“You never cross the spirit path,” Keith said, explaining the reason for their roundabout route. “It goes from the fire to the altar to the lodge.” Removing the plastic sheet, he took off the first blanket and opened it up. “You just drape them over the poles like this.”
Charlotte opened up another blanket and draped it over the lodge so that it lay flat on the wooden skeleton, and then smoothed it out. She was glad she was dressed in old clothes because the blankets were dirty and musty-smelling from being stored outdoors.
“I was surprised at how fast you got here,” said Keith as they worked. “And pleased. I was eager to find out what was going on.”
“We were here already,” said Charlotte, glad that he had provided the cue for steering the conversation to Pamola. “We set a trap for Pamola last night at Chimney Pond Campground, for which I was the decoy. All we caught was his rattle, which he dropped when he left.”
“His rattle?” said Keith, looking up from his work with interest.
She nodded. “It was made out of a gourd, and it had a drawing on it of a small animal. One of the rangers said it was an otter. Lieutenant Tracey’s going to have it tested for fingerprints along with the moose headdress, which one of the rangers found in the woods off the Saddle Slide.”
Keith stopped what he was doing and sat down on a nearby stump, with his hands clasped together and his head bent down in thought.
“Do you know who the rattle belongs to?” Charlotte asked.
He sat silently for a minute before replying. “As a matter of fact, I do. I wasn’t going to say anything. I figured the Pamola issue was a tribal matter. But if the police are testing the rattle and the moose headdress for fingerprints, they’re going to find out anyway.”
At last! A real lead, Charlotte thought, mentally congratulating herself for being correct in her suspicion that Keith knew who the Pamola prankster was. “Then this person has a police record?” she said.
He nodded. “He’s been arrested in connection with Indian protests out West.” Standing up, he resumed laying the blankets on the sweat lodge. “He used to be active in the American Indian Movement. His name is Lorne Coley. Coley is a corruption of the Indian word for otter.”
“Hence the drawing on the rattle,” said Charlotte. “Do all Indian names have meanings?” she asked, curious. “Like yours, for instance?”
“A lot of them, yes. Samusit means ‘one who walks along the edge of something, a line walker.’ I like to think that the line I walk is the line between Indian culture and white culture.”
Charlotte laid a blanket on the last uncovered space. The skeleton was beginning to look like a wigwam.
Keith continued. “Lorne’s grandfather was a carnival sideshow Indian. He’d dress up in Indian costumes and dance. One of his costumes was the Pamola costume. I saw him in it when I was a kid. By then, he wasn’t doing carnivals anymore. He was dancing for handouts downtown.”
“He was that poor?” said Charlotte.
He shook his head. “He was a drunk,” he said, “trying to squeeze drinking money out of the whites. It used to disgust me.”
“Why’s Coley dressing up as Pamola?” she asked as she smoothed out a moth-eaten trapper’s blanket. They were now on the second layer.
“Part spite, part craziness. He’s one of those people that Black Elk, the Sioux spiritual leader, called Blue Men. People who are motivated by jealousy and greed. He calls himself a Penobscot Indian medeoulin, or shaman.”
“What qualifies one to be a shaman?”
Keith shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine.”
“Then he’s a self-proclaimed shaman.”
“You could say that. He leads his own vision quests, conducts healing ceremonies. He’s very jealous of all this.” He waved a slim-fingered hand at the retreat center, whose shallow-sloped roof could just be seen above the trees below. “It challenges his authority.”
“Another shaman on his turf,” Charlotte commented.
Keith bristled. “I would never call myself a shaman. To be a shaman, you have to have supernatural powers. I call myself a ceremonial leader.”
Charlotte apologized.
“That’s okay,” he said. “It’s just that it’s a touchy issue with me. Given all the phony shamans that are running around these days.”
Didias had reappeared, carrying an armload of kindling that she added to a stack next to the woodpile. “Who’re you talking about, the male shamanist pig?”
Keith smiled. “That’s what Didias calls him. One of the perquisites of being a spiritual leader is that women throw themselves at you.”
“I hope not,” Didias said, smiling at Keith.
