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 checked.”
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.