Wolf Lake

by John Verdon

  At one table a pair of wizened women were inclined toward each other in silence, as though they’d been in the midst of a conversation during which someone had hit the “Pause” button.

  The “Latte Heaven” component consisted of a small espresso machine that showed no signs of life. There was an intermittent sound of steam pipes banging and wheezing somewhere beneath the floor. A fluorescent light fixture on the ceiling was buzzing.

  One of the wizened women turned toward Gurney. “You knowin’ what you want?”

  “Do you have regular coffee?”

  “Coffee we got. Can’t say how reg’lar it is. You wantin’ somethin’ in it?”

  “Black’ll be fine.”

  “Be a minute.” She stood slowly, went around behind the cooler, and disappeared.

  A few minutes later she reappeared and laid a steaming Styrofoam cup on the counter.

  “Dollar fer the coffee, eight cents fer the governor, who ain’t worth no eight cents. Damn fool made a law to bring wolves back into the park. Wolves! Can you beat that fer stupid craziness? Park’s fer families, kids. Damn fool! You wantin’ a top fer that?”

  Gurney declined the top, put a dollar fifty on the counter, thanked her, and left.

  He spotted Madeleine about two blocks away on the main street, walking toward him. He took a few sips of his coffee to keep it from spilling and went to meet her. As they were ambling together toward their car, a young couple came out of a two-story office building half a block ahead of them. The woman was holding a baby wrapped in a blanket. The man went around to the driver’s door of car that was parked in front of the building, then stopped. He was looking over the roof of the car at the woman. Then he started back toward her, moving unsurely.

  Gurney was close enough now to see the woman’s face—her mouth drawn down in terrible desolation, tears streaming down her cheeks. The man went to her, stood in front of her for a moment with a helpless look, then put his arms around her and the baby.

  Gurney and Madeleine noticed the sign on the building and were hit by its significance at the same time. Above the names of three doctors, it read “Pediatric Medical Specialties.”

  “Oh, God . . .” The words came out of Madeleine like a soft groan.

  Gurney would be the first to admit that he had a serious deficiency in the empathy area, that the suffering of others often failed to touch him; but on occasion, as now, without any warning, he was blindsided by a feeling of shared sadness so great his own eyes filled with tears and his heart literally ached.

  He took Madeleine’s hand and they walked the final block to the car in silence.

  CHAPTER 12

  Barely a mile out of the village a roadside sign informed them that they were entering the Adirondack Park. “Park” struck Gurney as a term far too modest for this vast tract of forests, lakes, bogs, and pristine wilderness that was larger than the entire state of Vermont.

  The terrain around them changed from a succession of down-at-the-heels agricultural communities to something far wilder. Instead of weedy meadows and hilltop thickets, the landscape was dominated by a dark expanse of conifers.

  As the road rose mile after mile, tall pines gave way to stunted firs that appeared to have been bent into angry submission by the harsh winter winds. Even open spaces here seemed forlorn and forbidding.

  Gurney noted that Madeleine was sharply focused now on everything around her.

  “Where are we?” asked Madeleine.

  “What do you mean?”

  “What are we near?”

  “We’re not near very much at all. I’m guessing we’re seventy or eighty miles from the High Peaks. Maybe a hundred, hundred and twenty miles from Wolf Lake.”

  There was a frozen mist in the air now, so fine it was drifting sideways rather than falling to the ground. Through this icy filter the wild landscape of hunched trees and gaunt granite outcroppings seemed wrapped in a deepening gloom.

  After another two hours, during which he encountered only a handful of other vehicles, all heading in the opposite direction, their GPS announced that they had arrived at their destination. There was, however, no lodge in sight. There was simply a dirt road that met the state route at a right angle, marked by a discreet bronze sign on an iron post:

  GALL WILDERNESS PRESERVE

  WOLF LAKE LODGE

  PRIVATE ROAD—GUESTS ONLY

  Gurney drove in. About half a mile into the property he sensed the pitch of the road steepening. The crouching trees began to take on a sinister aspect in the sleety fog, materializing out of nowhere only to disappear seconds later.

