“Shingles,” he pointed.
Mike looked that house in the direction of Morris’s finger, but couldn’t decipher what he was supposed to see.
“I don’t get it,” he said, shaking his head. “Some of them look blacker, is that it?”
“They’re darker because they’re not as weathered,” Morris explained. When Mike still didn’t get it, he explained further—“The ones on top were torn off, there, there, and there." He jabbed his finger at three points leading from the gutter to the roof. “Something climbed that roof quickly.”
“You think our guy scaled that roof?”
“He ran over that house like it was porch stairs,” said Morris.
“Wow,” said Mike.
“Yup,” replied Morris.
THE NEXT PHASE of Morris’s investigation involved driving slowly up Route 203, just east of Snow Pond. Mike fidgeted and sat on his hands. He finally lost his struggle with his own silence.
“I don’t get it,” he said. “How are you going to see anything on this road?”
Morris didn’t answer, but continued to scan the grassy ditch on the side of the road.
“This murder was days ago,” said Mike. “They showed helicopters looking for this guy. He’s long gone. Shouldn’t we be looking like forty miles from here or something?”
Morris shot a look at Mike and then pulled off the road where the shoulder widened slightly. Mike thought that Morris had stopped to address him, but was surprised when Morris simply used the wider patch of road to turn the truck around.
The quiet tracker pointed to the right as they drove south. “Swamp,” he said. Then, a few hundred yards later, he pointed again and said, “Lake.”
Pulling over at the driveway to a camp, he pulled out his laminated map. Tracing his finger around contour lines, he pronounced his judgement. “Chased from here,” he pointed, “he would have fled through here.” His finger showed a path skirting between the swamp and the lake. “You say he’s heading towards the Brunswick dam on the Androscoggin.”
“Yeah, that’s definitely where he was heading. All four of these locations point to it, and that’s where we first used the amplifier. I really do think he must be headed towards that spot,” said Mike.
Morris tapped the map. He thought several moments and then decided—“We have to wait for him to make another move.”
“What? Why?” asked Mike. “I thought you were on his trail.”
“We can’t catch up to him. He’s too fast. And he knows he’s being chased, so he’s changing his course randomly. If you’re right about his destination then we could wait there, but I think it’s best if we wait for him to make another move and then try to guess when he’s going to get there.”
Morris stowed his map, pulled out of the driveway, checked the road behind, and pulled back into the southbound lane.
When he got the truck back up to speed, he spoke without turning towards Mike—“Why are you looking for this thing anyway?”
“Pardon?” asked Mike. Morris’s low, quiet voice was absorbed the ample road noise of the old truck.
“Why track this thing?” Morris asked again.
“Oh,” said Mike. He was startled that he didn’t have an answer at hand and had to think carefully. “I think maybe I had a hand in waking it up,” he said eventually.
This time Morris glanced at Mike before speaking. “You believe that?”
“I guess,” said Mike, sitting back in his seat. He had leaned forward to hear Morris’s question. “I guess I also feel guilty about Gary, and he believed there was something interesting to find in those mountains. I want to prove him right; not that it changes anything.”
Morris nodded. Mike felt like they had made a connection with that answer. He hoped to make Morris genuinely interested in the quest to track down the killer before the taciturn man discovered that Mike didn’t have money to pay him for his services.
“What do you think it is?” asked Mike.
When Morris didn’t answer, Mike wondered if Morris had heard the question.
“Still don’t know,” Morris said. Mike leaned back again, figuring the conversation had concluded, but Morris started talking again. “My grandfather used to talk about an Armless Hunter. He would stalk the night and destroy those who wronged him. He had no eyes or arms—just legs and a neck that ended with a thousand teeth. He was a mortal turned supernatural; immortal.”
“I’ve read about that,” said Mike.
Morris drove another mile before continuing. “These victims are too spread apart, and not connected,” he said. “Doesn’t fit the Armless Hunter.”
“Also one per night,” said Mike. “Like he has to kill. He’s compelled to kill each night.”
“And he travels fast, like he’s headed for something,” said Morris.
“The signal,” added Mike.
The conversation died. Mike tried to resuscitate it several times on the remainder of the drive, but Morris remained silent, lost in thought.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Crooked Tree
THE PREVIOUS FEW NIGHTS had resulted in little progress for Crooked Tree. He spent hours carefully navigating around settlements—the population density increased steadily as he moved east. But his lock on the boy had grown much stronger. Side distractions—local infections—no longer clouded his vision. When he reached out to sense the boy the signal was many times stronger, aided by the proximity and because the infection had spread to more people.
His pursuers hadn’t managed to renew their fix on his position. Crooked Tree’s careful pace competed with his growing unease that the boy’s infection had begun to spread to others.
Crooked Tree sat on the branch of a pine tree atop a tall hill and looked towards a lake in the distance. The lake covered a huge span from north to south and brought a large concentration of houses and people. Further to the north, another lake wasn’t nearly as wide, but he couldn’t see how far stretched. Earlier that evening, he had tried to cross a thin spit of land between the lakes, but the heavy nighttime traffic kept forcing him back into the forest.
He pondered three choices: wait to see if the traffic on the road abated in the deep hours of the night; try his luck south where more people lived; or travel north to skirt both lakes. The boy was so close. He thought that before the next full moon he could locate and remove him, perhaps fulfilling his final duty as a loose spirit roaming the earth. He opted for the cautious approach and headed north—around the lakes—to avoid more contact with gun-wielding police.
The tree shook as Crooked Tree dropped to the ground next to its thick trunk. He started down the hill, moving from shadow to shadow. He had adjusted to this world—he could creep within a dozen yards of a house, stepping over a shaft of light projecting down through a window, and remain undetected. Halfway down the hill, he crossed a narrow private road and toured the outskirts of a well-maintained yard. A half-dressed man paced the living room. Crooked Tree saw him through the windows, walking back and forth. The bare-chested man talked into a phone and paused at the mantle to rearrange his curios.
Crooked Tree sniffed the air and approached the house. He sensed no other people in the house, and no dogs to reveal his trespass. He stopped a few feet from the window, not wanting to reveal himself in the light from the house. As he watched, the man’s shoulders slumped and he spun slowly, speaking low into the phone.
In the quiet night, the man’s conversation was just barely audible through the glass. “…just seems like it’s time. You know?” the man asked his phone. The man stopped in the center of his clean living room and looked up at the ceiling as he listened. Crooked Tree studied him. He wore only pajama bottoms; his bare feet were planted in the soft carpet. His torso sagged and bulged.