The Precipice: A Novel

by Paul Doiron

  The case was broken, and the battery was missing. Someone had tried to scratch a little girl’s sticker from the back. Most of it had been peeled away, except for what appeared to be a bright red bow. I dropped the phone as if it had scorched my hand.

  I looked up at the old woman. “Where did you find this?”

  “In the parking lot.”

  “Pinkham, didn’t Samantha and Missy own Samsung Galaxies?”

  “Yeah. Why?”

  “Their phones weren’t found with their bodies, you said.”

  I pointed at the counter. A sudden light came into Pinkham’s eyes. His hands fell to his sides.

  33

  Pinkham had said that Missy Montgomery’s phone was identifiable by a Hello Kitty sticker on the back. Someone had done a poor job trying to remove it—almost suspiciously poor, in fact.

  The investigator called Sergeant Fitzpatrick and told the state police detective what we’d found. The cell carrier would have a record of the serial numbers. Whoever had taken the battery had forgotten to scrape off the identifying information inside. We should have our answer in minutes.

  I took Pearlene aside while frustrated customers gave up and left without their purchases. She watched them go with a pained expression, as if she could count the dollars being blown away on the wind. She replaced the sodden cigarette in her mouth with another. If she couldn’t light up, she was going to try sucking out the nicotine.

  “When did you find the phone?” I asked her.

  “This morning. I picked it up and brought it inside. Figured it was Toby’s.”

  I’d already told Pinkham that Toby Dow was playing with a broken cell phone the morning I’d met him. At the time, I didn’t know the women’s phones were missing. I wanted to kick myself for not remembering the kid and his toy later.

  Stacey had been at the store the same time as Toby Dow. Maybe she had noticed him talking on his phone. But if she had realized the Samsung might have belonged to Samantha or Missy, she would surely have alerted the police. She wouldn’t have abandoned a key piece of evidence, leaving it behind in the store parking lot. And it didn’t explain why she would have rushed out to Nissen’s place.

  Pinkham held his own phone pressed between his ear and his shoulder so that he could jot down the serial numbers of the missing Samsungs. He held his pen poised over his little Rite in the Rain notebook. His tired eyes opened wide behind his unfashionable glasses.

  “It’s Missy’s,” he mouthed to me.

  “Are you sure this is the phone Toby Dow has been playing with?” I asked Pearlene.

  “It was right over near his bucket.”

  “Do you know where he got it?”

  “Probably out in the lot,” she said. “People drop things out there all the time when they’re pumping gas or getting in and out of their cars. Wallets, phones, sunglasses.”

  Pinkham finished his conversation with the state police detective and came over to me. “How’d you like to take a drive back to Blanchard?”

  “Just the two of us?” I was remembering the crazed faces of the five Dows as they surrounded me in the bar. How many more of those brutes were back at their compound?

  “Fitzpatrick is sending backup,” he said.

  Pearlene removed the unlighted cigarette from her mouth and waved it at Pinkham. “I don’t get it. You’re saying the Dows had something to do with what happened to those girls? What about the fucking coyotes?”

  He placed a hand on the old woman’s shoulder and leaned in close. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t mention this to anyone.”

  The color bled out of her cheeks. “What are you going to do?”

  “Just ask the boy a few questions,” the investigator said.

  “You can’t tell the Dows it was me who gave you that phone. If they think I ratted them out, they’ll burn my store down—with me in it!”

  “It’s going to be OK, Pearlene.”

  “The hell it is!” She clapped a blue-veined hand to her forehead. “I am so fucking screwed.”

  We left her to contemplate the many terrible ways the Dows could wreak revenge on her business and her person.

  “Do you know how many troopers Fitzpatrick is sending?” I asked Pinkham as we returned to our trucks.

  “Are you worried about being outnumbered?”

  “I’m worried about being outgunned.”

  Pinkham seemed to know where he was going. As the local warden investigator charged with catching the worst poachers in the Moosehead region, he must have made regular stops at the Dow family compound. My replacement tires, vibrating over the asphalt, made a noise like a wax-paper harmonica. Through the trees, I could see glimpses of Lake Hebron, the water as flat and blue as stained glass in the early-morning light.

