Wolf Lake

by John Verdon

“Of course there’s an answer. But I don’t know what it is.”

  “No idea at all?”

  “Oh, I can give you a list of ideas. How about a crushing fear of confrontation in general? Or the fear that greater confrontation would bring some dark moment of my past to light? Or a depressive conviction that struggling will only pull me deeper into the quicksand? Or outright paranoia, like my famous fixation on the imaginary body in the trunk of my car? Maybe I’m afraid of hiring an attorney who I’d never be free of, who’d somehow gain control of my life, that I’d be at his mercy forever. Perhaps it’s a sublimated terror of my mother, who taught me one thing above all else—never dare to deny whatever she was accusing me of at the moment. Accept the punishment being offered, or face one of her uncontrollable rages.”

  He let out a sharp, humorless laugh—seemingly at his own speculations. “See what I mean? So many crazy fears to pick and choose from. On the other hand, perhaps I’m motivated by a manic conviction that nothing Fenton says can touch me. Maybe I have a Pollyanna conviction that the truth will prevail and my innocence will speak for itself. Or a foolish pride that tells me not to lower myself to the level of the fools attacking me. Could it be that I crave the satisfaction of seeing Gilbert Fenton’s whole case, his whole world, come crashing down without my having to lift a finger?”

  He paused, the tip of his tongue darting across his lips. “Perhaps some of these possibilities have occurred to you. They occur to me every day. But I haven’t a clue which one is driving my decisions. All I know is that I want to proceed the way I’m proceeding.” This was addressed to Madeleine. Now he turned to Gurney. “If you want to seek justice for Ethan and the others, as a matter separate from my defense, that’s your business. I won’t stand in your way. But let me reiterate: you are not my advocate. Understood?”

  “Understood.”

  No one said anything for a while. The only sound was the faint tick-tick-tick-tick of sleet on the windowpanes.

  Then, somewhere out in the forest, the howling began. The same howling that Gurney had heard when their car was stuck in the ditch.

  It started with a low wail, like the moaning of wind at an ill-fitting door.

  CHAPTER 18

  By the time they were getting in their car to head back to the lodge, the howling, distant and mournful, seemed to be coming from every direction—from Cemetery Ridge, from the deep forest in back of Hammond’s chalet—even, it seemed, from the dark expanse of the lake itself.

  Then it faded into the wind.

  As they drove away from the chalet Gurney’s thoughts went back to Madeleine’s hostile response to Hammond’s observations. He felt some resentment that she had hijacked his conversation with Hammond. Admittedly, her approach had generated some revealing responses. But it might not have. It might have shut him down completely.

  “You were pretty aggressive back there.”

  “Was I?”

  “The expression on your face seemed to be suggesting that Hammond was lying.”

  “Only suggesting? I should have been clearer.”

  “You’re sure he’s not telling the truth?”

  “As sure as you are that he is.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “He has X-ray vision when it comes to other people? But he pays for it with total blindness to his own motives? How convenient! What a perfect way to deflect questions about his decisions. Question: So, Richard, why did you do such and such? Answer: Golly, gee, I don’t know. I’m a genius, but I have no idea why I do anything. Don’t you see that he’s making a fool of you?”

  “How?”

  “By tossing out all those ‘maybe’ reasons for his not hiring a lawyer—making you believe he doesn’t have a clue which reason is the real one.”

  “He didn’t make me believe anything. I told you I have an open mind.”

  “Did your open mind notice that he left out the most likely reason of all?”

  “Which is?”

  “That a smart lawyer poking around in the case might discover things he doesn’t want discovered. Maybe those deaths are just the tip of an iceberg.”

  “Christ, Maddie, anything is possible. But I still don’t see how he’s making a fool of me.”

  “Why are you taking his side?”

  “How am I taking his side?”

  “Whatever I say, you defend him. You believe everything he says.”

  “I don’t believe anything. I’m a homicide detective, not a gullible idiot.”

