The Precipice: A Novel Read online

  “I don’t know. There’s something about them—I can’t put my finger on it.”

  We started forward.

  * * *

  On our way out of the forest, we passed the airport again. I glanced past Stacey’s head and saw the Learjet parked near the hangars at the far end of the runway. Maybe it was unfair of me to judge the Reverend Mott based on his appearance and mannerisms, but I suspected he was proving to be a complication. Oh, to be a fly on the wall of Lieutenant DeFord’s office, I thought.

  At the stop sign in Greenville, I hesitated for a moment, feeling myself torn about whether to turn right, toward the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife headquarters on Village Street, or left, in the direction of the yard where I hoped to find Troy Dow.

  “I wish we could talk with the parents,” Stacey said, staring off to the right.

  “It wouldn’t help us find McDonut.”

  “There’s something I’d like to ask Missy’s mom,” she said.

  “What is it?”

  “Probably nothing. But didn’t you notice how horrible she looked? Something is eating her up inside.”

  “Well, her daughter is missing.”

  “It’s more than that.”

  I drove slowly through the village, knowing how careless tourists can be when crossing roads, too busy talking on their phones or balancing ice-cream cones. I needn’t have worried. The summer tourism season had ended like the tolling of a bell on Labor Day, and the swarms of leaf peepers hadn’t yet arrived to take snapshots of Maine’s fall foliage. I wished Stacey and I were just out for a drive on such a lovely day. The sky was dotted with cotton balls. The lake looked like someone had drained all the water and refilled the basin with blue ink.

  The yard was located in the industrial park on the western edge of town. We turned away from the lake and the old railroad depot. The cracked pavement was littered with shreds of bark and chips of wood from the logging trucks driving in and out. I spotted a sign with a familiar silver-and-black logo up ahead.

  Wendigo was a Canadian timber company that had bought up miles of the Maine North Woods and proceeded to evict hundreds of people—including Charley and Ora Stevens—from cabins they had leased for decades. The company planned to sell the waterfront land to housing developers. More recently, Wendigo had been in the news when one of its logging crews was caught cutting down protected cedar groves where white-tailed deer gathered during the winter to escape blizzards and coyotes. The state had ordered the company to pay a twenty-thousand-dollar fine for knowingly breaking the law. But the value of the wood they’d harvested had been many times that amount. And the deer were already gone.

  I stopped in front of the office, and we both got out. The air smelled of pine pitch and pulverized rock. A flock of five rusty blackbirds, more brown than black, pecked at the dead lawn. They made a liquidy noise as they took to the air.

  Wendigo didn’t employ a receptionist, but a man arose from behind a desk and came to greet us as we walked in the door. He wore a black shirt with the company’s silver logo. His hair was so blond that it was almost white, and he had one of those all-over tans people get who spend a lot of time boating.

  “Something I can do for you, Warden?”

  “I’m looking for Troy Dow, if he’s around.”

  The man scowled. “What’s he done now?”

  Remembering the kind lady at the gatehouse, I said, “Nothing. We’re searching the Hundred Mile Wilderness for a couple of missing hikers.”

  He interjected, “Yeah, we’ve been following it on the scanner. You find them yet?”

  “Not yet.”

  He lowered his voice so as not to be heard. We were the only ones in the room. “You think Dow might know something about what happened to those girls?”

  “What makes you say that?” Stacey asked.

  He ran his tongue along his flaking upper lip. “I shouldn’t say anything more unless you tell me why you’re looking for him.”

  “We’re just talking to everyone who’s gone back and forth along the KI Road in the past ten days,” I said. “Is Troy here?”

  He squinted through a window that badly needed washing. Vehicles were lined up in a row beyond a pile of unpeeled logs. “His truck is still here. It’s the red Silverado with those stupid pirate flags on the top. Troy’s probably out back, shooting the shit and distracting the other guys from their jobs.”

  “Can you show us where he is?”

  The man motioned with his finger for us to follow him. We passed through the office and down a hall with a kitchenette and a bathroom that gave off the scent of Pine-Sol cleaner. There was some sort of heavy security door in front of us. It made a groaning noise when our guide pushed it open.

