“Who approved this goddamn plan of yours?”
“DEC, Bognor, and the state police. They all signed off on it.”
“That’s why you changed the boat order this morning?” Marshall said.
“I wanted our best crew up front.”
“How many cops are with us?” Nash said.
“They’re all cops. Six are from a Coxsackie dive team, eight are detectives from Albany, and five are EPB.”
Nash looked confused. “EP what?”
“Executive Protection Bureau. The Governor’s bodyguard.”
“You used us as guinea pigs?” Nash said.
“No, I surrounded you with the best people we had.”
Betts stood up and adjusted the clasp on his helmet. “Don’t let me interrupt your little tea party.”
“What the hell are you doing?” Carlyle said.
“If some other boat comes through here, we could have another shit storm.” He dragged his raft closer to the submerged canoe.
Carlyle grabbed Betts’s arm. “Leave it for the dive team.”
“Get your hand off me. Someone could drown while you stand around.” He shrugged off his life vest, took a deep breath, and slid over the side of his raft into the water.
Nash stood up. “That’s crazy. He doesn’t have to do that.”
“Betts does what’s necessary, not what’s logical,” Carlyle said.
Betts fought his way down to the canoe, pulled a knife from his leg sheath, and cut through the lashing straps wrapped around the two boulders. When the canoe burst to the surface, he shoved it out of the current and dragged himself into the cockpit of his raft.
“Your right hand’s bleeding,” Carlyle said. “Let Marshall take care of it.”
“I’ll bandage it later.”
Carlyle turned to Nash. “It’s time to move out. You ready to finish the trip?”
“I’m fine. Let’s get going.”
“You still look a bit shaky,” Carlyle said. “I better take over lead boat.”
Nash laughed. “I can’t wait to see what Marshall says, but go right ahead.”
Carlyle gathered up his gear and stepped into the cockpit of Betts’s raft.
“What’s going on?” Betts said.
“What’s it look like? You can’t drive us back to North River with your hand like that.” Carlyle grabbed the guide paddle and shoved his foot into the restraining strap.
“You’re not licensed for this.”
“You think some ranger’s going to ticket me because I took over for an injured guide?”
“Fine. Just get us out of here. My hand’s killing me.”
Carlyle leaned out over the water, pulled them into the current, and maneuvered the raft slowly between a series of boulders. Five minutes later, the clouds lifted as they floated clear of Harris. Nearing the remains of the old trestle spanning the river, Carlyle kept the raft far from the concrete bridge pilings as the Hudson, near flood stage now, poured south.
“Looks like it’s all coming back to you,” Betts said.
Carlyle didn’t take his eyes from the river. “Did you really think I’d forget everything I’d learned about this business?”
They came up on Greyhound Rapid at two thirty. The Hudson was over a hundred yards wide here. A rock wall bisected the current, creating a deep trench with a ferocious low-head dam on its downstream side. On days when they had strong crews, Carlyle and the other guides would surf the boil line over and over. They stopped playing this game when the teenage son of a TV anchor got tossed into the trench one afternoon and almost drowned.
Carlyle told his crew, “Because we’ve got to get sissy-face here to a doctor, we’ll go round this thing today. Come back again when the river’s boiling and I’ll show you some real fun.”
As Betts nursed his wound, Carlyle led Nash, Hernandez, and Marshall down the Hudson, past the now-abandoned Barton Mines, and out of the gorge.
Ten minutes later, Betts said, “Shit.”
Carlyle spun around to check the rafts behind him. All looked fine. “What’s wrong?”
“I dropped my knife.” Blood seeped from his injured hand.
Marshall’s four rafts pulled into a small cove near North River at 3:15. The state police helicopter that had been hovering over the convoy for the past ten minutes banked right and raced back toward the gorge. Carlyle could see Bognor, Pierce, two DEC forest rangers, and a half-dozen stone-faced state troopers standing just off the road. The rain had stopped, but a thick gray fog had begun to settle over the valley.
The cops who’d been on the river today shook hands with their five guides, gathered up their gear, and marched toward two sixteen-passenger government vans with blacked-out windows.
Before she left, the woman who’d saved Nash’s life in Harris walked up to him. “I admire the way you took over that raft after the ordeal you went through.”
“I’m fine now, but I don’t know how to thank you.”
“You could ask for my phone number for a start.”
“Are you kidding me?” he said with a smile.
She pulled a card from her pack. “Just call. I’ll be home tonight after seven.”
A state police sergeant approached Marshall. “I’d like you to follow me. My boss wants you to provide a statement about what happened out there today.”
“Who’s going to watch our gear?” Marshall said.
The sergeant slowly looked around at the gathering of law-enforcement personnel and raised an eyebrow at Marshall. “I guarantee, no one’s going to touch your stuff.”
After Betts and Hernandez left for the lodge, Bognor, limping slightly, came over to Carlyle.
“How’d you all hear about the accident?” Carlyle said.
“That’s was one of the best equipped outfits I’ve ever seen. One of the people in Nash’s raft even had a satellite phone.” Bognor stared at Carlyle. “You want to talk about it?”
