Borderlines (28 page)

I was walking into State Police barracks to file the report on my hat with Chaney when Mel Hamilton met me in the lobby. “I just alled your office your secretary said you were headed this way. You ight like to come along.” “What’s up?” I handed the report to the receptionist.

“They found Rennie Wilson’s truck west of Hartwellville on emon Road.

They think whoever was in the truck headed off into e bush. I’m having Fish and Game send a tracker to meet em.

The trip was fast and lugubrious. Hamilton took a patrol car so e could use his blue lights and siren as necessary. He also had to use is headlights, although it was still midafternoon. The air was misty, reasing the road and reducing visibility, and the clouds hung so low at the hilltops vanished from view. The light was gray and dull, and dden patches of ground mist lingered menacingly in odd places, as dropped by accident from the bruised and glowering sky. It suited y mood and helped color my expectations of what we might find in e vicinity of Rennie’s truck. During the trip, I filled Hamilton in on hat I’d discovered at Pete Chaney’s. Lemon Road doesn’t really lead anywhere.

It branches off Radar oad out of Hartwellville, starts out paved, turns to dirt, and then just eters out on the heavily wooded slope of East Haven Mountain. It’s of very long, has only a house or two at its start, and leaves the pression of some half-forgotten municipal project whose planners n out of both ambition and funds. Rennie’s truck was parked at the d, its right wheels in a shallow ditch and its body half-covered with oken branches and dead leaves, a camouflage job either half-corneted or half-cleared away.

Spinney’s unmarked sedan and a patrol car were parked in a line the opposite side of the road. We pulled in behind them to lessen e number of extraneous tire marks in the dirt. A trooper I didn’t ow was standing nervously near the pickup, his right hand picking the yellow stripe that ran down the outside seam of his dark green iform pants; Spinney was stretched out on the hood of his car, his ck against the windshield. He snapped a salute from that position as amilton and I got out of our car. I could tell from Hamilton’s expresn he wasn’t pleased with the informality. %184 Obviously, even Spinney got the message. He slid off the car and gave a boyish smile to both of us. “Car hood was keeping me warm.” Hamilton smiled back and placed his hand on the car, warm vapor escaping from his mouth as he spoke. “I hadn’t thought of that. Fish and Game ought to be here pretty soon; you come up with anythiznew?” “Not here. We looked in the truck without disturbing anything, but there’s nothing unusual. You can see where the grass has been flattened leading into the woods. I didn’t want to risk messing things up.” Hamilton nodded. “No, no. I think that’s right. How long do you think the truck’s been here?” “Hard to tell. Engine was cold; there was frost on the windshield. A blind guess would be last night sometime, but that’s mostly because I figure Joe saw him last around 2300 hours and he must have driven here soon after.” The lieutenant nodded again and shivered slightly.

“Cold,” he muttered, and wandered over to the truck, greeting the trooper as he passed.

“You get any sleep?” I said.

“Some-still feel like shit, though. You figure this mess out yet?” “No, but it prompted me to talk to Pete Chaney again.” I gave Spinney the abbreviated version.

Hamilton came back as I finished. “Makes you wonder how many other people are involved in this case.” I laughed at that, but without any humor. I was just grateful that both of them had restrained from saying, “I told you so.” My conversation with Chaney put Rennie right in the middle of this case: He wasn’t the framed local bystander anymore, even in my own mind. While there still wasn’t proof he’d killed Bruce Wingate, it wasn’t so farfetched to assume Rennie might’ve had a serious personal grudge.

My bitter ruminations were interrupted by a muffled, grinding, metallic sound from down the road.

“That must be Fish and Game.” A somewhat battered Ford 150 four-wheel drive lumbered up the road and stopped behind my car. The Fish and Game emblem-what hadn’t been scratched off by too many encounters with brush and low branches-was emblazoned on the door. A man in a dark green unIform with black epaulettes and breast-pocket flaps piped in scarlet stepped out onto the road. He was somewhere in his forties, tall, very lean and muscular, and wore a.357 Magnum on his belt. Looking at him, I felt like Elmer Fudd next to a young Burt Lancaster. He nodded %185 us, looking around briefly, seemingly cataloging the scene in his ind.