  “Then why are you confusing his cleverness with real insight?”

  Gurney was at a loss for words. He felt that Madeleine’s animus toward Hammond was coming from a vulnerable place in herself, not from an appraisal of the facts.

  But what if she was right? What if she was seeing something he was missing? What if his own supposed objectivity wasn’t so objective after all?

  They arrived back in their suite in a state of strained silence. Madeleine went into the bathroom and turned on the tub water.

  He followed her. “Didn’t you just take a bath? Like three hours ago?”

  “Is there a limit on the number of baths I’m allowed to take?”

  “Maddie, what the hell is going on? You’ve been edgy ever since we agreed to come here. Shouldn’t we talk about whatever’s bothering you?”

  “I’m sorry. I’m just not . . . very comfortable right now.” She shut the bathroom door.

  All of this was new and unsettling. Madeleine with secrets. Madeleine hunkering down behind a closed door. He went over and sat on the couch. It was several minutes before he noticed that the fire had burned itself out. Only a few small coals remained, glowing weakly through the ashes. His first thought was that he should revive it, give the room some warmth. But his second thought was that he should go to bed. It had been a stressful day, and the following day promised to be the same.

  Thinking of the next day reminded him of the call from Holdenfield he’d let go into voicemail. He took out his phone and listened to the message.

  “Hi David, Rebecca here. They’ve added some stuff to my schedule, so I’m going to be tied up most of tomorrow. But I have a suggestion. Breakfast. You don’t have to get back to me, because I’ll be in the Cold Brook Inn dining room at eight tomorrow morning one way or the other. So come if you can. You can even come earlier if that’s better for you. I’ll be up at five, working in my room on a paper that’s overdue. Okay? Love to hear more about the Hammond case. Drive safely. Hope to see you.”

  From a practical point of view, the timing, although unusual, might be doable. He recalled that she’d said in her earlier message that it was just twenty-seven miles from Wolf Lake to Plattsburgh. That should take well under an hour, even in bad weather, plus an hour or so with Rebecca. So a total of three hours, max. If he left at seven, he’d be back by ten at the latest. He closed his eyes and began to compile a mental list of questions to ask Rebecca about hypnotism, about Hammond’s controversial reputation, and about Wenzel’s dream.

  His exhaustion overtook him so quickly he was asleep within minutes.

  As always happened when he dozed off sitting up, physical discomfort eventually intruded, dragging with it the concerns he’d temporarily anesthetized. He opened his eyes, checked the time on his phone, and discovered he’d slept for almost an hour. He was about to see if Madeleine was still in her bath when he saw her standing at the window. She was wearing one of the lodge’s plush white bathrobes.

  “Turn off the lights,” she said without looking at him.

  He switched off the lamps and joined her at the window.

  The storm had departed, and the dense overcast had been replaced with a patchwork of clouds making their way across the face of a full moon. He followed Madeleine’s line of sight to discover why she’d called him to the window. And then he saw it.

  As a cloud moved slowly out of the way of the moon, the effect on the landscape was like a theatrical light coming up on a dark stage. The stage
in this case was dominated by an overwhelming presence—Devil’s Fang, fierce and gigantic, its jagged edges thrown into dramatic relief. Then another cloud moved in, the moonlight faded, and Devil’s Fang disappeared into the night.

  Gurney turned away from the window, but Madeleine continued to stare out into the darkness.

  “I used to come here.” She said it so softly he wondered if he’d heard right.

  “You came up here? When?”

  “Christmas vacations. I’m sure I mentioned it.”

  That jogged his memory. Something she’d told him when they were first married. Something about spending a few Christmases with elderly relatives in upstate New York when she was in high school. “With a distant aunt and uncle, or something like that, wasn’t it?”

  “Uncle George and Aunt Maureen,” she said vaguely, still gazing in the direction of Devil’s Fang. The second cloud obscuring the moon began to pass, letting the silver light shine down again on that sharp pinnacle.

