Full Wolf Moon

13

It was three days before Logan next called Jessup.

“Jeremy. Hey. I thought maybe Krenshaw had scared you off.”

“I just wanted to lie low until things calmed down a little. Have they?”

“Calmed down? No. But they’ve grown a little more organized. Krenshaw and his boys have begun interviewing all the local populace. It hasn’t gone down very well, I can tell you that much.”

“Has he tried to interview the Blakeneys?”

“He tried, yes. Apparently he didn’t get any farther than you did. I don’t know how the exchange went, exactly, but he seems to have backed off for the time being. Posted a trooper at the entrance to their compound. Talked about sending in a surveillance drone.” Jessup chuckled his mirthless laugh.

“What about the search teams?”

“They’ve been mustered. Helicopter-assisted searches of Five Ponds and the Desolation Lake region are under way now.”

“Any luck?”

“Nothing yet except a lot of blistered feet, two sprained ankles, and a vicious case of poison ivy.”

“Why aren’t you using dogs?”

Another mirthless laugh. “They’re useless on this search. They just clamp their tails between their legs and whine. Refuse to track.”

Logan thought a moment. “What about the research team this dead graduate student worked with? Are they still part of the active investigation?”

“No. Krenshaw was in and out of their camp on the day of the briefing. Spent a couple of hours questioning them. With Artowsky’s death, there are only two people left there now. Frankly, I’m surprised they didn’t pack up and leave months ago, under the circumstances.”

“So I could pay a visit without attracting official attention?” Logan thought he would try to determine the “circumstances” for himself.

“I think so. Not sure how much you’ll learn, if anything, but I’m glad you’re still interested in looking into it.”

As it happened, Logan wasn’t particularly interested in looking into it. Ironically, it was his own skepticism about the local belief in lycanthropy that was pushing him to follow up every avenue; if he didn’t, he knew he’d be doing himself, and his unusual profession, a disservice. So he got careful directions to the research outpost from Jessup and took off in his Jeep around ten in the morning.

He knew the first part of the route well enough now — Route 3 to Route 3A — and the long journey into the heart of the wild did not feel quite as disquieting as it had on previous occasions. He passed Pike Hollow; passed the turnoff to the Blakeney compound — with a state police vehicle parked on the shoulder beside it — and then left the seamed blacktop of 3A himself a mile farther on for one of the rutted, muddy, narrow dirt lanes that seemed to crisscross this region of the park. The road forked, then forked again, and despite Jessup’s directions Logan got lost twice. Once, the dirt lane ended in a tangle of blowdowns and wild underbrush; another time, he realized that the road led back on itself and he’d gone in a circle. But at last he pulled the Jeep up to the one-acre clearing in the woods that housed the fire station. The station itself consisted of a ruined fire tower, once quite tall but now fallen in upon itself; a long, low fire command station at its base that resembled an oversized Quonset hut; a scattering of outbuildings; and a parking area housing two vehicles. A large commercial generator, fueled by a nearby five-thousand-gallon propane tank, grumbled away beside the Quonset hut. Off in the distance, a dog barked once.

Logan had done a little research into the history of Adirondack fire lookout towers. The first was built in 1909, after almost a million acres of forest had been ravaged by fire over the previous decade. In the years to come, almost sixty towers and, in many cases, attendant stations were erected. They remained in place for more than half a century before being replaced by newer technologies. A few dozen still remained in the region, some of them tourist attractions, some listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and others — such as this one — repurposed and given new life.

Getting out of his vehicle, he walked down the pebbled path to the old fire command station, apparently — judging by its relative state of repair and the satellite dish on its roof — the center of the scientific operation. He stepped up to the door, knocked.

A minute later, a young, slightly overweight man in a lab coat opened it. He had unkempt brown hair and brown, calflike eyes.

“Yes?” the man said, blinking at Logan.

“The name’s Logan. Do you mind if I come in a minute?”

“Are you another policeman?” the man asked.

“No.” Logan took the opportunity to slip past the man into the building. “What’s your name?”

