Wolf Lake

by John Verdon

  “Sounds outrageous. Can’t listen to it this second, though. I’ve got a client waiting. But I will get to it, and . . . and I will get back to you. Okay?”

  An unresolved note in her voice told Gurney there was something more she wanted to say. So, once more, he waited.

  “You know,” she added, “just theoretically speaking . . . if someone could figure out how to do that . . .”

  “You mean figure out how to make people kill themselves?”

  “Yes. If someone . . . if someone could actually do that . . .” The implications seemed to leave her at a loss for words.

  GURNEY SAT GAZING OUT OVER THE RESERVOIR. THE LONGER Rebecca Holdenfield’s unfinished comment lingered in his mind, the more convinced he was that he’d heard in it a touch of fear.

  He glanced at the dashboard clock. It read 3:23 PM. In a shadowed mountain valley in December, slipping down toward the shortest day of the year, it was nearly dusk.

  Gurney’s attention began to drift to a series of images. The images were both familiar and disconcerting. Familiar because they’d come to him from time to time—perhaps a dozen times in all, always unexpectedly—ever since he’d had the dream in which they first appeared, shortly after he and Madeleine had moved to the western Catskills and heard the stories about the old farm villages that had been dammed and flooded to create the reservoir.

  The villagers had been forced from their homes, dispossessed by eminent domain and New York City’s need for water. All the houses and barns, the churches and schools and general stores, everything had been burned to the ground, the charred timbers and stone foundations bulldozed into the earth, and all the bodies exhumed from the valley cemeteries. It was as if the place had never been home to anyone—as if communities that had existed for over a century had never existed at all. The vast reservoir was now the great presence in the valley, the bulldozed relics of human habitation having been long since absorbed into its silty bottom.

  But these hard facts, although they seemed to initiate it, were not the final substance of the dream’s recurrent images. In his mind’s eye he was standing in the dim, blue-green, deadly silent depths of the reservoir. All around him were abandoned homes, bereft of doors and windows. Incongruously, among the inundated farm buildings stood the Bronx apartment house where he’d spent his childhood. It, too, was eerily vacant, its windows nothing but rectangular openings in the murky brick facade. Eellike creatures undulated in and out of the openings. In the lightless interior venomous sea snakes lurked, waiting for their prey to venture in. A slow, freezing current pushed at his back, moving him ever closer to the looming structure with its hideous contents.

  So vivid were these images that Gurney’s lips drew back in revulsion. He shook his head, took a deep breath, started the car, pulled back onto the county road, and headed for home—resolving never to dwell on that dream again.

  The dozen miles of hills and hollows between the reservoir and Walnut Crossing formed a dead zone for his phone. But as he turned onto the narrow road up to his property, he entered the service area of the Walnut Crossing cell tower and his phone rang.

  It was Jane Hammond.

  “Did you hear?” Her voice was alive with anger.

  “Hear what?”

  “About Fenton’s latest press briefing.”

  “What happened?”

  “He’s making everything worse.”

  “What did he do?”

  “He claimed Richard is now his ‘primary suspect’ in what he’s calling four cases of ‘intentional homicide.’”

  “‘Intentional homicide’? That’s the term he used?”

  “Yes. And when a reporter asked him if that meant that Richard would be arrested and charged with first-degree murder, he didn’t say no.”

  “What did he say?”

  “That it was being considered, and that the investigation was ongoing.”

  “Did he say what new evidence prompted this?”

  “The same crazy stuff. Richard’s refusal to cooperate with the investigation. Of course he refuses to cooperate! You don’t cooperate with a lynch mob!”

  “His noncooperation is hardly new evidence. Was anything else mentioned?”

  “More nonsense about the dreams. Now he’s saying that all four victims had exactly the same nightmare. Which makes no sense at all.”

  Gurney pulled over to the edge of the road. One person having the same dream night after night was strange. Four different people having the same dream was beyond strange.

  “You’re sure you heard him right?”