  “You never said much about it.”

  She didn’t respond.

  “Maddie?”

  “One winter there was a tragic death. A local boy. A drowning.”

  “At this lake?”

  “No, another one.”

  “And?”

  She shook her head.

  He waited, thinking she might go on.

  But all she finally said was, “I have to get some sleep.”

  “DAVID!”

  There was a frantic tightness in her whisper that woke him immediately.

  “There’s something in the sitting room.”

  “Where?” As he whispered the question, he was calculating from memory the rough angle and number of steps to the bag that held his Beretta.

  “I saw something pass the window. Could a bat have gotten into the room?”

  “Is that what you saw—something flying?”

  “I think so.”

  He relaxed just a little and reached out to the lamp on the night table. He pressed the toggle switch. Nothing happened. He pressed it again. Still nothing.

  “Can you reach the lamp on your side of the bed?” he asked.

  He heard the futile clicks as she tried it.

  He felt around on the night table for his phone. He found it and checked the status icons. There was no cell signal, meaning the lodge’s private cell tower was out, meaning there’d been a power interruption.

  In the windowless bedroom alcove it was too dark to see anything, but a pale wash of moonlight was faintly illuminating part of the main room, visible through the alcove’s broad arch. Gurney lay motionless, searching the darkness for any hint of movement. He saw nothing and heard nothing. Some minutes went by without any return of power.

  Then the silence was broken by a slow creaking in the ceiling.

  Madeleine grabbed his arm.

  They listened together for a long minute.

  A small shadow shot past a window in the main room, forcing a cry from Madeleine.

  “It’s just a bat,” he said, as her fingers tightened on his arm. “I’ll open the balcony door and let it fly out.”

  His assurances were cut off by another creak in the ceiling—like a careful footstep on a weak floorboard.

  “Someone’s up there,” whispered Madeleine.

  Bringing to mind what he remembered of the front of the lodge, he pictured two regular floors—the ground floor and the floor they were on—plus an attic level. He thought it unlikely that any guest rooms would be in the attic. As he was considering this, there was a faint scraping sound in the ceiling directly above them.

  Then nothing. They listened for a long while. But all they heard was the droning of the wind at the balcony door.

  What was it about Wolf Lake Lodge, wondered Gurney, that made the sound of a slow footstep, if that’s what it was, so disturbing? Was it the power outage that was creating a sense of threat? Surely the same sound in daylight, or even lamplight, would not have the same impact.

  Madeleine spoke again in a whisper. “Who do you think is up there?”

  “Maybe no one. Maybe it’s just the wood contracting with the dropping temperature.”

  Her concern shifted to the bat. “Will it really fly out if you open the door?”

  “I think so.”

  She relaxed her grip on his arm. He slipped out of bed and felt his way from the alcove to the balcony door and opened it. He guessed the cold front that blew the sleet storm away had lowered the temperature at least fifteen degrees. Unless the bat flew out quickly, the whole suite would soon be freezing.

  It occurred to him that a fire would be a good idea—for warmth, light, reassurance.

  He stepped away from the open door and began to feel his way toward the fireplace. Shivering in his shorts and tee shirt, he stopped at the chair where his clothes were and put on his pants and shirt. As he turned back toward the fireplace, a sound in the outer corridor stopped him. He stood still and listened. A few seconds later he heard it again.

  He got his Beretta out of the bag on the chair. He couldn’t help feeling he was overreacting, influenced more by the spooky atmosphere than by any real threat.

  “What is it?” whispered Madeleine from the alcove.

  “Just someone in the corridor.”

  He heard a soft thump from the direction of the suite door.

  He eased off the Beretta’s safety and began moving forward. The moonlight was limited to the area near the windows. In this part of the room the visibility was zero.

  There was a second thump, stronger than the first—the sort of dull impact that might be produced by someone bumping a knee, or some other blunt object, against the door.

