The Precipice: A Novel Read online

  Tate stared directly into the glare of my beams, as if daring me to run her down. She had gray eyes like pebbles from a streambed and a flat face that seemed plain except on the random occasions when she chose to display one of the most dazzling smiles I’d ever seen.

  A rumor was going around—started no doubt by my former sergeant, Kathy Frost—that Dani Tate had a crush on me. I’d been mortified when I heard it, not because I didn’t like her, but because I feared Stacey might become jealous, and I didn’t want to give my girlfriend another excuse to hold me at arm’s length. Tate seemed like a good person and potentially a great warden. (She’d memorized every chapter and paragraph of the Maine code of fish and wildlife laws the way some people do the Bible.) But in my opinion, she could have stood to lighten up a little.

  I pulled alongside her and rolled down the window. “I didn’t know you were part of this, Tate.”

  “Are you kidding? Where else would I be?” She peered past me. “Who’s that with you?”

  My passenger surprised me by thrusting his hand out. “Bob Nissen,” he said.

  “Nonstop Nissen?” Dani asked.

  “The one and only. Pleased to meet you. What’s your name?”

  So Nissen was only a selective mute, depending upon the sex of the other person.

  “Tate,” Dani said. “What did you guys find up on Chairback?”

  “The girls were there nine days ago,” I said. “They left a diary entry in the logbook. I took a picture of it and the rest of the pages in the journal. I’m going to e-mail my photos to Lieutenant DeFord when I get a signal.”

  “I’ve been getting one intermittently at the top of the hill to the west. You might try up there.”

  With the engine off, I could hear the river. The ford was at a flat-water area below the churning plunge pools of Gulf Hagas and was often impassable. During periods of heavy rain, the Appalachian Mountain Club deployed a ranger to prevent hikers from wading to their deaths.

  “Why did DeFord station you here?” I asked.

  She exhaled hard, flaring her nostrils. “Communication. The lieutenant said he needed someone to drive out if there was a problem getting a cell signal.”

  It must have galled Tate to be left behind while the other wardens got to climb a dangerous mountain in the dark. The woman was the walking definition of gung ho.

  “Did you hear from the team on Whitecap?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “I guess there’s always a decent signal up above the tree line.”

  “What did they find?”

  “Nothing in the logbooks. Samantha and Missy always left a journal entry at every shelter where they spent the night. Sergeant Ouellette’s team checked the lean-tos at Newhall and Sidney Tappan and came up dry. I doubt the next team is going to find anything at Logan Brook.”

  I felt the hairs on my arms rise. “That makes Chairback Gap the point last seen.”

  With this new information, we had succeeded at narrowing down the search area. Unfortunately, the valley between Chairback and Whitecap mountains spanned dozens of miles of cliffs and ravines. It also included the deepest river canyon in the state of Maine and a pathless track of old-growth pines.

  Worse yet, this intervale was bisected by a heavily traveled road, so it wasn’t just thru-hikers whose names would need to be added to the list of potential suspects. It was anyone who might’ve driven down the KI Road in the past nine days. If you were a sexual predator studying the map of Maine, looking for the most advantageous place to abduct two unsuspecting women, you might very well choose this artery through the heart of the Hundred Mile Wilderness.

  5

  The thunderclouds had broken apart just as quickly as they’d formed, but there was a gauziness to the night sky that made the stars look fuzzy, as if I was viewing the constellations through a nylon mask.

  “I thought I’d head over to Hudson’s Lodge,” I told Dani Tate.

  “What for?”

  “I’m curious about something.”

  Her expression hardened. “Shouldn’t you be heading back?” she said, making no effort to hide her disapproval. “Besides, Lieutenant DeFord already talked with Caleb Maxwell. He’s the manager at Hudson’s. Some of his people are up on Whitecap with Sergeant Ouellette. Maxwell says Samantha and Missy never stopped at the bunkhouse.”

  “I want to talk to the other hikers,” I explained. “Now that we know that Chairback was the PLS, it makes sense to ID the people who stayed at the shelter before they scatter. I have the list of trail names, and we’re going to need to find out who these people are in real life.”

