“And where do you think Nick Thibodeau is now?”
“I assumed he took off out west. California, maybe. Didn’t think he’d end up as close as Boston, but maybe he doesn’t want to be too far from his brother Eddie.”
“Where’s Eddie live?”
“He’s about five miles from here. Oh, we hit Eddie hard with the questions, but to this day he refuses to tell us where Nick is.”
“Refuses? Or doesn’t know?”
“Swears he doesn’t know. But these Thibodeau boys, in their minds, it’s them against the world. You gotta remember, Maine is the northern tip of Appalachia, and some of these families value loyalty above all. Stand by your brother, no matter what he’s done. I think that’s exactly what Eddie did. Came up with a plan to get Nick outta here and help him disappear.”
“For five years?”
“Not so hard if you have help from your brother. That’s why I still keep tabs on Eddie. I know where he goes and who he calls. Oh, he’s sick of me all right, because he knows I’m not gonna let it go. He knows I have my eye on him.”
“We need to talk to Eddie Thibodeau,” said Jane.
“You won’t get the truth out of him.”
“We’d still like to try.”
Barber glanced at his watch. “Okay, I’ve got a free hour. We can head over to his house now.”
Jane and Frost looked at each other. Frost said, “Maybe it’d be better if we saw him on our own.”
“You don’t want me there?”
“You two have a history,” said Jane, “obviously not a friendly one. If you’re there, it’ll put him on guard.”
“Oh, I get it. I’m the bad cop and you want to be the good cops. Yeah, that makes sense.” He looked at the weapon strapped to Jane’s waist. “And I see you’re both carrying. That’s good.”
“Why? Is Eddie a problem?” asked Frost.
“He’s unpredictable. Think about what Nick did to Tyrone, and stay alert. Because these brothers are capable of anything.”
A gutted four-point buck hung upside down in Eddie Thibodeau’s garage. Cluttered with tools and spare tires, trash cans and fishing gear, it looked like any suburban garage in America, except for the animal dangling from a ceiling hook, dripping blood into a puddle on the concrete floor.
“I don’t know what else I can say ’bout my brother. Already told the police everything there is to say.” Eddie raised a knife to the buck’s hind leg, slit around the ankle joint, then sliced through skin from ankle to groin. Working with the efficiency of a man who’d broken down many a deer, he grasped the pelt with both hands and grunted with effort as he peeled it down, baring purplish muscle and sinew cloaked in silvery fascia. It was cold in the open garage, and he exhaled clouds of steam as he paused to catch his breath. Like the photo of his brother Nick, Eddie had broad shoulders and dark eyes and the same stony expression, but he was an unkempt version of his brother, dressed in bloodstained overalls and a wool cap, his beard stubble already peppered with gray at the ripe age of thirty-nine.
“After they found Tyrone hanging in that tree, the state police kept hassling me, asking the same damn questions. Where would Nick go to ground? Who was hiding him? I kept telling ’em they got it all wrong. That something must’ve happened to Nick, too. If he was on the run, he’d never leave without his bug-out bag.”
“What kind of bag?” said Frost.
“Don’t tell me you’ve never heard of a bug-out bag.” Eddie frowned at them across the splayed rear legs of the deer.
“What is it, exactly?”
“It’s where you keep your essentials for survival. For when the system goes all to hell. See, if there’s some kind of catastrophe like a dirty bomb or a terrorist attack, people in big cities are gonna be in a world of hurt. No power, folks in a panic. That’s why you need a bug-out bag.” Eddie peeled more of the pelt, and the smell of bloody deer meat, raw and gamy, made Frost grimace and step away.
Eddie glanced at him in amusement. “Not a fan of venison?”
Frost stared at the glistening flesh, streaked with fat. “I tried it once.”
“Didn’t like it?”
“Not really.”
“Then it wasn’t prepared right. Or killed right. For the meat to taste good, the deer has to go down quick. One bullet, no struggle. If it’s only wounded and you have to chase it down, that meat’s gonna taste like fear.”
