Motion in his peripheral vision caused Stephen to peer down the hunting path. The smoke from the gunfire had by now cleared, and the moon shone brightly in the frigid November sky. Struggling up the path was an elderly Abnaki tribesman. Stephen had never before seen the man and that was strange; until now he thought he had met everyone in the small tribal village at least once. The man looked older than anyone Stephen had ever seen—ancient even. Lines etched his face which was haggard and drawn. Tears rolled down his cheeks. He took slow, measured steps and remained utterly silent as he reached the scene of the bloody conflict.
The old tribesman’s arms were laden with strange-looking items like roots and cloth sacks filled with what Stephen could not imagine. At last the man reached a point roughly in the center of the carnage and set all his accoutrements on the ground in a neat pile. He still had not said a word as far as Stephen could tell.
Stephen thought briefly about crying out and alerting the ancient Native to his presence. He knew that by doing so, he would probably seal his fate. The man would certainly kill him after what had been done to his fellow Abnaki tribal members. But Stephen didn’t care if the man killed him; he decided he would welcome death after this tragic night had gone so horribly wrong, but he was curious as to what the old man was doing all by himself in the middle of the night in this place that reeked of treachery and death and destruction.
He remained quiet and watched the scene unfold. The elderly Abnaki sat cross-legged on the cold, hard ground, arranging his materials in a tight semicircle. It appeared to Stephen that the man was chanting under his breath—his lips were moving but Stephen could hear nothing.
Stephen knew enough about the customs of the Abnaki and about Natives in general to know the elderly man was performing some sacred ritual. He was a tribal medicine man, an individual possessed of incredible power and mysticism. His voice was now intelligible to Stephen, strengthening in volume as he continued to chant. He mixed ingredients into a great bowl placed on the ground in front of him. The man added water to the mixture and stirred slowly for a long time, staring into the distance and chanting. Tendrils of steam rose lazily from the bowl, clearly apparent in the bright moonlight, despite the fact there was no fire beneath it.
Eventually the elderly Native stood, moving ever so slowly, and walked among the bodies littering the forest floor. He stopped at each of the Abnaki dead, smearing some of the mixture on the foreheads of the men and ignoring the missionary dead.
Stephen’s vision began to waver and he knew he would soon be joining his fellow missionaries in whatever afterlife awaited them in the wake of this disaster. He hoped God understood he had not planned this slaughter and prayed he would still be permitted entrance into heaven. He prayed also that his daughter, the baby he had met just once, was alive; although he knew that was unlikely in the extreme.
As the ancient Abnaki medicine man padded silently among the Native bodies, performing his mysterious ritual, Stephen Ames slipped into unconsciousness for the last time. The freezing cold vanished and the world went black, and Stephen was grateful there was no pain.
1
Present Day
GEORGE HOOPER WAS LOST. He was also hungry and wet, thus completing what he had come to think of as his own personal trifecta of misery. A steady drizzle fell silently from the slate-grey skies, making George shiver and long for the warmth and comfort of his living room. He tried to take his mind off the chill by picturing himself sitting in front of a roaring fire, three fingers of bourbon warming his insides as he sat in a rocking chair doing nothing in particular, maybe watching the Yankees on TV or reading a good book.
George didn’t own a rocking chair, nor did he have a fireplace in the living room of his small house in Teaneck, New Jersey, didn’t even like to read all that much. But he figured, what the hell, it’s my daydream, I might as well enjoy it. He knew he should not have come hunting alone in the dank, desolate woods of Northern Maine in late November, but none of his buddies could make it this weekend, and George was damned if he was going to let his five-day break from the job at the paper mill pass by without getting out and enjoying some fresh air and solitude.
Going off by himself in the woods was a piss-poor idea, George knew that—common sense dictated that you always take at least one person with you as well as let someone else know exactly where you will be when you’re traveling into thousands of square miles of mostly uninhabited forest—but he had hiked and hunted his entire life in some of the most remote and rugged areas this country had to offer, so it wasn’t like he had no outdoor experience. Besides, with his trusty hand-held GPS, how bad could things get?
