The Precipice: A Novel Read online

  Benton also had an amazingly strong heart. He survived the ambulance ride and helicopter flight to the hospital in Bangor before lapsing into a vegetative state after surgery. As far as I know, a machine is still forcing air into and out of his lungs in a hospital bed he will never leave. I have a recurring dream of sneaking into his darkened room and pulling the plug, only to find that his heart continues to beat.

  The medical examiner released his report concerning the deaths of Samantha Boggs and Missy Montgomery. The skulls of both women had been fractured. The forensic evidence indicated they had died from massive blunt-force trauma. What the coroner couldn’t determine was what had caused their fatal injuries. They might have had their heads beaten in with a rock, or the fractures might have resulted from a fall from the Chairback precipice. Their other bones displayed unmistakable signs of having been masticated by canine teeth. On the question of whether coyotes might have driven Samantha and Missy to their deaths, the evidence was inconclusive.

  Despite the open-and-shut case against Benton Avery (should he ever be fit to stand trial), the rumors continued around Greenville. Some people wanted to believe that coyotes had killed and eaten the Bible students, and they clung to the uncertainties in the coroner’s report to justify their fear and hatred. Isn’t that the purpose of folktales?

  Thousands of people turned out for Wes Pinkham’s funeral in Lewiston the following week. He had graduated from Bates College, but there was no auditorium on campus big enough to handle the crowd, and so the Warden Service decided to hold the ceremony at the Colisée arena downtown. The facility doubled as a hockey rink, and the maintenance crew had to lay down parquet flooring over the ice to set up the stage. Even in my red wool coat, I was freezing.

  Otherwise, it was a nice memorial. Colonel Malcomb presided over the ceremony, and the Reverend Davies gave the eulogy. The governor spoke, as did one of our senators.

  During the service, I tried not to look around, because it seemed disrespectful to the memory of a man I had come to like, but I found myself sneaking glances at those in the audience. I was hoping to see Stacey, but if she was there, she wasn’t seated with her parents. I did spot Caleb Maxwell sitting with the other members of the Moosehead Search and Rescue team.

  After the service was over, I made the rounds. The mood was solemn whenever we wore our dress uniforms, but it was even more somber because of the affection in which everyone had held Wes Pinkham. I thought Lieutenant DeFord seemed to be carrying himself with admirable stoicism until I glimpsed him sniff a couple of times and turn his face to the wall. When he turned back, his expression was hard and grim once again.

  Caleb tapped me on the shoulder. His blond hair was neatly parted in the middle and swept back behind his ears, and he was wearing a black suit with a red tie. He was also wearing his red Crocs, I noticed.

  “I heard what happened at the slate quarries,” he said. “It sounded brutal. I never thought I’d say it, but poor Nissen.”

  “Have you heard anything about a funeral for him?” I figured that I would attend.

  “He’s not having one. His will instructed that his body be cremated and the ashes scattered along the AT.”

  In death he would become part of the trail that had given his life meaning.

  “Is Stacey here?” Caleb asked, glancing around.

  “I haven’t seen her.”

  “You’re not together?” The question seemed to have multiple meanings.

  “Not today we’re not.” I made eye contact with Danielle Tate, and she came over. “Excuse me.”

  As was always the case, Tate was perfectly put together; there wasn’t a wrinkle in her uniform or a scuff on her spit-shined boots. We shook hands—her grip was strong for such a small person—and she looked up at me from beneath the brim of her olive green fedora.

  “Was that the guy who manages Hudson’s Lodge?” she asked.

  “Caleb Maxwell? Yeah, that’s him.” I thought she was going to comment on what an aqua-eyed dreamboat he was.

  She let out a grunt. “What kind of douchebag wears Crocs to a funeral?”

  I smiled and shrugged.

  “Some of us are getting together afterward to tell stories about Pinkham,” Tate said.

  “I didn’t realize you knew Wes.”

  “He was my mentor at the warden academy. Do you want to join us?”

  I looked around the mass of red jackets and police uniforms. Kathy Frost waved to me from across the room. “I was hoping to find Charley and Ora Stevens.”

