We didn’t speak again until we had turned off Route 16 onto the camp road that led up to Foss’s gate. Tire marks in the snow indicated that the detective—I assumed it must be the detective—had arrived ahead of us.
Smoke from Logan Dyer’s chimney was visible even before we saw his house. It drifted straight up above the treetops, a perfect tight spiral. As we approached his property, I could smell and taste the wood burning in the stove.
Dyer must have parked his truck inside the garage, but there was a Ford Explorer in the driveway. The SUV was the Interceptor model, issued exclusively to law enforcement and other first responders, but it was painted in the same black and silver tones as the Widowmaker company vehicles I had seen on the mountain. It was equipped with pursuit lights, too.
“Do you know who that is?” I asked.
“Widowmaker security.”
“Russo?”
“Maybe,” Pulsifer said. “The mountain has a half dozen guys who work security. A couple of them are deputized by the sheriff in case shit breaks out requiring a real police presence. Don’t tell me you met Rob Russo, too?”
“What’s he doing there?”
“I don’t know. Having breakfast?”
“Ease up, Pulsifer.”
“Maybe Clegg asked someone from Widowmaker to talk to Logan about what he’s seen recently. The guy does have a bird’s-eye view of the only road in and out of Pariahville.”
The newly fallen snow gave the house and yard a cheerier aspect, although it couldn’t help the flaking clapboards, and the dark, wet shingles showed how much heat was escaping through the underinsulated attic.
“Poor Logan,” said Pulsifer. “He’s never going to find a sucker willing to buy his house. I told you he’s even unluckier than you.”
As we passed by, Dyer’s hounds began to bay inside: a loud and mournful noise that was nearly a kind of howl. The Plotts must have heard our vehicle with their supersensitive ears. If nothing else, they were effective watchdogs.
The road up the hill was slick, but the studs in Pulsifer’s tires bit through the surface ice. When we got to the steel gate, we found it standing open. Two sets of tire tracks led in, but none led out.
“Have you ever been up in here before?” I asked.
“Not since before Foss started running his home for wayward creeps.”
We were driving now through a majestic stand of old-growth pines. Very often the old lumber camps were surrounded by groves of massive trees like these. The loggers kept the big evergreens standing for scenery around their bunkhouses and kitchens, while they cut the surrounding forest down to the nub.
“How does Foss even make money?” I asked.
“The man cuts a shitload of wood.”
“How? I couldn’t even find a phone number for him.”
“He doesn’t need to advertise his services. The big developers know how to get ahold of him. Foss always comes in as the low bidder when a developer needs land cleared to build ski condos or whatever. It’s one of the advantages to having ex-con employees who can’t get a job anywhere. He can pay them pennies on the dollar and then turn right around and get his money back charging them room and board.”
“It sounds like a sweet deal if you don’t mind treating your workers like plantation slaves.”
“Maybe in his mind he’s helping them,” Pulsifer said.
“What do you think?”
He raised an eyebrow to tell me how stupid my question was. “I think the guy’s a genius.”
Snow was dropping in clumps from the evergreens where the sun was shining, but it clung tightly to the trees that remained in shadow.
After a few minutes, we came to the first building. It was a generator station in a clearing, with a big solar panel on the roof and wires leading off through the tree limbs. I could feel the vibration of the machine in my fillings.
The next structure was a trailer, no different from those used at construction sites, with a satellite dish mounted on the roof. Two state vehicles, a Franklin County Sheriff’s Department cruiser and a late-model Chevy sedan with state-government plates, were parked out front. I recognized the former as the car Clegg had been driving the night before. I figured the latter must belong to Adam’s probation officer.
Pulsifer unfastened his seat belt. “Have you ever met Shaylene Hawken?”
“Not in person, but we had a pleasant chat on the phone the other day.”
“Isn’t she a charmer?”
As I stepped out of the vehicle, I heard a fast-paced chittering overhead and saw a mixed flock of birds swoop and settle into the cone-laden branches of a pine. They were Red and White-winged Crossbills. Those bird-watchers Pulsifer had chased out of the road would have paid money to get such a good look at those elusive winter finches.
Pulsifer took no notice. He made his way to the door and rapped on it three times.
No answer.