  “Oh, I heard him right. He said that they’d each provided a detailed account of the nightmare they’d been suffering from. Wenzel told his minister. Balzac told a therapist. Pardosa told his chiropractor. Ethan wrote his out in a longhand letter to someone. Fenton says the four accounts are substantially the same.”

  “What point was he trying to make?”

  “He said that the fact that they all had the same dream after being hypnotized by Richard indicated that Richard was responsible—not only for the dream but for the suicides. And then he added, ‘the four suicides we know of so far’—like Richard might be a serial killer.”

  “But Fenton hasn’t formally charged him with anything?”

  “Formally charged him? No. Viciously slandered him? Yes. Destroyed his reputation? Yes. Ruined his career? Yes. Turned his life completely upside down? Yes.”

  She went on a bit longer, venting her fury and frustration. Although he normally was uncomfortable with displays of intense emotion, Gurney could sympathize with her reaction to a case that only became more bizarre with each new development.

  Four people having the same dream?

  How could that be possible?

  He continued driving up the road, past his barn, past the pond, up along the pasture lane. As he parked by the mud room door, he caught sight of a red-tailed hawk. It was circling over the field that separated the barn from the house. Its loosely formed circles appeared to be centered over the pen attached to the chicken coop. He got out of the car and watched the unhurried predator make another slow circuit before straightening its flight path and gliding out of sight over the maple thicket that bordered the pasture.

  He went into the house and called out to Madeleine, but there was no answer. It was just four o’clock. He was pleased to see that he’d arrived precisely when he said he would and disappointed that Madeleine wasn’t present for his rare on-time homecoming.

  Where could she be?

  She wasn’t scheduled to work her shift at the mental health clinic that afternoon. Besides, her car was in its normal spot by the house, so she couldn’t be far. It was cold and within an hour it would be dark, so it was unlikely she’d be out on one of the old quarry trails that ran along the bluestone ridges. The cold wouldn’t stop her, but the fading light would.

  He called her cell number and was startled to hear her phone ring on the sideboard just a few feet from his elbow—where it was serving as a paperweight on a pile of unopened mail.

  He went into the den on the off chance that she’d left a note for him on his desk.

  There wasn’t any note.

  The message light on the landline phone was blinking. He pressed the “Play” button.

  “Hi, David. Rebecca Holdenfield. I listened to the audio file of your conversation with Cox. ‘Bizarre’ is too mild a word for it. I have questions. Can we get together? Maybe meet halfway between Walnut Crossing and my office in Albany? Let me know.”

  He called her back, got her voicemail, and left a message.

  “Hi, Rebecca. Dave Gurney. Getting together may be tough. I’m leaving early tomorrow for Wolf Lake in the Adirondacks—to see Hammond, if I can. The following day I go on to northern Vermont for snowshoeing, et cetera. Earliest I’ll be back will be five, six days from now. But I do want to hear your opinion of the dream. By the way, the BCI investigator just added an impossible twist to the dream element at a press briefing. Check the
story updates on the Internet and get back to me when you can. Thanks.”

  As he ended the call, the phone rang in his hand. It was Hardwick, who was already speaking when Gurney put the phone to his ear.

  “. . . fuck is going on?”

  “Excellent question, Jack.”

  “Are Cox and Fenton competing for Craziest Man on the Planet?”

  “You listened to Cox reciting Wenzel’s dream?”

  “I did. The dream which Fenton now claims all the victims had.”

  “A claim you find hard to swallow?”

  “Horseshit of that magnitude is very hard to swallow.”

  “Which put us, Jack, in the uncomfortable spot of having to accept either that Fenton is lying with the approval of BCI brass, as part of some grand conspiracy, or that four people did, in fact, have the same dream, and it drove them all to suicide.”

  “You don’t think that’s possible, do you?”

  “Nothing I’ve been told about this case seems possible.”

  “So where do we go from here?”

