably alive. There had been a time in my life when it would’ve shocked me to think that someone might use a crisis to advance his career interests. I’d wised up a lot since those days.

I removed the flash card from my camera and slid it into a port in Caleb’s computer. I opened my Web mail, typed a short message to DeFord, and attached the photographs. Then I hit Send.

I hadn’t felt this exhausted since the Criminal Justice Academy. Boot camp had been only five years ago, but it seemed like another lifetime. I was older, in any case.

Caleb Maxwell had one of the neatest desks I’d ever seen. There was a careful stack of yellow and pink forms—receipts for food shipments, etc.—in a wooden box beside the computer keyboard, and he had taped the five-day weather forecast to the wall. The sole personal effect was a framed photograph that showed Caleb embracing an athletic-looking woman with short brown hair and exceptionally white teeth. The picture had been taken against a background of blue sky and rolling green mountains. Both Caleb and the woman looked healthy and happy, but there was something about the photograph that made me think it represented a sad memory.

It was late now, and wherever Stacey was, she was probably asleep. I tried to convince myself she was still at the beach house, lying in the bed we’d shared earlier. I imagined that the window was open and the sea breeze was fluttering the curtain. But I knew she hadn’t stayed.

My first serious girlfriend, Sarah Harris, would have preferred to be awakened, rather than not hearing from me. Most women seemed to be that way. But not Stacey. Her frequent silences discouraged me from interrupting them. I wanted to believe that there was no special significance behind her decision not to leave a voice-mail message earlier. She knew I would be in touch when I had something to report. It wasn’t a lack of concern on her part.

I leaned back over the keyboard and opened the browser to my Web mail program again. Using two fingers, I typed an e-mail to her:

Dear Stacey,

I saw that you had called but decided not to wake you. No sign of the missing women yet. I found an entry in a trail logbook that proves they were at a shelter on Chairback Mountain 9 nights ago. But they seemed to have disappeared after that. I don’t know what to think at this point, but I don’t have a good feeling. My search partner is a jerk named “Nonstop” Nissen, who once held the record for the fastest thru-hike of the AT. I’m writing from a new ecolodge called Hudson’s in the Hundred Mile Wilderness. I tracked a thru-hiker here named “McDonut,” who seems to have had contact with Samantha & Missy. He’s another piece of work.

I saw your dad’s plane earlier, and it lifted my spirits. I’m not sure how long I’ll be up here. I’m hoping you’re still at Popham. It would make me happy to think so, but I’ll understand if you decided to leave. I wish I were there with you now.

—Mike

I hit Send and sat there for five minutes, waiting for a reply that never came, before I gave up and shut down the computer.

*   *   *

I found Caleb Maxwell in the sitting room, warming his hands over the woodstove. His mind seemed elsewhere. He flinched when I spoke his name, as if he hadn’t heard me walk up behind him.

“Thanks for your help,” I said.

“Is there anything else I can do?”

“I’m sure Lieutenant DeFord will be in touch to let you know.”

“The thought of those girls disappearing up on the mountain is pretty damned awful.”

“Yeah.”

“I always felt like I was making a difference back when I was on the search-and-rescue team,” he said. “These days, I’m not so sure.”

“What happened between you and Nissen?” I asked.

“I was just busting his balls. He seems to bring it out in me.”

I knew what he meant. “What’s this about Nissen writing a book?”

“It’s called
Death on the Appalachian Trail,
and it’s an encyclopedia of all the crazy ways people have kicked the bucket on the AT. You know—falls, hypothermia, drowning, murder.”

Since Caleb was opening up, I thought I’d satisfy my curiosity. “You mentioned some incident with a snowboarder.”

Caleb fell silent for a moment. When he spoke again, there was a quiver in his throat that hadn’t been there before.

“A kid went off the trails at Big Moose Mountain. There was a pretty bad snowstorm that night. Our team was called in to help the wardens and the ski patrol. We thought the kid might be playing a prank—like he was really hiding somewhere. His friends said he always talked about those survival shows on TV. I guess I convinced myself it was a stunt he was pulling because he wanted attention. The next morning, we were doing a grid search of one of the glades on the back side of the mountain, using ski poles to poke down under the new snow. Nissen was the one who found his snowboard. He called us all over, and there was this boy’s dead face peeking out from under the crust. His skin was sparkling. That’s one of the things I’ll never forget, the way it reminded me of diamonds.”