Pretty bad indeed, George now decided. The goddamned GPS had crapped out on him two days ago for no particular reason that George could determine. It simply made the decision, somewhere inside its freakin’ soulless solid-state electronic guts, to take a break from operating, maybe a permanent break; George didn’t know. What he did know, though, was that without a working GPS and after his map book had been washed away during a river crossing, he was more or less totally screwed.
George unzipped the right front pocket of his insulated hunting jacket and pulled out his cell phone for what he guessed might be about the two hundredth time in the last two days, knowing what he would see when he powered it up but doing so anyway. The device clicked and whirred, eventually awakening from its slumber and informing George that, so sorry, there was still no cell coverage in this part of the God-forsaken northern Maine woods, and furthermore, its battery was getting dangerously low, so if he wished to make a call, this might be a good goddamned time to do it. He cursed under his breath. The damn thing was about as useful to him as the broken GPS. Two electronic paperweights.
His hands were shaking as he shoved the cell phone back into his pocket and re-zipped it. He had only removed his gloves for a couple of minutes, and his fingers were already stiffening and losing feeling. Dammit, it was cold!
George stopped in a small clearing and tried to get his bearings, knowing it was pointless but not having the faintest clue what else to do. The lowering sky was a dark grey, almost black; the sun a distant memory even though it was the middle of the day. Orienting himself direction-wise was a no go. The drizzle which had fallen pretty much constantly since, incredibly, just about the exact moment his GPS had given up the ghost was now increasing in intensity from a soft mist to a steady, slanting rain. The temperature was falling, too, and George knew he needed to find shelter and hole up until the weather cleared.
He had been walking nonstop for almost two days now and exhaustion hung on him like a cloak. Conventional outdoor wisdom dictated that when someone got lost they should stay in one place and wait for help, but George knew while that was good advice for a twelve-year-old who had become disoriented during a Boy Scout hike, it would do nothing to help him in his present situation. No one knew he had even come here, and as far as George could remember from his map book before it decided to go for a swim and never return, there was only one small town within twenty miles in any direction, so the chances of some random hiker or hunter stumbling upon him and helping him out of this mess were pretty slim. Almost nonexistent, when it came right down to brass tacks.
That being the case, George figured he might just as well keep moving. Maybe he would get lucky and stumble upon the little hamlet, and if he didn’t, well, he would be no worse off walking when the sun finally came out than he would have been had he stayed in one place. Either way, if he didn’t find that town, he was going to have some serious hiking to do once he was able to determine which way was south.
But now, hungry, tired, depressed and drenched, with a steadily lowering body temperature as an added bonus, George Hooper decided the number one priority was to seek shelter and wait out the rest of the storm, at least until he could get warm and dry. But where? Most of the trees in this thickly forested area were towering pines, their branches sagging from the weight of all the water collecting on their needles t
he past two days. Perhaps he could burrow under the branches toward the middle of one of the mammoth firs in the hopes of finding some dry ground.
George looked around for the most likely tree to begin burrowing into, and as he did, he again glanced up at the dark sky, at the clouds roiling high above the treetops. His breath caught in his throat as his brain at first refused to believe what his eyes were telling him. He stared without moving for a good sixty seconds at a thin column of smoke rising above the forest and disappearing into the rain and mist. A fire!
Whether the smoke was coming from a fireplace or a campfire or a cook stove, George had no way of knowing, but one thing he did know was that someone was near, and if someone was near then that meant food and warmth and directions out of here and maybe even a ride back to civilization if he got really lucky.
He couldn’t believe his incredible good fortune. He almost laughed out loud at the thought that he had been seconds away from crawling on his belly through the mud under a tree where he would have spent the next twenty-four hours or more cold and miserable, and now, because he just happened to look skyward at the right time, he might just be on his way home with a full belly and warm, dry clothes within hours.
