It was the shape that marked it out, although the forest had done its best to obscure its lines. At first glance, it looked only like the trunk of a fallen tree, one much larger than those that surrounded it, but a portion of one wing protruded from the foliage, and the flashlight made parts of the fuselage glitter. Neither of the men knew much about airplanes, but they could see that it was a small twin-engine prop, now minus the starboard engine, lost during the crash along with most of that wing. It lay on its belly to the north of the pool, its nosecone hard against a big pine. The forest had closed over the path that it must have torn through the trees upon its descent, although that in itself was not so remarkable. What was strange, and what gave the men pause, was that the plane was almost entirely covered with vegetation. Vines had wrapped their tendrils around it, ferns had shaded it, shrubs had masked it. The very ground itself appeared to be slowly absorbing it, for the plane had sunk some distance into the earth, and the lower portion of the port engine was already lost. The plane must have been here for decades, Harlan thought, but the portions of it that were visible through the greenery did not appear that old. There was no rust, no obvious decay. As he would tell his family during his final days, it was as though the forest were absorbing the plane, and had accelerated its growth accordingly so that this end might be more rapidly achieved.
Paul began walking toward the wreckage. Harlan released his hold on the tree trunk, and gave the pool a wide berth as he followed his friend. Paul used his rifle butt to test the earth around the slowly sinking plane, but the earth was hard, not moist.
‘It’ll soften during the spring thaw,’ said Harlan. ‘That might explain the way the plane is going down.’
‘I guess,’ said Paul, but he did not sound convinced.
All the windows of the plane were covered with ivy, including those at the cockpit. For the first time, Harlan acknowledged the possibility that there might still be bodies in there. The thought made him shudder.
It took them a while to find the door, so thick was the cloak of vegetation. They used their hunting knives to hack at the ivy. It came away reluctantly, coating their gloves with a sticky residue that gave off a sharp, caustic odor. Paul got some of it on his exposed forearm, and he would carry the burn scar that it left until the day that he took his own life.
When they had exposed the shape of the door, they found that the sinking of the plane had left an inch or more of it beneath the earth, so they had to hack at the ground to make enough space for the door to open out a little. By that time the blackness was upon them.
‘Maybe we ought to come back when it’s light,’ said Harlan.
‘You think we’d even be able to find this place again?’ asked Paul. ‘It’s not like any part of the woods I’ve ever seen.’
Harlan took in their surroundings. The trees, a mix of tall evergreens and huge, misshapen deciduous, were older here. This area had never been logged. Paul was right: Harlan couldn’t even have said where they were, exactly. North: that was all he knew, but this was Maine, and there was a lot of north to go around.
‘We can’t find our way back in the dark anyway,’ said Paul, ‘not with the compass on the fritz and no stars to guide us. I figure we got to stay till first light.’
‘Stay here?’ Harlan didn’t like the sound of that at all. He glanced at the black pool, its surface smooth as a plate of obsidian. Vague memories of old horror movies came to him, B-features in which creatures emerged from ponds just like that one, but when he tried to put a name to the films he found that he could not, and he wondered if he had made up those images all by himself.
‘You got a better idea?’ said Paul. ‘We have supplies. We can light a fire. Wouldn’t be the first time we spent a night in the woods.’
But not in a place like this, Harlan wanted to say, not with a pool of not-quite-water calling to us, and the wreck of a plane that might well be a tomb for anyone still inside. If they could get far enough away from it then the compass might begin to function properly again, or, if the sky cleared, they could navigate their way home by the stars. He tried to find the moon, but the clouds had smothered all, and there was not even the faintest glow to be seen.
Harlan looked at the plane once again. Paul had his hand on the exterior handle of the door.
‘You ready for this?’ he said.
‘No,’ said Harlan, ‘but I reckon you’d best go ahead anyway. We’ve come this far. We may as well find out if there’s anyone left in there.’
Paul turned the handle and yanked at the door. Nothing happened. Either it was stuck fast, or it was locked from the inside. Paul tried again, his face contorted with effort. There was a grinding sound, and the door came free. Harlan raised his hand to his face, expecting the smell of dead, but there was only the musty odor of damp carpets.
Paul poked his head inside and passed the flashlight’s beam around the interior. After a couple of seconds, he climbed in.
‘Take a look at this,’ he called to Harlan.
Harlan steeled himself, and followed his friend into the plane.
The empty plane.
‘Empty?’ I said.
‘Empty,’ said Marielle Vetters. ‘There were no bodies, nothing. I think that helped. It made it easier for them to keep the money.’
5
The money was in a big leather holdall behind what Harlan figured was the pilot’s seat. In every film he’d ever watched the pilot sat on the left, and the copilot sat on the right, and he had no reason to believe that this plane would be any different.
Harlan and Paul stared at the money for a long time.
Beside the holdall was a canvas satchel containing a sheaf of papers sealed in a plastic wallet for further protection. It was a list of names, typewritten for the most part, although some had been added by hand. Here and there sums of money had been included, some small, some very large. Also, again sometimes typewritten and sometimes handwritten, notes had been added to some of the entries, mostly words like ‘accepted’ and ‘declined’, but occasionally just a single letter ‘T’.
Harlan couldn’t make much sense of it so he turned his attention back to the money. It was mainly in fifties, used and nonconsecutive, with some twenties thrown in for variety. Some of the wads were held together with paper wraps, others with elastic bands. Paul picked up one of the bundles of fifties and did a quick count.
‘That’s five thousand dollars, I reckon,’ he said. The flashlight picked out the rest of the money. There were probably forty similar bundles of cash in there, not counting the twenties. ‘Two hundred thousand, give or take,’ he concluded. ‘Jesus, I never seen so much money.’
Neither of them had. The most cash Harlan had ever held in his hand was $3,300, which he’d got from selling a truck years before to Perry Reed up at Perry’s Used Autos. Perry had screwed him over on that truck, but then nobody ever went to Perry the Pervert for a fair deal: they went to him because they were desperate and needed money fast. Having that much cash was the closest Harlan had ever come to feeling rich. He hadn’t felt wealthy for long, though, because the money had gone straight to servicing his debts. Now Harlan knew that both he and Paul were thinking the same thing:
Neither would have considered himself a thief. Oh, they’d shaved a few dollars here and there from the IRS, but that was your duty as a taxpayer and an American. Someone had once told Harlan that the IRS factored cheating into their calculations, so they kind of expected you to do it, and by not holding out on them you messed up their system. You caused more trouble by not cheating on your taxes than you did by smudging your return, the fella said, and if you looked too square then the IRS would start thinking that maybe you were hiding something, and next thing you knew they had their claws in you and you were scouring the attic for receipts for ninety-nine cents just to stay out of jail.
But now they weren’t talking about a hundred dollars here and there kept back from Uncle Sam’s purse; this was potentially a serious criminal enterprise, which raised the second question:
Where had it come from?
‘You think it’s drug money?’ asked Paul. He watched a lot of TV cop shows, and immediately associated any