  “Oh,” she said, the light dimming in her gray eyes. The woman so rarely smiled as it was.

  “Charley was my mentor,” I explained. “One of my mentors at least.”

  But Dani knew who his daughter was, and how I felt about her.

  “Are you going to apply for the warden investigator position?” she asked with characteristic bluntness.

  “Me? With my track record? I wouldn’t have a shot in hell.”

  “I heard Lieutenant DeFord mention your name.”

  “You’re shitting me.”

  Her nostrils flared. “Do you think I’m lying?”

  I seemed to have a rare talent for angering women. “I’m just surprised.”

  She began to walk away, then remembered something. “Did you hear about Troy Dow?”

  “The last I heard, he was still on the loose. Did somebody catch him?”

  “No, he’s dead. He ran into a moose on his ATV. A bear guide found the two dead bodies on his way to check his baits. Poor moose.”

  “God’s justice is not man’s justice,” Brother John had told me. I’d never viewed a moose as an instrument of the Almighty’s will. But there it was.

  “Why are you grinning like that?” Dani asked.

  “Nothing,” I said.

  * * *

  I finally caught up with Charley and Ora. He was pushing her wheelchair down a ramp.

  “Is Stacey here?” I asked. “I haven’t seen her.”

  “She said it would be too painful.” Ora had snowy hair and flawless skin that didn’t need the help of cosmetics. Stacey had been a surprise baby who had arrived just in time to complicate her parents’ golden years. “She was going hiking instead to test her ankle. It makes her feel better to be outdoors.”

  I tried not to show my disappointment, but I was sure that Ora could feel it emanating from my soul. As I said, the woman had unnatural powers of perception.

  “What’s this I hear about blood on the bumper of Benton Avery’s van?” Charley asked me.

  “They think it’s Chad McDonough’s,” I said. “The DNA results haven’t come back.”

  “So that poor kid took off from the lodge because he was afraid of Nissen, and he ended up calling a serial killer for a ride.”

  “It looks that way. Benton was the one who shuttled him from the parking lot at Abol Bridge to Ross’s in Monson. So they definitely knew each other. Maybe Benton killed him because he was afraid of being identified as the man in the red tent. Or maybe he just killed him for kicks, like he did all the others. Who knows?”

  “That man is the most unusual specimen of God’s carelessness I ever came across,” said Charley.

  “That’s one way of putting it,” I said.

  Ora looked up at her husband with a tender smile. “Did you ever find Doris?” she asked Charley.

  “I gave her our condolences. She’s hoping we can fly over for supper in a few weeks.”

  “It won’t be the same without Wes there,” Ora said.

  “That it won’t.” After a pause, the old pilot began to smile wider and wider. “Wes was always good company. I remember getting sluiced with him one night when we were both young bucks up at Clayton Lake. Back in those days, I was quite a hand to drink rum, but Wes never had any tolerance for the stuff. Next morning, I found him asleep in the outhouse with a big smile on his face and his drawers down around his ankles.”

  “Charley!” Ora said, smiling.

  I tried t
o join in the spirit, but I kept visualizing Pinkham’s dead body lying in the grass. “I wish I’d known him better. He seemed like a good man.”

  “He was a true friend,” Charley said, making it sound like there was no higher compliment.

  “Listen, I wanted to talk with you two about Stacey.”

  Ora touched my arm. “Be patient.”

  “I just feel like I did something wrong.”

  “Like what?” her father said. “She’s still alive.”

  “Do you remember when Sarah was attacked when we lived in Sennebec?” I said. “The circumstances were similar, and I had no trouble taking a shot.”

  “That’s because you were young and reckless,” Charley said. “You’ve learned since then not to depend on luck. There’s nothing more foolish than firing blind and hoping you hit the bad guy. Real life isn’t like a Dirty Harry movie, young feller.”

  I would have to draw strength from Charley’s reassurance that I had acted responsibly. For most of my life, I had confused heedlessness with heroism. Maybe the time had come to get past that.

