The Gorge

by Ronald M. Berger

  “You’ve been around Betts too long.”

  “Maybe it’s about time we started fighting back.”

  It began to rain heavily as Carlyle and Wells retraced their steps through the beech forest. Water washed off the hills, and the trail quickly turned to mud. Tiny fluorescent green buds, like Christmas lights, sprouted from every branch.

  After two hours of slow hiking across now-slick rocks, the two men broke free of the undergrowth. Carlyle dropped his backpack and gazed at the Sheriff Department’s cruiser sitting just off the road, twenty yards east of the trailhead. “Look who’s here. Captain America.”

  The door opened and Pierce, clutching a twelve gauge in his right hand, spilled out of the driver’s seat. “Well, well, if it isn’t Butch and Sundance.” He walked across the road.

  “Caleb,” Wells said. “What are you doing out here?”

  Pierce propped his shotgun against a tree. “Bognor and I are trying to make sure you two don’t get your asses shot off. Why in hell’s name can’t you just let the authorities handle this investigation?”

  “What are you talking about?” Carlyle said.

  “How long have you boys been out there on the trail?” Pierce said.

  “Four hours,” Wells said.

  “And you didn’t hear or see anything unusual?”

  “Caleb,” Carlyle said, “for Christ’s sake. Will you tell us what’s going on?”

  “It seems as though our friend has decided to begin terrorizing locals now. Some guy wearing a full black beard and a Paul Bunyan outfit, plaid shirt and leather boots, ambushed a teenager hiking alone on Kettle Mountain.”

  “Where’s the kid now?”

  “At the state police barracks in North River. His parents are on the way over there.”

  “Did he describe this person?”

  “When the kid stopped crying, he said the beard was fake, but the axe was real.”

  “What’d he do to the child?”

  “He tied him up with duct tape and left him lying ten yards off the trail.”

  “Is he hurt?”

  “No, but this guy we’re after has a real sick sense of humor. He gave the kid a water bottle and told him if he moved before an hour was up, he’d come back with the axe and his parents would have to pick up body parts all up and down the mountain.”

  Pierce got back in his car and rolled down the window. “One more thing. Bognor says to tell you DEC wants you in Albany Saturday morning. Some guy named Elliot is on the warpath.”

  Thirteen

  Saturday

  After being kept waiting for twenty minutes, Carlyle and Bognor were ushered into a conference room on the eighth floor of DEC headquarters. It was 10 a.m. They found Karen Raines standing next to Abel Elliot.

  Raines motioned for them to sit down. “Sheriff, the commissioner believes we need to make more progress in your investigation. He’s asked Abel to evaluate the way you’re handling the situation in Warrensburg.”

  “I understand what’s going on, Karen,” Bognor said. “Shit runs downhill. It’s my turn to get called on the carpet.”

  “Not at all,” Elliot said. “But before we begin, I’d like to ask Ric how things are going at the university.”

  “You’re referring to my application for tenure.”

  “I just wanted you to know that if it doesn’t go well, you should apply for a job in our Policy Enforcement Unit.”

  “I’m a criminologist, not a cop.”

  Elliot stood up, walked to the south-facing windows, and turned down the blinds. “Let’s hope your investigation is successful, then.”

  Raines turned off her cell phone. “I think it’s time to hear your report. Abel has a busy schedule today.”

  Carlyle described how he had proven that Sanders and Blake were murdered and that two earlier accidents were caused by the same person. “But we still haven’t determined who has a grudge against Marshall.”

  “Your target could be a guide,” Elliot said.

  Carlyle pulled a small laptop from his briefcase. “That’s the first thing I thought of.” He paged through the relevant files. “Two hundred and seventy-five licensed guides have worked on the river since 1997. The majority were locals—carpenters, construction workers, electricians. People well known around town. I’ve also interviewed all the clerical and lodge staff, Marshall’s and Burton’s.”

  “Let’s just skip the details and hear the results,” Elliot said.

