The Precipice (8 page)

The Warden Service had commandeered the Monson municipal building for the search. When I’d driven past the lopsided wooden structure earlier, I’d noticed that the clock above the firehouse doors was broken, the hands frozen at 11:55. It seemed like an unnecessary metaphor.

“Do you want me to drop you somewhere?” I asked Nissen.

“My van’s parked in back.”

I turned left off Route 15 and plunged down a hill to the field where DeFord had set up his temporary headquarters. The mobile command post was a streamlined black vehicle nicknamed “the RV,” due to its resemblance to a Class C motor home (although no one would have mistaken it for your grandfather’s Winnebago). A communications array bristled from the roof, and inside, state-of-the-art computers ran GPS mapping software to assist search-and-rescue missions.

When we’d left, the lot had been jammed with all sorts of emergency vehicles: warden trucks, state police cruisers, patrol cars bearing the insignia of the Piscataquis County Sheriff’s Department, a lone ambulance just in case. Most of them had scattered for the night, leaving tire marks in the flattened grass. But a few remained.

DeFord had also sent most of the volunteers home after dark; it was standard procedure in these operations. A few diehards had pitched their tents at the edge of the woods; others slept on air mattresses in their truck beds or in the backs of their Subaru wagons. The Salvation Army wagon still had its door open, light and steam spilling out into the darkness, so the cook could serve hot coffee and beef stew to the night shift.

I parked my patrol truck in a vacant spot, turned off the engine, and let out a deep breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. Without a word of thanks, Nissen hopped out and walked away. Just when I thought the man couldn’t be any ruder, he found a new level. I watched him zigzag through the parked trucks and cars to a white Woodstock-era VW camper van. A giant honeybee was painted on the side, along with the name of his business—Breakneck Ridge Apiary.

“You’re welcome,” I said aloud.

My sore legs had stiffened from sitting in the truck for an hour. The ground was swampy from the thunderstorm and squished beneath my boots. I rapped on the side door of the mobile command post. Then the door opened, and I found myself looking up at Sergeant Kathy Frost.

“Speak of the devil,” she said.

Kathy had been my field training officer and was still my best friend in the Warden Service. She was in her fifties and had bobbed hair the color of butterscotch and a spray of freckles on her nose and cheeks. Instead of wearing a regulation uniform, she was dressed tonight in flannel and denim.

Five months earlier, she had been shot by a sniper outside her farmhouse in Appleton and had lingered in a coma for days, fighting for her life. She’d lost her spleen during surgery and probably pieces of other organs. The last time we’d spoken, she had still been on forced convalescent leave. The purple rings around her eyes told me she was far from healed.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, practically stuttering out the words.

She gave me a wink. “I’m in charge of the K-9 team, remember?”

“There’s no way they’ve let you return to duty.”

“Come in already. You’re letting in all the bugs.”

I had so many questions for her, but there were half a dozen officers seated around the gray plastic table in the center of the RV. It was the wrong moment for us to catch up.

The confined space glowed with computer screens and smelled of fresh-brewed coffee. A projector threw a topographical map against one of the beige walls, showing the Appalachian Trail between Chairback Gap and Whitecap Mountain. Icons indicated the locations of the lean-tos, and a dotted line traced the meandering trail.

Lieutenant DeFord turned from a conversation he was having with a state police detective and glanced up at me from his chair. He had a boyishly handsome face, dark blond hair cut close to the scalp, and a physique that verified the stories of his having almost made the Olympic biathlon team but for an ACL tear.

“Bowditch,” he said. “Glad you made it back in one piece.”

“We had a little rain up on Chairback, sir.”

“There was lightning popping everywhere down here. I wondered whether you and Nissen would even be able to get off the mountain tonight.”

“Nissen doesn’t seem easily fazed.”

A few subtle smiles from the assembled officers told me that Nissen’s reputation preceded him.

“The same could be said for you.” DeFord indicated a chair at the table. “Do you know everyone here?”

There were four other wardens, including Kathy, all of whom I knew, plus the state trooper, a detective sergeant, who was dressed in a blue T-shirt and blue tactical pants tucked into black boots, and whose name, I was told, was Brian Fitzpatrick. Another man—lean, black-haired, wearing a dress shirt and tie, suit pants, and shiny shoes—sat quietly in the corner. The lieutenant passed over him without introduction.

