were obscured beneath the balaclava protecting his face from the cold.
“Reverend Fergusson?”
The voice she recognized. “Officer Durkee?”
“What are you doing wandering around out here?”
She spread her arms open, displaying her pole, flashlight, and map. “I’m volunteering for the search and rescue team.” Before he could point out that she had no prior connection with the team or anyone on it, she added, “I was trained in search and rescue in the army.” Mark Durkee was young enough for references to a higher authority to carry some weight.
“Huh,” he said. He pushed the balaclava up, revealing his face. “I was just headed over there to talk with Jim.”
“About the search?” She glanced at the tow truck, shuddering and chuffing as it wrenched the Buick out of the trees. “Was there any sign that he walked away from the crash?”
Durkee nodded. “There were some boot prints around the car. Pretty indistinct. With the crust on the snow, every step just caves it in, leaves a big jagged hole.”
“Can you tell which way he went?” She looked at his expressionless face and thought, Don’t ever get in a poker game with this guy. “Let me rephrase that. Can you tell which way the footsteps went?”
“They intersect with the trail from the tires. Crunched flat.”
“So you can’t trace them from there?”
He shook his head.
“So maybe he made his way back to the road and was picked up…” She trailed off. “But if that happened, he’d be home by now, wouldn’t he?”
“I’d think so.”
“Did the crime scene investigation team find anything?”
“They always find something.”
“You’re a very closemouthed man, Officer Durkee.”
“Thank you, ma’am.” He smiled at her.
She looked around her, to where the unfathomable darkness of the Adirondack wood was held back by a few headlights and the whirling amber flashers of the tow truck. Even though she hadn’t started yet, her search of the reservoir frontage seemed suddenly futile, an exercise designed to soothe them into thinking they had some control over this great and terrible beast all around them. “Russ doesn’t think Dr. Rouse is going to be found alive,” she said. “Do you?”
He shook his head. “No. But I think the effort is worth it. Whatever we do to find out what happened, to find him, it’ll be a comfort to his family. There’s something to that.”
“Yes. There is.” She gestured with her pole. “I better get to it.” He lifted his hand in a salute that also pulled his balaclava back over his face, and headed up the road to deliver his news to the rest of the search and rescue team.
Clare waded into the snow. She discovered right away what Officer Durkee had been talking about. The stuff was covered with a frozen sludge of snow and ice, pitted with pinecones and broken bits of branches. It was just strong enough to hold her body weight for a second or two before breaking, so that each step jarred up her spine. When she lifted her foot for another step, the powdery snow hidden beneath the crust seeped in between the top edge of her boot and her rip-stop pants, so that within minutes, she felt cold rivulets running down her socks.
She would have thought that the clear, cold air would carry the sounds from the road aloft, that she would still be able to hear the truck axle grinding and voices talking, but the tall pines swallowed everything in a fine-needled screen. The light, too, disappeared shade by shade, which surprised her, since this was a mature forest, no scrub trees or opportunistic bushes to push through. Just northern white pines, one after another after another until, when she looked back to where she had come from, there was no sign of lights or movement, no indication that there had ever been any artifacts of civilization.
She plowed on, trying to ignore her wet socks and the quiet, trying to ignore the narrow thread of panic that fluttered beneath her breastbone, chanting
She could see the reservoir through the trees now, white and shining, and she hurried to break through into the clear air and was astonished when she did. Up on the road, all the lights casting the rest of the world into darkness had dimmed the effect of the almost-full moon. And beneath the pines, neither the moon nor the sun ever reached the ground. But here-she turned her flashlight off and blinked at the dazzle. The frozen surface of the water was neither white nor black, but glinted like layers of mica. And the size of it! When she had heard the term
She could make out more details of the surface now that her eyes were light adapted, and she could see grayer spots and pockmarks where the ice had melted, broken, re-formed, and refrozen. But even with Huggins’s warning playing in her head, the urge to step out onto that dazzling openness was strong. The Gospel writers had had it right when they described Jesus walking on water. What could feel more godlike than standing in the middle of a lake, water stretching away from you on all sides, the night turned to day by the light of the moon?
The walkie-talkie in her pocket crackled. She tugged her mitten off, retrieved it, and keyed the mike. “Fergusson here,” she said.
“Where are you, Reverend? Over.”
O-kay. So much for being one of the boys. She glanced at her map to remind herself of her distances. “I’m at the reservoir shore, about a quarter mile west of the cemetery site. Over.”
“Head east until you hit the cemetery and then come back up the hill to the road. Over.”
“Why? That’ll be the world’s shortest search.”
“Chief Van Alstyne wants you to drive Debba Clow back to her home. Over.” Additional emphasis on the “Over” to point out how she had forgotten that detail in her last message.
She was tempted to ask exactly how long it had been between the time Chief Van Alstyne found out she was here looking around and his decision Debba could be released. However, considering that every man on the search and rescue team could hear the conversation, she resisted the urge. “Will do. I’m headed that way now. Fergusson out.”
She turned her eyes away from the frozen water and began slogging east, driving her pole through the crusted snow, scanning left, right, left, looking for any sign that someone had come this way before her. They could pull her off this duty assignment, but she by God would do it to the best of her abilities until the end.
Unfortunately, no broken branches, conveniently torn-away bits of clothing, or telltale footprints appeared for her to triumphantly report. From the edge of the reservoir as far into the woods as she could see, the icy snow lay unbroken.
She forgot to check her progress against the map, and was startled when a flashlight beam splashed across her face. For a moment, she was back on a logging road, hearing a cold voice slithering out of the darkness, the snick of a gun’s safety releasing. Her heart tried to squeeze up through her throat.
“It’s me.” Russ’s voice came out of the shadows. “I came back down to make sure you-are you all right?” He crunched into the moonlight and wrapped his hand around her upper arm, bunching his fingers in the insulated fabric as if to keep her from falling.
She nodded, pressed her free hand against her mouth, breathed against the mitten. “Yeah, I’m fine,” she said when she could. “Your flashlight… it startled me, that’s all.”
He looked at her closely, his eyes washed colorless in the moonlight. When had he developed that look, like he was seeing right through her, right into her? She made herself busy with stuffing her map back into her pocket. “I’m fine,” she repeated, although he hadn’t asked. “Let’s go.”
“It’s real slippery through here,” he said. “Take my hand.” He reached toward her. She stared at his glove for a moment, knowing that if Mark Durkee had been there, offering to help her keep her balance, she wouldn’t have