  “If you want an answer,” Bognor said, “you’ll have to let Ric explain how he’s gone about his work.”

  “Trust me, Sheriff,” Elliot said. “The commissioner doesn’t have time for background. He just wants a solution to this crisis.”

  “We both know your boss will make time if his department becomes the focus of a media blitz.”

  “What exactly do you mean by that?”

  Bognor smiled. “It’s pretty obvious. If the Johnston Mountain Project is delayed, everyone in this room will have to explain why the killer hasn’t been brought to justice.”

  Elliot said. “Go on with your report, Ric.”

  “The people who run boats through the gorge aren’t a bunch of yokels. We’ve had doctors, EMTs, paramedics, cops, and teachers working out there.”

  “So you’ve eliminated several obvious candidates,” Elliot said. “What about the other suspects in your files?”

  “I’ve gone through the CID database trying to determine if anyone with a guide license has a criminal background.”

  “Are you saying we’ve had felons working on that river?”

  “Just hold on,” Bognor said. “Have you ever spent any time in a rural upstate jurisdiction?”

  Elliot turned to face Bognor. “What difference does that make?”

  “Answer me. Have you even been north of Albany?”

  “Sheriff, calm down,” Raines said.

  “I’ll calm down when I get an answer.”

  “No, as a matter of fact, I haven’t,” Elliot said.

  “Then you wouldn’t understand how things work in an area with unemployment and poverty,” Bognor said.

  “You’ve made your point, Sheriff, but I’m sure Professor Carlyle has more to tell us.”

  Carlyle handed Elliot and Raines a two-page summary of his analysis. “Six people have been charged with petty theft, shoplifting, and reckless endangerment. Two others were found guilty of possessing cocaine or methamphetamines. Every one of those indictments was dismissed.”

  Without taking his eyes from the list, Elliot said, “Care to explain why outfitters continue hiring people like that?”

  “Abel,” Bognor said, “If I stopped every BMW cruising through my jurisdiction and had a high-strung drug-sniffing Doberman with me, my jail would be filled with downstate lawyers wearing double-breasted Armani suits.”

  “This is getting us nowhere,” Raines said.

  Elliot stared at Carlyle. “I want to know what your next move is.”

  “I’m going upstate early tomorrow morning. The person we’re after has found another route into the gorge. I’m sure that’s where he’ll strike next.”

  “This so-called discovery of yours won’t be enough to satisfy the commissioner,” Elliot said. “He wants to see an end to these vicious incidents.”

  “We’re also working through a list of suspects. It’ll take a day or two to check them all out.”

  “I need to know how long,” Elliot said.

  “We can’t give you a deadline.”

  Elliot let out an exasperated sigh. “You must have a profile of this maniac by now.”

  “We’ve found some of the tools he uses when he commits these crimes and where he hides out in the backcountry. We’re also beginning to understand his habits, how he thinks, how he moves around out there, and how he’s able to elude us.”

  “Cut the bullshit,” Elliot said. “What’ll it take to break this case open?”

  Carlyle closed his case notes file. “If he makes just o
ne more mistake, we may be able to take him down.”

  Elliot stood up. “You have two days. If there’s no breakthrough, we’ll tell the Bureau of Criminal Investigations to sweep through that region with SWAT teams. This case will end quickly when they take over.”

  “I wouldn’t count on that,” Carlyle said.

  When Carlyle got home that afternoon, he made coffee and went out into the side yard. It had taken him and Beth three years to find this place. Two hundred acres of unspoiled woods surrounded the house. They could see two mountain ranges from their back porch, but he’d neglected his land this spring. Once the manhunt was over, he’d promised Beth that he would mend the fence near the road, find a way to revive the two giant mulberries bordering the pond, paint the shed, and prepare the garden for planting.