  Madeleine turned her head suddenly in the direction of something on her side of the car.

  Gurney glanced over. “What’s the matter?”

  “I thought I saw someone.”

  “Where?”

  She pointed. “Back that way. By the trees.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. I saw someone standing by one of those trees with the twisted branches.”

  Gurney slowed to a stop.

  Madeleine looked alarmed. “What are you doing?”

  He backed cautiously down the sloping road. “Let me know when we get to the spot.”

  She turned back to the window. “There it is, that’s the tree. And right there, see, there’s the . . . oh . . . I thought the broken-off tree trunk next to the bent one was a person. Sorry.” The discovery that it had only been a tree trunk and not a human being lurking in that inhospitable place did little to allay the tension in her voice.

  They drove on and soon came to a break in the procession of gnarled firs. The opening provided a passing glimpse of a rugged cabin, as somber and uninviting as the outcropping of icy granite on which it stood. A moment later the cabin disappeared behind the army of misshapen trees closing in again on the road.

  The ring of Gurney’s phone on the console between them triggered a reflexive jerk of Madeleine’s arm away from the sound.

  He picked up the phone and saw that it was Hardwick.

  “Yes, Jack?”

  “Good mawnin’ to you, too, Detective Guhney. Just thought I’d call, find out how y’all are doin’ on this glorious day the Lawd has provided.”

  “Is there a point to the Southern accent?”

  “Jus’ been on the phone with our loo-tenant friend in Palm Beach, and that way o’ talkin’—like you was amblin’ through molasses—is contagious.”

  “Bobby Becker?”

  Hardwick dropped the drawl. “Right. I wanted to find out if they knew anything down there about Christopher Wenzel, where he came from, how he happened to own that condo.”

  “And?”

  “They don’t know much. Except that the driver’s license he traded in a couple of years ago for a Florida one put his former residence in Fort Lee, New Jersey.”

  “Which puts three of our victims in the same metro geography in the not-too-distant past.”

  “Right.”

  “From what Jane said about Peyton, he doesn’t sound like a guy who’d choose to live in the mountains if his alternative was a townhouse in the big city—unless he’s hiding from somebody.”

  “I raised that point on our way back from your house. Jane thinks he can buy people upstate easier than he can in the city.”

  “She have any idea who he’s buying, or why?”

  “No names. But Peyton has a habit of creating trouble. And purchasing the necessary influence to keep consequences to a minimum would require a more modest outlay up in the backwoods than in a city. It’s Jane’s theory that he’s importing his pleasures to the country to keep his misbehaviors in a relatively safe playground.”

  “Peyton the slimebag.”

  “You could say that.”

  “A slimebag who may be about to inherit a fortune.”

  “Yep.”

  “From a brother who just died in peculiar circumstances.”

  “Yep again.”

  “But, as far as you know, Peyton’s not on
Fenton’s radar?”

  “Not even near it.” Hardwick’s voice broke up into a scattering of unintelligible syllables, ending in silence.

  Gurney glanced at his phone screen and saw that the signal strength was zero. Madeleine was watching. “You lost the call?”

  “Dead zone.”

  All his attention was now on the road ahead. The superfine sleet was sticking to the surface, obscuring the position of the road’s edges.

  “How much farther do we have to go?”

  “No idea.” He glanced over at her.

  Her hands were clenched into fists, her fingers wrapped around her thumbs.

  He was focusing now on a ravine about ten feet to the left of where he estimated the left side of the road to be. Then and there, at the worst point for it to occur, the pitch of the road increased by a few degrees. A moment later the tires lost traction.

  Gurney dropped down into first gear and tried inching forward, but the rear of the car began slipping sideways toward the ravine. He took his foot off the gas, applied the brake gently. After an unnerving lateral slide, the car came to stop. He put the gear lever in reverse and crept backward down the road and away from the ravine. When he was well below the point at which the pitch steepened, he braked as lightly as he could. Gradually the car came to a halt.