  We entered a garage bay. The cavernous space was draped in shadows except at the end, where the doors were rolled up and sunlight came flooding in. The air smelled of motor oil and cigarette smoke. Two man-shaped silhouettes stood in the open air.

  Our guide’s voice echoed off the cinder-block walls. “Who’s been smoking in here?”

  “Dow,” said one of the shadowy men.

  “Where is he?”

  “Just left.”

  Somewhere outside, a pickup engine roared to life. I rushed to the open end of the garage in time to see the red Silverado cornering out of the parking lot with both of its pirate flags flapping.

  The man beside me let out a laugh. “When Troy saw your warden’s truck pull in, he took off like a bat out of hell.”

  18

  Troy Dow had taken off down a dirt track, headed into the thick woods below Moosehead Lake. My GPS gave the name as the Bangor & Aroostook Railroad Road. I’d never traveled the route before, but the map showed only a handful of turnoffs before it hit pavement again, twenty miles to the south in the flyspeck village of Shirley Mills.

  I gunned the engine, but Dow had a sizable head start, and he must have souped up the V-8 under the Silverado’s hood. The September sun had spent all morning baking the mud into dust, and a brown cloud hung between our vehicles. Unable to see more than fifty feet ahead of the truck, I found myself gripping the wheel tightly, afraid I’d plow into some hapless four-wheeler cruising along in the opposite direction.

  “I guess he doesn’t want to talk with us,” I said.

  “Well, you should put your blues on and see if it makes him more sociable.”

  I glanced at the speedometer—sixty miles per hour—and hit the switch for the light bar and sirens. Before, I’d had no probable cause to stop Troy Dow, but now I could pull him over for speeding.

  Stacey must have accompanied Charley on a few high-speed chases over the years, because she gave me the hand mike without my needing to ask for it. A huge smile made her face all the prettier: my sweet adrenaline junkie.

  “Piscataquis? Twenty-one twenty-six,” I said. “I’ve got a ten-thirty-three southbound on the B&A Railroad Road in Greenville. Vehicle is a red Chevrolet Silverado. Can’t read the plates. Driver’s name is Troy Dow. Residence may be Monson. Do you copy?”

  The radio gave an electronic burp as the dispatcher responded. “Copy, Twenty-one twenty-six. Do you need assistance?”

  “Negative. But I’ll let you know.”

  “Roger, Twenty-one twenty-six.”

  Stacey’s head whipped around. “He just threw something out the window!”

  I didn’t want to look away from the road, even for a second. “Did you see what it was?”

  “Stop the truck.”

  I stepped hard on the brake pedal, but the pickup kept sliding even as the automatic brake system engaged. The tires rolled along the pebbles as if floating atop ball bearings. ABS is great on paved roads; on dirt, not so much.

  Stacey popped open her door and was out of the vehicle before we’d even stopped moving. “Keep going! I’ll find what he threw out.”

  Looking in my side mirror, I saw her leap down into the weedy ditch. Then I took off again.

  At the Maine Crimi
nal Justice Academy, I’d taken a class on driving dynamics that had had me zigzagging around orange pylons and sliding all over a closed course. Aside from the days I’d gotten to spend at the gun range, it was the most fun I’d had in the eighteen weeks I’d spent at that brick castle on the Kennebec River. I’d graduated thinking I could outdrive Mario Andretti.

  Then I’d gotten into my first real-world chase. I had been on patrol in Sennebec one night when I’d come across a Dodge Challenger that looked like it had just finished two hundred laps at Daytona. The driver blew through a stop sign to get my attention and then spent the better part of an hour tutoring me in remedial auto racing.

  Four-plus years on the job had made me a better driver, but I was still no match for some of the backwoods hot-rodders I encountered. Something told me Troy Dow might fall into that category. At the very least, he was familiar with this road. He knew which curves to slow down for and on which straightaways to hit the gas. And he wasn’t driving half-blind in a cloud of dust. All I could do was stay on his tail—and hope.