  Three miles to the east, the Hudson plowed south toward the ocean. It was nearly an eighth of a mile wide now, a river the color of earth that heaved a hundred thousand cubic feet a second of fresh water toward New York City. A century ago, it had turned lumbermen and backwoods land speculators into magnates. Now, it did little more than move wood chips and rusted scrap metal from America’s decaying heartland to Brazil and Pakistan.

  Carlyle glanced up at the window toward Beth’s studio. She’d been sleeping there for the past few days while she put the finishing touches to a new canvas.

  “What are you working on?” he’d asked her last week.

  “It’s about that day.”

  “Does it do any good to keep going over it?”

  “I’ll never put it behind me until I turn my fear and rage into…into something else.”

  A year before they met, Beth had been attacked one evening while walking through Washington Park, a wooded oasis in the heart of Albany. Grabbed from behind, pleading for her life, she’d fought off a bearded man wearing a filthy red plaid shirt, brown trousers, and unlaced work boots.

  His left hand wrapped around her throat, he’d pummeled her almost into unconsciousness. X-rays revealed a fractured right cheek and a broken wrist. The bruises on her face, arms, and chest took a month to disappear. She couldn’t remember how long the beating had gone on, or why. After slamming her to the ground, her attacker had run off.

  It took months to reclaim any traces of a normal life. A plastic surgeon needed two operations to cover the scar on her cheek. Her right wrist never fully healed. A psychiatrist, claiming she would recover more quickly without medication, refused a prescription for Xanax. Beth forked over a week’s pay for a locksmith to make her apartment burglarproof. She stopped walking deserted streets alone, refused to teach night classes, seldom left home after dark, and paid for an unlisted phone number.

  She described the details of the attack to Carlyle a month after they met. They were sitting in a coffee house along the river in Troy. It was late afternoon in November. Dark outside. The river gray and still above the dam.

  “I kept a diary for a while, but the flashbacks just became more intense. Then I put my recent work in storage and started taking out my anger on the canvas.” Rothko-like images, huge slabs of red, black, and yellow, quickly took over her studio.

  Carlyle walked back to the house and began to make lunch. A few minutes later, she came down to the kitchen. “You’re still here.” She kissed his cheek.

  He put his arm around her shoulders. “I didn’t want to leave until you knew where I was going.”

  She sat down at the table and put a half-piece of toast on her plate. “How’d your meeting go this morning?”

  “Some idiot in DEC thinks we’re bungling the case.”

  She took an orange from a bowl and began to cut it in sections. “Are we safe?”

  “You mean here, in this house?” She nodded. Carlyle wiped his hands on a napkin. “What are you afraid of?”

  Beth pushed her plate away. “Haven’t you seen the patrol cars cruising up and down our road?”

  “I should have told you. When the press announced I was connected to the manhunt, I asked the local cops to watch the place.”

  “What else haven’t you told me?”

  Carlyle looked at his watch. “Do we have to do this now?”

  “There’s more, isn’t there?” She got up and walked to the window facing the road.

  “They have two people on rotating eight-hour shifts stationed in the house across the way.”

  “At the McMillans?”

  “They moved to her mother’s place until this is over.

  “For God’s sake.”

  “The police said it’s best if we don’t know what else they’re doing.”

  She turned around and faced him. “But you won’t admit that we’re in danger?”

  “It’s just a routine precaution.”

  “Routine? How can you say that? Should I go somewhere until this is over?”

  “I wouldn’t let you stay here if I thought you were in danger.”

  She sat back down. “When are you leaving again?”

  “Tomorrow at dawn. But I promise I’ll be back by dark.”

  “Then what happens?”

  “I’ll start paying attention to this place. You won’t have to ask Adrian to come back again.”

  The windows trembled as several helicopters, their rotors slashing through the thick afternoon air, cut through the valley on their way north. When the noise faded, she said, “Do they have anything to do with the manhunt?”

  “DEC is moving forest rangers from across the state to staging posts around the gorge. The police have set up checkpoints on all roads leading to the river at every Northway exit ramp.”

  “And you still insist I have nothing to worry about?”

