Old Saul Mann would have liked Rochester, I thought. He would have appreciated the element of disguise, the possibility of one man taking on the identity of another in order to protect himself, then conning the very people who were searching for him. I fell asleep to the soft patter of snow on glass and dreamed of Saul Mann, wrapped in a cloak of moons and stars, his cards spread on a table before him, waiting quietly for the great game to begin.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The snows that came that night were the first heavy falls of the winter. They fell on Dark Hollow and Beaver Cove, on Moosehead Lake and Rockwood and Tarratine. They sugarcoated Big Squaw Mountain and Mount Kineo, Baker Mountain and Elephant Mountain. They turned the Longfellows into a white scar that ran across the back of Piscataquis. Some of the smaller ponds froze, creating a layer of ice as thin and treacherous as a traitor's blade. The snow sat heavy on the evergreens and the ground below lay silent and undisturbed, save for the sound of branches giving way reluctantly beneath the weight they carried, the compressed flakes falling heavily to the drifts below as snow welcomed back snow. In my disordered, disturbed sleep, I felt the snow falling, sensed the change in the atmosphere as the world was shrouded in white and the night waited for the exquisite perfection of winter's work to be revealed in the slow-dawning light of day.
Quite early, I heard a snowplow moving down the main street of the town and the slow, careful progress of the first cars, their chains making a distinctive noise on the road. The room was so cold that beads of moisture turned the windows to shattered glass, miraculously restored by the sweep of a hand. I looked out on the world, at the tracks of the cars, at the first people walking on the streets, their hands deep in their pockets or by their sides, the bulk of their layers of sweaters and shirts, thermals and scarves, forcing them to move with a comical unfamiliarity, like children thrust into new boots.
I approached the bathroom with unease, but all was quiet and clean within. I showered, keeping the water as hot and powerful as I could stand, then dried myself quickly, my teeth already chattering as the temperature cooled the drops on my body. I pulled on jeans, boots, a thick cotton shirt and a dark wool sweater, added a coat and gloves, and stepped out into the crisp, cold morning air. Beneath my feet, the snow crunched and shifted, my progress marked by the impression of my footsteps behind me. I knocked twice, sharply, on the door of the next room down.
"Go away," said Angel's voice, the force of his words undiminished by the fact that they came through about four layers of blankets. I felt a moment of guilt at having woken them the night before, and tried to keep my mind off the conversation I had had with Louis.
"It's me," I replied.
"I know. Go away."
"I'm heading over to the diner. I'll see you there."
"I'll see you in hell first. It's cold outside."
"It's colder in there."
"I'll take my chances."
"Twenty minutes."
"Whatever. Just go away."
I was about to head for the diner when something about my car distracted me. From the window of my room it had seemed that its red lines were only partially obscured by the snow, for flashes of color showed through as if a hand had wiped away some of the snowfall. But that wasn't why the snow on my car was streaked with red.
There was blood on the windshield. There was blood also on the hood, and a long line of it ran from the front of the car, across the driver's door and the rear window, before pooling below the trunk. I walked through the snow, feeling it crunch beneath my feet. At the back of the car, beside the right rear wheel, lay a pile of mangled brown fur. The cat's mouth was open, and its tongue hung over its small white teeth. A red wound ran across its belly, but most of its blood seemed to be on my car.
To my left, I heard the office door slam and watched as the manager walked over to me. Her eyes were red from crying.
"I already called the police," she said. "I thought, when I saw her first, that you'd hit her with your car, but then I saw the blood and knew that couldn't be. Who'd do something like that to an animal? What kind of a person could take pleasure in hurting it so?" She began to cry again.
"I don't know," I said.
But I did know.
It took me three knocks to get Angel to the door. He stood shivering as I told him about the cat, Louis behind him listening silently.
"He's here," said Louis, finally.
"We don't know that for sure," I replied, but I knew he was right. Somewhere close by, Stritch was waiting.
I left them and walked across to the diner. It was ten after eight, and it was already almost full, warm air circulating with the smell of fresh coffee and bacon, voices raised at the counter and in the kitchen. For the first time, I noticed the Christmas decorations, the Coca-Cola Santa Claus, the tinsel and the stars. It would be my second season without them. I felt almost grateful for Billy Purdue, maybe even for Ellen Cole, for giving me something on which to concentrate my mind. All of the energy I might have poured into grieving, into anger and guilt, into fearing the anniversary, I now put into the search for these two people. But that gratitude was a brief, passing thing, an ugly betrayal of the people involved, and I quickly felt disgusted with myself for using someone else's sufferings to alleviate my own.
I took a booth and watched the people passing by. When the waitress came, I ordered only coffee. The sight of the cat and the thought of Stritch trailing us had ruined my appetite. I found myself closely examining the faces of the people in the diner, as if Stritch might somehow have mutated himself, or stolen their form. There were a couple of timber company men across from me, eating plates of ham and eggs and already talking about Gary Chute.
I listened and learned, for the world of the northern wilderness was on the verge of change. An area of almost one hundred thousand acres of forest, owned by a European paper company, was about to be harvested. The area had last been logged in the thirties and forties and now it had matured again. For the last decade, the company had been restoring roads and bridges in preparation for the big lumber trucks with their claw-shaped hydraulic lifts that would move into the wilderness, enabling the transportation of the pine, spruce and fir, the maple and birch, to begin. Chute, a graduate of the University of Maine at Orono, was one of those responsible for checking the roads, the tree growth and the likely boundaries for the logging.
The laws relating to forestry had changed since the last cutting. Then, the companies had cleared all of the land, causing silting that killed fish, displaced animals and led to serious erosion. Now they were obliged to cut in a checkerboard pattern, leaving half the forest for another twenty to thirty years so that the habitats could grow again. Already there were signs of early cuts, where the deer and moose would feed on the raspberries, willow and alders that sprang up to fight for the new light. And so the days of the undisturbed northern wilderness were now numbered, and soon men and machines would be making their way into its vastness. Gary Chute had been the first of many, and it struck me that his job must have taken him into areas where few people had set foot in decades.
Across the street, Lorna Jennings stepped from her green Nissan, wearing a white padded jacket buttoned and tied over black denims and black, calf-length boots. I wondered how long she had been there: there were no exhaust fumes around the car, and despite the fact that there was little traffic on the street, the tracks of her tires had been crossed by a number of other vehicles.