  Halfway there, we passed a vintage Ford F-100 with a dead coyote tied to the flatbed. The driver had probably spent a long night in the woods, waiting to shoot the animal over a pile of Alpo. He was going to be pissed to learn there was no one to tag it at the Monson General Store.

  Unless one of the Dows had run into Samantha and Missy in Monson—or seen them walking along the road to the trailhead—I couldn’t see how they would have crossed paths. The idea of hiking for recreation was foreign, if not laughable, to mountain men like Troy and Trevor. The only time they took a walk in the woods was when they were heading to a tree stand or patrolling a trapline.

  Troy Dow had been in the Hundred Mile Wilderness on the same day the bodies had been found. He’d been working on the KI Road that very morning, which was how he’d come to give Chad McDonough a ride. He’d also had the opportunity, after I had released him from custody, to go looking for his hitchhiker, once he’d realized McDonut was a witness to the disappearance of Samantha and Missy. Troy Dow might have crushed the poor kid under the wheels of his Silverado to keep him from talking.

  Whenever I was trying to solve a puzzle, I liked to use my imagination to re-create the sequence of events. This time, however, I couldn’t get the film to play smoothly inside my head. The images kept jump-cutting.

  As a theory of what had happened, it just didn’t hang together. Nor did it offer an explanation for Stacey’s disappearance. To my knowledge, no relationship existed between the Dows and Nissen, nothing that would explain where my girlfriend had gone or been taken.

  * * *

  Charley called me from the air. I rolled up the window and put my phone on speaker, so I wouldn’t lose Pinkham.

  “I’m over Moxie Pond,” he said, shouting to be heard above the floatplane’s engine.

  “And I’m driving to Blanchard again.”

  “Back to the beekeeper’s place?”

  “Pinkham and I are going to talk to your friend, the mayor of Monson.”

  “Say again?” he shouted.

  I did my best to explain to him about finding Missy’s phone at the general store.

  “That’s a new twist in the pretzel,” he said. “Do you want me to fly recon for you over that compound?”

  “It might spook them.”

  “I’m sure the DEA makes regular flyovers.”

  “Keep looking for Stacey’s truck. Start at Nissen’s place on Breakneck Ridge and range out from there.”

  Whatever he said next was lost beneath the mechanical roar.

  “What was that?” I said.

  “How afraid should we be for my little girl?”

  “She’d be pissed if she heard you call her that.”

  “Ain’t that the truth!” His tone was light, but I could hear the bluff behind it.

  My old friend had done two tours in Vietnam during the war, flying Cessna O-1 Bird Dogs over enemy lines. After a surface-to-air missile blasted off his rudder, he’d managed to ditch in a rice paddy, with only a broken ankle to show for it. Afterward, he’d done a stint in the Hanoi Hilton, where his torturers made sure his ankle never properly healed. Back home, working as a game warden, he had been shot, beaten up, and nearly drowned; he’d been in three more pl
ane crashes, including the one that paralyzed his wife. And not once had I heard him complain about being in pain or ever worry for his own life. In short, Charley Stevens was one of the bravest, strongest men I had ever met. This was the first time I’d ever heard fear in his voice.

  * * *

  As we drove into what I’d come to think of as downtown Blanchard, we turned left, heading southeast along the Barrows Falls Road. We passed a single farmhouse with Rhode Island Reds pecking in the wet grass. Then we were swallowed up again by the green woods.

  A state police cruiser was parked along the shoulder. Beyond the car was a huddle of mailboxes. Across the road, a dirt drive led up a thickly wooded hillside. The forest here was damp and dense, crowded with northern white cedars, red maples, and black spruces packed so closely together that the shadows between them appeared to be tangled, writhing things. It was no surprise to me that the woods-wise Dow family had chosen this impassable place for their stronghold.

