I hauled out my collection of topographical maps and found the quadrangle that included Number Six Mountain and Intervale and Tantrattle Pond and spread the curling paper across the kitchen table, using my coffee mug, my gun, and my elbow to keep the corners pinned. Seeing the geography translated into print for the first time—the rises in elevation marked by rings, the blue streams wriggling downhill, the paved roads and the Jeep trails—I was finally able to plot several possible routes Shadow might have taken from the valley to Alcohol Mary’s mountain. I circled the Tantrattle cabin and used an X to mark the pasture where the wolf had killed the donkey and another X for where the road dead-ended at Gorman Peaslee’s house.
I had worried yesterday that Shadow might have wandered for miles before he finally collapsed beside Mary Gowdie’s woodpile, but looking closely at the map, I had a powerful intuition that he had been shot somewhere within a three-mile radius of Number Six Mountain, somewhere to the north or east. The steep cliff faces to the south and west would have closed off access to all but the most determined bow hunters. And no serious outdoorsman would pursue his quarry using a youth crossbow and a cheap bolt.
Given the condition of the road into Tantrattle, I decided to drive my personal vehicle back up to the Sandy River Valley. Taking my Scout would also help if I was called to explain myself to the Warden Service brass. It would be much easier to portray my actions as personally motivated if I seemed to be on vacation.
I made a practice of keeping my Scout loaded with everything I might want for an impromptu weekend in the woods. I had a tent, tarp, sleeping bag, reflector oven and cooking supplies, ax, come-along, chain saw—anything and everything I might conceivably need. To this I added a toolbox, two-by-fours to repair the door, as well as a mop and a bucket to clean up the filth.
When I saw it was close to ten, a brainstorm came into my head.
“I want you to check out,” I told Aimee when I reached her by phone.
“I told you to let it go, Mike. Besides, where are we supposed to stay?”
I was about to tell her that I would find them another motel when the invitation erupted from my mouth. “You can stay at my house!”
“Your house?”
“I won’t be here for the next few days, and there is a lot of space for the kids to play outside. It will give you a place to lie low from reporters after Billy is granted his release. Besides, didn’t you tell me you’ve always hated motels?”
“You’re not afraid of us trashing the place?”
“Not at all,” I lied.
I followed the sun west until I reached the state capital of Augusta and saw the Kennebec River in full flood and pushing free of its banks.
When I was young, there had been a dam here, but it had been taken down to free the river for salmon, alewives, and other seagoing fish to return and spawn in upstream tributaries. Now the head of tide was twenty miles to the north, in Waterville. Looking down from the high eastern bank, I saw standing waves and whirlpools where the fast-flowing current collided with the surge of salt water. Whole trees, torn up by their roots, were being carried along, their branches like skeleton arms outstretched for help. I hadn’t heard if any of the towns along the river downstream had been swamped, but it wouldn’t have surprised me to learn that the streets of Hallowell and Gardiner were underwater.
A bald eagle flew overhead with nesting materials gripped in its talons like a quiver of arrows and an olive branch. Our national symbol is a waterbird that prefers to nest in a huge tree with a commanding view of the ocean, a lake, or a large river such as the Kennebec. I’d read about an eagle’s nest in Ohio that was supposedly twelve feet thick and more than eight feet in diameter. Charley Stevens had once told me how, as a boy, he’d climbed fifty feet to the top of a pine and spent the night in an abandoned nest after the eaglets had fledged.
And people accused me of being foolhardy.
Following the river south, I made my way to the wooded campus that houses the Maine State Police Crime Laboratory. I entered the building through the back sallyport. To prevent tampering with evidence, the lab has a complicated series of rules for how and when it receives materials for testing.
I ignored them. One of the technicians owed me a favor.
“Why are you doing this to me, Bowditch?” Paul Panagore asked when I presented him with the crossbow bolt. He was a bulging, thick-fingered man with a natural monk’s tonsure and a constant air of being put-upon.
“I’ll never ask for special treatment again.”
“That’s what you said the last time.” He squinted through his reading glasses at the arrow in the bag. “You do realize that if you don’t fill out the paperwork and submit this through channels, you’re going to break the chain of evidence? Whatever I find will be useless in court.”
I had no intention of bringing this matter to a prosecutor, but I decided to stay mum.
Instead I put my hand on his soft shoulder. “I want to know if we have the archer’s prints in the system. Dust this and tell me what you find.”
“Someone here is bound to notice that I’m freelancing.”
“You won’t be caught.”
“How do you know?”
“Because you’re the best there is. Any chance you can get me the results by the end of the day?”
Panagore removed his readers and pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers. “You know what your problem is, Bowditch? You dwell happily in a state of constant chaos. It doesn’t occur to you
