Wolf Lake. John Verdon
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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.
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