Hefting his pack, which had started out heavy but was now even more so thanks to the water soaking the canvas, George angled in the general direction of the smoke, zigzagging through the trees, ducking under branches and putting up with ice-cold water dripping down his neck. He kept his eyes on the prize: that thin column of nearly-invisible wispy smoke, fearing that if he lost sight of it he might never relocate it.
After roughly twenty minutes of struggling, he trudged through a particularly thick line of trees into a large clearing and stopped dead in his tracks. Spread out before him was what had once been a tiny village, clearly abandoned years ago, probably decades ago. Hell, maybe even centuries ago. The remnants of about a half-dozen small granite foundations lined each side of a narrow, rutted dirt trail, which was barely wide enough to accommodate a car, not that any car would be able to navigate this rough terrain; even a four-wheel drive vehicle would get stuck trying to make it out here.
In addition to the ancient stone foundations, which George assumed had at one time held houses, a couple of similar but larger foundations—perhaps supporting a general store and maybe a police station or jail—sat in disrepair at the far end of the clearing. Weeds and scrub grass and even some fairly large trees sprouted out, around and through the foundations, giving the area a look of utter abandonment. The forest had nearly completed its reclamation of the lonely and isolated village which had been hacked out of it at some point in the distant past.
In his shock at stumbling upon this tiny deserted village, George had almost forgotten the trail of smoke he had been tracking and now looked around to see if he could find the person or persons responsible for the fire. At first he could see no sign of the smoke—he thought for a moment he had lost it completely and almost panicked—but after a few seconds caught sight of a wisp drifting lazily up and out of a red-brick chimney sprouting from the roof of a small log cabin off to George’s right.
The home was tucked into the very edge of the abandoned village and was clearly not part of the original town; it looked almost brand new. The construction looked square and shipshape, with windows and a door and a farmer’s porch running the length of the house.
George’s heart leaped with the thought that he was about to get out of this mess, then he was struck like a hammer by the obvious question—who in the hell builds a home way out here in the middle of nowhere, at the edge of an old housing graveyard? Even Ted Kaszinski, the old Unabomber himself, the guy with the grudge against modern technology who had terrorized the country for a time in the 1990’s with bombs delivered through the United States Postal Service, had lived in an area that was at least accessible to some conveniences. What had George stumbled upon? Some antisocial lunatic who might chop him up into little pieces and then feed them to his equally antisocial dog?
George laughed uneasily to himself at such a ridiculous notion. He just needed a little help, that was all, and undoubtedly whoever lived here would be happy to provide it.
Of course they would.
Jeez, get a grip.
But his nervous body refused to cooperate with his calm, rational brain. His breath came rapid and shallow and sweat dripped down his back as he stared at the strange village laid out in front of him, not a pleasant sensation considering he had been wet and freezing cold to begin with. George couldn’t imagine why he was so nervous and jumpy. He wasn’t a guy who spooked easily, and he should be jumping up and down screaming his damn fool head off in delight at the prospect of getting out of this mess, not standing motionless in the rain like some four-year-old kid afraid of his own shadow.
Grunting in disgust at himself but still unable to shake the feeling that something was terribly wrong, George forced himself to slow his breathing and made a concerted effort to calm his frayed nerves. “Get ahold of yourself, dumbass,” he muttered and began slowly walking toward the only recent construction, the log cabin. The smoke from the chimney had now almost completely disappeared, and George hoped the person or people who had been burning the fire inside the house wouldn’t mind lighting it up again for him.
2
“THAT IS TOTALLY disgusting.” Sharon Dupont shook her head, her pretty mouth drawing down into a frown as new Paskagankee Police Chief Mike McMahon attempted to navigate a large steak bomb in the passenger seat of their parked cruiser. He grinned at the petite officer’s horrified expression as he chomped away, bread and cheese and bits of steak, onions and peppers littering the cruiser’s cloth bench seat, forming an ever-growing circle around him.
