Stacey and I had done the trip in five days. Even though we were young and fit, the effort had exhausted us. When we’d reached Allagash, we’d slept twelve hours at McKinnon’s Lodge. The charming redhead who owned the place said the record had been set by a paddler who didn’t awaken for thirty-six hours. She had been tempted to call her cousin, the mortician.
I could claim that I had forgotten that Stacey was headed north, that she would presumably be arriving in the morning in her father’s borrowed plane, but it would be more accurate to say I had tamped down the thought. Seeing her again—and so soon—was more than I could deal with.
I needed to refocus on the problem before me.
Egan had stood up to hours of questioning after Pellerin went missing. He had done his full sentence in the prison Mainers nicknamed “Shawshank” after the Stephen King story and movie. He had never given up his secrets.
But Egan’s circumstances had changed. He had a family, a baby. He was out from under Pierre Michaud’s thumb, if not Roland’s.
And someone had brutally killed Angie Bouchard. Whatever alternate theories Zanadakis felt compelled to explore, I knew her death was a direct result of that telltale badge. She had been killed to shut her up. Her murderer would know that Egan was a potential squealer.
What would Charley do?
Wrong question: What was Charley doing?
My friend would have the same instinct about Egan that I had. He would be watching the redheaded man closely. He would be waiting for him to panic and reveal some long-held secret. He would be preparing for Angie’s murderer to come looking for blood.
40
The rain had stopped, but the temperature had risen. The clamminess made me remember something my father had told me about the war. In Vietnam, he had said, your uniform got soaked from two directions: from the mist seeping in and from your perspiration unable to escape.
Welcome to the jungle.
The road west along the St. John River had grown narrower with the ground fog. My nervous foot kept hitting the brake pedal. My imagination saw a looming moose around every bend.
Twenty miles out of Fort Kent, I again came to the crossroads. I passed the overgrown ruins of the Michauds’ burned houses. Then the haunted Valley View Motel with its sad bilingual sign, now and forever vacant. Police tape hung across the entrance to the parking lot: a reflective ribbon. And then St. Ignace was behind me. The hamlet was no longer a real place, just words on a map that would, in time, disappear, too.
Finally, a handsome wooden sign, adorned with painted oak leaves, appeared in my lone headlight.
ENTERING
A Scots/Irish Community
Settled in 1838
I lost my cell signal long before I reached town.
The village center sat at the looping confluence of the Allagash and the St. John Rivers. I paused in front of the lone eatery, closed for the night, and shined my flashlight onto the water-stained pages of my atlas, spread across the passenger seat. I had no idea where Jon Egan lived.
I only knew that I would recognize his Toyota Tacoma, with its distinctive plow mount and safety lights, when I saw it again. Most people in the area, I guessed, lived close to the roads. The lumber company that owned 99 percent of the land outside town had kept residential development confined to maximize the extent of its tree-felling operations.
Twin lights in the mist behind me announced the arrival of another vehicle—a large pickup, from the height of the beams—but before I could reach for my handgun, the truck stopped in the road. It was too far for me to identify the color, especially with its high beams on. The driver hesitated, but not more than fifteen seconds, then turned left onto a woods road.
Maybe someone tailing me, maybe not, but I had better things to do than go chasing it.
I made a slow circuit of the village, sparking the interest of more than a handful of watchdogs. Porch lights snapped on as I idled outside trailers. If I had been an Allagasher, I would have grabbed my gun if a junked Scout stopped outside my door.
Having found no sign of Egan, I crossed the Dickey Bridge. The span, above the St. John, was where the pavement ended. One could go no farther north in Maine except on private property. A handful of houses stretched out along the north bank.
I didn’t spot any Tacomas parked outside these residences, so I followed the road north, losing hope with every tick of my odometer. Soon I would come upon yet another gatehouse and be forced to turn back. I couldn’t even call anyone for assistance, my phone being useless.
I had just about given up when I saw the snowplow.
It was beached in the dooryard of a modular home. Two ATVs were parked out front, his and hers, along with a Toyota 4Runner SUV that had seen better days.
The reason the plow caught my attention was its color. It wasn’t the golden yellow of the snowplows made by the Maine-based company, Fisher. It was black and yellow: a Meyer HomePlow. The same maker of the mount on Egan’s pickup.
When I pulled into the drive, a dog began to bark inside the house. It didn’t sound as fierce as Ferox, but even smaller breeds can take a hunk of meat from your calf. A motion-sensitive light came on, flooding the entire yard, catching a thousand moths and mayflies in midflight. A woman, holding a baby in her arms, appeared in the door. She had close-cropped blond hair and was dressed in mismatched sweats. She was at least twenty years younger than Egan. Taller, too, by almost a foot. A curly-haired spaniel peeked between her
