As the days went on, and he once again grew fully involved in his own work, he became increasingly comfortable with simply staying on the sidelines and letting the police do their job. True to his promise, Jessup backed off; when Logan was again invited to the ranger’s house for dinner, the conversation had focused solely on philosophy, French cuisine, and innocuous local gossip. Logan liked Suzanne already, and by dinner’s end the two were almost like old friends. As far as Logan could tell, Jessup was toeing Krenshaw’s line.
By the end of more than two additional weeks of solid effort, Logan managed to get most of the remaining work done on his monograph. His homebody behavior at Cloudwater clearly pleased Greg Hartshorn, the resident director, who—Logan now felt certain—had gotten wind of his inquiries into the recent deaths, to his evident displeasure.
One day, after driving into Saranac Lake for a few items, he ran into Harrison Albright, who had come into town to stock up at the local hunting and fishing store. Logan had enjoyed Albright’s lecture and reading at Cloudwater and was relieved the man hadn’t “ratted him out,” and now offered to buy him lunch. Albright declined, saying that he subsisted almost entirely on rabbit and venison he bow-shot—and brandished a freshly purchased packet of arrows to prove it. He agreed to have coffee, however, and the two quickly fell into a lively discussion of poetry and literature. Logan found himself enjoying Albright’s company: he had a truly unusual blend of literary education and a colorful life, combined with the outlook and skill of a born backwoodsman. Logan had never encountered anyone quite like him before. He stayed away from any questions about mysterious or unsettling forest lore, and Albright seemed to appreciate this in his rough-hewn way.
The only other times he ventured off the Cloudwater estate were, ironically, to visit the fire station where Laura Feverbridge had her lab. Despite his reservations about the old scientist’s secret life, he felt himself drawn for reasons he did not quite understand to both father and daughter; Laura had a quick, eager scientific mind and, despite himself, he was impressed by how she had sacrificed for the sake of her father’s well-being. The first visit was late one morning, when he found Laura alone in the main lab. They took a walk in the woods, chatting idly about how her work was proceeding, and—ironically—ended up at the base of Madder’s Gorge, the spot where she’d found the body of the dead hiker. On the way back, she told Logan she presumed he’d like to speak with her father again, and suggested he come back late the following Friday, when Pace, the lab assistant, would be taking the weekend off. Logan agreed; he could not help but feel a growing admiration for this smart, compassionate, loyal, and dedicated woman.
On his next visit that Friday, Laura escorted him back to the secret lab, where Dr. Feverbridge was, it seemed, awaiting his arrival. Logan again asked about the work, and the older man eagerly described the progress he had made since they’d last met. Logan was struck once more by the man’s brilliance and scholarly charisma. Freed at last from the carping of his would-be colleagues, he displayed none of the emotional frailty or despondency that Laura had described. In the course of discussing his work, he gave Logan an additional demonstration of how he could induce the lunar effect—this time on a nocturnal mammal, a fruit bat. Logan also learned there was a lab within the lab where he did some of his most cutting-edge work and that he insisted on keeping private, even from Laura. He explained how, once he’d finished the work to his satisfaction, he planned to let Laura publish it under her own name. “It’s the least I can do, given all the sacrifices she’s made for me,” he said.
“And what will you do then?” Logan asked.
“I’ll retire. This is my life’s work, you understand, and it’s almost done. I’ll go someplace far away—I’ve always liked Ibiza. Or perhaps the Amalfi coast. Or maybe Santorini. A spot where I won’t be surrounded by all of this,” and he waved at the instrumentation with a smile. “Who knows? Maybe my reputation will be rehabilitated. Then again, maybe not. But by that point, I’ll no longer care—I’ll know, and Laura will know, that we’ve succeeded. That I’ve managed to make it to the end of the road. And that’s the most important thing.”
Logan thought of his own monograph, awaiting completion back at his cottage at Cloudwater, and nodded silently. He understood this sentiment completely.
