“Unless the man in question made the bite marks himself,” Krenshaw said. “Thank you, Doctor. Was there anything else?”
“Not at this time. If anything further comes to light, I’ll be sure to let you know.”
Krenshaw nodded, then let the doctor step aside and assumed the podium himself. “All right. From what Dr. Plowson has told us, we can’t rule anything out—animal or human. With this third murder, we now have no choice but to search these woods with a fine-tooth comb. Captain Hannigan of the rangers will coordinate that search. You’ll need to concentrate on the Five Ponds Wilderness and the area around Desolation Mountain. Given the lengthy periods between the killings and the discoveries of the first two bodies, not to mention the conditions of the terrain, previous searches were minimal. That won’t be the case this time. I’ll call in helicopter support to assist. Despite what we’ve heard, be prepared for anything—bear or wolf. Meanwhile, the troopers under my command will investigate the possibility that a human perpetrator is involved. We will interview the local residents, look for criminal histories, interface with Dannemorra prison regarding any recent parolees, and search for any commonalities. Troopers, you’ll be taking your specific instructions from your station commanders and zone sergeants. Any questions? No? Very good. This meeting is adjourned.”
As the rangers and state police began rising and murmuring among themselves, Logan watched Krenshaw leave the podium and—looking straight at him—make his way through the rows of chairs.
“Uh-oh,” he murmured to Jessup. “Care to do the talking?”
Captain Krenshaw stopped directly before Logan, meaty arms crossed over his chest. “What are you doing here, exactly?”
Logan took a breath. “I’m a historical researcher from Yale, investigating—”
“Academics aren’t invited to official briefings such as this.” Krenshaw smiled mirthlessly. Despite his girth, he had remarkably tiny, deep-set eyes that had the uncomfortable ability to bore into a person. “Besides, I know all about your researches, Doctor Logan. I’ve seen your face on TV more than once. And I can guess why you’re here—I’ve heard some of the talk coming out of Pike Hollow, too. If you want my own opinion, you’re wasting your time. This wasn’t the work of an animal, and it sure as hell wasn’t the work of a monster. In fact, I’ve got a pretty good idea who’s responsible.”
“And who would that be?” Jessup asked.
“Saul Woden.” Now Krenshaw turned to the ranger. “As for you, Lieutenant Jessup, I’m making it your responsibility to see to it that Logan here doesn’t interfere—and doesn’t attract unwanted publicity. He is not to involve himself with the official investigation in any way. Is that clear?”
“Quite,” said Jessup.
Krenshaw looked from Jessup to Logan, then back again. And then, without another word, he turned away and moved toward a cluster of state police near the front of the room.
Jessup sighed, stood up. Logan did the same.
“Who’s Saul Woden?” Logan asked.
“No idea. But I think we’d better get you out of the building before Krenshaw has you bodily ejected.” Jessup shook his head. “Sorry about that.”
“Don’t be. I’ve got a paper waiting for me back at Cloudwater…and some catching up to do.”
He let Jessup show him out, then walked to his rented Jeep, started the engine, and began heading back toward Cloudwater. But even as he did so—even as he began trying to compose his thoughts for work on his monograph—he could not get the words of the medical examiner out of his head:
Much about this death remains inconclusive…A likely animal would be a gray wolf…And yet many things are not typical of a wolf at all and, in fact, are difficult if not impossible to explain.
13
It was three days before Logan next called Jessup.
“Jeremy. Hey. I thought maybe Krenshaw had scared you off.”
“I just wanted to lie low until things calmed down a little. Have they?”
“Calmed down? No. But they’ve grown a little more organized. Krenshaw and his boys have begun interviewing all the local populace. It hasn’t gone down very well, I can tell you that much.”
“Has he tried to interview the Blakeneys?”
“He tried, yes. Apparently he didn’t get any farther than you did. I don’t know how the exchange went, exactly, but he seems to have backed off for the time being. Posted a trooper at the entrance to their compound. Talked about sending in a surveillance drone.” Jessup chuckled his mirthless laugh.
