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.”
“Or just a freak.”
Her mouth curled on one side in either a smirk or a grimace. “You’re wondering what his story is,” she said. “The guy’s an ex-con. He did ten years in prison down south for cooking meth. The folks at Moosehead Search and Rescue tell me he found salvation in the slammer. As soon as they let him out, he took off up the AT like the devil was hot on his trail. I guess he’s quite the Bible-thumper now.”
I summoned an image of Nissen. His scarred shoulder blades came into focus. “He used to have a tattoo on his back.”
“I’ve never seen the man without a shirt, and I never want to.”
“He must have had the tat removed—and not by a plastic surgeon.” I had to keep shifting my weight to keep my hamstrings from tightening up. “I’m surprised they let a felon join Moosehead Search and Rescue.”
“You of all people don’t believe in second chances?”
“The guy just creeps me out. Caleb Maxwell told me Nissen’s writing a book about the ways people have died on the AT. The two of them seem to have sort of a history.”
“Caleb has a lot of history—most of it sad.” She scratched her forearm where another bug had bitten her. “I’m getting eaten alive out here. Can we pick this up tomorrow?”
“One more thing,” I said. “Who was that guy with a tie in the corner?”
“Special Agent Genoways with the FBI. He doesn’t say much.”
“Why is the FBI interested in missing hikers?”
Kathy grinned from ear to ear. “You and your curiosity! Enjoy your stay at Ross’s, Grasshopper.”
That was her pet name for me when I was her young pupil. “Where are you sleeping?”
“The Indian Hill Motel in Greenville. One of the perks of being a sergeant is that I get a private room. Tell your bunk mate I said hi!”
* * *
When a search operation is under way in a remote location, the Warden Service stashes searchers wherever it can—in fleabag motels, bed-and-breakfasts, the homes of other wardens, wherever. I parked on the wet lawn outside Ross’s Rooming House, grabbed the duffel bag from the backseat, and jumped out of the truck with all the grace of the Tin Woodman after a rainstorm. My joints might actually have creaked.
The inn wasn’t a single building, but three: the original white clapboard structure, a newer annex sided with white vinyl, and a separate two-story bunkhouse so ungainly, I had to assume the carpenters had been drunk when they’d raised its roof.
I made my way to the front door of the old inn and, taking note of the sign posted beside it—OUR DOOR IS ALWAYS OPEN—dragged myself inside. Hiking boots were piled in pairs in the big entryway, and raincoats and ponchos hung from hooks along the walls. I did my best to scrape the mud from the bottoms of my boots, then passed through the dimly lit foyer into a spacious front room. Mismatched furniture had been tossed carelessly about the place. In one corner, a woman with long gray braids was snoring in a recliner, an open book (by Barbara Kingsolver) on her lap. Otherwise no one was about, including at the front desk. But I found a piece of paper with my name on it, as well as instructions to make myself at home. Breakfast, it said, would be served at seven. That was past the hour DeFord expected me back at the command post, so I’d likely be eating oatmeal from the Salvation Army chuck wagon. There didn’t seem to be a room key.
Nor was there a map to direct me through the rat maze of hallways to my room. I couldn’t imagine who my bunk mate could be. Knowing Kathy’s wicked sense of humor, I had to expect the worst. Christ, I thought, what if it’s Danielle Tate? Was Kathy perverse enough to force Dani and me to share the same twin bedroom? My gut knew the answer to that question. I hesitated before turning the doorknob.
The room was dark, but a shaft of light from the hall showed two beds. One was neatly made. The other contained a half-naked old man. He had a prominent chin, a formidable nose, and a full head of stiff white hair. He seemed to have been asleep but had snapped fully awake when he’d heard the door. Now he turned on the table lamp and squinted up at me.
“Well, aren’t you the most mournful-looking object of pity.”
“Charley?”
“Who were you expecting?” Stacey’s father said. “Queequeg the Cannibal?”
Charley Stevens had grown up around lumber camps. To hear him speak in that thick Maine accent, using lingo he’d picked up from illiterate trappers and Québécois lumberjacks, you might have concluded that he had never cracked a book in his life. But over the years of our friendship, I had learned how deceptively intelligent he was, and I had come to suspect that the old autodidact was better read than some of my English professors from Colby.
“I didn’t know you were staying here,” I said.
“Figured it didn’t make much sense to fly all the way home just to turn around again at first light.”
Charley and his wife, Ora, lived a hundred-odd miles to the east, in a lakeside camp, near the village of Grand Lake Stream. Stacey still lived in a guest cottage on their property, ostensibly saving up to build her own house. Given her graduate school debt and how little she made as an assistant wildlife biologist, it was going to take a while.
Charley was wearing a sleeveless T-shirt that showed off his Popeye forearms and the scars he’d gotten as a POW in North Vietnam. He grinned and held out one of his big paws. I tried not to wince when we shook hands. The skinny geezer had a grip like a bench vise.
“Good to see you, young feller.”
“Same here.” I slung my rucksack on the floor and sat down on the rock-hard bed. The box springs might have bounced half an inch at most. “I take it your daughter called you.”
“Stacey thought you might need a little help. She’s wicked worried about those two girls.”
“Did you talk to her tonight?” I asked.
“Not since I took off. Why?”
“She tried calling me, but I was out in the boonies. When I had a signal again, I figured it was too late to call her back, so I e-mailed her instead.”
The old pilot chuckled. “You don’t know much about the female sex, do you?”
Charley Stevens had been one of my first mentors: someone who’d believed in me as a warden and a man when I’d done nothing but shown bad judgment. In just four years, he had taught me more about the woods than I could have learned on my own in three lifetimes. He and his wife were, in just about every meaningful way, the parents I’d always wished I had, which made my new relationship with their daughter both fitting and awkward.
I put my head in my hands. “So you mean I should have woken her?”
“All women, in my experience, appreciate hearing that their men haven’t fallen off a cliff.”
“Should I call her now?”
“I’m not sure if you should be asking your sweetheart’s dad for romantic advice,” he said with a chuckle. “And I definitely shouldn’t be giving it to you. So what’s the latest on the search?”
“Samantha and Missy signed into the logbook at Chairback Gap, but there’s no trace of them after that. It looks like they disappeared in the valley between Gulf Hagas and the Katahdin Iron Works.”
“The KI Road runs through that stretch,” he said. “Those girls could have hitched a ride out.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.”
Charley had a craggy face that spoke of a long life of outdoor adventure. He was the only person I knew who tugged on his chin while he contemplated a problem. “Searching that section of the trail is going to be the devil’s own job.”
“Do you want me to fill you in on my meeting with DeFord?”
“I’d rather you took a shower,” he said. “If we’re going to be bedfellows for the night, I’d prefer you didn’t skunk up the place.”
And with that, he turned off the light.