He corrected himself. “At least, they throw themselves at Coley. Not all women. He specializes in old ladies. His amorous exploits have caused a lot of discord among the older members of the tribe.”
“Are you friendly with him?” Charlotte asked.
“I used to be. We were both Pure Men. The Pure Men are young male members of the tribe who are honored for their fleetness of foot; in the old days, they would run down and kill the deer or moose. They were called Pure Men because they had to stay pure in order to maintain their endurance.”
Which meant that Coley would be more capable than most of making the grueling hike over the mountain. But Keith also had been a Pure Man, she thought, reminded of how gracefully he had moved through the woods. And he had more of a motive, like a literary estate worth a million dollars. “And today?” she asked.
“Today, it’s strictly a social honor. The Pure Men lead the Sacred Run. As soon as a Pure Man is outstripped by a younger candidate, that person takes his place. I was the one who replaced Lome.”
Not only had Keith challenged Coley’s role as shaman, he had also replaced him as a Pure Man, Charlotte thought. No wonder Coley was jealous. “But you’re not friends anymore?”
He shook his head. “I stopped hanging around with him when he started drinking heavily.” He sighed. “It’s a problem with our people, as I’m sure you know. He stopped drinking some time ago, but sometimes alcoholics act crazier after they stop drinking than they did before.”
“Crazy enough to murder Iris?”
“I don’t know,” he said, opening up yet another blanket to spread on the lodge. “I’ve been thinking about little else since I spoke with you the other day. Didias, can you tell us if any light’s getting in?”
Didias crawled into the lodge and reported that the southeast side near the bottom needed more blankets. Then she crawled back out and went off into the woods again to fetch more kindling.
“Lieutenant Tracey and I were trying to figure out his route. How would he have gotten here, or to Chimney Pond?”
“I have a theory about that, too,” Keith said. “Our tribal lands used to be divided up into family hunting ranges; families would go year after year to the same area. The otter family’s range was northwest of Katahdin in an area called the Klondike. Lome’s great uncle used to hunt moose there.”
Charlotte remembered Mack talking about watching the fog roll in over the Klondike when he and Iris had been eating lunch at Thoreau Spring.
“He’s the one who named it because of its resemblance to the Canadian Klondike. Do you know anything about the Klondike?”
She shook her head.
“It’s a bowl of spruce that lies between Katahdin to the east and Barren, O-J-I, Coe and the Brothers to the west. It’s been called the most inaccessible area in the state. There are no trails into it. The only way in is over the surrounding ranges, or through a narrow defile to the north.”
“And you think he used the Klondike as his staging area?” She wondered if a former alcoholic—even one who had been a Pure Man—could have made such a grueling trek, and then dismissed her doubts, remembering all the times she had been astounded at the physical stamina of alcoholic co-stars.
He nodded. “His great uncle had a camp there.”
Reaching into the pocket
of her jacket, Charlotte pulled out her trusty pocket map and opened it up against the side of the sweat lodge.
“Here it is,” Keith said, pointing to an area dotted with the blue plant-like markings that were the symbol for bog. “His great uncle’s camp was at Klondike Pond, which is here.” He indicated a slice of blue on the east wall. “I think that’s where he stays.”
“Right between here and Chimney Pond,” she said. “But if there aren’t any trails, how would he get in and out?”
“His great uncle could have told him. But he’s a good woodsman in his own right. It would be difficult—it’s all dense, thickly matted stunted spruce that’s very difficult to get through—but it could be done. There are a lot of old logging roads in here”—he pointed to the northwest—“where he could park.”
“That’s what the rangers said, too,” she told him.
“Once he got out of the Klondike, he could take the Perimeter Road to the Kidney Pond Campground,” he continued. “From Kidney Pond, there’s a trail that leads into here. It would be a long haul, but you could do it in a night.”
“And to Chimney Pond?” she asked.
“Chimney Pond wouldn’t be that hard. It’s much closer.” Again he pointed out the route on the map. “He’d just climb up this gulley to the Northwest Plateau, follow the Northwest Basin trail to the top of the Saddle Slide, and then take the Saddle Trail down to the campground.”
“A ranger who’s an expert tracker tracked him up the Saddle Trail, but lost his trail at the Saddle Slide.”