DeFord fetched a bottle of Poland Spring water from the refrigerator for me. “So, we’ve been going over the photos you sent. Why don’t you fill in the details for us.”

It took me fifteen minutes to describe what I’d found at the shelter and recount the conversation I’d had with Chad McDonough. Midway through my monologue, one of the overhead fluorescents began to flicker, throwing a jumpy light on the assembled faces. Both Fitzpatrick and the warden investigator assigned to the case—an affable gray-haired guy named Wesley Pinkham—interrupted me frequently.

“What was your take on McDonough’s state of mind?” Sergeant Fitzpatrick asked. He worked out of the Maine Information and Analysis Center. “You said he seemed stoned?”

“He had a strong odor of marijuana on him.”

Fitzpatrick crushed a piece of hard candy between his molars. “Did you search him for drugs?”

“I thought it was more important that I establish trust. When he told me he’d hiked with Samantha and Missy, I wanted to learn everything I could from him.”

“That was the right move,” said Wes Pinkham.

Except for the handgun and badge on his belt, Pinkham looked nothing like a game warden and everything like the branch manager of a savings and loan. He had thinning hair held in place with pomade, a stomach that overflowed his belted chinos, and aviator glasses that had last been in vogue—well, I wasn’t sure how long ago, but not since before I was born. I could imagine that his average Joe appearance (Little League umpire, president of the Lions Club) might have helped when he went undercover to purchase illegal cuts of deer meat from poachers.

The lieutenant asked Wes Pinkham to bring up on the computer projector the photo I’d taken of Chad McDonough’s driver’s license. We studied the magnified image on the wall. McDonut seemed so clean-cut in his Massachusetts DMV photograph.

“Did you believe that he was telling the truth about the girls?” Sergeant Fitzpatrick asked.

The detective had a reddish gray buzz cut that looked like it would become curly if he ever grew it out. His complexion was pale, but there was a rosy blush on his cheeks that suggested he might’ve enjoyed a nightly nip—or had before he found the program. He had an accent that sounded as if he’d grown up in South Boston.

I wasn’t sure what Fitzpatrick wanted to hear. I glanced at Kathy, seated beside me. She winked again, as if telling me to trust my instincts.

“I think he might have been lying about some things,” I said, “but not about Samantha and Missy. The kid definitely has an edge to him, but he didn’t strike me as dangerous.”

“We ran a background check on McDonough,” Fitzpatrick announced, “and he was suspended from UMass after being accused of sexual assault.”

I had the sense that he’d been waiting to ambush me with that information. I became aware of the black-haired man watching me with the intensity of a predator. His eyes were so black, they seemed to be all pupil.

“Was he convicted?” I asked.

“Criminal charges were never brought,” said Fitzpatrick. “The girl was intoxicated herself and didn’t have a complete memory of the night. The DA couldn’t proceed with the case, but the school decided McDonough should take a year off, until she graduated.”

“If he was involved with Samantha’s and Missy’s disappearance,” I said, “I have no idea why he would hang out on the trail. Why wouldn’t he have gotten the hell out of there?”

The mysterious black-haired man in the corner spoke for the first time. “Did it occur to you that he might’ve been making up this ‘man in the red tent’ to divert attention from himself?”

“It occurred to me, yes.”

“Do you want to bring him in for an interview?” DeFord asked Pinkham. “At this point, we still don’t have evidence of a crime, so we can’t call him a material witness.”

“Tell him his help will be invaluable in finding the two girls,” the warden investigator said. “Make him feel like everyone is depending on him.”

“We’re going to need to track down all the other names on the list Bowditch gave us,” said Sergeant Fitzpatrick.

Kathy tilted back in her chair. “Personally, I’d start with the Incredible Hunk.”

“You think he sounds like a suspicious character, do you?” Pinkham asked with a sly grin.

“I just want to see if the man lives up to his name.”

Everyone smiled except Fitzpatrick and the man in the corner, whose name I still didn’t know. Despite her ill health, Kathy was making a brave effort to participate. I couldn’t help worrying that she might be pushing herself too hard. Her skin was the color of parchment.