“What about the search teams?”
“They’ve been mustered. Helicopter-assisted searches of Five Ponds and the Desolation Lake region are under way now.”
“Any luck?”
“Nothing yet except a lot of blistered feet, two sprained ankles, and a vicious case of poison ivy.”
“Why aren’t you using dogs?”
Another mirthless laugh. “They’re useless on this search. They just clamp their tails between their legs and whine. Refuse to track.”
Logan thought a moment. “What about the research team this dead graduate student worked with? Are they still part of the active investigation?”
“No. Krenshaw was in and out of their camp on the day of the briefing. Spent a couple of hours questioning them. With Artowsky’s death, there are only two people left there now. Frankly, I’m surprised they didn’t pack up and leave months ago, under the circumstances.”
“So I could pay a visit without attracting official attention?” Logan thought he would try to determine the “circumstances” for himself.
“I think so. Not sure how much you’ll learn, if anything, but I’m glad you’re still interested in looking into it.”
As it happened, Logan wasn’t particularly interested in looking into it. Ironically, it was his own skepticism about the local belief in lycanthropy that was pushing him to follow up every avenue; if he didn’t, he knew he’d be doing himself, and his unusual profession, a disservice. So he got careful directions to the research outpost from Jessup and took off in his Jeep around ten in the morning.
He knew the first part of the route well enough now—Route 3 to Route 3A—and the long journey into the heart of the wild did not feel quite as disquieting as it had on previous occasions. He passed Pike Hollow; passed the turnoff to the Blakeney compound—with a state police vehicle parked on the shoulder beside it—and then left the seamed blacktop of 3A himself a mile farther on for one of the rutted, muddy, narrow dirt lanes that seemed to crisscross this region of the park. The road forked, then forked again, and despite Jessup’s directions Logan got lost twice. Once, the dirt lane ended in a tangle of blowdowns and wild underbrush; another time, he realized that the road led back on itself and he’d gone in a circle. But at last he pulled the Jeep up to the one-acre clearing in the woods that housed the fire station. The station itself consisted of a ruined fire tower, once quite tall but now fallen in upon itself; a long, low fire command station at its base that resembled an oversized Quonset hut; a scattering of outbuildings; and a parking area housing two vehicles. A large commercial generator, fueled by a nearby five-thousand-gallon propane tank, grumbled away beside the Quonset hut. Off in the distance, a dog barked once.
Logan had done a little research into the history of Adirondack fire lookout towers. The first was built in 1909, after almost a million acres of forest had been ravaged by fire over the previous decade. In the years to come, almost sixty towers and, in many cases, attendant stations were erected. They remained in place for more than half a century before being replaced by newer technologies. A few dozen still remained in the region, some of them tourist attractions, some listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and others—such as this one—repurposed and given new life.
Getting out of his vehicle, he walked down the pebbled path to the old fire command station, apparently—judging by its relative state of repair and the satellite dish on its roof—the center of the scientific operation
. He stepped up to the door, knocked.
A minute later, a young, slightly overweight man in a lab coat opened it. He had unkempt brown hair and brown, calflike eyes.
“Yes?” the man said, blinking at Logan.
“The name’s Logan. Do you mind if I come in a minute?”
“Are you another policeman?” the man asked.
“No.” Logan took the opportunity to slip past the man into the building. “What’s your name?”
The man in the lab coat looked around the laboratory for a moment before replying. “Kevin Pace.”
“Quite a place you have here,” Logan said. And it was. The exterior’s rustic, rather shabby appearance was a far cry from the inside, which appeared to be a cutting-edge laboratory. It sported three worktables covered with apparatus; several light boxes and a variety of optical equipment; a rack of computer servers and various scientific analyzers; rows of plastic cages for housing small animals; numerous tall storage shelves of gray metal, carefully labeled; a small dissection table; and what appeared to be a “clean room” set into one corner. There was a framed picture on the closest lab table: a young woman hugging an elderly, tall, white-haired man with a salt-and-pepper beard, standing in a brick quadrangle that reminded Logan of Oxford. On one wall was a bulletin board, numerous moths and butterflies pinned to it, along with notes covered in scrawled handwriting. There was a faint smell of formaldehyde in the air.