“There you go,” he said. “I’d venture to say that if you looked along the line of krumholz on the west slope of the Northwest Plateau …”
“Krumholz?” asked Charlotte.
“It’s a German word for that stunted spruce that I was talking about. It’s also called elfinwood. The trees might be over a century old, but they’re only a few feet high, and very dense from being flattened by the wind and snow.”
“I forgot,” said Charlotte, who had been wondering how Keith knew all of this. “You’re a forester.”
“In places, you can walk right on top of it,” offered Didias, who had reappeared with another armload of kindling.
“Anyway, if your tracker looked along the line of krumholz on the west slope of the Northwest Plateau, I’d venture to say that he’d find an entry point somewhere just to the east of Klondike Pond.”
Tracey had appeared at the head of the path with a wheelbarrow-load of rocks. “Hello, there,” he said as he paused to wipe the sweat from his brow. “I’ve been out gathering our grandfathers. What have you folks been up to?”
Charlotte pondered what to say, and decided to leave it until later.
“Thanks,” said Keith. “We’re ready to light the fire now. It takes about an hour to heat the grandfathers, which will give the vision questers plenty of time to get back here. The fire is the signal that the quest is at an end. Would you like to join us for the sweat?”
“Maybe next time,” said Tracey. “We have to get back. But thank you.”
They all helped pile the grandfathers on the top of the woodpile, and the kindling on top of that. Then Keith touched a match to a pile of shredded birch bark at the base of the woodpile. Within minutes, huge orange flames were darting into the cloudless blue sky.
“Some Native Americans make a practice of reading the flames,” Keith said. “I can’t do that. But I can tell that this is a fire with a lot of energy. I think it’s going to be a good sweat.”
As they stood there and watched, the heat of the flames burning their faces, they heard the hum of an engine. Turning, they saw the float plane returning over the forest to the south.
“Here’s our ride,” said Tracey.
Charlotte walked next to Keith as they headed back down the path toward the retreat center. As they arrived at the bottom, he turned to her and said, “You know, the Penobscots have a saying: ‘The fox is smart, but he gets caught in the trap just the same.’”
Charlotte looked at him, an eyebrow arched quizzically.
He explained. “If Lome’s the one who killed Iris, you’ll catch him.”
After saying goodbye, Charlotte and Tracey headed down to the dock. A few minutes later, they were airborne. As they looked back, they saw a dense pillar of black smoke rising out of the forest.
As the plane headed back toward Ambejejus, Charlotte was struck by an idea. The Klondike might be inaccessible on foot, or nearly so. But that wouldn’t necessarily be true by air. It probably depended on wind speed and direction, but she guessed it would be possible to land a float plane there. On their walk down to the dock she had filled Tracey in on what Keith had told her. He, in turn, had told her that Didias had confirmed Keith’s alibi, for what that was worth. Now Charlotte turned to the back of the plane, where Tracey was sitting (having been gentleman enough to give her the seat, with the view), and suggested that they try to land on Klondike Pond. Tracey considered her suggestion for a moment and then leaned forward to talk to the pilot, who was the same bear of a man they had flown out with.
“Do you know a place called the Klondike?” he asked.
The pilot looked puzzled. “Nope,” he said. “Can’t say that I do.”
“It’s a basin surrounded by mountains to the west of Katahdin.”
“Oh! I know where you mean,” he said, nodding in recognition. “We fly over there on sightseeing trips. I didn’t know what it was called.”
“Do you know the pond there, Klondike Pond?”
The pilot nodded again.
“Do you think you could land there?”
“You mean today?”
Tracey nodded.
He considered the request. “It might be tricky. It’s a small pond, and it’s tucked right up into the slope of the plateau. But it’s pretty quiet today. I’d be willing to give it a try.”
“We’re game if you’re game,” Tracey said, whereupon the pilot rounded a mountaintop to their left and headed the plane back toward the north.
“That’s Daicey Pond down there,” the pilot said, indicating a collection of little cabins, looking like Monopoly pieces, that were clustered around one end of a lake. “It’s one of the park campgrounds,” he said.