A BlackBerry vibrated on the table. The lieutenant picked it up. “DeFord.”

The rest of the room fell silent while he had his conversation.

I leaned my head close to Kathy and whispered, “You should be home in bed, getting your strength back.”

“Now you’re the one giving lectures?”

DeFord ended his call and put the phone back on the table.

“Samantha’s and Missy’s parents are on their way up here from Georgia,” he said. “They’re flying into Greenville tomorrow morning on a private plane. The commissioner wants us to meet them at the airstrip.”

I didn’t envy the lieutenant. Searches were difficult enough to manage without having powerful people second-guessing every decision.

“Do you want me to call Deb Davies?” asked Kathy.

“I think you’d better,” said DeFord.

The Reverend Davies was one of the Warden Service’s two chaplains. Whenever we got word that an Alzheimer’s patient had wandered off into a blizzard, or a canoe had overturned on a lake and the paddlers were missing, or a snowmobile had crashed into a tree and the driver had been found lifeless, his limbs bent in impossible directions—whenever death, in other words, had become more than just a possibility—she would be summoned.

Samantha and Missy might yet turn up alive, but someone would need to stand vigil with the waiting, worrying parents, and it made sense for it to be a minister. I was just relieved it wouldn’t be me. My prayers so rarely came true.

9

Lieutenant DeFord took me aside and rested a hand on my shoulder. It felt as heavy as lead.

“You look exhausted, Mike. We’ve booked rooms at Ross’s. Go get yourself a good night’s sleep, and we’ll see you back here in the morning.”

It was the same boardinghouse where Samantha Boggs, Missy Montgomery, and Chad McDonough had spent their last night in Monson. All I knew about the place was that it catered to thru-hikers this time of year. As long as the beds were free of bugs, I’d happily accept whatever was offered.

“Hope you don’t mind having a bunk mate,” said Kathy with a shit-eating grin I didn’t understand. I’d lived in a dormitory at the Maine Criminal Justice Academy and shared cabin bunkhouses with wardens over the years. I had no expectations of privacy in my job.

She followed me out into the humid night, closing the door of the RV quickly behind her to keep the bugs out. There was a bright halogen spotlight on the back of the fire station, but otherwise the parking area was pitch-black except for the glowing tents set up by the searchers along the perimeter of the lot. In the dark I couldn’t read her expressions at all.

“What was that about?” I asked.

“What?”

“The comment about the bunk mate.”

“Oh, you’ll see.”

I decided to let the matter slide. Whatever her private joke was, she could tease me about it in the morning. A mosquito landed on the meaty part of my hand, but I squished it before it bit me.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to be here,” I said. “You should be at home recovering.”

“There are two young women out there who seem to be lost,” she said, but she was unable to disguise her weariness. “I’m pretty good at finding people. And DeFord could use my help.”

I couldn’t deny that the search would benefit from her expertise. Kathy had headed up the Warden Service’s K-9 team almost since its inception; for years she’d tracked down missing persons with her coonhound, Pluto, and schooled other wardens in the mysteries of dog handling. But Pluto had died earlier that spring, shot by the same psycho who’d wounded Kathy, and she hadn’t yet adopted a puppy to train. Kathy claimed she was waiting until she had returned to full health, since teaching a young dog to follow a human scent across all kinds of terrain is physically demanding, but secretly I suspected she was still mourning the loss of her longtime companion.

“So the lieutenant has you supervising the K-9 teams?” I asked.

Kathy slapped at a mosquito on her neck. “I’m coordinating with Maine Search and Rescue Dogs, too.”

She was referring to a volunteer group of experienced handlers whose personal pets had been trained as rescue dogs, taught to sniff out living people who might be trapped or injured, and cadaver dogs, whose gory job was tracking the scent of corpses, including those buried under six feet of dirt or submerged at the bottom of a lake. The mention of the search-and-rescue organization made me remember a question I’d been meaning to ask someone all night.

“Any idea why DeFord partnered me with Nissen?” My eyes were beginning to adjust to the dark.

“He’s the fastest hiker here. I’m surprised your aging legs were able to keep up with him. The man’s a freak of nature.”