“Why?”
“Krenshaw’s put a cordon around Woden’s place. But not too close—he probably knows that would agitate the man. I’d rather not have Krenshaw find out I’ve brought you here.”
Logan did as requested. He felt the truck creep forward, then stop.
“Morning, Officer,” he heard Jessup say.
“Lieutenant,” came the clipped reply from outside and below.
“How far ahead is he?”
“Quarter mile. Just around the bend.”
“The captain has one or two questions she wants me to put to Woden. Don’t worry, nothing that will alarm him. I’ll only be a few minutes. Will you keep a watch here? I’ll let you know if I need you.”
“Will do.”
“Thanks.” And with that the truck eased forward again. As Logan crouched on the floor, the jouncing of the vehicle was even more pronounced. He felt the truck go around a bend, hit a particularly deep rut, then come to a halt.
“We’re here,” Jessup said. “You can get out.”
Logan eased himself up, then opened the door and stepped out. At first, he saw nothing but a veritable whirlwind of trees, shrubs, and bracken surrounding the vehicle. And then he made out, against the riot of brown and black, a cavelike hut, its interior seemingly pulled by hand out of the all-encompassing blowdowns, the way a rodent might pull moss and verdure from a hollow tree stump in order to make a nest. A single low wall of rotting, unpainted two-by-fours made up both a facade and a prop against the collapse of the broken limbs that formed the ceiling. Beyond the truck, Logan could see the “road”—barely a grassy path at this point—curving away into the dimness.
Jessup gave Logan a nod—of both caution and encouragement—checked his weapon, then moved forward. Logan followed.
Reaching the front door—sagging in its jambs, with leather thongs for hinges—Jessup raised a hand to knock. But Logan stopped him, stepped forward himself, and gave a single rap.
“Mr. Woden?” he asked. “Saul Woden?”
There was no response from inside.
“My name’s Logan. Jeremy Logan. I’m not with the police. I just want five minutes of your time.”
Still nothing.
“You see, Saul, I need help—and I think that maybe you can help me. Would you let me in for just a moment? Please?”
For a minute, there was no response. Then a rattling sounded from inside and the door opened a crack. Two eyes like glowing coals peered out from the darkness.
“I’m Jeremy,” Logan repeated. “Could I come in for just a minute? I won’t stay long, I promise.”
The man hesitated. Then he opened the door wider. Logan stepped in, nodding deferentially as he did so. Jessup followed.
Saul Woden was short, but very powerfully built. He had a matted beard and hair that spilled down around his shoulders. His most prominent features were his eyes: bright, skittish. They widened in alarm when they saw the ranger enter. He was dressed in clothes that were old and worn nearly to tatters, but quite clean. The same could not be said for his dwelling: as his eyes adjusted to the dimness, Logan saw that a wattle-and-daub roof had been fashioned into the blowdown over their heads, and more two-by-fours had been used for walls to the left and right. A kerosene lamp hung from a wooden peg set into the ceiling, which grew lower toward the rear of the single room, until at the back one had to stoop to move around. There was a mattress, torn and frayed and without a blanket. An unpleasant odor lingered in the air. Along one wall, countless tins of food had been stacked almost to the ceiling. Two sawn stumps of wood, one larger than the other, made up the only things that could be considered furniture. It was like Jessup said: Woden had deliberately tried to remove himself from all semblance of civilization.
A number of bottles of clozapine—some empty, others not yet opened—lay scattered around the floor.
“What do you want?” Woden said. “I ain’t done nothing.”
“I know that,” Logan said calmly. “Can we just sit for a minute?” And he indicated the stumps of wood.
“I ain’t done nothing,” Woden repeated. “Those police already been bothering me. I ain’t done nothing!”
His voice had grown shrill during this short recitation, and the eyes wider, the whites bulging. Logan realized he had very little time to accomplish what they’d come for.
“I’m a researcher,” he said in the same soothing tones. He took a seat on one of the rough stumps. “I investigate past events. I’m not here about any of those police matters.”