Locating Daicey Pond on her map, Charlotte was able to follow their route as they crossed the Perimeter Road, followed the Appalachian Trail along Katahdin Stream, and then flew through a narrow pass between two mountains to emerge in the bowl of the Klondike. It was a deep depression, surrounded by mountains. Except for the fact that it was covered by a dense carpet of evergreens, it reminded Charlotte of the giant Meteor Crater in Arizona.
“Supposedly, there’s an old plane wreck down there,” said the pilot, looking down into the bowl. “But nobody’s ever found it.”
From the bottom of the bowl, they followed a stream up the side. Just as it seemed they were about to crash into the slope of the Northwest Plateau the pilot suddenly set the plane down on a tiny pond, as softly as if it were a leaf falling on a puddle.
“How do you like that for flying?” said the pilot proudly, once they had come to a gentle stop.
“Pretty impressive,” said Tracey with a grin.
“Now, do you mind if I ask you one question?” asked the pilot, turning around to talk to his backseat passenger.
“Fire away,” he said.
“What are you folks looking for here?”
“A camp, probably. Failing that, any evidence that somebody’s been here recently.”
“A log-cabin kind of camp or a tent-kind of camp, or what?”
Tracey shrugged. “We’re not sure.”
“Is it possible to just kind of taxi around?” asked Charlotte.
“Sure,” said the pilot, turning back to his controls. “We can circumnavigate the pond. It will take two and a half minutes.”
Tracey moved over to Charlotte’s side for a better view as the plane started moving slowly along the south shore, which was lined by a dense growth of sc
rub spruce.
“Doesn’t look like very good fishing,” said Tracey as he looked out at the clear green water, which was as devoid of vegetation as Chimney Pond had been.
“The fishing’s nonexistent,” said the pilot. “Fish don’t live above a certain altitude. And this pond has the highest altitude in the state. I forget who told me that, but it appears to be true.”
At the eastern end, which was bordered by scree from a slide that had come down off the Northwest Plateau, the pilot turned the plane around and started heading down the opposite shore.
“I’ll tell you something else about this pond,” the pilot went on. “It can’t be seen from any trail in the park. It’s a real secret little place, the way it’s tucked into the back side of the plateau.”
Which also meant that the light from a campfire wouldn’t be visible, thought Charlotte. Or, for that matter, the smoke from a campfire.
They were about three-quarters of the way down the north shore when Charlotte glimpsed the outline of a building through the trees. “Wait a minute,” she said, but the plane had already passed by.
“Did you see something?” asked the pilot.
“I don’t know,” she replied. “I think so. Can we go back?”
“I don’t see why not.” He maneuvered the plane in a U-turn, went back to a spot at about the halfway point, and then continued down the north shore of the pond again, this time more slowly.
“There it is,” she said, pointing. “It’s a cabin. Do you see it?”
“I see it,” said Tracey. “I also see a path through the underbrush from the shore.” He addressed the pilot: “Do you think you can put in here? There’s a good-sized log that you might be able to pull up to.”
“Don’t see why not,” said the pilot, turning the plane toward shore. At the shore, he sidled it up to the log and then dropped anchor. Charlotte and Tracey got out, stepping first onto the pontoon, and then onto the log.
The cabin was small, constructed of peeled spruce chinked with clay and moss. In size it resembled Thoreau’s house at Walden Pond, which was to say about ten by fifteen, though Thoreau’s house had been sided not with logs but with boards that he’d scrounged from an Irishman’s shanty. The cabin appeared to be quite old: the roof was caved in on one side, and the plank door hung from one hinge. The roof and walls were green with moss and lichens, giving the structure a kind of protective coloration. It was a wonder that Charlotte had seen it at all. The clearing in front bore the remains of a campfire: a heap of charred wood surrounded by a circle of blackened rocks. An old iron pot hung from a stick that was supported by two forked branches stuck into the ground on either side. Charlotte peered into the pot. The rusty water at the bottom was coated with a scum of tree pollen and brown needles. To one side of the campfire was a pile of old cans and bottles. A rusted barrel hoop hung from a tree limb. Tracey picked up an old bottle that was caked with dirt. “My wife collects these,” he explained, sticking it into the pocket of his windbreaker. “They look pretty good once they’ve been cleaned up.”
Murder on High Page 17