She described the details of the attack to Carlyle a month after they met. They were sitting in a coffee house along the river in Troy. It was late afternoon in November. Dark outside. The river gray and still above the dam.
“I kept a diary for a while, but the flashbacks just became more intense. Then I put my recent work in storage and started taking out my anger on the canvas.” Rothko-like images, huge slabs of red, black, and yellow, quickly took over her studio.
Carlyle walked back to the house and began to make lunch. A few minutes later, she came down to the kitchen. “You’re still here.” She kissed his cheek.
He put his arm around her shoulders. “I didn’t want to leave until you knew where I was going.”
She sat down at the table and put a half-piece of toast on her plate. “How’d your meeting go this morning?”
“Some idiot in DEC thinks we’re bungling the case.”
She took an orange from a bowl and began to cut it in sections. “Are we safe?”
“You mean here, in this house?” She nodded. Carlyle wiped his hands on a napkin. “What are you afraid of?”
Beth pushed her plate away. “Haven’t you seen the patrol cars cruising up and down our road?”
“I should have told you. When the press announced I was connected to the manhunt, I asked the local cops to watch the place.”
“What else haven’t you told me?”
Carlyle looked at his watch. “Do we have to do this now?”
“There’s more, isn’t there?” She got up and walked to the window facing the road.
“They have two people on rotating eight-hour shifts stationed in the house across the way.”
“At the McMillans?”
“They moved to her mother’s place until this is over.
“For God’s sake.”
“The police said it’s best if we don’t know what else they’re doing.”
She turned around and faced him. “But you won’t admit that we’re in danger?”
“It’s just a routine precaution.”
“Routine? How can you say that? Should I go somewhere until this is over?”
“I wouldn’t let you stay here if I thought you were in danger.”
She sat back down. “When are you leaving again?”
“Tomorrow at dawn. But I promise I’ll be back by dark.”
“Then what happens?”
“I’ll start paying attention to this place. You won’t have to ask Adrian to come back again.”
The windows trembled as several helicopters, their rotors slashing through the thick afternoon air, cut through the valley on their way north. When the noise faded, she said, “Do they have anything to do with the manhunt?”
“DEC is moving forest rangers from across the state to staging posts around the gorge. The police have set up checkpoints on all roads leading to the river at every Northway exit ramp.”
“And you still insist I have nothing to worry about?”
Working by the light of a single gas lantern, it took him forty-five minutes to assemble the equipment he would need for his next assault. When he was done, a lightweight wall hammer, a compact backcountry shovel, a sixty-foot piece of 9.2 mm canyon rope, a half-dozen snow anchors, a climber’s harness, and two pulley sets sat on the workbench in his barn.
He stowed his gear, including a pair of Lund bear paws, in a high-volume external-frame rucksack. The four pieces of six-foot rebar now lying under canvas in his pickup would go on his shoulder. After studying the map and estimating how much snow remained on the trail, he estimated he would have to carry the forty-eight-pound load for two hours.
Because it made him feel invulnerable, he’d begun using his grandfather’s gear, even the clothing the old man had left before he died. He tugged open the door of a large oak cupboard and began the transformation.
In the mirror, he saw what some would have called a ghost from the past, a lumberman with wind-scarred cheeks and a neatly trimmed handlebar mustache. The image did not reveal the hidden wounds that went along with a lifetime in the woods: a broken nose, fractured pelvis, and punctured lung. He was also missing the ring finger on his left hand.
His three-page, minute-by-minute plan for what would take place tomorrow required an eight-mile drive to the trailhead, a two-mile hike into the canyon, and at least two hours on-site. When it was all over, someone might guess how he’d set up this job, but by then it would be too late to prevent him from escaping.
The reporters had begun calling him a homicidal maniac, but they knew nothing about the grievances his people had faced here and did not understand the terrible things that would happen to these woods if his campaign failed.
Once he’d driven out Phillip Marshall and his cronies, Hamilton County would again belong to those who’d earned the right to live here. The forest would revive, logging camps would spring up, thousands of skilled men would be employed cutting timber, and boatmen would again run log rafts down the Hudson to Glens Falls. This region would be known for providing affordable land and decent jobs to working families, folks who wanted nothing more than to make a life in this frontier territory.
He shouldered his load, locked the house, and drove off in the dark toward the gorge.
Fourteen
At 8:00 a.m. Sunday morning, Carlyle and Wells stood facing each other in Bognor’s office on the outskirts of Indian Lake. The room was littered with coffee cups, faxes, old case files, and maps of the gorge.
“You look terrible,” Carlyle said. “What happened?”
“I’ve been up all night. A father and his two teenage sons got trapped on Cascade.”
“They make it out okay?”
“One of the