  “We need to search for potential connections. Places where the paths of the four victims may have crossed. Also, any prior contacts they may have had with Richard Hammond. Or with Jane Hammond. Or with Peyton Gall, who Jane mentioned was in his twenties, just like three of the four victims, which may or may not be significant.”

  “Hell of a job, but I’ll start the process.”

  For some minutes after the call ended Gurney stood at the den window—until the deepening dusk reminded him of Madeleine. He thought he should go out and look for her before it got any darker. But where should he start? It was unlike her to—

  “I was down by the pond.”

  Her voice made him jump, so quietly had she entered the house and come to the den doorway. Once upon a time her comment’s uncanny responsiveness to the question on his mind would have disconcerted him, but he’d grown accustomed to the phenomenon.

  “The pond? Wasn’t it kind of a raw evening for that?”

  “Not really. It was just good to be out in the air. Did you see the hawk?”

  “You think we ought to do something about it?”

  “Other than admire the beauty of it?”

  He shrugged, and a silence fell between them.

  Madeleine was the first to speak. “Are you going to meet with her?”

  He knew instantly that she was talking about Rebecca, that she must have heard the phone message. The question, asked in too casual a tone, put him on edge. “I don’t see how. At least not until we get back from Vermont, and even then . . .”

  “She’ll find a way.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “You must realize she’s interested in you.”

  “Rebecca is interested in her career and in maintaining whatever contacts she thinks might someday be useful.”

  The half-truth led to another silence—broken this time by Gurney.

  “Is something wrong?”

  “Wrong?”

  “Ever since Jack and Jane were here, seems like you’ve been in another world.”

  “I’m sorry. I guess I’m . . . just a little out of sorts.” She turned away and headed for the kitchen.

  DINNER ENDED UP BEING A BRIEF AFFAIR CONSISTING OF BOILED potatoes, microwaved peas, haddock, and minimal conversation. As they were clearing the table he asked, “Did you let Sara know we’d be leaving a day early?”

  “No.”

  “Are you going to?”

  “Yes.”

  “If we open the chicken coop door in the morning to let them into the pen, someone will have to close it at night.”

  “Right. I’ll call her.”

  A long silence ensued with her washing and rinsing their dinner plates, the silverware, the haddock pan, and the potato pot, and setting everything in the drainer to dry. This ritual activity at the sink was a task she’d claimed as her own years earlier.

  Gurney’s peripheral role in the ritual was to sit and watch.

  When she was finished, she dried her hands; but instead of getting one of her books and settling into her regular armchair by the woodstove at the far end of the room, she remained at the sink island, staring into some private mental landscape.

  “Maddie, what on earth’s the matter?” Even as he was asking the question he knew it was a mistake, driven by irritation rather than concern.

  “I told you. I just seem to have a lot on my mind. What time do we have to leave?”

  “In the morning? Eight? Eight thirty? Is that all right?”

  “I suppose. Are you all packed?”

  “I’m not bringing much.”

  She gazed at him for several long seconds, then turned off the light over the sink island and left the kitchen through the hallway that led to their bedroom.

  He looked out through the French doors and saw nothing at all. Dusk had long since turned to solid night, a night with neither moon nor stars.

  CHAPTER 11

  Sometime after midnight there was a dramatic shift in the weather, with strong winds blowing away the overcast and flooding the maple copse outside their bedroom window with moonlight.

  Awakened by the sound of the wind, Gurney got up and went to the bathroom, drank a glass of water, and stood for a while at the window. The moonlight illuminating the winter-faded pasture grass looked like a coating of frost.

  He returned to bed, closed his eyes, and tried to empty his mind, hoping to slide naturally back into a comfortable sleep. Instead he found himself helplessly playing host to a succession of unsettling images, bits of the day, baffling questions and half-formed hypotheses—a needle stuck in a groove that went nowhere.

  His thoughts were interrupted by a sound—something high-pitched above the wind. Then it stopped. He waited, listening. The sound came again, more distinctly now. The shrill yipping of coyotes. He could picture them, like small wolves, closing in on their prey on the rocky moonlit ridge above the high pasture.