  As I came to a stop behind Pinkham’s truck, I spotted an improvised gate—a felled cedar log that would need to be dragged aside whenever anyone wanted to enter or exit the property. Tacked to the trees for hundreds of yards in both directions were POSTED signs, and rusted barbed wire was strung at crotch level between the trunks. To make it absolutely clear how they felt about trespassers, the Dows had placed the rotting head of a longhorn steer on a spike at the end of the drive. Stacey had told me that the locals believed the clan matriarch, Tempest Dow, was some sort of evil witch. I could see how this disgusting fetish might awaken primitive fears.

  The trooper straightened up out of his Interceptor and adjusted the strap on his brimmed blue hat. He waited for Pinkham and me to approach. He stood about six-five, all muscle. His name tag identified him as Chamberlain.

  “Fitzpatrick is on his way,” he said.

  “We’ll wait for him,” said Pinkham. “Chamberlain, this is Warden Bowditch.”

  The trooper and I shook hands. “We spoke last week,” he said.

  I remembered him now—the officer who had found Chad McDonough’s car at Abol Bridge Campground.

  “What’s the plan?” I asked Pinkham.

  The detective unrolled a topographical map on the hood of his truck. He pointed to a small elevation to our north, rising approximately three hundred feet above the river floodplain. The survey map included a cluster of black rectangles indicating buildings at the top of the hill.

  “Fitzpatrick and Chamberlain will go up the drive,” Pinkham said. “You and I will approach through the woods from different directions. There are probably fifty people living up there, including the kids. Most of what’s up there are mobile homes, but there’s an old farmhouse, a barn, a sugar shack, and a bunch of sheds. Lots of places to hide, in other words.”

  “Are there other ways out of there?” I asked.

  “There are ATV trails going in every direction. The last time I poked around these woods, I found piano wire stretched across a few of them at neck height. It’s a miracle none of the Dows have beheaded themselves.”

  I had a bad feeling about sneaking up on men like this unless we were going in force with guns drawn. “Are they just antisocial, or do they have business they don’t want discovered?”

  “Both,” said Trooper Chamberlain. He popped a piece of gum in his mouth, as if the word had left a bad taste.

  “The Dows have always grown marijuana,” said Pinkham. “They do most of their farming on other people’s properties to keep from being busted. I’ve had summer people who came up in August and found their backyards overgrown with pot plants. Rumor is that the Dows have recently gotten into dealing ‘bath salts,’ too.”

  The investigator wasn’t talking about the crystals you pour into your tub. He meant the illegal stimulants that cause users to jump off bridges, thinking they can fly.

  “No wonder they don’t like visitors,” I said.

  Chamberlain folded his arms. “A few years ago,” he said, “a census taker tried going up there to ask them some questions. He came running out in his Fruit of the Looms, covered in pig shit. I told him he was lucky the Dows hadn’t made him squeal like a pig, too. He decided not to press charges, needless to say.”

  A dark blue Ford sedan appeared, coming from the direction of Monson. I recognized it as Fitzpatrick’s unmarked police car. It rolled to a stop in the shadows behind my truck, and the state police lieutenant got out. He paused to tuck his shirt into his pants, revealing the holstered pistol on his belt. A bloody piece of paper stuck to his chin suggested a shaving mishap.

  Pinkham briefed him on the situation. He brought out the bagged Samsung Galaxy for show-and-tell.

  “Are you sure this is the phone you saw the boy playing with?” Fitzpatrick asked me.

  “As sure as I can be.”

  The state police sergeant hadn’t placed much faith in my opinions that first night of the search. But events had intervened since then: Chad McDonough was dead, Nissen had disappeared, and I’d discovered the one piece of hard evidence to suggest Samantha and Missy had died by human hands.

  “So the question is where he got it,” said Fitzpatrick after a pause.

  “Let’s go ask him,” said Trooper Chamberlain.

  I gazed up at the trees on either side of the log gate. I was remembering the expression of terror on Pearlene’s face whenever she talked about the family’s capacity for violence. There are dangerous places in Maine—dark corners like this one—where officers are required to go in pairs except in grave emergencies. In this case, I wondered if even four of us was a prudent number.

  “I’m guessing they have game cameras all over these woods,” I said.

