"Cops and the feds did a pretty good job, but they didn't deal with your buddy Ronald the right way," he said.
"You talked to him about his dog?" I asked.
"Talked about his dog, then ate some stew." He looked a little queasy.
"Roadkill?" I knew that Ronald wasn't above scavenging, despite the state's laws on taking roadkill. Myself, I couldn't see the harm in using a deer or squirrel for food instead of letting it rot by the side of the road. Ronald did a pretty mean venison steak, served with beets and carrots preserved by burying them in sand.
"He told me it was squirrel," said Angel, "but it smelled like skunk. It didn't seem polite to ask. Seems this letter came for Billy about a week back, but Ronald hadn't seen him to give it to him."
The letter was postmarked Greenville. It was short, little more than an extension of good wishes, some details of renovations to the house and some stuff about an old dog that the writer still had around the place and with which Billy Purdue seemed to have been familiar when it was a pup. It was signed, in his old man's scrawclass="underline" "Meade Payne."
"So they stayed in touch all these years," I remarked. It seemed to confirm what I had thought: if Billy Purdue was going to seek help from anyone, it would be Meade Payne.
We drove nonstop to Dark Hollow, Angel and Louis shooting ahead in the Mercury. The mists gathered as I went farther north, so that journeying from Portland to Dark Hollow was like moving into a strange, spectral world, where house lights glowed dimly and the beams of headlights assumed their own, lancelike solidity; where road signs announced towns that existed only as scattered dwellings without any hub or center. There was more snow forecast, I knew, and soon the snowmobilers would arrive in numbers to hurtle along the Interstate Trail system. But for now, Greenville was still quiet as I drove through, sand mixed with snow by the side of the road, and I passed only two cars on the uneven, pitted surface of Lily Bay Road on the way to Dark Hollow.
When I arrived at the motel, Angel and Louis were already checking in. The same woman with the blue-rinse hair who had greeted me earlier in the week stood behind the desk, examining their details on a single registration card. Beside her, a brown cat slept on the counter, curled in on itself with its nose almost touching its tail. Angel was doing the talking while Louis examined a series of battered tourist booklets in a rack. He glanced at me when I came in, but didn't acknowledge my presence further.
"You gentlemen sharing a room?" asked the blue-rinse woman.
"Yes, ma'am," replied Angel, with a look of homely wisdom on his face. "A dollar spared is a dollar made."
The woman glanced at Louis, resplendent in a black suit, black coat and white shirt. "Your friend a preacher?" she said.
"Kind of, ma'am," said Angel. "He's strictly Old Testament, though. An eye for an eye, and stuff like that."
"That's nice. We don't get many religious folks staying here."
Louis's face had the long-suffering look of a saint who has just heard that the rack is to be tightened.
"If you're interested," the woman continued, "we got a Baptist service tonight. You're welcome to join us."
"Thank you, ma'am," said Angel, "but we prepare to engage in our own forms of worship."
She smiled understandingly. "Long as it's quiet and doesn't disturb the other guests."
"We'll do our best," intervened Louis, taking the key.
The woman recognized me as I approached the desk. "Back again? You must like it here in Dark Hollow."
"I hope to get to know it better," I replied. "Maybe you can help me with something."
She smiled. "Sure, if I can."
I handed her a photo of Ellen Cole, the small, ID kind taken in a photo booth. I'd had it blown up on a color copier so that the picture was now eight-by-ten size. "You recognize this girl?"
The woman looked at the picture, squinting her eyes behind the thick lenses of her spectacles. "Yes, I do. She in some kind of trouble?"
"I hope not, but she's missing and her parents have asked me to help them find her."
The woman turned her attention back to the picture, nodding as she did so. "Yes, I recall her. Chief Jennings was asking about her. She stayed here with a young man for one night. I can get you the date, if you like."
"Would you, please?"
She took a registration card from a green metal card box and examined the details. "December fifth," she said. "Paid by credit card made out in the name of Ellen C. Cole."
"Do you recall anything that happened, anything out of the ordinary?"
"No, nothing important. Someone had suggested to them that they visit here, someone they gave a ride to from Portland. That's about all. She was nice, I remember. He was kind of a surly kid, but they can be that way at that age. I should know: raised four of my own and they were meaner than wharf rats until they were twenty-five."
"Did they give any indication of where they might be heading after they left here?"
"North, I guess. Maybe up to Katahdin. I don't know, frankly, but I told them that, if they had some time to spare, they should drive out and watch the sunset on the lake. They seemed to like the idea. It's a pretty sight. Romantic, too, for a young couple like that. I let them check out late in the afternoon, just so they wouldn't have to be rushing to pack."
"And they didn't say who recommended that they see Dark Hollow?" It seemed an odd thing to suggest. Dark Hollow didn't have that much going for it.
"Sure they did. It was an old guy they met along the way. They gave him a ride up here, and I think maybe he met up with them before they left."
I felt my stomach turn a little. "Did they mention his name?"
"No. Didn't sound like anybody from around here, though," she said. Her brow furrowed a little. "They didn't seem concerned about him or nothing. I mean, what harm could an old man do?" I think she meant the question to be rhetorical when she started out, but by the end I don't think it sounded that way to either of us.
She apologized, told me she didn't know any more, then gave me directions to the lakeshore viewing point, about a mile or two outside the town, on a tourist map. I thanked her, left my bag in my room and knocked on the door of the room next door, now occupied by Angel and Louis. Angel opened the door and let me in. Louis was hanging up his suits in the battered brown closet. I put the old man to the back of my mind. I wasn't about to leap to conclusions, not yet.
"What do people do for fun around here?" asked Angel, sitting down heavily on one of the two double beds in the room. "This place sees less action than the pope."
"Endure the winter," I said. "Wait for the summer."
"Fulfilling existence, if you're a tree."
Louis finished arranging his clothes and turned to us. "Find out anything?"
"The manager remembers Ellen and her boyfriend. She told them to go watch the sunset out of town, then reckons they went north."
"Maybe they did go north," said Louis.
"Rangers up in Baxter State Park have no record of them, according to Lee Cole. Apart from that, the options up north are limited. Plus, the woman at the desk says they gave some old guy a ride up here, and it was this old man who suggested that they stay in Dark Hollow."
"Is that a bad thing?"
"I don't know. Depends on who he was. It could be nothing." But I thought of the old man who had tried to take Rita Ferris at the hotel, and the figure of the old man Billy Purdue claimed to have seen the night that his family was taken from him. And I thought too of something Ronald Straydeer had said when he misheard my comment as we stood before Billy Purdue's trailer, discussing a man he might or might not have seen on his property.
You're getting old.
Yuh, he could have been old.
"So what now?"
I shrugged glumly. "I'm going to have to talk to Rand Jennings."