by Paul Doiron
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 for all it was worth. For a second, I felt myself poised as if on a teeter-totter. The slightest shift in my weight would send me forward or back. This time, I committed to the hill. The front wheels grabbed hold, and I jerked ahead, topping the crest.
The tracks from the two ATVs led off through the descending storm.
Where will they go next? I wondered if Barter might decide to play cat and mouse with me, leading me through his own private obstacle course in the hope I’d give up or wreck my machine. His other choice was to circle around behind me.
For the moment, I decided to proceed ahead cautiously. I might not be able to catch him, but maybe I could outsmart him.
The sleet had changed over entirely to freezing rain. I could feel the subtle rise in air temperature on my bare nose and throat. Ice was starting to weigh down the boughs of the spruces. Mist was beginning to push back the beam of my headlights, and with each passing minute, the landscape was becoming more and more crystalline. I moved methodically forward down the slope—no longer at top speed—searching for clues.
What I discovered next surprised me. At the far side of the ridge, the trail entered a pool of half-frozen mud. A taut surface of ice stretched from one side of the path to the other. Both all-terrain vehicles had gone surging through this watercourse, but only one had made it across. In the middle, a small yellow ATV sat submerged. The handlebars projected above the surface, but the rest of the vehicle had broken through the ice and sunk down into the gluey mud at the bottom. Its lights were still on, shining fuzzily forward across the pond, but it was apparent to me that the boy’s engine had drowned out.
I paused for a moment and unhooked the Maglite on my belt, then shined it to either side of the pond. There was a chance the boy was hiding somewhere in the trees, but I saw no trace of him. That meant Barter had taken the boy on the back of his own vehicle. The additional weight would slow them down now and having a passenger would probably make Barter less aggressive in his efforts to elude me.
I reached into my parka for my GPS. From this spot, there was no easy way back to Barter’s farm via the trail system. With the ice storm picking up in intensity, it made sense for them to seek cover. The only alternative was to cut through the woods to the nearest road and then follow it back to the farmhouse.
If I caught Calvin Barter riding his ATV down the middle of a paved road, I would have a misdemeanor to charge him with, and if he was carrying a child on the back of his four-wheeler, I could add endangering the welfare of a minor to the list of offenses.
I plotted an intercept course from my current location back to the farmhouse.
First, I’ll need to go back down that horrible hill, I realized with a pang.
I throttled up the ATV and spun a tight circle back up the ridge. The storm had begun leaving miniature icicles along the opening in my helmet, and my wheels seemed to be spinning more than ever, as if the treads were gunked up with frozen slush.
I arrived at the top of the hill again and realized the angle was such that I couldn’t get the headlights to shine down the descending trail. From this vantage, it seemed as steep as a cliff. How the hell did I get up here before? I wondered. And how the hell will I find my way down now?
Go slow, I told myself.
A lot of good that did. Within just a few seconds of beginning my descent, I could feel the tires start to skid on the slippery surface of ice. I became aware of the back end of the ATV beginning to pirouette out to my left side. There was a levitating sensation that started in my toes and traveled up my sciatic nerve, and I knew the quad was about to flip on top of me. For a moment, I hesitated and pulled as hard as I could on the handlebars, but it was all in vain. The machine’s center of balance lurched under my feet. Instinctively, I sprang off the seat into the air. I tried to tuck and roll, but when I came down, my right hand hit first, hard and fast, and I tumbled headlong down the slope. Glancing to one side of me, I was aware of Kathy’s four-wheeler pursuing a parallel course before it slammed into a tree trunk.
I knew my hand was broken even before I had come to rest. I’d broken bones before, and the sensation—as if one’s raw nerves were being attacked by hornets—was unmistakable.
I lay for a while on the frozen ground, feeling the icy rain pressing on every inch of my body. The tumble had filled my helmet with snow. I cradled my right hand against my chest.
“Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.”
The collision had knocked the wind out of me, and it took a long time before I had the strength to sit up. I saw Kathy’s ATV lying on its side at the base of the hill. A young poplar tree rose up from the snow beside me. I grabbed hold of the flexible swaying trunk and used it to gain my footing. The nerves in my right hand were all in a riot.
Back at my truck, I had a pliable splint I could use to immobilize the wrist, but I needed to limp my way there first. I stumbled over to Kathy’s wrecked quad and removed the keys from
the ignition. The engine died abruptly. The sound of the pattering rain swept suddenly over me. I pried loose my goggles and hung them and the helmet from a handlebar. I unzipped the front of my parka and tucked my injured hand against my heart, then zipped it back up again. Not as good as a sling, but better than nothing.
