He smiled, a tired smile. “I knew I should have left the room.”
“I don’t mean to pry.”
“It’s all right. It’s common knowledge. Hell, I thought everyone in the Warden Service knew.” He kept his eyes on the road while he spoke. “We were in a plane crash six years ago, before I retired. I’d been nagging her to learn to fly for thirty-odd years and finally she gave in. I practically live in the air, so I figured she’d take to it the way I did.”
“What happened?”
“I had another plane back then. I showed her a few things on the ground, the instrument panel and how to use the stick, but I didn’t spend near enough time. Then the first couple times we went up together she did fine, better than I hoped, so I figured that was it. She was a natural, I thought.”
He rolled down the window, letting air rush in between us.
“Well, the third time we went up together the wind was really blowing and she panicked bringing us in to land. We came in at the wrong angle, and there was nothing I could do. The plane got crumpled down to half its size. It was a miracle we didn’t both get killed. She broke her back, and I got off with a concussion and a busted flipper.” He lifted his right elbow. “But then I’ve always been close to indestructible.”
We turned off the main dirt road down a narrow path. Tree branches brushed the sides of the truck as we blundered ahead.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Me too. And of course it was harder for me being the one relatively uninjured, although Ora never blamed me for what happened.”
“But your daughters blamed you.”
He glanced over at me, eyes narrowed. “You’re quite the perceptive young warden. I guess I’ll have to watch what I say around you from now on.” He swerved slightly to avoid a toad in the road. “Yes, Anne blamed me at first, but not anymore. Stacey, though… I think she blames us both. But me more.”
I didn’t say anything else, and he didn’t, either, until we’d finally come to a stop.
The path dead-ended at the edge of a small black pond in the hollow between wooded hills. There was a dark cabin there half-hidden in the trees and the ruin of an old pier jutting out into the water. “That’s Jim Grindle’s old cabin,” Charley said. “He’s living in a nursing home down in Waterville with Alzheimer’s. I suppose it’s just as well, given what’s happening with Wendigo.”
He flicked off the highbeams and we got out of the truck and walked down to the waterline, letting our eyes adjust again to the darkness. In the weeds frogs were blowing like bagpipes. And the sky was an enormous black bowl overhead.
“How’s your astronomy?” Charley asked.
“I know the Big and Little Dippers, of course, and there’s Mars. Those are the Pleiades. I’m fairly certain that’s an airplane. Or a UFO.”
In the starlight I could see Charley smiling at me. “That’s not so bad. My dad made us memorize all the different constellations, summer and winter. They say birds navigate by the stars.”
We stood there for a while breathing in the rich balsam smell of the forest and the algae smell of the pond.
“Let’s see if I can get those dogs singing.”
He cupped his hands around his mouth, just as he did with the owl, but this time the sound he let loose was a thin, mournful howl.
Almost instantly there came a cry from across the pond, a high-pitched wail that sent shivers up my spine.
Charley called again, and the first coyote answered, and then a second coyote, off on one of the hills, joined in. Then a third and a fourth replied.
“This pond is the boundary between two family packs,” said Charley softly. “I think they’ve got a feud going on over whose it is. Some nights it doesn’t take much to get them worked up.”
Back and forth the coyotes called to one another, wailing like lost souls.
“Listen to them sing,” he said. “Doesn’t the sound of it do something strange to your heart?”
“Yes,” I said. “It does.”
26
When I awoke the next morning, sunlight was streaming through the window beside my bed. I lay there a long time, breathing in the warm balsam smell of the forest that drifted through the screen.
Lying there, it was easy to fantasize about hiding out here from my life, enjoying Ora’s home cooking and Charley’s stories. But in my heart I knew it was a false dream. All I was doing in Flagstaff was interfering with a homicide investigation, making it less likely-not more-that the detectives would ever focus their attention on Truman Dellis, Russell Pelletier, Vern Tripp, or anybody else, for that matter. It was time I stopped playing Hardy Boys with Charley Stevens. My life back home was a mess and I needed to clean it up.
My father was somewhere far away, maybe in Canada, maybe not. He might be caught today or next week or never. My being here would make no difference. The thought that I might somehow be able to talk him into surrendering-if the opportunity ever arose-was laughable. We were strangers. We always had been. Ora Stevens was right: I couldn’t save him.
I found her sitting in her wheelchair on the porch with a cup of tea, reading Jane Austen’s
“Did you sleep all right, dear?”
“Better than I have in a long time, actually.”
“I always sleep better in the woods myself. Charley’s out with Nimrod, but he should be back soon. There are clean towels in the bathroom, and Charley left a T-shirt that should fit you.”
Charley was sitting at the kitchen table, drinking coffee, when I came out of the bathroom. “There’s the man of the hour,” he said.
I pretended to look over my shoulder. “Where?”
“I hope you’re hungry because I’m making my world-famous, four-grain waffles.”
“It’s the only meal he cooks,” said Ora from the porch.
He gave a mock frown. “My secret’s out.”
I sat down at the kitchen table while Charley poured me a mug of coffee.
Ora rolled herself in from the porch. “What did you see this morning, dear? Anything unusual?”
“Mostly thrushes and chickadees. There was a mourning warbler singing over by that new clear-cut. And Nimrod spooked a partridge.”
“There was a red-eyed vireo outside my window,” I said.
He raised his eyebrows.
“My girlfriend taught me a few things,” I said. “Ex-girlfriend, I mean. She’s a hardcore birder.”
“What’s her name?”
“Sarah.”
“Pretty name.”
“She’s prettier than her name.” I smiled at the memory.
“What’s she do for a living, dear?” asked Ora.
“She’s a teacher’s aide, studying to be a teacher. But I think she has higher ambitions than that. She wants to change the educational system across the country.”
“And how long were you two together?”
“Off and on, four years. We met in college.”
“So why aren’t you together anymore?”
“Ora,” warned Charley.
“It’s OK,” I said. “Sarah doesn’t like what I do-what I did-for a living.” It was a simplification, a lie, basically,
