Panting, I said, “How about you tell me where you’ve been?”
“Following you,” he said, lifting his head. There was that warm, wide grin, those deep-etched laugh lines, that comically oversized chin. “I should have been closer, but I knew you were onto the Jeep.”
He made a hitchhiking motion with his thumb toward the idling silver Wrangler fifty feet down the road. Rain spun in its headlights.
“Is Nick Francis driving your truck? Why did he tell Kellam I was coming? What are you two up to?”
I sensed he was struggling not to answer. “I can’t explain, Mike. I need to leave before anyone else arrives.”
“Why?”
“Certain people can’t know where I am.”
“Which people? Kellam?”
“I told you not to follow me, son.”
I had regained my breath. “You knew I would try to track you. You counted on it. And today was the second time it nearly got me killed. You’ve been using me as bait, Charley. Because you can’t ask certain questions, you’ve let me do it for you, and it’s put me in harm’s way.”
“I’ve always been nearby,” he said, trying to reassure me with a fatherly tone. “I’ve always been watching.”
“Like at Moccasin Pond? You were the man in the hat.”
“It’s one of Nick’s.”
“And it was you who called Chasse Lamontaine and tricked him into visiting Kellam.”
“I did.”
“And now you’re just going to disappear again? Without any explanation? You owe me answers, Charley. Starting with who was behind the wheel of that truck.”
“I can’t tell you.”
“Does that mean you don’t know, or you know but refuse to say?”
“I understand how frustrated you are. Trust me when I say we’re getting close.” The old pilot rose to his full height. At five and a half feet, it would be a mistake to say he loomed over me. With his shaved head, he was nearly unrecognizable. “We owe it all to you, Mike. You’ve flushed them for us.”
“I’ve been your bird dog, you mean? And by ‘us,’ you mean you and Nick Francis? Why do you trust him, but not me?”
He glanced up and down the darkened road without answering.
I was tired of his game. “Stacey’s on her way here.”
Now it was his turn to go gray. “When?”
“She has a flight from Florida tonight, and then she’s flying your Cessna up here.”
“You told her about me?”
“I didn’t have to. She sensed something was wrong when she reached out to you and got no answer. Ora wasn’t going to lie when Stacey asked her what was happening.”
“You can’t let her come here. They’re not going to stop now—not after what just happened. All we need is another day. We’re so close to the truth, and they’re getting sloppy.”
“Who’s ‘they’? At least tell me that.”
Two pinpoints of light appeared in the darkness: a vehicle following the river road from Fort Kent. Charley took a step toward the Jeep.
“You can’t tell anyone you saw me,” he said over his shoulder. “You have to trust me, son. I’ll find you again soon.”
Before I could say another word, he sprinted off toward the idling Wrangler.
Seconds later, it roared by, passing the oncoming vehicle. I watched the taillights grow smaller and smaller in the rain. Part of me felt relieved, even thrilled, to see the old man. Another part burned with resentment as if I’d swallowed acid.
Whatever Charley might have said, he had placed me in harm’s way without my consent.
I shifted position amid the ferns. They were prehistoric plants, glad for the return of primordial heat. I tried to raise my left arm and could only lift it past my shoulder with considerable pain.
But nothing matched the agony of seeing the injuries done to my Scout. As it was perched on its side, I found it impossible to assess the full damage. The frame looked intact, and the tires were not hissing air, but the exterior was dented, scraped, mangled.
The oncoming vehicle turned out to be yet another pickup. For an instant, I wondered if the monster truck had returned, but this one was ghost white. I experienced a crazy vision of Joe Fixico, having driven two thousand miles from the Everglades to my rescue.
Instead of stopping along the shoulder, the pale vehicle drove straight across the ditch and out into the field with barely a bounce. It was a Dodge Laramie, recently washed and waxed; then rinsed clean again by the rain.
I raised a forearm to block its headlights. The diesel engine chugged as it idled. I heard a door open and slam shut.
“Bowditch?”
I squinted into the light. “Who’s that?”
“Jesus, man,” said Stan Kellam. “What happened to you?”
What were the odds of Kellam being the first person to come upon the crash scene?
“I hydroplaned off the road.”
“And tumbled all the way here? It’s a miracle you survived. I’m going to recommend to your colonel that you take a remedial driving class.”
“With all due respect, Stan, go fuck yourself.”
The retired warden wore a hooded olive-green raincoat, safari shorts, and leather sandals that reminded me of something Ernest Hemingway might have worn in his Key West days. “Did you just come from St. Ignace?”
“I was headed back into Fort Kent to assist in the interviews. Nico Zanadakis is running the investigation.”
“He’s the one who called me. You lied to me about what you were up to.”
“I withheld information.”
“Don’t get Jesuitical with me, you little shit.”
“Do you want me to apologize?”
When he opened his mouth to laugh, his breath smelled of beer. “Are you genuinely regretful?”
“Not particularly.”
“Then it would be another lie.”
He circled my side-swiped Scout. He crouched and ran a hand along the bumper. “It looks like you were rammed from behind.”
I tried lifting my left arm again with the same results. “The whole thing was a freak accident.”
“No one else was involved?”
“No.”
Maybe he believed me. Maybe he didn’t.
“I think I can winch you over onto your wheels. Whether this piteous deformity is still roadworthy is another story. But here comes the cavalry.”
Blue lights flashed in the darkness. Stan and I didn’t exchange another word