Then, still not having said a word, he walked silently and graceIly up to us and shook hands, barely murmuring his greeting. His eep-set blue eyes, contrasting with a tan face and dark brown hair, ere startlingly sharp. If I hadn’t seen him drive up, I would have ought him capable of just appearing from the woods, much like the eer that were pictured on both his shoulder patches. Hamilton made the introductions. “This is Lieutenant John ishop. He’s been with Fish and Game for over twenty years and is Probably one of the best trackers they have.” Bishop shook his head slightly, downplaying the compliment. hat’ve you got?”

Hamilton waved at Rennie’s truck. “Owner of that’s wanted for estioning in a murder. He disappeared yesterday. Wiley here,” he dded at the trooper, “found the truck about an hour ago.” Bishop nodded and walked a few steps toward the truck, his head nt, watching the ground. He stopped a few feet from it and crouched, oking underneath. “Any of you walk around here?” Wiley spoke up first. “I went to the driver’s door, then around to e other side, just to see if anyone was maybe in the ditch. But that as it.” “You walk around the front or the back?”

“Front.” “Anyone else?” “I did about the same thing,” Spinney admitted.

“I also looked side, using the driver’s door.” Bishop placed his hand on the truck’s hood and then stepped ay, coming back toward us. “Well, it was parked here last night.” e looked at both Wiley and Spinney. “Could I see the bottoms of your oes?” Both men turned and lifted their feet up for Bishop to see. He dded after a few seconds of study. “Thanks, I just want to rule them t-don’t want to mix them up with other prints.”

He walked out to the middle of the road and crouched again, arming the surface with those careful eyes. He got up, moved a bit, ouched. He did that several more times before nodding to himself. e nodding was something I learned he did a lot, the gesture of a man ho spends much time alone in serious conversation with himself. He crossed over to his truck and retrieved a camera, a large knife at he attached to his belt, and a tape recorder, into which he muttered veral notes. He glanced over at us, clustered together, looking back him. “Saves on time and paper. I type it up at the office.” %186 He pointed to the road. “You had two vehicles here last night. On’ of them parked over there, and then turned around later and left in n< big hurry.” He returned to Rennie’s truck, this time from the rear, and go down on one knee near the exhaust pipe. He muttered something to himself I didn’t catch and strode quickly to the driver’s door again, thi’ time opening it and looking in. He slammed the door and faced us.

“Well, that explains why the branches and leaves were taken off the front-the engine was running and whoever did it didn’t want too much heat to build up and cause afire.” I scratched the back of my neck. “Why run the truck half-coverec with leaves and junk?” “The lights are on, or they were until the gas ran out and the battery died, and they’re aimed right to where the tracks lead off int< the woods. I guess he was lighting the way, or maybe just showin~< which way to go. That’s not a good sign, by the way.” Hamilton said it. “Why not?” Spinney answered.

“‘Cause it means he meant to come back and turn off the engine and never did.” I’d understood instantly, too, and it opened a void deep within me Over the last several days, I’d had to relinquish much of what I’d helc dear of my memories of Rennie and of Gannet. What had been plannec as a spiritual homecoming was fast becoming a wake.

Bishop gave a small smile and ducked his head slightly. “Righ you are.”

He followed the erstwhile path of the headlights to the edge of the woods, where the road petered out. “More bad news. Three sets 0 prints head off here; only two come back, both leading to where the other vehicle was parked.” We walked toward him as a group, but he stopped us.

“Tell y01 what.

I’d like your company-all except Wiley-but I’d like you t( follow my tracks and not these.” He pointed at the ground where, to be honest, I hadn’t seen much from the start. “Wiley, I’d like y01 to stay here to watch the truck and to act as liaison between us and you] car radio.

That okay, Lieutenant?” Hamilton nodded. I noticed Wiley seemed relieved as he trampec back to his unit-and its heater. Hamilton, Spinney, and I tuckec ourselves into Bishop’s wake as he led the way into the woods.

