Torgerson watched me approach with the same welcoming expression with which he might have greeted a door-to-door salesman.
“Chief Torgerson,” I said. “I didn’t think I’d be seeing you again so soon.”
You might have thought he was totally deaf.
“This must have been the call you got at the Sluiceway,” I said. “Someone from SERE wanted you to know Adam Langstrom’s truck had been found.”
The SEAL beside him said, “Do you know this guy Torgy?”
Torgerson’s eyes bored into mine. “I know exactly who he is.”
Without uttering another syllable, Torgerson turned his back on me. He dug his fists into the pockets of his peacoat as he tromped away through the snow toward a cluster of parked vehicles. The SEAL remained behind for a few seconds, his eyebrows knit together, his mouth twisted in confusion. After a while, he also left the halo of the construction lights for the darkness of the trees.
Torgerson was an expert at manipulation and intimidation. I had to hand it to him. He’d left me feeling as naked as if I’d just stepped out of the shower. And he’d done it without making a single explicit threat.
Pulsifer had been standing five paces behind me the whole time. His snowmobile helmet hung from his hand. “You and I need to talk about a few things.”
“I know.”
Car doors slammed around us. Engines roared to life. The tow truck driver went to work wrapping the bloody pickup for its trip to the forensics garage in Farmington.
Pulsifer bounced the helmet against his thigh. “You got a room somewhere for the night?”
“No.”
“You can stay at my place, then.”
The exposed skin of my face had taken on a cold, rubbery texture. “I don’t want to impose.”
“Lauren won’t mind. I’ve told her so many stories about the shit you’ve pulled, she doesn’t believe you’re real. It’ll be like I’m bringing home Bugs Bunny.”
Typical Pulsifer: trying to cheer me up by comparing me to a cartoon character. The humor left me untouched.
Two days earlier, I had learned that I had a brother I had never met.
Two days later, I had come to the place where he might well have died.
The thought was having a hard time taking hold in my head.
“I have a stop to make first,” I said. “There’s someone I need to see.”
18
At the intersection of the Navy Road and Route 16, I waited for the next plow to come along and followed it back toward Bigelow. I was exhausted but in no hurry, and I needed time to collect my thoughts.
Driving in a Maine blizzard is a matter of timing. Get ahead of a plow, and you’ll find yourself blazing a path through unbroken snow, unable to see the edge of the road, oblivious to whatever ice might be hidden underneath. Get behind a plow, and you’ll find the going easier, provided you’re content to crawl along at twenty miles per hour and have your vehicle splashed with salt brine and sand.
It sure looked like someone had died in Adam’s truck. You could have butchered a deer inside and spilled less blood. I saw two possibilities: Either a corpse had been taken away from the site for reasons unknown or it had been dumped somewhere before the vehicle was abandoned at the trailhead.
Up ahead, Widowmaker’s sign glowed at the base of its access road. The light touched the snowflakes drifting past, making them look like a cloud of winter moths. The mountain itself was invisible in the hazy grayness. There wasn’t even a glow in the sky from whatever trails might be open for night skiing.
A new question intruded into my thoughts: Why dump the truck at that particular trailhead?
Maine’s western mountains were crisscrossed with logging roads and ATV trails; pockmarked with old gravel pits and remote clear-cuts. Anyone looking to conceal a vehicle beneath a blanket of snow had thousands of potential hiding places to choose from. The decision to park the Ranger just outside the heavily guarded SERE school had to have been deliberate. Maybe someone had wanted Amber’s blood-soaked truck to be discovered quickly. But why?
Once again, I passed the farm road that led across the frozen river and up the backside of East Kennebago Mountain to Mink’s house. What a strange little man. I would have to ask Pulsifer what his story was.