“Evans Bridge takeout,” said the boy as if Dale should know where that was. “They’ll be lucky to get there before dark.”
“How about the couple before them?” said Dale. “They going to Evans Bridge?”
“Uh-uh. Those folks were camping. They’ll be at Godfrey Bridge Campsite in four and a half or five hours. Then they plan to go on down to Bodine Field tomorrow where we’ll take them out.”
“How do you know they’ll be camping at Godfrey Bridge?”
“You have to have a camping permit before you can do a two-day rental. They showed me the permit.” The boy looked at Dale. “You a cop?”
Dale tried to laugh casually. “Hardly. Just curious about canoe trips. My girlfriend and I have been thinking about taking one.”
“Well, you’d better make up your mind by next weekend if you’re planning to rent from us,” said the boy, sounding bored and disinterested again. He was lifting kayaks onto a trailer. “We close for the winter after then.”
“Do you have a map I could have of the distance to campsites and such?”
The boy took a wrinkled photocopy out of his back pocket and handed it to Dale without looking at him again.
Dale thanked him and walked back to the car.
The gravel turnoff from Route 563 to Godfrey Bridge Campsite was only about ten miles south of the put-in point. Dale had expected a developed campground, but at the end of the gravel road there was only the river, some metal fire pits set back under the trees, and two portable toilets. Thick forest pressed in on all sides. The camping area was empty. Dale glanced at his watch. It was a little after two. Clare and her boyfriend should be along between 6:00 and 7:00P.M. The afternoon was clear and silent—no insect sounds and little animal or bird noise. A few squirrels scampered in the trees, but even their autumn play seemed hushed. Occasionally a cluster of canoes or a lone kayak would float by, the people either brazenly loud or as silent as the absent insects. None of the canoes carried Clare.
Dale walked back to his rental car, drove it a few hundred yards up the gravel road to an overgrown logging road he’d noticed, pulled it back out of sight, and popped the trunk open. For a while he stood staring into the trunk at the ax he had taken from the canoe rental place.
Professor Stewart? You get ahold of the psychiatrist in Montana?”
Dale looked up from the table where he was sitting drinking bad coffee out of a Styrofoam cup. The sheriff had shown him to a tiny room with a bare table and telephone and left him to make his call. There was no two-way mirror in the wall, but there was a tiny slit in the door and Dale guessed that this—sans telephone—was what passed for an interrogation room in the Oak Hill sheriff’s office.
“Yeah,” he said.
“No problems?”
“No problems,” said Dale. “Dr. Williams told me what you did about Dr. Hall’s accident and agreed to phone my prescription into the Oak Hill pharmacy. Actually, I’m pretty sure that I still have some medication left back at the farmhouse.”
“Good,” said McKown. The sheriff slipped into the only other chair and laid a manila folder on the table. There was a paperback book under the folder, but Dale could not see the title. “Are you willing to talk to me for a minute?” asked the sheriff.
“Do I have a choice?” Dale was very tired.
“Sure you do. You can even call a lawyer if you want.”
“Am I under arrest or suspicion for something other than being crazy?”
McKown smiled tightly. “Professor Stewart, I just wanted to ask your help on a little problem we have.”
“Go ahead.”
The sheriff removed five snapshot-sized glossy photos from the folder and set them out in front of Dale as if inviting him to play solitaire. “You know these boys, Professor?”
Dale sighed. “I don’t know them, but I’ve seen them. I recognize this kid as Sandy Whittaker’s nephew, Derek.” He tapped the photograph of the youngest boy.
“You want to know the names of the others?”
“Not especially,” said Dale.
“This one you should know about,” said McKown, sliding the photograph of the oldest skinhead out by itself on the tabletop. “His name is Lester Bonheur. Born in Peoria. He’s twenty-six. Dishonorable discharge from the army, six priors including felonious menacing, assault with a deadly weapon, and arson. Only convicted once for auto theft, served just eleven months. He discovered Hitler about four years ago the way most folks discover Jesus. These other punks are just. . . punks. Bonheur is dangerous.”
Dale said nothing.
“Where was the last place you saw these five men?” McKown’s pale blue eyes were too intense for a poker player.
“I don’t. . .” began Dale.
Tell him the truth. Tell him the whole truth.
The sheriff’s stare grew even more intense as Dale’s silence stretched.
“I don’t know what the place is called,” continued Dale, completely changing what he was going to say, “but it’s that muddy old quarry area a mile or so east of Calvary Cemetery. When we were kids, we called the little hills there Billy Goat Mountains.”
McKown grinned. “That’s what my uncle Bobby always called the old Seaton Quarry.” The grin disappeared. “What were you doing there with these troublemakers, Professor?”
“I wasn’t doing anything with them. The five of them were in two pickup trucks, chasing me. I was in my Land Cruiser.”
“Why were they chasing you?”
“Ask them,” said Dale.
The sheriff’s stare did not grow any friendlier.
Dale opened his hands above the tabletop. “Look, I don’t even know who these skinheads are except for him. . .” He tapped the photo of the youngest boy again. “Sandy Whittaker told me that her nephew was a member of this local neo-Nazi group. They threatened me when I first got here in October. Then the other day—“
The day before Michelle Staffney showed up on Christmas Eve.
“The day before Christmas Eve they jumped me at the KWIK’N’EZ. You can ask the fat girl who works there. I got in my Land Cruiser and drove away. They chased me in their pickup trucks. I took the back way from Jubilee College Road and lost them at the muddy old quarry area.”
“‘Back way’ is right,” said the sheriff. “That’s all private land. Why would you drive across country like that with these bad boys after you?”
Dale shrugged. “I remembered Gypsy Lane. It’s an old overgrown road that we used to. . .”
“I know,” interrupted McKown. “My uncle Bobby talked about it. What happened out there?”
“Nothing,” said Dale. “My truck got through the mud. Theirs didn’t. I drove on back to the McBride farm.”
“Were the boys all alive when you left them?” McKown asked softly.
Dale’s jaw almost dropped. “Of coursethey were alive. Just muddy. Aren’t they alive now? I mean. . .”
McKown swept the photos back into the folder. “We don’t know where they are, Professor Stewart. A farmer found their pickup trucks out there in the mud yesterday afternoon. One of the pickups got turned on its side. . .”
“Yes,” said Dale. “I saw that. The green Ford followed me up and over a muddy hill there and tipped over at the bottom. But both boys—both men —got out of it. No one was hurt.”
“You sure of that, Professor?”
“Yes, I’m sure. I saw them hopping around and cursing at me. Besides, the chase—even the truck tipping over—all happened in extreme slow motion. No one was going fast enough to get hurt.”
“Why do you think they were chasing you?”
Dale held back his anger at being interrogated. “Sandy Whittaker said that Derek and his pals had read on the Internet some essays I wrote about right-wing groups in Montana,” he said slowly. “The skinheads called me names both times they encountered me—‘Jew lover,’ that sort of thing—so I presume that’s why they wanted to hurt me.”
“Do you think they would have hurt you that day, Professor?”