“How can I help you, exactly?” Pace asked.
“I’m a fellow scientist,” Logan said. “Staying at Cloudwater—in the Thomas Cole cabin, as it happens—putting the finishing touches on a paper. I heard about your outpost, here in the middle of nowhere, and curiosity got the better of me.”
“Okay,” the young man said. Logan had already sensed he was withdrawn, timid, not one to readily volunteer information.
“I also wanted to express my condolences about the death of your coworker. How terrible.”
Pace nodded.
“He was a fellow researcher, I understand?”
“Yes.”
“And have you been here long?”
“About eight months. We were hired to work for Dr. Feverbridge.”
“Feverbridge?” Logan asked. “Chase Feverbridge?”
Pace nodded again. He was looking more closely—and curiously—at Logan.
Logan had heard a little about Feverbridge. He was a brilliant, if highly iconoclastic, naturalist, independently wealthy enough to work on whatever subjects interested him most and to fund his own research. As Logan recalled, he was rather infamous for his skepticism of traditional scientific beliefs.
“One moment,” Pace said. Sudden recognition had flashed in those calflike brown eyes. “Did you say your name was Logan?”
“That’s right.”
“Dr. Jeremy Logan?”
“Right again.”
Pace took a deep breath. “Dr. Logan, excuse me for saying so, but I don’t think I should be talking to you anymore about our lab. In fact, I shouldn’t even have allowed you in. That’s up to Laura to decide.”
“Laura?” Logan asked.
At that moment, the door to the building opened and a woman stood framed in the entrance—tall, about thirty, with hazel eyes and high cheekbones: the woman in the photograph. She was wearing a Barbour jacket, and the wind had tousled her blond hair across her face and shoulders.
She looked from one man to the other. “I’m Laura Feverbridge,” she told Logan in a musical contralto. “May I help you?”
“This is Jeremy Logan,” Pace said. He hesitated a moment. “I, ah, I’m going to open those packages that arrived yesterday and store them in the equipment shed.”
And with that he stepped out of the lab, leaving Logan with a woman he assumed was Dr. Feverbridge’s daughter.
“What can I do for you, Mr. Logan?” Laura Feverbridge asked.
“First, let me say how sorry I am for the loss of your coworker. And no, I’m not in any way affiliated with the police.”
Laura Feverbridge nodded. Logan took a step closer to her. He sensed uncertainty; shock; cautiousness; and deep, abiding sadness.
“I’ll be frank with you. There are people here in the Adirondacks who think the three recent deaths—including that of your assistant, Artowsky—are not only tragic, but highly unusual. I’ve been asked, in an unofficial capacity, to look into them. I know this is probably not a good moment for you, but I wonder if you could spare just a few minutes of your time—and that of your father’s as well, if it isn’t asking too much.”
As Logan spoke, the woman’s eyes first widened, then narrowed again. “My father is dead.”
“Oh,” Logan replied, shocked. “I’m so sorry. I hadn’t heard.”
Laura Feverbridge hesitated for a moment. She blinked, drew the hair away from her eyes with one finger. Then she nodded toward the door. “Come on,” she said. “We can talk out there.”
14
They sat on rough wooden benches set parallel to the front door of the lab. Laura Feverbridge looked off into the woods, her hands clenched together.
“Again, I’m sorry to hear of your father’s passing,” Logan said. “The world has lost a brilliant naturalist.”
“Actually, he held doctorates in both biochemistry and the natural sciences, and when he was younger lectured on both disciplines. But you’re right—naturalism was always his first love.”
This was followed by a short silence.