22
The following evening, after Logan made his way back from the main lodge after dinner, he found Randall Jessup installed on the front porch of his cottage. The ranger was sitting on the front steps in the same spot where he’d found Pace, Laura Feverbridge’s lab tech, waiting for him some two and a half weeks earlier.
“Randall,” Logan said as the ranger stood to shake his hand. “Nice to see you. Come on in.”
They stepped inside. Jessup took off his hat and hung it on the back of a chair, then took a seat on the wraparound sofa.
“Can I get you anything?” Logan asked. “Coffee, tea, something stronger?”
“Nothing, thanks.”
Logan sat down opposite Jessup. He wondered what this visit could be about. He hadn’t seen the ranger since the second dinner at the man’s house, well over a week before. This certainly didn’t feel like a social call. Quite the contrary: it was clear Jessup had something on his mind. There was a look on his face that could only be called troubled.
“Making any progress?” Logan asked, careful to give the question a light pitch.
“Not really. The search parties wrapped up without finding anything—no useful evidence, no rogue animal. We’re basically waiting—and I don’t like that at all.”
“Waiting?”
“For the next full moon.”
Logan nodded his understanding. They haven’t found the killer, he thought. So now they’re waiting for it—or him—to strike again. Logan knew such an approach would stick in Jessup’s craw.
“When’s it due?” he asked.
“The next full moon? Two days.”
Two days. “But surely you’ve made some progress.”
Jessup sighed. “Krenshaw still has a team of state troopers shadowing Saul Woden’s cabin, just in case. And I’ve spent a fair amount of time in Pike Hollow, investigating the Blakeneys as best I can. Thin pickings, as you can imagine, although I do have what might be an unexpected lead. In any case, that’s the spot—according to the locals, anyway, as you might guess—that trouble is most likely to come from. Krenshaw’s keeping an eye on their compound, too.”
“And what about you? Is that where you think the trouble’s coming—if it comes at all?”
Instead of answering, Jessup asked a question of his own. “Tell me something, Jeremy. Why did you make a second visit to the scientific outpost at the fire station?”
The tickle of apprehension Logan felt at this unexpected question reminded him of his complicity. “How do you know about that?” he asked.
Jessup waved a hand, as if to say, Let me have my few trade secrets.
Logan thought quickly. “Second visit,” Jessup had said. That meant he knew only of the two times Logan had been there during the day—not about his nocturnal visits. Unless he knew more than he was saying and was sifting his old friend for information. He looked closely at Jessup. But he didn’t see any suspicion in the ranger’s face. All he sensed was concern, frustration—and a degree of anxiety.
“The first time I went, it was to ask about Mark Artowsky, the lab assistant who was also the third victim. I met Laura Feverbridge. We talked a little about the nature of her work.”
“Which is?”
“She’s studying the lunar effect on small diurnal mammals.”
“The lunar effect?” Jessup repeated.
“It’s a theory that the moon, the full moon in particular, has an unusual influence on creatures. With people, for example, there are supposed spikes in the crime rate, more pregnancies, higher mortality during operations, things like that.”
Although he felt a little guilty doing so, Logan deliberately mentioned the most sensational
and unlikely phenomena associated with the lunar effect. He realized that he had a vested interest in minimizing the ranger’s curiosity about the scientific outpost.
“Did she tell you what happened to her father?” Jessup asked.
“A little,” Logan replied, not wanting to lie.
Jessup nodded. “That still doesn’t explain your second visit.”
“Why are you curious?”
“Indulge me.”
Logan shrugged. “It’s no secret. It was just a social call. It gets boring here, you know, writing and researching day after day. We took a short hike in the woods. I find her work interesting. I’m an enigmalogist, after all—something like the lunar effect is just my cup of tea.”
“That’s all that’s going on there? Studying this lunar effect?”
“It’s all I know about.”
“Sounds like pseudoscience, if you ask me.”
Logan allowed himself a small smile. “Well, I’m not only interested in her work. I’m interested in her.”