A piece of burning wood snapped, popped, and sizzled in the stove.

“What was the other thing?” I asked.

“How happy Nissen seemed—like he’d just proven that he was the best searcher on the mountain. The fact that this poor kid’s parents were back at the lodge didn’t mean anything to him. He just kept grinning.”

*   *   *

On the drive out, Nissen sat silently in the passenger seat. At one point, I thought he might have fallen asleep, but when I looked over, I saw his enormous eyes glowing green in the dashboard light.

We headed west on the KI Road, bound for the town of Greenville, which was the closest thing to civilization in this part of Maine. The road followed a deep notch cut into the bedrock by the Pleasant River. The thunderstorm had opened new potholes in the gravel, and muddy puddles exploded across my headlights, smearing the glass. I was probably going too fast, but I was in a hurry to be rid of my passenger and his foul stench. The static on my police radio began to fade as we crested the mountains. I turned up the volume, but there wasn’t anything new.

About a mile from the North Maine Woods gatehouse, we came upon an animal sitting in the wet road. If I hadn’t known better, I might have mistaken it for a wolf. Its fur was reddish brown, with a black streak down the back, and I could see the muscles ripple beneath the skin when it scratched one of its pointed ears. I knew that canids tend to be curious by nature—I’d had red foxes approach me in the woods, as tame as dogs—but I’d never encountered a coyote this brazen.

“Maybe it’s rabid,” I said.

“It doesn’t look sick to me.”

I honked my horn, but the animal remained seated on its haunches, staring straight at the truck with eyes that shone like lamp-lighted brass fixtures. I tried my blues, to no avail. Finally, I flung the door open and stepped out, resting my hand on the grip of my sidearm. Before I could take three steps, the wild dog gave a sudden leap and disappeared into the roadside bushes.

I returned to the pickup, remembering Samantha’s and Missy’s ominous note about coyotes. I could tell from Nissen’s expression that the troubling thought had occurred to him, as well.

“That’s a strange coincidence,” I said.

“I don’t believe in them anymore.”

8

With the help of another cup of coffee I purchased at a late-night convenience store in Greenville, I managed to make it back to Monson without flattening my truck against a telephone pole.

The village of seven hundred people was surrounded by forest, except where the paved road went through, and had once been a busy way station for travelers headed to Moosehead Lake and Mount Kineo. Thoreau had passed through town in 1846 and made note of a pair of moose antlers, fastened to a post, that functioned as a road sign directing travelers north to Greenville and south to Blanchard. Later in the nineteenth century, a Welsh immigrant discovered black slate in the ground and made a fortune digging the first of what would become many quarries in the Monson woods. A chain of rectangular pits—some flooded, some not—followed the seam in a northeasterly direction from Lake Hebron into the forested highlands. Locals will proudly tell you that the gravestones of both John and Jacqueline Kennedy in Arlington Cemetery were carved out of Monson slate. But the mining industry, like so many others in Maine, had long been in decline.

The town’s commercial hub now consisted of a lakeside post office, a general store that doubled as a gas station, a redemption center that paid out a nickel apiece for bottles and cans, and a surprisingly out-of-place Louisiana Cajun restaurant—all strung along a main street where few travelers bothered to stop, because what was there worth stopping for? Many of the downtown buildings had plywood over their windows or faded
FOR SALE
signs tacked to their doors. Two had been converted into competing places of worship, John the Baptist Missions and the Lake of the Woods Tabernacle, as if faith were the only growth industry left in town. The latter of these churches had one of those changeable letter signs on which the resident preacher had spelled out his message for the week:
NO ONE WHO PRACTICES DECEIT SHALL DWELL IN MY HOUSE
—
PSALMS.
The building was a clapboard fire trap, with an external staircase and a roof that looked primed for collapse. If it was indeed the Lord’s house, I wondered who would choose to dwell in it.