The man in the lab coat looked around the laboratory for a moment before replying. “Kevin Pace.”

“Quite a place you have here,” Logan said. And it was. The exterior’s rustic, rather shabby appearance was a far cry from the inside, which appeared to be a cutting-edge laboratory. It sported three worktables covered with apparatus; several light boxes and a variety of optical equipment; a rack of computer servers and various scientific analyzers; rows of plastic cages for housing small animals; numerous tall storage shelves of gray metal, carefully labeled; a small dissection table; and what appeared to be a “clean room” set into one corner. There was a framed picture on the closest lab table: a young woman hugging an elderly, tall, white-haired man with a salt-and-pepper beard, standing in a brick quadrangle that reminded Logan of Oxford. On one wall was a bulletin board, numerous moths and butterflies pinned to it, along with notes covered in scrawled handwriting. There was a faint smell of formaldehyde in the air.

“How can I help you, exactly?” Pace asked.

“I’m a fellow scientist,” Logan said. “Staying at Cloudwater — in the Thomas Cole cabin, as it happens — putting the finishing touches on a paper. I heard about your outpost, here in the middle of nowhere, and curiosity got the better of me.”

“Okay,” the young man said. Logan had already sensed he was withdrawn, timid, not one to readily volunteer information.

“I also wanted to express my condolences about the death of your coworker. How terrible.”

Pace nodded.

“He was a fellow researcher, I understand?”

“Yes.”

“And have you been here long?”

“About eight months. We were hired to work for Dr. Feverbridge.”

“Feverbridge?” Logan asked. “Chase Feverbridge?”

Pace nodded again. He was looking more closely — and curiously — at Logan.

Logan had heard a little about Feverbridge. He was a brilliant, if highly iconoclastic, naturalist, independently wealthy enough to work on whatever subjects interested him most and to fund his own research. As Logan recalled, he was rather infamous for his skepticism of traditional scientific beliefs.

“One moment,” Pace said. Sudden recognition had flashed in those calflike brown eyes. “Did you say your name was Logan?”

“That’s right.”

“Dr. Jeremy Logan?”

“Right again.”

Pace took a deep breath. “Dr. Logan, excuse me for saying so, but I don’t think I should be talking to you anymore about our lab. In fact, I shouldn’t even have allowed you in. That’s up to Laura to decide.”

“Laura?” Logan asked.

At that moment, the door to the building opened and a woman stood framed in the entrance — tall, about thirty, with hazel eyes and high cheekbones: the woman in the photograph. She was wearing a Barbour jacket, and the wind had tousled her blond hair across her face and shoulders.

She looked from one man to the other. “I’m Laura Feverbridge,” she told Logan in a musical contralto. “May I help you?”

“This is Jeremy Logan,” Pace said. He hesitated a moment. “I, ah, I’m going to open those packages that arrived yesterday and store them in the equipment shed.”

And with that he stepped out of the lab, leaving Logan with a woman he assumed was Dr. Feverbridge’s daughter.

“What can I do for you, Mr. Logan?” Laura Feverbridge asked.

“First, let me say how sorry I am for the loss of your coworker. And no, I’m not in any way affiliated with the police.”

Laura Feverbridge nodded. Logan took a step closer to her. He sensed uncertainty; shock; cautiousness; and deep, abiding sadness.

“I’ll be frank with you. There are people here in the Adirondacks who think the three recent deaths — including that of your assistant, Artowsky — are not only tragic, but highly unusual. I’ve been asked, in an unofficial capacity, to look into them. I know this is probably not a good moment for you, but I wonder if you could spare just a few minutes of your time — and that of your father’s as well, if it isn’t asking too much.”

As Logan spoke, the woman’s eyes first widened, then narrowed again. “My father is dead.”

“Oh,” Logan replied, shocked. “I’m so sorry. I hadn’t heard.”

Laura Feverbridge hesitated for a moment. She blinked, drew the hair away from her eyes with one finger. Then she nodded toward the door. “Come on,” she said. “We can talk out there.”