  * * *

  In the lot outside, I followed the row of identical Warden Service trucks until I found my vehicle parked near the end. Stacey was leaning against the passenger door. She was dressed in a green T-shirt and hiking shorts that showed off her tawny legs. She lifted her sunglasses, looked me up and down, and let out an appreciative whistle.

  “Looking good, Bowditch.”

  “It’s just the uniform.”

  “No, it’s the man.”

  I stepped forward to embrace her. “Stacey, what are you doing here? Your folks said you went hiking.”

  “I had a change of heart on Tunk Mountain.” Her arms went around my waist and very nearly squeezed the breath out of me. “You should have said something about Pinkham that morning at the quarry. When my dad told me what happened to him, I just about lost it.”

  “I thought you’d had enough trauma for one day.”

  “You don’t have to protect me from the world, Mike.”

  “I know that,” I said.

  “Besides, if you’d told me about Pinkham, maybe I wouldn’t have been such a bitch.” She bit her lip and gave me a sly look. “Maybe.”

  I held her by the shoulders and inspected the black stitches on her forehead below the hairline. She had made no effort to hide the ragged wound. Her lack of vanity was one of her most attractive qualities.

  “You’re not a bitch—not usually. You’re passionate. Anyone who doesn’t understand that doesn’t understand you.”

  “That’s kind of you. But I’m not sure it’s the truth.”

  “Did you see any of the service?”

  “The end of it. I didn’t want to go in dressed like this, so I watched from the nosebleed section.”

  I scanned the faces of the people flowing past. “We should go find your parents.”

  “I’ll see them later,” she said. “Where are you headed?”

  “Dani Tate and some of the others are getting together to drink and tell stories about Pinkham.”

  “Tate, huh?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  “You know why. But it doesn’t sound like you’re going.”

  “I thought I wanted to be alone.”

  She touched my cheek with the palm of her hand. “But you don’t anymore?”

  “No.”

  “How about we take a ride, then?”

  I fished my key fob out of my pocket. “Where do you want to go?”

  “Let’s just drive.”

  Most of the cars and trucks were headed either downtown or to the Maine Turnpike. I decided to sneak out the back, in the direction of the Thorncrag Bird Sanctuary in the hills above Bates College. Stacey loosened her ponytail, letting her dark hair flap around her face and stream behind her in the breeze.

  Clouds piled up like scoops of vanilla ice cream in the western sky. In a few days, it would be October, and my life would change again with the turning leaves. The boaters would tow their boats out of the water, and I would put away my Jet Ski and cover it with a tarp. On the first day of the month, bow hunters would creep to their secret tree stands, and men who had won permits to kill moose would start cruising the back roads with loaded rifles and cans of beer wedged between their legs, scouting for trophy bulls. For the next two months, I would spend long hours dressed in camouflage, stalking the woods for armed and dangerous men. But right now, all I could think about was how beautiful the day was.

  “I heard a rumor the legislature was going to overturn the governor’s coyote bounty,” I said.

  “That’s one good thing that came out of this. The only good thing.”

  “Have you been back to work yet?”

  “Not yet. It turns out that being attacked and nearly murdered by a serial killer qualifies you for workers’ compensation. Who knew? The truth is, I haven’t wanted to deal with the questions about Benton Avery. It’s still hard to talk about.”

  I took this as a hint to change the subject. Sooner or later, we would need to discuss what had happened to us in Monson, but I trusted that she would let me know when she was ready.

  “I ran into Caleb Maxwell,” I said. “He asked about you.”

  “I’ll bet he did. He called me at home last night. I’m not sure how he tracked me down.”

  My foot kicked the gas pedal and we rocketed forward, nearly bumping the car ahead. “What?”

  “He didn’t come right out and say it, but I’m pretty sure he wanted to know if we were a couple, so he could ask me out.”

  “I’m going to turn around now,” I said. “I need to go punch him in the face.”

  “You have nothing to worry about,” she said. “He’s kind of a sorry figure, if you ask me.”

  “Sorry how?”