Jessup had taken out his ever-present notebook, in preparation for jotting down a few items. Now he paused, raising his eyebrows. “I didn’t take you for such a fast worker.”
“Oh, I don’t mean anything like that. We’re just soul mates of a sort, working as we both do on the fringes of science.”
Jessup nodded slowly. The troubled look had not left his face.
“What’s bothering you, exactly?” Logan asked.
Instead of answering, Jessup slipped the notebook back into his pocket and stood up. Logan stood up as well. He felt torn between what he knew about Chase Feverbridge and what he was withholding from his friend. And yet he simply could not betray Laura—not only had he given his word, but he did not want to be held responsible for the old man’s suicide.
“I don’t know,” Jessup said, intruding into Logan’s thoughts. “Not for sure. Like I said, I might have an unexpected lead. Anyway, it’s something I’m looking into. If I learn anything specific, perhaps I’ll be more forthcoming.” He walked to the door, then turned. “Just remember: we’re only two days from another full moon. And there’s something else to keep in mind—while a true full moon only lasts a moment, it appears to look full for at least three nights.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning only this: be very careful in the days to come, my friend.” And with that, the ranger shook Logan’s hand again, nodded, and stepped out the front door and into the night.
23
It was almost forty-eight hours later, to the minute, that Logan heard from Jessup again. His cell phone rang as he was sitting in the living room of his cabin, reading a draft of the closing argument of his monograph.
“Logan,” he said as he answered the phone.
“Jeremy? It’s Randall.”
“Hi, Randall. What’s up?”
There was a pause. “Jeremy, I don’t know how to tell you this—how to ask you this.”
The ranger’s tone was oddly reserved, almost guarded. “Ask me what?”
“Do you remember our conversation of two nights ago? When I told you that I was looking into something—and I’d say more if I learned anything specific?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I have. And we should talk.”
How odd. “Of course. Would tomorrow morning be good?”
“No—I think we should talk now. I’d like you to meet me.”
Logan glanced at his watch: quarter to eight. “Tonight? What is it that can’t wait?”
“I’ll tell you when I see you.”
“Very well. Where are you now—at home?”
“No. I’m on the far side of Pike Hollow, not far from the Blakeney place. You know Fred’s Hideaway?”
“You mean that bar in Pike Hollow?”
“Yes. Can you meet me there as soon as possible?”
“If you really think it’s that important, of course.”
“Thanks. I’ll be waiting for you in the Hideaway. I’ve got one or two things to check out, but I should still make it there before you.”
Logan switched off his phone. For a moment he sat still, looking at it thoughtfully. Then, getting up, he shrugged into his jacket, reached for the keys to the Jeep. Then he stepped out of the cabin and began making his way down the path to the parking area.
Overhead, a full moon, bloated and yellow, hung in the crisp night sky.
24
It was a few minutes past eight when Sam Wiggins pulled onto 3A from the main street of Pike Hollow and headed west. His old Honda Civic—his barbershop business had not prospered of late, and he hadn’t been able to buy a newer or larger vehicle after his thirty-year-old Ford pickup died the year before—jerked and rattled as it made its way down the rutted road. He looked up through the driver’s window at the full moon, just visible through the screen of branches overhead, with a sinking feeling. On the seat beside him, Buster, his Jack Russell terrier, whined and whimpered.
This was crazy, he knew. All other residents of Pike Hollow, as if by unspoken consent, were locked in their houses, shutters closed, lights extinguished. And here he was, heading out toward Desolation Mountain. Well, okay, not exactly toward Desolation Mountain, but a lot closer to it than he’d like to be.
It was all the fault of his aunt Gertrude, who lived in an old Airstream trailer out in the woods about eight miles west of Pike Hollow. She had no car, and she relied on Sam to bring her canned foodstuffs, cash her welfare checks, bring her pitiful mail from the PO box, fill her propane tank—and, most particularly, keep her well stocked with the cheap plastic 1.75-liter bottles of vodka that she subsisted on. Gertrude Randowsky was the most raging of all alcoholics Sam had ever known, and it had only gotten worse once her husband died and could no longer keep her in check. She’d run out of the stuff again, and it was only the threat of her towering rage that had coaxed Sam to get Fred at the Hideaway to give him half a dozen bottles and head out to the trailer.
