“I do.”
“I’m not saying he sold the one that was used against that male wolf.”
“I’ve already had a conversation with him. He denies all knowledge.”
Pete grinned. “My aunt used to say Denis Cormier had a Ph.D. in denial. I hope you don’t mind my saying that, him being your uncle.”
“We’ve never been close.”
Pete nodded sagely, wanting me to know that he saw our estrangement as a good thing.
“What can I do to help?” I asked.
“Go find the man you’re looking for.”
“Seriously.”
“I am serious. We’ve got a rhythm to working together, my boys and me, and you’d just be in our way. Come back before dusk for the grand unveiling. We’ll have a little toast to celebrate. Ronnie said she’s bringing over some food and beer for you.”
I couldn’t say I was disappointed having my schedule wiped clean. Enough hours were still left in the day for me to poke around the Amish farms, since they were the last place where Shadow had been seen. With luck I might find something—wolf tracks, a donkey bone—that would help fill in the gap between the bloody events in the Stolls’ sheep pasture and Shadow’s turning up injured at Alcohol Mary’s house.
As I was putting the Scout in reverse, Pete looked up from his table saw and hurried over. I cranked down the window. The crisp air smelled of newly sawed wood.
“Ronnie said I should tell you that she paid a visit to the Beliveau boys. She pinched them on trespassing, vandalism, breaking and entering—the whole shebang. I begged her to bring along a couple of Franklin County deputies as backups. It’s good she did because she needed help transporting those three stooges to the jail in Farmington.”
“I’m glad it went smoothly.”
He scratched his beard, dislodging some wood chips. “She did leave a message for you, by the way.”
“Yeah?”
“She said to forget about the Beliveaus as suspects in the attack on your wolf. She and the deputies didn’t find so much as a broadhead when they searched the house. She called the place a shrine to modern sporting rifles. Those hillbillies are too in love with their black guns to pick up a weapon that went out of style in the Middle Ages.”
29
The perforated sign warning about the presence of horses and buggies swayed in the wind that had begun blowing down from the hills. Even by the demented meteorological standards of New England, the weather in the Sandy River Valley seemed freakish and nasty.
A half mile along the road, I overtook a horse-drawn carriage with a reflective orange triangle affixed to the back. The buggy was black, box shaped, and being pulled by a bay horse that trotted along at an impressive speed. I eased my foot off the gas, concerned the animal might spook as I approached, but it must have been accustomed to motor vehicles and continued on without breaking stride.
The buggy had rearview mirrors—salvaged from an auto junkyard—mounted on either side, and in the one on the left, I could make out a man’s face and beard beneath a black hat. To my knowledge Intervale’s Amish community had only three adult males. I was eager to speak with each of them, but it seemed rude for me to pull over a man in a moving carriage for no good reason.
Instead I let the distance between us grow. When I came to the tire-track road leading up to Zane and Indigo’s yurt, I swung a left. I could always catch up with the carriage driver later.
Clumps of fresh straw that hadn’t been there the day before lay in the road.
Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t have thought twice about this. The young hippies were living on a hardscrabble farm they had carved out of the birch woods. What else would you expect to find in such a place?
But Indigo had mentioned that Zane had argued her out of owning a horse and, presumably, other herd animals. I supposed there must be other uses for straw and hay on a farm. Maybe they stuffed their mattress with the dried-out stalks or used it to thatch roofs. Possibly they’d piled bales around the outside of their yurt as insulation against the hard winter weather. Maybe they made their own scarecrows.
But if there was one thing I had learned as a game warden, it was to notice the object out of place, the item that had been disturbed, the detail that didn’t belong. Although I couldn’t have told you why at the time, the newly scattered straw bothered me.
Where the trees opened up and the road entered a smallish field, still not entirely cleared of glacial rubble, I came upon a sign planted in the ground: FOREST FARM II. YOUR GOVERNMENT IS NO LONGER MINE.
So this homestead was a sequel to another whose name I didn’t recognize. The confrontational motto surprised me, I had to admit. It seemed like a proclamation Gorman Peaslee would have shouted from his barricades.
At the far end of the field stood a hooped greenhouse made of torn plastic sheeting. With every gust, the tattered structure would fill with air, then, as the wind leaked out, it would contract again. The potting shed seemed to be breathing.
Indigo’s Subaru was nowhere to be seen. Zane’s truck, I assumed, was either still perched precariously on the side of Number Six Mountain or had been hauled away for repair or demolition.
I had never set foot inside a yurt before. The Mongolian structure sat upon a raised wooden platform. Stairs led up to a single, impressively carpentered front door, engraved with artful images of storks and carp. The house was round with a conical roof. The walls were made of a fabric like sailcloth. The heavy fabric seemed to be stretched tightly over hidden ribs that provided structure to what was, in essence, a glorified tent. The windows were of translucent plastic. Curlicues of woodsmoke issued from a metal stovepipe jutting from the top.
Around the property I saw assorted sheds.