  “DeFord told me about him. I was curious why he’d left Moosehead Search and Rescue, since he seemed to miss it so much. His fiancée committed suicide at Gulf Hagas a few years ago. No one knows why. She didn’t even leave a note, just threw herself off a cliff one morning. They recovered her body trapped in one of those grinders. And now Caleb goes there all the time and visits the place where she died. I thought you knew the story.”

  “No,” I said. “Are they sure it was a suicide?”

  She patted my knee. “Every death is suspicious to you, isn’t it?”

  “It’s a bad habit of mine, thinking that way.”

  “You just can’t help yourself.”

  I remembered the brown-haired woman in the photograph on Caleb Maxwell’s desk, how even her brilliant smile had seemed tinged with sadness, as if even in that seemingly happy moment she was aware of what was ahead, and I knew that my suspicions were misplaced. “That explains why Caleb was crying when the newlyweds saw him on that ledge.” A shiver ran through me at the thought. “I can’t imagine what it’s like, having someone you love kill herself with no explanation. No wonder he roams the Rim Trail like a grieving specter.”

  “I wonder if he’s ever tempted to jump himself.”

  “What?”

  She unfastened her seat belt and drew her knees up against the dash. “If all you had to do was let yourself fall into the abyss, and you could be with the person you loved again, wouldn’t you consider it?”

  “I’m not that confident in the hereafter.”

  “So if Benton Avery had killed me, you would have kept on living, huh?”

  “Am I supposed to say yes or am I supposed to say no?” I asked. “What’s the right answer?”

  “The right answer is always to keep on living.”

  She leaned across the console and tucked her head into my shoulder. Her body felt sun-warmed against mine. She smelled of the same suntan lotion she had worn at Popham Beach. I felt myself being transported there again, back to the cottage. She pressed her ear to my chest, closed her eyes, and listened to the steady beating of my heart.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  This book is a work of the imagination, and it should
go without saying that every character and event in it is fictitious. I drew inspiration from real places, not least of which was the town of Monson, Maine, a beautiful and big-hearted community rightly loved by AT thru-hikers. I have taken liberties in its depiction and in my rendering of other locales in and around the Hundred Mile Wilderness.

  Thank you to the Appalachian Mountain Club, specifically the helpful staff at Gorman Chairback Lodge & Cabins and Little Lyford Lodge & Cabins: the best base camps for anyone wishing to explore Gulf Hagas. And thanks also to Simon Rucker of the Maine Appalachian Trail Land Trust for answering my last-minute questions about the area.

  Certain books informed the composition of this one: Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods (of course); Michelle Ray’s How to Hike the AT: the Nitty Gritty Details of a Long Distance Trek; the Appalachian Trail Thru-Hiker’s Companion, published by the Appalachian Trail Conservancy; The Maine Woods: A Fully Annotated Version by Henry David Thoreau, edited by Jeffrey S. Cramer; and finally, my trusted companion throughout this series, Robert E. Pike’s Spiked Boots. The National Geographic Channel documentary Killed by Coyotes, which tells the tragic, true-life story of Taylor Mitchell, was an important resource in my revisions.

  As always, I am indebted to the Maine Warden Service, in particular to Corporal John MacDonald, who provided me with crucial information about the service’s search-and-rescue operations.

  My agent extraordinaire, Ann Rittenberg, offered support and advice along the way—thank you, Ann.

  I am grateful to my editor, Charlie Spicer, publisher Andrew Martin, and everyone at St. Martin’s Press and Macmillan Audio. Thanks also to Beth Andersen for her proofreading help.

  Lastly, I would like to thank my wife, Kristen Lindquist, for her encouragement, insight, patience, and love—all of which I needed during the writing of The Precipice.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  A native of Maine, bestselling author Paul Doiron attended Yale University, where he graduated with a degree in English, and he holds an MFA in creative writing from Emerson College. The Poacher’s Son won the Barry award and the Strand award for best first novel, and has been nominated for the Edgar, Anthony, and Macavity awards in the same category. He lives on a trout stream in coastal Maine with his wife, Kristen Lindquist. Visit his Web site at www.pauldoiron.com and follow him on Twitter @pauldoiron. You can sign up for email updates here.