Buster was whining more loudly now. Well, Sam could hardly blame him.
He passed the old Blakeney compound—a narrow lane to the left, heavily overgrown, dark and unoccupied state trooper car barely visible in the moonlight—with trepidation. That bitch Gertrude. She wasn’t even his own aunt, she was the aunt of his late wife…and yet here he was, bowing and scraping to her every whim like a damn lackey. One of these days, he thought grimly as he rounded first one bend, and then another, those bottles of Olde Petersburg Vodka would do her in—and, although he’d never say it out loud, that day couldn’t come soon enough, and he could then devote all his off-hours to making caddis fly lures and fishing for the elusive brook trout….
Wham. Shit, what was that—a blowout? Oh God, this was the last place he wanted to have to change a tire.
He slowed the Honda, then crept forward gingerly. The right front end was shimmying like crazy, all right. He stopped and turned off the engine, leaving the headlights on, thinking. He had three options: get out and swap the tire for a spare; try driving home on the rim; or just abandon the car and walk back.
He immediately discarded the last option. No way was he walking back to Pike Hollow past the Blakeneys—not during a full moon, and with the state trooper who was supposed to be surveilling it off having dinner or something. And driving on a rim seemed almost as bad an option, incurring expenses he could ill afford to pay. With a sigh, he reached for the glove compartment, opened it, pulled out the flashlight he kept inside, and—reluctantly—opened the driver’s door.
Swallowing painfully, he stood by the door, looking around, senses on full alert, ready to jump back in and lock the door if anything seemed amiss. There was a break in the trees overhead and the moon was in view, almost comically large, the pellucid night sky allowing a veil of pale yellow to fall over his surroundings. There was no wind, and the numberless trees that surrounded him were standing, almost as if at attention, awaiting something.
Leaving the driver’s door open, he switched on the light and walked around
the hood, glanced left and right again, then knelt to inspect the tire. To his relief, it seemed to be all right after all—it was just stuck in a huge rut that ran along the shoulder of the cracked highway. He must have drifted into it without noticing.
He stood up. Time to get this damn-fool errand over with and hurry home.
But just as he began to make his way back around the hood, something short and hairy shot between his legs, whimpering, heading into the darkness away from the car. Buster. He’d jumped out of the front seat while Sam had been inspecting the tire and run off.
“Well, if that don’t beat all…” Buster wasn’t Rin Tin Tin, but he had plenty of pluck, and it wasn’t like him to run away—and it sure as hell wasn’t like him to desert his master. Something must have scared him—scared him enough to make him forget all his normal instincts.
It had not gone unnoticed by Sam that Buster had run into the woods in the opposite direction from the Blakeney compound.
“Buster!” he called, beginning to walk in the direction the dog had run, toward the dark wall of trees. “Bus—”
Suddenly he stopped in mid-call. Some instinct told him to be silent—silent as the grave.
He turned off his flashlight. Now there were only the headlights of the car and the glow from the open door.
At first he noticed nothing unusual. But then he became aware of a strange smell—more of a stink, really: musky, rank.
This was followed by a noise unlike anything Sam had ever heard before: something between the menacing snarl of a feral wolf and the guttural, angry grunt of a bull moose. And it sounded close.
Sam Wiggins had lived in Pike Hollow his entire life. He’d grown up on stories of strange things in the deep woods like other children grew up on Mother Goose and Peter Rabbit. Over the years, he’d come to accept them as gospel—in some form or another—and taken steps to avoid them. And so he had managed never before to come face-to-face with the actual sound, or smell, of evil. There was a long moment when he stood, paralyzed with surprise and fear. He felt a warm gush as his bladder let go.
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