Full Wolf Moon
Page 20
And with this she laid her father’s head gently on a rock, rose, turned, and began walking back in the direction of the fire station. Logan watched her receding form for a minute until it was nothing more than a phantom, gray against black. And then he, too, rose from the gurgling pool and, moving slowly and painfully, began to follow.
EPILOGUE
Two months later, Logan was scheduled to attend a conference of medieval historians in Quebec. At the last minute, he canceled his flight and decided to drive instead—although it was now December, the weather was warm and no snow was expected. As he drove up the Northway—and then, well before the Canadian border, took the exit that led to NY Route 73—he was aware of two distinct and very different memories of this particular trip: the ones he’d taken with his wife years before, and the very different one he had made this past October.
He did not want that latter memory to be the one that remained uppermost in his mind. And so he very purposefully made the drive past Keene, Lake Placid, and Saranac Lake, turning first onto Route 3, and then 3A, reliving events both new and old. Save for the stands of pine, the trees were completely bare now, and even in the densest woods he could see the clear blue sky above. The secondary roads were as bad as ever, and just occasional patches of snow could be seen here and there as he drove on deeper into the forest.
“Don’t worry, Kit,” he murmured. “Two hours, tops, and then we’ll be back on the freeway again.”
As he steered the Elan around the curves, he allowed himself—gingerly—to get a sense of the woods around him. There was no longer a feeling of malice, or a perversion of the proper order of things. The Adirondacks remained imperially indifferent to the little humans who hiked and worked and moved within them, but it now felt like a benign indifference to Logan. Man would come and till the fields and lie beneath, but nature would go on regardless.
He turned in at the driveway beside the A-frame, parked next to the red pickup, made his way along the front path, and knocked on the door. It was opened a few moments later by Harrison Albright.
“You’re late,” the poet said.
“Sorry. Didn’t start as early as I’d planned. Never do.”
“Well, come in, anyway.”
Logan followed the man into the rustic living room. Albright moved a little stiffly, but evidently his wounds had by and large healed.
The poet sat him down in one of the handmade chairs, then produced two mugs of coffee with—at his insistence—a good splash of bourbon in each. They lounged before the crackling fire, sipping and saying nothing, for several minutes.
“I was a little surprised to get your call,” Albright said finally.
“Why?”
“I would have thought you’d seen enough of this place to last a lifetime.”
“Don’t worry, this is as far as I go. No need for another visit to Pike Hollow. But…” Logan paused. “I couldn’t leave it like that.”
Albright nodded his understanding.
“And I also wanted to thank you, face-to-face, for all your help.”
This produced a dismissive wave.
“Also, I was curious about what’s happened since I left. Nobody’s told me anything, of course. But I figured if anybody knew the story, it would be you.”
Albright took a sip of coffee. “It’s true, I have my sources. But I really haven’t heard all that much, either. Apparently, it’s being treated as a unique case. It was taken away from Krenshaw immediately and referred higher up the chain of command. There was even talk of the CDC getting involved.”
“Not with the Blakeneys, I hope.”
Albright shook his head. “Nobody’s touched the Blakeneys—and nobody will. It’s like we promised them: what we saw in that compound will stay in that compound.”
“Of course.” The enigmalogist in Logan felt this was a shame: not studying the unique “moon-sickness” of the clan, and adding the resultant findings to the body of medical knowledge, seemed a missed opportunity. The humanist in him, however, knew that the Blakeneys had suffered enough from unwanted attention, gossip, and open hostility over the years and that they deserved to be left alone.
“What about Laura Feverbridge?” he asked at last.
“From what I’ve heard, she’s being treated lightly. She was an indirect accomplice to what happened—but an accomplice to something nobody could have anticipated or understood. I believe she’ll get off with probation.”
“An indirect accomplice,” Logan said, hearing the bitterness in his own voice.
Albright raised his eyebrows inquiringly.
Logan sighed. “Usually, when I finish a case, I’m able to put it behind me. Walk away. Even those that I don’t solve, can’t find a satisfactory solution to, don’t linger to disturb my dreams. But this one…this one was different. Is different.”
“You’re upset by the role you played in it,” Albright said.
“Precisely. Imagine someone—someone very much like myself—stumbling on the fact that Dr. Feverbridge hadn’t died, after all. His daughter had come upon the body of a dead hiker, someone nobody would miss, and used that as an opportunity to hide her father away, free him from the academic scorn that had troubled him so much that he tried to commit suicide. Father and daughter plead with this someone to keep their secret. It’s an innocent deception, he’s told. Nobody was hurt by it. And so the someone agrees.”
“Except that it turns out people were hurt. Five men were killed.”
“And that’s why the case doesn’t want to fade away. I can’t seem to shake the ethical dilemma of it; the results of my action—or inaction.”
For a few minutes, the two fell silent, mutely sipping their coffee. At last, Albright shifted in his chair.
“You know,” he began, “I almost hate to say it, but it seems to me that what you’re describing would frequently be part of the baggage of a job like yours. When you study enigmas—when you immerse yourself in solving them—you just might find yourself walking out of the woods at the end of the day, enigma resolved…but with yourself now burdened by an ethical enigma of your own. Your friend Jessup might have told you to remember the famous words of Nietzsche.”
Logan thought a moment. “ ‘If you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back at you.’ ”
Albright’s only response was to smile a little conspiratorially and take another sip of his coffee.
Logan held Albright’s gaze for a long moment. And as he did so, he realized—with the faintest of shocks at not having realized it before—that the old woodsman was right.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Those who know the Adirondacks well will no doubt observe that I have interspersed the names of real places with numerous fictitious ones. Even the “real” locations I employ do not always match their counterparts in the actual world. I have taken liberties with the mountains, towns, hamlets, wilderness regions, history, and geography of the Adirondacks in order to suit the needs of the novel, and the brooding setting of Full Wolf Moon is as much a creation of my own whimsy as it is a direct reflection of that vast and wonderful park.
While I tried to portray the duties and divisions of the New York State Forest Rangers and New York State Police with a degree of accuracy, all rangers, troopers, and state or federal employees, etc., in Full Wolf Moon are fictitious and the products of my imagination, and should not be considered to be a portrayal of any actual person or persons, living or dead.
I wish to thank my wife, Luchie, for reading the manuscript and making several excellent suggestions; Doug Preston, for suggesting the addition of “moon dust” to the novel; and my friend and editor, Jason Kaufman, for his guidance and companionship over many years of enjoyable literary toil together.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Lincoln Child is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Forgotten Room, The Third Gate, Terminal Freeze, Deep Storm, Death Match, and Lethal Velocity, as well as coauthor, with Douglas Preston, of numerous New York Times bestsellers, most
recently The Obsidian Chamber and Beyond the Ice Limit.
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