  As a rookie, I’d nearly been drummed out of the service for sticking my nose where it didn’t belong. I still had a reputation for overenthusiasm when it came to the investigative aspects of my job, but I was working hard to establish myself as a trustworthy officer. Frankly, though, I didn’t care whether Danielle Tate liked my decisions or not.

  Her reply surprised me. “That makes sense.”

  Maybe there’s hope for her yet, I thought.

  “I’m going to keep trying to raise DeFord. If you talk to him first, let him know what we found.”

  “Ten-four,” she said. “You should be able to use the lodge’s phone and computer if you don’t get a signal on your cell. They’ve got a pretty high-tech setup at that place, from what I hear.”

  Nissen made a snorting sound to remind me what he thought of the new ecolodge.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “Hey, Bowditch.” She took a step toward the truck.

  “Yeah?”

  She took a long time to answer. “Never mind.”

  I rolled up the window to keep out the bugs and regretted the decision instantly. I wondered when the last time was that Nissen had used antiperspirant—or soap, for that matter.

  At the top of the hill above the ford, my phone began to buzz. I brought the pickup to a halt and checked the signal. There was a single bar of coverage—not enough bandwidth to call DeFord or send him photographs, but enough to release the backlog of messages that had piled up while I was climbing the mountain and which were now belatedly arriving.

  Most of them I ignored, but at the bottom of the list of missed calls was Stacey’s number. As usual, she had chosen not to leave a voice-mail message. I held up the lighted screen of my smartphone and tapped her number. For a moment, it seemed like I might be able to make a connection. But the satellite had passed on, and all I heard was the hollowness of a dropped call.

  The drive to Hudson’s was shorter than I’d expected; essentially, we circled the base of Chairback Mountain from east to west. Signs directed us to the lodge from the KI Road and then down a hill. The trees parted at the bottom, and we crossed a wet meadow that had been flooded by beavers. A swollen brook ran through a culvert beneath the road, the surface of the water shimmering like a tarnished mirror. Then we entered the forest again. As we descended another hill, ruts in the gravel gripped the tires of my truck and refused to let go until I gave the wheel a jerk. After a minute, we entered the well-manicured grounds of the lodge. I followed the signs to the manager’s house, which was tucked into a grove of pines below the guest parking lot.

  As we pulled up to the illuminated path, a black Lab came bounding out of the shadows. For a split second, I feared the dog might claw my truck, but there was a whistle from the house, and the animal slammed to a stop. A man emerged from the front door and stepped from flagstone to flagstone to avoid the puddles left by the rain. The first thing I noticed was that he was wearing bright red Croc sandals.

  Nissen and I got out of the truck. I could smell a lake somewhere nearby and heard the sound of water running in ditches: the aftermath of the storm.

  “Sorry about Reba,” the man said. “She’s the world’s oldest puppy.”

  The Lab wagged its tail so hard its hindquarters shook.

  “You’ve trained her well, though. I’m Mike Bowditch. Are you Caleb Maxwell?”

  “The last time I checke
d.”

  He was long-limbed and carried himself with the looseness of a professional surfer. He had blond hair, parted in the center and pushed back behind his ears, and was wearing leather bracelets around both of his wrists and a braided necklace around his throat. He had on a flower-patterned shirt and a pair of jeans cut off below the knees like denim culottes.

  “Do you know Bob Nissen?” I asked.

  “Oh, I know Bob,” Caleb Maxwell said with a cold smile. When he pivoted toward the halogen light, I could see wrinkles around his blue-green eyes, which made me think he was older than I’d first assumed. Early forties maybe. “He and I go way back. How’s the book going?”

  Nissen stared off into the trees without answering.

  “Bob wasn’t a fan of our building the lodge,” Caleb said. “He let his feelings be known at some public meetings we had in front of the Land Use Regulation Commission, nearly torpedoed us. Before that, he and I were on the Moosehead SAR team together. Do you remember the lost snowboarder on Big Moose Mountain, Bob?”

  “I remember,” Nissen muttered.