Now in his element, and in obvious control, Bishop became a’ talkative as he’d been quiet earlier. Bending over at the waist, frez quently dropping to one knee, switching suddenly from one bearing to %187 there and back again, he chatted freely about what he was seeing, his rarely leaving the ground. I was tempted to think of him as a ting dog on the scent, but somehow the image didn’t stick. The gun, quiet, unemotional voice, and the sheer Iitheness of his movements him a more lethal air.

There was an element of limitless determinato him-a rare thing in a human being, and a potentially dangerous “The owner of the truck went first-alone. The other two followed r, and not too well at that; not too used to walking in the woods. ok at this-you can see where one of them tripped. And over there, other one did it; looks like a woman or a small, light man, maybe enager. The lights must have been left on for them, although they uldn’t have been much good for more than a few feet.

That part still sn’t make much sense to me.” I was staring at where he was pointing. All I saw were minute turbances in the leaves, a slightly rolled twig, a tiny smudge in the t. “How can you tell the other two followed later?” Bishop pointed to a spot on the ground. “Heel marks are the iest to spot. All the weight comes down on them, at least when ‘re on flat ground or going down hill. And you see where there’s a tiny skid mark from the top of the heel mark to the bottom? That icates the direction they’re taking… It’s a little hard on this partly zen ground. Okay, there’s another one, but it’s on top of the first, obviously it came along behind.” “I can see that, but the time thing-“

Bishop straightened and pointed behind us, back toward the road.

e how we’ve been walking? All in a line? That’s normal in the ods, especially stuff that’s pretty thick like here. Now the first guy e pretty much like we did straight ahead, and along that row of all, white birch trees there. The other two wandered some. They to the other side of those trees, and over there they got into a bit angle, so they backed out and went the other way. All that indicates, the way, that they were in tight formation, the little guy following larger one. Here they crossed the first guy’s tracks, but they didn’t p on ‘em; they wobbled off instead slightly to the left. They wouldn’t that if all three had been in Indian file. I also think the first guy knew area like the back of his hand, while the second two obviously n’t, but that might be stretching things a little.” We came to a depression, a wet-bottomed swale that might have e been a small creek or a runoff during the rainy season. Bishop held his hand and went ahead, going up and down the edge of this area.

stopped suddenly, far off to the left, and straightened, looking ahead %188 and behind. Then he took his knife out and slashed a foot-long blaze on a small tree beside him.

“What the hell’s he doing?” Spinney muttered next to me. Bishop, now bent almost in half, had begun walking slowly in circles around the tree he’d marked, reaching out in an ever-wIdening spiral. Around and around he went, slowly and purposefully.

Spinney pointed to the damp depression ahead. “Even I can see the tracks through that, coming and going, even on the rocks where they left muddy footprints.” Hamilton smiled. “Don’t worry. We’ve worked a lot with this guy.

He’s so good it’s creepy.” Bishop had stopped his circles. He seemed to be backtracking on a parallel course, about twenty feet away from ours, frequently marking trunks as he went. Through the forest of bare trees, we could see him heading back toward the road, his green uniform barely distinguishable from his cold and gloomy surroundings. I looked up at the dark, swollen clouds, seemingly just beyond the reach of the uppermost branches. I didn’t like the additional clammy feeling that was beginning to creep inside me, like a confirmation of my fears.

Finally, he came back to us, returning to the edge of the swale. “Found a fourth guy.

We all looked at one another, but stayed silent. If he’d had more to add, we knew, he would have.

We followed him across some stepping stones, slightly above the tracks Spinney had pointed out. On the far side, where the trees clustered together again, he stopped and let out a grunt of surprise.

We followed his look. Tied to a tree, about chest-high, was one of those mini-mag lights. Its reflector top had been entirely removed, so that its halogen bulb stood exposed at the top, making it look like a miniature lighthouse. The bulb was not burning.

“I’ll be damned,” he said, looking back the way we’d come. “That explains the truck lights.” He twisted and pointed ahead. “If I’m right, we’ll either find more of these, or something like it, until we get to the place they intended on meeting.” We could no longer see the end of the road from here; the trees had accumulated enough to totally block the view, but we could have seen the glow from a pair of car lights at night. “He was guiding the way, I muttered.