Page 90 of A River Red With Blood
“But why target Cotter?”asked the supervisor.
“Bergsma’s man says it wasn’t their work.”
“And you believe him?”
“I do.He gave us the car.”
“What about the Mexicans?”
“If they’d found out Cotter was an agent, they’d have let Bergsma take care of her, though we’re not ruling them out.But what if she wasn’t targeted?What if it was just bad luck?”
“But the switched plate indicates planning,” said the supervisor.“They set out to take her.”
“Or they set out to take someone,” said Solomon, “and settled on Cotter.”
“So where is she?”
“Obviously, we’re staying on the car,” said Solomon.“There’s no camera on the garage door of the apartment building because the super says the one they did put up kept getting vandalized.We’re back to scouring traffic cameras and archives, but it may be that Cotter never left the complex.”
The supervisor stood, bringing the meeting to an end.Everyone in the room could be more usefully employed elsewhere.
“Tell the magistrate to get her signing hand ready,” he said, “and let the FBI know that DEA agents will be present when they enter that building.We’re going to tear that fucking place apart.”
Chapter 87
The Kennebec River was the artery that nourished the Kennebec Valley, rising in Moosehead Lake to the north, connecting with the Dead River, and picking up minor streams and tributaries on the way to joining the Androscoggin to enter the Atlantic at Merrymeeting Bay.Before the settlers came, the Kennebec Valley was Abenaki country; after the settlers came, it was still Abenaki country, but with visitors, and following a brief period of tentative commerce with the new arrivals, the natives decided they’d been better off without them and reclaimed the valley for the best part of seventy-five years.But the region held too much potential wealth for that arrangement to be allowed to continue, so the settlers returned.The old Cushnoc trading post was resurrected in the improved form of Fort Western, Revolutionary veterans were offered land to farm, and the days of the Abenaki as the dominant force in the Kennebec came to an end.
In the nineteenth century, textile and lumber mills were built along the banks of the river, and around them congregated flourishing communities.In the spring, logs from the winter cuts would be floated downriver, thousands and thousands of them, so numerous that in places they formed a solid floor over the river and a man could walk from one bank to the other, were he so minded and so skilled.As a boy, my grandfather took me to watch one of the last of the river drives, which must have been in ’75 or ’76, and we spent the night in a big room at the faded Solon Hotel, because my grandfather knew the manager and the hotel was only a quarter-full anyway.Now the lumber was transported by road, and it was leisure that sustained the Kennebec: fishing, hunting, rafting—which, ironically enough, was what the Abenaki had been doing when the first settlerscame along.Everything comes full circle, if one is prepared to wait long enough.Even the Solon Hotel had reopened.
As I drove to Bingham, some of the fall coloration was still apparent, like the embers of fires that formerly burned brightly: the yellows of elm, birch, and maple, the reds of hornbeam and black oak, and here and there, the faded purples of white ash and witch hazel.Soon only the greens of the conifers would remain, and staked among them, like sketches unfinished or abandoned, the bare branches of the rest.I caught flashes of water as I neared the Kennebec, and I thought again of that last river drive, and the way the logs had come together to make the water vanish; and I thought also of the dead of the valley, Scott Theriault among them, so that the two combined to form an image of a river thick with bodies, thousands and thousands of them, and the water, when it became visible again, was red with blood.
It was dark by the time I reached Bingham.Cell phone coverage could be spotty, but so far it was holding up and I had 4G coverage.The trackers placed on the vehicles owned by Roger Teal and Edward Kenney were working, and at that moment I had movement on Kenney—he was driving south from Orono—while Teal’s car was still in the lot in Augusta.I picked up some supplies at Jimmy’s Shop ’n Save, checked into the Motor Inn, and let Sabine Drew know I’d arrived.She said she was out at her new boyfriend’s house in The Plains for the evening, and we agreed to meet the following day.I watched TV for long enough to decide that a book would be more improving and less depressing, so I read a Bernard Cornwell novel until my eyelids began to droop, then drifted off to sleep.
Chapter 88
Out on Big Island, the old woman with the mutilated skull drew nearer to the water.Time no longer held any meaning for her beyond the abstract, but she was aware that once again, after so long, someone with the ability to sense her presence had come to the valley.If they could see her, so too perhaps they could hear her; and if they could hear her, they could help her.She had forgotten her name.She had forgotten the names of the children she once had, and of their children.All she remembered with clarity was the axe.But she wanted to leave the island and she could not do it unaided.She reached out to the sleeping man, that he might dream of her—
And instantly she drew back, like one who had inadvertently touched scalding metal.She retraced her steps into the woods, where it was safe and dark, but she was no longer alone.With her on the island was a woman as ruined as herself, wearing a faded summer dress.
Now the woman spoke:
leave him be
let him sleep
he cannot help you
but i can
Chapter 89
My rest was uneasy, which was usual for my first night in an unfamiliar bed, and I woke earlier than I’d have liked.Each unit at the motel had a kitchenette, but I found eating in motel rooms depressing.It was like glimpsing an alternative existence marked by transience and solitary meals taken in anonymous lodgings.I walked across to Jimmy’s, filled my to-go cup with fresh coffee, and ordered a breakfast sandwich so big I might have injured myself had it fallen on my foot.The young woman at the counter asked if I was in town for long, and I told her I didn’t know.I was the only customer, and a stranger, and represented a diversion for her.
“So why are you here?”
“Business,” I said, “not pleasure.”
“It’s the wrong time of year for pleasure anyway,” she said.