  Gurney awoke the next morning exhausted. He forced himself out of bed and into the shower. The hot pelting water worked its customary magic—clearing his mind, bringing him back to life.

  Returning to the bedroom, he found the two duffel bags Madeleine had shown him the previous morning. They were resting on the bench at the foot of the bed. Madeleine’s was full and zipped shut, his was open and waiting for whatever he intended to bring.

  He disliked packing for trips, probably because he disliked taking trips, especially ones he was supposed to enjoy. But he managed to gather and pack what he might need. He carried both bags out through the kitchen to the side door where Madeleine had stacked up their ski pants and jackets, snowshoes and skis. The sight fed his discomfort, as he realized that the only part of the planned excursion that held any interest for him was the brief segment they’d be spending at Wolf Lake.

  He took everything out to the car. While he was fitting the bags into the hatchback space, he caught sight of Madeleine, bundled in a heavy coat against the cold morning, making her way up through the pasture from the direction of the pond.

  He was back in the kitchen, brewing his coffee, by the time she’d circled back down to the house. When he heard her in the mud room, he called out. “Coffee’s on, you want a cup?”

  He couldn’t make out her muttered answer. He repeated the question when she appeared in the kitchen doorway.

  She shook her head.

  “Are you okay.”

  “Sure. Is everything in the car?”

  “As far as I know. Duffel bags, ski stuff . . .”

  “The GPS?”

  “Of course. Why?”

  “The detour we’re taking. I wouldn’t want us to get lost.”

  “There aren’t that many roads up there to get lost on.”

  She nodded with a touch of that same preoccupation he’d sensed in her the night before. As she was leaving the room, she added with a certain coolness, “There was a phone message while you were in the shower. It’s on the lan
dline.”

  He went into the den to check it, suspecting that it might be Rebecca.

  He was right. “Hi, Dave. Four people with the same dream? Meaning what? Generally similar elements? Or precisely identical images? First meaning is a stretch. Second is nuts. Love to delve deeper into this. Listen, I’ve got a gig every Friday in the psych department at SUNY Plattsburgh. So I’ll be there tomorrow. Google says that’s just twenty-seven miles from Wolf Lake. Could that work for you? We could meet where I’m staying—the Cold Brook Inn. Coming from Wolf Lake, the inn is just before the campus. Call me.”

  Gurney stood by his desk trying to sort out the timing and logistics of the proposed meeting, as well as the position it would put him in with Madeleine. Before he called Rebecca back, he’d need to give those issues more thought.

  THE FIVE-HOUR DRIVE FROM WALNUT CROSSING INTO THE NORTHERN reaches of the Adirondack wilderness offered an alternately beautiful and bleak exposure to the rural landscape of upstate New York. Many of the little towns were dead or dying—patches of commercial decay that clung to the state roads like disease growths on tree trunks. There were whole valleys where the tumble-down condition of everything was so pervasive it seemed the product of a toxic contamination seeping up out of the earth.

  As they traveled farther north, the patches of snow on the sepia farm fields grew larger, the overcast gradually thickened, and the temperature dropped.

  Coming to a village with more signs of life than most, Gurney pulled into a gas station across from something called the Latte Heaven Deli-Cafe. After filling the tank, he pulled out of the station and parked in the first space he found.

  He asked if Madeleine wanted coffee. Or maybe something to eat?

  “I just want to get out of the car, stretch my legs, get some air.”

  He crossed the street by himself, entered the little establishment, and discovered that it wasn’t exactly what the name suggested.

  The “Deli’” component was a cooler displaying in the light of a dim bulb the bleak cold cuts of Gurney’s Bronx childhood—bologna, boiled ham, and an orangey American cheese—alongside trays of thickly mayonnaised potato salad and macaroni salad. The “Cafe” component consisted of two oilcloth-covered tables, each with four folding chairs.