From the GPS, I knew that the nearest road was less than a quarter of a mile to the west. I removed my DeLorme from my pocket and took a bearing and then began to stumble in that general direction. After what seemed like an eternity, I broke through a wall of ice-tipped spruce boughs and stepped into a flooded ditch. Before me was the road. It stretched north and south.
Which way was my truck?
North, I remembered.
I climbed up onto the glazed road and began to hoof it back toward the Varnum place. It was a country road, with no lights along the telephone poles. The plow hadn’t come by yet, and it was hard going.
After a few minutes, I turned a corner and saw rain-blurred headlights and bright flashing orange lights up ahead. I knew at once that it was a plow truck, but the hulking shape wasn’t moving. It just seemed to be stopped in the middle of the road.
As I approached, I saw the silhouette of a man standing on the edge of the road, looking down into the woods. Had the plow struck a deer?
“Hey!” I shouted.
Slowly, the man’s head turned. I moved faster, and now I could see that he was a young guy, wearing a red plaid jacket and heavy Sorel boots. His head was bare, and he seemed to be wearing a cap of ice from the way his wet hair had frozen in the cold.
“Maine game warden!”
The man mumbled something, but I was still too far away to hear him over the idling engine of his plow truck.
“What?” I asked.
“I didn’t see them.” His eyes were wet and pleading. “They didn’t have their lights on.”
I unfastened the Maglite from my belt and shined the beam into the ditch. An ATV lay on its side in a mud-splattered snowbank. Beside it sat a big bearded man—dressed from head to toe in a black snowmobiling suit—cradling a red-haired boy in his arms. The boy’s head was back, his neck was limp, and there was blood flowing from his nose.
Calvin Barter stared up into the beam of my flashlight, his pupils huge and black. “Call nine one one!” he shouted at us.
22
I slid on the edges of my feet down the icy slope and ordered Barter out of the way. Maybe because he didn’t know what else to do, he handed the boy to me. I felt beneath the jaw for the carotid artery. There was no pulse. I bit down on the icy tips of my glove and yanked it off with my teeth. The bare skin of my palm detected no breath from either the nose or open mouth.
Carefully, I placed the boy flat on the frozen ground. I eased my broken hand out of the parka and spread my screaming fingers below Travis Barter’s sternum. I pressed my good hand atop the shattered one, gulped down a big breath, and began a series of thirty compressions. The intensity of the pain made me grit my molars, but I continued CPR. After I’d completed thirty compressions, I wiped my eyes and tilted the boy’s head back gingerly. I covered his mouth with mine and administered two rescue breaths.
Still no pulse.
Heedless of the pain, I started pumping the boy’s chest again. Thirty compressions, followed by two rescue breaths. Then feel for a pulse. Thirty compressions and two rescue breaths. Then feel for a pulse. I wondered how long I could keep going before I passed out from the agony.
I pressed two fingers to Travis Barter’s neck. Blood was moving through the artery. The pulse was faint. I pressed my ear to his mouth and felt the damp heat of his breath.
The boy was alive, but for how long?
* * *
It took half an hour for a deputy to arrive on the scene and half an hour more before the emergency medical technicians showed up. Cars were off the road all over the peninsula, the deputy told me. Frozen branches were snapping everywhere, bringing down electrical wires. Power lines were sizzling and snapping, rendering roads impassable. The ice storm was shaping up to be the worst in years.
I watched the EMTs secure Travis Barter’s neck and head with a brace and carefully strap him to a stretcher. His body was as floppy as a sock puppet. The medical people exchanged worried looks.
While the ambulance crew ministered to the injured teenager, Calvin Barter stood beside his ruined vehicle, muttering obscenities. His long black beard grew high on his cheekbones, so that little of his face showed beside his coal black eyes. His chest and belly wanted to burst loose from his mud-splattered snowsuit, and his boots were sizable enough for Bigfoot to wear. Even his hands were gargantuan. I wondered how those thick fingers could ever button a shirt.
I waited for the deputy—my buddy Skip Morrison—to set up some emergency beacons. Then I took him aside. I explained about the ATV vandalism case and how I’d chased Barter and the boy through the woods. I told him about crashing my sergeant’s ATV, and he gave me a pitying look. I didn’t mention my broken hand, just kept it tucked inside my parka, out of sight. My fingers were throbbing. I could feel the knuckles beginning to swell.
