which was every thirty seconds or so.
I wasn’t sure if the snow made it more or less likely that Barter would be venturing out again this evening. Hopefully, the new powder would serve as an enticement. There wasn’t quite enough of the white stuff anymore for snowmobiling, but a person could have some fun skidding around on an all-terrain vehicle.
The story Kathy had told me about the search for Nikki Donnatelli kept intruding on my thoughts. I looked over at the passenger seat, where I’d moved Ozzie Bell’s box of files. Kathy had advised dumping them in the trash on the way home, but somehow I had managed not to do so.
Kathy’s pursuit ATV was a real beast. It had a 71-horsepower engine with an auto-locking front differential and dynamic power steering. She told me that, if properly handled, her Can-Am/Bombardier could go as fast as the fastest four-wheelers on the trails. She’d emphasized the words properly handled when she’d given me the keys, as if she doubted the likelihood of my delivering her prize toy back to her in a single piece. She had reason to worry. Like most overgrown boys, I loved the sensation of going really, really fast.
I parked my truck in the woods half a mile from Varnum’s place and inspected the armor Kathy had loaned me. Her plated riding boots wouldn’t fit, so I was stuck with my own field boots and work gloves. Fortunately, I could squeeze my big head into her helmet and goggles. I knew my uniform was going to get trashed from flying mud and roost-the grit and rocks an ATV’s wheels churn up-but there was no way around that.
I unfastened the tailgate and propped up the ramps Kathy had given me. Then I climbed up into the bed and started the engine. The machine gave a large, harsh growl.
Traveling backward on a four-wheeler is a funky art. I could just imagine explaining to Kathy how I’d flipped her ATV over while getting it out of my vehicle. Like most quads, hers had a winch on the front to pull it out of mud holes, but that wouldn’t do me any good if I found myself pinned beneath the machine.
I did a couple of circuits on the nearest stretch of trail, trying to regain my muscle memory. Posture is everything when riding an all-terrain vehicle, and I needed to get loose, relaxing my shoulders and elbows and tilting my knees into the gas tank. The machine fought against my efforts to master it. The handlebars pulled against my forearms when I tried to turn them, and the vibration from the engine sent a shock wave up my spine that crashed against my cerebellum. The sleet, mixed now with freezing rain, began falling more heavily, screwing with my vision through the plastic goggles.
After getting comfortable in the saddle, I turned the ATV in the direction of Barter’s farm and revved the throttle. The woods were a blur as I raced along the cold-hardened trail. The forecast for the coming week was for warmer weather, but two nights of subzero temperatures had hardened the mud into shit cement. The conditions made for a jarring ride. The freezing rain was sliding its cold, wet fingers down the back of my neck. And it was getting dark.
As best as I could tell from my DeLorme GPS, Calvin Barter had only one direct-access point into the trail system that connected his property with that of the Varnums. A single path exited his farm before forking off in several directions across the peninsula. When I arrived at the fork, I paused and looked around. The local trees were all hardwoods-maples and oaks mostly, with their usual tatters of dead leaves-affording me little in the way of cover. But there was a knoll to one side of the trail that I could perch atop. Dressed as I was in an olive uniform and riding a mud-crusted machine, it was unlikely Barter would spot me if he came racing past at forty-five miles per hour. I leaned forward and downshifted to climb the little hill, then swung the ATV around in a tight circle until I was facing the fork in the trail. I turned off the engine and removed my goggles and helmet.
The freezing rain pelted my bare face like bird shot. It took several minutes for my hearing to return to normal, and even then a ghost echo of that loud engine lurked behind my throbbing eardrums. I became aware of the sound of the icy rain on the frozen snow-an insistent shhh, as if the sky were telling the earth to be silent.
I removed a glove and reached inside my soaked parka for my cell phone. I tapped in Wanda Barter’s number and waited.
“Hello?” The voice was female, Wanda’s daughter maybe, the one with the baby.