  Like most logging roads in Maine, this one had been graded after the snow had melted in the spring, and it had received a fresh coat of gravel. The surface had taken a pounding over the summer from the steady traffic of eighteen-wheelers, pickups, Jeeps, and all-terrain vehicles, and now it grabbed my tires like the grooves in a slot-car track. Pausing for even a few seconds for Stacey to get out had opened up a gap between Dow’s truck and mine that seemed to be getting wider with every mile. No longer was I traveling in a glittering brown haze. I glanced at the map on the GPS display and saw an intersection up ahead with a road branching off toward Route 15. If I couldn’t keep pace, I wouldn’t know if he’d continued straight or taken the fork.

  The road entered a wet meadow with a winding brown stream cutting through the sedge. There was a beaver lodge in back with fresh leafy saplings heaped on top. The greenery told me that a family of beavers was still in residence and would be until one of the local trappers set up his Conibears this winter.

  Looking across the vast clearing, I saw no trace of Troy Dow’s pickup. I despaired of catching him at this point. I could always track him down later at his home—assuming he didn’t decide to take an impromptu vacation—but there was a reason why Troy Dow had fled when he’d seen my truck, and I needed to know what it was.

  I was weighing the possibility of turning around and retrieving Stacey, in the hope that she’d found whatever Troy Dow had thrown away, when, to my surprise, I came upon the man himself standing beside his parked Silverado. He had a spin-casting rod in one hand and was leaning over the truck bed as if rummaging around for a tackle box. As I slowed to a stop, he glanced up with a smile.

  He resembled the Dow whom Charley and I had met that morning, the hay-faced brawler. He also was squat, barrel-chested, and thick-limbed, only Troy had a Yosemite Sam mustache instead of a Yukon Cornelius beard. He was wearing a black T-shirt with the Harley-Davidson insignia, duck pants stained brown at the knees, and the ubiquitous work boots every man who made his living in the woods seemed to own.

  I radioed in my location to the Piscataquis County dispatcher and reported that I’d caught the man I was chasing. The whole time, Troy Dow maintained a bewildered expression, as if he couldn’t possibly imagine why I might be interested in his harmless, law-abiding person.

  I pushed the door open and stood behind it, my right arm hanging along my side, my hand in reach of my SIG. The woods had gone silent at noon. I could feel the heat of the sunbaked road coming through the bottom of my boots.

  “Hey, Warden.” His voice had the grating quality of a rasp moving along a block of wood. “You want to see my fishing license?”

  With his free hand, he reached around his back. My own hand clamped down on the grip of my pistol.

  “Stop! Keep your hands up!”

  He complied with my command. “What did I do?”

  “You didn’t notice me chasing you the past ten miles?”

  “Chasing me? What for?”

  I took five steps toward him and froze. “You took off in a hurry when you saw my truck back at the Wendigo office. Do you want to tell me why?”

  “Gee, I don’t know. I guess I was in a hurry to get fishing. Honest to God, I never saw you behind me.”

  “That’s because you were going sixty-five miles per hour.”

  “Was I? I don’t think I was. Fifty, maybe. Are you sure about my speed? Were you using one of those radar guns, because I’m pretty sure I wasn’t speeding.”

  Dow knew I might have trouble proving that he’d exceeded the limit along this unmarked stretch of forest road.

  “What about littering?” I said. “You tossed something out of your truck about three miles back. What was it?”

  “You’ve got me scratching my head here. I’m not one of those slobs who chuck their beer cans out the window.” His bushy eyebrows suddenly climbed a couple of inches on his forehead. “You know what? A partridge did fly up in front of me as I was driving. I bet that’s what you saw.”

  Dow’s story was a complete fabrication, but I had to hand it to him: The man was a terrific actor.

  “Luckily, there’s a way we can be sure,” I said. “My partner got out of the truck to see what it was you threw out. Why don’t we take a ride and see what she found?”

  “I’m not under arrest, am I?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Then technically you can’t detain me. I’m thinking I should be on my way.”

  “I thought you were going fishing,” I said.

