The Precipice: A Novel Read online

  “I thought the girls were keeping their relationship a secret.”

  “Steffi Ross said they were open about it at dinner the night before.”

  “But how did this Brother John know? What did those girls do—smooch in the church pew?”

  I hadn’t thought to ask that question. “He must have heard about their being gay after the fact. It seems to have added to his sense of outrage. Brother John doesn’t exactly approve of same-sex couples. He thinks God sent coyotes to kill Samantha and Missy as a punishment for their wickedness.”

  “The detectives will want to talk to everyone who was in the church that morning.”

  “That’s what I was thinking.”

  Four motorcycles roared past my truck, headed for Greenville at an unsafe speed.

  “What’s that?” I said. “I didn’t hear you.”

  “What if the person who killed those girls hears she’s sniffing around town?” Charley said.

  “Stacey can take care of herself. You taught her well.”

  “I’m flying up there as soon as it gets light.”

  “You don’t have to do that, Charley,” I said.

  “Yes, I do. She’s my daughter.”

  Stacey would be livid when she learned that her father thought she needed rescuing. But what if Charley was right? The person or persons who killed Samantha and Missy were still at large and possibly in the area. So far, the murderer had benefited from the confusion and panic over killer coyotes. What would he do when he learned Stacey was asking questions that might expose him? I hadn’t wanted to admit to myself that she might be in real danger.

  * * *

  I went back into the restaurant, ordered a po’boy sandwich to go, and returned to my truck to wait. The diners began to leave the restaurant. I watched Roland climb into a dented Lincoln Town Car and drive away without turning on his headlights. I radioed in his plates to the Piscataquis County Sheriff’s Department. If he was lucky, the old drunk would end up in jail tonight instead of the morgue.

  The woman in the apron and kerchief came outside. She folded up the blackboard sign with the specials. A minute later, the porch light blinked off.

  In the silences between passing cars, I listened to the crickets playing their love songs in the weeds along the road. Soon the frosts of autumn would put an end to their music. When the temperature drops, survival takes precedence over romance.

  The wrecker arrived just before midnight. The driver was a big man with a big head. He wore coveralls and sneakers, and his camouflage ball cap seemed to perch atop his hair. He made a circuit of my truck, prodding each of the punctures with his fat finger. Then he straightened up, looming over me like Goliath.

  “You’re fucked all right,” he said.

  “I know that.”

  “Must have been the Dows.” He let loose with a chuckle. “Man, I should give those guys a cut of my profits for all the business they send my way.”

  I crossed my arms. “What are my options here?”

  “I can tow your truck back to the garage for the night. In the morning, I’ll order you some new tires. Should have you back on the road by afternoon. Do you got someplace to stay around here?”

  I had been prepared to sleep in my sleeping bag in the bed of my truck, but the idea of camping out inside his garage held little appeal. “Can you drop me at Ross’s Rooming House?”

  The tow driver winched my truck up onto the flatbed. He brushed candy and pastry wrappers off the passenger seat before I could sit down. The inside of the cab smelled of Lysol.

  As we drove back into town, the driver murmured something to himself.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “The store’s closed early,” he said. “Pearlene is usually strict about staying open until one A.M. so she can maximize beer sales. There’s always a rush before closing, since the store’s the only place to buy booze and cigarettes from here to Guilford.”

  “It sounds like there will be some unhappy partiers tonight.”

  “You think?”

  As we passed the tabernacle, I noticed that the upstairs apartment was dark, but the sign was burning with a new message in my honor: GOD’S JUSTICE IS NOT MAN’S JUSTICE. I wondered how defiant Brother John would be when the detectives appeared. I might have to arrange to be there when it happened.

  When we arrived at Ross’s, I removed my long guns—the shotgun and the AR-15—from the patrol truck and placed them in a big duffel. I dropped my spare uniform, state-issued laptop, and GPS unit into a rucksack. After having my tires slashed, the last thing I needed was for something valuable to be stolen out of my patrol truck while it waited to be repaired.