Skip left me for a while to go take a statement from the plow truck’s driver.
Barter insisted on helping the EMTs levitate the stretcher with the boy on it out of the ditch. No one dared refuse the giant man. In truth, he probably could have lifted the heavy gurney on his own and toted it all the way to the hospital in Rockport on his back.
As the EMTs were packing to leave, Skip came slipping and sliding back to me. “The plow driver says they were riding in the middle of the road with their lights off, for some reason.”
“They were fleeing from me,” I explained.
“You saved that kid’s life, Mike.”
“Let’s hope so.”
“Do you want me to help you arrest Barter?”
“Not here,” I said. “But I’d appreciate your filling out the accident report.”
“Sure thing. That guy is seriously bad news. I think half the high school kids around here get their pills from him.” He wiped melted water from his chin. “Did you hear someone sighted Westergaard?”
It took a moment for the name to register. “What? No.”
“They got a report about his Range Rover being seen in Massachusetts. But it’s not definite.”
I knew this was potentially big news, but somehow I couldn’t bring myself to care. Between the kid and my hand, I had enough on my mind. “I’m going to follow the ambulance to the hospital.”
“Maybe you should get a doctor to check you out,” he said. “You look a little green.”
I caught a ride with the plow driver back to the tote road where I’d hidden my truck. He was a greasy-haired, pimple-faced dude, scarcely out of high school, and he didn’t say a single word to me while we were on the road together.
“Don’t blame yourself,” I told him. “They shouldn’t have been in the road like that with their lights off.”
The driver looked at me as if I’d just muttered something to him in Swedish.
“Are you going to be OK?” I asked him.
“No,” he said.
* * *
The ice had encased my pickup in an opaque shell. I had to chip away at the seams of the door with my multitool before I could pry it open. Once inside, I ran the heater and defrosters full blast, hoping they would melt the windshield ice and spare me the labor of scraping it clear. I cradled my right hand on my lap. Very carefully, tugging each finger one by one, I removed my glove. Every little twitch sent jolts of pain up my forearm. My fingers were visibly swollen. The image that came to mind was of hot dogs expanding in a microwave.
I used my cell phone to call home.
Sarah picked up immediately. “Mike? Where the hell are you?”
“I got sidetracked. I’m sorry about missing Amy’s party.”
“She canceled it on account of the storm. I’ve been worried about you. The roads are horrible!”
“I’m going to be
a while longer,” I said through clenched teeth. “That guy I was looking for—Hank Varnum’s ATV vandal—crashed his machine. I’m following the ambulance to the hospital. A boy who was riding with him was injured.”
“A boy? What’s his name?”
“Travis Barter.”
“Oh my God! I have the Barter twins in my class—Jud and Julie. What happened to Travis? Is he going to be all right?”
“I don’t know.”
She took a long time to respond. “Your voice sounds strange.”
“The ambulance is leaving and I need to get going.”
“Call me from the hospital. And please drive safely. It’s such a dangerous night. I’ve had this feeling of foreboding all afternoon.”
“I’ll be home soon.”
I checked my voice mail. There was a message from Kathy Frost, asking for an update. I’d call her later. Maybe by then I’d have an excuse for demolishing her ATV.
There was also voice mail from Charley. “I picked up some info on the q.t.,” he said. “The state police found a print on that telephone outside Smitty’s Garage. It belongs to Mark Folsom, the owner of the Harpoon Bar. That’s an interesting wrinkle, don’t you think? Give me a call when you can, young feller.”
The defroster was having no effect whatsoever on the rimed windshield. I got out and started scraping the glass until, at long last, my truck emerged from its frozen chrysalis.
I could barely process Charley’s message. Was the anonymous caller who reported Ashley Kim’s accident Nikki Donnatelli’s former boss? At the moment, I was in no condition to chase that particular rabbit down the trail.
I drove myself one-handed to the hospital. Sarah and Skip were right: The road was treacherous. At intervals, I felt as if I were driving on sheer glass. Falling rain glittered like diamonds in my headlights. There was an eerie beauty to this night. Every tree branch and hanging wire seemed coated with a pastry glaze.
On my way off the peninsula, I passed several cars off the road and slowed down for each one, but the drivers had disappeared as utterly as Ashley Kim. For their sake, I hoped they had met real Samaritans on the road instead of the monster I knew to be lurking somewhere in the darkness.