“Looks like it.”
“What kind of vehicle?”
He looked at me. “One with tires.”
“Was the driver right-handed or left-handed?”
“You’re funny.”
“Come on, you’re the Indian guide. Where are the tracking skills?”
We had walked maybe two more miles, and were about to give up and turn around. But then we went around a bend and the road ended. There were three vehicles parked among the trees-one jeep and two pickup trucks-and then through the trees we could see blue water.
“I’m guessing this is Lake Peetwaniquot,” I said.
“I think we found it.”
“They don’t need a sign on the road. Either you know how to get here or you don’t.”
I looked at my watch. It was almost five o’clock. There was some daylight left, but the sun hung low enough in the west to cast long shadows. As soon as we had stopped moving, the air felt cold again.
“Let’s go see who’s here,” Vinnie said.
“Lead the way.”
We walked down the path, the trees opening up to a clearing and a large cabin overlooking the lake. As we got closer we could see a couple of smaller sheds set back in the woods, and a long dock. There was a floatplane tied up to it, and two aluminum boats with outboard motors.
“Hello!” Vinnie said. The sound died in the cold wind. Nobody answered.
“There’s got to be somebody here,” I said.
We walked down closer to the lake. The wind was just strong enough to kick up a light chop in the water. The floatplane bobbed up and down.
“Hello!” Vinnie said again.
Nothing.
We walked out onto the dock, passing a large weighmaster’s scale and several propane tanks. There was no sound but our heavy footsteps on the wood, the wind blowing in off the lake, the hollow clunk when the boats came together, and the plane’s left float working up and down against the rubber bumpers on the dock.
“It’s a nice lake,” I said. It was maybe a half mile across, with nothing but trees on the far shore.
Vinnie wasn’t looking out at the water, but at the dark, seemingly empty window of the cabin. “Let’s see if anybody’s in there,” he said.
We were halfway there when the man stepped out from the shed.
Blood.
That’s all I saw at first. The man was covered in blood.
“Whatcha boys need?” he said.
“You own this place?” Vinnie said.
That broke the spell. I saw the man clearly, with the full-length canvas apron, the gloves. He was a little guy, not more than five feet tall. And he must have been about my age, which made me wonder why he called us boys.
“Nah, you want Helen,” he said. “I just work here.”
“You’re butchering something?” Vinnie said.
The man looked down at his gloves. “A moose,” he said. “What a goddamned mess.”
A woman peeked her head around the door behind him. She was the same size as the man, and you could tell in a second they’d been married forever. “Who is it, Ron?”
“Couple of men,” he said. He didn’t introduce us to her. Instead he just turned around and went back to her. They disappeared into the shed and closed the door.
“What’s the matter with you?” Vinnie said. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“It’s nothing,” I said. “I’m fine.”
Just a little blood, I thought. No problem.
“I take it that woman in the shed wasn’t Helen,” he said. “You suppose she’s in the main cabin?”
“Let’s go see,” I said. “I thought they’d never stop talking.”
We went up the path to the front door of the cabin, climbing a set of wooden stairs that desperately needed a new coat of paint. The whole place had a run-down look about it, from the cracked foundation to the porch ceiling overrun with spider webs. We knocked on the front door. Nobody answered.
Vinnie looked at me, knocked on the door again, and then opened it. The room we stepped into was a lot nicer than what I expected, based on how the place looked from the outside. A big wooden table stood in the center of the room, with eight hand-carved chairs. There was a stone fireplace on the back wall that my old man would have approved of, and a great moose head looking down at us, its rack of antlers as wide as a piano.
“Hello!” Vinnie said. “Anybody here?”
“Back here!” a voice said. “Come on in!”
There was a door in the far wall of the room. As we stepped around the table, I looked up at the moose head. He seemed to stare right back at me.
Vinnie pushed the door open slowly and peeked inside. It was an office, with a rolltop desk and a big window overlooking the lake. The woman inside was fiddling around with the antenna on a small television. Where she expected to get a signal from, I couldn’t even guess. Maybe a CBC station out of Timmins.
“We’re sorry to bother you,” Vinnie said.
The woman turned around and looked at us. “Oh!” she said. “I thought you were the men back from town.”
“We’re sorry to bother you, ma’am,” I said.
“It’s all right,” she said. “You just surprised me.” She had brown eyes, that was the first thing I noticed. She was about my age, maybe a couple years older, with brown hair just starting toward gray, and she was wearing a red flannel shirt a couple sizes too big. My overall impression was a nice lady who was a little tough, too. I suppose that’s what it took way the hell up here.
“The couple outside told us to come see you,” I said. “They said you owned the place. We tried calling you, but I think you have a problem with your phone.”
“I’m Helen St. Jean,” she said, standing up. She shook Vinnie’s hand and then mine. “Yeah, that phone’s been out for a week. If it wasn’t so late in the season, I’d get it fixed so it could go out again.”
Vinnie spoke up. “My name is Tom LeBlanc,” he said. The old switcheroo was apparently alive and well. “This is my friend Alex McKnight.”
“That was Ron and Millie you met outside,” she said. “He was probably still working on that moose.”
“He seemed to be up to his elbows in it,” Vinnie said.
She frowned at that. “I don’t know how many mooseburgers those men are gonna take home,” she said. “They didn’t seem too happy, is all I know. I don’t imagine they’ll be coming back next year. Not that we’ll even be here next year.”
“Who are we talking about?” Vinnie said. “You see, we’re sort of trying to track down my brother. We know he came up here.”
“I think I hear them now,” she said. “Hank took them over to Calstock when they got back from the lake. You know how it is. Seven days in the woods and you need pizza.”
Vinnie went to the window and craned his neck, trying to see who was outside. “I don’t see him,” he said. “Which party is this, ma’am?”
Before she could answer, a man came stomping into the office. “Son of a freaking-Helen, do you have the sheet for these clowns, eh? The sooner we can get rid of them-” He stopped when he saw us standing there. “Let me guess,” he said. “The truck that some idiot ran off the road back there.”
“That would be me,” I said. “There was a moose.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I’ve got the bill all made up,” Helen said, ruffling through the papers on the desk. “Let me just put one more thing on here. Gentlemen, this is Hank Gannon. He’s usually in a better mood. Hank, this is Tom and Alex.”
He stood there looking at us. He was a tall man, with a firm jawline and a commanding air. His name fit him perfectly. With the leather coat and wide-brimmed hat, he looked like the Canadian version of a Texas Ranger. “You