  “You don’t have to unload all that shit, Warden,” the driver said. “There’s a lock on my door.”

  “I’m not taking any chances with the Dows.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Where else would I have my truck towed other than your garage?”

  He let out another of his big-chested chuckles. “Fair enough.”

  The driver gave me walking directions to his auto-repair shop—it was a mere four miles away—and said I should call him after nine. We said good night. I heaved the heavy bag over my shoulder, picked up my rucksack with my free hand, and made my way into the hostel.

  A couple of hikers were still up, playing cards at a rickety table near the fire, and another was talking on her cell phone in the corner. She was speaking an Eastern European language I didn’t recognize. The Appalachian Trail drew trekkers from all over the world.

  I looked for Steffi Ross in the office behind the bead curtain, but she must have gone to bed.

  Everything was just as I’d left it inside Stacey’s room. I eased the bag with my firearms to the wooden floor and sat down on the bed. I looked at the dirty laundry bulging from the unzipped duffel.

  Where the hell was she?

  I lay back on the blanket and stared at the cracks in the ceiling. When I closed my eyes, I saw Troy Dow’s leering smile. I tried to bring up a more pleasant image, but the ugly face wouldn’t leave me alone.

  * * *

  I sat up with a start. The overhead bulb was still blazing. I checked my watch and saw that it was nearly five A.M.

  Stacey hadn’t returned while I was asleep.

  It had been close to twelve hours since the old drunk, Roland, had seen her truck. Twelve hours unaccounted for. Both of us had spent plenty of nights in the pitch-black forest and knew there was no reason to fear the dark. But I couldn’t imagine what she might be doing out there. In spite of my confident assurances to Charley about his daughter’s ability to handle herself, I felt worry nibbling around my heart.

  I tried her number again. The duffel bag at my feet began to buzz.

  I rifled through the wrinkled clothes and found Stacey’s khaki uniform shirt—and of course her phone was in the pocket. She had never given me her pass code, but I didn’t have to look at the log of missed calls to know she hadn’t heard any of the messages I had left since the previous afternoon.

  Out in the hall, someone got up to use the shower.

  Roland had said he’d passed her truck when he was coming from Blanchard.

  What was in Blanchard?

  I set my laptop computer on my knees and pulled up a topographic map of the region. Blanchard Plantation was the next township to the southwest. The Appalachian Trail followed the looping course of the Piscataquis River. It was the route Samantha and Missy had taken on their way into Monson. I zoomed in, searching for any clue that might be hidden in the landscape.

  The map showed an oblong elevation south of the river: Breakneck Ridge.

  Nissen, I thought.

  His business was named Breakneck Ridge Apiary. Stacey must have gone to Blanchard to speak with him. But why? Had she discovered that he was at supper with Samantha and Missy the night before they entered the wilderness? If so, she hadn’t gotten the information from Steffi Ross. Until I’d jogged her memory, the Teutonic innkeepe
r had forgotten about Nissen.

  What about the Lake of the Woods Tabernacle? Kathy Frost had told me Nissen had served time in prison for cooking meth. She’d said he’d found Jesus in the joint. A religious zealot, motivated by blind hatred of homosexuals, determined to punish them for their sacrilegious behavior. The man in the red tent?

  It made sense why Nissen would have volunteered to search Chairback Gap. If he had pursued Samantha and Missy there—if he had known they were dead—then he would have wanted to direct searchers away from their corpses for as long as possible. The more time that passed, the less evidence would remain for the forensic technicians to connect him to the murders.

  It also explained his antagonism toward Chad McDonough. He was panicked that Chad remembered him from supper at Ross’s. What had McDonut said? “Good to see you again, sir.”