Frost stared at exposed muscles that had once propelled this buck through fields and woods. “And how does fear taste?”
“Like scorched flesh. Panic sends all kinds of hormones through the animal and you taste the struggle. Ruins the flavor.” He cleanly sliced a fist-sized hunk of meat from the haunch and tossed it into a stainless-steel bowl. “This one was killed right. Never knew what hit him. Gonna make a tasty stew.”
“You ever go hunting with your brother?” asked Jane.
“Nick and I grew up hunting together.” He sliced off another hunk. “I miss that.”
“Was he a good shot?”
“Better than me. Real steady, always took his time.”
“So he could survive out there, in the woods.”
Eddie gave her a cold stare. “It’s been five years. What, you think he’s still out there, living like some mountain man?”
“Where do you think he is?”
Eddie dropped his knife in a bucket, and bloodstained water splashed onto the concrete. “You’re looking for the wrong man.”
“Who’s the right man?”
“Not Nick. He’s no killer.”
She eyed the dead buck, its left leg now stripped down to bone. “When they found Nick’s buddy Tyrone, he was gutted and hanging just like this deer.”
“So?”
“Nick was a hunter.”
“So am I, and I haven’t killed anyone. I’m just feeding my family, something you people are so far removed from, you’ve probably never even used a boning knife.” He took the rinsed knife from the bucket and held it out to Jane. “Let’s see you give it a try, Detective. Go on, take it. Slice off a chunk and see how it feels to harvest your own dinner. Or are you afraid of a little blood on your hands?”
Jane saw the disdain in his eyes. Oh no, a city girl would never dirty her hands. It was men like the Thibodeau brothers who hunted and farmed and butchered so that she could have her steak on a plate. She might view his kind in contempt, but so, too, did he view hers.
She took the knife, stepped toward the buck, and sliced deep, all the way to bone. As chilled flesh peeled open, she smelled all that the deer had once been: fresh grass and acorns and forest moss. And blood, wild and coppery. The meat came away from bone, a dense, purple wedge of it, which she tossed into the bowl. She didn’t glance at Eddie as she started carving off the next chunk.
“If Nick didn’t kill his friend Tyrone,” she said, her knife gliding through flesh, “who do you think did?”
“I don’t know.”
“Nick has a history of violence.”
“He was no angel. He got in a few fights.”
“Did he ever get in a fight with Tyrone?”
“Once.”
“That you know of.”
Eddie picked up another knife and reached deep inside the carcass to strip out a tenderloin. His blade was at work barely an arm’s length away from her but she calmly carved another chunk from the leg.
“Tyrone was no angel, either, and they both liked to drink.” Eddie pulled out the bloody tenderloin, slippery as an eel, and tossed it into the bowl. Swished the blade in the bucket of icy water. “Just because a man loses control once in a while doesn’t make him a monster.”
“Maybe Nick did more than just lose control. Maybe an argument led to something way worse than a fight.”
Eddie looked straight at her. “Why would he leave him hanging from a tree, out in the open, where everyone could find him? Nick’s not stupid. He knows how to cover his tracks. If he killed Tyrone, he’d drag him into the woods and bury him.
Or scatter his parts for the animals. What was done to Tyrone, that was something else, something sick. That wasn’t my brother.” He crossed to a workbench to hone his blade, and all conversation was cut off by the whine of the sharpener. The steel bowl was now mounded high with meat, at least twenty pounds’ worth, and half the deer had yet to be butchered. Outside the open garage, an icy drizzle was falling. On this lonely country road there were few houses, and in the last half hour she’d seen no cars pass by. And here they were, in the middle of nowhere, watching an angry man sharpen his knife.
“Did your brother go down to Boston much?” she called out over the screech.
“Sometimes. Not a lot.”
“He ever mention a guy named Leon Gott?”
Eddie glanced up at her. “That’s what this is about? Leon Gott’s murder?”
“You knew him?”
“Not personally, but I knew his name, of course. Most hunters do. I could never afford his work, but if you wanted your kill stuffed and mounted, Gott was the man to go to.” Eddie paused. “Is that why you’re up here, asking about Nick? You think he did Gott?”
