I needed two coffees to shake the cobwebs out of my brain.

I’d never been this far north in California. States take on each other’s characteristics the closer you get to their borders. I might’ve technically been in California-it felt more like Oregon. It was almost July, but I could feel a raw chill in the air. The surrounding vegetation was lush and tangled and reeked of decay.

I’d meticulously plotted out the route to Wren’s front door.

I still got lost. Went past the correct exit and didn’t discover my mistake till I’d gone twenty miles out of the way. One section of forest looked pretty much like another-I had the sensation of being inside one of those topiary mazes, turning left and right and back and forth but getting nowhere fast, continuously coming up against another impenetrable wall of green.

Eventually I retraced my route and got it right.

I followed the sign to Bluemount Lake.

Soon I glimpsed slivers of cool blue through the pines. Only the one-lane road seemed to circle the lake forever, offering no way in.

Then after twenty minutes or so, another sign: Bluemount Fishing Camp-turnoff 20 yards.

I slowed, peering ahead for the actual turnoff, which wasn’t easy because the light was rapidly leaving and the thick pines put everything in shadow.

It was hardly there.

Just a bare indentation in the crawling ferns.

I stopped, finally made out the crudely drawn sign nailed to a tree-a black arrow pointing thataway.

My Miata wasn’t meant for offroad exploring. Even when it was new, a status symbol emblematic of its riding-high owner, it wouldn’t have negotiated the twisting, bumpy terrain much better than it did now.

But now its shocks were pretty much moribund.

Every yard gained was accompanied by a bone-jarring jolt. Strange sounds emanated from the undercarriage-creaks, squeals, and sick-sounding moans. It sounded like my muffler was dragging directly on the ground. At one point, I considered just leaving the car where it was and hoofing it the rest of the way. But the forest seemed less inviting outside the car than in it. Besides, the lake was getting closer; I could smell it.

I made a twisting turn around a thick ancient oak, and suddenly I was staring at a row of log cabins perched on the shore of Bluemount Lake. No longer blue exactly-more mottled purple in the evening light.

One cabin had smoke billowing out of its chimney.

I drove up to the side of the cabin, my tires spitting gravel, and stopped.

When I got out, no one came out of the door to greet me.

Odd.

My beat-up Miata must’ve made a terrible racket, especially out here where the loudest sounds probably came from hungry loons.

“John?” I called out, for some reason uneasy about just walking up and knocking on his door.

No response.

I called his name again. Still nothing.

I walked up to the cabin, negotiated the three steps up to the porch, and gave a good knock at the door.

No answer.

I rapped again. “Mr. Wren, it’s Tom Valle. Are you in there?”

After waiting awhile, I pushed against the door-there was no doorknob, just a plank of rough wood nailed to the door.

It trickled open.

A real mess. A pack rat’s lair, reminding me of the way my basement looked when I’d first taken over the house. Mounds of clutter spread over a bed, couch, table, even the floor. A cast-iron stove radiated a bare modicum of heat.

No Wren.

I turned around and peered out at the lake.

Nothing-no boats or swimmers. No fishermen, either. Just tiny skittish ripples being stirred up by a rapidly growing breeze. Which reminded me-it was certifiably cold now. I was wearing proper attire for Littleton in June. A faded New York Yankees T-shirt with Pettitte on the back-a testament to Steinbrenner’s formidable wheeling and dealing, since Andy Pettitte, like me, was long gone from New York-but not much protection against a Bluemount Lake night. I had a windbreaker in the trunk, but I wasn’t sure if it would help much.

What to do?

I felt funny about just walking in and making myself at home. It wasn’t my home-it belonged to somebody else. Not a friend, either. Someone who’d called me a fraud and meant it. He might not like coming home and seeing this selfsame fraud sitting on his couch. It might offend him.

I went back to my car, took my windbreaker out of the trunk, and quickly pulled it on. I slid into the front seat, made sure the windows were rolled up tight, and began waiting it out.

It quickly got dark.

It was worse than desert dark. There you had the moon. Here it was blotted out by the overhanging trees, though I could see its reflection flickering on the far edges of the lake like hot licks of flame.

I put on the radio for comfort, but managed to get only the faint echo of a classical station from Sacramento. Now for some Debussy, the gravel-voiced host intoned. Which reminded me of a joke I couldn’t quite recall, something about men being attracted to strange Debussy, something like that, trying to reconstruct it in order to have something to do.

I wondered if I’d gotten the day wrong. Had I told him next week? No, I clearly remembered telling him I’d be coming up today-probably late, depending on traffic, but today for sure.

So where was he?

Maybe he’d gone fishing and had an accident. The boat tipped over, he hit his head on a rock, and right this minute he was lying unconscious somewhere out on the lake. Or worse.

What then?

I couldn’t sit out here in the car forever.

I could drive back.

One look at the solid wall of black that was the surrounding forest instantly dissuaded me.

You couldn’t tell where the road in was. Not anymore. Besides, road was being generous. I pictured my Miata stuck in some unseen hole, myself stumbling around the tree trunks like Tom Hanks in Cast Away-the second half of the movie, when he’d already begun conversing with bloodstained volleyballs.

I stayed put.

I listened to Beethoven, Liszt, Chopin.

My mom had signed me up for piano lessons when I was 11, after a teacher going door-to-door selling the benefits of a musical education had caught her at the opportune time-half-coherent and full of magnanimity. I’d liked the lessons about as much as the teacher, who had to constantly hound my mom to pay her, and occasionally had to ride the right pedal in order to drown out the sounds of a furiously squeaking upstairs bed.

“And now a lovely little concerto from Schubert,” the radio host whispered, like a PGA announcer during a crucial putt, classical music evidently demanding a kind of hushed reverence.

Was I sleeping by then? I don’t know.

I heard the forest whispering at me. The wind through the leaves.

But it seemed to be saying something.

Listen.

The crunch of boots on dead leaves. Someone had walked up to the car. Someone was standing there.

Outside my window. Looking in at me.

He’s sleeping…

The person was carrying something. He raised it up over his shoulder. A long-handled ax? A mud-covered shovel? Something long, heavy, and lethal.

He was going to shatter the windshield into smithereens.

He was going to smash me to bits.

Stop…

When I sputtered awake, no one was there.

I was shivering.

I left the car and walked back up the porch into the cabin.

The cast-iron stove was still going, but barely. There was a pile of chopped wood in the back of the room. I threw two logs into the stove and stood there as the fire combusted again, rubbing my arms in an attempt to wring the chill out.

I pushed some books aside to make a place to sit down. The couch smelled faintly of fish.

After a while, I began leafing through some of his stuff. Anything in arm’s range. Why not-I was bored. The books reflected the same eclectic taste I’d seen in my basement-everything from a paperback of Lolita to a biography of Enrico Fermi. They were stuffed with ad hoc bookmarks-a grocery list, a movie ticket stub, a letter. I opened the letter and peeked, wondering if any minute Wren would come charging through the door to discover me reading his personal correspondence. From a Dearborne Labs in Flint, Michigan: To Mr. Wren, it said in the dry, passionless tone of official bad news. Preliminary results of your specimens have confirmed your concerns. Please see attached lab workup.