  Madeleine was peering out into the surrounding woods. “What do we do now?”

  Gurney looked up the road as far as he could see. “I think the crest is about a hundred yards ahead of us. If I can get some momentum . . .”

  He eased the car forward. As he tried to accelerate through the spot where the trouble had begun, the rear of the car swung out suddenly, pointing the front end at the ravine. He turned the steering wheel rapidly in the opposite direction—an overcompensation that ended with a jarring thud as the passenger-side tires entered a drainage ditch at the edge of the road.

  The engine stalled. In the ensuing silence he could hear the wind picking up and the rapid tick-tick-tick-tick of ice pellets blowing against the windshield.

  CHAPTER 13

  When his attempts to extricate the car succeeded only in getting it more deeply entrenched, Gurney decided to venture on foot up to the crest of the hill where he hoped he might be able to get either a cell signal or a sense of how much farther it was to the lodge.

  He put on his ski cap, turned up his collar, and headed up the road. He’d hardly started when a sound stopped him dead—an eerie howling that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere in particular. He’d grown used to the yips and howls of coyotes in the hills around Walnut Crossing, but this was different—deeper, with a quavering pitch that produced instant gooseflesh. Then it stopped as suddenly as it began.

  He considered moving the Beretta from his ankle holster to his jacket pocket, but he didn’t want to ratchet up Madeleine’s anxiety; so he just resumed his trudge up the hill.

  He’d proceeded no more than a dozen yards when he was stopped again—this time by a cry from the car.

  “David!”

  He spun around, slipped, and fell hard on his side.

  As he scrambled to his feet he caught sight of the cause of her alarm.

  A looming gray figure was standing in the icy mist no more than ten feet from the car.

  As Gurney moved forward cautiously, he could see more clearly that it was a tall, gaunt man in a long canvas barn coat. A hat of matted fur, seemingly stitched together from parts of animals pelts, covered his head. A sheathed hatchet hung from a rough leather strap around his waist.

  With the car between them, Gurney raised his right leg and slipped the Beretta out of its ankle holster and into his jacket pocket, gripping it firmly, thumb on the safety.

  There was something almost feral in the man’s amber eyes. His discolored teeth had either been broken or filed to jagged points.

  “Be warnt.” His voice was harsh as a rusted hinge.

  Gurney responded evenly. “About what?”

  “Evil here.”

  “Here at Wolf Lake?”

  “Aye. Lake’s got no bottom.”

  “No bottom?”

  “Nay, none, never was.”

  “What kind of evil is here?”

  “The hawk knows.”

  “The hawk?”

  “The hawk knows the evil. Hawk man knows what the hawk knows. Sets the hawk loose. Into the sun, into the moon.”

  “What do you do here?”

  “Fix what’s broke.”

  “Around the lodge?”

  “Aye.”

  While keeping a close eye on the hatchet, Gurney decided to proceed with the conversation as if it were perfectly normal, to see if it might start to make sense. “My name is Dave Gurney. What’s yours?”

  There was a flash of something in those strange eyes, a moment of keen attention.

  Gurney thought that his name had been recognized. But when the man turned his sharp gaze up the road, it became clear something else had grabbed his attention. Seconds later Gurney heard it—the sound of a vehicle approaching in low gear. He was able to make out a pair of headlights, white disks in the frozen mist, coming over the crest and down the road.

  He glanced over to check his visitor’s reaction. But he was nowhere in sight.

  Getting out of the car, Madeleine pointed. “He ran off into those trees.” Gurney listened for footfalls, rustling branches; but all he heard was the wind.

  Madeleine looked toward the approaching vehicle. “Thank God for whoever this is.”

  A vintage Land Rover, the sort in old safari films, came to a stop a little way up the incline from the Outback. The tall, lean man who emerged from it in a country-chic Barbour rain jacket and knee-high Wellington boots created the impression of an English gentleman out for a pheasant shoot on an inclement day. He pulled the jacket hood over his closely cropped gray hair. “Damn rotten weather, eh?”