Carlyle described the accident in Harris. “We almost lost Nash back there.”
“How come you were you driving that raft when you pulled in just now?”
Carlyle told Bognor how Betts had cut his hand freeing the canoe from the river. “Don’t tell Pierce I was working without a license. I’ve had enough grief for one day.”
Bognor pulled out a notebook. “I’ve got a few more questions. You mind going over this once more?” They moved to a patch of open ground overlooking the valley. “Any idea why our suspect put that canoe right there?”
“It seems pretty obvious. He knows that Marshall always takes that route.”
“How’d he get that thing into the gorge?”
Carlyle looked to his left, upstream, toward the mountains. “There’s only one way he could have done it. He brought it down through the Narrows.”
“What do you mean, brought it?”
“You’ve never back been in there, have you?”
“Ric, I’m five ten and weigh two-forty. Do I look like someone who would run that river?”
“He paddled the canoe through the gorge himself.”
“When?”
“It had to be around dawn, before anyone else showed up.”
“Are you serious?”
“Getting a canoe through that canyon when the river’s this high is nearly impossible. But with almost no light, it’s sheer madness. I’ve been on that river in some terrible conditions, but this stunt was off the charts.”
“Goddamn.”
“So now we know something else about our suspect—he’s an expert boatman, so obsessed with his hatred of Marshall that he’s willing to kill another guide and risk his own life if necessary.”
Bognor glanced over his shoulder. “Could it be one of Marshall’s guides?”
“I thought about that. Only Nash and Betts have that kind of skill. But neither of them had enough time to make the canoe run and get back in time for this trip.”“Any idea how he got away once he finished with the canoe?”
“He must have b
ailed out somewhere in the backcountry,” Carlyle said. “He could still be out there now, for all we know.”
Bognor lit a cigarette. “You realize what this means?”
“He’s not bottled up west of the Narrows like we thought. Terrain is irrelevant. He goes where he wants to.”
Bognor closed his notebook. “Raines is going to have a stroke when she hears this.”
Pierce and Marshall left a state police Crime Scene trailer and approached the two men. “Mind if we listen in?” Pierce said.
“Caleb,” Bognor said, “This conversation will go a lot easier without your constant sarcasm.”
Carlyle turned to Marshall. “I guess you realize that this guy knows everything about your operation. Which rafts you use, your boat order, what time you take off from Indian Lake. All of it.”
“Ryan,” Bognor said, “I hate to say this, but if Ric is correct, it may be time to close you down for good.”
“Hold on a second, John,” Carlyle said. “There may be a better way of handling this. We’ve learned a good deal about him in the past two weeks. When he gets anywhere near this river, he’s almost impossible to stop. And we can’t just wait for him to find us. That means we have to try another tactic.”
“Okay, let’s hear this bright new idea of yours,” Pierce said.
“We flush him out of the woods.”
“You’re really not saying that we go in there after him, are you?” Bognor said.
“What other choice do we have?”
Pierce let the butt of his shotgun drop to the ground. “Wake up, will you? Thirty minutes after this operation begins, everyone within a hundred miles will know about it. Including the asshole we’re looking for.”
“But only two or three people will know where we’re going.” Carlyle pulled a topo map from his pack and unfolded it. “There’s only three legitimate trails into the gorge east of Blue Ledges. We start at the top and work our way down.”
“How many forest rangers will you need to find this guy?” Pierce said.
“I’m not planning on using any.”
“You want to tell me, then, who’s dumb enough to track this killer?”
“Wells and I will do it.”
Pierce grabbed the map from Carlyle’s hand. “You two are no match for that guy.”
“Wells know this terrain better than anyone and he’s just pissed off enough to try it.”
“You think you can do what three different police agencies have been unable to?”
Carlyle reached over and took his map back from Pierce. “If you’ve got a better idea, either let us know what it is or stay out of our way.”
Just before eight that evening, Carlyle found Beth sitting on the porch. A tiny lamp stood on a side table, an open book lay on her lap, and a cigarette lay smoldering in an ashtray. She had thrown on a hand-woven shawl that she’d bought in Taos last year.
Carlyle pulled out a chair next to her. “You haven’t done that lately,” he said.
“What?”
“Smoke.”
“It was a long day.”
He bent over and kissed her temple.
Beth said, “Are you okay?”
“Everything’s fine.” He would tell her later about Nash. “Can I take a look at the book?”
She passed the heavy volume toward him. “You may not like the image.”
“Why not?”
“You once said you preferred realism.”
Carlyle laughed. “I said that when we were dating. I was trying to impress you.” He took the book from her hands. “You won’t believe this. Even in this light, I can see it’s Caravaggio.”
“The Conversion of St. Paul.” Paul, wrapped in armor, a maroon cloak at his side, lay on his back beside an old man holding the bridle of a huge warhorse.
Carlyle stared at the painting for several minutes, its bold colors unmistakable even in the weak light. He looked outside at the shadows creeping across the garden and put the book back in her hands. “What’s it supposed to mean?”
“I think Caravaggio’s saying we can’t trust reason, but emotions never lie.”
