He was not afraid of being pulled over by the cops. No one around here would look twice at a guy driving a battered pickup while wearing a Jets cap and a brown-and-white camo jacket.
These disguises made him feel invisible. During the past three weeks, he’d stood unnoticed along the Indian while hikers, forest rangers, and outfitters passed within fifty yards of his campsite. To minimize the risk of getting caught, he’d driven to New Jersey to purchase full-body camouflage outfits, to Plattsburg for non-glare binoculars, to Albany for knee-high gaiters, and then to Freeport, Maine for what LL Bean called its Pine Forest Camouflage Backpack.
Ice crystals as delicate as Christmas ornaments glistened in the sunlight. He pulled on a pair of thick wool gloves, reached into the back seat for his pack, and got out of the truck. After sweeping a Scotch pine branch across his tire tracks, he jogged across the road and disappeared into the woods just as the sun broke the horizon.
At 7:00 a.m., Carlyle watched Marshall’s new red Toyota 4x4 pull off the main road and bounce down the gravel trail toward the meadow perched above the Indian. Betts, in a rusting, decade-old pickup, arrived three minutes later. Nash, driving a Jeep tricked out with an emergency light bar and a winch, was just behind him.
On weekends during the rafting season, the scene at the meadow was chaotic. Hundreds of boisterous clients milled around, churning the ground into mud while outfitters attempted to corral them into boats at the foot of the hill.
The meadow was empty and almost silent this morning. It had snowed for several hours last night. Carlyle’s thermometer read forty-two degrees. The ground was still frozen and would not turn to slush until the sun appeared over the tree line.
The four men exchanged handshakes and finished their coffee. Betts stared down at the basin. “So, what’s this all about?”
“What does it look like?” Carlyle said. “We’re taking a little trip.”
“Yeah? Where to?”
“Cedar Ledges.”
Betts threw his coffee cup into the woods. “Why make us go through Blake’s death again?”
“We need to find out how this son of a bitch moves around without anyone seeing him.”
Nash said, “How are we supposed to do that?”
“If we do a meticulous search of the chute and the ground all around it, we may find something that the cops overlooked.”
“Like what?” Nash said.
“No matter what you’ve heard, criminals aren’t the smartest people in the world. If you know what you’re looking for, you can always find something out of place.”
Nash zipped up his life vest. “You mind telling me why it was necessary to leave at dawn?”
“I didn’t want reporters following us. We need time to examine the site without anyone looking over our shoulders. The sooner we leave, the less chance there is we’ll be interrupted.”
Marshall peered down toward the water. “Is that my raft down there?”
“I took it from the shed two hours ago.”
“What the hell have you been doing since five in the morning?”
“Deciding how I was going to convince you to come with me today.”
“Screw it,” Betts said. “Let’s just get this over with.”
The four men inched down the hill and dropped their gear into the boat. “You can examine whatever the hell you want,” Marshall said to Carlyle, “but I’m in charge of this crew today.”
Betts picked up a paddle. “Can we please get going before I kill both of you?”
It took them twenty minutes to reach the Gooley Steps. Carlyle paddled in silence, staring at the Indian and the woods. Although it was mid-April already, the forest was still in the grip of winter, the maples and birch without leaves, the white pine, spruce, and hemlock dull green.
No outfitter ran midweek trips until the end of the month, and DEC, fearing another incident, had warned the kayak crowd to stay off the water. If they were attacked today, Carlyle and the others would be three hours from the nearest road and unable to call in for help.
Ignoring the bitter cold and the piercing wind, the four men quickly worked their way down the ice-choked Indian River. At 8:20 a. m., they pulled into an eddy halfway down Cedar, fifteen yards upstream from where they’d found Blake’s body six days ago. They tied the boat up and waded through snow and mud across a narrow peninsula to the cheat chute.
Nash said, “You have any idea what we’re looking for?”
Carlyle stopped to catch his breath. “Two things. Evidence of how he dropped the log right where he wanted it, and where he was that morning while we were trying to revive Blake.”
Carlyle ducked under the flimsy police tape and began pacing the area, stopping every few seconds to measure the distance between the chute and the tree line. “To get his ambush to work, the tree had to be facing upstream, just about here.” He pointed to a bare spot in the snow. Carlyle turned around and walked twenty feet into the woods. “Break off a branch, stay ten feet apart, and sweep the ground.”
“We’re supposed to find what?” Betts said.
“Come on, Alex,” Carlyle said. “We’re looking for the tree stump.”
The four men, bent over at the waist like peasant farmers in some Third World country, began swiping at the snow with their makeshift pine brooms. After twenty minutes, they’d found nothing.
Marshall threw his branch down. “Okay, Sherlock, we struck out. This is a dead end.”
Carlyle stood up. “It’s too early to say that. We saw the log. It had to be at least eight feet long. He couldn’t have brought it far. That means we haven’t found it yet or he was able to dispose of it.”
“What happens if we don’t find it?” Nash said.
Carlyle thought a moment.