He swallowed and licked his lips. “You’re just jealous. You decided to pass up this traditional American feast and now you’re sorry you didn’t get something too, so you could join in the fun.”
“Are you kidding me?” she countered. “After being subjected to this display, I might not ever eat anything again, never mind dead animal flesh.”
McMahon reached across the seat and waved the partially eaten sandwich in front of her, drawing another frown. He nodded knowingly. “Jealousy. It’s very unbecoming.”
Mike McMahon had been in town for just over a week. He had edged out a total of zero other applicants for the chief of police job in the isolated northern Maine town of Paskagankee—population four thousand, give or take. Outgoing Chief Wally Court—a fitting name for a law enforcement officer, McMahon thought—had reviewed Mike’s application and conducted a thirty-minute telephone interview followed by a two-hour personal meeting before hiring him within a matter of days.
In neither of the interviews had Court asked Mike the obvious question of why he wanted to move from Revere, Massachusetts—a hardscrabble community just north of Boston—to a sleepy hamlet like Paskagankee while still in the prime of his career, and for that Mike was grateful. Maybe the chief had heard about the shooting last year and understood Mike’s need to get away from Revere, or maybe he just didn’t give a damn why anyone would want the job and was just thankful someone did. Either way, though, Mike had escaped his old life, which was exactly what he needed.
Mike had been surprised by the apparent contradiction that was Chief Wally Court. His office, where the in-person job interview had taken place, had been neat to the point of obsession, with the obligatory citations and photos of the chief glad-handing dignitaries adorning his walls and with a shipshape desk devoid of any hint of clutter.
The outgoing chief’s personal appearance, however, had been a different story. His graying hair badly needed a trim, as did his beard. He sported at least a three-day growth of salt and pepper on a face clearly unused to the intrusion. His uniform was heavily wrinkled and appeared slept-in, and Court sweated profusely throughout the interview, looking extremely uncomfortable, as if he had somewhere else he needed to be.
Mike thought it all added up to something strange; t
here was clearly more to the story of retiring Paskagankee Police Chief Wally Court than met the eye. Perhaps the man was ill. Whatever his situation, it didn’t really matter. Mike had been notified three days after the unusual interview that the job was his if he wanted it. Furthermore, the town needed him to start as soon as possible due to the imminent retirement of Chief Court, a circumstance that fit Mike’s desires perfectly.
The first thing McMahon had done upon his arrival in town was to introduce himself to his small force of officers and announce he would not be changing any procedures or assignments right away, but rather that he would take the next month or two and accompany an officer on routine patrols in order to familiarize himself with the town and its people. He had chosen rookie Sharon Dupont to train with for no particular reason other than she was relatively new to the force, so he assumed she would be less likely to kick and scream and raise a fuss about having to babysit the new boss than a more established veteran would be.
Now the two were trading barbs like partners and friends, despite the fact Dupont had been on the job just six months and McMahon brought fifteen years of law enforcement experience to Paskagankee, all of it on a busy metropolitan police force.
A light-falling mist drizzled around the cruiser as the two sat in the otherwise empty parking lot of the town’s only funeral home, using a hand-held radar gun to clock cars passing by on Route 14. The effort was mostly for show, an attempt to discourage townspeople from speeding rather than actually to ticket drivers.
Mike prepared to wave what was left of his sandwich in Officer Dupont’s face again, just to enjoy her reaction, when a muddy, faded maroon Ford pickup flashed by, at least fifteen years old, losing the battle to rust and traveling a good twenty-five miles per hour over the posted speed limit of forty-five. The truck roared through a massive puddle, kicking up an impressive rooster tail of spray and fishtailing momentarily before regaining traction on the wet pavement and continuing along the road. The driver was clearly in a hurry and had not noticed the police cruiser, despite the fact it was parked in the middle of an otherwise empty lot.
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