“I’d like to help,” Logan said. “But I don’t see what expertise I can offer. I’m no pathologist. I’m no backwoodsman. And the fact is I came up here to finish a paper I’ve been working on for almost two years—”
“Just go to Pike Hollow,” Jessup interrupted. “As a personal favor to me. It’s the town nearest the sites of the killings. Go there tomorrow, ask around—under the radar, of course—and then have dinner with me. Meet my wife and kids. And then, if you don’t want to take it further, I’ll let the whole thing drop.”
“I…” Logan began, then stopped. There was no mistaking his friend’s concern. And it seemed pointless to protest anymore. He took a deep breath. “Okay. But your wife had better be a good cook.”
Jessup smiled again—this time with obvious relief. “I don’t think you’ll have cause to complain.” He picked up the leather satchel, pulled out two thick manila folders, passed them over to Logan. “Here are copies of the case files. Look them over when you get the chance. But keep it to yourself. The park is a crazy quilt of overlapping jurisdictions. Since so many of the smaller communities have no police departments of their own, the state police often take the leading role in serious crimes such as rape or murder—not that those are common. It’s true I’m a Department of Conservation officer, authorized to enforce all state rules and regulations, but I’m not really at liberty to bring a layman into the investigation.”
“Great. You want me to investigate, but you don’t.”
“I’m sure this isn’t the first job you’ve taken requiring discretion. I understand your SSBI clearance has an open exit date.”
“I haven’t taken the job, remember? But you’re right. Give me your address, let me know what time dinner is tomorrow, and I’ll see you there.”
Jessup pulled out the small, worn journal again, scrawled quickly on a page, tore it off, and handed it to Logan. “Seven o’clock work for you?”
When Logan nodded, Jessup stood. “Then I’ll let you get settled in. Thank you, Jeremy. I know this is an imposition. But I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t think it was important.” His gaze drifted toward the case files.
“Get on home. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Jessup seemed about to say something else. But then he simply nodded, picked up the empty satchel, shook Logan’s hand, seated his ranger’s hat squarely on his head, and stepped out of the cabin into the night.
6
The next morning, Logan had an early breakfast in the big lodge, then got into his car and left Cloudwater. He now regretted promising Jessup he’d look into the murders; in the chill light of day he was even more convinced there was nothing he could add to the official investigation, and his laptop, books, and notes—placed on the living room worktable of his cabin—silently chastised him for not getting immediately to work. But he was to have dinner with the Jessup family that evening; it seemed best to make a cursory effort—Randall had asked him as a personal favor, after all—which would then allow him to report no success and get on with what he’d come here to finish.
And so he pointed the nose of his car westward, following Route 3 as it threaded its way between the steep flanks of rising mountains and along the shores of rushing streams. It occurred to him as he drove that he had never penetrated this deeply into the park before. It was a forty-mile drive to the hamlet of Pike Hollow, and the farther he went, the more the things he was accustomed to seeing began to fall away. First went the summer camps with the fake Indian names and wooden signboards, invariably situated on the shores of lakes. Next went such tourist attractions as the curio shops offering lynx tails and arrowheads and other backwoods bric-a-brac. Then, even the establishments that catered to the locals began to vanish: gas stations; ATV and snowmobile repair shops; turnouts for private logging roads. Past Sevey he left Route 3 for 3A, a narrow road that plunged still farther westward, into a pine forest so deep the overhanging branches formed a kind of woven tunnel, beneath which a perpetual evening reigned. The air became increasingly humid and moist. This road was in far worse repair, its blacktop so cracked and heaved that sections of it could barely be called paved. Passing cars were infrequent. As the reception bars on his cell phone disappeared one by one, Logan became aware of a vague sense of apprehension: if anything should happen to his Lotus Elan S4, he doubted that there was a mechanic within a hundred miles capable of repairing, let alone finding parts for, the fifty-year-old sports car.
But there was another component to his growing feeling of apprehension—the forest itself. It gave the impression of being almost immeasurably old; he felt that he could pull onto the shoulder at any point, walk off into the trees, and within minutes—if he wasn’t already lost—be where no human being had set foot before. The growing lack of human habitation was somehow unsettling. Logan felt almost like an intruder here: a tiny, insignificant intruder, to be tolerated perhaps but given no comfort or assistance. He recalled the lines of an old English ghost story, set in a remote Canadian wilderness: The bleak splendours of these remote and lonely forests overwhelmed him with the sense of his own littleness. That stern quality of the tangled backwood which can only be described as merciless and terrible, rose out of these far blue woods swimming upon the horizon, and revealed itself. He understood the silent warning. He realized his own utter helplessness.