“We’re just asking if they knew each other.”
“We read Gott’s articles in Trophy Hunter. And we went down to Cabela’s, to check out some of the big game he mounted. But as far as I know, Nick never met the guy.”
“He ever go to Montana?”
“Years ago. We both went, to see Yellowstone.”
“How many years ago?”
“Does it matter?”
“Yes, it does.”
Eddie set down the knife he’d been sharpening and said, quietly, “Why are you asking about Montana?”
“Other people have been killed, Mr. Thibodeau.”
“You mean, like Tyrone was?”
“There were similarities.”
“Who are these other people?”
“Hunters, in Montana. It happened three years ago.”
Eddie shook his head. “My brother disappeared five years ago.”
“But he has been to Montana. He’s familiar with the state.”
“It was one fucking trip to Yellowstone!”
“What about Nevada?” said Frost. “He ever been there?”
“No. What, did he supposedly kill someone there, too?” Eddie looked back and forth at Jane and Frost and snorted. “Any other murders you want to pin on Nick? He can’t defend himself, so you might as well throw your whole cold-case file at him.”
“Where is he, Eddie?”
“I wish I knew!” In frustration, he slapped away an empty bowl and it hit the concrete floor with an ear-ringing clang. “I wish you fucking cops would do your fucking jobs and come up with answers! Instead you keep harassing me about Nick. I haven’t seen or heard from him in five years. The last time I did see him, he was on the porch, drinking with Tyrone. They were haggling over some crap they’d picked up at the campground.”
“Picked up?” Jane snorted. “You mean, stolen.”
“Whatever. But it wasn’t a fight, okay? It was a … lively negotiation, that’s all. They left for Tyrone’s place, and that’s it. The last time I saw them. Few days later, state police shows up here. They found Nick’s truck parked at the trailhead. And they found Tyrone. But they never found any trace of Nick.” As if too weary to stand any longer, Eddie sank onto a bench and huffed out a breath. “That’s what I know. That’s all I know.”
“You said Nick’s truck was parked at the trailhead.”
“Yeah. Police figured he took off into the wild. That he’s somewhere in the woods like Rambo, living off the land.”
“What do you think happened?”
For a moment, Eddie was silent, staring down at his callused hands, the nails crusted with blood. “I think my brother’s dead,” he said softly. “I think his bones are scattered somewhere, and we just haven’t found him yet. Or he’s hanging from some tree, like Tyrone.”
“So you think he was murdered.”
Eddie raised his head and looked at her. “I think they met someone else out there, in the woods.”
Twenty-One
Botswana
When the sun comes up, I am alone in the wilderness. I have stumbled for hours in the darkness, and I have no idea how far I’ve traveled from camp; I only know that I am somewhere downstream, because all night I kept the sound of the river to my left. As the sky brightens from pink to gold I am so thirsty I drop to my knees at the water’s edge and drink like a wild animal. Only yesterday, I would have insisted the water be boiled or purified with iodine first. I would have fretted over all the microbial terrors I’m ingesting, a fatal dose of bacteria and parasites with every gulp. None of that matters now, because I am going to die anyway. I scoop up water in my palms, drink so greedily that it splashes my face, streams from my chin.
When at last I’ve had my fill, I rock back on my haunches and gaze across a clump of papyrus to the trees and waving grasses beyond the river. To the creatures who inhabit this green and alien world, I am but a walking source of meat, and everywhere I look, I imagine teeth waiting to devour me. With sunrise came the noisy chatter of birds, and when I look up, I see vultures tracing lazy loops in the sky. Have they already marked me for their next meal? I turn upriver, toward camp, and see the clear trail of footprints I’ve left along the bank. I remember how easily Johnny tracked even the faintest paw prints. My trail will be as glaring as neon for him to follow. Now that it’s daylight, he’ll be hunting me because he can’t afford to let me live. I’m the only one left who knows what happened.
I rise to my feet and continue to flee downstream.