He already sensed that he’d get nothing out of Woden regarding the recent killings, whether the man was responsible for them or not. All he could hope for was a reading of the man’s psyche, a small window into his inner soul.
Now, slowly and suspiciously, Woden sat down on the other stump. His eyes darted nervously toward Jessup once or twice, who stood close to the doorway, arms at his sides, maintaining a nonthreatening posture, hands holding nothing more than his omnipresent notebook.
“Saul,” Logan said, “I know what you did. But that was a long time ago. And you’re better now. You’ve been cured. You’re taking medication. I’m not here to judge you. I’m just here to…to understand. I have a certain ability to do that, you see.” He chose his words carefully, knowing Woden had suffered a persecution complex. “And maybe I can even help you. I just need a single favor. May I take hold of one of your hands?”
Woden jerked in surprise. His hands curled into fists.
“It helps me understand the person I’m speaking to. This way, I won’t have to ask any questions, and you won’t have to say a thing. Not a thing. I know it might sound strange, but trust me.” And then, slowly, he held out one hand, palm open and upraised.
Logan’s soothing, unmodulated voice, his slow gestures, had the effect he intended. Although he still looked nervous, Woden’s fists relaxed. Slowly—as if approaching something very hot—he put one hand forward. Logan noticed that although the hand itself was clean, there was considerable dirt beneath the fingernails.
Logan took the hand gently between his own. “Now, Saul, I’m going to ask you one last favor—just one. And then I’ll go, and I won’t bother you again. I want you to think back—in your own way—on those bad things you did.”
Woden’s expression grew alarmed, and he tried to pull back his hand. But Logan restrained him, gently but firmly. “Just think back for a moment. What happened—and why.”
Woden was looking at him. And suddenly, Logan was filled with a wave of emotion so powerful it almost pushed him off his chair. He was flooded with fear: there was nobody he could trust; everyone around him wished him harm; there was no rest, not even in sleep; and the voices would never leave him—those whispering voices that at times taunted him, at times warned him, at times commanded him. A psychological desolation, a kind of existential despair such as he’d never experienced, pierced Logan to the core. The voices grew louder, more insistent; as if from a great distance he saw an ax, became aware of its reassuring, comforting weight in his hands—there was sudden, involuntary action, a series of ragged screams, and then the voices swelled in jubilation before subsiding into silence. But all too quickly, they began their chanting murmur again—and the darkness once again rushed to embrace him….
For the first time he could remember, Logan snatched his hand away in the midst of an empathetic encounter. Unwillingly, he looked at Woden. The man was staring back. The alarm had left his eyes, and instead there was a strange, almost intimate look in them, as if they had passed on a secret; as if a part of Woden was now part of Logan, and would never leave him.
Shakily, Logan got to his feet. “Thank you,” he managed. “We’ll leave you now.”
He stumbled in the doorway, and Jessup helped him back into the truck, had him crouch once again until they had passed the state policeman. Then the ranger stopped the car, raised Logan into his seat, and strapped him in.
All the way back to Cloudwater, Jessup knew enough to sa
y nothing, keeping quiet while Logan recovered and marshaled his thoughts. Just before the entrance to Cloudwater, he pulled the truck onto the shoulder and looked at his friend in mute inquiry.
Logan returned the look. “I’ll tell you what I experienced,” he said. “But only once. Please don’t ask me to talk of it again. It will be hard enough to forget as it is.”
Jessup nodded.
“I sensed overwhelming fear. I sensed a very sick mind. I sensed violence—savage violence. But that violence seemed…old to me. Still very much alive in his mind—but old.”
“Could Woden have committed these three murders?” Jessup asked quietly.
“I don’t know. I wouldn’t rule it out. As I said, I didn’t sense anything that felt recent—that he was killing in the present. But there was so much violence in his past there’s no way for me to be sure. He may well have been rehabilitated, as the state says. Clearly they believe he’s no longer capable of murder, or they wouldn’t have paroled him. But I believe he’s capable…and dangerous.”
Jessup nodded again. Then he sighed. “Thank you, Jeremy—for everything, but especially for this. If I’d known how much of an ordeal it would be, I’d never have asked. Maybe Krenshaw’s right, after all. In any case, that will be my assumption, going forward. Can I drive you in?”
