Clare and her lover turned south again on Route 563 and drove eleven miles—Dale clocked it on his rental car’s odometer—before pulling left into a parking lot amidst a cluster of ramshackle buildings. The sign out front saidPINE BARRENS CANOE RENTAL.
Dale drove on another mile before finding a good turnaround spot in the tiny crossroads town of Chatsworth and then drove back slowly. A river ran along the west side of the highway for this stretch, and he caught a glimpse of Clare and her lover in a canoe heading south, downriver, before they disappeared around a bend in the river. He turned into the canoe rental place and parked next to the empty Suburban. Dale walked past the main building, noted the high stack of firewood there and the chopping stump and the ax embedded in it and the pile of wood chips and unstacked wood, looking as if the owners were preparing for a hard winter, and then he was waiting for the teenaged boy in khaki pants and a green Pine Barrens Canoe Rental shirt to finish helping two women shove off into the easy current.
“Howdy,” said the boy, looking at Dale long enough to register the dress pants and street shoes and to dismiss him as a canoe rental client. “Can I help you?”
Dale studied the canoes and kayaks lined up on trailers and at the river’s edge. “How much to rent a canoe?”
“Thirty bucks,” said the teenager. “That includes life jackets and paddles. Cushions are fifty cents extra. Three bucks each for a third or fourth person. More than four people, you need a second canoe.”
“I’m alone,” said Dale, feeling for the first time how true those words were.
The boy shrugged. “Thirty bucks.”
“How far do the canoes go?”
The kid looked up from counting cash and smiled. “Well, they’d go to the ocean, but we like to retrieve them before that.”
“Well, how far is a normal trip, then? The two women who just left? How far are they going?”
“Evans Bridge takeout,” said the boy as if Dale should know where that was. “They’ll be lucky to get there before dark.”
“How about the couple before them?” said Dale. “They going to Evans Bridge?”
“Uh-uh. Those folks were camping. They’ll be at Godfrey Bridge Campsite in four and a half or five hours. Then they plan to go on down to Bodine Field tomorrow where we’ll take them out.”
“How do you know they’ll be camping at Godfrey Bridge?”
“You have to have a camping permit before you can do a two-day rental. They showed me the permit.” The boy looked at Dale. “You a cop?”
Dale tried to laugh casually. “Hardly. Just curious about canoe trips. My girlfriend and I have been thinking about taking one.”
“Well, you’d better make up your mind by next weekend if you’re planning to rent from us,” said the boy, sounding bored and disinterested again. He was lifting kayaks onto a trailer. “We close for the winter after then.”
“Do you have a map I could have of the distance to campsites and such?”
The boy took a wrinkled photocopy out of his back pocket and handed it to Dale without looking at him again.
Dale thanked him and walked back to the car.
The gravel turnoff from Route 563 to Godfrey Bridge Campsite was only about ten miles south of the put-in point. Dale had expected a developed campground, but at the end of the gravel road there was only the river, some metal fire pits set back under the trees, and two portable toilets. Thick forest pressed in on all sides. The camping area was empty. Dale glanced at his watch. It was a little after two. Clare and her boyfriend should be along between 6:00 and 7:00P.M. The afternoon was clear and silent—no insect sounds and little animal or bird noise. A few squirrels scampered in the trees, but even their autumn play seemed hushed. Occasionally a cluster of canoes or a lone kayak would float by, the people either brazenly loud or as silent as the absent insects. None of the canoes carried Clare.
Dale walked back to his rental car, drove it a few hundred yards up the gravel road to an overgrown logging road he’d noticed, pulled it back out of sight, and popped the trunk open. For a while he stood staring into the trunk at the ax he had taken from the canoe rental place.
Professor Stewart? You get ahold of the psychiatrist in Montana?”
Dale looked up from the table where he was sitting drinking bad coffee out of a Styrofoam cup. The sheriff had shown him to a tiny room with a bare table and telephone and left him to make his call. There was no two-way mirror in the wall, but there was a tiny slit in the door and Dale guessed that this—sans telephone—was what passed for an interrogation room in the Oak Hill sheriff’s office.
“Yeah,” he said.
“No problems?”
“No problems,” said Dale. “Dr. Williams told me what you did about Dr. Hall’s accident and agreed to phone my prescription into the Oak Hill pharmacy. Actually, I’m pretty sure that I still have some medication left back at the farmhouse.”
“Good,” said McKown. The sheriff slipped into the only other chair and laid a manila folder on the table. There was a paperback book under the folder, but Dale could not see the title. “Are you willing to talk to me for a minute?” asked the sheriff.
“Do I have a choice?” Dale was very tired.
“Sure you do. You can even call a lawyer if you want.”
“Am I under arrest or suspicion for something other than being crazy?”
McKown smiled tightly. “Professor Stewart, I just wanted to ask your help on a little problem we have.”
“Go ahead.”
The sheriff removed five snapshot-sized glossy photos from the folder and set them out in front of Dale as if inviting him to play solitaire. “You know these boys, Professor?”
Dale sighed. “I don’t know them, but I’ve seen them. I recognize this kid as Sandy Whittaker’s nephew, Derek.” He tapped the photograph of the youngest boy.
“You want to know the names of the others?”
“Not especially,” said Dale.
“This one you should know about,” said McKown, sliding the photograph of the oldest skinhead out by itself on the tabletop. “His name is Lester Bonheur. Born in Peoria. He’s twenty-six. Dishonorable discharge from the army, six priors including felonious menacing, assault with a deadly weapon, and arson. Only convicted once for auto theft, served just eleven months. He discovered Hitler about four years ago the way most folks discover Jesus. These other punks are just. . . punks. Bonheur is dangerous.”
Dale said nothing.
“Where was the last place you saw these five men?” McKown’s pale blue eyes were too intense for a poker player.
“I don’t. . .” began Dale.
Tell him the truth. Tell him the whole truth.
The sheriff’s stare grew even more intense as Dale’s silence stretched.
“I don’t know what the place is called,” continued Dale, completely changing what he was going to say, “but it’s that muddy old quarry area a mile or so east of Calvary Cemetery. When we were kids, we called the little hills there Billy Goat Mountains.”
McKown grinned. “That’s what my uncle Bobby always called the old Seaton Quarry.” The grin disappeared. “What were you doing there with these troublemakers, Professor?”
“I wasn’t doing anything with them. The five of them were in two pickup trucks, chasing me. I was in my Land Cruiser.”
“Why were they chasing you?”
“Ask them,” said Dale.
The sheriff’s stare did not grow any friendlier.