  “That’s a safe bet,” said Pinkham.

  “What about booby traps?” It wasn’t uncommon for backwoods pot growers to rig trip wires and explosives in their fields.

  “Keep your eyes open, and you’ll be all right.”

  I returned to my truck to change jackets. On patrol, I always carried a Mossy Oak camouflage raincoat and a matching ball cap. I couldn’t do anything about the blue jeans, but the light was low enough under the trees. I doubted the color would scream out.

  We all exchanged cell numbers and set our phones to vibrate. Pinkham directed me to walk a hundred yards down the road. The plan was for me to approach the hilltop from the southeast while he climbed up the southwestern slope. He laid a hand lightly on my shoulder, the way priests used to after the sacrament of confession, when they’d told me to “go with God.”

  “Watch yourself in there,” he said. “The Dows don’t screw around.”

  “You, too.”

  The investigator smiled, winked at me, and patted the firearm at his side. Then he went to put on his camouflage.

  34

  On Fitzpatrick’s signal, we all began moving up the hill. I found a sagging spot in the barbed wire that I could step over. I lost sight of the others as soon as I entered the evergreens.

  The trees were thickest close to the road, and the forest floor was puddled. The branches scraped my cheeks and flipped my cap off my head. I stepped from slippery root to slippery root, not wanting to put my foot down into a pool of water and find a leg-hold trap hidden at the bottom. Poisonous toadstools sprouted from rotting logs. The heavy boughs were fragrant and wet. You can always tell if deer are in the woods by looking to see if the cedar branches closest to the ground have been picked clean. These were untouched. I was certain that no deer ever escaped the Dows’ land alive.

  After a few minutes of climbing through the muck, I found myself in a dry grove of hardwoods. Some of the hand-shaped leaves overhead had begun to turn scarlet, and a few of them had already fallen, blown free by one of the recent thunderstorms. The trunks were scaly and crusted with gray-green lichen.

  I saw the first game camera mounted to one of the maples at knee height. It was an olive drab box, the size of a deck of cards, with a single lens pointed at an overgrown moose trail. The Dows must have used the video recorder
to watch for animals or guard against trespassers—probably both.

  Carefully, I made my way around the trunk, collided with a spiked branch, and got a cut on my cheek for my trouble. By the time I was an old man, my entire epidermis was going to consist of nothing but scar tissue. If I lived to be an old man. I kept going up the hill.

  The fallen leaves were brittle on top but wet underneath, and every once in a while a whole mat of them would slide loose, causing me to slip. I didn’t want to rush, for fear of stumbling into a booby trap, but I was concerned that I wasn’t keeping pace with the others.

  A flash of silver brought me up short. At first I thought I was gazing at strands of spider silk. Then I saw the sharp pieces of metal.

  A row of fish hooks, tied to monofilament line, dangled from a branch overhead. They had been set at eye level. Another step and I might’ve been permanently blinded.

  I parted the plastic threads with my hands and moved deliberately up the hill. I saw white Indian pipes growing in the shade, a neat mound of pinecone scales where a red squirrel had eaten its dinner. The treble hooks had taught me that if I overlooked anything, however mundane, I might find myself injured, or worse.

  Five minutes later, I saw light shimmering around tree trunks, caught the warm smell of ragweed drying in the sun, and knew I was nearing a field. At the edge of the clearing was an improvised fence. Loose coils of barbed wire unrolled like a child’s toy to my right and left, blocking my way.

  It took me a few minutes, but eventually I found an opening between two rolls of wire.

  A rabbit had tried to jump through the gap, but the animal must have gotten stuck on the barbs. Its soft coat was torn and bloodied. In places I could see the pink muscle beneath the fur.

  Strange, I thought. It was a domestic rabbit, not a wild snowshoe hare. Had it escaped from the Dows’ hutches?

  The question made me hesitate before stepping through the gap. I paused long enough to notice the coyote snare on the opposite side of the fence. It was a noose made of aircraft cable, suspended a foot off the ground. The rabbit hadn’t accidentally impaled itself; it had been placed there as bait.