“No, thanks. I’d rather walk, if it’s all the same to you.”
“Sure. I’ll call you in a few days. We’ll have you over for dinner again—and no shoptalk, I promise.”
“Okay.” And Logan got out of the truck, waited for it to disappear down the road, then began making his way down the lane to Cloudwater.
17
Logan walked slowly, trying to still the agitation and dismay that he felt. As a sensitive, he’d had numerous unpleasant encounters in the past—though few as disturbing as this one—and as he walked he employed a mental exercise: as calmly and rationally as he could, he went over the encounter one final time. And then, quite deliberately, he put it inside of a box, shut the box, and stored it away in a far corner of his mind where—hopefully—it would remain without troubling his dreams.
He turned in at the path to his cottage, glanced at his watch. To his surprise, it was almost a quarter to two. He felt utterly drained; there would be no work for him today. He passed the turnoff for the Albert Bierstadt cabin, the William Hart cabin, then took the final turn toward his own. As he did so, he stopped, frowning in surprise. Ahead, he could see that someone was sitting on his front steps. It was Pace, the technician he’d met the other day; the one who worked for Laura Feverbridge.
What on earth could he want? Logan wondered. Clearly, the man wasn’t aware of Cloudwater’s no-uninvited-visitors policy. This was the last thing he needed: his only desire at the moment was to go inside, pour himself a stiff drink despite the early hour, lie down on the couch, and close his eyes. But with an effort he put a spring into his step and approached the cabin. His lunch, he saw, had been left on its usual tray, beneath a pair of stainless-steel dish covers.
“Kevin Pace, right?” he said as the technician stood at his approach.
Pace nodded.
“Have you been waiting long?”
“About half an hour.” The man passed a hand through his rumpled, mouse-colored hair. “I’m sorry to bother you. I remembered your saying you were in the Thomas Cole cabin, and I wandered the grounds until I found it.” He seemed agitated, his eyes darting here and there even though the two of them were standing at the path’s end, invisible to anyone. “I’m sorry, but do you think I could speak to you for a minute?”
“Of course.” Careful to keep the puzzlement from his face, Logan unlocked the door, ushered the man in, then picked up the lunch tray and followed.
“Sit anywhere,” he said as he carried the tray to the kitchen, then came back out into the living room. Pace sat down on the wraparound couch and Logan chose a chair opposite him. The technician licked his lips, wiped his hands on his jeans. It did not take an empath to see that he was upset about something, perhaps even frightened.
“Why don’t you tell me what I can do for you,” Logan said, leaning forward, interlacing his fingers and resting them on his knees.
But even though he’d driven all the way from the research station, even though he’d waited on Logan’s step for thirty minutes, the technician seemed unwilling to talk—or, perhaps more likely, didn’t know how to begin. He cleared his throat, looked at Logan with his timid eyes, took a deep breath.
“It’s okay,” Logan said. “Whatever it is, I’m sure I’ve heard stranger.”
Pace took another deep breath. “How much did Dr. Feverbridge tell you about our work?”
“She said you’ve been studying the influence of the lunar effect on small mammals.”
Pace nodded slowly. “Yes. It’s been taking longer than expected—everything slowed down, of course, after her father died. Anyway, my own observations have dealt mainly with Peromyscus maniculatus and Blarina brevicauda.”
“Excuse me?”
“Oh. Sorry.” And for the first time in Logan’s brief experience, Pace smiled. “The deer mouse and the northern short-tailed shrew. I was assigned the shrew specifically because of the morphological changes they go through during torpor—their teeth, skulls, even internal organs undergo significant shrinkage. Among other things, I’ve been tasked with determining if those changes can be stimulated in ways other than weather.”
“Go on,” Logan said.
“Well, as you might imagine, because I study the rodents—well, technically, a shrew isn’t a rodent—at various phases of the moon, my work involves observations both inside the laboratory and out, at night as well as day.”
Logan nodded. It was as if Pace was dancing around the issue, unwilling to get to the point.