“If everyone followed their gut, I’d never catch the madman who killed those two guides.”
“Why not?”
“Everybody up north is trigger-happy.”
Carlyle decided he had to tell Beth about his day. He described Nash’s accident.
“Did anyone else get hurt?”
“Betts gashed his hand pulling the canoe out. That’s all.”
“You weren’t in any danger?”
“No. But I had to drive our boat back to North River.”
“How did it go?”
“You can’t imagine how it feels to be in a raft when the river has some teeth in it, when it’s fighting you every second.”
Unable to sit still as he described his afternoon, Carlyle stood up, moved toward the window, and stared at the garden as the light faded. Furrows, deep and dead straight, stretched across it instead of weeds and brush. “Was someone working out there today?”
Beth picked up a wine glass. “I couldn’t refuse his offer.”
Carlyle kept his back to her. “Whose offer? What are you talking about?”
“Adrian’s. He said he’d help us get ready for the spring.”
“How long was he here?” Carlyle continued to study the expertly turned fields.
“Until about three.”
“You said he’d left the area.”
“He’s got an apartment in town now.”
Carlyle turned. “Listen to me, please. It’s not safe to have him around us.”
“Ric, there’s nothing to worry about.”
It was almost dark now. Carlyle put his glass on the table. “He probably thinks I’m responsible for booting him out of the program.”
“How does that affect us?
“When graduate students get terminated, they can go a bit crazy. Some send menacing emails to their professors or phone in bomb threats to the university. One maniac in Utah stabbed his adviser as she was pushing her infant daughter in a stroller.”
“Adrian’s not capable of anything like that.”
“Beth, let me explain something. The university employs a lawyer to do nothing but handle calls from faculty stalked by students, who can go berserk when they feel they’ve been mistreated by a professor. Why do you think I cancel my office hours at the end of the semester and suggest we leave town for a few days?”
“Adrian’s really quite kind. He knows how busy you’ve been lately.”
Carlyle turned to face her. “How can you be so certain this guy isn’t dangerous?”
“You haven’t been at home much. What was I supposed to do?”
“That’s not fair.”
Beth got up and walked into the kitchen. Carlyle watched as she put his dinner in the oven and, without looking back, went upstairs. A minute later the lights in her studio went on.
Twelve
Carlyle sat in a booth at the North Creek Diner at 7:20 on Saturday morning and watched the rain, driven by an unrelenting north wind, lash the shuttered store fronts that lined Main Street. If the temperature dropped another degree or two, the roads would ice up and the whitewater crowd, with no stomach for these conditions, would stay away from the river this weekend.
Leo Wells came through the front door ten minutes later. “You ever see anything like this?”
“Is it still illegal to shoot weathermen?” Carlyle said.
Wells stripped off his parka and gloves and slid into the booth. His deeply lined face, toughened by a decade in the mountains, looked drained. He was devoted to high-altitude rescue work, but it was an exhausting and solitary infatuation.
Carlyle had been to Wells’s tiny, one-bedroom apartment once, several years ago. The place was filled with ice axes, crampons, first aid equipment, five pairs of mountaineering boots, high-tech flashlights, global positioning devices, a half-dozen portable weather radios, and enough camping gear t
o outfit an army platoon. Women who saw the place knew that Wells would never make room in his life for a family.
“What happened?” Carlyle said. “You look like shit.”
“I thought you admired the Marlboro Man look.”
“Seriously.”
Wells began rapping the salt shaker against the table. “A couple of kids in a rowboat tried to run the low-head dam below Thompson’s Falls. We’ve been out all night searching for them.”
Carlyle rested his arms on the table. “You find anything?”
“Just the boat and two life vests. The bodies will probably wash up downstream in a day or so.”
The waitress who took their order recognized Carlyle. “How soon before they catch that guy who’s been killing guides?”
“Wish I could tell you, Ruth.”
A four-man line crew from the local power company burst into the diner. They wore bright orange vests and carried heavy leather tool belts, thick felt gloves, and hardhats. One of them left his scrum to slap Wells’s shoulder. “Leo, I heard about last night. You went into that wave below the dam to look for the bodies? That’s insane.”
Wells drained his first cup of coffee. “Tell that to the parents.”
The lineman turned to Carlyle. “Your friend here’s going to get killed one of these days if he’s not careful. Keep an eye on him.” He rejoined his crew.
“It’s been nearly two weeks,” Wells said. “You have any suspects yet?”
Carlyle pulled a small notebook from his backpack and placed it on the table. “I did background checks on everyone who’s worked for the town the past five years. Three people—one on the highway crew and two in maintenance—have minor criminal records, but we haven’t been able to connect them to this.”
“Anything else turn up?”
“Marshall had a client a year ago who broke his leg in Soup Strainer.”
“Did one of the guides make an error?”
“No, but the dude fractured his left femur and eventually lost his job.”
“Why’d he show up on your radar?”
Carlyle watched the rain beat against the diner’s windows. “He wrote some angry letters to the local paper blaming Marshall for his injury. I don’t think he’s our guy, though. Ryan’s insurance company paid him to drop his suit.”
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