  Working by the light of a single gas lantern, it took him forty-five minutes to assemble the equipment he would need for his next assault. When he was done, a lightweight wall hammer, a compact backcountry shovel, a sixty-foot piece of 9.2 mm canyon rope, a half-dozen snow anchors, a climber’s harness, and two pulley sets sat on the workbench in his barn.

  He stowed his gear, including a pair of Lund bear paws, in a high-volume external-frame rucksack. The four pieces of six-foot rebar now lying under canvas in his pickup would go on his shoulder. After studying the map and estimating how much snow remained on the trail, he estimated he would have to carry the forty-eight-pound load for two hours.

  Because it made him feel invulnerable, he’d begun using his grandfather’s gear, even the clothing the old man had left before he died. He tugged open the door of a large oak cupboard and began the transformation.

  In the mirror, he saw what some would have called a ghost from the past, a lumberman with wind-scarred cheeks and a neatly trimmed handlebar mustache. The image did not reveal the hidden wounds that went along with a lifetime in the woods: a broken nose, fractured pelvis, and punctured lung. He was also missing the ring finger on his left hand.

  His three-page, minute-by-minute plan for what would take place tomorrow required an eight-mile drive to the trailhead, a two-mile hike into the canyon, and at least two hours on-site. When it was all over, someone might guess how he’d set up this job, but by then it would be too late to prevent him from escaping.

  The reporters had begun calling him a homicidal maniac, but they knew nothing about the grievances his people had faced here and did not understand the terrible things that would happen to these woods if his campaign failed.

  Once he’d driven out Phillip Marshall and his cronies, Hamilton County would again belong to those who’d earned the right to live here. The forest would revive, logging camps would spring up, thousands of skilled men would be employed cutting timber, and boatmen would again run log rafts down the Hudson to Glens Falls. This region would be known for providing affordable land and decent jobs to working families, folks who wanted nothing more than to make a life in this frontier territory.

  He shouldered his load, locked the house, and drove off in the dark toward the gorge.

  Fourteen

  At 8:00 a.m. Sunday morning,
Carlyle and Wells stood facing each other in Bognor’s office on the outskirts of Indian Lake. The room was littered with coffee cups, faxes, old case files, and maps of the gorge.

  “You look terrible,” Carlyle said. “What happened?”

  “I’ve been up all night. A father and his two teenage sons got trapped on Cascade.”

  “They make it out okay?”

  “One of the kids lost a toe to frostbite. The other kid is fine.”

  “Sorry I had to call so early.”

  Wells unzipped his jacket. “Forget it. What’s the emergency?”

  “The state police received a call just after dawn this morning. Two fishermen in a dory spotted him near the bottom of Harris.”

  “How do you know it’s our guy?”

  “He was wearing a top hat, canvas trousers, knee-high boots, and a calf-length leather coat. They also said he was smoking a corncob and had a black beard. Who else could it be?”

  “Jesus.”

  “And he was carrying a weird axe in his right hand.”

  “This guy say anything to them?”

  “Not a word,” Carlyle said. “They assumed he was waiting for them to get out of his way. When they spotted the axe, they began rowing like crazy.”

  “What’s he doing so far from the gorge?”

  “It could only mean one thing—we’ve flushed him out of familiar territory.”

  “Why would he let himself be seen out in the open like that?”

  “He may think he’ll never get caught.”

  “Or maybe he’s getting careless?”

  “Him? Never. He’s too disciplined for that…or it could be part of his plan.”

  “Is it finally time to bring in the cops?” Wells said.

  “He’ll just go to ground once the troops arrive. We need to figure out where he goes next.”

  Carlyle unfolded a large-scale map of the region running from Indian Lake to North River. “We’ve assumed the Huntley Point Trail was the only way he could get in there, that he would never attack Marshall in the gorge itself.”

  “Did we make a mistake?”

  “Not really. Once the river turns east, the Black Mountain Range makes it all but impossible to get into the canyon.”