“This is Warden Bowditch. I want to talk with Calvin Barter.”
“Go fuck yourself.”
“Tell him I’m coming with a warrant.” I wasn’t certain I got out the last words before she hung up.
Now there was nothing to do but wait. The prospect of actually catching Barter in the act of vandalizing Hank’s place seemed pretty remote, so this was the only way I could see to play things. Maine law provided a nice assortment of offenses-from speeding to suspicion of operating under the influence of intoxicating liquor-that I could use to stop Barter on the trail. After that, I’d have to hope he said something stupid or otherwise provoked me in such a manner that I could make a bona fide arrest. It was possible I could connect his ATV tire treads to the prints I’d collected at the Varnum house, so the district attorney would feel confident pressing charges, but I doubted it.
I didn’t have long to wait. In the distance I heard the insect whine of engines. The noise began to grow. I was definitely hearing two machines-Barter and who else? I put my helmet and goggles back on and restarted the ignition. The ATV sent a shudder through every bone in my skeleton.
In less than a minute, I saw the lights. The first figure was very large, almost too large for the vehicle beneath him. The second was ridiculously small, riding what looked like a toy version of a four-wheeler-like something out of a cereal box.
I kept my lights off until the last possible second, when they were just about to fly past me, I hit the pursuit lights.
I saw the two riders turn their heads in my direction and then, without even a pause to consider the situation, they took off.
Bending forward so that my weight was over the back of the seat, I started down the slope. The machine seemed to slide beneath me, and I squeezed the brakes hard, swerving to avoid a tree that seemed to materialize out of nowhere.
Barter and the other, smaller rider-it had to be the teenage boy, Travis-were already disappearing into the distance. Between the driving ice and the trees themselves, the visibility absolutely sucked, but clouds of snow and smoke lingered behind the two machines, and their tire tracks showed clearly in my headlights. I realized I might have trouble overtaking them, but I could certainly follow. At the moment, the riders were headed for Hank Varnum’s land.
In front of me I could see their lights growing smaller. I gunned the engine. I’d forgotten how physically exhausting it was to drive one of these quads. The process seemed to involve long-forgotten muscles in my thighs and lower back.
Suddenly, with just a split second to act, I noticed a huge log in the path. Barter and the boy had turned off into the woods to avoid it, but I was flying along at a speed too fast to do the same. I stood up in the seat and throttled hard. For an instant, I felt a lifting sensation in my stomach, as if I were about to tumble ass over teakettle across the handlebars, but then the front wheels grabbed the bark and I found myself launching into space. I threw my weight back when the rear wheels hit, landing so hard, I almost veered off trail. I had to yank the handlebars back in line to avoid smacking into a birch.
The path began to climb sharply. I stood up in a crouched position on the foot rests, trying to regain an attack stance so that I could move forward, sideways, or to the rear-depending on what I saw coming at me in the headlights. It was a steep and nasty hill that Barter had chosen. I charged up the slope, staying on the gas and leaning forward to keep the front end down. Even so, I felt the machine begin to loop out. I was about to wheelie back on myself with hundreds of pounds of metal crashing down on top of me. I threw my weight to the right, turning the front wheels downhill, and made a U-turn, swerving through an obstacle course of birch and beech trees. Their branches pawed at me, seeking to knock me loose, but I held on with all the strength my hands could muster. Somehow, I managed to circle around to the base of the hill.
I braked hard and stared up at the steep trail. Barter knew what he was doing. He had chosen this path because he suspected a rider unfamiliar with it would have problems climbing the hill. Looking for a detour would probably mean I’d lose them for good.
Try again, I decided. I swung the ATV around to give myself a longer approach this time. I shifted into a lower gear and gassed it, aiming for as much momentum as possible and hoping to hell my wheels didn’t lose traction on the icy surface.
Again, I felt the engine revs bogging me down, and again I threw my weight forward, throttling the machine