  “So what’s going on with the search for those two girls?” Caleb asked. “I wanted to help out, but we’ve got a full house tonight, and I needed to stay on-site. I haven’t heard from my crew since they left. I know Josh went with some wardens up Whitecap. And Addie was supposed to meet up with another team at the base of Chairback.”

  “That was us,” I said. “We ended up going up the backside of the mountain to the shelter.”

  “That’s a hellish path! I’m surprised you didn’t break a leg.”

  “Will this Addie be all right?” I asked.

  “She’s a wilderness first responder. She probably hooked up with the others. So is there any news?”

  Since we’d just met, I decided not to take Caleb Maxwell into my confidence. We seemed to share a similar opinion of Nissen, though, which suggested his instincts couldn’t be all bad.

  “I was hoping to talk to the thru-hikers you have staying here,” I said. “Or anyone else who might have been up on Chairback recently.”

  He fiddled with the rope necklace around his throat. “The Cains from Hartford booked all eleven of our cabins for a family reunion. They just arrived yesterday, and they spent today out on the water before the thunderstorms hit, so I doubt they’ll be of help.”

  “Paddleboarding?” Nissen asked.

  “Yeah. Why?”

  “Who’s staying in the bunkhouse?” I asked.

  “We’ve got eight thru-hikers tonight.” Caleb kept his eyes on me rather than on Nissen. “I’ll take you down there if you want.”

  “That would be great,” I said.

  “Reba, come!”

  He led us along a damp and winding path that cut through the evergreens. Without my headlamp, I could barely make out Maxwell’s broad shoulders in the darkness ahead of me, but he seemed not to need a light. The tangy, almost acidic smell of wood smoke hung in the air. Ahead, I could hear voices muffled behind walls.

  We emerged from the trees into a grassy clearing that contained a single building. It was fashioned entirely of cedar logs that hadn’t yet weathered. I could hear people talking and laughing inside the bunkhouse as we circled around to the front. There was a heap of wet backpacking gear piled outside the screen door.

  Caleb rapped once with his knuckle on the frame and peered inside. “Is everyone decent?”

  “Define decent,” came a young woman’s voice, followed by mostly male laughter.

  As I stepped through the door, my nose was treated to an amazing bouquet of aromas: wood smoke from the stove, floral shampoo (or maybe soap), burned coffee, the steamy smell of drying sleeping bags, muddy boots that stank from within and without, bug repellent, the distinctly sweet odor of consumed alcohol being exhaled, and some sort of freeze-dried curry dish being heated on a propane camp stove.

  I counted seven people at first glance, five men and two women, neither of whom was Samantha Boggs or Missy Montgomery. One of the guys, a bearded dude with a red bandana tied around his head, took one look at the gun at my side and threw up his dirty palms.

  “I didn’t do nothing!”

  More laughter.

  “Come on, people,” said Caleb. “Warden Bowditch is here about those two missing women I told you about.”

  Instantly, the room went silent. The sensation I’d had of crashing a college party disappeared with a poof. They all knew how serious the situation was. Two members of their community were in trouble.

  I handed the poster of Samantha and Missy to a man seated in his boxer briefs on the nearest bunk. “Do any of you recognize them? Their trail names are Baby Ruth and Naomi Walks.”

  One woman, an attractive but disheveled strawberry blonde, raised her hand as if I were her college professor. “I’ve seen their names in the logbooks.”

  “Did you meet them?”

  “No.”

  The piece of paper circulated. I watched each hiker study the photograph. Thousands of people hiked the AT each summer, and it was probably asking a lot to hope that this group had overlapped with Samantha and Missy. The two missing women had been days ahead of these hikers for most of the trek.

  The poster came back to me, and I gave it to Caleb. “Can you post this for me in the lodge?”

  “No problem.”

  Despite being almost as young as most of the people in the room—and younger than a couple of them—I felt uncomfortably old as I directed myself to the group again. “If you do come across these women, you need to call nine-one-one or contact the Appalachian Mountain Club. Did any of you spend the night at the Chairback Gap lean-to?”