“What can you tell me about Artowsky?” Logan asked.
“I’ve already told the police just about everything,” she said. “Mark was the most dedicated graduate student and lab assistant you could want. He was friendly, knowledgeable, interested in our work.”
“His body was found about six miles north of here. Do you know how he happened to be so far from the lab?”
“Mark was a city boy his entire life. Queens born and bred. We were worried how he’d adapt to such a remote and isolated location. But ironically, he took to it with relish. Almost too much relish. He developed a love of hiking, but he wasn’t very good at directions or orienteering. Twice he wandered off down unmarked trails and got lost overnight. Had to be rescued by rangers.” At this, Laura Feverbridge managed a wintry smile.
“Did he have any enemies?”
“No. No enemies, no scientific rivals—certainly nobody here.”
“Had he struck up relationships with any of the locals?”
“None of us have. We go into Saranac Lake twice a month to stock up on supplies and pick up packages at the post office. Otherwise, we keep to ourselves.”
“If you had to guess what happened to Artowsky, what would you say?”
“That he’d wandered off again—and this time, ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time. They say it was the work of a bear—or maybe a feral wolf.” She shuddered at the thought. “How horrible.”
“Yes, it was. Horrible—and tragic.” Logan paused. “Dr. Feverbridge, have you ever been to Pike Hollow?”
“No.”
“Ever heard of a family called the Blakeneys?”
“No. These sound an awful lot like the questions the police asked. Are you sure you’re not affiliated with them?”
“Quite the opposite. To be honest, Dr. Feverbridge, they wouldn’t want me poking around like this.”
“Then why are you?”
“It’s like I said. There are members of the Adirondack community—responsible members—who have questions, reservations, about the nature of the deaths of the two backpackers, killed in a remote region several miles from here. I’m afraid that their reservations will extend to the death of Mr. Artowsky, as well.”
“And just why did they ask you to look into it?”
“Let’s say that my job is to examine things that lie beyond the scope of normal investigations—police or otherwise.”
Laura Feverbridge did not respond to this. Instead, still looking off toward the woods, she gave a low whistle. Almost immediat
ely, two Weimaraners, sleek and muscular, appeared from behind an outbuilding. They capered in front of the scientist, panting and whining, until she picked up a stick and threw it out toward the edge of the clearing. The two ran after it, barking excitedly.
“Beautiful dogs,” Logan said.
“Thanks. Toshi and Mischa. They’re almost like my own children.”
“I have to ask. This is an unusual setting for a lab like yours—to say the least. From what I understand, your father had the wherewithal to do his research anyplace he liked. Why did you decide to come to such a remote location, which clearly comes with its own unique set of hardships?”
For a long moment, she did not respond. It was clear to Logan that she did not enjoy answering these questions. He also sensed something inside her—something going on beyond, or beneath, the ordinary. What it was, he couldn’t tell. Nevertheless, she seemed to be so dazed by the loss of Artowsky that she was operating on autopilot, answering the questions as they came without thought. “You know of my father’s work?”
“I know of his reputation, yes.”
“Then you may or may not know that over the last few years in particular he’d been subjected to increasingly withering scorn, even derision, by the orthodox scientific community. Academics can be an unforgiving, hateful lot, Mr. Logan. Schadenfreude, or an embarrassing bit of peer review, seems never to be very far away.”
“I know. And it’s Dr. Logan, actually. I teach history at Yale.”
“Then you’ll understand what I’m talking about. His theories were ridiculed, articles called his work unscientific, even pseudoscience. My father was an honorable man, Dr. Logan. He took great pride in his research. He tried to shrug it all off, but the continued criticism wounded him deeply. At last, he went into a kind of disgusted seclusion, determined not to be heard from publicly again until his work was complete. And yet even that was not enough—he grew so despondent that a time came when I truly feared for him. And so I arranged for us to come out here—just Father, myself, and our two graduate students—to continue his research in a place where academic bitterness would have a hard time reaching him.”