  After Nissen and I had showed up at Hudson’s Lodge with news of Samantha’s and Missy’s disappearance, McDonough might have put the puzzle pieces together. He might’ve realized who the mysterious man in the red tent had been. Instead of telling the authorities what he knew, McDonut had taken off in the dark.

  Later a message had gone out over the police scanner that we were looking for Chad McDonough. By identifying him over the radio, we had announced to the killer that we knew the kid might have incriminating information. We’d signed his death warrant, I realized. Pinkham said McDonut had been run down by a truck. What if it had been a van?

  Nissen was the first man to discover the scavenged bones at the bottom of Chairback Mountain. He’d displayed no anguish at the discovery. In fact, he had relished being the one to have found the corpses.

  At every turn in the search, Nissen had been there. This theory explained everything.

  Had Stacey come to this same conclusion? I couldn’t believe that she would have been so stupid as to drive out to Nissen’s isolated farmhouse if she suspected he was a murderer. But what else would have led her there after dark?

  My pulse was racing as I dialed Wes Pinkham’s home number in Greenville.

  “Yeah?” he said.

  “It’s Bowditch. We need to get over to Bob Nissen’s house in Blanchard right now.”

  “Huh? What are you talking about? Where are you?”

  “At Ross’s, in Monson. Listen, I think Nissen might have murdered Samantha Boggs and Missy Montgomery. And there’s a chance he’s connected to the hit-and-run that killed Chad McDonough, too.”

  “Slow down.”

  “There’s no time,” I said. “I’m pretty sure Stacey Stevens is at his house. If I’m right, she’s in danger, or worse. And I just discovered that she left her phone at the rooming house. I need you to pick me up. I’ll fill you in on what I’ve learned in the truck. You need to trust me, Pinkham. You know I’ve been right about things like this before. We need to go now.”

  I heard the warden investigator take a breath. “I’ll be there in twenty minutes,” he said at last.

  31

  The predawn sky had a fuzzy blue glow that reminded me of a television with no reception. Closer to the ground, the shadows were breaking apart as individual trees sharpened into focus. A goldfinch perched on a wire made its squeaky-toy noise. I waited at the edge of the wet lawn for Pinkham to arrive.

  In the empty dining room, I’d wolfed down a bowl of dry Cheerios from a container I’d found on the sideboard. I’d heard Ross puttering in the kitchen but hadn’t wanted to trouble him for milk.

  In less than an hour, the sky would turn pink above the ragged horizon, and Charley’s plane would appear. I had thought of calling him with my revelation about Nissen, but he would be here soon enough. Once he arrived, I would tell him to take a look at Breakneck Ridge from the air and see if he spotted Stacey’s pickup.

  A truck turned down the road, its headlights slicing the early-morning gloom. When I opened the door, the dome light came on. Pinkham’s thinning hair was sticking up in wisps, and he needed a shave. I really had pulled him out of bed. The investigator was dressed in his usual plain clothes—button-down shirt and chinos—but he’d put on his warden’s jacket with the badge on the front and the red department logo on the sleeve. He wore his SIG openly on his belt.

  The inside of the cab smelled of hot coffee. When I saw that he’d picked up a cup for me, I wanted to kiss him. I slung my duffel into the backseat.

  “What’s in the bag?” Pinkham asked.

  “Guns.”

  “Dare I ask why?”

  The light above my head dimmed after I locked the door. “My truck is at the garage in town, getting repaired. The Dows slashed all four of my tires last night outside the Cajun restaurant. I appreciate your picking me up.”

  He shifted into drive. “How do you know it was the Dows?”

  “They invited me to a brawl first.”

  “You must have refused,” he said.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “No stitches.”

  Pinkham took a sip from his Styrofoam cup. I had no need for caffeine with all the adrenaline percolating through my bloodstream, but I joined him.

  “I listened to the voice mail you left me,” he said. “It’s interesting that Samantha and Missy visited the tabernacle, but what does that have to do with Nissen?”

  “Maybe nothing.”