  Gurney agreed.

  Madeleine was shivering, burying her hands in her jacket pockets. “Are you from the lodge?”

  “From it, yes. But of it, no.

  “Excuse me?”

  “I did drive here from the lodge. But I’m not an employee of it. Merely a guest. Norris Landon’s the name.”

  Instead of walking across the ice to shake the man’s hand, Gurney simply introduced himself. As he was about to introduce Madeleine, Landon spoke first.

  “And this would be your lovely wife, Madeleine—am I right?”

  Madeleine responded with a surprised smile. “You must be the welcoming committee.”

  “I’m not exactly that. But I am a man with a winch—which I expect you’ll find more useful.”

  Madeleine looked hopeful. “Do you think it’ll get us out of the ditch?”

  “It’s done the trick before. Wouldn’t want to be without it up here. I was talking to Jane Hammond earlier today, and she was anxious about your arrival in this wretched weather. Lodge is short-staffed at the moment. I volunteered to put Jane’s mind at ease—check the condition of the road, make sure no trees were down, that sort of thing. Things have a way of changing fast here. Streams turning into whitewater floods, roads collapsing into ravines, rock slides, instant icing—risky on the best of days.”

  Not quite British or American, his accent was Mid-Atlantic, the diction once adopted by the cultured wealthy in the Northeast and actively nurtured in the Ivy League—until those institutions began to overflow with would-be hedge funders who didn’t care how cultured they sounded as long as they got rich fast.

  “Do you know where your tow hook is, and can you reach it with the undercarriage in that awkward position?”

  Gurney peered under the tilted front end before answering.

  “Yes, I think, to both your questions.”

  “In that case, we’ll have you back on the road in no time.”

  Madeleine looked worried. “Before you arrived on the scene, someone approached us out of the woods.”

  Landon blinked, appeared disconcerted.

&nbs
p; She added, “A strange man with a hatchet strapped to his waist.”

  “Crazy talk and amber eyes?”

  “You know him?” Gurney asked.

  “Barlow Tarr. Lives in a cabin out here. Nothing but trouble, in my opinion.”

  “Is he dangerous?” asked Madeleine, still shivering.

  “Some say he’s harmless. I’m not so sure. I’ve seen him sharpening that hatchet of his with a damn wild look in his eye. Hunts with it, too. Saw him cut a rabbit in half at thirty feet.”

  Madeleine looked appalled.

  “What else do you know about him?” asked Gurney.

  “Works around the lodge, sort of a handyman. His father worked here, too. Grandfather before him. All a bit unbalanced, the Tarrs, to put it gently. Mountain people here from the time of Genesis. Related to each other in odd ways, if you know what I mean.” His mouth curled in distaste. “Did he say anything intelligible?”

  “Depends what you mean by intelligible.” Gurney brushed a buildup of sleet pellets off the shoulders of his jacket. “Perhaps we could hook up that winch, and talk about the Tarr family later?”

  IT TOOK A QUARTER OF AN HOUR TO GET THE LAND ROVER POSITIONED at the best angle and the cable set properly on the tow hook. After that, the winch did its simple work and the trapped car was gradually freed from the drainage ditch and pulled up to a drivable position on the road, well above the point at which it had lost traction. Landon then rewound his winch cable into its housing, turned the Land Rover around, and proceeded back up the hill with Gurney following.

  Once over the crest, the visibility improved considerably and some of the tension went out of Madeleine’s expression.

  “Quite a character,” she said.

  “The country squire or the weird handyman?”

  “The country squire. He seems to know a lot.”

  Madeleine’s attention was then drawn to the stark vista appearing before them.

  A series of jagged peaks and ridges the color of wine dregs stretched out toward a fog-shrouded horizon. Distance created the illusion of sharp edges—as though those peaks and ridges had been hacked with tin snips out of sheet metal.