“If he left his mobile phone here, I haven’t come across it. Can I pour you some more coffee, dear?”
“I’d appreciate that,” I said. “I also wonder if I might use your computer.”
“Charley cleared the browser search history. I already checked.” More than most people their ages, the Stevenses were determined not to be left behind by new technology.
“Does he do that often?”
“Never.”
Ora told me that Charley’s password was O-1BirdDog, after the light aircraft he had flown during the Vietnam War.
Bird Dogs were small surveillance planes that often skipped just above the treetops within easy range of enemy fire. The North Vietnamese Army didn’t need a shoulder-fired missile to take down a Bird Dog. The weapon that had downed Charley’s plane was an AK-47.
Ora was in the kitchen, cleaning up. She had sensed that I didn’t want her watching over my shoulder. The locator app probably wouldn’t even function. The phone might be out of power. It might be beyond the reach of a cellular signal. Or Charley might have removed the SIM card that could be used to trace the phone’s physical location.
A map of Sixth Machias Lake appeared instantly on the screen. An icon indicated the location of Charley’s phone. At first, it seemed to be inside the house. Only when I zoomed in did I see that the phone was pictured at the edge of the lake.
Charley’s floatplane.
In her wheelchair, Ora would have been unable to check the Cessna herself. I shut down the machine and returned to the kitchen, where she was drying the last plate with a rag. I didn’t want to tell her about my discovery until I could assess the situation firsthand.
“I’m going to take a walk to clear my head.”
“You’ll be eaten alive. The blackflies and mosquitoes are especially bad this year on account of the wet spring we had.”
“Not as bad as the Everglades, I expect.”
“That’s just what Stacey says!”
The mention of her daughter caused a moment of awkwardness. She asked if I needed a flashlight. I showed her the SureFire I carried in my pocket.
I hadn’t taken more than two steps outside before the first mosquito jabbed her needle into my neck, but at least I could safely assume this one wasn’t carrying malaria. The haze of clouds concealed the precise location of the waxing moon, but the night wasn’t entirely dark. I slid my flashlight into my pocket and let my night vision guide me down the boardwalk to the lake.
Trout were rising to hatching insects. The fish made circles that rippled outward across the smooth surface. The newly emerged mayflies were Hexagenia limbata, and they were three inches long with greenish wings. I had worked as a fishing guide and had loved taking clients out at night for the Hex hatch.
Charley kept his floatplane—a red-and-white Skyhawk—tied to the dock beside the boathouse.
I pulled myself up by one of the struts and ducked to keep from knocking my head against the wing. I was correct in my assumption that he had left the door of the aircraft unlocked. As I entered the familiar cabin, the locus of so many of our adventures together, the plane rocked gently on the surface of the lake.
I shined the flashlight around the cockpit and found the phone sitting atop the pilot’s seat. Beneath it was a sealed envelope with my name on it. And another, addressed to Ora.
I tore mine open.
Dear Mike,
I expect this makes no sense to you, my going off like a thief in the night. You think I’m cruel for leaving Ora to wonder and worry. Trust me, I had no choice. For one, I may be a fool about my suspicions. I won’t know for certain until I talk to some folks I hoped never to meet again.
My fear is that I made the worst mistake a man can make in this life. If so, it means there’s someone out there who’s kept quiet all these years, waiting for me to wise up to my foolishness, a man of patience and guile. He’s been expecting me, I fear, and taken precautions. I can’t put Ora or the girls in danger of his retribution.
Chances are, I’ll be back before I’m missed, in which case you won’t have to give Ora the other letter I’ve left.
But if I’m not back, it’ll mean I’m beyond anyone’s ability to find, and your searching may only deliver you into the grasp of the same man who killed me. Instead I hope you will forsake revenge and destroy these notes. Let my family remember me as the man I tried to be after my moment of weakness.
I know you well enough to reckon that you won’t heed my words of caution. Which is why I am leaving you in the dark, too. I will cover my trail to keep you from following, but I fear I may have taught you too well.
I love you, son. Don’t come after me.
Charley
When I’d finished, I felt an inner heaviness—like a weight upon my soul—because I understood that this document might effectively be my friend’s last testament.
12
When I returned to the house, I found Ora parked under a standing lamp. A glass filled with amber liquid and ice cubes rested within reach on a small table. A whiskey and soda was her nightly indulgence. She looked up from the book she was reading, a biography of the photographer Margaret Bourke-White.
“You look positively bloodless,” she said, peering at me above her reading glasses. “Did the mosquitoes drink you dry?”
My voice didn’t want to leave my throat. “They were pretty bad.”
“What did you find out there?”
“Nothing that tells me where he went.”
I was using the truth to mislead her. I hoped my shame didn’t show in my expression and give away the secret.
If it did, she was too polite to press the matter. Instead she smiled that incandescent smile of hers. “I hope you are staying