I can’t allow myself to think of Richard or the others. All I can focus on is staying alive. Fear keeps me moving, pushes me deeper into the wild. I have no clue where this river leads. I recall from the guidebook that the rivers and streams of the Okavango Delta are fed by rainfall in the Angola highlands. All this water, which annually floods these lagoons and swamps from which so much wildlife magically springs, will eventually empty into the parched Kalahari Desert. I glance up to gauge the direction of the sun, which is only now lifting over the treetops. I am walking south.
And I am hungry.
In my knapsack I find six PowerBars, 240 calories each. I remember tucking them into my suitcase in London, just in case I couldn’t abide the food in the bush, and I remember how Richard mocked my unadventurous palate. In an instant I devour one of the PowerBars and have to force myself to leave the remaining five for later. If I stay near the river, at least I’ll have water, an endless supply of it, even though it surely carries a host of diseases I can’t even pronounce. But the water’s edge is a dangerous zone where predator and prey so often meet, where life and death converge. At my feet is an animal’s skull, bleached by the sun. Some deer-like creature that met its end here on the riverbank. A line of ripples disturbs the water, and a crocodile lifts beady eyes to the surface. This is not a good place to be. I veer away into the grass and find a pathway has already been trampled here. Tracks stomped in the dust tell me that I am following in the footsteps of elephants.
When you are afraid, everything zooms into sharp focus. You see too much, hear too much, and I’m overwhelmed by a rapid click-click of images and sounds, any one of which might be the only warning of something that will kill me. That must all be processed at once. That swaying of the grass? Merely the wind. The blur of wings swooping above the reeds? A fish eagle. The rustling in the underbrush is merely a warthog rambling by. Tawny impala and the darker shapes of Cape buffalo move along the horizon. Everywhere I see life, flying, chattering, swimming, feeding. Beautiful and hungry and dangerous. And now the mosquitoes have found me and are feasting on my blood. My precious pills are back in my tent, so add malaria to the list of ways to die, along with being mauled by a lion, trampled by a buffalo, drowned by a crocodile, and crushed by a hippo.
As the heat builds, the mosquitoes become relentless. I wave at them maniacally as I walk, but they thicken into a bitin
g cloud that I cannot escape. In desperation, I’m driven back to the riverbank where I scoop up handfuls of mud and slather my face and neck and arms. The silt is slimy with decaying vegetation and the smell makes me gag, but I slap on thicker and thicker layers until I’m encased in it. I rise to my feet, a primeval creature emerging from the muck. Like Adam.
I continue on the elephant path. They, too, prefer to travel alongside the river, and as I walk I spot other prints that tell me this route is used by a multitude of different creatures. This is the bush equivalent of a superhighway, all of us traveling in the footsteps of elephants. If impala and kudu walk this way then surely lions do as well.
Here is yet another killing zone, where predator and prey find each other.
But the tall grass on either side of me hides just as many threats, and I don’t have the energy to thrash my own path through dense bush. I must move quickly, because somewhere behind me is Johnny, the most relentless predator of all. Why did I refuse to see it? As the others were taken down one by one, their flesh and bones fed to this hungry land, I was blind to his game. Every look Johnny gave me, every kind word, was merely a prelude to a kill.
As the sun reaches its height, I am still trudging the elephant path. The mud dries to a hard crust on my skin and clumps of it crumble into my mouth as I eat a second PowerBar, and I devour it, grit and all. I know I should conserve my food supply, but I’m already famished and the ultimate tragedy would be to collapse dead, with food still in my knapsack. The trail veers back toward the water’s edge, where I come to a lagoon so black and still that a twin sky is reflected in its waters. The heat of midday has silenced the bush; even the birds have gone quiet. At the water’s edge is a tree where dozens of strange, pendulous sacs hang like Christmas balls. In my heat-crazed exhaustion, I wonder if I’ve stumbled upon a colony of alien cocoons, left to incubate where no one will discover them. Then a bird flutters past and vanishes into one of the sacs. Weaverbird nests.