  “We did. Night before last.” A tan young man with a patchy beard pointed at the strawberry blonde. “I’m El Chupacabra and she’s Hetty-Mae. We came down here for a shower and a real meal.”

  “Are we in trouble?” asked the young woman.

  “We’re just trying to make sure we don’t waste our time chasing down the wrong people. Can I see some identification, please?”

  The man and the woman took out their wallets. They were made of hemp.

  Caleb loomed over my shoulder. “Wait a minute. Where’s McDonut?”

  I glanced up from photographing the couple’s driver’s licenses.

  “He’s taking a shower,” someone said.

  “Again?” said Caleb. “We practice water conservation here.”

  I recognized the trail name from the Chairback logbook. “Who’s this McDonut?”

  Maxwell rolled his eyes. “A kid from Massachusetts. He sprained his knee coming down Chairback and hobbled in with an Ace bandage wrapped around it. He’s been in no hurry to leave. I think he likes it here too much.”

  “How long ago did he show up at the lodge?” I had a feeling I knew the answer.

  “Eight days ago,” Caleb said.

  It was the day after Samantha’s and Missy’s last logbook entry.

  6

  Hudson’s Lodge was an impressive building made of unweathered logs, new cedar shingles, and lots of glass. Lemon light streamed through the windows, attracting swirling clouds of moths and caddis flies. Nissen and I followed Caleb Maxwell up a rough-hewn series of steps—immense flagstones embedded in the earth—to the double doors.

  “He’s got all the fucking lights on, too,” Caleb said under his breath.

  I wiped the mud from my boots on a steel grate before stepping inside the lodge. Nissen did not.

  “This is quite a place,” I said.

  “It’s a state-of-the-art green building,” Maxwell said, as if it were a rehearsed speech he gave to new guests. “You can’t see them in the dark, but there are solar panels on the roof. And all the toilets are composting. The lodge is heated by groundwater from a six-hundred-foot-deep well. We try to conserve as much energy and water as possible, and we recycle everything we can.” He paused in an entry decorated with trail maps and informational posters. “Hey, McDonut!”

  “In here!”
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br />   The room to the left had several comfortable chairs, arranged around a fieldstone fireplace and a Jøtul wood stove so hot the air above it rippled with heat. Low coffee tables were littered with magazines: Orion, Backpacker, AMC Outdoors. There was no wall between the sitting area and the brightly lighted dining hall, where a wet-haired man was eating GORP from a glass container and reading one of the magazines he’d picked up in the lounge. He looked young, somewhere in his early twenties, and the bottom half of his face was covered with light brown scruff that was almost but not quite a beard. On the table beside him rested a sweat-stained and sun-faded sombrero.

  “Do you remember what I told you about energy conservation, Chad?” Caleb said in his camp counselor tone.

  The young man rose stiffly to his feet, and I saw that he had a blue brace on his right knee. He brushed the crumbs off a faded T-shirt with the slogan DON’T SMOKE (SHITTY) WEED. If he was a thru-hiker, he was one of the pudgiest I’d ever seen. The miles had done little to melt the fat from his stomach, chest, and back.

  “Oh, shit, bro. I came up here to take a shower and lost track of time.” His big head wobbled back and forth on his neck when he spoke, as if his neck muscles were weak. “Hey, I know you!”

  I realized that he was looking past me at Nissen.

  “You two know each other, too?” I said, wondering how I’d lived this long without hearing Nissen’s name.

  “Everyone on the trail knows who Nonstop is. The guy’s like a living legend. Good to see you again, sir.” He gave a military salute.

  Nissen grunted and glared off in another direction.

  “This is Warden Bowditch,” said Caleb Maxwell.

  I put on my Officer Friendly face and crossed the stone floor until I was standing across the table from the soft-bodied hiker. “Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?”

  “Um, that depends, I guess. Am I in trouble? I didn’t mean to leave the lights on.”

  “The light police is another department.”

  His openmouthed expression told me he didn’t understand that I was joking. I indicated that he should sit down again. I settled into a chair opposite him. The dining room still smelled of roasted turkey.