  He felt his way into a position by the side of the door, eased the dead bolt into its open position, then stopped and listened. He heard something that might have been the sound of someone breathing, or maybe it was just the movement of air through the crack under the door.

  He grasped the doorknob. He turned it slowly as far as it went, steadied his stance, checked his grip on the Beretta . . . then yanked the door open.

  CHAPTER 19

  The grotesque apparition in front of him was a shock.

  A weirdly illuminated face seemed to be suspended in the darkness of the corridor, its features distorted by elongated shadows cast upward by a small yellow flame beneath it.

  As Gurney’s mind raced to make sense of what he was seeing, he realized that the flame was in a kerosene lamp, that the lamp was being held by a dirty hand with cracked fingernails, and that the jaundiced face in the angled lamplight was one he’d seen before—at the side of the road when his car was stuck in the ditch. The matted fur hat confirmed the identification.

  “Tree come down,” said Barlow Tarr.

  “Yes . . . and . . .?”

  “Smashed the electrics.”

  “The generators are out?”

  “Aye.”

  Gurney lowered his Beretta. “That’s what you came to tell us?”

  “Be warnt.”

  “About what?”

  “The evil here.”

  “What evil?”

  “The evil what killed them all.”

  “Tell me more about the evil.”

  “The hawk knows. The hawk in the sun, the hawk in the moon.”

  “What does the hawk know?”

  Even as Gurney was asking the question, Tarr was stepping away from the doorway, turning down the wick of the lamp until the flame was extinguished.

  A second later he disappeared into the unlit corridor.

  Gurney called out, “Barlow? Barlow?”

  There was no response. The only sound he could hear was coming from the open balcony door on the far side of the room.

  It was the rising and falling rush of the wind in the trees.

  AFTER THAT EXPERIENCE, SLEEP SEEMED UNLIKELY.

  Convincing himself that the flying bat had departed, Gurney closed the balcony door. He built a large fire in the hearth. He and Madeleine settl
ed down on the couch in front of the blaze.

  After speculating about the meaning of Tarr’s visit, they agreed the only clear aspect was that the man wanted them to know that Wolf Lake was a dangerous place. Beyond that, his spooky ramblings could mean anything or nothing.

  In the end, they fell into a prolonged silence, succumbing to the undulations of the fire.

  After a while Gurney found his thoughts returning to Madeleine’s connection to the area.

  He turned toward her and asked softly, “Are you awake?”

  Her eyes were closed, but she nodded yes.

  “When you stayed here in the Adirondacks with your aunt and uncle, how old were you?”

  She opened her eyes and stared into the fire. “Early teens.” She paused. “It’s so strange to think that it was me.”

  “What was so different about you . . . back then?”

  “Everything.” She blinked, cleared her throat, looked around the room. Her gaze stopped at the kerosene lamp on the small table at Gurney’s end of the couch. “What’s that?”

  “The lamp?”

  “The etching on the base.”

  Gurney looked more closely. He hadn’t noticed it before, having set the lamp down on the table before starting the fire, but on the glass base there was a fine-line etching showing an animal crouching, as if preparing to leap at the viewer. Its teeth were bared.

  “It appears to be a wolf,” he said.

  She responded with a shiver. “Too many wolves.”

  “It’s the theme of the place.”

  “And part of the nightmares those people died from.”

  “They didn’t die from their nightmares. That doesn’t happen.”

  “No? What did happen?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “Then you don’t know that their dreams didn’t kill them.”

  He was convinced that dreams couldn’t kill people, but equally convinced that arguing the point would be fruitless. All he could think was: None of this makes any sense at all.

  HIGH STRESS AND AN UNSETTLING ENVIRONMENT, FOLLOWED BY THE mesmerizing effects of the fire, left Gurney with no sense of how long they’d been sitting on the couch. He was brought back to the moment by Madeleine’s voice.