“I do most of my nightly observations in ‘A Pen’—that’s a small blind we attached to the rear of the main lab. The fact is…well, I’ve started to hear things.”
“Things?”
“Strange noises in the night. Mutterings, whisperings, the occasional muffled bang. I don’t much like being so deep out in the woods—unlike Mark Artowsky, who took to it like a fish to water—and at first I just chalked it up to an overactive imagination. But then I saw the lights.”
“Where?”
“Hard to tell, with all the trees. But they seemed to come from the direction of an old outbuilding.”
“An outbuilding of the fire station?”
Pace nodded. “We’ve never used it. It’s situated too deep in the woods, out south behind the lab.”
“When did you first notice this?” Logan asked.
The technician thought a moment. “Hard to be sure. I think it was around the time that second backpacker’s body was discovered. But it may have been earlier.” He hesitated. “I tried not to think about it, tried to blame it on cabin fever. And maybe that’s what it is. But after what happened to Mark…I just needed to tell somebody about it. I couldn’t keep it to myself any longer.”
“Why didn’t you mention this to the police?” Logan asked. It was a fair enough question: the cops had already been out to interview the lab personnel after the discovery of Artowsky’s body.
“I wanted to, believe me. But a story as thin as this? I figured they’d think I was crazy. And if they didn’t, then they’d be swarming all over the lab, interfering with our work more than they already have, and…and asking more questions.” At the thought, Pace seemed to grow more agitated. “And that’s the last thing I want. I don’t want to get any more involved.”
All of a sudden, he looked directly at Logan. “But then you stopped by the lab. Scientific curiosity, you said—and a wish to express your condolences. Those were the reasons for your visit. But I know who you are. I saw you interviewed in that PBS documentary about Bigfoot. I guessed the real reason you stopped by our lab…and after thinking about it, I realized you were the perfect person to tell.”
Logan didn’t respond. Serves me
right, he thought ruefully.
Pace glanced down at his hands. “It’s just that I know bad stuff has been happening, out there in the western wilderness. And since I’d been hearing some strange things, seeing things…and since I know a little about your work—well, I figured you’d be more receptive than a cop, or a ranger. That’s all.”
For a moment, Logan didn’t reply. Then he nodded. “Okay.”
“So what are you going to do?” Pace asked.
“Do? Well, right now, I’m going to take a long nap.” And he stood up. “Thanks for coming by. I know this doesn’t come naturally to you, getting something like this off your chest. But I hope you’ll feel better for having done so.” He smiled and offered the technician his hand.
Pace blinked for a moment, not comprehending. Then, all of a sudden, he scrambled to his feet, shook the proffered hand.
“Thanks,” he said. Then a fresh look of anxiety swept over his face as a new thought came to him. “You won’t tell the police you heard anything from me?”
“Heard what? This conversation never took place.”
Pace nodded as Logan led him to the door.
“Drive carefully. And good luck with your research.”
Pace blinked, nodded again. Then he turned and began hurrying back down the path to the parking lot.
18
All the next day, and the day following, Logan worked assiduously on his monograph. Except that, try as he might, he was not able to make much headway. He wasted hours verifying sources he’d already confirmed to his satisfaction; he reread passages he had previously polished and left for done. He spent altogether too much time staring out the window at the surrounding trees, wondering how much progress was being made in the cottages around him: Diane Kearns, the conceptual artist, toiling at “Works in Progress Nos. 74 & 75”; Rudolph Zeiss writing his single-movement concerto for piano and string orchestra.
Gradually, he became aware of the cause of this distractedness: it was Kevin Pace, and his talk of lights and strange noises in the woods behind the fire station. As much as Logan had told himself—and Jessup—that he was finished inquiring into the murders, and as much as he wanted to believe it, he realized that he’d already put so much time and thought into the investigation that he wouldn’t be able to rest until he had looked into this, too. It might be nothing, it was almost certainly nothing…and yet the coincidence—unexplained goings-on near the lab where the most recent victim had worked, not far from Desolation Mountain—was something his sixth sense told him simply could not be ignored.