“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.