  “That clears things up. Thanks for getting me out of bed.”

  “Kathy Frost told me that Nissen was born again in prison,” I said. “I saw him with his shirt off, and I think he had his jailhouse tattoos removed. I’m guessing that his name is going to show up on the list of people who attend services at the Lake of the Woods Tabernacle.”

  “You’re guessing?”

  “For the moment, yes. But here’s something I know for sure: Nissen had supper at Ross’s the same night Samantha and Missy were there. That’s quite a coincidence, don’t you think? The man who volunteered to search the mountain where they died—the same guy who found their bones—had a previous encounter with them he neglected to report to the police.”

  Pinkham kept his eyes on the cones of light projected onto the road. He made a right onto the Blanchard Road, following the shoreline of Lake Hebron into the deep woods west of town. The police radio made a gurgling noise.

  “All right,” he said, turning down the volume. “You’ve got my attention.”

  He listened without interruption as I laid out my theory about Nissen. As I heard myself talking, I kept thinking how much was pure speculation. I was weaving a crazy quilt out of circumstantial threads of evidence. When I finished, I was half-afraid Pinkham would push me out of the truck.

  “Has Stacey forgotten her phone before?” he asked.

  “She does it all the time.”

  “So when was the last time you spoke with her?”

  “A couple of days ago. We had an argument. I was letting her cool down.”

  When he smiled, he reminded me of a kindly schoolteacher. “I heard she told Tom Waterman to perform an anatomical impossibility on himself.”

  “I heard that, too. That’s one of the reasons I raced up here.”

  “And you discovered she’d been nosing around town, trying to prove that Samantha and Missy were really murdered?”

  “Stacey has a tendency to get single-minded about things.”

  “It sounds like you two were made for each other.”

  Tell her that, I wanted to say.

  “I can’t think of any other reason for her to have gone to Blanchard other than to talk with Nissen. And you have to admit there’s cause to be suspicious of him.”

  He didn’t answer, but I noticed the speedometer jump ten miles per hour.

  * * *

  The road was like a groove gouged through the forest. Every mile or so, we passed a lighted homestead with trucks and ATVs in their dooryards and often a BEWARE OF DOG sign out front. It was the kind of road where you prayed not to break down after dark and be forced to knock on doors.

  Fifteen minutes after we left Monson, we c
ame to a crossroads where a handful of homes were clustered together. Robins hopped across the lawn of a white meeting house. Flowers were dying in its window boxes, and a frayed American flag hung limply from a pole. We crossed a bridge over the shallow, quick-flowing Piscataquis River and made a hard right after the municipal sand shed. Then we were plunged into the forest again. That seemed to be the entire village of Blanchard.

  “What do you know about Nissen?” I asked.

  “I see him selling honey and beeswax candles at the farmers’ market in Greenville,” Pinkham said. “He’s not the most sociable human being I’ve ever met, but I guess that’s not news to you. DeFord tells me Nissen knows every inch of the Appalachian Trail. That’s why Moosehead Search and Rescue lets him volunteer despite his being a convicted felon. As far as I know, he’s never been in trouble since he moved to Maine from down south. I would have heard if he’d ever been pinched for anything.”

  “Ever hear anything that would suggest he’s a religious fanatic?”

  The warden detective peeked at me from behind his glasses. “What do you mean?”

  “Is he known to be a Christian extremist?”

  “I go to church every Sunday—Holy Family in Greenville. Does that make me an extremist, too?”

  “No.”

  We drove on for another few minutes. We had left the last of the streetlights behind.

  Without looking at me, Pinkham said, “The worst thing you can do is go into an investigation prejudiced.”

  “I’ll try to remember that.”

  “We don’t know how the girls died yet, let alone why. I think you’re trying to come up with a motive that fits your personal bias. You don’t like Nissen, and so you want him to be guilty.”

  “So what if I do?”

  “How is that any different from the folks who believe coyotes killed those girls?”