  “That was before you started accusing me of all these misdemeanors. I’m kind of feeling harassed.”

  I put my hand up as if I’d just heard a noise. “Hold that thought.”

  I returned to the cab of my pickup and grabbed the mike and held it to my mouth as if I’d just received a transmission that Dow hadn’t heard. I moved my lips soundlessly as I stared at him through the bug-splattered windshield. After half a minute, I returned the hand mike back to its hook.

  “Well, it turns out my partner found something,” I said boldly to disguise my lie.

  “What?”

  “Let’s just say I understand why you didn’t want us to catch you with it.”

  He twisted the end of his mustache. “I think you’re trying to trick me.”

  “I’ll tell you what,” I said. “You come with me for ten minutes, back to see my partner, and I’ll give you a chance to prove the thing we found isn’t yours. If you can, I’ll let you return to your fishing and forget about the speeding citation, too. Otherwise I’m going to have to poke around your truck a little.”

  “You can only search for stuff in plain sight.”

  “That’s true—unless you give me permission.”

  He let out a blast of air through his nose. “Sorry, Warden, but that ain’t going to happen.”

  “How about this, then, Mr. Dow? If you come with me, I’ll tell you why I drove all the way over to the Wendigo office to have a word with you.”

  “You know my name?”

  “Yes, sir. I’ve been looking for you all morning.”

  “What for?”

  “Take a ride with me, and I’ll tell you.”

  What could I possibly have on him? The length of his silence told me there was a long list of offenses. If Troy Dow was the most law-abiding member of his clan—as the woman at the gatehouse had claimed—I could scarcely imagine where that left the rest of them.

  “OK,” he said at last. “But only because I’ve got nothing to hide.”

  He tossed the fishing rod into the back of his truck and walked, bowlegged, toward me. Up close, I could see his eyes twinkling from under those bushy brows. He smelled like he’d recently taken a long bath in turpentine. He squinted at the name tag stitched onto my ballistic vest.

  “Warden Bowditch, is it?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Troy Dow. Pleased to meet you.”

  I waited for him to clim
b up into the passenger seat of my Sierra before closing the door. He smiled at me through the window. I could tell that he wasn’t going to drop his affable mask for a second.

  He waited for me to turn the truck around before asking, “So why were you looking for me?”

  “I’ll tell you after we pick up my partner.”

  We rattled along the washboard road. Eventually, we turned a corner, and I saw Stacey up ahead, standing with her arms behind her back and a big grin that brought out the resemblance to her father.

  Troy Dow leaned forward. “That’s your partner? How do you get any work done riding with a babe like her?”

  I treated the question as rhetorical. As we came to a stop, Stacey strolled toward my vehicle, keeping her hands hidden. She seemed to be holding something she didn’t want us to see.

  I pushed the button to unroll the window. “I take it you found the item Mr. Dow threw into the woods during the chase.”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  Troy Dow didn’t seem overly concerned about his situation. “Hey, beautiful,” he said. “Do you have a sunburn, or are you always this hot?”

  “Gee, that’s original,” she said.

  “How about this one, then? Sex is a killer. Want to die happy?”

  Stacey groaned and held up the limp gray body of a bird. It was the size of a small chicken, with a black throat and bright red eyebrows. The feathers were fluffed and spattered with blood from where the shotgun pellets had perforated its body.

  I turned and looked hard at Troy Dow. “That’s a spruce grouse.”

  “So it is!”

  “They’re an endangered species.”

  “You don’t have to tell me that,” he said. “My uncle shot one of those fool hens once and got a thousand-dollar fine. I bet some poacher mistook it for a partridge and then realized what it was and left it in the woods.”

  Stacey leaned closer so she could talk to him through the window. “Or he shot it on purpose and threw it out the window when he realized a game warden was chasing him.”

  “You might have trouble proving that in front of a judge,” he said with a genial laugh.

  “We saw you toss the bird out your window,” I said. “I’m guessing you shot it while you were driving your gravel truck this morning. I bet if we compared the shot inside that bird with the shells inside your truck, there would be a match. You do have a shotgun in your Silverado, don’t you?”